IT WAS OBVIOUS JEFFERSON didn’t like being awakened at one A.M. Especially by Carver.
He stood in the doorway of his room at the Sundown Motel, squinting out at Carver, his right arm hung at an angle so the hand rested out of sight behind him. He was wearing only pants; suspenders were still attached to them and draped down around his hips and thighs. Even in the faint and wavering light from the illuminated pool, Carver could see the ridged muscle of Jefferson’s upper body. One time or another, Jefferson must have done considerable work with weights.
The hand came out from behind his back. There was a revolver in it. Jefferson said, “Fuck you want, this time of night?” He stepped back to let Carver inside, keeping the gun low but with his finger still curled around the trigger.
Carver planted his cane and entered the dark motel room. It was too warm in there and smelled of sweat. “You always answer the door with the lights out?”
“Yeah. With a gun, too.” Jefferson reached over and switched on a table lamp. Blinked at the sudden glare. Never stopped looking at Carver, though. “Heard the knocking, thought at first it was a fuckin’ dream. Still have hopes.”
“Not a dream,” Carver said, “me.”
“So I see. Nightmare, more like it; too much pasta coming back to haunt. Now, why would you wake me up at”—he glanced at his watch—“oh, God, one o’friggin’-clock in the morning?”
“I thought it was the safest time to come here without being seen.”
“By your Atlanta friends?”
“Right. You must have been in contact with Courtney Romano.”
“We are frequently,” Jefferson said. He revealed no surprise that Carver knew about Courtney. Used his free hand to scratch lazily beneath his rib cage. “She likes it that way.”
“Don’t blame her, having met Vincent Butcher. You ever had the pleasure?”
“No, but I know a great deal about him. More than you know. None of it’s nice. So maybe I don’t blame you for sneaking over here in the wee hours. But how the hell did you know where to find me?”
“Called the main DEA office in Washington and they told me.”
“I’ll ignore that, but I don’t wanna hear any more smartass remarks.”
“Courtney tell you the arrangement I’m supposed to have with the Wesley people?”
“ ’Course she did. That’s her job. A useful arrangement, you ask me. You’re gonna be a double agent, my man. No, wait a minute, triple agent. Working for us, but they think you’re working for them, only we know about it and you’re working for us. A three-cushion shot.”
Carver remembered Desoto mentioning that.
Jefferson sat down in a small wing chair. He let his powerful arms drop limply to the sides, let the gun dangle. The lamp highlighted his washboard stomach; the kind of guy who could drive himself to do hundreds of sit-ups each and every day. Or who was driven to do them. “No time at all you’ve gone from keyhole-peeker to goddamn triple agent,” he said. “Something, huh?”
“Only in America.”
Jefferson’s eyes, yellowish in the lamplight, got hard. “When we got something we want Wesley to know, we’ll get in touch with you. Tell you what to pass on.”
“And if they find out I’m passing on stacked information, what about me?”
Jefferson barked something somewhere between a snort and a laugh. “You’re the one wanted into this game, Carver. Now you’re in and you got no choice.”
“Maybe. But I want something from you.”
“I gathered that, considering you were knocking at my door at one A.M. and we never got together much socially.”
“The woman I live with, Edwina Talbot; if I get outa line they’ll sic Butcher on her. That’s the string they tied on me.”
Jefferson nodded, staring at Carver. “Courtney told us. So you stay in line, only what you tell Ogden and Butcher is what we want them to know.”
“That’s not staying in line,” Carver said. “It’s dangerous for Edwina.”
“Not to mention the intrepid private eye. You guys tinker around with serious matters, get in our way. Well, this time you poked your pecker in a steel trap. Nothing you can do but play along with Ogden and Butcher. Which means there’s nothing you can do but play along with us.”
“Maybe,” Carver said. “But you got no choice other than to make sure nothing happens to Edwina Talbot. You’re not exactly running your own investigation by official procedure.”
“I can’t afford to be a bureaucrat,” Jefferson said. “I’m out here in the field with my ass on the line.”
“You know a private citizen’s in danger, and you want to place her in even greater jeopardy by forcing me to lie to Ogden and Butcher.”
“If that’s the way you see it. Thing is, though, there’s a kinda time limit on all this. There’s supposed to be a Southern Christian Businessmen’s League strategy meeting down here in the next few days. All the movers and shakers, discussing new routes for drug shipments from Central America. That’s the reason Palma and I came to Florida in the first place.”
“Time limit or not, the way I see it, you better do what you can to shield Edwina.”
“You seem to have it backward about who’s between the rock and the block, Carver. You gotta tell the Wesley people something, and if you pass on information we haven’t okayed, you’re guilty of complicity. It’s gotta be one or the other. Them or us. No real choice there, the way it looks to me. How you see it I’m not sure. But it’s down to the short strokes in this game, baby.”
“Any way I move I lose.”
Jefferson nodded. “Might.”
“What if I tell Ogden you know about the SCBL get-together?”
“Then you’re federal pen bound, Carver. But the SCBL knows we’re onto this anyway. The meeting will come off, as long as they think we don’t know where it’s gonna be held. Florida’s a big state, the size of some European countries, and big money makes for big egos and overconfidence. Now if you were to find out the exact location of the meeting, it’d be smart to pass it on to me or Palma.”
“Can’t Courtney tell you?”
“They don’t completely trust her.” Jefferson swallowed hard. “And she’s around because Ogden wants her.”
“I didn’t see any sign of that,” Carver said. “I mean, of anything between them.”
Jefferson said, “It’s not a relationship based on love.” He made a face as if he’d like to spit out something vile.
“She still figures to learn the meeting place before I would.”
“Could be.”
Carver made an effort not to look in the direction of the rifle in the duffel bag beneath the bed. He said, “There’s something else operating here, isn’t there?”
Jefferson said, “Huh? I don’t follow.”
“Something more than a drug-smuggling ring you’re trying to break.”
“Well, you never know what else some of these drug kings are into until you subpoena the books. Even then, they’re so good at cooking the numbers you still might not know.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Oh? What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe you can tell me.”
Jefferson’s face twitched and the muscles in his neck and chest corded. For a moment he seemed about to say something. But only for a moment. Carver got a brief look at something inside Jefferson, writhing and agonized and dangerous. It scared him; a glimpse of a demon.
A wind kicked up off the sea. Something light bounced with force off the glass door beyond the bed. Outside, in the distance, a woman laughed loudly and maniacally.
“I came here to tell you to make sure Edwina has protection,” Carver said.
“Why don’t you simply get her out of town on the sly?”
“That’d only work for a while. Even if she’d leave, which she won’t. Besides, there’s always the possibility she’d be trailed to wherever she went. There’d be no way to know for sure. These people are pros. It’d be hard for her to go anywhere now without them knowing.”
Jefferson yawned, his deep chest heaving. He ran a hand over his hair, as if to make sure it hadn’t fallen out in the night. Studied his palm for a few seconds. “Yeah, you’re right. So you’re using what you perceive as leverage to get us to protect Miss Talbot.”
“That’s it,” Carver said.
“Might surprise you to know we already got somebody watching over her. That was decided five minutes after our contact with Courtney. You’re right, Carver, Miss Talbot’s a U.S. citizen and has protection owed her.”
“That’s what I needed to hear,” Carver said. He shifted position with the cane and limped toward the door.
“You mean I can go back to sleep now?”
“Or wake up. Maybe this is a bad dream.”
“Yours, not mine. But wait’ll I turn out the light before you open the door. Wouldn’t want some fool to take a shot at you and hit me.” Jefferson reached out a muscular arm and switched off the lamp. “We’ll give you a call soon about what information to pass on to Atlanta.”
“Sure. Thanks.”
“Carver, something else.”
Carver waited in the faint light.
“The way you’d feel if something happened to Edwina Talbot, that’s how I’ll feel if you screw up and something happens to Courtney Romano.”
Carver looked at him, surprised. “So it’s that way between you and Courtney.”
Jefferson nodded slowly, his serious dark eyes shining in the dim room. “That way.”
Carver stood quietly for a moment, thinking about Courtney and Ogden. About the rifle under the bed. A hunting tool. An assassination weapon. But what was the deal here? Jefferson could take out Ogden almost anytime he wanted. And he had to know Courtney was willingly doing her job. Jefferson of all people would understand that. “But there’s more, isn’t there?” Carver said. “Only you’re not telling me. Something about you. Something keeping you wound tight.”
Smiling, Jefferson said, “Get off that bullshit. You wanna play psychiatrist, go back to school.”
Carver said, “You worry me.”
“Least you got that much sense. Night, Carver.”
“Night.”
“So walk. I gotta get some sleep.”
Carver limped out into the greater darkness of the night. He was satisfied now that Edwina would have the best protection possible. She’d be safer home and unaware in Del Moray than in a strange city, unfamiliar territory where she might have been followed or could soon be discovered.
From the shadowy room behind Carver, Jefferson said, “Remember, Carver, you’re the one between the rock and the hard place.”
Carefully skirting the edge of the gently lapping pool, Carver thought: That means it’s time to move.