“I thought this
“I know it,” Carver said.
“And now you back away.” McGregor spat dryly, disdainfully, with his upper lip curled over an eyetooth. It was a dandy expression of contempt and one Carver imagined the big man had practiced to make perfect and used in tough interrogations.
McGregor worked the chrome door handle, about to get out of the car. The musty cologne scent got stronger with his sudden movement.
“Wait a minute,” Carver said. “There’s one thing we haven’t talked about.”
Twisting his long body back toward Carver, McGregor arched a blond eyebrow. “What’s that?”
“If I find him, I get him. I don’t want to see his money make things light for him. You, personally, can have credit for bagging him. But later. When I’m finished with him. I’ll fade out of the scene.”
“Jesus, Carver, you’re asking a lot.”
“You’ve got a lot to gain by giving it to me.”
McGregor made a fist with one hand and massaged its massive knuckles with the other. “It’s gotta be miles, miles off the record,” he said, “like the rest of this conversation. I mean, I never told you any of this.”
“How could you? We haven’t met.”
McGregor smiled. It made his eyes seem tiny and cruel. There was a wide gap between his teeth and his breath smelled sour. Carver didn’t like the idea of having him as a co-conspirator, but there it was.
“So we got an agreement,” McGregor said. “The kid’s yours.”
He climbed out of the car and slogged back to the Pontiac, his boat-size shoes sloshing rainwater in his wake.
Carver sat and watched him drive away, then reached forward and twisted the ignition key.
Chapter 9
The Kave estate on A1A could barely be seen from the road as a glimpse of bright red tile roof through the trees. Carver waited for a break in the passing Lincolns and Cadillacs, then turned the Olds sharply into the graveled entrance.
McGregor had indeed laid the groundwork for Carver’s visit. When he identified himself over the intercom at the gate, a male voice immediately instructed him to drive through.
It wasn’t a gate, really; it was a drop barrier of the type used at railroad crossings, only smaller. The black- and-white-striped, tapered length of lumber rose smoothly to allow the Olds to pass, then automatically settled back into place behind it. Made Carver feel like a locomotive engineer.
He tapped the accelerator, and continued up the gently sloping, winding drive toward the red roof and now a section of stark-white stucco wall. The top was down on the Olds and the sun was just beginning to get serious about making misery, and over the rumble of the car’s big V-8 engine he could hear the rush and sigh of the ocean beyond the house.
The grounds abruptly became immaculately tended: neatly trimmed hedges; colorful yet controlled explosions of lush bougainvillea; healthy-looking, precisely placed palm trees with symmetrical white stripes about their trunks; deep-green grass of uniform height and at erect attention. A lizard, green as the grass and primitive as the Mesozoic age, struck a travel-poster pose on a nearby tree trunk, as if it had been bribed by the gardener. Carver felt like the only flawed object on the grounds. He paused and let the engine idle as he took in the house. Sat feeling the vibration of the powerful car.
The house was two stories and rambling, all white stucco and black wood trim and fancy wrought iron. Spanish architecture, with rough-hewn cedar arches and decorative rails. Red shutters and red front double doors matched the vivid color of the tile roof. The driveway curved to run beneath a wide portico from the ceiling of which dangled a heavy iron-and-stained-glass Spanish-style light fixture.
To his left, Carver saw a path winding to wooden steps that led down to the beach and blue-white rolling surf and a boat-house and dock. A white-and-brown pleasure boat-a forty-foot Gulf star with a flying bridge-bobbed gently at the dock. The private beach was wide, and the sand was clean and flawless except where the sea had washed in some globs of oil from passing ships, along with dark tangles of kelp. The place made Carver wish he were rich.
He parked the Olds in the black shade of the portico and struggled out with his cane.
As soon as he slammed the car door one of the tall red front doors opened and a sturdily built man of medium height well into his sixties stepped outside. He was wearing dark slacks and a gray silk short-sleeved shirt buttoned halfway up. Casual but unmistakably expensive. His straight, black but graying hair was brushed back as if he were facing a stiff wind. Silver-rimmed squarish glasses magnified his intense dark eyes and made him look as if he’d never blink, even if you touched his pupil with a pencil point. Around the loosening flesh of his thick neck hung a glinting gold chain that lost itself in the gray mat of hair on his chest. He had prominent cheekbones and very thin lips, and a wide, square jaw that looked capable of cracking walnuts.
“Mr. Carver,” he said. There was something mechanical about the way his lips and lower jaw moved, as if there might be a battery pack in him somewhere. He shaped a lower-face smile as he stepped down off the concrete stoop. “I’m Adam Kave.” He extended a hand and Carver shook it. Kave squeezed hard, sensed the unexpected power in Carver’s grip, and let up quickly. Not a man to waste time on losing battles.
He led Carver through a large foyer with a terra-cotta floor and some high-priced Spanish-style furnishings, along a hall lined with mirrors and paintings, and into a room spacious enough for indoor polo.
The Spanish touch was here, too. Massive wood beams sectioned off the high ceiling. The walls were rough- textured white stucco, like the house’s exterior, with decorative colorful tiles set in them. Except for a massive, gold-framed oil painting of a three-masted battle galleon forging through a wild ocean storm, the ornate tiles were the only wall decorations.
Carver negotiated the floor carefully. It was set with large hexagonal sections of tile or marble, strewn with thick throw rugs. The furniture was black leather and dark, heavy wood. All the tables and a few elaborate wooden chairs had curlicued black iron legs. The room was cool. No need to switch on either of the two large, wicker-bladed paddle fans that extended on slender brass pipes like bizarre gigantic spiders at rest and at watch from the center beam of the lofty ceiling.
“Sit down, please, Mr. Carver,” Adam Kave said in his deep, phlegmy voice. He was one of those men who always seemed to need to clear his throat, and who had probably cultivated and disciplined the timbre of his voice to approximate a tone of command.
Carver set the tip of his cane and lowered himself into a black leather sofa that faced a wide window overlooking the beach. The ocean seemed vast from here. A gull touched down nimbly on the pure sand, gazed about, realized it was trespassing, and uneasily took to the air again. It was no stranger to packing orders.
“Something to drink?” Adam Kave asked.
“Thanks, no.”
“I’ll have a Scotch,” he said, as if it were Carver who’d offered. He moved to a dark-stained wood credenza and opened its doors. There was a kind of compact power in the way he swung his arms and carried his shoulders as he walked; he’d probably been physically tough when he was younger, and might have a few good minutes in him even now. Carver caught a glimpse of glittering crystal, a miniature refrigerator, a bright row of bottles.
Kave plunked ice cubes into a glass, doused them with Cutty Sark, then closed the credenza doors and turned again toward Carver. The force of his attention came in waves.
Carver said, “I’m sorry about your son’s trouble.”
Kave stared into his glass, swishing the Scotch and ice around. The ice made a tiny tinkling sound. Musical. “Not sorry for the victims?”
“Them, too,” Carver said. He took a deep breath, plunged. “My own son was killed a few years back in Saint Louis, Mr. Kave. A boy about Paul’s age was holding up a convenience store. My son walked in at the wrong time; he wanted a can of root beer and instead he got a bullet through the brain.”
Kave was watching him, still swirling the liquid in his glass. More slowly now. Carver couldn’t hear the
