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McGregor swiveled back around to face him again. “They like homing pigeons? They only fly one direction, so eager they just gotta get back to Atlanta? They so careless they didn’t leave a man behind to watch you? See what kinda fuck-up you’re gonna pull next?”

“They didn’t need to leave anyone behind.”

“How ’bout those DEA assholes. Think they might not be keeping an eye on you?”

“What if they are? What if anybody is? I’m a private investigator, and this is police headquarters. You might not have noticed it, but we’re in more or less the same business. Florida’s got more crime than sand. I might be here on a matter unrelated to narcotics or Renway’s death.”

“We both know that’s bullshit. Either of your sets of friends knew you came here, they’d sure as hell lean on you to find out why. Cut off selected body parts till they found out.”

Carver figured McGregor was right, but why give him satisfaction by admitting it?

“What makes you think the Atlanta faction didn’t leave somebody behind to keep watch on you?” McGregor asked. The possibility was clearly worrying him.

“They worked it out so they don’t need to watch me; they tied a string to me. That’s why I came to see you.”

A wary look drifted into McGregor’s pale blue eyes. He brushed his lank blond hair back from his long forehead. Darted the tip of his tongue out between his widely spaced front teeth. He said, “String? What’s that s’pose to mean, you’re a yo-yo? You think you’re a hip guy talking street slang like the rest of the shitheads out there? What kinda string?”

“Edwina.” Carver explained about the photographs, the threat to Edwina if he didn’t keep Ogden informed about the DEA investigation. Then he hit McGregor with his request. He didn’t tell McGregor about Courtney Romano being DEA. That would put Courtney in worse, if not immediate, danger. She was surrounded by people hungry for money and power. If it suited his purpose, McGregor would toss her like meat to trailing wolves.

McGregor stood up, stretched his elongated body languidly, and walked out from behind the desk. Lanky and looming, hollow-chested but with a rangy, tireless look about him. He paced slowly, his fingertips caressing his jutting chin. Posing. Showing Carver he was carefully considering. He had his suitcoat off and perspiration stains formed dark crescents beneath the arms of his wrinkled white shirt. The narrow end of his tie dangled down an inch below the wide. His pants looked as if they’d been ironed with a hammer, and he’d missed a belt loop so the material bunched up in back as if his diaper needed changing. He was a tower of bad taste.

After a while he said, “Uh-uh, Carver, I ain’t gonna assign someone to guard her.”

Anger dug spurs into Carver’s stomach. He told himself he shouldn’t be surprised by McGregor’s refusal. “Why not?” he asked.

“Whaddaya mean, why not? It oughta be obvious, even to an airbrain like you. We all got our personal and intimate responsibilities.”

“Which means?”

“Means you’re the one runnin’ cock through Edwina Talbot, you take care of her.”

Carver sank the tip of his cane into the soft carpet and hauled himself to his feet. Took an awkward half-step. He mentally measured the distance between himself and McGregor. The length of his arm and the cane?

McGregor grinned at Carver’s rage; he enjoyed getting under people’s skin. “Also, there’s lotsa crime happening around here. I can’t spare the manpower.”

Carver said, “I don’t like your explanation.”

“Really? Which one?”

“Neither.”

“No shit? Well, it’s this way: I can’t take the chance. Can’t afford to have the DEA or your Atlanta buddies or the department here make any connection between me and what you’re doing. You’re a detective, fuckhead, you shoulda been able to figure that one out. So I can’t give your cunt protection. No way, Jose.
Forget
it!”

“You’re the one who set all this in motion,” Carver hissed through clenched teeth. “
You’ve
got a responsibility. For Christ’s sake, you’re a cop. If nothing else, it’s
your job
to protect a citizen if you know her life’s in danger.”

McGregor spread his plate-size hands and pretended to be puzzled. “Whadda we got here, the Judeo-Christian work ethic or something?”

“It’s your job,” Carver repeated evenly. Thinking, despite himself, maybe McGregor had something with that “work ethic” remark. Cynical prick! But if his work—this kind of work—wasn’t important, what was?

“I can’t know shit about a job,” McGregor said, “since we never had this conversation. And it’s a fact we never had this conversation, ’cause I don’t know a thing about what you been doing this past week or so. That’s why you should realize I got no choice but to tell you no. So send your lady friend outa town. Outa the state. If that ain’t safe, it’s at least safer than in Del Moray. Sleep alone for a while and jerk yourself off. Just don’t involve me in your problem.”

Carver had to fight the impulse to club him with the cane. “Don’t involve you in my problem? You
are
my problem, you kink-brained bastard! You’re why all this is happening.”

“If I’m your problem,” McGregor said, “then you got a problem ain’t humanly possible to solve.”

“That’s because the only thing human about you,” Carver said, “is that you walk upright.”

“I’m no different from you, except I’m smarter and keep two moves ahead. I don’t do dumb things and get myself in trouble because of some fucked-up sense of morality that don’t mean a thing unless I got the luxury of being able to practice it. You say I ain’t human, but you’re wrong; I’m what human beings are all about. Looking out for ourselves, that’s us. Boil it down, that’s what it’s about for all of us in this shitty world. And that’s what the world is—fermenting shit. I at least got the sense to learn to live in it. Learn to kinda like it, even. More sense than a John Wayne jack-off like you, with your box-top code of honor. Tell you, Carver, the only difference between you and me is I
know
there ain’t a difference between us. That’s why you’re the one caught in the middle and getting the juice squeezed outa you.”

“Oh? You think we’re not in this together? What are you gonna say if somebody asks you what we talked about here in your office?”

McGregor smiled confidently. “I got a cover story all worked out. It didn’t surprise me, you being rammy enough to come here big as a hard-on despite our agreement. I didn’t get where I am by forgetting to cover my ass.”

Carver believed him. Covering his tracks, covering his ass, that was McGregor’s game and he was the best at it. Still, there was the possibility of that tape recording when he’d put his proposition—his ultimatum—to Carver in the littered office after the car bombing.

Carver said, “What if I told you our conversation in my office the day of Renway’s death was taped?”

“I’d tell you that I don’t believe it. ’Cause I phoned your office that same day and didn’t even get a ring outa that piece of Japanese junk on your desk. So I’m willing to chance it, if it comes to push and shove. Willing to bet that you can’t prove I put you up to whatever it is you been doing. I figure it’s the word of a has-been gimp keyhole-peeper against that of a respected police lieutenant.”

“Who respects you?” Carver asked.

McGregor shrugged. “Legalese,” he explained. “That’s what I’ll be in court, a respected police lieutenant. The guy they’ll
have
to believe before they believe you. Otherwise where would the law and order come from in this pea-brained society, they start doubting the word of the law in court? That’s what you’ll hear, you fuck with me. The law talking.”

“Some law,” Carver said, glaring at him.

“Right now,” McGregor said, “the law says get the fuck outa my office. It’s not that I ain’t got compassion, but I also got work to do.”

“That’s your final word?”

“My final word is, if you’re afraid she’ll get photographed to death, take care of the bitch yourself.”

“Compassion,” Carver said in disgust, “is something you know nothing about.”

McGregor grinned, absently scratching his testicles like a major-league batter on TV, and said, “Nothing or everything.”

C
ARVER DECIDED HE HAD
to go see Lloyd Van Meter. The man was bizarre, but he had resources and he’d help. And he was a friend, which was a good reason both to confide in him and to leave him out of the action. McGregor had left Carver little choice but to bring Van Meter into the game. That could be like inviting Howard Hughes to sit in on Monopoly.

Carver had first met Van Meter when, as an Orlando patrolman, he’d arrested a burglary suspect who happened to be the wayward lover of Van Meter’s client, a wealthy New York society woman who ran an exclusive call-girl operation. Van Meter had been small-time back then, but he’d gotten the help of a local high-powered lawyer and created enough smoke and confusion to get the suspect returned to New York in a tangle of red tape. Carver had never seen the burglar again. The unconventional but effective Van Meter, with the money-laden gratitude of his wealthy New York client, had soon become head of one of the largest private-investigation agencies in Florida. Within five years he had offices in Miami and Tampa, as well as new and impressive offices in Orlando. Crime paid, even if indirectly.

He sat now in his main office on Orange Avenue in Orlando and listened to Carver. The office was furnished in Danish modern, no doubt by a decorator who’d never seen Van Meter. He was the only thing in the plush office that didn’t fit the decor. His bulk seemed to threaten to break everything. Especially the spindly straight legs of his desk chair. The desk itself was a pale oak creation that sort of resembled the state of Florida painted by Picasso. It was as sharply angled as the obese Van Meter was rounded. On one of its many corners was an ornate walnut pipe rack containing only one curve-stemmed pipe with a huge blackened bowl. A comfortable-looking accessory that also seemed foreign to the room but not to its occupant.

Van Meter, who claimed to be the illegitimate son of famous Prohibition-era gangster Homer Van Meter, was more massive than when Carver had last seen him. His features were sharply defined despite his fleshiness, and his thick white hair and flowing white beard gave him a Biblical look that inspired certain clients with confidence, especially in central Florida. He dressed as if he’d had all his clothes made from fabric bought at an awning-factory sale of material that wouldn’t move. He was wearing a yellow-and-white-striped suit. White shirt with yellow flecks in the material. Brown tie with what appeared to be a yellow mermaid painted on it. Perched in his dainty little chair, he looked like a huge scoop of lemon-vanilla ice cream about to melt over the sides of a dish.

After listening to Carver, he waved a hand bearing a massive silver-and-turquoise ring and said, “Sounds like you’re in deep and sinking toward the bottom to join the whale shit.”

Carver said, “I came here to see if I could borrow some buoyancy.”

Van Meter grinned and patted his huge, protruding stomach. “Came to the right man, old buddy.” He leaned forward; the frail little chair squealed in fright. Van Meter glanced around the office. “I wish somebody’d come in here one night and break all this crap into sticks. I paid a fortune to have it decorated last year; put it all in the hands of my secretary, Marge. It’d hurt her feelings if I told her I didn’t like it and was afraid someday it’d break under me and give me splinters.”

“Must be some secretary, that Marge.”

Van Meter shrugged beneath the yards of yellow material. It was like watching a sail billow. “Well, she’s an old man’s pleasure, you might say.”

Carver figured Van Meter was only about fifty, not much older than Carver, but he let it go. He wondered if Marge was the one who’d ushered him into the office, a tall, noble-looking gray-haired woman, probably older than Van Meter. The sort of woman who’d be attractive all her life. Good bones. Good everything.

Something hissed like a snake in the corner. Carver turned his head and saw one of those automatic scent dispensers timed to emit periodic sprays of fragrance into the air. He sniffed and recognized the scent of cinnamon.

“Another one of Marge’s ideas,” Van Meter said. “She don’t like it when I smoke my pipe in here. Says it smells up the place for a month.”

Carver said, “Maybe you oughta try some cinnamon-scented tobacco.”

“They make that kinda crap?”

“Sure.”

“Hmm.”

The little square scent-dispenser clicked and whirred. Something in it had rewound.

“Women and money,” Van Meter said, shaking his head, “they cause us to do things we wouldn’t ordinarily.”

Carver said, “That’s what keeps you and me in business.”

Van Meter stroked his long beard. Looked wise as Moses behind his peculiar angled desk. “Why you’re here, in fact, would be my guess.”

“That’s right,” Carver said, “Edwina. I want to hire you to put an operative on her for protection, but it’ll have to be without her, or anybody else who might be shadowing her, knowing about it.”

“Okay. Just leave me a can of that powder makes people invisible.”

“C’mon, Lloyd.”

“What you’re asking won’t be easy.”

“Possible, though. And the only way I have to go.”

“You could tell her about this,” Van Meter suggested. “See what she wants to do.”

But Carver knew what Edwina would want. What she’d do. She’d stay in Del Moray. And if she knew she was under surveillance she’d act as if she knew. Might even confront whoever was watching her. She’d lost herself during a disastrous marriage. Became even more lost after her divorce when she’d rebounded into a crippling love affair with a con man. Found herself only after the death of the con man and the help of Carver. Would never run from herself or anything else again. Carver had taught her that and he couldn’t argue now that she should run. She’d stick despite anything he might say; she’d developed the territorial possessiveness of a bull terrier. He thought that was fine—usually.

But he had to protect her from Vincent Butcher. Christ, Butcher with his string of human earlobes.