Torch (10 page)

She said, “Are you a friend of Mac’s?”

“Who’s Mac?” Carver asked.

“The man who owns this place.”

“He a friend of yours?”

“Uh-huh.”

Carver told her who he was and that he wanted to talk to her about the Winships.

“I don’t see much point in that,” she said. “They’re both gone.”

He stood quietly in the sun, leaning with both hands on the crook of his cane, making it obvious he wasn’t going anywhere, so they might as well chat. The breeze off the sea felt cool on his perspiring back, the sun felt uncomfortably hot on his bald pate.

She replaced her sunglasses and settled her head back onto the folded towel. “I didn’t know Donna at all.”

“It was Mark I wanted to talk about,” he told her.

“I knew him,” she said, the blank dark glasses aimed straight up at the sky.

Carver said, “My understanding is that you and Mark were lovers.”

“I suppose there’s no reason now to deny it. We were in love, and now that’s all ended. Mark’s marriage was breaking up.”

“Because of you?”

“Before he met me. Otherwise . . .”

“Otherwise what?”

She laughed without humor. “I was going to say that if he was happily married I wouldn’t have allowed us to become so involved, but I’m not sure that’s true. We probably would have fallen in love anyway. It was one of those elemental things that overwhelm people.”

“It’s a wonder anyone stays married,” Carver said.

“Are you being sarcastic?”

“No, it was an honest observation. I’m divorced, myself.”

“The whole world is divorced.”

A gull swooped in low over the beach, then changed direction and flew out of sight beyond the outcropping of rock. It screamed as it passed from view.

Maggie said, “Mark was going to leave his wife for me.”

“You’re sure?”

She nodded, reaching down and finding a brown plastic squeeze bottle of sun block. “That’s what he told me, and I believed him.” She squirted the oily white substance into her left palm and began slowly rubbing it into the firm flesh of her stomach and thighs.

Watching her, Carver said, “I find it difficult to believe that a man with you to live for would commit suicide.”

She dropped the bottle back to the sand. “Donna caused it. Donna had him all fucked up.” Her voice was controlled but angry. She drew a deep breath and then very slowly released it.

“But Donna was dead.”

“Yeah. Leaving poor Mark with enough guilt piled on him that he broke under it. He wasn’t strong that way. He couldn’t take it so he decided to . . . well, he decided not to endure it.”

“Is that your take on what happened?”

“What other way is there to see it? Goddamned Donna stepped in front of a truck because she knew she was losing her husband. Mark was already under the strain of a marriage that was unraveling like a cheap sweater, with Donna blaming him for everything. Naturally, in the shock of what happened, he thought he was responsible for her death.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“Yes. On the phone. I tried to talk sense into him but he wasn’t listening. What she did, why I’m
sure
she did it, really got to him, just the way she planned it.” She shifted on the lounge and made a helpless little gesture with a clenched fist, swiping at the warm air tentatively, as if afraid it might strike back harder. “I should have gone to him. It might have made a difference.”

“There’s enough misplaced guilt going around,” Carver told her. “Don’t add to it.” He thought she might be crying beneath the dark glasses, but all he could see in their lenses were reflections of clouds. “How long have you been with Burnair and Crosley?” he asked, trying to get her mind off guilt and recrimination.

“About six months.”

“Is that where you and Mark met?”

“Yeah, it was a typical office romance. A cliché. We tried to hide it from everyone, but they saw through us even if they didn’t say anything. They all knew Mark was married, and that put a damper on talk around the office, at least in front of us. But no matter how discreet you are, love between two people shows and generates gossip. Look how easy it was for you to find out about us.”

“Did Donna know?”

“Mark didn’t think so. And he didn’t think anyone at the office knew. He simply wouldn’t let himself see it in their faces.”

“Did Mark know about Donna?”

Maggie sat up on the lounge and crossed her legs, facing Carver. She removed her sunglasses again. Her eyes fixed on his, and he could understand how Mark Winship had fallen. “Did he know what about Donna?” she asked.

“That she was involved with another man.”

Maggie stared at Carver for a while, then threw back her head and gave a half laugh, half cry. A gull cried down near the sea, as if in answer. “You’re sure about that?” Maggie asked.

“She told me so.”

“Jesus! If only Mark had known!”

“Are you positive he didn’t know?”

“Don’t you think he would have told me?” She bowed her head slightly now, causing her auburn hair to fall forward and conceal most of her face. The sun glistened on her oiled, golden shoulders. “It would have taken so much burden off him if he’d known. He really cared about not hurting Donna. So did I, really. Neither of us wanted to cause pain, we simply wanted each other.”

The tragic geometry of love, Carver thought. He said, “Do you know, or did Mark ever mention, a man named Enrico Thomas?”

“No.”

“What about Carl Gretch?”

“Not him, either. Was Donna involved with one of them?”

“They’re the same man,” Carver said.

Now Maggie raised her head and stared at him. “What is he, some kind of con artist?”

“I think so, but I’m not sure which kind.”

“Getting mixed up with somebody like that sure doesn’t sound like Donna Winship. She was . . . well, plain vanilla, if you know what I mean.”

“She was vulnerable,” Carver said. “Mark was withdrawing from her, and along came Gretch. Men like that can sense weakness in a woman, and they know how to close in on it.”

“God, I wish Mark had known!” she said softly.

“It might not have made any difference.”

“I hate that fucking word—might!”

Carver was getting miserably hot, standing there in the sun. Sweat was stinging the corners of his eyes. “I don’t like that word either. It’s part of the reason I do this kind of work.” He handed Maggie his business card and said, “Will you call me if you hear or remember anything about Mark or Donna? Maybe something Mark might have said?”

She accepted the card, leaving sun block on his hand where their fingers brushed. “Sure. Why not?”

He thanked her for her time, then left her to continue grieving in the sun. It had to be hell, carrying so much sorrow for someone you couldn’t admit having loved. The sidelong glances and gossip would continue for her, and to confront them head-on would only make matters worse.

Narrow wooden steps led up to firmer but still sandy soil. Carver was glad to be off the soft beach with his cane. He walked around to the front of the cottage where his car was parked. It was a secluded and shady spot, concealed from the road by shrubbery and a row of wind-bent palm trees and paved with white powdered rock that had become packed and hard as concrete beneath years of rain and the compression of tires. A three- or four-year-old black Nissan Stanza was parked in the shade. There was a red plastic rose taped to its antenna, making it easier to locate in parking lots. Carver was headed toward the Olds, looking forward to starting the engine and setting the air conditioner on high, when he caught movement in the corner of his vision.

He stopped walking and turned, leaning on his cane.

The little Oriental martial arts whizbang stepped out from the shade of the palms and smiled at him. He was wearing dark brown pleated slacks and an untucked white shirt that was laced up the front with rawhide rather than buttoned. He seemed relaxed, his arms and shoulders loose and his hands folded lightly in front of him.

He said, “Mr. Carver, you didn’t heed my cautionary advice.”

“I don’t take advice well,” Carver said. He was gripping his cane hard, knowing the little man would go for it first to put him on the ground.

“I could sense that about you from the beginning,” the man said, edging toward Carver. “You possess admirable but dangerous determination. It borders on obsessiveness, I’m sure. Even when you were at a terrible disadvantage in Gretch’s apartment and agreeing to everything I suggested, I discerned a certain lack of sincerity in you. Would you be more sincere and truthful if I asked why you were talking to the woman on the beach?”

“No.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter. It’s Mr. Gretch’s life that you must stay out of, as I tried so hard to impress upon you without breaking any part of you or separating flesh from bone. So painful.” His tiny but muscular body took on a sudden tenseness and deadliness, and his hands unfolded and moved out in front of him. His knees flexed slightly so that he was in a slight crouch, and he began moving in on Carver. “Now the lesson must be more forcefully taught.”

Carver quickly snatched the Colt from beneath his loose-fitting shirt and snapped the safety off, jacking a round into the chamber, then another, so the first round was ejected in the sunlight and the Oriental man would know the gun was loaded. “It’s ready to fire,” he said.

His tiny assailant stopped and stood very still. “But are
you
ready? I don’t think so, and I’m an excellent judge of such qualities. It takes a certain uncommon willingness to shoot someone, Mr. Carver. I doubt if you possess that rare callousness of soul.”

Holding the gun steady, Carver said, “I possess it.”

The man began walking smoothly and slowly in a circle around Carver. “People who can kill recognize the trait in others. I don’t see it in you at all. No, you’re not a killer, Mr. Carver. Few men are. They think they are, but when it comes time to muster the nerve to actually squeeze the trigger, they find they are too decent, too human. We don’t kill our own so easily. We must first learn how to overcome certain inhibitions.” He was walking faster. The circle, with Carver in its center, was becoming smaller. Carver set the tip of his cane and moved around it as an axis, always facing the tiny, dangerous man with the unfailing grin. Only about ten feet separated them now.

Carver said, “I suggest you don’t come any nearer.”

“I don’t believe you’ve overcome your very human and decent inhibitions, Mr. Carver.”

Carver shot him in the leg.

It wasn’t easy. He remembered his pain and disbelief when he’d been shot in the knee, and he moved his aim higher on the thigh. The gun wasn’t as steady as it should have been.

The little man went down, his grin replaced by an expression of shock.

Seated on the hard ground, he ignored Carver and examined his bleeding thigh with what seemed a mild curiosity. Then with both hands and surprising ease, he ripped off part of the tail of his white shirt, knotted it, and wrapped it around the leg as a tourniquet to stem the bleeding. The brown pants were dark with blood. The wetness spread to below the knee as he struggled to his feet. There was a pattern of blood on the ground near his feet, more blood marring one of his supple brown shoes.

Carver couldn’t believe it. The guy was really something. He was grinning again, bright as ever, and hobbling toward him. Toward the gun. A splinter of doubt pricked Carver. The little bastard might be right about him; he wasn’t sure if he could squeeze the trigger again.

“I misjudged you,” the tiny Oriental man said.

“You’re doing it again,” Carver told him, wondering if it was true.

The man stopped and stood unsteadily, his wounded leg trembling but still supporting weight. Carver leveled the gun at his heart. It was steady now.

Still smiling, the little man nodded as if in admiration. He shuffled backward, then turned and walked stiffly and proudly along the driveway and out of sight behind the shrubbery near the highway.

Carver had to be impressed. He was sure the bullet had missed bone and the injury was superficial, but a gunshot wound was a gunshot wound, and most men would be on the ground and screaming. This guy was walking around as if he’d suffered a charley horse.

The sound of a car starting reached Carver, and he caught a flash of gleaming white metal as his assailant pulled out onto the highway and drove away.

The gun dangling in his free hand, Carver set his cane and made his way to the side of the cottage where he could see the beach.

Maggie Rourke lay on her stomach now on the lounge chair, her bikini strap unfastened so the tan on her back would be unbroken. She might have been sleeping. Apparently the breaking surf had concealed the sound of the shot.

Carver stood perspiring and watching her for a few minutes, then got into his car.

C
ARVER STOPPED AT
Sir Citrus, a roadside restaurant shaped like a huge orange, to phone Dave Belquest at the Sheriff’s Department. The phone booths, near the back of the restaurant, were also shaped like oranges, only they had doors and orange-colored sound insulation inside. Carver left the door open so he wouldn’t be stricken with claustrophobia and fed the orange phone change.

“I suspected you might call,” Belquest said when Carver had identified himself. “I’ve been talking to people about you.”

Carver didn’t want to know what people had said. “Have you learned anything about the driver of the truck that killed Donna Winship?”

“Sure have. His name’s Elvis Tarkenton and he lives in Alton, Illinois. No police record. Thirty-eight years old, married with four kids. He’s been driving for the same freight line almost ten years and he’s never had an accident.”

“There’s nothing at all to connect him with Donna Winship?”

“Not a thing other than that he ran over her. The man’s a churchgoing Midwesterner who was too shook up to drive after what happened. The freight line sent another driver to transfer cargo and finish his run, then his wife drove their car down from Illinois to take him home.”

Carver didn’t say anything for a while, watching a family being seated by a waitress in an orange uniform. Three blond boys and a small blond girl, all under ten, were arguing over who was going to sit by the orange-shaped window with the Disney character decals on it. The orange-clad waitress stood by looking bored; she’d heard the argument before.