Torch (17 page)

“Not to worry,” Carver said, but Travers had hung up.

Lunch, Carver thought. Despite his earlier conversation with McGregor about fast food and the death of true love, he decided to grab a cheeseburger and vanilla milkshake at a drive-through McDonald’s, then drop by Nightlinks and try to talk with Harvey Sincliff.

He smiled. McGregor. Harvey Sincliff. It was amazing, the people you met in this business. Not at all like, say, if you worked in a shoe store or sold nursing home insurance. Maybe.

As he started to stand up, the phone jangled. He sat back down and was going to let the answering machine handle it, but it was Beth so he lifted the receiver.

“I’m calling from the drugstore down the street from Gretch’s apartment,” she said. “He’s back. He’s in the building now.”

“I’ll be there soon as I can,” Carver said. “If he leaves, follow him.”

Beth said, “I don’t think he’s going to leave, Fred. He’s carrying up armloads of clothes and boxes out of his car. Like he’s moving back in.”

C
ARVER WAS IN
O
RLANDO
in a little over an hour. He left Beth parked in her car outside the apartment on Belt so she could follow Gretch if for some reason he broke and ran again. Then he limped along the hot sidewalk toward the building entrance, wishing he’d had time to stop for lunch. His stomach was growling. People like Gretch caused problems large and small. The large problems kept Carver in business, but they spun off smaller ones. Such as hunger.

Gretch apparently had finished carting up boxes; his car was parked at the curb in front of the building, doors and trunk closed. A length of twine dangled from beneath the closed trunk lid, barely touching the ground.

As Carver turned to negotiate cracked concrete and enter the building, Hodgkins emerged. He was wearing overalls today over a white tee shirt, and carrying a hammer. A long screwdriver with a yellow plastic handle smeared with white paint was tucked through one of the overalls’ many tool loops. He didn’t look happy.

When he saw Carver, he stopped and said, “I was gonna call you. He’s back.”

“I know,” Carver said. “How did that come to pass?”

“Billy seen his chance to collect back rent and get the apartment occupied right away, is how. That’s a landlord for you when he don’t live on the premises and have to cope with the trash that’s there. If I was him, I wouldn’t have let the little prick move back in. Not after the way he skipped out on the rent the first time. What’s to prevent him from doin’ it again?”

Carver didn’t have an answer. “Did Billy consult you?”

“Sort of. I told him what I just told you. Told him Gretch was scum and his money was contaminated. He said money was money and didn’t know nor care where it came from, so it made no difference if Gretch was scum. I don’t believe that. A man with character wouldn’t say it. Billy’s got no character, only property.”

“It happens that way a lot,” Carver said. “Is Gretch up there now?”

“Yeah. He carried up some boxes and a ton of clothes on hangers, and now he’s in there playin’ the TV too loud.”

“I’m going up and talk to him,” Carver said. “I’ll tell him to turn down the volume.”

“You be careful of him, Carver. He’s liable to do anything if you get him mad.”

Carver said, “I’m liable to do anything right back.”

That kind of talk seemed to excite Hodgkins. He waved the hammer in the air as if yearning for something to strike. “Know what gripes me, Carver? I cleaned up that apartment so I could show it to prospective tenants, even scrubbed and polished the kitchen and bathroom. Made everything shine. And it turns out I was only doin’ that little punk’s housework.”

“Cheer up,” Carver said. “Maybe the disinfectant will kill him.”

Hodgkins shuffled away mumbling, a malcontent on a mission of repair.

Carver began sweating more heavily as he climbed the stairs to the much warmer second-floor hall. He wasn’t in a good mood when he knocked on Gretch’s door.

He stood for what seemed a long time, listening to what sounded like people having sex on the other side of the door. “Oh, yes, yes, yes!” a woman shouted, as music reached a crescendo. The woman yelled something unintelligible. Then the door opened. “Oh, yes!” the woman said again.

Gretch looked out at Carver and said, “Oh, no! I figured you’d show up here again.”

Behind him on the TV screen a man and woman were lying nude on a round bed and lighting cigarettes, smiling dreamily at each other. Gretch started to close the door, but Carver placed the tip of his cane against his chest and shoved him back, then pushed inside. The apartment wasn’t any cooler than out in the hall.

“Okay, okay,” Gretch said, “so you’re insistent.” He glanced at the TV, then walked over and turned off the adult video he had playing. “I saw this scene before.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Next they take a shower together, get all excited with the shampoo and soap and all, then go at it again.”

“No kidding?” Carver said.

Gretch was still dirty from moving in the boxes that were stacked against a wall in the living room. His blue shirt and khaki pants were smudged and his hands and arms were streaked with perspiration and dirt. A half-empty bottle of Corona beer sat on the floor near the sofa that faced the television.

Gretch sat down on the sofa, leaned forward, and picked up the beer. He took a sip, grinning at Carver. “I figure maybe we owe each other an apology. I mean, you followed me around when you had no right, and I guess I shouldn’t have pulled a knife on you.” He said it as if apologizing for taking Carver’s parking space. He drank some more beer, dribbling some down his chin, and said, “I guess you want whatever it was you wanted before.”

Carver moved closer to Gretch, watching his hands, prepared to lash out with the cane if Gretch tried to pull the knife again. He stood silently for a moment, letting Gretch get nervous. Watching him make a show of taking another sip of beer. But the bottle was empty now. Gretch pretended it wasn’t, licking his lips as he put it back down on the floor.

“So whaddya want?” he finally blurted out.

Carver said, “Talk to me about Donna Winship.”

“Sure. Donna.” He took a deep breath, then said, “Whew!,” as if emotion had almost derailed him before he’d gotten it under control. “Donna’s the reason I had to get away for a while. Try’n make some sense outa what happened. I loved her.” He bowed his head. “Whether or not you believe it, I loved her. When I heard about it, the accident, I got a little crazy. I just had to go off by myself, spend some time alone and get used to the idea of Donna being gone. I still ain’t sure I’ve gotten used to it. I mean, I feel like if I picked up the phone and called, she’d still answer and we could meet someplace.”

“Where have you been?”

“Staying with a friend in Miami. But it wasn’t working out. I mean, his wife started bitching about me being there. Then she went the other way when her husband was right in the next room, and I had to fight her off to keep her from unzipping my pants. She held it against me. You know the way some women do. I knew it was time to come back here anyway, try to pick up my life again.” He looked up at Carver, started to take another drink of beer, then remembered the bottle was empty. Looked up at Carver again, hope in his eyes. “That what you wanted to hear?”

“It’s what you wanted me to hear.”

Gretch shook his head, slowly at first, then violently, in a display of agonizing dismay. When he stopped, he said, “You don’t believe a guy like me could love somebody like Donna, but it’s true. I loved her with all my heart.” He touched the side of his neck gingerly; he might have hurt himself, shaking his head that way.

“How’d you two meet?” Carver asked. He hadn’t expected this soap opera story line from Gretch, didn’t know quite how to take it.

“I was with another woman at a convention, a female insurance executive from out of town, when I met Donna and fell for her right there. She was with some other people from the insurance company where she worked. I saw right away there was something between us, so I phoned her the next day at work, kept phoning her until she agreed to meet me someplace for coffee. That’s how it started.” He sniffed and wiped away tears with dirty knuckles, making it look as if he had two black eyes. “You know how it ended.”

“Did you know she was married?”

“Not at first. She told me the second time we went out. We were both too far gone on each other for it to make any difference then. She said for me not to think I was breaking up her marriage, she was unhappy anyway.”

“The female insurance executive. How’d you meet her?”

Gretch clenched his hands in his lap and stared at them. “This some kinda test?”

Carver said, “Yes.”

“I’m a model, but I work sometimes as a paid escort. She called and I went with her to the convention. There’s nothing wrong with that. Men and women, they come into town for those kinda things, they sometimes like to be seen with somebody at important functions, you know? They got their own reasons. Like, the insurance woman prefers girls but knew that wouldn’t go well with the company brass. She wanted me to help establish the impression she liked men.”

“You do anything other than escort these women?”

“I don’t see as that’s any of your business. What it’s got to do with anything, anyway?”

Gretch was starting to build up some indignation, the mood that helped carry a guy like him through life. Carver said, “What about Donna Winship’s husband?”

“What about him?” Gretch shrugged. “He ain’t the first guy whose wife stepped out on him. From what Donna said, the marriage going sour was his fault. He’ll survive.”

“He didn’t,” Carver said. “He’s dead.”

Gretch stood up, wearing an astounded expression. He sat back down immediately, as if too affected by the news to remain upright. Carver couldn’t tell if the display of surprise was genuine or if modeling skills extended to acting.

“Mark Winship shot himself when he learned about Donna’s death,” Carver said.

For a long time Gretch said nothing, staring at the opposite wall, or maybe the blank TV screen where the man and woman had recently enjoyed sex and cigarettes.

Then he said, “You can’t lay any guilt on me for that one. I didn’t plan for things to work out this way.” He slumped forward, elbows on knees, and stared at the floor. Carver was surprised to find himself feeling slightly sorry for Gretch.

He said, “The police are calling his death a suicide. Right now, anyway.”

Gretch glanced sharply over at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Means some people think Mark Winship might have been murdered.”

Gretch rubbed both hands over his thighs with a lot of pressure, as if trying to scrape something unpleasant off his palms. “I wouldn’t know anything about that, and I don’t wanna know.”

“No idea who’d want to kill Mark?”

“No. And I figure if the cops say it’s suicide, it probably is. They know about those kinda things.”

Carver said, “What about Maggie Rourke?”

Looking at the floor again, Gretch shook his head. The back of his neck was dirty where he’d rubbed his hand over it while lugging stuff up the hot stairs. “I don’t know any Maggie Rourke.”

“The Walton Agency.”

Gretch raised his head and stared at Carver. “Yeah, yeah. Now I know who you mean. Real pretty brunette. I don’t really know her, though. She’s another Walton model, and we worked on the same shoot last year. It was a lung shot.”

“Lung shot?”

“Group photo for a cigarette ad. You know, the tobacco companies like to show good-looking people having fun on a picnic or skiing or whatever. Healthy people with healthy lungs. We were all smoking and playing volleyball on the beach.”

“You ever meet any of Donna’s friends?”

“Are you kidding? She wasn’t the type to share that kinda secret. She wanted to keep our affair quiet. So did I. Nobody wanted anybody else to get hurt. Then it all turned to shit, like a lotta other things have happened to me in my life.”

“You know a man named Beni Ho? Little Oriental guy.”

“No, I don’t think so. Should I know him?”

“Nobody should.”

Gretch stared at him earnestly. “I gotta say I’m not completely sorry to hear about Mark Winship, not after some of the stuff Donna told me about him. It’s just a goddamn shame”—his voice broke and his eyes misted over again—“just a goddamn shame she was married at all, that any of this ever happened. Especially to somebody as good as her. I never woulda gone near her if I knew how it’d turn out. Life’s fucking funny sometimes, isn’t it? I don’t mean like ‘ha-ha’ funny, but, you know . . .”

“I know,” Carver said. He planted his cane and moved back a few steps, toward the door. “You plan on being at this address for a while?”

Gretch looked surprised. “Of course. I gotta be. I’m on a lease.”

Carver left the apartment, closing the door behind him.

He stood in the stifling hall for a few minutes, listening. There was only silence.

Then faint music and voices from the TV.

The sound of a shower running.

B
ETH FOLLOWED
C
ARVER
back to Del Moray, then to the taco stand on Magellan, where they sat in the shade of an umbrella over one of the tiny round tables and ate a late lunch-early supper. A warm salt breeze was wafting in, carrying the scent of the ocean. The sun was still bearing down hard, and Carver’s knee and forearm that were outside the circle of the umbrella’s shade were hot.

Beth bit into her brittle taco, chewed, swallowed with apparent difficulty, and said, “I don’t understand why you like this place, Fred. Stuff tastes like a cardboard meat-pie.”

“Try more sauce.”

She tore the corner off one of the little plastic containers of hot sauce and squeezed some onto her taco. She took another cautious bite, chewed, said nothing, and sipped Pepsi-Cola through a straw.

As they ate, Carver told her about his conversation with Carl Gretch. As
he
ate, actually. Beth only sipped soda and watched the sunlit pleasure boats bobbing in unison at their moorings as he talked.