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38

At ten-thirty that night, Carver left the Olds parked out of sight and limped along Shoreline toward the research center. There was enough light to see fairly well, broken only by the passage of scudding black clouds across the face of the moon. He placed his cane carefully in the dark, making good time to the parking lot.

As he drew near the angular brick building, he slowed his pace, gathering his thoughts and resolve. Around him were only the night sounds of insects, the brief drone of a faraway plane, water lapping down by the dock where the dark form of the Fair Wind rode. He could sense on his right the vast mystery of the ocean. He was sweating, breathing raggedly, as he used the key Katia had given him and let himself into the research center.

After closing the door but not relocking it, he stood for a while waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dimmer light inside the building. Then he limped past the posters of sea horses and dolphins and opened the door to the lower level Tide Pool Room.

There were no windows in this room, so he felt for the light switch inside the door. Found its smooth protuberance and flipped it up. It made a sound like a sharp slap.

The overhead fluorescent tubes flickered like heat lightning then glowed steadily, and the shark tank’s wavering illumination was also activated. The hulking form of Victor swooped toward Carver, surprisingly near, startling him for a moment. Then the shark swept in a graceful arc behind the glass and with a flick of its tail glided in the opposite direction, its image becoming distorted and deceptively small on the far side of the tank. Victor’s world. Circling, circling.

“You’d think he’d get tired,” a voice said.

Still poised on the black steel landing, Carver looked down and saw Walter Rainer standing near one of the tide pool displays. Like Carver, he’d gotten the idea of arriving early, before Millicent Bing was due. Early birds hoping they weren’t worms.

Carver clomped down the metal stairs with his cane and saw Davy standing to Rainer’s left, where he wouldn’t be seen from the landing. Davy stared unsmilingly at Carver, his muscular arms hanging limply at his sides. Carver nodded toward the shark and said, “I’m told they have to keep swimming, keep feeding, or they sink and die.”

“I find myself in the same position,” Rainer said. He ran a hand over his hugely protruding stomach, as if to reassure himself he was prosperous and well-fed. He was wearing a cream-colored suit that made him look even more massive than he was. A beige shirt, no tie. The suit was wrinkled and baggy, and though the Tide Pool Room was cool, Rainer’s fat-padded face glistened with sweat and looked sickly in the fluorescent light. Davy had on tight jeans and a loud flowered shirt, untucked. Carver had left his own shirt untucked to conceal the Colt holstered beneath it. He figured Davy was also armed, probably with his weapon of choice, the sharpened cargo hook. There was pattern and predictability to sadism.

Behind Rainer the shark kept circling, the only movement in the room. Then Davy hooked his thumbs in his side pockets and swaggered out to stand in the center of the floor with his feet spread wide, closer to Carver but not too close. He was playing cool but he was tense; the nude dancer on his forearm twitched a hip.

Carver said, “Millicent isn’t coming.”

Ranier shrugged inside the tent-sized suit. “That doesn’t surprise me, nor does it matter. I was sure you’d be here. Time enough to deal with Millicent, if indeed I must.”

“You must,” Carver said. “Otherwise you won’t sleep well, worrying about when her conscience might bite her and then you.”

The small square room was silent, insulated from the outside world as the floor of the sea. “I assume she told you everything,” Rainer said.

“She filled me in on what I hadn’t already guessed after seeing Davy hand over a payoff to Frank Everman this morning.”

Rainer gave Davy an annoyed look. Davy’s flat little eyes fixed intensely on Carver, like dispassionate radar-gun sights.

“You weren’t smuggling drugs or anything else into the country,” Carver told Rainer. “You were smuggling something out, into Mexico. You run a way station, part of an operation that supplies certain people in Mexico with abducted children for sexual exploitation in brothels and for private amusement. Dr. Sam knew about it but wasn’t part of it, though occasionally he gave you use of the Fair Wind when you thought the Miss Behavin might attract suspicion. The doctor had a weakness for young boys, which you supplied in exchange for his silence. Millicent knew but wouldn’t talk about it and ruin her husband.”

Rainer was nodding slightly as Carver spoke, agreeing with him. “That kind of appetite burns in the blood,” he said. “Dr. Sam was weak, couldn’t help himself. Millicent’s also weak. That’s why she isn’t here.”

“And why she might eventually talk if you don’t find her and kill her.”

“I honestly don’t see that as necessary,” Rainer said. “There’s always a way to persuade people, and if they aren’t persuadable, there are other methods. For instance, just before you arrived I got a call from Hector telling me your friend Beth Jackson was arrested by Chief Wicke for spying on my private grounds. Apparently she was supposed to phone you here when I and mine left for this meeting. Instead she’s now in the custody of Chief Wicke.”

“You phoned Wicke to come get her?”

“Hector did, after Davy and I left unseen and were well on our way. We didn’t want her to become impatient and interrupt proceedings here. But do tell me what else you think you know, Mr. Carver.”

Carver glanced at Davy, who hadn’t moved or changed expression. The faint shadow of the circling shark played over his stolid features. “The Evermans are part of the operation that abducts the children and sends them south in Davy’s van for you to transfer to Mexico,” Carver said. “The boy who drowned was high on cocaine so he could be controlled, but somehow he got free, tried to swim to safety, and drowned. The Evermans were sent from Miami to Key Montaigne to pose as the boy’s parents and claim the body before further police investigation revealed his true identity and that of his real family.”

Rainer gently touched his protruding stomach again, making the gesture somehow sensual and obscene. He sighed. “You’ve done surprisingly well, despite our considerable efforts to discourage you.”

“Henry Tiller was doing okay himself, which was why you had him murdered.”

“Yes, we had to send Davy to handle that chore.”

“Chore, huh? Like weeding the garden.”

“Or taking out the garbage. But doing violence and making it seem accidental isn’t exactly Davy’s style, so old Henry lived long enough to draw you into the situation. And you certainly proved to be as stubborn as your reputation promised.” Rainer’s gold ring glinted as he waved a fleshy hand limply but quickly, as if flicking something nasty from his fingertips. “No matter, I’m a man who takes precautions religiously. Davy’s in his element now, not behind the wheel of a rental car. He’s at his best preventing someone of known obsessive and dangerous personality from harming his employer or himself, even if it means that someone’s unfortunate but lawful death.” Not looking away from Carver, he nodded to Davy and said. “This is finally goodbye, Mr. Carver. It’s been stimulating if irritating.”

Davy reached beneath his riot-of-flowers shirt and pulled out his sharpened cargo hook. His expression was businesslike as he advanced on Carver. He’d handled Carver easily in Miami, and now it was time to get serious and finish the job. The routine chore.

Carver calmly drew the Colt from its holster, but the cargo hook arced forward with startling speed and slashed his hand. The gun dropped to the floor, landing at an angle and bouncing away from Carver. The back of his hand throbbed and dripped blood from a four-inch gash.

Davy stepped back, grinning now. His eyes had changed. Since Carver had been disarmed, business and pleasure could be combined. Carver had little doubt that if he stooped to retrieve the gun, Davy would be on him for the kill. They both knew Carver wasn’t going to do that. Doomed men tend to cling to time. Davy was obviously relishing the leisurely sport of finishing off a cripple.

But this time Carver wasn’t caught by surprise. He stood almost still as Davy approached him, shifting his weight subtly so Davy wouldn’t notice. His good leg was set so firmly that inside his thin-soled moccasins his toes were curled down tight against the concrete floor. He waited.

As Davy crouched to close in with the hook, Carver lashed out and up with the cane. It missed Davy’s wrist by inches, but Carver pulled it close to his body and, as Davy sprang, he shot the tip of the cane forward into Davy’s sternum, using it as a jabbing weapon to drive the breath from his attacker. “Ooomph!” He felt the sour rush of Davy’s exhalation on his face, and the point of the cargo hook snagged for a moment on his shirtsleeve, then tore free. Now Carver slashed down with the cane, and the deadly steel hook flew from Davy’s injured hand and bounced clanging beneath one of the display trays. As Davy instinctively lowered his free hand to grip his damaged fingers, Carver flicked the cane up in his face, jabbing at an eye. Jabbing again.

Davy snarled and leaped back. Stood rocking on the balls of his feet. Glaring and battling his temper.

“Davy,” Rainer said softly, cautioning. Almost a whisper. “Davy!”

But Davy lost his composure and charged.

What Carver was waiting for. He flicked the cane out again, like a nifty boxer using a stiff left jab. Davy stopped and tried to brush the cane away from his face or grab it. Carver drove it into his groin. Davy’s hands dropped again. Carver slammed the cane across the side of his head, feeling and hearing the solid connection of walnut with bone. Nailed him again on the backswing, opening up a cheekbone. He was a fraction quicker than Davy, and now both men realized it and knew it made all the difference. Christ, this was fun! Terrifying but fun.

Davy retreated. Streaming blood was making a grotesque mask of his face. His glance shot to where the cargo hook had slid beneath the display tray.

Carver smiled and motioned with the cane for him to attack again. Silently mouthed the word “Please,” urging him to come forward.

But Davy moved fast in the opposite direction, going for the steel hook.

Before he could reach it, Carver was down and struggling for the Colt. His hand was about to close on the gun before Davy could grasp the hook, so Davy reversed direction and scrambled up the steel stairs. He knew when the war was over. In a flurry of noise and desperate energy, he burst through the door and was gone before Carver could raise the Colt above shoulder level and fire.

Carver planted the cane and hauled himself to his feet, holding the gun aimed at Rainer, listening to his own rasping fight for air. His labored breathing was making the gun barrel waver.

Unruffled and unmoving, Rainer said, “You use that cane very well as a weapon. Interesting to watch, but indecisive.”

“Decisive enough so you and I are driving into Fishback to see Chief Wicke.”

“No, no,” Rainer corrected, wagging a ringed finger with impatient amusement. “Didn’t I mention I was a man who took precautions, Mr. Carver? Allow me to set you straight on a few facts, the first of which is that as soon as Dr. Sam committed suicide-and it was suicide, brought about by middle-class remorse and self-hatred-I ordered destroyed every scintilla of evidence that the child-smuggling operation ever existed. Dr. Sam indeed had the kind of sickness that compelled him to sexually abuse young boys, but Millicent was certainly enough of an accomplice that she’ll decide to remain silent when I convince her of the consequences of a loose tongue. Especially if we speak with Davy present.” He stood taller, turning slightly as if aiming his jutting stomach at Carver like the prow of a proud vessel. “You see, I’m not merely a part of the smuggling operation, I’m in charge of it, so I have enough control to protect myself. And naturally I’ve exercised that control. There’s no way for you to advance any legal proof of what you know. No way at all.” The fleshy pads of his cheeks bulged in a smile. His eyes glittered. “In short, Mr. Carver, a closure has been reached, but not of the sort you envisioned. What transpired here tonight simply doesn’t matter.”

Rainer’s words made a horrifying kind of sense. And probably all too soon, in another place, in another manner, he’d be back in his profitable and terrible business.

Willing himself not to tremble with the rage building in him, Carver said, “Don’t you ever feel the same self-loathing that made Dr. Sam hang himself?” He knew even as he spoke that his was a futile hope. The evil wouldn’t corrupt and destroy itself. Real evil seldom did that, and Rainer was the bulky embodiment of genuine evil.

“Ah, Mr. Carver, you should try to move beyond your simplistic and inhibiting delusions of right and wrong. You need to learn what Dr. Sam came to know and couldn’t live with because he was weak. The world’s like the ocean he studied, an arena of prey and predator in endless succession. A food chain without moral meaning. Sappy sentimentalism aside, the abducted children are merely prey, nothing more. They simply fell prey to a larger predator. Despite the naive moral interpretation you put on it, actually nothing could be more natural and correct.”

As Carver listened to Rainer he was watching the huge torpedo shape of the shark gliding in circles behind the fat man, its image wavering and shrinking with distance, then growing into sharp and ominous focus.

“You’re burdened with morality and an absurd code of honor,” Rainer said confidently, “so you’re not going to shoot me. You’re not a predator. Not the sort who can slay a defenseless man in cold blood, anyway. And nothing criminal can be proved, so face the fact that the game’s over. Henry Tiller lost when Davy ran him down. Now you’ve lost. But you get to live, lucky you.” He folded his pudgy hands in front of him. “And that, Mr. Carver, is simply that.”

Still staring at the shark, Carver was backing awkwardly up the stairs. He knew Rainer was right. About too much, but not about everything. He said, “Have you noticed, Rainer, that this room’s smaller than the shark tank?”

Rainer appeared puzzled. He glanced around the square concrete room and shrugged. “So it is.”

“About the size of a swimming pool. You swim as well as your wife, Rainer?”

Rainer cocked his head to the side, pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows. The thought was forming.

Carver said, “Time for you to be introduced to a larger predator.”

That was when Rainer fully grasped it. Carver saw it on his face as he reached the steel landing and opened the door. Set the tip of his cane and emptied the Colt into the thick glass wall of the shark tank, spreading the pattern of bullets from floor to ceiling. He glimpsed Rainer’s mouth gaping soundlessly as the wide expanse of glass behind him went milky and bulged. Carver hurled himself out of the room, slamming and locking the door.

As he limped away he heard the thunder of crashing glass. Water roaring into the tiny room. The thumping and flailing of the startled and ravenous shark.

Possibly a scream.