Bloodfire by John Lutz Page A

wanna do a job on this guy?”
    Hirsh shrugged. “Don’t matter to me one way or the other.”
    Gomez looked back at Carver and said, “He means it. It really don’t matter diddlyshit to him if he pulls you apart like a plucked chicken or if he don’t. Hirsh is like that. Then we go out and get something to eat. I tell you, his appetite stays the same either way.”
    “Gonna get up?” Carver asked.
    Gomez folded his hands on Carver’s desk, then bowed his head as if thinking about Carver’s request. Like a key executive considering a supplicant employee’s plea for a raise.
    Then he looked up. His eyebrows were high on his forehead and in line with each other. He was grinning; this wasn’t worth going to war over, and he had some sort of use for Carver, otherwise he wouldn’t be here. “So siddown, my man.” He got up and moved aside in exaggerated fashion so Carver would have room to pass. “You’re a fucking gimp, so I oughta mind my manners, right?”
    Carver didn’t say anything as he limped to his chair and sat down. It was still warm from Gomez; he didn’t like that, but other than that it felt good to be sitting. He set his cane off to the side, propping it against the desk where he could grab it if Hirsh or Gomez made a threatening move. He looked at Gomez, who was standing in front of the desk now with his fists on his hips, still smiling, as if he thought Carver was really a hoot. Hirsh was still staring at Carver with his bloodhound gaze, but there might have been a watery glimmer of amusement in his sad blue eyes.
    “So why’d you come and see me?” Carver asked Gomez. It was his office again; he was in charge. Sort of.
    Gomez stopped smiling. “My wife’s sister got herself killed. You were there.”
    “She didn’t get herself killed ,” Carver said. “Somebody shot her. But, yeah, I was there.”
    “It go down like the news said? A bullet comes through the window and zaps her?”
    “That was it,” Carver said. “Sniper with a high-powered rifle.”
    “You see anything at all?”
    “Saw your sister-in-law’s head explode. That’s about it.”
    “What was the poor dumb cunt doing in our condo?”
    “She didn’t say. She’d packed some clothes in a suitcase, probably to take to your wife.”
    “You didn’t talk to her?”
    “There wasn’t time. Fast bullet.”
    Gomez walked over toward the window, squinting for a moment into the angled, brilliant sunlight. He shot a look at Hirsh, then came back to stand facing Carver and put on a sincere expression. “Her dying was a mistake. You get what I’m saying?
    “Somebody dies that way, it’s always a mistake.”
    “That ain’t what I mean, Carver.”
    “You figure the killer thought she was your wife.”
    “Yeah. And that’s how it looks, right?”
    Carver nodded. It did look that way to him. There were only a few black tenants in Beau Capri, and the two sisters would resemble each other through a telescopic sight, especially in Elizabeth Gomez’s living room. The killer had probably been waiting patiently for Beth to come home. Maybe he’d never seen her before and only had a description, then made a mistake most people would have made. Most killers. Carver said, “The police’ll wanna talk to you.”
    “That’s okay,” Gomez said. “There’s no warrants out on me. I’ll go in and talk, but when I fucking get around to it.”
    “Police’ll get lucky and find you sitting at a desk down at the station house and talking mean, huh? Just like here?”
    “You might be surprised, my man. You got the right legal counsel and you can talk mean even in the cop shop. Fucking constitutional rights up the ass. And I got the right attorney.”
    “Bet you do. Does he know you’re here?”
    Gomez winked. “Confidential information, Carver.”
    “If you came here to find out more than was on the news about Belinda Jackson’s death,” Carver said, “I can’t help you. It was quick and simple. The only good thing about