They told me Roberto hired you under false colors. You accepted the job, then you backed off when you found out what was going on.” She took a sip of beer and placed the can on the rail. She’d removed the tinted glasses, and it looked for a moment as if her dark eyes were misting. “After Belinda got killed.”
“If you know I know the story,” Carver said, “what do we have to talk about?”
She removed the wide-brimmed hat now. Her hair, raven black and straightened, tumbled to her shoulders, changing her appearance entirely. Made her look like a rock singer, or a funky fashion model. Even the baggy gray dress couldn’t hide the lissome curves of her lean body. He’d heard Elizabeth was a beautiful woman. Heard right. She said, “You don’t know the whole story.”
“About your pregnancy?”
“Yeah.”
“And why you left your husband?”
“Yeah again.”
“I don’t care,” Carver said. “Domestic difficulties don’t interest me. They’re not my business. Point is, you want out, Gomez doesn’t want you out, and he’s a tough guy to leave.”
“Oh, he’s not that hard to leave. Only thing is, you leave everything else when you leave Roberto. I mean, like life itself.”
Carver gazed beyond the toe of his moccasin, at the ocean rolling in the sunlight. A pelican flapped past, dipped suddenly at a fish. Made a splash but came up empty and flapped on. “Here’s how it is,” Carver said. “I believe he’s trying to kill you, and I think you oughta go to the police. Trade what you know in exchange for their protection.”
She shook her head, staring at him with those dark, dark eyes. “Can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Roberto’s into drugs in a big way.”
“Not news to many.”
“I’m into drugs too.”
“I told you, work a deal. Get immunity. The law wants to put Roberto away, Elizabeth.”
“Do me a favor and call me Beth. I don’t like formality.”
“Okay, Beth.”
“What you want me to call you?”
“Carver’s fine.”
“I don’t mean I’m into drugs that way, Carver, the way Roberto is.” She was staring fixedly at him, something in her eyes pleading for understanding. “Not as a dealer.”
He tapped gently on the porch rail with his cane. Not making much noise. “You telling me you’re a user?”
“That’s it. Couldn’t just say no, I’m afraid.”
“Heavy user?”
“The heaviest. And that’s no exaggeration.”
Carver said, “What’s that change?”
“Roberto doesn’t do drugs,” she said. “Nobody who works for him does. He figures that’s the only way to run his business. It’s a strict rule. Strict rule for me not to use any of the stuff, either.”
“But you broke the rule.”
“Been breaking it for the past two years. Did coke at first. Then heroin.”
“Heroin, huh.” Almost disinterested. Then he said, “Oh, Jesus!”
She had a way of knowing what he was thinking. “That’s right. Our baby-Roberto’s son-died from addiction complications immediately after birth. That’s why Roberto wants to kill me, even though he knows my own addiction’s such it’ll probably kill me within a year or so.”
It was difficult for Carver to feel sympathy for her. A baby born with the raging blood of her habit, too frail to survive, where was there room for compassion for the mother? For an instant he knew how Gomez must feel. Why he needed vengeance. “How’s Roberto know you’re hooked that badly?”
“The doctor told him. The one that delivered the baby. Roberto wanted as few people as possible to know I was pregnant. That’s why he put me in the condo in Orlando. He arranged for me to have the baby at a private clinic, run by a doctor he knows. The doctor told him what happened, and I found out Roberto was furious. The day after the birth, I got out of the clinic. I laid low at a friend’s place till I healed up enough to get on the run, and I been running ever since.” She swallowed, her Adam’s apple working in her lean brown throat. “Roberto wants his revenge. That’s the way he is. He wants me before Mr. Heroin can have me.”
Carver looked out at the hazy horizon. She had to be in the last and worst stages of her habit to have killed her child. She was being optimistic in saying she had a year or two at most to live. A heroin addict in her league could measure the future in months. He said, “Does it really matter much which way you go, or how soon?”
She looked hard at him, and it seemed for a moment as if she might break down and sob. “Get yourself in my position, you hard-ass bastard. Find out how it feels. See how much you love life.”
“Maybe you’re right. But I’ll ask you what I asked Roberto the day he showed up here to hire me. Why me?”
“Because you got the courage to turn down Roberto. You refused to help him murder me, even for twenty thousand. Know what that means?” She was quietly sobbing now. Her body was quaking inside the baggy gray dress. The body he’d assumed was lean and sensuous was a doper’s wracked, thin frame, shaking itself in despair.
“Means I got humongous balls?”
“Damn you!” She turned away, toward the sea, so he couldn’t see her crying.
He sat sipping beer, not liking himself. Telling himself he didn’t feel compassion for her, this woman who’d chosen a fast life and then killed her child with her weakness. Carver couldn’t help it; weakness had always repelled him. In himself, especially, but too often in others who’d had some choice in the matter. What was free will about, if not that?
She turned around to face him again, composed now. “Everybody’s got some kinda weakness,” she said. She was a goddam psychic.
He said, “I wouldn’t argue it.”
She stood up straight. She was probably about five-ten. “You gonna help me, Carver?”
He said, “I’m sorry, I don’t do bodyguard work.”
Her demeanor changed. She moved closer to where he sat. Gazed down at him as if
Then she nodded. He wasn’t worth speaking to. She’d made her appeal and failed, and that was that.
She walked from the porch toward her car, not glancing back at him, her head held high. There was something unmistakably defiant in her long, loose-jointed stride. Even haughty. He’d doomed her and she was saying piss on him, she didn’t need him after all in order to die the way she wanted.
He liked that about her, that spit-in-the-eye quality. Liked it a lot. But he didn’t try to stop her as she drove away.
12
When Carver drove to his office and turned off of Magellan, he saw a black Lincoln stretch limousine in his usual parking slot near Golden World Insurance. It had darkly tinted windows and several different kinds of little antennae sticking up from its trunk. An occupant could coast along unseen and listen in on broadcasts from Mars.
He parked next to the Lincoln and took care not to bump its gleaming and reflective side as he opened the Olds’s heavy, rusty door.
As he raised himself up out of the car, he heard a steady, ticking whisper and realized the limo’s motor was idling. Heat was rolling out from beneath it. The rear window on Carver’s side glided down and Gomez smiled out at him.
