Bloodfire

8

Carver said, “I thought I locked the door.”

Gomez smiled. He was wearing a white suit and a pale blue shirt open at the collar. A thick gold chain glinted among his dark chest hairs. He didn’t look like a hardworking salesman now. Gomez wore his hair differently, too, from when he’d visited Carver on the beach. It was combed straight back now, greased down almost flat. The slick hairstyle made him look like a lounge lizard, and it made his dense, dark eyebrows seem even more pasted on and out of synchronization. “We don’t pay much attention to locks,” he said.

Hell with this. Carver limped over to the desk. The man standing didn’t actually move from where he leaned with his back against the wall, but an alertness came over his tall, slender body, like a low-wattage current of electricity. He was in his mid-fifties, with a long, loose-fleshed face and sad blue eyes, wearing a dark blue pinstripe suit with a vest. Though it wasn’t warm in the office, sweat was rolling down his flabby, somber face. It didn’t seem to bother him. One of the two, probably the big one standing, gave off the rancid odor of the unwashed.

“Want something?” Gomez asked, leaning back and gazing up at Carver. As if it were his office.

“My chair,” Carver said. He gripped the crook of his cane hard and took a little weight off the tip, ready to use it as a weapon.

Gomez looked amused, but his dark eyes had the flat, emotionless lack of expression Carver had seen on passionless killers. “You serious, my man?”

“About wanting my chair? Yeah.”

Gomez worked his eyebrows. His cheek muscles. As if he were holding back a good loud laugh. “Listen, Carver, I give the word and Hirsh starts breaking your small bones. When I’m in a room, I sit where I fucking want. That clear?”

Carver looked over at Hirsh, who looked bored. Also older than Carver had first thought. Gray hairs sprouted from his nostrils and ears, and the black hair on his head looked dyed.

“I asked if that was clear,” Gomez said. He didn’t look amused now. His tough-guy act was in full swing.

Carver said, “Get up.”

Gomez looked surprised. Zoom, zoom went the eyebrows. “Holy fuck! You raised on John Wayne movies or something? Don’t you know who I am? Who you’re fucking talking to?”

“There’s a line I heard in a lot of movies,” Carver said, “that ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ thing.”

Gomez glanced over at the silent and sober Hirsh. “You wanna do a job on this guy?”

Hirsh shrugged. “Don’t matter to me one way or the other.”

Gomez looked back at Carver and said, “He means it. It really don’t matter diddlyshit to him if he pulls you apart like a plucked chicken or if he don’t. Hirsh is like that. Then we go out and get something to eat. I tell you, his appetite stays the same either way.”

“Gonna get up?” Carver asked.

Gomez folded his hands on Carver’s desk, then bowed his head as if thinking about Carver’s request. Like a key executive considering a supplicant employee’s plea for a raise.

Then he looked up. His eyebrows were high on his forehead and in line with each other. He was grinning; this wasn’t worth going to war over, and he had some sort of use for Carver, otherwise he wouldn’t be here. “So siddown, my man.” He got up and moved aside in exaggerated fashion so Carver would have room to pass. “You’re a fucking gimp, so I oughta mind my manners, right?”

Carver didn’t say anything as he limped to his chair and sat down. It was still warm from Gomez; he didn’t like that, but other than that it felt good to be sitting. He set his cane off to the side, propping it against the desk where he could grab it if Hirsh or Gomez made a threatening move. He looked at Gomez, who was standing in front of the desk now with his fists on his hips, still smiling, as if he thought Carver was really a hoot. Hirsh was still staring at Carver with his bloodhound gaze, but there might have been a watery glimmer of amusement in his sad blue eyes.

“So why’d you come and see me?” Carver asked Gomez. It was his office again; he was in charge. Sort of.

Gomez stopped smiling. “My wife’s sister got herself killed. You were there.”

“She didn’t get herself killed,” Carver said. “Somebody shot her. But, yeah, I was there.”

“It go down like the news said? A bullet comes through the window and zaps her?”

“That was it,” Carver said. “Sniper with a high-powered rifle.”

“You see anything at all?”

“Saw your sister-in-law’s head explode. That’s about it.”

“What was the poor dumb cunt doing in our condo?”

“She didn’t say. She’d packed some clothes in a suitcase, probably to take to your wife.”

“You didn’t talk to her?”

“There wasn’t time. Fast bullet.”

Gomez walked over toward the window, squinting for a moment into the angled, brilliant sunlight. He shot a look at Hirsh, then came back to stand facing Carver and put on a sincere expression. “Her dying was a mistake. You get what I’m saying?

“Somebody dies that way, it’s always a mistake.”

“That ain’t what I mean, Carver.”

“You figure the killer thought she was your wife.”

“Yeah. And that’s how it looks, right?”

Carver nodded. It did look that way to him. There were only a few black tenants in Beau Capri, and the two sisters would resemble each other through a telescopic sight, especially in Elizabeth Gomez’s living room. The killer had probably been waiting patiently for Beth to come home. Maybe he’d never seen her before and only had a description, then made a mistake most people would have made. Most killers. Carver said, “The police’ll wanna talk to you.”

“That’s okay,” Gomez said. “There’s no warrants out on me. I’ll go in and talk, but when I fucking get around to it.”

“Police’ll get lucky and find you sitting at a desk down at the station house and talking mean, huh? Just like here?”

“You might be surprised, my man. You got the right legal counsel and you can talk mean even in the cop shop. Fucking constitutional rights up the ass. And I got the right attorney.”

“Bet you do. Does he know you’re here?”

Gomez winked. “Confidential information, Carver.”

“If you came here to find out more than was on the news about Belinda Jackson’s death,” Carver said, “I can’t help you. It was quick and simple. The only good thing about it.”

“That ain’t the purpose of me being here,” Gomez said. “I want you to keep looking for Beth. It’s obvious she’s in danger, and I want her found before something happens to her.”

“The police can find her.”

“I don’t want the police in on it.”

“Why not?”

“Nature of my business and all, it ain’t a good idea.”

Carver saw his point. But he said, “I’m done with you, Gomez. I’ll give you back your retainer.”

“I won’t take it back.”

“Okay. I’ll spend it. But that changes nothing.”

“Why do you want out, Carver?”

“You come to me with a shitpot fulla lies, hire me under false pretenses, and I wind up standing next to a woman when a high-power slug tears into her.”

“Coulda been you instead, huh? That it? You chickenshit, my man?”

“Believe it.”

Gomez’s eyebrows did their dance and he flashed sharp white teeth. “I don’t believe it. I do research before I hire somebody, Carver. You got humongous balls, they tell me; they clank when you walk. That’s why I wanted you and not some sleazy keyhole-peeper’d piss in his pants first time something serious happened.”

“Somebody getting shot in the head, that’s serious,” Carver said. “Serious enough to discourage me, anyway.”

Gomez crossed his arms and planted his feet wide. Ultimatum time. “Let’s put it this way, Carver: You keep searching for Beth, or Hirsh here’ll see they’ll be searching for your fucking remains.”

Carver looked at Hirsh, who gave him a slow smile and a nod. There was a thick gold watch chain draped across his vest, emphasizing a stomach paunch. Hirsh had about him the air of a rough-hewn thug who’d somehow lived long enough to become half a gentleman.

Gomez said, “People I hire, they don’t quit.”

“Then I’ve broken new ground.”

“Under the fucking ground’s where you’ll be.”

Carver said, “I still quit.”

“Stubborn fucker!”

“Sure. Those humongous balls.” He closed his hand on the cane, ready to lash and stab with it if Hirsh came away from the wall with malice in mind.

Gomez wriggled and jiggled his eyebrows. He seemed puzzled. “Sure you wanna do this, Carver?”

“It’s done.”

“Don’t make goddamn sense.”

“Does to me.”

Gomez stared at him. “Tell you, in a way I gotta fucking admire you.”

“Just business,” Carver said. “I don’t work for clients who aren’t straight with me.”

“Well, maybe I can see that. Business is something I understand.”

“I’ve heard that about you.”

“Huh! Huh! Huh!” The annoying nasal laugh again. “I just bet you heard plenty, if you asked the right people.”

He kept facing Carver and backed slowly toward the door. “C’mon, Hirsh.”

Hirsh straightened up away from where he’d been leaning, then ambled over to stand by the door like a theater usher. He was wearing French cuffs, black in contrast to his white shirt. He had incredibly long arms. Huge, gnarled hands with thick, splayed fingers, like sausages flattened at the ends.

“So you think about it,” Gomez said, fading toward the anteroom while Hirsh watched Carver and everything else in the office.

“Nothing to think about,” Carver said. “It’s done. I already quit, sure as Nixon.”

“Think about it,” Gomez said again. “There’s a guaranteed twenty thousand dollars in it for you if you keep looking for Beth, whether you find her or not.” He edged past Hirsh and started to cross the anteroom. Hirsh smiled sadly at Carver and followed.

After they’d gone, Carver stayed sitting behind his desk for quite a while, thinking about Gomez’s offer, and what Gomez’s guarantee was worth.

He decided he really had quit, and he had every reason to stay quit. Nothing about the case called to him.

“Fred Carver?” said a voice from the anteroom.