Bloodfire

26

By the time the fried eggs and bacon arrived at their table at Whiffy’s, Beth was no longer misty-eyed. Before they’d left the motel, she’d called again to check on Adam and had a lengthy, tearful phone conversation with Melanie. Carver figured there was a time limit on keeping mother and child separated. He wasn’t sure how long that might be.

Marlene the waitress gave them each a shy grin as she set the plates before them. She glanced with unabashed awe at Beth, then told them to signal when they wanted more coffee. She returned to the sizzling grill behind the counter.

There were about a dozen customers in Whiffy’s, mostly rough-looking men. Just three women, one of them very old and almost bald. No sign of Whiffy this morning. Maybe he only appeared when there was trouble, when Marlene drew him like a gun. Occasionally, one of the men would look over at Carver and Beth, features set in barely disguised hostility. The women were less reserved in letting their faces show their curiosity and disapproval. Carver experienced what Beth must have felt all her life in places like this. He wondered how a person learned to live with it and not explode.

The scent of the eggs and bacon wafted up to him, spurring his appetite. Beth was pouring cream in her coffee. She seemed calm now, completely over her phone call. And seemingly unconcerned about the attitude of Whiffy’s clientele. It was, after all, what she’d expected.

He picked up his fork and began to eat.

The eggs were greasy but good. Biscuits were terrific. Coffee strong, the way Carver liked it. He could see why Whiffy’s had no serious competition in Dark Glades.

When they were finished eating and on their second cups of coffee, Carver said, “Sure you wanna stay here? It doesn’t make much sense to me.”

“Yes it does,” Beth said. “You understand.”

“You’re running for your life,” Carver reminded her.

She sipped her coffee and considered. Above her, one of the ceiling fans ticked like a metronome as its wide blades rotated. “Might be this kinda trouble wherever we go.”

“Not in a big city. We could lose ourselves in Miami. Or maybe the Tampa area.”

“You kidding, Carver? Those are the places Roberto operates heaviest and has the most connections. You were the one came up with the idea of going to the boondocks, and it was a good one.”

“That was before we knew what kinda place this was. Before we met Junior and B.J. Brainard.”

Beth stared at him with something like pleading in her dark eyes. “Carver, you gotta understand, I just can’t run from people like Junior and B.J.; I made it the basis of my whole life, not running from them and their kind.”

“You mean you joined them instead?”

She sat back and looked as if he’d kicked her in the stomach.

He reached for his cup, then set it back down without having raised it more than an inch. “Damn it, I didn’t mean it like that, Beth! You know it.”

She gave him a neutral look that shielded all emotion. How often had she worn that mask in Gomez’s presence? “Life fucks us over, all of us.”

“True enough. Really, I wasn’t being judgmental.”

“Besides, in the beginning Roberto wasn’t the way he is now.”

“I believe you, but if you don’t mind, I’ll go ahead and be judgmental about Roberto.”

“The money did it to him, Carver. You realize what it means to have that much money? You wouldn’t believe how much money, green and endless. For Roberto, there’s always a limitless supply. He expects to have everything he wants. There isn’t anything he can’t afford, and can’t have on his terms.”

“You,” Carver pointed out.

“Yeah, that’s right. But I’m the exception to the rule. That’s why he has to try to kill me.” She finished her coffee and set the cup down hard in its saucer. “The Brainards aren’t gonna be a problem, trust me. They’ll slink back into the swamp where they belong, and do whatever it is they do. I’ve seen men like that. There isn’t any substance to them.”

“Chief Morgan knows them, and he thinks they’re substantive enough to squeeze triggers.”

She laughed softly. “Roberto makes them look tame. Roberto’s enemies make them look like kittens.” She sounded as if she were bragging about Gomez. Carver didn’t like that.

He buttered and ate his last biscuit, then summoned Marlene and paid the check. Left a two-dollar tip. Marlene acted as if it were twenty dollars. Apparently not much of the drug money changing hands in and around Dark Glades found its way to waitresses. There was no democracy in crime.

Chief Morgan was walking into Whiffy’s as Carver and Beth were leaving. He showed his young Gary Cooper smile and nodded to them as he ambled over to a corner table. Marlene had seen him and was already on the way with a cup of coffee.

The sun and humidity were teaming up tough again today. Carver figured if he’d had creases in his pants, they would have disappeared by the time he and Beth reached the car.

They were driving back to the motel over a rutted, slightly elevated dirt road when a rumbling sound, then motion in the rearview mirror, caught Carver’s attention.

A four-wheel-drive Chevy Blazer with huge knobbed tires crawled up from the swamp onto the road and fell in behind the Olds. It was dented and rusty, painted in dull green and brown camouflage,

Carver studied it in the mirror. Suddenly it grew, as it roared up close to the Olds’s rear bumper. No mistaking who was in the Blazer now: B.J. Brainard was driving; the massive shape beside him was baby brother Junior.

Beth had turned and was staring back at them. She seemed afraid, but mostly she looked angry. “Those assholes!” she said, as if they were merely messing up the morning and weren’t in the least homicidal.

Carver held the Olds’s speed at a steady twenty miles per hour, letting the Blazer eat dust from the dry road. “Morgan warned us,” he said, “just didn’t warn us how soon.”

The Blazer fell back about a hundred feet, so B.J. could see more clearly through the thick haze. It held that distance, a tall and outsize caricature of a truck, its huge tires beating at the road.

Turned in her seat, Beth watched it out the back window until Carver braked the Olds and steered into the Casa Grande’s parking lot.

The Blazer followed and parked nose-out at the opposite side of the lot. It sat with engine idling as Carver and Beth climbed out of the Olds and went into Carver’s room. The irregular, deep beat of its motor suggested custom work and plenty of power.

There was only one other car on the lot, a pale blue Plymouth, the kind rental companies used, parked at the far end of the motel. No one in sight.

The rumbling low thunder of the Blazer’s engine could be heard even inside the room with the door shut. Beth, still looking more irritated than afraid, said, “What now?”

“Up to them,” Carver said. “That’s what I don’t like about staying around Dark Glades.”

Beth shot him a dark and furious glance. “Gonna give me the old I-told-you-so shit, Carver?”

The phone rang before he had a chance to tell her that was what he was going to do.

When Carver picked up the receiver, Watts said, “I happened to glance out the office window, Mr. Carver. Saw the Brainard brothers’ truck out on the lot. Them two boys are sittin’ in it watchin’ your room.”

“Thanks, Watts, we know they’re there.”

“Want I should phone Chief Morgan?”

“Not yet,” Carver said. “Call him if they come inside.”

“Will do.” Watts hung up.

Carver limped to the dresser and pulled the Colt automatic out from beneath his folded shirts, then got the loaded clip out from under a pair of Jockey shorts and slid it in. Tapped it tight. He worked the handgun’s mechanism to jack a round into the chamber. The solid clicking of precision steel was comforting.

Beth was looking over his shoulder, standing so close he could feel her breath on his neck and pick up the faint scent of her morning coffee. She said, “I got one of those in my room. Want me to get it?”

“Jockey shorts?”

“Don’t be a wise-ass at a time like this.”

He said, “No better time. Leave your gun where it is for now.”

She said, “You forget who hired whom?”

He liked that whom, but he didn’t answer her. She made no move to go to her room and get the gun he hadn’t known about. If the Brainards climbed down out of their truck and walked toward them, he’d send her for more firepower. Until then, why increase the odds on an accidental exchange of shots?

As if responding to what he was thinking, the Blazer’s engine fell silent. The passenger-side door swung open and Junior hopped to the ground. The truck’s heightened suspension and oversized tires created quite a drop, and his huge stomach jiggled when his boots hit gravel. He reached back into the Blazer and pulled out a shotgun. The other door opened, and B.J. sprang to the ground, light and lean as a jungle cat. He was carrying a handgun, had a large sheath knife attached to his belt, and was wearing some kind of round gray fur cap despite the heat. Looked like Davy Crockett gone bad. They were some pair, the Brainards.

The brothers glanced at each other. Junior grinned. They moved out away from the Blazer and walked toward Carver’s room, keeping distance between them.

Carver looked at Beth and said, “Really know how to use that gun?”

She looked scared now, but she nodded.

“Go get it. Don’t use it unless I tell you.”

She didn’t answer, but moved quickly and gracefully to the connecting door, opened it, and disappeared into her room.

Carver parted the drapes slightly wider and peered back out the window.

The Brainards had stopped and were standing in the sun-cooked parking lot, about fifty feet from the door to Carver’s room. They knew he was watching. Junior, still grinning, winked at him. There was nasty anticipation smeared all over his fat face.

Half a minute passed and no one moved. Possibly the purpose of the Brainards’ visit was to terrorize and not to act. Cats and mice at play. Cats, anyway.

Carver thought, Fuck this. Holding the Colt at his side, its safety off, he went to the door and opened it. Stepped outside.

Neither of the Brainards seemed surprised.

Junior said, “Mornin’, asshole.”

Carver didn’t answer.

B.J. said, “Get it in your mind, Carver, we can open fire on you here and you’re a dead soldier. No way you can drop both of us afore we kill you.”

Carver said, “Junior’ll be my pick. He’s a nice wide target.”

Junior stopped grinning. Sensitive about his weight. He said, “Thing to remember about us, Carver, is we just don’t give a fuck. Honestly don’t. That’s why we don’t scare.”

Carver said, “Times like this, I feel exactly the same way, so don’t stand there wasting my time with bullshit.”

Junior and B.J. exchanged glances. Junior said, “Thinks he’s a tough asshole ’steada just an asshole.”

B.J. said, “Well, dead’s dead. He wants his tombstone to say he was tough, that’s okay.”

Junior spread his feet wide and angled his body, in position to raise the shotgun to his shoulder. “You ready, B.J.?”

Carver figured they were bluffing, but he couldn’t deny the terror that spread through him. He centered his weight between his good leg and his cane. Tightened his finger on the Colt’s trigger.

Behind him, Beth’s voice said, “We’re sure as fuck ready.”

Junior’s little pig eyes actually widened. His body tensed and he drifted around to face Carver square. B.J. looked confused, letting his revolver dangle loose at his side.

Beth moved up to stand beside Carver. She was holding an Uzi submachine gun in a way that left no doubt she knew how to use it. The resolve in her eyes left no doubt that she would.

Junior and B.J. unconsciously backed away a few steps. They knew there was enough firepower in Beth’s hands to kill them ten times over within seconds.

Carver smiled.

B.J. stared at him and said, “What the fuck is she, some kinda African female mercenary?

Junior, looking enraged now and showing some guts, said, “That what you are, nigger?”

“Not a mercenary,” Beth told him, “just a psychotic killer.” She raised the Uzi.

The Brainard brothers’ mouths fell open. They couldn’t know if she was serious. Couldn’t know her finger wouldn’t twitch on the trigger even if she wasn’t serious. As B.J. had pointed out, dead was dead.

Neither brother turned around. Still facing Carver and Beth, they backed slowly toward the Blazer. Every few steps, Junior whipped his head around on his thick neck to make sure they were moving in a straight line, shortest distance between two points. Then his glittering pinpoint eyes fixed again on Beth.

When they reached the Blazer, Junior yanked open the door and scrambled inside, anxious to get metal between himself and submachine gun bullets. Never averting his intense and angry stare, B.J, raised himself up behind the steering wheel slowly, wary and controlled.

The Blazer’s starter ground and the engine kicked over. The truck lurched as B.J. shoved it into gear.

B.J. and Junior were still watching Beth as the Blazer rolled on its wide, knobbed tires toward the driveway. When the hood was aimed at the road, Junior stuck his head out the window and yelled, “We’ll be back, bitch!”

The Blazer’s engine howled and its tires threw gravel and blue-black smoke as it tore out of the lot and the line of fire.

Beth waved the Uzi and snarled, “Yellow shit bastards!”

Carver said, “Calm down.” Trying to calm down himself. His stomach was tight, and the taste of metal lay thick on the edges of his tongue. Death had been close.

“He needs to learn not to call people ‘nigger,’ ” Beth said.

Carver looked down at the Uzi. “You’ve got what it takes to teach him.”

She exhaled loudly in that way of hers, puffing out her cheeks. “Roberto’s got these things laying around like ashtrays. Thought I might as well bring one with me when I left.”

Carver said, “It loaded?”

“Damn right, it’s loaded. And I was within a half-inch of using it.”

Terrific, Carver thought. “You sure you’re not some kinda African mercenary?”

She smiled.

He said, “Let’s go inside outa this heat. I need to make a phone call.”

Desoto was at his desk. When the lieutenant picked up his phone in Orlando, Carver could hear Latin music in the background. A merengue, heavy on the guitars. After Carver identified himself, the music faded.

“You okay, amigo?”

Carver said he was.

“And the Gomez woman?”

“Okay too.”

“Hmm.”

“Anything I oughta know on that end?” Carver asked.

Desoto said, “I got word our friend McGregor’s trying very hard to find you.”

“He would be.”

“He’s also got some kinda semi-secret operation going in Del Moray. Seems to think there’s gonna to be a major drug drop there.”

“Semi-secret?”

“Yeah, that DEA guy, Dan Strait, found out about it. He’s cut himself in. Too many people know what’s happening for it to work, you ask me. All those people, somebody’s bound to tip the drug runners. They have connections all through the Florida police. Even the DEA.”

“Comforting thought.”

“For them.”

Carver said, “Beth and I are getting a rough time from two brothers here who’re said to be in the drug trade. B.J. and Junior Brainard. Ever hear of them?”

“You forget I don’t know where you are, amigo.”

“Okay, a little town called Dark Glades, in the Everglades. But if anybody asks you, there is no such place. You might really think that if you were here with us.”

“All right. But even if I never heard of Park Glades-”

“Dark Glades.”

“Okay-I could check with the law there and see what’s the deal with these brothers.”

“The law’s a guy named Morgan and a two-man police force. It’s a small town.”

“Maybe the DEA has got something on the Brainard brothers. But if I check with them, they’ll know something’s up in Dark Glades. They haven’t stopped thinking about you and Mrs. Gomez, my friend.”

“What about Mister Gomez?”

“I understand Roberto’s disappeared. But that’s not unusual; he’s dropped from sight plenty of times. But this time would it have to do with a drug drop in or near Del Moray?”

“Might.”

“Then McGregor’s not wasting his time?”

“Not entirely. Unless he goes about things the wrong way.”

“The weasely bastard has a way of doing things the wrong way and still coming out on top.”

“So far, anyway. Maybe he’ll nail Gomez. And if he doesn’t, Strait’s got a chance.”

A long silence buzzed and crackled on the line. “You’re the one put McGregor onto the drug drop, aren’t you? So he’s got a shot to nail Gomez before he can catch up with your client.”

“I’m a taxpayer,” Carver said. “Why shouldn’t McGregor work for me?”

“If he gets Gomez for keeps, he might work for you as mayor.”

“A risk, but McGregor running for mayor is better than Gomez running free.”

“Agreed, but it’s a close call.”

“Does Gomez have any drug dealings in the swampland?”

“Anywhere in Florida, he’s maybe got his hand in. Drug types are thick with each other until money causes a falling-out and bullets start to zip. You want me to check with the DEA on these Brainard brothers?”

Carver thought about it, then said, “No, I think I better take on only one monster at a time.”

“Same monster, amigo, just a different head.”

“Greek mythology?”

“American reality.”

Carver gave Desoto the Casa Grande’s phone number, but told him he probably wouldn’t be in Dark Glades much longer.

Beth stared at him questioningly as he said this.

As Carver hung up the phone, they both turned toward the rubber-on-gravel growl of an approaching vehicle.

The Brainards’ Blazer coming back?

Carver limped to the window and looked outside.

Chief Morgan was climbing out of his dusty white patrol car, hitching up his pants.

Carver wasn’t surprised. Watts had seen the guns.