Bloodfire

1

The ocean roared and pushed him close to shore. Carver felt the equilibrium lent by deep water desert him. His toes and palms scraped on the grit and broken shells of sea-tossed sand. Breakers curled and flattened out, then frothed around his suddenly heavy and awkward body, which belonged to land. Dragging his bad leg, he crawled through shallow water toward the beach.

As he emerged from the water, the fierce Florida sun bore down on him. Almost immediately perspiration began to mix with seawater on his shoulders and the back of his neck. Carver wasn’t afraid of sunburn; he was already brown from morning after morning of therapeutic swims in the sea.

He crawled to where his cane jutted from the sand like a spear. Picked up the folded towel next to it, shook sand into the burning morning air, and rubbed his face and bald pate with the rough terry cloth. Then he sat with his permanently stiff left leg extended, his good leg doubled under, and stared out to sea. In the distance a mammoth freighter lay on the hazy blue horizon like an island, its progress almost imperceptible as it made its way north. Closer in were several triangular white sails, banked at precisely the same sharp angle into the breeze. Above them half a dozen gulls, dark specks against a luminous perfect sky, dipped and soared on currents of warm air.

Carver loved to look out at the ocean, to sit and listen to the eons-old rhythmic roar of waves rolling in and crashing on soft sand, while he breathed in the fetid fish-rot scent of things living and dying and being cleansed by time and water. Between the smashing and sighing of surf, he could hear an occasional muted shriek; tanned sun worshipers were already on the public beach, to the right of where the shore curved away from his cottage with its private stretch of sand.

Only a small portion of the beach was visible. Carver saw a slender girl in a white one-piece suit dash into the surf and leap as if the sea were electrified. She screamed to someone onshore, then shook her long blond hair and ran back from the waves’ reach and out of sight beyond the curve of land. Another scream. Laughter.

Movement caught his eye. A man was walking toward him from the direction of the public beach.

Carver bowed his head slightly and continued facing the ocean, as if he weren’t watching the interloper. The man looked about average height and weight but was very muscular. He was suntanned evenly, as if he spent a lot of time outdoors, and was wearing red bikini trunks, stretched taut across a flat stomach. In his right hand was a wadded white towel. The heels of his rubber beach thongs flopped loosely and flicked up rooster tails of sand with each step.

Carver expected him to walk past, cutting through to the rocky beach on the left, which was too rough for swimming or sunbathing. He sat listening to the whisper of footfalls in sand as the man trudged behind him.

The swish of sand kicked up by the beach thongs stopped. The man was standing behind Carver.

Carver turned. The man was staring down at him. A guy about forty but still in great condition. The tan was almost too even, as if it had been augmented by sunlamps. He was handsome in a dark and classic way, though his wavy black hair was going gray. One of his thick, dark eyebrows was set higher than the other. Now it crawled even higher on his forehead, giving him a supercilious, amused look, as if he were passing through a world of inferiors he viewed with disdain. He had brown eyes, flashed perfect teeth as he smiled and said, “Enjoy your swim?”

“Always do,” Carver said, making a point of staring out to sea, waiting for the man to resume walking.

Instead he moved around in front of Carver, facing the wide ocean. There was something haughty even in the way he stood.

Carver didn’t feel like making small or large talk with anyone. “Private beach down here,” he said, keeping his voice amiable. “I don’t mind if you cut through, though.”

“You’re not very polite,” the man said, not turning around. “Be that way, you’ll scare off business.”

“Business?”

Now he turned and did that amused, arrogant thing with his eyebrows: Carver was hardly worth his time, but here he was and Carver was a fool not to be glad. “You’re a private investigator, right, Mr. Carver?”

“That’s right. My office is in town, on Magellan Avenue across from city hall.”

“That the only place you do business?”

“No,” Carver said, deciding he was being a hard-ass when it wasn’t necessary. Wasn’t Edwina always warning him he was too cynical? That he was wearing out his life from the inside? He gripped his cane halfway up the shaft and used it to lever himself to his feet. He looked the man in the eye, smiled, and said, “You business?”

“I might turn out to be a client, if you want the case.” He extended his right hand. “Name’s Bob Ghostly.”

Carver shook hands with the man, whose grip was powerful and dry and contained a hint of strength in reserve. “You know my name.”

“Not your first.”

“Fred, then,” Carver said, thinking there was really no need for first names if this was business. “Usually I’m just called Carver.”

“Okay, Carver.” Again the affable handsome smile, marred only by the disdainful eyebrows. “So you wanna hear my problem?”

“Let’s go into my cottage,” Carver said. “Cooler there. And I feel like drinking a beer.”

“Sounds fine.”

Carver tucked his folded towel under his arm and led the way up the gently sloping beach toward the low, clapboard cottage with its flat roof. He had to walk carefully with his cane in the soft sand, making sure its tip was planted firmly enough before leaning his weight on it. He could hear the slow, even tread of the man behind him, now and then the spray of sand and the slap of a rubber sole on a bare heel. Ghostly was hanging back, as if he didn’t want to offend Carver with the fact that he had two strong and capable legs. Or maybe Carver was just reading it that way, filtering it through his own self-pity. Had to watch out for that.

He pulled open the screen door, then stepped aside on the plank porch so that Ghostly could enter first. Followed him inside and let the door slam shut behind him. The slap of wood against wood as it bounced several times off the doorjamb reverberated but was absorbed by the background sigh of the sea, lost in eternity.

Ghostly stood and looked around at the one-room cottage, the wood floor, the folding screen divider that sectioned off where Carver slept, the cooking area set off by a breakfast counter where Carver usually ate standing up, leaning as if he weren’t lame. A row of dead plants, in pots dangling by chains, was silhouetted inside the wide window that looked out at the Atlantic. Ghostly said, “Nice place,” as if he didn’t mean it.

Carver tossed the damp towel in the canvas director’s chair near the door. He thumped across the floor to the old refrigerator and opened the door. Cold air tumbled out on his bare feet. He reached in and closed his hand around an icy red-and-white can. “Want a Budweiser?” he asked. “That’s all I got.”

“You said it,” Ghostly told him. “I don’t see any sign of food in there.”

Carver straightened up and stared at him, “You want the beer?”

“No, thanks.” Ghostly was smiling, working those expressive out-of-sync eyebrows, Carver was beginning to think the guy was a smartass trying to be sociable and not quite making it. A nasty edge kept showing through.

Carver tugged at the can’s pull-tab, heard the hiss, and felt cold liquid dribble on the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. He took a long pull on the beer, not minding that it stung his throat a little going down, then backhanded foam from his upper lip. “So what’s your problem, Mr. Ghostly?”

“My wife.”

Now Carver had to tame a smile. The old story. That was what kept him in business, trouble between the sexes. Love, lust, whatever, really did make the world go round, dropping people off at Carver’s door.

He clutched the crook of his cane in one hand, the beer can in the other, and limped over to the director’s chair, still trailing water on the floor. He used the cane to lower himself into the chair, on top of the towel. He always sat in this chair when he was finished swimming, and didn’t mind if the canvas seat and back got wet. He took another swallow of beer and waited for Ghostly to continue.

“She’s missing,” Ghostly said.

Carver thought, How original. Said nothing.

Ghostly gnawed his lower lip, letting Carver know how concerned he was. “Last week I woke up and she was gone. Left a note saying she wouldn’t be back.”

“That what it said exactly?” Carver asked.

“Yeah, it was to the point. ‘Bob, I’ve had enough. I’m leaving and won’t be back.’ I remember it word for word.”

“Still got the note?”

“No, I threw it away. Saw no reason to keep it.”

That didn’t ring true to Carver. It was his experience that jilted spouses usually held on to such notes. A last message from someone they might never see again. Or, if the parting was bitter, tangible proof of betrayal. “She sign it?”

“Sure. Not her last name, just Elizabeth.”

Carver looked at his half-empty beer can. “Like that? Her entire first name?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What’d you usually call her?”

“Beth. Her friends called-call-her that, too.”

“But she signed the note Elizabeth. Kinda formal. Her handwriting?”

“Yeah, I’m sure it was.”

“Any reason she’d bolt?”

“Must have been. She’s gone.”

Mr. Wise-ass again. “I mean, that you know of. You two have an argument just before she left? Anything like that?”

For the first time Ghostly looked uneasy. He was staring at Carver with appraising dark eyes, gnawing his lower lip again but meaning it this time. “If I hire you, is what I say confidential?”

“Even if you don’t,” Carver assured him.

“Still. . ” Ghostly partially unwound the towel he was carrying. A leather wallet and a pair of sunglasses were cradled inside. He opened the wallet, an expensive eelskin one, and peeled out a bill. He held it out for Carver. It was a thousand-dollar bill. “I wanna make sure nothing I say gets beyond you. Want you to have some ethical obligation. Take the money. Let me be your client officially before I finish what I have to say, then you either accept the case or not, but either way you keep the thousand.”

Carver was getting interested. He decided to play along. People did less for more money on TV quiz shows, didn’t they? He took the bill from Ghostly’s hand, folded it in quarters, and tucked it beneath the damp elastic band of his swimming trunks. He said, “You can trust me.”

Ghostly said, “I know. I checked on you before I came here. You’re a lot of things, Carver. Honest is one of them.”

Carver didn’t want to hear about the others. Better to stop with honest, while he was ahead. Settling back in the wood-and-canvas chair, hearing it creak beneath his weight, he laid his cane across his lap and stretched out his good leg alongside his bad one, the result of a bullet. Such a world.

He said, “Let’s hear about Elizabeth.”