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extra cautious with this one, all right?” Desoto said. There was concern in his voice. Instinct again.
    “Sure, always.”
    “How’s the lovely Beth?” Ever the gentleman, Desoto was considerate of women, especially beautiful ones. Even though he still wasn’t entirely approving of Beth, her gender alone was enough to earn his gallantry.
    “Soon as I get off the phone,” Carver said, “I’m gonna drive up the coast and find out.”
    “You’re a lucky man, amigo. But remember, you be careful.”
    “I’ll buckle up.”
    “I didn’t mean on the highway, my friend.”
    Carver was about to ask him what he did mean, but Desoto had hung up.
    Carver let the receiver clatter back into its cradle. There was no point in trying to call Henry Tiller until he’d had time to drive back to Key Montaigne.
    He removed the life insurance pitch from the envelope Tiller had scribbled his phone number on, stuffed the envelope in his shirt pocket, and used his cane to lever himself to his feet. Then he limped from the office, wincing when he met the June Florida heat, and made his way across the parking lot to his car.
    Leaving the canvas top up on the ancient Oldsmobile convertible, he coaxed what he could from the balky air conditioner as he drove north on the coast highway toward his beach cottage and Beth Jackson.

3
    C ARVER MADE LOVE to Beth before telling her about Henry Tiller’s visit. He knew if he’d told her first, she’d have been distracted. Was that male chauvinism? Maybe. His former wife, Laura, had pointed to that kind of attitude as part of the reason for the dissolution of their marriage. Carver figured she might be right and had tried to modify his thinking. He was still trying.
    Beth lay beside him now on her back, her hands clasped behind her head, considering what he’d said. The window was open and the breathing, sighing sound of the surf was in the room, punctuated by the lazy metallic ticking of the slowly revolving paddle fan on the ceiling above the bed. A breeze was playing over their nakedness, evaporating perspiration and purging the room of the musky afterscent of sex. Carver looked over at Beth’s smooth, dusky body, long and lean as a high-fashion model’s but with an obvious wiry strength. There was firm definition to her stomach muscles, and her long thighs curved with the musculature of the distance runner. She’d been running when Carver first met her, from her drug-czar husband who’d been bent on killing her.
    Staring at the ceiling, she said, “Tell you about the war on drugs, Fred, it obscures other things. People in power use it to advance their own agendas. The news media give the public wrong images, wrong impressions.”
    “What’s obscured, for instance?” Carver asked. He was aware Beth knew plenty about drugs, having been married to the infamous late Roberto Gomez. She’d grown up in a Chicago slum and gotten out the only way she’d known how—with her sex and beauty. Then slowly she’d turned her life around, even while living with Gomez and regrets, got an education, escaped from Gomez and his world bought by drug money, and fell in love with Carver. Called herself Jackson again, her maiden name. It bothered Carver sometimes that what she’d seen in Gomez, she might see in him.
    “Main thing that’s obscured,” she said, “is the fact there is no drug problem.”
    Carver wasn’t surprised; she was always saying things like that, setting little conversational traps, and he’d learned not to jump in and argue. He said, “Explain.”
    “The powers that be act like there’s some substance, some stuff, causing all our problems, and if we just stop most of it at the border, things’ll get better. They say guns don’t kill people, people do, then they think it’s the junk itself that’s causing drug addicts. Get rid of the white powder and the weed that can be smoked, and the problem’ll be solved.”
    “Hasn’t worked so far,” Carver said.
    “’Cause