Torch (22 page)

Post’s smile faded and for an instant was replaced by an expression of hope. Carver recognized the look, the dreamer dreaming the dream. “Maggie, huh?” Post said. He seemed lost in memory for a few seconds. The sound of traffic down on Collins drifted into the room with the breeze. “That Maggie . . . You know where she is?”

“Don’t you?”

“No, she left my life the way she entered it—like a visiting angel.”

Surprised, Carver said, “That’s poetic.”

“Maggie’s the kind of woman that inspires poetry.”

Carver didn’t argue. “Your former wife May told me I might find you here,” he said, bending the truth a little.

Charlie Post sipped coffee, then placed the cup back in its saucer, clinking glass against china. His hand was trembling. “May inspires things other than poetry.” Carver wondered if the trembling hand was the result of his mentioning Maggie, or May. Or maybe it was simply due to advancing age. Seemingly in complete control of his emotions again, Post pretended to examine his fingernails, as if to demonstrate to himself and to Carver that his hand was now steady, and said, “May took everything I owned. My business, my home, my old life.”

“Was the divorce because of Maggie?”

“Oh, yes and no. May knew I was seeing someone else, even had us followed and obtained . . . er, indelicate photographs of us. But the truth was, Maggie wasn’t the first of my indiscretions, and May knew it. I won’t say May drove me to infidelity; it’s never that simple. I’m a man who should never have married. I love beautiful women the way I love beauty in nature and in the line of a fine ship. So I suppose it wasn’t entirely May’s fault. I’ve always liked the opposite sex, and they’ve always appreciated my appreciating them.”

“Was Maggie named as co-respondent in the divorce?”

“No. Maggie dropped out of sight the day after we were photographed in the stateroom of a yacht. She couldn’t stand what she knew was coming, the embarrassment and shame. I wasn’t about to give out her name, and May never learned it. Actually that worked in May’s favor, that I seemed not even to know the name of the woman in the photographs, like I was a real lowlife who went to bed with anyone on short notice. One-night-stand Charlie. That’s how she painted me, anyway. It tilted things even more in her direction in court. So Maggie had nothing to do with the actual divorce proceedings, but she would have if I’d fought May. I was glad when Maggie disappeared. I mean, the thought of those photographs being made public. I couldn’t have that, so I was hobbled in the divorce negotiations despite the slickest attorneys I could buy. May cleaned me out.”

“And you’ve never seen Maggie since?”

“Nope. We had an arrangement we both understood. I know she wasn’t heart-throbbing in love with me, but I thought eventually she might be. We talked about my leaving May, but I think Maggie figured that’s all it really was, just talk and wishful thinking. So she broke it off the quickest, cleanest way possible.” He smiled, his blue eyes clouding. “Still, I’d like to see her once more, tell her everything’s all right between us.”

“
Is
it all right?” Carver asked. “I mean, your former wife has everything you owned.”

“Sure. But on a certain level—the important level—I don’t regret what happened. I know what you’re thinking: For love of a woman a kingdom was lost. I’ll tell you, Carver, Maggie was worth it. And at that point in my marriage, May really didn’t care that I was being unfaithful. Hell, she probably only married me for my money in the first place. After a while, we didn’t love each other at all and didn’t mind saying so when we argued. Which was often, until we got tired even of that. Then along came Maggie.” He sipped more coffee and looked wistful. His hand was still steady. “Sometimes, Carver, you have to grab life by the balls and live it and damn the consequences. Maggie wasn’t like the others. I knew right away she was a one-time thing for me, maybe a last chance at the grand prize. I admit I became obsessed. She was the whole unimagined world and I wanted her, and for a short time she was mine. Whatever I’ve lost because of it, I say it was worth it and I’d do it again.”

Carver thought about that, then said, “I see what you mean.”

“Do you really?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Liberating, ain’t it,” Post said, grinning hugely.

Carver laughed.

“Not so long ago I was one of the most successful businessmen on the Gold Coast, now here I am and I’m not complaining. Know why?”

“You just told me,” Carver reminded him. “Maggie.”

“Maggie, all right, but also the fact that this pisshole isn’t my last stop. Nothing can whip me but time, and it hasn’t yet. I’ve been getting in touch with some of my old contacts, raising capital. I’ve lost more than one fortune, Carver, and made them back. And I’ll bounce back from this loss, too. Bet on it.”

“If I could afford it,” Carver said, “I would bet on you.” He shifted his weight and leaned his cane against his chair arm, thinking age hadn’t robbed Post of his deviousness and charm. “Did you ever come in contact with anyone named Enrico Thomas or Carl Gretch?”

Post didn’t even have to think about it. “Nope.”

“Beni Ho?”

“Sounds like a restaurant. Oriental fella, I assume. Nope, never heard of him, either.”

“Your ex-wife May,” Carver said, “does she know how to manage Post Yacht Sales?”

“Oh, sure. May’s wicked smart. That’s how she nicked me for damn near everything I had.”

Carver thought, Some nick. He said, “Maggie told me you wrote her a letter of reference, got her a position at Burnair and Crosley in Del Moray.”

Charlie Post glanced sideways at Carver and grinned like a kid caught in a schoolyard lie. “Did she now?”

“I thought you told me you didn’t know what happened to her after she left you,” Carver said.

“I said such a thing?”

“Sure did. Not five minutes ago.”

“Well, let’s just say I was protecting her privacy. It is true I’ve never seen her since the night of those photographs. She phoned about two weeks later though, asking for help after she lost her job in the brokerage firm where she was an account executive. She was desperate, even doing part-time work modeling. That didn’t sound like her at all, though she sure had the looks. Well, I’d done plenty of business with Burnair and Crosley, and Ken Crosley was an old friend of mine. So I wrote a letter of reference for Maggie and they made an opening for her. I tried phoning her there a few times, but I was always told she wasn’t in.”

“So you did know where to find her, but you never tried to see her.”

“That’s true. Because I know when something’s ended, Carver. Much as I don’t like it, I can swallow it. That’s one of the best things to know in life, when something’s over. Even better’n recognizing opportunity when it knocks. Keeps you outa lots of trouble.”

Carver didn’t know what to believe. Post was a disarming conniver and equally persuasive about both sides of a story. It was easy to understand how he had his way with women.

“I figured Del Moray was small and out of the way enough that she wouldn’t be bothered. She still there, Carver?”

“Sure. Even if she won’t accept your calls.”

Charlie Post shrugged and smiled, a high roller accepting his losses gracefully. “I guess she knows when things are ended, too. I’ve got no hard feeling or second thoughts. I had my time in heaven and I’m just passing through on my way to nothingness, like you and everybody else.”

Carver leaned his weight on his cane and stood up out of the overstuffed chair. His back ached from sitting in the thing, even though it had seemed comfortable. “Thanks for your time,” he told Post.

The handsome old man pursed his lips and studied him. “You going to talk with May?”

“If I can.”

“Don’t believe anything she tells you, Carver. May’s a liar.” He said that with a face that could bluff at poker.

“If she contradicts anything you told me,” Carver said, “I’ll know she’s fibbing.”

As he moved toward the door, Post said, “Don’t let her sell you a boat.”

C
ARVER PARKED BESIDE
Beth’s car outside his cottage.

As he walked toward the plank front porch, he wiped perspiration from his face with the tail of his pullover shirt and was glad to hear the air conditioner droning away. Beth wasn’t bothered much by heat and often only opened the windows on some of the hottest, most humid days of summer.

It was cool inside. She was sitting at the breakfast counter, eating a sandwich and using her laptop Toshiba. A Budweiser can and a glass half full of beer sat beside the computer.

Carver peeled off his perspiration-soaked shirt and went into the bathroom.

“Hot, lover?” she asked, not looking up from her computer.

He didn’t answer. Instead he splashed cold water over his face. He felt water drip and run down his forearms and bare chest. Some of it made it down his ridged stomach and felt cool beneath his waistband. He ran more cold water over his wrists, holding them beneath the tap for several minutes. Then he toweled his face and chest dry and returned to the cottage’s main area. Though the air conditioner was on, a window was open and the sound of the surf dashing itself on the beach infiltrated the cottage.

“I figured you’d turn up soon,” Beth said, “so I switched on the air conditioner just for you.”

“Thoughtful,” he said, and got another Budweiser out from behind some very old barbecued chicken in the refrigerator. He carried the beer to the sofa, sat down and rolled the cold curvature of the can back and forth on his forehead, then gazed out at the ocean. A few white triangles of sails were banked at identical angles. Beyond them, far in the sun-hazed distance, was what appeared to be a cruise ship. Nothing out there seemed to be moving; maybe it was too hot. Behind him, Carver could hear Beth’s fingers clicking and clacking the computer’s keyboard with amazing speed. It sounded like a maniac abusing a typewriter inside a padded room.

He said, “I thought you were finished with your mail-order-scam story.”

“I am. This is a telephone boiler room piece,” she said, continuing to play the computer’s keys. “It’ll expose some of those jerks who are talking the old folks out of their ready cash. Some of the people involved in the phony mail-order business are mixed up in this. That’s how I got onto it. It’s like a web full of spiders.”

“Gonna send any of them to jail?”

“Hope so.”

“That’ll just leave more helpless flies for the televangelists,” he told her.

“You’re too cynical, Fred.”

“I’ve been told.”

After she relayed her story via modem to the
Burrow
offices, she sat down next to Carver on the sofa, leaned back, and extended her legs, as if her muscles were stiff from sitting a long time at her computer. She was wearing black shorts and a red halter that didn’t do much of a job restraining her breasts. Carver didn’t mind. Her feet were bare. The black leather sandals she’d been wearing were lying upside down on the floor next to her crossed ankles. They were the kind with soles made from tire treads and were probably good for another thirty thousand miles.

“I still haven’t heard anything on Dredge Industries,” she said. “I’ve got Jeff Mehling working on it.”

Mehling was
Burrow’s
resident computer genius. He’d helped Carver before, but they’d never met. Beth had told him Mehling mainly communicated with friends via electronic mail. Carver hadn’t wanted to hear any more about that.

“Jeff told me he’d have something soon,” Beth went on. “He’s still experimenting, finding his way into various data banks.”

Carver wondered if the government knew about Mehling.

Beth laced her fingers behind her head, inhaled deeply as she stretched her long body, and gave him a sloe-eyed glance. “You talk to Post?”

Not looking at her breasts, he told her about the conversation with Charlie Post at the Hotel Miranda in Miami Beach.

“Pussy broke,” Beth said. “That’s how some people I know used to describe Post’s condition. And some men’ll go out and find the wrong woman and do it all again. It’s a masochistic thing with them, giving up their money for love.”

“Post didn’t strike me as masochistic.”

“Nobody’s how they strike people, Fred. You oughta know that.”

Then he told her about stopping briefly in Palm Beach on the drive up the coast. May Post hadn’t been in her office at Post Yacht Sales, and she hadn’t answered her home phone.

“Why didn’t you hang around until she showed up?” Beth asked.

“Because the office workers were frantically finalizing arrangements for a party that night on a yacht they had listed to sell, the
Stedda Work.
Woman in the office who was calling to check on the caterer explained to me that was how they showed some of their yachts to prospective clients. Like a floating open house with booze and hors d’oeuvres.”

“And May Post is sure to be on board,” Beth said, her head resting back so she was staring now at the ceiling. “It’s a pretty smart tactic, getting the rich sales prospects liquored up and maybe bidding against each other.”

“Charlie Post told me May was smart.”

They both were quiet for a while, listening to the low hum of the air conditioner and the soft rush of the surf. Not far away outside a gull cried. Beth idly moved a bare foot over and rested painted toes on Carver’s moccasin. He could feel the pressure of each individual toe through the supple leather.

She said, “I’m assuming you’re going to drive back to Palm Beach tonight and crash the party.”

“No. I’ll be there as a guest. I managed to pick up a few unused invitations when no one was looking.”

“A few?” She sounded interested.

Carver said, “We’ll have to look as if we belong with the Palm Beach set and could afford a yacht or two. Got something suitable to wear?”

“Don’t worry,” she told him, “I’ll be the richiest and the bitchiest. But you I’ll have to supervise, Fred. When you get dressed up you look like a gangster.”

T
HE
S
TEDDA
W
ORK
was, according to a color brochure available at the foot of the gangplank, a 94-foot Broward Motoryacht built in 1985. It was a beautiful white vessel with red trim, three luxury staterooms, two salons, an on-deck galley, a 170-bottle wine cooler, a teak swimstep with stairs and transom door, and a range of 3,000 miles so you could get far away from land and enjoy it all without being disturbed.