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condo to begin with. My impression is he was trying to protect her and the baby they were expecting.”
    “Then Gomez really thinks somebody snatched her—or them,” Carver said. “According to your hypothesis.”
    “It falls that way,” Desoto said. “An abduction.”
    Carver considered it. Didn’t like it. Didn’t say anything.
    Desoto said, “By the bye, sooner or later a DEA agent name of Dan Strait will wanna talk to you. He’s naturally interested in anything concerning Gomez.”
    “Reasonable.”
    “Considering what happened, you probably won’t see Gomez again. But if you do, let me know. It’s not just the DEA that wants a word with him.”
    “You see him as a suspect?”
    “Oh, no. Even if he shot the woman, he’ll have an alibi a team of high-powered lawyers couldn’t budge in a year.”
    “A careful man, huh?”
    “Miami tells me he’s awful nifty as well as psychotic. DEA says the same thing. What drug money can do to people, it’s done to Gomez. Guy’s major-league dangerous, so you be careful yourself.”
    “You know me.”
    “Sure do, my friend. Once you get involved in something, you can’t let go. Give some dogs a rag to chew on, and when they get a tooth-hold they’ll tug at it till they drop. That’s the way you are.” He reached back and turned up the Sony’s volume. A tango was playing; very dramatic. “Anything you wanna add before you go into an interrogation room and make your official statement, amigo ?”
    Carver leaned forward over the cane and stood up. He said, “Belinda Jackson was a slender, well-built woman. Even through a telescopic sight and a window, there’s no way she’d look to be in the late stages of pregnancy.”
    “I noticed that about her,” Desoto said.
    “Figured you would,” Carver said, and went out.
    Hoping he’d never see Roberto Gomez again, but knowing better.
    Dogs and rags.

6
    O N THE DRIVE BACK to Del Moray, Carver stopped at the Happy Lobster on A1A and had a leisurely supper of crab legs washed down with draft beer. It was cool and quiet in the restaurant, making it easier to think sanely. Faint noise was drifting from the bar. Men argued good-naturedly—about what he couldn’t tell, Someone coughed, a nasty cigarette hack. A woman laughed a rising, uncontrollable shriek of mirth. They were having a good time, all right.
    Carver had followed the hostess farther into the restaurant, away from the noise. He sat in one of the booths by the wide, curved window and looked out at the darkening Atlantic. A couple of fishing boats were moving parallel to the shore, surrounded by gulls in the way fleas surround dogs. The clouds that had lain on the horizon that morning had been pushed in by the sea wind and turned the sky a low, leaden gray, but the temperature was still up in the nineties. It was muggy as a sauna out there. Rain ready to happen.
    Carver and Edwina had shared a lot of meals at the Happy Lobster, but he didn’t feel sentimental and he didn’t know why. She was due back from Atlanta tonight. She might even be back now. He could have driven all the way in to her place and possibly had supper with her.
    Six months ago, maybe one month ago, that’s what he would have done. Shared with her what had happened with Roberto Gomez and his missing wife and dead sister-in-law. But Edwina had demanded the total commitment from him that he couldn’t give. Sensing he’d never surrender a private side of himself, she’d been pushing him away, gaining emotional distance and courage for a break they both knew was coming.
    Unless Carver relented and gave her marriage and all it entailed.
    And he knew he never would. His marriage to Laura had soured him on the institution. It was a reaction he couldn’t control; marriage was a setup for pain. Just looking at a flame could make you hurt again where you’d been burned.
    He sipped his beer and gazed out at the ocean rolling in from a far part of the planet. He’d had enough of pain,