Bloodfire by John Lutz

upholstery wouldn’t melt, then limped over and unlocked the office door. Pushed into the anteroom.
    The sun hadn’t really gotten mean yet today, and the air conditioning had the place comfortably cool. By two o’clock the office would begin to grow warm. Florida in June, what could he expect? The state really belonged to the reptiles and other coldblooded types.
    He picked up the mail that had been dropped through the slot in the door, shuffled the envelopes, and saw nothing that promised a check. Mostly bills and ads. He’d apparently won a video recorder, if only he’d visit a new condominium development in Fort Lauderdale. Sure. He tossed the VCR offer and the rest of the obvious junk mail in the metal wastebasket near the door, then tucked the few remaining envelopes between his first and second fingers and limped across the sparsely furnished anteroom toward the open door to his office. He went inside to sit down behind his desk and check his phone messages and the rest of the mail.
    Stopped after two steps and stood staring.
    Somebody was already seated behind his desk, leaning back in his chair. Somebody else was standing off to the side, next to the window.
    The one behind the desk said, “You look surprised.”
    Carver said, “Am surprised.”
    “Huh! Huh! Huh!” It was a jackal-like laugh. “Nothing in life should shock you. Not ever. That’s just the kinda world it is, you know?”
    Carver knew. He said, “You Robert Ghostly this visit? Or Roberto Gomez?”

8
    C ARVER SAID, “ I THOUGHT I locked the door.”
    Gomez smiled. He was wearing a white suit and a pale blue shirt open at the collar. A thick gold chain glinted among his dark chest hairs. He didn’t look like a hardworking salesman now. Gomez wore his hair differently, too, from when he’d visited Carver on the beach. It was combed straight back now, greased down almost flat. The slick hairstyle made him look like a lounge lizard, and it made his dense, dark eyebrows seem even more pasted on and out of synchronization. “We don’t pay much attention to locks,” he said.
    Hell with this. Carver limped over to the desk. The man standing didn’t actually move from where he leaned with his back against the wall, but an alertness came over his tall, slender body, like a low-wattage current of electricity. He was in his mid-fifties, with a long, loose-fleshed face and sad blue eyes, wearing a dark blue pinstripe suit with a vest. Though it wasn’t warm in the office, sweat was rolling down his flabby, somber face. It didn’t seem to bother him. One of the two, probably the big one standing, gave off the rancid odor of the unwashed.
    “Want something?” Gomez asked, leaning back and gazing up at Carver. As if it were his office.
    “My chair,” Carver said. He gripped the crook of his cane hard and took a little weight off the tip, ready to use it as a weapon.
    Gomez looked amused, but his dark eyes had the flat, emotionless lack of expression Carver had seen on passionless killers. “You serious, my man?”
    “About wanting my chair? Yeah.”
    Gomez worked his eyebrows. His cheek muscles. As if he were holding back a good loud laugh. “Listen, Carver, I give the word and Hirsh starts breaking your small bones. When I’m in a room, I sit where I fucking want. That clear?”
    Carver looked over at Hirsh, who looked bored. Also older than Carver had first thought. Gray hairs sprouted from his nostrils and ears, and the black hair on his head looked dyed.
    “I asked if that was clear,” Gomez said. He didn’t look amused now. His tough-guy act was in full swing.
    Carver said, “Get up.”
    Gomez looked surprised. Zoom, zoom went the eyebrows. “Holy fuck! You raised on John Wayne movies or something? Don’t you know who I am? Who you’re fucking talking to?”
    “There’s a line I heard in a lot of movies,” Carver said, “that ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ thing.”
    Gomez glanced over at the silent and sober Hirsh. “You