Scorcher (17 page)

The shot had come from the slope north of the cottage, where there was high brush and a few wind-bent palm trees. Carver reached for the Colt automatic tucked in his belt but it was gone. It had fallen out as he’d wriggled beneath the car.

He bowed his head as low as possible, feeling tight strain in his back and neck, and saw the gun on the ground directly beneath the center of the Olds’s undercarriage. It was about three feet from where he crouched. It looked like ten feet.

He carefully poked his cane beneath the car and moved it in short, sweeping motions. It bumped the gun a few times. Finally it snagged the Colt near the trigger guard, and he pulled it to him. The cane was coming in handy for more than walking.

If he kept the protective bulk of the car between him and where the shot must have come from, he could reach shelter behind the cottage.

If he moved fast enough.

If the gunman hadn’t changed position for a better angle.

Carver swallowed the old-metal taste of fear, gripped the cane halfway up the shaft, and made himself move.

Muscles knotted in his back as he tensed for the rip of a bullet. Fear had settled icy and hard in his bowels, trying to make him weak. Careful to stay in line with the car, leaning hard on the cane, he half crawled, half duckwalked toward the corner of the cottage. His feet and the tip of the cane dug into the soft ground and shot dust and sand behind him as he scrambled for cover. He was sure he looked ridiculous. He’d think about that later. He hoped.

Then he was around the corner.

Safe.

He leaned back against the sun-warmed clapboard wall and took deep breaths. Anger grew alongside his fear, then gained dominance. It was time to go on the offensive.

Staying low, calculating angles so he wouldn’t be seen, he made his way toward the thick brush on the slope behind the cottage. He intended to reach the coast highway, stay in cover on this side of the shoulder, and try to work in behind his assailant. Whoever had taken the shot at Carver might be surprised by the fact that his target was armed and ready to return fire; a tiger that had turned around.

Carver backed away from the cottage and into the cover of the low brush. He fought his way up the slope toward the highway, using the cane almost in the way a gondolier powers a boat with a pole along a Venetian canal, setting its tip deep in the soil ahead of him, and pulling then pushing with both arms and his chest muscles as he dug the edge of his good right foot into the loose earth for leverage and propelled his body forward. He was working up a thick sweat, attracting mosquitoes and sand fleas. Something small flitted around one of his nostrils. He ignored it. The soft hushing sound of the surf cautioned him to be as quiet as possible; danger here. The knowing ocean.

As he neared the highway shoulder, he thought he heard a car spin its tires on the baked, dusty ground and drive away. But he wasn’t sure. By now it was probably unnerving to the gunman not to be certain of Carver’s location. If whoever had taken a shot at him hadn’t immediately fled.

Making better time now, getting the knack, he made his way along the road shoulder toward the point where he was reasonably sure the shot had been fired. As he got close, he drew the Colt from his belt and moved silently. On the hunt now. Better than being shot at.

After a moment he paused, forcing himself to breathe evenly.

From where he was crouched he could see the Olds several hundred feet away. In the bright morning light the silver-rimmed bullet hole near the flat left front tire was barely visible. From this distance, the gunman had probably used a rifle. Not with a telescopic sight, or the shot would have been more accurate.

Unless it had been fired by a scared young killer on the run. One used to another murder method. Paul Kave, trying to take out two generations of Carvers.

There was a slight sound, like a long sigh, directly in front of Carver, He aimed the gun in that direction and tried to crouch lower, feeling pain in his hip above the stiff knee. A lump formed in his throat; he swallowed it.

His flesh tingled and he waited.

Waited.

Foliage rattled, and a man with a revolver emerged from the brush and trudged toward the road.

He wasn’t Paul Kave. He was a big man in saggy Levi’s and a yellow T-shirt with an orange setting sun printed on it and stretched tight across his meaty chest and stomach. He was in his late thirties and had a dark beard and perpetually arched eyebrows, and a hooked nose that was much too large for his round face. Carver thought he looked like an Arab terrorist. The man moved as if tired, letting the revolver brush at his thigh as he swung his long arms. It was a bulky, large-caliber gun, maybe a .357 Magnum.

Carver let him take a few more steps toward the highway and then said, “I can pop three holes through you before you can turn around.”

The man stopped and his body stiffened. “Not ‘freeze’?” he said. He sounded scared, but not scared enough. Something didn’t fit here.

Carver leaned on the cane and stood up. His good leg was shaky, the knee rubbery. “Toss the gun away, then turn around and face me or I’ll show you what I meant about those three holes.”

“This thing’s expensive,” the man said. “I don’t wanna get sand in the action, you don’t mind.” He stooped slowly and placed the revolver lovingly on the ground, then straightened up and turned toward Carver in one gradual motion. He was smiling now, so cooperative. “Guy who shot at you got away,” he said. “Drove off a few minutes ago.”

“Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe he’s right here lying his ass off.”

“That piece didn’t put the bullet in your car,” the man said, nodding toward the revolver at his feet. “Hasn’t been fired, in fact.” He moved two slow steps to the side. “Pick it up and give it a sniff.”

“Smell your own gun.” But Carver knew the man was probably telling the truth. It would be difficult with a high-powered handgun even to hit the car from this distance.

They stood there in the hot morning for a while, neither man moving. Gulls screeched about some difference of opinion on the beach. A jet plane tracked past out over the ocean, very high.

When the trailing thunder of the plane had faded, along with some of the tension of the moment, the man with the beard sighed loudly through his nose—the sound Carver had first heard—and said, “Mind if I dip something out of my pocket?”

“Depends on what.”

“My identification. I’m a police officer.”

For some reason, Carver wasn’t surprised. “Orlando?”

“Fort Lauderdale,” the man said. “Name’s Gibbons. I’m McGregor’s man.”

“That’s not moving you any further away from getting shot,” Carver said.

The man smiled wider. Such a charmer.

Carver said, “You been following me in a white Ford?”

“Yep. It’s parked down the highway. McGregor wants me to keep a loose tail on you, let him know if you’re doing the job. Looks like you could use a bodyguard, while we’re at it. I scared off somebody when I heard the shot and saw you duck down. I ran hell-for-leather up here, but whoever plinked at you drove away. There’s tire tracks over there, and the dust was still settling when I arrived.”

Plinked,
Carver thought. “Get a look at the gunman?”

“I told you, I heard the shot and saw nothing but dust. I don’t even know which way the guy went. I’m pretty sure he used a rifle, though. You can tell from the sound.”

“I was too busy to reason all that out,” Carver said. “Let’s see your shield.”

Gibbons fished in a hip pocket and drew out a wallet-size leather folder with his Fort Lauderdale I.D. He moved a few steps toward Carver and held it far out in front of him. Carver scanned it but didn’t really need to look. Gibbons had flashed the I.D. in the smooth, practiced manner of a longtime cop. McGregor’s man, all right. In on the deal and looking out for his future. His wagon hitched to a dark star that might soon be on the rise. Politics and justice, in bed together like the old lovers they were.

Carver tucked the gun back in his belt beneath his shirt.

“Gonna thank me?” Gibbons asked, grinning.

“No. Maybe you left your rifle in the brush.”

“You’ll look around for it later and won’t find it,” Gibbons said. “Cops don’t shoot at other cops, even at private ones like you, Carver.”

“Usually that’s true, but this is kind of an unorthodox investigation.”

“That’s what McGregor said, but he didn’t give me all the details.”

“Me either, it turns out,” Carver said. Something big, a truck or bus, whined past on the nearby highway. “He and I need to talk about that.”

Gibbons shrugged. “Want a ride back to your place?”

“I’ll walk.”

“Thought you might. Mind if I leave now, or are you planning to Mirandize me?”

Carver raised the Colt level. “You have the right to get the hell out of here,” he said.

Gibbons did, without looking back.

Carver decided not to search for the rifle that wouldn’t be there. He’d done enough scrambling around in the rough.

He slapped at and missed a mosquito about to sting his left arm, then he stood still until he heard Gibbons’s car start and drive off. The sound of the white Ford’s engine wavered and died as it headed south toward Fort Lauderdale.

Then the only sounds were the gulls screaming, and the drag of Carver’s footsteps and cane as he made his way down to the cottage.

After draining a cold Budweiser, he called McGregor.

“I been expecting to hear from you,” McGregor said. “I just got done talking on the phone with Gibbons.”

“There’s a man I don’t want to see again,” Carver said.

“Shouldn’t talk that way about him. He’s a nice fella, though he does give the impression he’s on his way someplace to hijack an airliner. All he’s really doing is the job I sent him on.”

“I want you to give him another job instead of having him shadow me. Gotta be some traffic somewhere needs directing. Aren’t I always hearing how you guys are short of manpower?”

“Don’t act like such a vigilante jackoff, Carver. Maybe you hadn’t noticed, but Paul Kave went on the attack today. You oughta be glad to have Gibbons in the background. He might have saved your bacon this morning. You better keep in mind you’re looking for a guy even crazier than you.”

“I do the job my way or I don’t do it,” Carver said.

“We both know you don’t mean that, sweetheart. You’re just zapping me with this late-night movie talk to scare me. We need each other like Bogie and Bacall. Gotta work together in concert, you might say.”

“You sound confident,” Carver said. “You shouldn’t be. I can chuck this arrangement, tell everything to the media, and take another approach.”

“Not an approach that’d net you the guy french-fried your son.”

Carver felt an almost palpable loathing for McGregor. The Fort Lauderdale lieutenant saw only opportunity in death, not the justice he talked about to rationalize his actions outside the rules. “You said it, though: I’m emotional about this investigation. I’m not thinking any more clearly than Paul Kave. He’s running scared, I’m running hot. Hell, I might do just about anything; it doesn’t have to make sense.”

“I know your history, Carver. You’re too good a cop to do something stupid.”

“1 wasn’t a good cop last night at the Mermaid Motel.”

McGregor was silent for a long time. Then he laughed but it sounded hollow.

“Okay, Carver, no more Gibbons. You’re a solo act the rest of the way. And I hope to Jesus for both our sakes you got this thing figured out so it happens the way we planned.”

Carver hung up. He knew McGregor was probably lying. He wondered how deeply Gibbons was involved with Mc­Gregor, and if McGregor was careful and ruthless enough to snip any loose ends after Paul Kave was killed.

That was how people like McGregor climbed to eminence, over the graves of people like Carver. It was the kind of world where anything might happen. Anything.

He drank another beer, then went outside and moved the Olds so he could change the tire with his back to the ocean.

J
OEL
D
EWITT’S CAR
and motorcycle dealership was on a bend on Haven Avenue in Fort Lauderdale. It was flanked by two used-car lots, each with strings of red, white, and blue vinyl pennants draped above the front row of cars that were facing the street with headlights and grilles shining and eager, like puppies vying for adoption. About half the businesses in the block had American flags flying, or suspended in display windows. Patriotism for sale; Commie kisser if you didn’t buy. Most of the cars on the lots were Japanese or European. The pennants fluttered and flapped like crazy when the wind barely breathed.

There were no pennants at Dewitt Motors. It was a neat, square brick building squatting on a blacktop lot. Late-model used cars were arranged in two rows in front of it, with an aisle wide enough so that the small showroom was visible from the street. Some of the cars had prices soaped on their windshields, along with
Cream Puff, Virgin
, or
Low, Low Miles.
The offices, where deals were consummated, were in back of the showroom, in which half a dozen new motorcycles were displayed. Besides Honda cycles there were a few larger and heavier American-made Harley-Davidsons. Apparently Dewitt didn’t sell used cycles.

When Carver entered the cool showroom he saw Dewitt immediately. Nadine’s fiancé was standing by a Coke machine, sipping from a red-and-white can and talking to a short, dark woman with bangs that almost completely concealed her eyes. He had on a pastel green shirt, striped aquamarine tie, and pleated blue slacks; he looked like an animated Picasso from his Day-Glo period. For neutrals he was wearing a white belt and white loafers. Carver thought a checked sportcoat would make it an ideal outfit for selling used cars. Maybe Elana Kave disliked Dewitt because of the way he dressed. Or maybe he had a few toned-down outfits especially for wearing to the Kave estate.

He noticed Carver, excused himself from his conversation with the woman with bangs, and walked across the showroom. The machine-gun chatter of an air wrench popped off out of sight behind him. Must be a service bay out back.