Flame (13 page)

Carver felt a brief wave of revulsion. He’d known what bullets could do, but the pain and the sight of his ruined knee were still raw in his mind. The personal violation. Some nights he’d dream about how casually the kid at the convenience store had aimed at his knee and squeezed the trigger.
Stopped by for a quart of milk and a holdup, shot this off-duty cop while I was there.
He’d feel again the disbelief and terror. Hear the blast. See the muzzle flash. His world changed in the incredibly brief time it had taken a bullet from a cheap handgun to rend flesh and bone. And now guns were even easier to get and to keep in Florida. Cops didn’t like that. Not most cops. Not most people, if they really stopped to think about it, which they didn’t. What the hell were the politicians thinking? Who and what did they owe?

Carver lifted his shirt and checked again to make sure the Colt’s safety was on, then replaced the dresser drawer and limped from the bedroom.

Standing outside again in the heat, he’d shut the back door behind him and was keying the deadbolt when a voice said, “We might as well go back inside where it’s cool.”

Carver turned and saw the rough-hewn black guy from Fort Lauderdale. His smooth Latin sidekick, the probable Ralph Palmer, stood beside and a little behind him. They were both wearing conservative light gray suits, white shirts, red ties. Like a couple of menacing accountants.

Carver had the Colt out from beneath his shirt even before he’d turned and planted his cane, feet spread wide in a shooting stance.

He’d surprised them, all right. The black guy’s eyes got round and he shuffled backward. Bumped into Ralph Palmer, who seemed perfectly calm but frightened and very alert, like a man about to work on disarming a bomb. Carver was the bomb. He’d shocked them. Folks didn’t wander around with guns in such easy reach and with the decisiveness to draw and point them. Maybe on “The Untouchables,” but not in real life. Not even in Florida.

Well, maybe in Florida. Which was why the two men in front of Carver were especially scared.

Carver let them stay scared. “I’ve got the gun this time,” he said. “Not like in Fort Lauderdale. The conversation’s gonna go a little different here.”

The black guy said, “I’m about to get something out of my pocket, Carver, and I’d like for you not to blow a hole in my suit.”

Carver said, “No deal. I don’t wanna see pictures of your kids. And if they were here, they wouldn’t want you to reach in that pocket.”

“I got no kids, and you watch me real close, because I’m gonna show you you’re dealing with the U.S. government here.”

He had nerve, did the black one. Not moving his frightened eyes from the Colt, he shifted his hand toward the lapel of his suitcoat. Beneath the material and out of sight. Inching toward the inside pocket. Gave Carver his choice—squeeze the trigger, or hesitate and take the chance.

Carver took the chance. His heart hammering. Making a show of tensing his finger on the trigger.

What came out in the black guy’s hand was a worn brown leather folder. The kind that usually contained a badge.

Holding it well away from his body, he let it flop open facing Carver.

Badge, all right. And Carver recognized what kind.

The black guy said, “I’m Ben Jefferson. Drug Enforcement Administration. This is agent Ralph Palma, also DEA.” “Palma,” not “Palmer,” as he’d told Renway.

Not politics
—
drugs. Sure! What else, in Florida?
Not knowing quite what to say, Carver said, “So?”

“So put down the fuckin’ gun,” Palma said.

Carver didn’t move the gun. Not yet. But he knew this figured. The DEA could take precedence over the Miami police. Get the autopsy report faked so it looked as if Frank Wesley and not Bert Renway died in the car bombing. A federal agency had that kind of clout. Maybe only the weight of the federal government could do it. And it
had
been done.

“The ID’s authentic,” Jefferson said.

“I know.” Carver lowered the gun. Tucked it back into his belt beneath his shirt. He’d never thumbed the safety off, but Jefferson and Palma hadn’t noticed. Guns caused people not to think straight. People behind and in front of them. Guns didn’t kill people, people with guns killed people.

“Why don’t we go in the house?” Jefferson said. “Hot as the surface of the sun out here.”

Palma was grinning confidently now. The gun was back where it didn’t pose a danger and the balance of power had shifted again to where it belonged. These were all of a sudden very official dudes, with the intimidating force of the U.S. government behind them. Big Uncle Sam.

Carver said, “You wanna talk, we can sit at the table on the veranda.”

Jefferson said, “You’re a hard man.”

Carver said, “Believe it.”

When they’d crossed the brick veranda and were seated in the shade of the table’s wide umbrella, Jefferson, who seemed to be in charge, said, “What do you know, Carver?”

“Enough not to spill all of it to you.”

Palma said, “You’re fuckin’ with a federal investigation here. Better tread light.”

“But I don’t think your superiors, or the news media, would like the way you used guns and bullshit to scare a U.S. taxpayer in Wesley’s apartment in Fort Lauderdale.”

“The taxpayer was where he didn’t belong,” Jefferson said.

“So were the DEA agents. And they didn’t identify themselves.”

“We go where we want,” Palma said, “and we belong wherever that is.”

Carver said to Jefferson, “He’s kind of haughty.”

Jefferson smiled and said, “Well, sometimes we need that in this job. We’ve identified ourselves now, so let’s all three of us forget about that Fort Lauderdale thing. Start over and even.”

Carver glimpsed another, unexpected side to the powerful and fierce-looking Jefferson; he could be, when he chose, a charming and persuasive man.

“What I know,” Carver said, “is that Bert Renway came into my office and hired me to find out why
he
was hired by you to impersonate Frank Wesley. I took the job, Renway left the office, and got blown up in his—Wesley’s—car before he had a chance to drive away. Only it turns out the autopsy report says the body was Wesley’s. I expect you two had something to do with that.”

Jefferson said, “Everything to do with it.” Palma looked cool, but beads of sweat were tracking down Jefferson’s broad dark face. The sun was getting to him today, making him suffer. But he made no move to take off his suitcoat or even loosen the knot on his tie. Man wouldn’t make concessions even to God.

Carver was slightly outside the shadow cast by the tilted umbrella. His bald head was feeling the heat. The sun was no friend of the hairless. He said, “Let’s go inside and talk.”

Jefferson grinned. Palma made a languid, waving motion with his hand, as if he couldn’t care less where they sat and made conversation.

Carver could feel the two men watching him as he limped ahead of them to the house.

In the living room, Palma sat on the sofa, legs crossed, hands folded in his lap. Jefferson remained standing, as did Carver. The sound of the surf was barely audible.

Jefferson mopped perspiration from his face with a wadded white handkerchief, looking for a moment like Louis Armstrong without a trumpet. He said, “Thanks for inviting us in. Nice and cool here.” He stuffed the handkerchief back into a pocket and nodded toward Carver’s cane. “You oughta sit down, take weight off that bad leg.”

Carver said, “I’m fine standing.”

“How’d you hurt the leg?” The good twin asking.

“Guy with a gun hurt it for me.”

Jefferson stared at him, then shrugged almost imperceptibly, as if deciding not to pursue that line of conversation. He glanced instead at Palma.

Palma said, “We’d like to know what you were doing in Atlanta, Carver. Why you paid a visit to Wesley Slaughter and Rendering. Why you went to Frank Wesley’s memorial service.”

“And I’d like to know why you’re asking.”

Jefferson blew out a long breath and shook his head, the picture of exasperation. “It’d sure help if you’d stop being a smartass, Carver. You know how it works. We’re government agents; we ask, you goddamned well better answer, or you’ll wish you had.” Bad twin again.

“I don’t recall breaking any federal laws in Atlanta,” Carver said.

Palma smiled almost sadly. “But you never know, the law being so complicated.”

Jefferson slipped just his fingertips into the rear pockets of his suitpants, the coat folded back and bunched between his wrists. His powerful thigh muscles worked beneath the thin material as he paced a few steps away, then turned and came back.

Now that he’d turned around, he was a different man altogether. Like an impressionist who’d slipped into a new identity. The irritation on his face had been replaced by a peaceful, almost blank expression. Guy was changeable as a chameleon. Now he was oddly amiable. He said, “We know something about you, Carver. Know you’re not some fool. We’re DEA, so you must have figured out by now we’re investigating a narcotics-related crime.”

“I got that one pretty early,” Carver said.

“There’s this group of Southern businessmen,” Jefferson said. “Some twenty-five years ago they formed an organization headquartered in Atlanta.”

“The Southern Christian Businessmen’s League?”

Jefferson pursed his lips and nodded. “That’s the one. After 1973 it ceased to exist—at least publicly. But its core group of very wealthy Southerners remained banded together secretly for mutual profit. For a while it was good old white-collar crime on a high level. Stock manipulation, phantom collateral, political graft. Last year or so, though, they’ve moved to where the big money is. They’re smuggling narcotics into this country. It’s shipped or flown to Mexico, then brought by boat into Florida. A lot of it—we aren’t sure how much—is then transported in various ways to Wesley Slaughter and Rendering. Shipments of animal products from Wesley to certain distributors are as much drugs as pork. Usually the stuff is hidden inside meat products—sausages, pork bellies, what have you.”

Carver asked the obvious. “You know all this, why don’t you stop them?”

“We were in the process of doing that,” Palma said, “when you came along and fucked up the works.”

Carver shifted his weight. Moved the cane and used the toe of his right shoe to scruff out the indentation made by its hard rubber tip in the soft carpet. Nothing Jefferson had said surprised him much, yet there was something about it that didn’t rest level.

He said, “I didn’t come along and do anything. You recall, it was Bert Renway who came along and hired me to find out what was going on. I was sitting there doing nothing when he was blown up outside my office after he paid me to do my job. Which is why I’m doing my job now. Where were you sitting when he was killed? What were you doing?”

For the first time, Palma looked uncomfortable on the sofa. He uncrossed his legs. Crossed them the other way. Adjusted a thin black sock that had slipped down on his ankle. He said, “Your client dies, doesn’t that sorta release you from obligation?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Come on, Carver,” Jefferson said. “You must have a better reason than that to be making our lives difficult.”

Carver considered telling them about McGregor. Serve the conniving bastard right to have the federals on his ass. But that one cut both ways, so he kept silent.

Jefferson said, “Carver?”

“How come you hired Bert Renway to impersonate Wesley?” Carver asked.

“You got this all backward,” Palma said. “
We
ask,
you
answer.”

Carver said, “Maybe if I talk to the right people, they’ll ask. Then you’ll have to answer.”

“Threats are something we get a lot of,” Palma said.

Carver placed both hands on the crook of his cane, leaned forward. “Some of them must be more than just threats.”

Jefferson said, “Let’s cool down here.” He moved closer to Carver. Locked gazes with him. There was now something deep and dangerous in Jefferson’s dark eyes. Something as implacable and relentless as time itself. Carver had seen that kind of look before but couldn’t remember where. “About a month ago,” Jefferson said, “Frank Wesley arrived at the condo in Fort Lauderdale. After a few days, he left on a boat that took him to Mexico. From there he was flown to Bogota, Colombia. We had him watched in Bogota, and we hired Renway to take his place in the condo while he was gone. Hired him because he was about Wesley’s age and fit Wesley’s general description amazingly well. Had him wear Wesley’s clothes, drive Wesley’s car. Then we kept him under surveillance to see who’d contact him.”

“Used him as bait,” Carver said in disgust.

Palma said, “We don’t see it like that.”

“Call it what you will,” Jefferson said. “We’re not dealing with Sunday-school teachers, and sometimes we have to use unconventional methods. The Justice Department understands that and gives us leeway.”

“Christ!
That
much leeway? Methods
that
unconventional?”

“Sometimes. We’re sorry about Bert Renway. You can believe that or not.”

“So Wesley realized you were on to him, and he decided to stay dead after Renway was killed and mistakenly identified as him. You faked the Miami autopsy report to keep the deception alive.”

“That’s about it.”

“But why do
you
want Wesley to stay dead?”

“We have our reasons.”

“Such as not wanting anyone to find out you hired Renway?”

“That’s only part of it.”

“But Wesley has to realize somebody must have put Renway up to impersonating him. Somebody must know he isn’t really dead.”

“He knows we did it,” Jefferson said. “He also knows we can’t have that made public in light of our investigation. It was a rival drug faction that killed Renway, thinking he was Wesley. You heard about the drug wars in Central America?”

“Sure. Sometimes they make the papers.”

“Well, Wesley wants to stay dead as far as the killers are concerned, so he’ll be safe from another assassination attempt. I told you, Carver, these ain’t Sunday-school teachers. As much money as there is involved here, it brings out the animal in people. They get to be hogs, just like the ones at Wesley Slaughter and Rendering. Sometimes they end up the same way. And the ones that aren’t the victims are the killers.”