Bloodfire

Desoto shook his head no. “He’s gotten clever since he’s moved south. Miami Narcotics and the Drug Enforcement Administration keep a watch on him, though, waiting for him to screw up. They know he’s one of Florida’s major dealers, but they need more than they got if they wanna prove it in court. He’s also one ruthless cookie, amigo. He’s got a longtime lieutenant name of Hirsh does the mean work. Gomez enjoys watching, they tell me. But he’s still capable of most anything himself. He doesn’t do drugs and he doesn’t allow any of his employees to use the stuff. Last year, in the Keys, he found out one of his men was carrying a habit. Gomez cut off the guy’s fingertips with a machete and towed him behind the boat. Got a charge outa what happened when sharks were attracted by the blood.”

“No proof, though?” Carver asked.

Desoto smiled faintly. “Not unless you can get sharks to testify. DEA knows who else was on the boat, but nobody’s talking.”

Carver couldn’t blame them. Seeing sharks make a meal of one of your co-workers would stick in the mind and prompt loyalty to the employer.

“So what we have,” Desoto said, “is Gomez wanders up to you on the beach, pretends to be someone else, and hires you to find his wife.”

“His real wife,” Carver said.

“So far, anyway. But he neglects to tell you she’s pregnant.”

“She might have already had the baby,” Carver pointed out.

“True. Nobody knows how pregnant she is-or was. Anyway, you go to the address Gomez gives you-where he actually did spend time with his wife and where she’s been more or less living much of the past year-and the wife’s sister walks in and gets shot by a sniper.” Desoto leaned back into the breeze from the window unit. His wavy dark hair didn’t budge in the flow of air. “Amigo, tell me what it all means.”

Carver had been sitting there wondering exactly that. He said, “Well, I don’t think I was used to set up Gomez’s sister-in-law. It doesn’t connect. She must have arrived at the apartment unexpectedly.”

“Uh-huh. But why, do you figure?”

“To get some clothes and personal items for her sister, who’s in hiding.”

“Hiding from?”

“I don’t know. Gomez?”

“Maybe from Gomez. But I don’t think so. And the unfortunate Belinda Jackson?”

“Shot by mistake,” Carver said. “Because the killer, firing from a distance, thought she was Elizabeth Gomez.”

“That’s how it coulda been, all right.” Desoto sat forward again. He placed his elbows on his desk and clasped his neat, tanned hands together. “What if somebody’s trying to kill Elizabeth Gomez, and hubby Roberto wants to find her so he can protect her, eh?”

“That the way you’re leaning?”

“For now, amigo.”

“She’s more likely running from Gomez, which is why he hired me to find her.”

“Except he stashed her out of harm’s way in the Orlando condo to begin with. My impression is he was trying to protect her and the baby they were expecting.”

“Then Gomez really thinks somebody snatched her-or them,” Carver said. “According to your hypothesis.”

“It falls that way,” Desoto said. “An abduction.”

Carver considered it. Didn’t like it. Didn’t say anything.

Desoto said, “By the bye, sooner or later a DEA agent name of Dan Strait will wanna talk to you. He’s naturally interested in anything concerning Gomez.”

“Reasonable.”

“Considering what happened, you probably won’t see Gomez again. But if you do, let me know. It’s not just the DEA that wants a word with him.”

“You see him as a suspect?”

“Oh, no. Even if he shot the woman, he’ll have an alibi a team of high-powered lawyers couldn’t budge in a year.”

“A careful man, huh?”

“Miami tells me he’s awful nifty as well as psychotic. DEA says the same thing. What drug money can do to people, it’s done to Gomez. Guy’s major-league dangerous, so you be careful yourself.”

“You know me.”

“Sure do, my friend. Once you get involved in something, you can’t let go. Give some dogs a rag to chew on, and when they get a tooth-hold they’ll tug at it till they drop. That’s the way you are.” He reached back and turned up the Sony’s volume. A tango was playing; very dramatic. “Anything you wanna add before you go into an interrogation room and make your official statement, amigo?”

Carver leaned forward over the cane and stood up. He said, “Belinda Jackson was a slender, well-built woman. Even through a telescopic sight and a window, there’s no way she’d look to be in the late stages of pregnancy.”

“I noticed that about her,” Desoto said.

“Figured you would,” Carver said, and went out.

Hoping he’d never see Roberto Gomez again, but knowing better.

Dogs and rags.

6

On the drive back to Del Moray, Carver stopped at the Happy Lobster on A1A and had a leisurely supper of crab legs washed down with draft beer. It was cool and quiet in the restaurant, making it easier to think sanely. Faint noise was drifting from the bar. Men argued good-naturedly-about what he couldn’t tell, Someone coughed, a nasty cigarette hack. A woman laughed a rising, uncontrollable shriek of mirth. They were having a good time, all right.

Carver had followed the hostess farther into the restaurant, away from the noise. He sat in one of the booths by the wide, curved window and looked out at the darkening Atlantic. A couple of fishing boats were moving parallel to the shore, surrounded by gulls in the way fleas surround dogs. The clouds that had lain on the horizon that morning had been pushed in by the sea wind and turned the sky a low, leaden gray, but the temperature was still up in the nineties. It was muggy as a sauna out there. Rain ready to happen.

Carver and Edwina had shared a lot of meals at the Happy Lobster, but he didn’t feel sentimental and he didn’t know why. She was due back from Atlanta tonight. She might even be back now. He could have driven all the way in to her place and possibly had supper with her.

Six months ago, maybe one month ago, that’s what he would have done. Shared with her what had happened with Roberto Gomez and his missing wife and dead sister-in-law. But Edwina had demanded the total commitment from him that he couldn’t give. Sensing he’d never surrender a private side of himself, she’d been pushing him away, gaining emotional distance and courage for a break they both knew was coming.

Unless Carver relented and gave her marriage and all it entailed.

And he knew he never would. His marriage to Laura had soured him on the institution. It was a reaction he couldn’t control; marriage was a setup for pain. Just looking at a flame could make you hurt again where you’d been burned.

He sipped his beer and gazed out at the ocean rolling in from a far part of the planet. He’d had enough of pain, seen enough of it and was undoubtedly going to see more. He wanted as little as possible of it to be his. Selfish? Maybe. Or maybe more like self-preservation. Edwina had felt the same way a few years ago, after her own disastrous marriage and rebound love affair. Since then she’d healed. Carver hadn’t. That simple.

He finished his third beer, paid his check, and limped out to the parking lot, where he stood and smoked a Swisher Sweet cigar. Cars carrying the supper crowd were pulling in from the highway and parking. He listened to gravel crunching beneath tires and shoes, and watched people, usually in pairs, stride into the restaurant.