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Carver said, “Mr. and Mrs. Everman?”

“Yeah?” said the man, making it a question.

“I’m from Key Montaigne,” Carver said, raising his voice so he’d be understood over the music. “I’m here to talk about your son.”
Oompah!
said the tuba, vibrating the floor.

A blank look came over the face of the man. Fear crept into the woman’s woeful blue eyes.

“Our son’s dead,” Frank Everman said.

“I know. That’s why I’m here. To ask you a few questions. I don’t like it, but that’s my job. Can I come in?”
Oompah! Oompah!

Everman didn’t know how to say no. Carver inserted his cane into the room first, as if it were part of him that was already inside, then limped through the door and past Everman, who made a sort of acquiescent grunt as he shuffled aside. The hall had been hotter than the lobby, and the room was hotter than the hall. It was actually a small suite. Carver could see beyond the overstuffed old sofa that matched the lobby furniture and into a room where the corner of an unmade bed was visible. Alongside the sofa was a fancy brass floor lamp with a bent yellow shade. A cheap reproduction of a Frederic Remington painting, a weary Indian on a wearier horse, hung on one wall. There was a bookshelf on another wall, but it held stacks of 33 rpm records instead of books, and a brown stereo turntable with lots of controls but only one knob, and that one cracked in half. The woman walked over and used the cracked knob to switch off the turntable, then lifted the stylus and carefully set it aside in its bracket. The room was astoundingly quiet in the absence of polka. It smelled of stale tobacco smoke and strong insecticide, now that Frank Everman was out of range with his cologne.

The woman must have seen Carver’s nose twitch. “I just killed the biggest roach you ever seen,” she said, and crooked her forefinger over her cupped hand as if depressing the button on an aerosol can.

“I’m glad you nailed him before I got here,” Carver said, smiling. Selma might be easier to deal with than the whipped loser Frank.

Frank tried to take charge, backpedaling quickly to the center of the room so he was standing next to his wife and facing Carver. “So whad’ya need to know about Lenny? I thought we told you guys everything possible.”

“Probably you did,” Carver said sympathetically, “but we need to hear it again to verify it.” He looked over at Selma. “Losing your son as you have, you must understand we have to learn everything possible so we can try to prevent other kids from leaving home and ending up the same way. The streets are the worst kind of life for a minor.”

“For anybody,” Selma said.

“It was the drugs,” Frank said. “Goddamn drugs and the scum that sells ’em is what killed our boy.” He clenched his fists and looked fierce enough to tackle any drug dealer smaller than five feet tall.

Selma bowed her head. “Time to time, the way God works His will is hard to bear up under.” She’d produced a wadded white Kleenex from somewhere and used it to dab at her eyes. Tiny pills of tissue appeared on her blouse to join the coffee stain.

“Did Leonard have a history of drug use?” Carver asked.

Frank looked puzzled, then said, “We told you fellas he did. His fuckin’ peers got him using the stuff when he was no more’n eleven years old. Hell, we was surprised to find out. Exactly the kinda unsuspecting parents you read about. Lenny was hard to roust outa bed some mornings, but other’n that we seen no sign whatsoever he had a problem.”

“What kinda drugs he use?” Carver asked.

“You name it and Lenny probably tried it in his young life. Toward the last he was smoking crack cocaine, is what I gather. But we don’t know for sure except for what they found in his blood test after he . . . was gone. Once he got past twelve years old, Lenny never let us in on what was happening in his life. Lousy peers took over.”

“That’s not exactly true,” Selma interjected, defending her dead son and her competence as a mother. “It was just the drug part of his life he kept secret.”

Frank snorted. “My feeling is drugs were his
whole
life. Him and the other poor fucked-up kids that caught a habit. Not to mention the bastards that deal the stuff. You lie down with them dogs, you’re gonna get up with plenty of fleas. Then one day you don’t get up at all.”

“That’s what usually happens,” Carver agreed. “And Leonard had run away before, right?”

“Just temporarily,” Selma said.

“Till the police brung him back,” Frank told Carver, ignoring Selma. “Once when he was ten, and another time when he was eleven.”

“How long was he gone those times?”

“When he was ten he was away less’n a week. Cops found him way the fuck up in Haines City. Time he was eleven, he was gone two months and some social worker found him right here in Miami, selling artificial flowers at a busy intersection.”

Two months, Carver thought. That was a long time for an eleven-year-old boy to be on the streets and not fall prey to the perverts or the dope dealers. Time enough to become savvy and cynical and lost to yourself as well as the people who might be searching for you. It would be so easy for us to alleviate our social problems by making sure every kid in the country had education, medication, and some sort of basic physical and emotional nourishment. But Carver knew it wasn’t going to happen. Fifteen or twenty years would have to pass in order to see the results, and political horizons extended only to the next election.

Selma said, “Looka here, Mister . . . ?”

“Carver.”

“Mr. Carver. We’re living in this hotel on welfare ‘cause of Frank’s disability.”

“Got injured in an industrial accident,” Frank said, with what sounded like pride.

“What I’m saying,” Selma went on, “is that we don’t wanna make no waves and bring the case worker down on us for neglecting Leonard—which we definitely did not do. But folks on the dole don’t wanna call attention to themselves, you know?”

Carver said he understood. He looked hard at her. “You really think it’s plausible your runaway son went swimming in the ocean and drowned under the influence of cocaine?”

“Ain’t that what happened?” Frank asked.

Selma said, “Leonard was a good swimmer.”

“Not juiced up on coke, he wasn’t,” Frank said bitterly. He screwed up his face and trained his injured eyes on Carver. “To answer your question, yeah, it fits the way Lenny was, the way he was living at the time, that he mighta done something like that. Anyway, I guess the proof’s in the pudding, ain’t it?”

“Afraid it is,” Carver said.

Selma moved her pale and flabby arm in a tired gesture toward the ice bucket. A bottle of bourbon and a plastic liter bottle of Coca-Cola Classic sat beside it on an old elliptical mahogany coffee table that looked like a surfboard on legs. “You wanna drink, Mr. Carver?”

“No thanks,” Carver said, “I’ve taken up about enough of your time. One last thing, though, are you satisfied with the way the investigation into your son’s death was handled?”

“Oh, hell, yeah!” Frank blurted out. “Them people down on Key Montaigne couldn’t have been nicer, don’t you think, Selma?”

“They was as comforting as anybody could be under the circumstances,” Selma said.

“You acquainted with a man down there named Walter Rainer?”

“No,” Frank said.

“Yes,” Selma said. “He was the nice fella give you a lift when the rental car got a flat.”

“Yeah, mighta been his name at that. Big fucker in a long gray car. Name Rainer sounds right.”

“So you don’t have any doubts about the way Leonard died?”

“Doubts?” Frank Everman stared at Carver. “What kinda doubts?”

“Nothing, really,” Carver said. “I just wanna make sure you’re satisfied with the way everything was done. It’s important we make it easy as possible for people who’ re gonna have similar experiences, because the sad thing is, there are plenty more kids out there living the way your Leonard did.”

Selma said, “Often times—and I know it’s a sin to think it—I do believe Lenny’s better off now. I mean, the kinda discontent and mental suffering he was in. Whatever it was made him take to the streets. And the drugs and stuff. The horrible people he took up with. He was living a life of agony and might eventually have come to an even worse end. It’s like the bible says about the wages of sin, and Lenny was led astray and into the wilderness early in life.”

Carver wondered if she imagined her dead son in hell. How couldn’t she, if she believed in an afterlife of reward and punishment?

Frank shook his head sadly. “Damned peers!”

Carver left the Evermans to their bourbon and their beer-hall music and rode the elevator down to the lobby. Their grief for their son didn’t ring quite true, didn’t seem to stab deep enough. On the other hand, it was possible they were so beaten down by poverty they’d become numbed to tragedy.

The explanation of the flat tire and the ride from Walter Rainer might well be fact, the one genuine coincidence that had tilted Henry’s suspicion to conviction.

Carver had left the Olds parked in the lot alongside the Blue Flamingo, in the shade of the adjacent hotel that was deserted and under renovation. He limped over to it and was about to unlock the door when his cane was suddenly jerked from his grasp. He heard it clatter to the pavement as he twisted, stumbled, and fell back against the warm hood of the car, supporting himself with his elbows and with his stiff leg angled out in front of him like a brace.

He was looking at Davy Mathis, who was standing on the cane, smiling and holding a wood-handled steel cargo hook that had been honed to a gleaming point.

B
EFORE
C
ARVER COULD MOVE
, Davy suddenly stepped in close. Carver felt something sharp and painful digging into his crotch.

He tensed his body, looked down, and saw that Davy had the point of the cargo hook pressed into his scrotum. Davy patted him down skillfully with his free hand, making sure Carver didn’t have a weapon. Carver thought of his gun back in Henry’s cottage, still in Beth’s suitcase. He hadn’t figured he’d need it to talk to bereaved parents in Miami. It might not have helped anyway; it would probably belong to Davy now.

The length of the hook allowed Davy to move back slightly and still use his and Carver’s bodies to shield what was happening from view. Anyone passing on the street might glance at them and see only two men having a casual conversation.

“You move a fuckin’ millimeter,” Davy said with a grin, “and I’m gonna gaff you and hoist you a foot off the ground. Give you a vasectomy while I’m goddamn doing it.” He made a slight upward motion, an almost imperceptible shrug, and the hook moved. Sudden pain coursed through and nauseated Carver, making him dizzy. “You and I gonna have a talk,” Davy said. He was wearing white pants and a sleeveless T-shirt; the sweat-coated hula dancer on his muscular forearm had wriggled when he made the move with the hook. He must have had fish for lunch; it was still on his breath.

“Where’s your van?” Carver asked through clenched teeth.

“Parked down the street a ways. You don’t know how lucky you are. I’m awful fond of my wheels. If you’da backed into the van the other day down in Key Montaigne, I’d have got out and gutted you asshole to belly button.”

“Then you admit it was you who tried running me off the road?”

“Sure. You gonna fuckin’ quote me?”

The point of the hook again rose a fraction of an inch, and Carver sucked in his breath. He couldn’t answer, but that was okay with Davy, who probably asked a lot of rhetorical questions.

More fish breath. “If I’d have been trying to run you off the road, Carver, you’da fuckin’ run off the road. What I was attempting was to get you to see plain reason, realize your future was someplace else.”

“Or not at all.”

“Ain’t you per-fuckin’-ceptive?”

“Were you acting on Walter Rainer’s orders?”

Davy sneered. “You’re amazing. I got you by the balls directly, and you think you’re the one doing the quizzing. Maybe I need a bigger hook. You talk when I ask you a question and not a word otherwise. Understand?”

“Yeah, I get the point.” The words came out in a wheeze.

Davy laughed and spittle tattooed Carver’s face. “Hey, maybe I really
do
need a bigger hook. What I come to tell you is, Henry Tiller’s nothing but an old geek talking out his asshole. There’s nothing to his fuckin’ paranoid ideas. Now, you know what that means?”

“I got a feeling I’m about to find out,” Carver said. His mind was whirling, trying to figure out a way for him to defend against the sharp cargo hook so he could go on the offensive. But there was no way. Any sudden motion would prompt Davy to hoist him like a live side of beef on the hook, and Davy would enjoy that.

The hula dancer jiggled her hips again and Carver felt the hook rotate. The twisting motion didn’t add to his pain, but it carried a psychological horror that made his insides go cold and metallic-tasting saliva collect under his tongue. “Means you oughta seriously consider moving outa the Tiller place,” Davy said, “and returning to whatever rock you live under on the mainland. You got that message loud and clear, fuckface?” Now the hook lifted another eighth of an inch and Carver heard his shrieking intake of breath as another shock of pain jolted through him. “Loud and clear?” Davy repeated.

“Loud and clear,” Carver groaned. He swallowed. Nausea threatened to reverse the process.

Davy spat in his face and smiled like a man who’d just accomplished his mission. He lowered the hook and stepped back. “I really do enjoy dealing with assholes like you. Fuckin’ small-time gimp, did you really think you were gonna cause somebody with some real grease any kinda trouble without bringing ten times more down on yourself?”

“I didn’t know Rainer had that kinda grease.”

“Well he does, and it’s green, and you don’t follow my advice, you’re gonna get a special kinda lube job.” Davy kicked Carver’s cane under the car, then moved farther back and slid the cargo hook through a belt loop so it was concealed beneath his untucked shirt. “I tried to give you a hint the day before yesterday on Shoreline you wasn’t wanted on Key Montaigne, but you insisted on ignoring it, so here we fuckin’ are.”