“Sure. Also why you hired me.”
Desoto was quiet for a moment. Carver could hear the sounds that empty houses make: the breezy, rushing hum of the air-conditioning unit, the higher-pitched drone of the refrigerator. Now and then a low groan, creak, or snap. The noises made by materials heating and expanding beneath the malicious Florida sun.
Then Desoto said, “There’s something you don’t know, my friend. Something I should have told you.”
Carver waited, not liking the icy sensation on the back of his neck. Friends were more dangerous than enemies. They came with obligations and they knew the chinks in your armor.
“There’s another reason I wanted you to handle this,” Desoto said. “If you didn’t, it’d all be up to Lieutenant William McGregor.”
Carver felt his stomach roll over. McGregor was a Fort Lauderdale police officer who’d been in on the investigation of the murder of Carver’s son last year. He had this idea he’d saved Carver’s life and solved the case, and parlayed that into a lot of publicity that resulted in his being hailed for heroism and then promoted. Those had been his goals all along. Justice wasn’t of much interest to McGregor.
“I thought McGregor was a captain,” Carver said. “In Fort Lauderdale.”
“So he was,” Desoto said. “But things do change. A few months ago there was some question about the fidelity of a Fort Lauderdale politico’s wife. An older woman, but not without beauty.”
“She was seeing McGregor?” Carver asked. He couldn’t imagine the towering, homely McGregor as a lothario, stealing someone’s wife. Not unless the woman liked her men vulgar and unscrupulous. But then, some women did.
“She was paying McGregor to keep quiet about her affair with her brother-in-law,” Desoto explained. “Then one day she broke down and confessed everything to her husband, who was in a position to force McGregor’s resignation from the Fort Lauderdale department. The only thing McGregor could do was accept a position in a smaller department at reduced rank. The Del Moray department.”
“Why the hell would anyone hire him?” Carver asked.
“He’s an acquaintance of your fair city’s mayor,” Desoto said. “And my guess would be the mayor doesn’t have any choice. You know McGregor; kinda guy collects secrets and turns them into currency of one kind or another. Listen, I was afraid if I told anyone but you what I thought, what Uncle Sam had told me, there mighta been an investigation by the Del Moray law, with McGregor having a hand in it. I wouldn’t want that. I don’t like McGregor.”
“Only folks who like poisonous snakes like McGregor,” Carver said.
“Ah, then you understand.”
“Yeah, but I’m not crazy about it. Sooner or later I’ll have to deal with McGregor. Once he finds out you and I are in this-two cops, and not his best buddies at that-he’ll get curious.”
“You can deal with him; you have before.”
“I’ll keep him out of it as long as possible,” Carver said. “Do my nosing around quietly.”
“I’ll let you get to your work, then, amigo, and I’d better get busy with mine. Crime’s picking up here.”
Carver said good-bye and hung up, leaving Desoto to his Latin rhythm and his busy day. Orlando was a rapidly expanding city with growing pains, and the police department was hard-pressed to keep up. It had been that way even when Carver was on the force. Always more crime than time.
He put on his shoes, then limped into the bathroom and rinsed away the sleep-sour taste in his mouth with some kind of blue, minty liquid Edwina had bought. He squinted at himself in the mirror. A dusty swirl of sunlight streaming in through the window highlighted his graying stubble and made it evident he hadn’t shaved closely enough that morning. So what? Scruffy guys were in style. They were everywhere, like dressed-up bums, and women couldn’t get enough of them. He raked his fringe of hair back with his fingers and told himself he was ready to do business. Told himself twice, so he believed it.
But as he stepped outside, the heat sapped him of much of his resolve. For a moment he thought it would be nice to go back in the house and stretch out again on the couch and breathe cool air. Then he gripped his cane with a sweat-slippery hand and reminded himself that the weather forecast called for rain sometime this afternoon. That would cool things off for a while, before it became steam. There was a price that went with beaches and palm trees, and it could be calculated in Fahrenheit.
He made his way across the wide driveway to where the Olds squatted half in sun and half in shadow.
The big engine fired right up and clattered loudly for a moment before the heat-thinned oil built pressure. Carver wristed perspiration from his forehead and jammed the shift lever into Drive.
He knew how to tail suspects, but his police training hadn’t included spotting someone following him. When he jockeyed the Olds in a sharp, rocking left turn out of the driveway, he gave no more than a glance at his rearview mirror.
It was Satchel Paige who’d suggested people not look back because something might be gaining on them.
That kind of advice could cause trouble.
6
What Carver needed was a clearer picture of the people involved in this. What sorts were they? Where and how did they live? What were their interests? Their virtues and vices? Who were their friends? Every problem, almost everything in life, sooner or later came down to people. And what they did to each other and why.
Birdie Reeves lived in an apartment on the west side of Del Moray, away from the beach and the expensive neighborhoods of the young and successful and the wealthy retirees. Her building was on the corner of West Palm Drive and Newport Avenue. It was a low, rectangular structure of beige stucco with a brown tile roof. The stucco had been chipped away here and there by time and weather and needed paint. A large sugar oak grew in the front yard and cast dappled, shifting light over the grounds. Off to one corner a couple of grapefruit trees that long ago had been planted too close together rustled in leafy embrace. The building sat well back from the street, and the entrance was a cedar gate in an ornate wrought-iron arch that served as a trellis for vines on which bloomed brilliant red and yellow roses. The gate, and the curlicued iron arch, also needed paint. Some oil on the hinges, too. There was a piercing squeal as Carver shoved the gate open and pushed into a courtyard overgrown with weeds and more roses. Somebody here liked roses, all right. There were red and yellow ones to match the blossoms over the gate, but these bloomed on bushes instead of vines. Here and there a white rose or a purple hollyhock peeked out from between high weeds that bent over the brick walk.
Careful how he set the tip of his cane on the uneven bricks, Carver limped to a wooden door with a metal D nailed crookedly on it. To the left of the door clung more rose vines; they’d scaled the cracked and patched stucco wall by climbing from one rusty nail to another. The long nails were hammered in a staggered pattern to provide maximum coverage. Someday the wall would be nothing but roses, like a parade float.
In the middle of the D on the door was a round glass peephole. Carver knocked loudly and stood so he was visible to anyone inside. Birdie was working at Sunhaven; he figured the apartment was empty, but there was always the possibility of a roommate or long-term guest. If anyone answered his knock, he was ready with an insurance-salesman cover story to explain his presence. Carver could be full of bullshit when it was necessary.
The only sound came from the unit next door: a radio tuned to an Atlanta Braves day game. A huge mosquito lit on Carver’s arm and drew about a pint of blood before he realized what was going on and slapped at it. He missed. The insect flitted at his nostrils as if angry with him and then droned away.
Carver tried the knob and wasn’t surprised to find the door locked. This was the kind of neighborhood where people pinched their pennies for everything else, but spent lavishly for locks and window grilles. Even if he’d considered breaking and entering, he’d have had a difficult time picking the bulky, shiny Yale dead bolt that had recently been installed. He glanced at the door to the unit where the radio was playing. It had the same kind of apparently new dead-bolt lock.
The sportscaster’s excited voice inside the apartment said, “Deep, deep to left! Back, back, back!..” A much calmer voice behind Carver said, “She ain’t home.”
He turned and was face-to-face with a stocky, sixtyish woman in a limp tan housedress. Her broad face would have been plumply pretty except for half a dozen warts on her cheeks and the sides of her nose, and the glint
