Tropical Heat (13 page)

Carver tested the zipper on the suitcase, running it back and forth. Smooth.

“This town is rumored to be a haven for drug runners,” he said, glancing at Curt. “Any of that true?”

“Naw. There’s always talk about the Malone brothers. Sean and Gary. But believe me, they blow a little grass now and then and that’s it. Some drugs at the high school, too, even with a few of the teachers. Some hard stuff, but not much. Like it is everywhere. Big deal, huh? Folks just need somebody to talk about.”

“That’s the truth,” Carver agreed, thinking they wouldn’t be likely to talk to Curt if they didn’t want their words spread around like flu at an orgy.

He attempted to give Curt a tip, but Curt would have none of that. Not from a poor cripple the motel had almost smoked like a ham.

“Daninger said to tell you there’ll be no charge for the room as long as you wanna stay,” he said.

“Thank him for me,” Carver said. “Tell him I’ll send home for the family and the rest of my things.”

Curt’s acne-marred face split into a mottled grin. Nothing bled; a testimonial for Clearasil. “Really?”

“No,” Carver said. “I’ll be here a few more days at most.”

Still grinning, Curt hitched up his faded Levi’s and ambled slowly out to return to the office. Walking at normal speed seemed alien to the boy’s nature.

His clothes might be fresh, but Carver still smelled faintly like charred hickory. He went into the bathroom and took a long shower in lukewarm water, lathering up twice.

He stayed in the shower until he no longer smelled like a forest fire. Then he toweled dry, dressed in some of his freshly laundered clothes, and tried out his new shoes.

The shoes fit well. Someone had even pressed his clothes, and Daninger had managed to have Carver’s blue sport jacket dry-cleaned. No expense or effort had been spared in the attempt to sidestep litigation.

Carver felt okay after the night before, only a little tired. But he knew about fire; another ten minutes in that small room that was filling up with smoke and he would never have awakened, except perhaps for a few terrified, airless last seconds before eternity.

He smoothed the thick, damp gray hair above his ears, palmed water from his bald crown, and was about to leave the room when the phone rang.

Carver thought it would be Daninger, checking on his well-being, wondering if the clothes were to his satisfaction. But it was Desoto. The Cahill report.

“I phoned you last night,” Desoto said. “You didn’t answer.”

“You saved my life last night,” Carver said.

“Hey, don’t blame me. I wasn’t near you.”

Carver explained what happened.

“This fire I saved you from,” Desoto said, “was it an accident?”

“Maybe. It could have been spontaneous combustion. What about Sam Cahill?”

“He was in trouble over in Fort Lauderdale nine years ago. Assault with a deadly weapon, suspended sentence. A domestic quarrel over a woman when her husband showed up unexpectedly. The treacherous paths of love. Cahill tried to bean the guy with a lamp. Relatively minor stuff. There’s nothing else on him in Florida.”

“Nothing? No drugs?”

“Not on the record.” Desoto paused. “You know what the Chinese say,
amigo
?” he asked, mixing cultures without a qualm. “When someone saves your life, you’re responsible for them, share the blame or credit in whatever they do from then on.”

“You’ve got it backward,” Carver said. “
You
share the blame for whatever
I
do.”

“If that’s the way it is,” Desoto said, “I’m going to hang up and stay away from the phone, in case there’s another fire there.”

“Thanks for the call last night,” Carver said, “and for the rundown on Cahill.”

“Part of what makes my job a joy,” Desoto said. “It’s possible that you might be onto something too big for you to handle,
amigo.
Something nobody else has noticed.”

“I don’t know yet what I’ve got hold of,” Carver said honestly.

“You’re out there alone, Carver. The first to suspect something. Not healthy, my friend. The early worm gets devoured by the bird. Maybe you should get out of there, count your bullets, and look forward to another day, eh?”

“Not yet. The fire might really have been an accident.”

“You seen the local law yet?”

“No, I’ll get around to that this morning.”

“You worry me.”

“That Chinese thing.”

Desoto snorted. “I got to go, Carver. Crime calls. A busy day shaping up. Folks killing each other at a brisk pace.” Latin music came faintly over the phone; Desoto had turned on his radio, building rhythm and momentum to carry him through the day.

“Thanks again,” Carver said. “Really.”

Desoto hung up without answering. No sentimentalist he.

Carver left to talk to Chief Armont, as promised, locking the door carefully behind him, catching a whiff of charred wood from the direction of his old room.

The morning was hot. And the air was filled with clouds of some kind of tiny insect that had ventured out of the swamp to mate or die or act out some other mysterious rite of nature. The bugs were good at being pests. They flitted abruptly this way and that and had no respect for humans. Carver brushed the irritating insects away as he limped toward his car.

The man watching him from behind the trees at the end of the parking lot didn’t seem to mind the insects at all. Until he was sixteen, he’d endured worse inconveniences every day of his life, indoors and out. Inconveniences that to others had seemed an inexorable grinding that had finally worn them down, destroyed them.

That kind of background gave a man certain hard-won advantages, if he followed the right course and played his own game. A man like that could do things some people would faint just thinking about, because they’d always had a choice; it had never been necessary for them to learn what they could really do on sheer nerve, what they might even come to enjoy. He grinned, tasted and then spat out one of the unpredictable tiny bugs, and started walking through the moss-draped woods toward town.

S
OLARVILLE’S POLICE HEADQUARTERS
had once been somebody’s home. The ordinary problems of life had been shared there, solved or not solved, and probably children had romped and brooded to maturity within its shelter. Now the inside of the low white house had been purged of hominess and rearranged into a booking area and offices. Carver figured Chief Armont’s office was in what had once been the master bedroom. There was what appeared to be a closet door on one wall, on another a window that looked out on a sloping stretch of ground ending at a tall chain-link fence bordering the backyard of the house in the next block.

Behind the fence a large black and tan Doberman pinscher paced like a caged dark spirit, as if contemplating escape for malicious purposes, or daring anyone to come into the yard. Carver wondered why someone whose house backed up to police headquarters thought they needed a watchdog.

“That’s King,” Armont said, noticing Carver looking out the window at the dog. “He looks tough but he’s a marshmallow.” He stared speculatively at Carver. “How about you? Are you really a marshmallow?”

“Do I look tough?”

“Yeah. Even with the cane.”

“You look tough, too. Even without the cane.”

The chief paced around the room for a while, not so unlike a chunky counterpart of the unimaginatively named King. His tie was loosened, and his short-sleeved white shirt had crescents of dampness beneath the arms. He wasn’t compatible with the climate of his town. His thick arms were layered with muscle. As he paced, his stomach paunch preceded him aggressively like the confident prow of a ship. He looked like a square-fisted, solid cop, all right, and Carver suspected that his center was as hard as his exterior.

“That fire last night,” Armont said, “it wasn’t necessarily accidental. You said you were here on business. Anybody in town have a motive to try to barbecue you?”

“I doubt it. I just arrived yesterday.”

Armont stopped his restless roaming, then sat on the edge of his desk and crossed his arms, propping them on the shelf of his stomach. “Why are you here, Mr. Carver?”

Carver told him, mentioning the possible connection between Sam Cahill and Willis Davis, but not between Cahill and drugs. Maybe Cahill wasn’t involved in drug trafficking. Or maybe he was and Chief Armont knew it. Right now, it was a box better left unopened.

“No sign of this Davis around here,” Armont said. “Any stranger draws at least some attention in a town like Solarville. Nobody fitting Davis’s description, vague and average as it is, has set down around here.” He spoke as if he knew everything that went on in and around Solarville. He probably did.

“What can you tell me about Sam Cahill?” Carver asked.

Armont shrugged; the powerful muscles in his arms danced. Carver thought it was a shame he didn’t have one of those tattoos of a hula girl on his forearm, so the girl could wriggle when the muscle did. “He’s been here about six months. Deals in real estate out of a home and office he rents out on Pond Road. Drives a fancy red car. Got himself some money.”

“It there enough real estate dealt around here to make it worth his while?” Carver asked.

“There might be. And he talks now and again about building a subdivision outside the north edge of town. He could be serious; ground’s flat out there, and fairly dry.” The arms resting on the stomach paunch unfolded. Armont gripped the desk edge with thick, gnarled fingers. Carver had seen fingers like that on an old major-league catcher. “You musta checked on Cahill,” the chief said. “He got any priors?”

Carver knew Armont could easily run his own check on Cahill; this was a test of cooperation. Carver cooperated. “A nine-year-old assault conviction,” he said. “Never served time. It was a domestic fracas; a husband came home at the wrong time and caused a problem. Cahill tried to solve the problem with a lamp. Used it as a club. The traditional blunt instrument.”

“Humph. He’s been quiet enough here. Maybe he’s grown out of his temper.” Armont’s flat yet curious eyes flicked up and down Carver, considering him. “You can find Cahill most mornings about this time at The Flame restaurant down on South Loop. He’s probably having breakfast there as usual, trying to suck up again to Verna Blaney, one of the waitresses.”

“Was Cahill involved with this waitress?”

“For a while he seemed to be; then whatever was going on cooled off, at least with Verna. It’s the sort of thing folks around here would notice and probably make too much of. Myself, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was nothing between Verna and Cahill but acquaintanceship. Verna’s dad, Ned Blaney, ran airboat rides for tourists through the swamp south of town before he died of a heart attack nine months ago. People wondered what would happen to Verna. She got the job at The Flame, and she’s still living out on her hundred or so godforsaken acres in the ramshackle swamp cabin she and her dad shared before he died. She’s a good woman, maybe went a little touchy and withdrawn after Ned died, then she seemed to right herself.” Armont recrossed his arms; he was done talking, finished with his own gesture of cooperation.

Carver thanked him for the information and started toward the door.

“You were a cop once, weren’t you?” Armont asked, in a way that made it clear he knew the answer.

Carver turned, leaning on the cane. “That’s right. In Orlando.”

“It shows,” Armont said. His tone suggested he was complimenting Carver, in his own begrudging manner. He sat down heavily behind his desk and got busy in a rough way with paperwork that apparently had him frustrated. “You’ll keep me informed,” he said.

Carver said that he would.

Armont didn’t look up from the disorganized spread of papers on his desk. He drew a plastic ballpoint pen from his shirt pocket, and with powerful darting motions of his big right hand, he began gouging signatures into some of the papers. A man who attacked his work.

Carver continued out of the office. He nodded to the uniformed patrolman at one of the desks, and to the elderly woman at the switchboard, when they looked over at him as he limped past. They nodded back. The woman smiled in grandmotherly fashion, as if she’d like to pat Carver on the head, give him some cookies, and fix his leg. She looked as if she might actually be able to do that.

Carver levered himself into the sun-heated Olds, wincing as his bare hand pressed too long against the baked vinyl upholstery. The car’s top was up, but the sun had invaded through the windshield and rolled-down side windows.

He drove from the police-department lot, then down Loop Avenue to The Flame restaurant. After making a U-turn, he parked the Olds behind Sam Cahill’s gleaming red Corvette and smiled. Time for breakfast. Bacon, eggs, and information. The Flame was a white clapboard building close to the curb on Loop Avenue. It had a long, green-tinted window that featured a fancy decal of a dancing flame above the restaurant’s name in red letters. Through the window Carver could see several tables and booths, and a long serving counter with stools. There appeared to be about a dozen customers inside, most of them at the tables or booths.

One of those electrified insect traps that attract and then zap bugs on contact was hung above The Flame’s entrance. War was hell, even war on insects. Carver stepped gingerly through the previous night’s bounty of crisp casualties and went inside.

He sat at a table near the counter, not far from one of the big ceiling fans that were rotating their broad blades too slowly to stir any air. A huge antique jukebox was playing a country-western tune, a sincere lament that had to do with cowboys and trucks and desperately unhappy rich women. The place was old, slightly worn at the edges, but it looked prosperous in a small way and clean, except for the insects. Carver felt better about ordering breakfast there.

Two men in jeans and work shirts sat at the counter, sipping coffee. A man and a young blond boy with a mouthful of braces were in one of the tape-patched booths, and an older couple sat at a table near the back. Some teen-agers giggled not far from them. No one in there looked as if he might be Sam Cahill.