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Davy paused as if expecting Carver to answer, but Carver remained silent. He still ached where the hook had gouged his testicles. Somewhere deep in his mind he tried to create a place the pain couldn’t reach.

Davy gave a snorting kind of laugh, then said, “Miami’s a great city. Got jai-alai, the races, nice beaches. What you wanna do now, Carver, is maybe enjoy yourself here, take in a few sights, find yourself some whore’ll bed down with a gimp, catch some rays—being careful you don’t get sunburned—then set a course to the north. Stay the fuck outa the Keys. That’s my advice, and it’s best if you got the sense to listen. Consider me a lighthouse warning you away from the rocks.”

The warning was plain enough. And if Carver had any reservations about Rainer being mixed up in something criminal, they were gone now. He must be a threat to Rainer, or Davy wouldn’t have been sicced on him. Henry must have stumbled upon some vulnerability that scared Rainer.

“You the one ran over Henry Tiller?” he asked, since Davy was in a gloating mood.

“That’s another question you asked,” Davy said, “after I told you not to. You’re lucky I don’t feel like going to the trouble of getting the hook back out.”

“Gonna answer?”

“Let’s just leave old Henry an ordinary hit-an’-run victim,” Davy said. He gave Carver a little half salute, then turned and swaggered away.

Carver leaned against the car for a few minutes, perspiration rolling down his face. Then he worked his way down and crawled on the hot pavement to a point where he could lie flat and grope for his cane beneath the Olds.

As soon as his fingers closed on the hard walnut he felt better, less vulnerable, as if he’d recovered a flesh-and-blood missing limb. Part of him wanted Davy to return so he could smash the cane across his confident smile and then feed him his cargo hook. Wanted it badly.

Carver placed a hand on the chrome windshield molding and stood up straight. A dull pain throbbed in his groin, but he didn’t think he’d been seriously injured. He’d been kicked there a few times, and he knew how that felt; this pain was similar but not as debilitating, though it made him dizzy and sick to his stomach with each cautious breath.

He brushed dirt off his clothes, then he lowered himself into the car and for a long time sat very still behind the steering wheel, waiting for the world to stop tilting and whirling. He was sweating coldly and trembling. From fear or pain or rage, he wasn’t sure which. Probably a combination.

When he finally did start the car he drove north, exactly as Davy had instructed.

Not toward Del Moray and home, though. Toward a phone booth.

W
HEN
C
ARVER 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.

B
ETH WAS SITTING
at the kitchen table, eating a sandwich and drinking a beer, when Carver entered Henry’s cottage. There was a lot of daylight left, and plenty of residual heat from the scorching afternoon. The ocean breeze that stirred the palm fronds was a warm one and brought no relief. But Beth had the air conditioner off; she wasn’t bothered by heat as much as most people. Growing up in a theft-gutted housing project in Chicago, living in an upper-floor unit where a safely opened window was a luxury, might have something to do with that.

As soon as he dropped his scuffed leather suitcase on the floor, he went to the living room window and switched on the air conditioner, set its thermostat on Coldest and its fan speed on High. Then he turned on the box fan sitting on the floor and aimed it so it blew a stream of the cool air into the kitchen.

“How’d it go in Miami?” Beth asked around a bite of sandwich.

Carver didn’t answer. Instead he limped into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face and wrists. When he went into the kitchen, it was still too hot in there. Florida could be a beast.

“See Henry Tiller?” Beth asked. She was wearing a black T-shirt with a blue marlin on the chest, Levi’s faded almost white, no shoes. Her brown leather sandals were lying on the floor near the chair. Her body glistened with sweat but she didn’t seem to mind.

“Saw him,” Carver said. He got a can of Bud from the refrigerator and popped the tab. “He didn’t see me, though.” He took a long swig of beer and explained to Beth what had happened to Henry.

Beth finished her sandwich and licked her fingers. She said, “He doesn’t come outa that coma, we’re talking murder.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Serious shit,” Beth said. Now she finished her beer, leaving only a sudsy residue in the bottom of the tall, tapered glass she’d rummaged from Henry’s cabinet. “You gonna ask the girl spy if she saw anything interesting last night over at the Rainer place?”

“I’m asking.”

“Answer’s no. There was movement over there about three o’clock, but even with the night binoculars I couldn’t tell what was happening. So today I drove around to a couple of points on shore I noticed from the surveillance spot. An area around the research center or aquarium or whatever it is provides a clear view of the Rainer dock. So does a short section of coast you can’t see from this side with the boat docked where it is, down Shoreline where it turns before leading toward the major metropolis of Fishback. Nothing can go on in Rainer’s backyard that can’t be seen from those two parts of the island, so he’s got no choice but to move by night if he suspects he’s being watched. A wiry Latin guy was there with Rainer, Hector Villanova, I s’pose. And there was a tall blond woman, probably the missus, Lilly. What with the darkness and all the foliage and such, there was no way to know what all the bustling around on the dock was. I’m sure of one thing, though: that guy Davy wasn’t around last night.”

Carver told her he knew that, then told her how he knew. She seemed unimpressed by Davy’s theatrics with the sharpened cargo hook, but then she wasn’t the one who’d felt its point and almost became shish kebab.

She gnawed her lower lip for a few seconds and looked thoughtful. “If they’re trying that hard to scare you off the case, leaving no doubt that’s exactly
what
they’re doing and practically admitting they’ve got plenty to hide, you must be probing a mighty sensitive nerve.”

“Henry must have probed the same nerve.”

Beth toyed with her empty glass, rotating it on the table, running a long, lean finger down the tapered curve of its damp side. “You gonna?”

“Gonna what?”

“Do what Davy said, give this up and head back north?”

He smiled. “That what you plan on doing?”

She smiled back. “While it’s still light out, I can drive you over and show you the view of the Rainer estate from farther down the shore.”