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Carver glanced at the grease-spotted menu and said, “What’s good, Fern?”

“Not your chances of a long and prosperous life.”

He looked up at her. “What’s that mean?”

“Means Key Montaigne’s a small place, an’ word gets around.”

“Which word?”

“That you’re meddlin’ where you shouldn’t be, that you been warned.”

“And ignored the warning?”

“Well, you’re here, ain’t you?”

Sometimes Carver had his doubts about that, but he didn’t want to get metaphysical with Fern.

“What was that crack about long life?” Beth asked.

Fern stood solidly with pencil poised and eyes averted as she said, “This island’s kinda deceptive in some ways. Beautiful to look at, with all the green an’ the colorful flowers, the tourists walkin’ around town or goin’ out to sea in charter boats. Like paradise under a blue sky. But there’s some awful rough people here.
Awful
rough. An’ as a Christian woman I feel compelled to let you two know that. Now I done let you know, so that’s that.”

“Are these rough people into drugs?” Beth asked.

“I honestly ain’t sure what’s goin’ on, but maybe it’s drugs. An’ you didn’t hear it from me.”

“Okay,” Carver said.

“Two coffees, was it?”

“Right. With cream.”

When Fern returned with the coffee, Beth and Carver both ordered the scrambled egg special.

It arrived at the table within a few minutes with toast, strawberry preserves, and Canadian bacon. Fern commanded them to “Enjoy” and plodded back behind the counter.

Carver decided the Key Lime’s breakfast was its best meal. Whoever was in the kitchen was an expert fry cook.

When they’d finished eating, they each had a second cup of coffee. Then Beth went into the rest room while Carver paid the check and limped outside to smoke a Swisher Sweet cigar. He was leaning back against the front right fender of the Olds, squinting into the sun and touching flame to tobacco, when a shadow drifted across the ground in front of him.

Immediately he flicked the match away and turned, keeping a firm grip on his cane, aware of the bulk and deadliness of the Colt automatic in its holster beneath his shirt. Davy wouldn’t get the chance to move in close with the cargo hook again.

But it wasn’t Davy standing five feet away and smiling at him.

It was Walter Rainer.

R
AINER WAS WEARING
what looked like the same white sport jacket today, only it was more wrinkled. He had on a money-green shirt, open wide at the collar so his thick gold chain showed against the glistening expanse of his chest. Up close his face appeared puffier, yet there was an added sharpness to the features set in that doughy expanse of flesh, an almost startling shrewdness and vitality in his tiny blue eyes. He was a fat man suffering in the heat, reeking of sweat and deodorant.

He said, “Thought we ought to talk, Mr. Carver.” Beyond him, on the other side of Main, the long gray Lincoln was parked. A tall Latino dressed in jeans and a black muscle shirt that revealed a wiry and powerful physique was standing near the car with his arms crossed, looking cool and controlled. Hector Villanova, no doubt. Carver recognized him from last night in the boat. About thirty and lean and tough-looking; if people could become panthers, Hector was halfway there. He caught Carver’s eye, smiled and nodded. He could be friendly and slash you up with a boat prop.

“I see Hector’s keeping an eye out for your safety,” Carver said. He drew deeply on the cigar and exhaled a white stream of smoke that the breeze spirited away.

“Ah, that’s right, you more or less know Hector,” Rainer said. He had a reedy voice that didn’t match his huge body and would soon get annoying. “Know him from a distance, that is.”

Did he mean last night? No, he’d be playing dumb about that. Carver recalled the glint of sunlight off a lens yesterday. That was okay; Rainer still probably didn’t know where the blind was, or when or how often he was being observed. Carver hoped. “Were you going to ask me how Henry Tiller is?” he asked.

Rainer shrugged. “No, no, my information is that the poor man’s slipped into a coma. That’s how it happens sometimes with our senior citizens. The slightest illness can escalate unexpectedly.” He screwed up his fat face in the heat and dragged a hand slowly across his glistening chin to wipe away perspiration, as if he’d drooled. Wiped the hand dry on his pants. “What I actually wanted, Mr. Carver, was to apologize for the unfortunate and painful incident in Miami. I honestly vow to you that Davy wasn’t acting on my instructions. He has a troubled past, is indeed a troubled young man, and at times his emotions propel him into mistaken assumptions and unwise actions.”

“He didn’t seem out of control to me,” Carver said. “He seemed like a man going about his job and enjoying it immensely.”

“Well, Davy does make the most of the moment, in his swashbuckling way. He’s rather like a buccaneer born too late.” Rainer shuffled closer. He was so heavy his legs seemed barely able to support and move him simultaneously. “Listen, Mr. Carver, despite poor Henry Tiller’s misguided suspicions and Davy’s independent and unforgivable behavior in Miami, there’s really no reason to badger me, to pry into my affairs as you’re doing.” He shot a sweaty smile Carver’s way, though his eyes remained diamond chips. “I can say sincerely there is no basis in fact for suspicions about the way I conduct my affairs. I’m simply a retired businessman who got lucky in commerce and is trying to live out a life of harmless leisure. It’s possible there’s a tinge of envy in some people, and they want me to suffer rather than live what to them must seem an idyllic existence. I don’t know, or pretend to know, what motivates certain people. The complexities of the human mind are a mystery to us all. I do know that your being here at Henry Tiller’s request is a waste of his money, your time and effort, and is making life difficult for me.”

“Difficult how?”

“It isn’t pleasant to know your affairs are under professional scrutiny, Mr. Carver. That everything your employees do reflects on you unfavorably in someone’s tilted perspective. In short, I don’t think I’ve done anything to warrant this kind of persecution. I could speak to Chief Wicke about it, get it stopped through legal measures.”

“Bringing the law into your affairs could cut both ways,” Carver said.

“Only if I have something to hide.”

“And here you are talking to me instead of to Chief Wicke or the Drug Enforcement Administration.”

Rainer raised his eyebrows, furrowing his wide forehead. “The DEA? What have they to do with this?”

“Maybe nothing,” Carver said. “Maybe something.”

“Schoolyard talk, Mr. Carver.” Rainer’s thin voice deepened an octave with disdain.

Carver said, “Schoolyard’s an educational place.”

Rainer’s hand moved to an inside pocket of the white jacket, and Carver’s hand edged toward the holstered Colt beneath his shirt. Across the street Hector stood straighter in the sunlight and uncrossed his arms.

It was a thick white envelope that Rainer withdrew from the jacket. Smiling sweatily, he raised the unsealed flap with his thumb so Carver could glimpse the green of the bills inside. “There are fifty one-thousand-dollar bills Here, Mr. Carver. Clean money, believe me. Money I’m willing to pay in order to purchase my wife’s well-being.”

Huh? “Your wife?”

“Lilly’s a woman of delicate composure, has in fact suffered clinical depression in the past and had to be confined and observed for her own safety. The suspicions of Henry Tiller, and now your constant if sometimes indirect intrusion into our lives, have been a strain on her. I’m a very rich man, and I’d consider it money well spent if you’d take it and leave her-us—alone.”

“And if I don’t accept the money?”

“I’ve spoken with my attorneys, Mr. Carver, If you refuse my offer, I can go to the Key Montaigne police and have you charged with harassment.”

Carver looked at his half-smoked cigar, remembering Davy in Miami. Davy, doing muscle work for Rainer, despite what Rainer claimed. Anger rose and blazed in him like a flare. He said, “I don’t think you’ll do that.” He flicked the cigar in the direction of Hector and watched it bounce sparking in the street. Hector, standing motionless again with his arms crossed, didn’t change expression. Obviously he wasn’t afraid of cigars.

“Why wouldn’t I do that, Mr. Carver?” Rainer sounded genuinely dumbfounded.

“Because you don’t know how much Henry knows, or knew. That’s why he was run down. And you don’t know how much I know. You don’t know how far it would spread.” He nodded toward the envelope. “Maybe that money isn’t clean. Maybe it tracks all the way back to someplace in Mexico or South America.”

Rainer widened his eyes in bewilderment. “Please stop fantasizing, Mr. Carver. Take the money.”

“That’d be extortion on my part,” Carver said-

“Not at all.
I’m
the one who approached
you.
Party of the first part, as the attorneys say. If you’d like, I can even sign a statement to that effect.”

“Thanks, anyway.”

“Then I haven’t convinced you?”

“No.”

Rainer looked as if his feelings had been stepped on. He lowered his massive head into the folds of his thick neck, appearing for an instant like a huge crestfallen infant in adult clothes. Then he seemed to brighten, and he slipped the envelope slowly back into his pocket. “There’s no necessity for haste,” he said. “Do think about it. Consider it in the manner someone in your relatively modest position should mull over fifty thousand dollars. So very much money.” He smiled with the old, old knowledge. “You’ll do that, I’m sure.” His eyes fixed on something off to the side, and his smile gained wattage as Beth walked up to stand next to Carver. “Perhaps the young lady might influence you.”

“Regarding what?” Beth asked.

“I’ve just offered to hire Mr. Carver away from his present employer for fifty thousand dollars. A boy and girl don’t need Manhattan to enjoy that much money.”

Beth laughed. Roberto Gomez, whom she’d once described as an island in a river of money, had kept rolls of hundreds of thousands of dollars lying about their luxury condo. “I used that much money for coasters,” she said.

Rainer looked at her curiously. She was obviously an element he didn’t understand, and that bothered him.

“Do think about the offer,” he said, and turned and waddled slowly across the street to the gleaming gray Lincoln. Hector opened a rear door for him and stood by dutifully while Rainer worked his bulk into the car.

Without a glance at Carver and Beth, Hector shut the door softly, then stalked around and got in behind the steering wheel. Behind the tinted rear side window, Walter Rainer’s profile remained fixed straight ahead as the car glided away from the curb and down Main Street. It rode low in back and listed toward the side where Rainer sat, the hot vapor of its exhaust shimmering behind it.

“Fat man thinks he can buy a lot for a measly fifty thousand,” Beth remarked.

Carver didn’t answer. Beth had become inured to the lure and curse of big money, knew what it had done to her and no longer craved it. But a part of Carver was aware that Rainer’s offer had been perilously close to his price.

Maybe Beth knew what he was thinking. “Go for those fifty big ones, Fred, and you can afford a toupee.”

Carver said, “Get in the car.”

A
FTER DROPPING OFF
Beth at Henry’s cottage, Carver drove along Shoreline to the Oceanography Research Center.

The
Fair Wind
was now at the dock, a stubby, functional-looking gray-hulled boat with raked navigational antennae jutting from its faded green bridge. A green stripe was painted just above its waterline, and there was machinery, what looked like compressors, mounted on the cluttered deck. It was nothing like the sleek and fun-loving
Miss Behavin’,
visible in the same sunny, panoramic view of Key Montaigne’s curved and sandless coast. Scrubwoman and socialite.

Suddenly aware of the sun’s bludgeoning heat, Carver limped toward the main building.

This time Katia Marsh was in the outer room, explaining to a group of six primary-school-age children about the meaning of bright colors on tropical fish. She smiled at Carver, and he mouthed the words “Doctor Sam” and raised his eyebrows inquisitively. She pointed to the door to the hands-on Tide Pool Room. All of the children and the teenage girl with them looked at the door to the lower level, then back at the four-color poster Katia was showing them, as she began to speak again. Something about the lifespan of eels.

Carver pulled open the heavy door, stepped onto the steel landing, then descended the short flight of metal steps. Dr. Sam was standing at the far end of the room, jotting something on a clipboard tucked into his hip as he glanced back and forth between it and whatever was displayed in the shallow tray before him. Even after he heard Carver’s cane bonking down the steel stairs, he methodically finished what he was writing before looking up.

Dr. Sam Bing was a somewhat short man and bald, with only a fringe of gray hair around his ears, like Carver’s hair, only straight and much shorter. His narrow eyes were magnified by round tortoiseshell spectacles. He had the face of a German bureaucrat, fine, even features, a slash of a mouth above a strong jaw, and a wide forehead that shone like a light bulb as it reflected the fluorescent brilliance glaring down from the ceiling. The light in the room was made wavering by the play of water behind the glass observation wall of the aqua tank. Victor, the huge gray shark, was still gliding in effortless circles, barely missing the glass on each pass, as if trying to make the most of the limited space fate had allotted.

Carver limped toward the waiting researcher and introduced himself.

Dr. Sam shook hands deliberately and with seeming reluctance, letting the clipboard dangle at his side. He’d been making notes about what looked to Carver to be slugs and starfish in the watery display tray. Some profession.

“How was Mexico?” Carver asked.

Dr. Sam seemed to expect the question; Katia or Millicent or both had mentioned Carver’s earlier visits. “They speak a different language there,” he said.