Hot

11

Carver drove back to the cottage and called Henry Tiller at Faith United in Miami. Henry answered the phone on the third ring. He sounded weak.

“How’re you making it, Henry?” Carver asked.

“They got inside me with their knives, took out some of this, some of that, sewed me up where I was tore. What there’s left of me’s gonna be okay, I think. They gave me a CAT scan yesterday and now they say I got a head injury. Hell, that’s just what I need, the way people think of me already.”

“They’re gonna have to start taking you more seriously, Henry.”

“Ah! You’re on to the bastards?”

Carver filled Henry in on what had occurred since his arrival on Key Montaigne. He tried not to make it sound as if they had enough to send Walter Rainer to the gas chamber.

When he was finished, Henry sounded stronger, exhilarated. He said, “Gotta be that shit-bum Davy tried to run you off the road, Carver.”

“Wicke thinks so, too, I’m sure, only he won’t admit it.”

“Wicke’d be a good cop if he wasn’t running so scared of his job. But the fact is, his position’s a political appointment, so he kisses ass to keep it. And Walter Rainer’s ass is one of the kissed. I up and told Wicke that one time. Got him irritated, I think.”

Carver smiled. He could imagine.

“I figure it was Davy in a rented car tried to do me in, too,” Henry said.

“Wouldn’t doubt it,” Carver told him. “Proving it’s the hard part. You know police work.”

“Sure as hell do. From years in the department in Milwaukee, then later in Lauderdale. You give me a call when you learn anything else, you hear?”

“I hear,” Carver said.

“I think you oughta find out about that dead boy, too. The one washed up on the beach. Did I tell you there was traces of cocaine found in his blood?”

“You told me.”

“Something like that happens, and that ass-kisser Wicke’s got the nerve to tell me there ain’t no drug trafficking to speak of on Key Montaigne.”

“Effie seems to agree with him,” Carver said. “She told me there’s a fair amount of drug use, but nothing big-time happening.”

“Hell, Effie’s just a kid. She don’t run in the kinda major money circles that’d deal hard stuff.”

“The boy found washed up on the beach was just a kid, too. Younger than Effie, in fact.”

“Younger in years, maybe,” Henry said, “but he was a runaway. Two months on the street and Effie’d be ten years older, God willing it never happens.”

“You’re right about that,” Carver said. He’d met too many kids not old enough to shave or have regular periods, whose lives were set on unalterable courses to hell. Drugs were always involved. Always.

“There was cocaine in that dead boy’s blood, Carver. I figure we oughta find out what that means.”

“We will. You get some rest, though, Henry. Best thing you can do is get well enough for them to release you so you can come down here and help with the investigation.”

“You’re right, damnit! You keep in touch with me, you hear, Carver.”

“I hear,” Carver said again.

“This phone call was better painkiller than them little white pills the nurses give me. I might disconnect these tubes they got plugged into me and check myself out.”

Carver didn’t know if he was serious. “Listen, Henry, just rest. Recuperate.”

“Aw, that’s what I’ll do,” Henry said. “You stay in touch, Carver, you hear?”

Carver said he heard. Hung up. Drank the last beer in Henry’s refrigerator.

He’d go nuts waiting in the little cottage for Beth to arrive, so he decided to drive into Fishback and pick up the beer and groceries, then go by police headquarters and see if Chief Wicke was around. Carver was working for Henry, and Henry was right again: It was time to find out more about the boy who’d mixed cocaine and seawater.

The Food Emporium was hot, humid, and crowded. Every resident and tourist in the area must have decided to go shopping today. Carver limped along with his cane, bumping with his grocery cart and getting bumped in return. The cart’s left front wheel squealed and hopped with regularity, exactly the way they manufactured them. Every other passing cart was equipped with a squawling, grasping infant in the wire basket-seat where produce normally went. A fat woman in a frilly white sundress nudged Carver aside with her hip and snatched the last jar of dill pickles from a top shelf. “I got a coupon,” she explained.

Finally, after checking out behind a man with twenty items in the ten-items-or-less express lane, he limped behind the squeaking cart to his car and slung the plastic bags into the trunk. Shoved the cart out of the way and drove from the lot feeling like a commando who’d just raided an enemy storehouse.

Deciding that fifteen or twenty minutes in the Olds’s trunk wouldn’t spoil anything that needed refrigeration, he drove to police headquarters, where the mayhem was less frequent and more controlled than at the Food Emporium. He parked in the side lot, in the shade of the building, and struggled out of the car to lean on his cane.

The Toyota station wagon he’d seen there yesterday rolled into the lot and braked alongside the Olds. Today it had a magnetic cherry light stuck on its roof. Chief Wicke climbed out. Every hair on his head was in place and he looked dry and cool, even had his dark blue uniform tie tightly knotted. The Toyota must have a terrific air conditioner. Not like the Olds.

“Mr. Carver again,” Wicke said, walking around the Olds and showing a smile as frosty as the rest of him. “Here to see me, I presume.”

“Am I getting to be a pest?” Carver asked. He could feel rivulets of sweat trickling down his back; they felt like insects crawling toward his belt.

“I’ll hide behind the Fifth Amendment,” Wicke said. “C’mon inside.”

Carver followed Wicke into his office and told him what he wanted, and Wicke had the skinny cop he’d been lambasting yesterday pull the file and bring it in.

“Thanks, Dewey,” Wicke said amiably. They were on the best of terms today.

Dewey withdrew, poker-faced, and closed the door behind him. He’d been chewing candy or breath mint and left in his wake the scent of peppermint.

“Dead kid’s name turned out to be Leonard Eugene Everman,” Wicke said, staring into the open file folder. “Just turned thirteen before he died. Coroner’s report says death by drowning, traces of cocaine in the blood but not nearly enough to make him an O.D. victim. Enough to fuck up his judgment and swimming ability, however.”

“Any other marks on the body?”

“A few bruises, some abrasions on his ankles, from where he mighta been tossed around on the rocks before he died. Or he coulda been in a fight before he drowned.” Wicke shook his head sadly. “The kid was a runaway, but at least he had a family cared enough to claim the remains. His mom and dad. They were plenty broken up, too. Obviously cared a lot. Maybe the poor kid coulda got his life straightened out eventually.” Wicke lifted a pencil between his stubby fingers, then let it fall and bounce on the desk. A gesture of frustration, seen more and more in the War on Drugs. “Narcotics are a goddamn curse from hell on this country, burning up the young folks.”

Carver agreed. Plenty of older folks were burning, too. No one seemed to know how to extinguish the fire. “Who found the body?” he asked.

“Couple of tourists from Atlanta, out jogging one morning and saw it floating in shallow water near shore. No clothes on it, so we were puzzled about identity at first. Then the parents read in a Miami paper about the kid being found, and drove down and identified and claimed the body.”

“The boy was from Miami?”

“Yeah. He’d run away before and been mixed up with drugs. Thirteen, Jesus! Anyway, the parents’ names are Frank and Selma Everman. You want their address?”

“Yeah, I think I’ll talk to them.”

“I don’t see what any of this has to do with Henry Tiller getting run over.”

“It might have to do with Walter Rainer,” Carver said, “which might have to do with Henry being in the hospital.”

“The drug angle?”

“Sure.”

“I’m not naive, but I can’t see Rainer involved in drug trafficking.”

“He’s got a boat and is within easy turnaround distance of the Mexican coast.”

“There’re thousands of people like that in Florida,” Wicke said. “Even me.”

Carver smiled. “You’re lucky Henry doesn’t suspect you.”

“I am at that,” Wicke said, “since he’s got a persistent peckerhead like you working for him.” He wrote down the names and address of Leonard Everman’s parents on a memo sheet headed “From the Desk of Chief Wicke” and handed it to Carver.

Carver folded it, slipped it into his damp shirt pocket and thanked the chief.

“Anything else?” Wicke asked wearily.

“No,” Carver said, standing up. “I better get outa here before my milk sours.”

Wicke gazed at him strangely as he limped out. You meet all kinds in this work, the look implied.

Wasn’t that the truth?