Flame (16 page)

“Thing is,” McGregor said, “if either of us goes down he pulls the other one with him. Both of us been scratching around where we shouldn’t. Been withholding evidence in a homicide.”

“Your idea,” Carver said.

“You can’t prove it, though, asshole.”

But Carver knew McGregor remembered the multipurpose answering machine with its tape recorder in the blast-littered office. No way for him to know for sure whether it was working and turned on when he’d arm-twisted Carver into cooperating with him.

Let him wonder, Carver thought, not answering.

When he got back to his office there was a message on his machine to call Desoto. The only message.

Carver settled down behind his desk and propped his cane against the wall. Phoned the Orlando Police Department and asked to be put through to Lieutenant Desoto.

Desoto had to put him on hold for a minute, then came back on the line and apologized. “Sorry,
amigo
, looks like a homicide over by Clear Lake. I’m gonna have to hang up and get out there pretty soon. Crime marches on. McGregor get back to you on your three visitors in Atlanta?”

“I just left him.” Carver told Desoto what McGregor had said about Ogden, Butcher, and Courtney Romano.

“That’s all straight stuff,” Desoto said. “Jives with my information. This Butcher looks like the kinda psycho you gotta be awful careful around.”

Carver said, “That came shining through.”

“So you don’t take chances with this one, eh?”

“Not me,” Carver assured him.

Desoto said, “Bullshit. You never knew when to let go of something since I’ve known you. Kinda psycho yourself.”

Carver knew he might be right. “Nice of you to say so.”

“Well, at least I warned you, so I won’t feel so bad if someday you’re found sliced and ground.” Desoto waited for a reaction from Carver. Got none. Said, “There was a reason McGregor got no feedback on the Romano woman. Something he doesn’t know or isn’t sharing.”

Carver waited, actually still thinking about Butcher and that “sliced and ground” remark. He was in Atlanta at the Holiday Inn, seeing Butcher staring intently at him over the blade of the boning knife.

Desoto brought him back, though, when he said, “Courtney Romano’s a DEA agent, too.”

Carver sat thinking about that one. Remembering Romano’s reaction in Atlanta when he’d described the two men he’d talked to in Wesley’s Fort Lauderdale condo. She’d been momentarily shaken. There was no way for her to be sure how the Fort Lauderdale conversation had gone. She was undercover and didn’t like complications that might reveal what she was doing. Not with Butcher in the same room. Carver couldn’t blame her for that. He remembered Butcher’s eyes. Beyond cruel. Psychotic eyes.

Desoto said, “
Amigo,
you there?”

Carver said, “Me a psycho, huh?”

Desoto said, “I don’t think that’s too strong. Hey, crime calls. I gotta run.”

Carver said, “Run.”

A
T JUST PAST TEN
o’clock, Walter Ogden walked into Carver’s office, bringing with him a push of outside heat. He was wearing a pale gray suit, blue shirt, yellow tie. Glossy black slip-on shoes with tassels that had brass on them. His sandy hair was neatly combed except for a clump above his right ear that the ocean breeze had gotten under and caused to stick out at an angle like a crooked wing. He was smiling. Carver knew that meant nothing. Cobras smiled before striking.

As soon as he’d stepped into the office and nodded to Carver, he moved aside. Butcher and Courtney Romano entered, Butcher standing off to one side like a gentleman to let Courtney in first. She was wearing stylish, tight-fitting jeans, heels high enough to be stilts, a low-cut blouse that fit tight around her middle and showed off her breasts. Lots of wild dark hair and mascara. Carver thought she looked a lot like that singer, Gloria Estefan.

Butcher looked like nobody in show business. He was his unique, quietly sadistic self. Features showing no emotion but for his tiny glittering eyes, made to seem even smaller by the pads of flesh around them. He had on white slacks, a silky white shirt open almost all the way to his navel. He was wearing a silver chain around his neck with what looked like a polished white fragment of bone dangling from it. Animal bone, Carver hoped. Other than the bone fragment, Butcher was dressed relatively normally today.

Other than that.

Ogden said, “Well now, I suppose you didn’t expect to see us again so soon.”

“I took you at your word,” Carver said, wondering if he could get to the Colt in the file drawer next to Ogden. “After all, I didn’t pick up the envelope you left for me at the Holiday Inn desk.”

Ogden surprised him. “Forget about the money, Mr. Carver. Apparently you’re a man possessed by ethics.” He spoke of ethics as if they were demons. “Now, that isn’t necessarily all bad.”

Butcher was gazing balefully at Carver, as if he didn’t like the way the conversation was going and wished he could get busy with the blade. Courtney Romano was perspiring just enough to put a soft sheen on her bronze flesh. She was leaning with her hands behind her on the back of the chair near the desk, her arms braced with the elbows in. The pose made her breasts jut aggressively beneath the tight blue blouse. She belonged on the cover of one of those true-crime magazines. Probably knew it. She was rocking back and forth on her very high heels, glancing over at Carver now and then deadpan. Gun moll of the month.

Ogden said pleasantly, “Butcher’s got something for you, Mr. Carver.”

As Butcher advanced, reaching for a pocket, Carver grabbed his cane and levered himself up behind the desk, ready to drive the cane’s tip into Butcher’s gut if he had the chance.

Ogden chewed the inside of his cheek and nodded thoughtfully, obviously impressed by the lame man’s surprising quickness. Carver had to be reassessed again. My, my. Ethics, and now unsuspected physical ability.

Butcher didn’t pull a knife from the pocket. Instead he grinned and withdrew a handful of photographs. They were color shots of the sort taken with an instant camera. Butcher dropped them on the desk and Carver saw that the top photo was of Edwina in her blue bathing suit, standing at the side of the pool behind her house, her arms extended in front of her as if she were poised to dive. She’d already been in the water; her hair was wet and lay flat against the back of her head and neck and shoulders. She was squinting the way people do when they’ve just had an eyeful of pool chemicals.

Butcher said, “Clear shots, huh? Had to get damn near close enough to touch her to get pictures like this.” He gave his grating giggle. “Wouldn’t mind touchin’ her.”

Ogden said, “They were taken just this morning. Less than an hour after you left Miss Talbot.”

Something in Carver drew tight. He knew what this was going to be. He hadn’t snapped at the money in Atlanta, now they were ready to apply another kind of pressure to get him to drop the investigation.

He was right, and then again he was wrong.

Butcher said, “She’s a nice piece, your Edwina Talbot. Great legs and ass.”

“Too pretty a woman to let her get messed up,” Courtney Romano said.

Ogden patted at his hair. Discovered the wayward wing above his right ear and tucked it back deftly with a crooked forefinger. He said, “Butcher told you the truth; we were close enough to touch the young lady this morning, The point is, you don’t want her touched. Neither do I. Now Butcher, here, he’s another story.”

“Another species,” Carver said.

Butcher said, “There goes that sense of humor again. Dangerous.”

“Someday he might die laughing,” Courtney said.

Carver thought, Jesus, don’t egg him on!

Ogden crossed over to the desk so he was standing close to Carver. He was still smiling, but not with a single thermal unit of warmth. He used a manicured finger to spread out the photographs on the desk. There were about a dozen of them, all of Edwina. Edwina in her suit and rubber thongs, walking across the veranda toward the pool, her hair not yet wet. Edwina in the water, head and shoulders visible, right arm slung forward, hand cupped, stroking toward the pool’s edge. Edwina pulling herself up out of the pool, her suit wet and plastered to her body, her buttocks straining against the thin and flexible material. Butcher tapped that photo with his knuckle. “That’n there’s my favorite.”

“We took these photographs,” Ogden said, “to show you how accessible your Miss Talbot is to us. The camera might just as well have been a . . . well, something else.”

Carver said, “I could make sure she wasn’t so accessible.”

“Could you really?” Ogden seemed remotely amused. “For how long? One thing we’ve got is patience. Another is time.”

“He thinks he could move her to another state,” Butcher said, gloating about Carver’s predicament. “Just give her another name and make believe she’s somebody else.”

Courtney said, “We’d find her.” She looked at Carver and he thought he saw something, a momentary soft earnestness, in her eyes. “I mean that. We’d find her.”

“That I promise you,” Ogden said. “And we always keep our promises.”

Carver knew they were right. It wasn’t necessary to kidnap Edwina in order to use her continued well-being for leverage. And they knew she wouldn’t simply give up her life in Del Moray, even if Carver asked her to leave for her own safety. Besides, leaving was no guarantee of a long and untroubled existence. Always there’d be the apprehension, the imagined movement in the corner of vision, the shock of the late-night phone call or doorbell. Not a way for Edwina and Carver to live, holding their breath in Oskaloosa, Iowa, or some such place where they might pretend to be distant and secure, knowing all the time they
were
pretending.

“You’re telling me to drop my investigation,” Carver said, “or you do something to Edwina.”

“No, no,” Ogden said, shaking his head. “Things have changed.”

“What changed them?”

“Some thoughts we had after our little get-together in your hotel room in Atlanta.”

Carver glanced at Courtney. She was staring straight ahead, nervously kneading the chair back behind her with her square, strong hands.

“Main thing is,” Ogden said, “we know the two men you talked to in Frank Wesley’s condo were federal narcotics agents. They don’t like you mucking around in this investigation any more than we do, but there you are, mucking around, and I think it’s safe to say you plan to continue.”

“Safe to say,” Carver agreed. “Mucking is in my blood.”

“What we want,” Ogden said, “is for you to talk to those two agents whenever either of them suggests. From time to time you’ll get a phone call, and you’ll report what those conversations with the DEA were about. You’ll report anything else that might interest us. I making myself clear?”

“You want me to spy on the government for you.”

Courtney said, “I think he’s got it.”

Ogden picked up three or four of the photographs and let them slide from his hand, back onto the desk. “I think
you
want to spy on the government, Mr. Carver, considering that if you don’t, Butcher gets Edwina Talbot for as long as he wants her.”

Butcher beamed and said, “For me it’s a win-win situation.”

Ogden said, “Tough choice for any man, but I’m afraid we don’t have much time to wait for your answer. What’s it gonna be, Mr. Carver, love or patriotism?”

Carver stared down at the photographs. The shutter had been slow, catching splashed water in midair but making it look milky. Slightly blurring but lending grace to the arm Edwina was using to stroke.

“Mr. Carver?”

“Love’s harder to come by,” Carver said. “I’ll be your informer.”

Courtney pushed away from where she was propped against the chair. Shoved up the three-quarters-length sleeves of her blouse so they were wadded above her elbows. “That’s a sensible response.”

“I think so, too,” Carver told her. But they both knew that now he posed a danger for her.

Ogden said they’d contact him soon. Walked out of the office and was followed a second later by Courtney, then Butcher. Might have been a sneer on Butcher’s round face. Might have been a smile. Might have been gas.

A few minutes later, when they drove away from the office in a rented white Lincoln, Carver followed them. Ogden had mentioned love and patriotism. Forgotten about ethics.

T
HEY DROVE INLAND FAST
, due west directly away from the sea. Carver stayed well back in the Olds, watching the distant white form of the big Lincoln shimmer in the heat like an illusion.

But it was real enough. The big car, the people in it, the problems they’d brought with them.

Within an hour they were in central Florida’s orange-grove country. Fields of citrus trees, their lush green dotted with oranges or grapefruits that somehow didn’t seem to belong, as if a child had dabbed repeatedly and randomly at a landscape scene with a soft crayon. The land stretched level on both sides of the highway. The trees were in neat rows whose receding parallels made their march to the horizon seem even longer than it was. Here and there awkward iron pipework loomed among the trees like a child’s erector set, irrigation equipment jetting rainbowed sprays of water into brilliant sunlight, lending a waxlike gloss to the leaves.

A semi roared around the Olds, and for a short while its boxy trailer blocked Carver’s view of the Lincoln. Then the truck drifted into the passing lane again, and he was surprised to see that the Lincoln was only about half a mile ahead, brakelights flaring, turning onto a side road. The speeding truck snaked around it and belched dark smoke, making time toward its destination.

The road the Lincoln had turned onto was unpaved as well as unmarked. Carver jockeyed the Olds past it and parked on the gravel shoulder, trying to decide what to do.

There was no telling how far the road ran through the fields of citrus trees. Narrow as it was, turning a car around on it would be difficult; he’d be taking a chance tailing the Lincoln along it in the mammoth Olds. Might find himself with no way to go except forward toward something unpleasant.

He drove down the highway to a spot where he could turn the Olds around, then parked out of sight on the other side of the road.