Torch (11 page)

“Carver?”

“Yeah?”

“Donna Winship wasn’t murdered. That trucker isn’t lying. And the parking valet didn’t see anyone else around.”

When Carver rested his bare elbow on the metal shelf beneath the phone it came away sticky. Someone must have spilled orange juice while using the phone. “What do you know about the valet?”

“That he’s a nineteen-year-old kid working a summer job between college semesters. He’s as likely to be a plant witness as he is to know where Hoffa’s buried.”

“I’m not interested in Hoffa.”

“No? I’m surprised that one hasn’t grabbed your attention and you haven’t solved it. You know what the people I talked with said about you?”

The little blond girl got her way and sat by the window, smiling smugly.

“Carver? They said you were obsess—”

Carver hung up.

He crossed the orange tile floor and went out the door, thinking that it was possible in central Florida to get sick of citrus. They were obsessed with it here.

The little blond girl smiled at him through the window as he lowered himself into the Olds to drive toward the Beeline Expressway and Orlando.

Desoto looked as harried as Carver had ever seen him. He’d actually loosened his tie knot.

Carver sat down in the chair facing Desoto’s desk, and Desoto closed the office door, then walked around behind the desk and sat in the swivel chair. He slid the knot of his beige and yellow tie snug to his neck and explained that a woman had been found shot to death in a rented van behind a restaurant over on Orange Avenue. The van was full of suitcases that contained clothes for a man and woman and at least two small children.

“More domestic hell,” Desoto said. “Sometimes I’m grateful to God that I never married.”

“Suicide?” Carver asked.

“Yes, I see matrimony that way.”

“I mean the woman in the van. Did she shoot herself?”

“Not likely. There were five bullet holes in her back.” He shook his head, his dark eyes sad. “Such a beautiful woman. A young mother, no doubt. Vacationers from up north. We’re searching for the husband.” He sat up straighter and adjusted his cuffs. “But it’s police business, and you should be thankful it’s none of your concern. What
is
your concern today, my friend?”

“Another shooting.” Carver told him about the encounter with the Oriental man and asked if Desoto had any idea as to the assailant’s identity.

“I might have,” he said. He asked Carver to wait, then got up and left the office. Carver knew he wasn’t going far; he’d left his cream-colored suit coat draped neatly on its hanger.

Carver sat patiently without moving. The portable Sony on the windowsill was silent, and sounds from outside filtered into the office. People arguing, joking, laughing. Occasional footsteps in the hall outside. “I mean it,” a woman said loudly somewhere outside the office. “It’s true. I really mean it.” Trying hard to be believed.

Ten minutes later Desoto returned with a mug book. His place had been marked by some fan-fold computer paper inserted between the pages. He laid the book on the desk where Carver could see it easily from where he sat, then opened it, withdrawing the computer printout and pointing to full-face and profile photographs of Carver’s Oriental attacker.

The man’s name was Beni Ho, and the photos were three years old, from when Ho had done brief prison time on an assault charge. His height was listed as five feet even, his weight 119.

“Him,” Carver said. He tapped the photo with his forefinger.

Desoto leaned over Carver’s shoulder. “You’re sure this man did what you describe?”

“I’m sure.”

“He isn’t very big,
amigo
.”

“Well, he’s wiry.”

Desoto handed the printout to Carver. Beni Ho had a long record of assaults and had done two prison stretches.

“There’s no need for you to be ashamed,” Desoto said. “This is a dangerous man, as several police departments would tell you.”

Carver didn’t recall saying he was ashamed of anything.

“Ho never uses a weapon,” Desoto said. “That and his diminutive size have impressed jurors and prevented him from taking up more or less permanent residence behind the walls. But he doesn’t need a weapon, apparently; he’s said to possess every color martial arts belt and even some suspenders. He’s injured several men severely, and rumor has it he’s killed more than one. He jumped parole in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, six months ago. The Baton Rouge police say he’s half Japanese, half Hawaiian, and all dynamite. An extremely lethal little package.”

“What about Gretch?” Carver asked. “Anything else on him?”

“No. Gretch, from his record and what you’ve told me, isn’t in Beni Ho’s league.” Desoto went back behind his desk. He switched on the Sony portable and tinkered with the dials but got only static. Apparently his favorite Spanish station was temporarily off the air. He turned off the radio and sat down, looking disconsolate. The beautiful, melancholy music was an important part of his days and his perspective.

“Maybe lightning struck the station’s tower,” Carver said.

“It hasn’t rained in a week. Which of Beni Ho’s legs did you shoot?”

“His right.” Carver wondered what were the odds of a five-foot Oriental man checking into a hospital shot in the left leg and causing confusion.

“I’ll run the routine check of medical clinics and hospitals,” Desoto said, “and phone you if Ho seeks treatment. But from what you said, and what we know about him, he might be able to tough it out without hospitalization. He’s a psychopath, and they sometimes have amazingly high pain thresholds.”

“He was walking,” Carver said, “when most men would have stayed on the ground.”

Desoto smiled. “You admire him, hey?”

“The way I admired Hurricane Andrew.” Carver moved the tip of his cane in a tight circular pattern on the floor. “What more do you have on Mark Winship’s death?”

Desoto raised a dark eyebrow in puzzlement. “He’s dead—what more is there? It was a suicide.”

“Are you completely convinced? I think there are unanswered questions.”

“They often are. People who commit suicide are usually more interested in getting out of this world than in any questions they might leave behind.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

“But you’re not suicidal. Not right now, anyway.”

“I understand all the evidence points to suicide, but there’s no way to completely rule out murder.”

“True. But there’s not nearly enough there to prompt an official homicide investigation.” Desoto rubbed his chin with his thumb. “You really think Mark Winship was murdered?”

“I think it’s possible.”

“It feels like suicide. I wouldn’t question it. I’m surprised you would.”

“I didn’t at first. But now I think there’s a chance he was shot by someone else.”

“A very slim chance,
amigo.
But no doubt enough of one for you to take for a ride. Who do you like as his killer?”

“What about Beni Ho?”

“He would have used his hands, then pushed Winship off a bridge or out a window to make it look like suicide. He’s not a gun kind of guy. It’s against his religion. Makes him feel less than a man. Machismo, face, whatever you want to call it—it’s more important than life itself to a martial arts fanatic like Ho.” Desoto talked as if, on a certain level, he understood and approved.

“What about Carl Gretch?”

“I couldn’t rule him out. All we really know about him is that he doesn’t like you. But it takes more than that to figure a man with a hole in his head and a gun in his hand was murdered.”

“I’ve seen Maggie Rourke, the woman Mark Winship was involved with, and not many men would voluntarily leave her for the state of being dead. Not many men would leave her to step outside for a minute to pick up the paper. She’s lovely and then some, the sort of woman whose beauty dominates her life and the lives of others.”

“And that’s what makes you suspect he was murdered? Because it strikes you as odd that he’d kill himself and leave a woman as beautiful as his lover?”

“Not entirely,” Carver said. “It strikes me as odd that Maggie Rourke assumes he would.”

Desoto cocked his head to the side and looked pensive.

Carver smiled. “I thought that was something you’d understand.”

“I do,” Desoto said, absently caressing a sleeve of his soft white oxford shirt, “but that doesn’t change the evidence.”

C
ARVER DROVE TO
Gretch’s apartment to see if Beth was still there. He found her parked in her white LeBaron convertible half a block down from the building. Her head moved slightly as she checked his approach in the rearview mirror.

He parked the Olds behind her car, climbed out, and limped to the LeBaron. Invisible mosquitoes droned around him in the dusk, and he swatted one away from his eyes. Swatted at the faint, lilting buzzing, anyway.

The LeBaron’s white canvas top was raised but the windows were rolled down. Despite the heat, Beth looked cool. She was seated motionless and unbothered; mosquitoes knew trouble when they saw it and stayed well clear of her.

She was reading something. Carver put his weight over his cane and leaned down to peer into the car.

She was studying a glossy mail-order catalog. Stacked next to her on the seat were more catalogs. He recognized them as the catalogs from the closet floor in Gretch’s apartment.

“I already looked at those,” he said. “There’s nothing unusual about them. If they meant anything, Gretch wouldn’t have left them behind.”

“That’s what Oliver North thought when he punched the delete button on his computer.” Beth had this thing about Iran-Contra. She’d done a series of “Ends Don’t Justify Means” articles for
Burrow.
Carver had seldom seen her work so hard on anything.

“Did Hodgkins let you into the apartment?” he asked.

“I never saw any Hodgkins. I let myself in without benefit of a key. Cheap-ass apartment locks. If I was a tenant there and got robbed, I’d sue.”

Carver didn’t bother pointing out the illegality of what she’d done. Or that ends didn’t justify means, which he was sure would be the case in this instance. The catalogs were worthless, some of them dating back over a year.

“You’re right about there being nothing in these,” she said. “But what’s
not
in them might turn out to be interesting.”

“Nothing’s been ordered from any of them,” Carver told her. “The oldest ones were on the bottom of the stack. Gretch probably got them in the mail and put them in the closet out of the way in case he decided to order something later, then when the new catalogs came he did the same thing. Maybe he threw them away every couple of years. Lots of people treat catalogs that way. This is the age of mail-order. Send away for anything in any catalog, and a week later they all have your name and address on gummed labels.”

He noticed then that she had a sheet of paper in her lap. There were columns of numbers on it. As he watched, she added another number and tossed the catalog she’d been reading on the floor on the passenger side with half a dozen others.
For After Eight
was lettered on its glossy cover, which featured a foppish-looking young guy and girl in what looked like Spandex tuxedos. They were grinning at each other as if just last night they’d discovered sex. Carver ignored the girl’s figure and leaned closer and squinted at the columns of figures on the paper in Beth’s lap.

“These are page numbers,” Beth said. “Or, more precisely, the numbers of the pages that have been torn out of these catalogs. I’m going to get copies of the current catalogs and see what was on those pages.”

“Maybe Gretch has a crush on one of the models and he’s using the pages for pinups.”

“Some of the pages are missing from men’s clothing catalogs, or the menswear section of general catalogs.”

“Still possible,” Carver said. “It’s unlikely, though, considering his relationship with Donna Winship. But Gretch wouldn’t be the first bisexual gigolo.”

Beth looked directly at him. She wasn’t smiling.

“Okay,” Carver said, “I won’t deny it. You latched onto something I overlooked.”

Now she smiled.

He leaned closer and kissed her cool cheek. “Thanks for the good work.”

“You’re improving, Fred. Growing as a human being.”

He wasn’t sure if she was kidding, so he said nothing. He was at least as smart as the mosquitoes.

He took over the stakeout for the rest of the evening, settling down in the Olds’s sticky warm upholstery and watching the taillights of Beth’s car draw closer together, then disappear in the dusk as she turned a corner. Maybe he should have made more of the catalogs. He had to admit that Beth might be right about the missing pages being significant. If that turned out to be the case, he’d go wherever her research led. He wasn’t going to be recalcitrant about it.

Belt Street was quiet except for an occasional passing car. Carver could barely see the flow of heavier traffic on the major cross street three blocks down. As the evening deepened to blackness, the lights of the cross-traffic seemed to flow in steady bursts of red-tinted white streams each time the signal changed from red to green.

He and Beth were only going to keep a loose stakeout on Gretch’s apartment; it would be almost impossible, and probably unproductive, for one of them to be in position all the time. Old Hodgkins would doubtless know if Gretch returned, and he’d call Carver.

Carver turned on the radio and tuned it to a Marlins game, heard immediately that the score was nine to one in favor of the New York Mets, and sat only half listening. The play-by-play man gave the scores around the league and mentioned the St. Louis Cardinals. St. Louis, where Carver’s former wife, Laura, lived with their daughter, half a continent away from where Carver sat in the heat in an ancient convertible and watched a stucco apartment building darkening to join the shadows of the night,

At least he shouldn’t have to worry about Beni Ho. The little man would have to take things slow for a while, maybe a long time if the bullet remained in his leg and he was forced to seek medical treatment from a doctor who’d follow the law and report a gunshot wound to the police.