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16

When Carver called the Municipal Justice Building in Orlando, he was told Desoto wasn’t in his office but would return tomorrow. He was attending a conference on DNA identification in Fort Lauderdale. That worked out for Carver. Fort Lauderdale was only a few miles north of Miami.

Within the hour he was sitting in Desoto’s room at the Pier 66 Resort on the Seventeenth Street Causeway. Desoto had been glad for an excuse to walk out on the conference’s keynote speech by an FBI technician in the building’s seventeenth-floor revolving restaurant. The view, he’d explained, was more interesting and comprehensible than the scientific jargon about genetics.

A woman was speaking Spanish from the clock radio on the nightstand by the bed. Desoto, dressed in a light beige suit, white shirt, and maroon tie, had sat on the room’s small sofa, listening patiently to Carver describing his morning in Miami. His dark eyes were vague, as if his mind were elsewhere, but Carver knew he was concentrating. Desoto was deceptive in a lot of ways, a cop who looked and dressed like a tango dancer.

The radio began playing Latin music, the song the female DJ had introduced. “Eiiiyah!” a soulful voice cried from the speaker. Desoto made a steeple of his gold-adorned manicured fingers and said, “You could have Davy arrested down on Key Montaigne, amigo, but it wouldn’t do any good. You said yourself, there were no witnesses when he threatened to make you a gelding.”

Carver had thought that far ahead. “I’m not here because of Davy.”

Desoto smiled handsomely, knowingly, the tanned flesh crinkling at the corners of his somber .brown eyes, the kind of bastard women thought got even better-looking as he aged. “But you won’t forget what he did, will you?”

“Would you?”

“Ah, no.” The steepled hands parted in a palms-up, curiously humble gesture. A man began singing to the beat on the radio. He had a resonant tenor voice that haunted the air. Carver couldn’t understand the lyrics, but the tone was tragic, a Latin lament.

Carver felt the breeze from an air-conditioning vent coolly evaporating a sheen of perspiration on his arms. He didn’t like remembering this morning in Miami. “I need some information on the Evermans. And the Blue Flamingo Hotel in South Miami Beach.”

“Such as?”

“Are Frank and Selma Everman really welfare recipients? Is the Blue Flamingo actually a welfare hotel? Do either of the Evermans have a record of child abuse or any other offense? How long have they really been in Miami?”

With a glitter of gold, Desoto held up a hand to stop Carver. “In short, were they telling you the truth, eh, amigo?”

“In short.”

Desoto arched a dark eyebrow. “Your instincts tell you the Evermans were lying?”

“Instincts again, huh? You and Henry Tiller. I don’t know if it was instinct or common sense. The Evermans sure weren’t eager to talk to me.”

“Not unusual, for people living their kind of life. You live on the dole, you get suspicious of authority. Not without good reason.” Desoto idly twisted the gold ring on his left hand, sending shimmers of reflected light dancing over his crossed legs. “What else was there about the Evermans that made you think they weren’t leveling?”

“Maybe nothing,” Carver admitted. “I’m not sure myself what I’m fishing for, or even if there’s anything to catch.”

“What happened to Leonard Everman, my friend, it happens hundreds of times a year or more, here and there around the country. Runaways get mixed up with drugs and the people involved in the drug trade, and it kills them. One way or the other, sooner or later, it kills them, even if it leaves them walking around and breathing.”

“I’d still like to verify the Evermans are on the up-and-up.”

Desoto looked thoughtful. “‘The up-and-up.’ That sounds like a line from a hundred old movies.” He was a classic film buff. “I think Humphrey Bogart said it a lot. Or maybe it was one of the Three Stooges. I’m not sure which one.”

Carver said, “Does it make a difference?”

“Only to the Stooges, I guess. I’ll do what I can, amigo, just like I promised. But in return, I want you to promise something.”

“Oh?”

“Don’t get involved in a personal vendetta with Davy Mathis.”

“Sure, I promise.”

Too easy. Desoto looked dubious. “Truth?”

“Truth.”

And it was the truth. Carver’s vendetta wasn’t with Davy. That would be like blaming the guided missile instead of whoever had launched it at the target. In this case it was Walter Rainer who’d pressed the red button. His mistake was in not destroying the target.

“You going back to Key Montaigne today?” Desoto asked.

“Yeah, I left Beth down there.”

“How is she these days?” Desoto’s voice was mechanical. He still wasn’t quite sure about Beth. Her years with Roberto Gomez might have corrupted her beyond redemption. Only a few people, maybe only Carver, knew how strong she really was. Maybe as strong as he was.

“She’s doing okay,” he said.

Desoto stared at him, his handsome head bobbing ever so slightly in time with the music, a morose guitar solo now.

“Better than okay,” Carver said for emphasis.

“Hear anything from Edwina?” Desoto asked.

“No, but I hear about her. She’s still in Hawaii selling condos.” Carver didn’t often think about Edwina anymore, about the time they’d so tentatively yet so intimately shared their lives. He’d assumed he’d never reach that point, but he had, and sooner than he would have guessed. The tragedy of life wasn’t so much that we missed people, but that we stopped missing them. Days, weeks, months, years passed, and lost faces became indistinct in the fog of memory. Endearing gestures could no longer be recalled. Emotions dulled.

Desoto stood up and buttoned his suitcoat, a tall man dressed for his luxurious surroundings. “I need to get down to one of the conference rooms. Gonna be on a panel on DNA and sex crimes. You should stick around and sit in, maybe learn something.”

“In case I wanna be a sex criminal?”

“You’d decide against it, once you learned how this DNA identification works.”

“It isn’t that I’m not interested, but I better get back.”

“Tell Beth I said hello,” Desoto told Carver. He tried; Carver appreciated that.

He said he’d convey the message, then thanked Desoto for his help and stood up.

Desoto said, “I’ll phone you soon as I get any information. Part of the reason I’m doing this is for Henry Tiller. You understand what I mean?”

“I understand,” Carver said. “Henry comes around, he’ll appreciate it, too.”

He limped over to the door. Behind him the vocalist with the haunting voice had joined the guitar in a melancholy but beautiful melody. Carver wondered if all of human experience was embodied in Latin music. Desoto thought so. Maybe he was right. For all of us the tragic and joyous music played while we lived and danced, and then it stopped. The only question was how soon.

Desoto switched off the radio and walked with him to the elevator.

After leaving Pier 66, Carver drove south toward Key Montaigne. The convertible’s top was up and all the windows were cranked down, and the wind beat like a pulse through the steel struts and taut canvas. Occasionally he checked his rear-view mirror, but Davy’s black van was nowhere in sight on the heat-wavering highway.

It didn’t really matter. Carver’s presence on Key Montaigne would be common knowledge within hours after his return. Davy wouldn’t like that. Walter Rainer wouldn’t like it.

Carver smiled and pushed the Olds’s speed over the limit.