Bloodfire

17

By the time Carver drove down the narrow road to his beach cottage, the Olds was running hot. He could smell the sweet scent given off by boiled coolant. The radiator was rusty and leaking, he was sure. He made a mental note to have it repaired before the old car left him stranded.

He parked alongside the cottage and switched off the engine. A few seconds passed, then steam billowed from beneath the hood, and the windshield fogged. Great. He hoped he hadn’t pushed the car too hard and harmed the engine.

He climbed out and limped around to the front of the Olds. Worked the double latch and raised the long hood.

Heat rushed up and hit him in the face, He stepped back and watched more steam rise and dissipate in the already hot air. The motor was ticking loudly and something was hissing like an angry snake. Oh-oh!

He edged close and peered beneath the hood. A thread of water was angling from a break in the top radiator hose and spattering steamily on the inside of the fender well. Carver was relieved. He’d been lucky; replacing the faulty rubber hose was easier and cheaper than having the radiator repaired. It was a job he could handle himself in fifteen minutes.

He left the hood raised so the motor would cool faster, then turned away from the mass of hot metal. He needed some air conditioning and a cold Budweiser, needed to sit down.

So preoccupied was he with the car that he didn’t notice anything unusual as he clomped up the stairs onto the plank porch.

Until a voice said, “Nice to see you again, Mr. Carver.”

Carver stopped, swiveled on his cane, and saw Hirsh standing on the end of the porch. He must have stepped around the corner of the cottage and scissored his long legs over the rail. He was wearing what looked like the same dark blue, vested suit. His hair was slightly mussed and he was sweating hard, but his sad blue eyes were calm, almost gentle. He was holding an Uzi submachine gun, not threateningly, but letting it dangle at his side casually, as if he’d been interrupted cleaning it.

Hirsh said, “Stay right there, please.” He glanced to the side.

Gomez, wearing tight-fitting jeans, blue Avia jogging shoes, a blue T-shirt, and half a dozen gold neck chains, swaggered into view. He was smiling at Carver. He raised his right hand and waggled his fingers at someone out of sight around the side of the cottage, a combination wave and summons.

Carver heard an engine grind and kick to life, and a late-model black Ford pickup truck jounced into view over the rough ground. Gomez gave another hand signal, and the truck braked to a halt and sat with the motor idling. The driver was a Latino with a drooping dark mustache. He draped a wrist languidly over the steering wheel and sat staring straight ahead through the windshield. Might have been at an intersection, waiting for the light to change. There was a large metal barrel standing upright in the back of the truck.

Gomez made the same motion to Carver he’d first made to the driver of the pickup. “C’mon, Carver, you gotta fucking see this.”

Hirsh didn’t change expression, but he raised the compact and deadly Uzi a few inches. His sausagelike forefinger was crooked around the trigger.

Carver limped down off the porch and heard Hirsh follow. Gomez was already swaggering toward the back of the pickup, waving for them to come along.

The three of them stood near the back of the truck. Hirsh lowered the tailgate, all the while holding the Uzi steady and looking sadly at Carver with the resignation that grew with hard-earned wisdom.

The barrel in the truck was laced with holes. Hundreds of them. Carver recognized them as bullet holes, some of them entrance holes, some exit. The barrel had been riddled with large-caliber gunfire from a lot of directions.

Gomez said, “Can you get yourself up in the bed of the truck with that bum leg?” He sounded concerned.

Carver didn’t answer. Using his great upper-body strength to raise himself onto the steel truck bed, he scampered noisily to his feet and planted the cane with care on the ridged metal. Hirsh held the Uzi off to the side and stepped up beside him, grunting softly with the effort.

“Open the barrel and look inside,” Gomez said. “Go ahead.” He spoke in an affable tone, but it was more than a suggestion.

Carver stared at the large, perforated barrel. It was black except where the bullets had separated paint from shiny silver steel. And clean. Maybe a hosed-out fifty-gallon oil drum. A fly crawled out of one of the round holes, buzzed in a circle, and entered another.

“Mr. Gomez gave you an instruction,” Hirsh said in gentle reminder.

Carver held on to the side of the truck bed as he shuffled up to the barrel. Its metal lid was sitting on it loosely, a little off center. Gomez moved around to the side of the truck, as if he wanted to watch Carver’s reaction to whatever was in the barrel.

“Got any guesses what’s inside?” Gomez asked, obviously enjoying himself all to hell.

Carver’s head was hammering. A stench rising from the barrel closed in around him. “I doubt those are air holes.”

Gomez gave his Huh! Huh! laugh. “Get it over with, my man.”

Carver lifted the lid and made himself peer inside.

Forced himself to look at the thing’s dead face.

Not Beth Gomez. Not Edwina. Not anyone he knew.

A bald man with a beard. He’d been placed in the barrel and then riddled with automatic-weapons fire. Some of the bullets that had initially missed him, or hadn’t penetrated the other side of the barrel as they exited his body, had ricocheted around inside and caused incredible damage. His head and face were barely recognizable. So much bone had been smashed that his body had a limp quality and had settled toward the bottom of the barrel, like a human pudding dotted with moving raisins that were actually feasting flies. The dead, drained flesh was a ghastly gray. Here and there, dried blood formed crazy patterns and set off the whiteness of exposed bone.

Carver backed away, twisted his body violently, and vomited over the side of the truck. Dust rose from the impact of his recent lunch spattering on the hard ground.

He straightened up, feeling his trembling running through the cane. Spat several times to try to get the bitter taste from his mouth and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. Gomez was grinning at him. Giggling softly. Hirsh looked at Gomez, then at Carver. He smiled and very faintly shrugged, as if sharing a joke: What ya gonna do? — Roberto’s such a character.

“Okay,” Gomez said, “c’mon fucking down outa there.”

Carver gladly struggled down out of the sun-heated truck bed. The steel seared his palms as he lowered himself to the ground. It hadn’t seemed that hot climbing up.

Gomez had moved closer. “We gonna have a fucking talk, my man.”

Carver didn’t answer. He couldn’t shake the vision of the once-human thing in the barrel.

Gomez stared at him. “Huh! Huh! Huh! You want I should explain about the guy in the barrel?”

When Carver still didn’t answer, Hirsh said, “I betcha he’d like an explanation.”

Gomez said, “Well, what’s in the barrel used to work for me. I trusted the scumbag. Turns out he was more loyal to Beth than to me. One of my people heard him talking to her on the phone and told me about it. He fucking tried to dummy up when we questioned him as to where Beth was. So we put him in that barrel out in the sun, let him soak in his own juices for a while.” Gomez grinned and shook his head. “But you know what? The son of a bitch fooled us. He died of a heart attack or something, so we never did get him to talk.”

“Bad break for you,” Carver said.

“Well, those things happen. What we did then,” Gomez continued, “is we pumped him and the barrel fulla holes, hosed down the barrel and whatever leaked out, and loaded it onto the truck. Brought it here so you could see firsthand what happens to folks that try to fuck with me.”

Carver said, “So some you feed to crocodiles, some you shoot in a barrel.”

Hirsh said, “Alligators.”

“Whatever,” Gomez said. Without looking around, he motioned with his arm, and the driver put the pickup in Drive. Dust drifted as the truck pulled away. Carver listened to it shift gears as it made its way along the road to the highway. Gomez said, “My man’s taking the barrel to a boat. It’ll be loaded on board, and some heavy anchor chain’ll be dropped inside on top of the dead scumbag. Then the lid’ll be bolted on and the barrel will be dropped overboard out at sea. Nobody’ll ever fucking find it.”

“Efficient,” Carver admitted.

“I’m that,” Gomez said proudly. As if to illustrate the fact, the long black Lincoln limo with the tinted windows glided around the side of the cabin and parked where the truck had been. Heat waves danced from the exhaust of its idling motor.

“Why are you giving me this example of your business methods?” Carver asked.

Gomez said, “I wanted you to know-to fucking feel-the kinda thing’s gonna happen to you if you don’t play straight with me. You see, the guy in the barrel, he was heard mentioning your name on the phone. Shame is, he never lived long enough to tell us why. But if you got anything to do with Beth, or if I find out you know where she is and you ain’t telling me. . well, you’ll wind up worse’n our friend that just left to go on his last ocean cruise.” He put his hands on his hips, stuck out his chest as if he might actually emit a rooster crow. The gold neck chains caught the sun. “Now, Carver, this make a fucking impression on you?”

Carver said, “How couldn’t it?”

Gomez cocked his head to the side. He elevated his wacky eyebrows as if he were puzzled. “You’re a tough cocksucker, you know that? You puked when you looked in the barrel, but you didn’t pass out. Lotta guys woulda fucking keeled over. And there you stand being sarcastic.”

Carver raised his shoulders slightly and let them fall. He wouldn’t let this self-styled drug dictator know how shaken he was. He said, “It was his turn in the barrel.”

“Huh! Huh! Huh! That’s good, Carver. This guy’s a piece of work, ain’t he, Hirsh?”

“Sure is, Mr. Gomez. But then so was the one in the barrel.”

Carver said, “He call you Mr. Gomez in private?”

“Not in private,” Gomez said, “but this is business, so he’s being a bit formal.” He spread his hands palms out. “Just business, being done so you keep outa my personal life.”

Hirsh said, “I think you made your point, Mr. Gomez.”

Gomez said, “Sure hope so. Have I, Carver?”

“I feel we know each other better. But don’t look for me to invite you over for barbecue.”

“Or me to ask you to go fishing,” Gomez said. “We don’t need to be friends, just fucking understand one another. That’s so if you are in any kinda contact with my wife, you break it and stay away from her. She’s got a fatal disease called Roberto Gomez, and if you get near her, you’re sure to catch it.”

Carver said, “I understand you, Roberto.”

“Fine. Good. That means I accomplished the purpose of this visit. ’Cause I understand you, Carver. You’re a hard-ass, but you ain’t fool enough to dive into a blender for a no-good cunt like Beth. Mother Teresa maybe, but not Beth.”

Hirsh said, “Or maybe Madonna.”

“Huh! Huh!” Gomez turned and swaggered toward the limo. He opened a rear door and climbed in as Hirsh moved to follow. Old pro Hirsh walked as easily backward as forward, still looking disinterested and keeping the Uzi aimed in the general direction of Carver.

He folded his tall body into the back of the limo after Gomez, making the same soft grunting sound he’d made when he’d climbed into the truck. He pulled the door shut after him. The long, gleaming car spun its rear tires and threw sand and rock as it drove away.

Carver looked over at the Olds. It had stopped steaming. He limped to it and slammed the hood shut. The hollow clash of steel reminded him of the barrel, causing his stomach to lurch and a rage that had been smoldering in him to flare into something white-hot and constant.

He hobbled around the mess he’d made on the ground when he’d vomited, then he clomped inside the cottage and rinsed out his mouth. He drank a cold Budweiser while he sat in his creaking director’s chair and trembled. The barrel with the body in it might even now be sinking toward the ocean bottom, plunging faster and faster as sea water poured through the bullet holes.

Carver shook off the ghastly vision, but it wasn’t easy. He drank another beer before he phoned Beth Gomez and told her he’d work for her.