Torch (28 page)

“He’s hooking, too,” Carver said.

“Sometimes it seems like the whole world’s hooking, one way or another,” she said.

“Sometimes.” He let his foot drop from the rail to thunk on the plank porch. Reached for his cane. “Gotta make a phone call.”

“Man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do,” Beth said, not moving.

Carver couldn’t quite make out what kind of mood she was in. But he knew that was part of why he loved her, not knowing exactly where he stood or what to expect next. She was a package of surprises, some of them harrowing. Hadn’t she said some men were drawn to dangerous women?

He phoned Desoto and asked him to run the license plate numbers he and Beth had collected during the last two nights. He also told Desoto why he wanted them.

“You give this information to McGregor yet?” Desoto asked.

Carver knew what he was thinking. “Not yet. But don’t worry, I’m not withholding information in a homicide investigation, since McGregor insists the Winships’ deaths were suicide.”

“What about Carl Gretch?”

“That’s murder, but it’s your case, not McGregor’s. That’s why I just gave you this information.”

“And asked for information from me.”

“Sure. But I wouldn’t take for granted there’s any connection between Nightlinks and Carl Gretch’s death.”

“Everything’s connected in some way or other with everything else. Haven’t you noticed?”

“I’ve noticed you’re the second person I’ve met this morning in a philosophical frame of mind.”

“Murder does that to people. To the people who weren’t murdered, anyway. Speaking of murder, what’s going on with the little Oriental destruction machine?”

“Beni Ho? He’s walking with a cane now. Also with revenge in his heart.”

“He’s all the more dangerous crippled.”

“That’s what Beth said.”

“Hm. Listen to Beth on this one. I’ll get back to you soon as I can on the license numbers.”

Carver hung up the phone, then he returned to the porch and sat down again next to Beth. She was still staring straight ahead at the ocean. The sea wind hadn’t budged the clouds stacked on the horizon, but it had parted her dress again, revealing her legs.

“What now?” she asked, not looking at him.

“We wait for Desoto to call back.”

“You ask him to run those plates?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Might be a little while before he calls.”

“Might.”

She finally looked over at him and smiled. It was a smile he knew. “Know how we might pass that time?”

“Not charades?”

“Not charades,” she said.

D
ESOTO DIDN’T PHONE
until noon.

He gave Carver the names and addresses of the Nightlinks clients and escorts who’d apparently engaged in prostitution. Two of the clients were from out of state, driving rental cars.

Desoto had taken so much time to get back to Carver because he had had to check the rental car agencies for names and addresses. Also a woman’s mutilated body had been found in Lake Eola Park, floating out by the fountain near the center of the lake. Some tourists in one of the boats built to resemble swans had discovered it. The experience was nothing like Disney World. Much of Desoto’s morning had been spent taking the sobered tourists’ statements.

After telling Carver what he needed to know, Desoto had to terminate the conversation rapidly. The medical examiner’s preliminary findings on the woman in the lake had arrived. Someone in the background was yelling something about a saw.

Carver hung up the phone and sat staring at the paper on which he’d scrawled the Nightlinks information with a black felt-tip pen. Beth had showered and was dressed in tight slacks and a gray tee shirt lettered SAVE THE MANATEE across the chest. The propagation of the sea beast was a cause with many Floridians, and the sluglike animal appeared on license plates, bumper stickers, and souvenirs up and down the state. Carver wondered why there wasn’t as much enthusiasm to save the human victims of crime in Dade County.

Beth kissed the back of his neck and peered over his shoulder. “That’s our list of bad boys, huh?”

“And girls. The redhead’s name is Mandy Jamison.” He traced his finger down the list. “This is the one that interests me. The driver of the blue ’93 Cadillac.”

“The one that got himself photographed?”

“Reverend Harold Devine,” Carver said. “He’s pastor of a church in Miami and does a weekly TV spot.”

“He’s more than that,” Beth said. She was still looking over his shoulder, and her breath was warm in his ear. He didn’t mind.

“Desoto mentioned he was director of something called Operation Revert.”

“That’s right, Fred. They oughta be called Operation Regress.
Burrow
did a piece on them last year when some of their members chained themselves to the doors of a television network affiliate in Miami. They believe all of society’s ills can be traced to the disintegration of the family, and they think the media are the primary cause of that decline. They want to turn back the clock to ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ time, reestablish the dominance of the American family. The problem is, they don’t care how they accomplish it.”

“And you don’t care for them,” Carver said.

“More’n a few of those true-blue model families had colored maids at minimum wage.”

“And ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ time was also separate drinking fountains time.”

“Not to mention separate lynchings.” Beth walked to the other side of the breakfast counter and perched on a stool facing Carver. “Also not to mention Barney Fife time. Funny little guy, sure. But how’d you like to be hassled by that jerk for real if he had the power to get you convicted?”

Carver knew she had a thing about Barney Fife, believing the Mayberry TV character had made a generation of abusive cops seem sympathetic, so he said nothing. He didn’t want to get into an argument over reruns.

“Devine’s the one got himself photographed,” she said, “so that makes the blackmail scenario most likely.”

“The Cadillac has dual registration. He has a wife, according to Desoto. Cindy Sue, believe it or not.”

“I believe,” Beth said.

“Maybe Cindy Sue hired a detective to follow her pious husband and get the goods on him. Or maybe his political enemies wanted something heavy to hold over his head. Plenty of folks might want to take advantage of the fact that the good reverend has a weakness for prostitutes.”

“What about the others on the list?”

“Nothing about them jumps out,” Carver said. “One’s a furniture dealer from Wisconsin, another sells cars up in Jacksonville. Guys with money to spend and looking for a good time, most of them probably married. It’d be a shame to shake up their lives by making it public record they were Nightlinks customers.”

“Oh, really?” Beth drew back and glared at him. “I always regarded prostitution as a crime it took two people to commit. And sometimes there’s a crime within a crime, and no legal recourse for the victim. I know what I’m talking about, Fred.”

He didn’t ask what she meant by that. He knew part of the price she’d had to pay to escape her upbringing. Some parts he didn’t want to know. Most men and women should keep some things secret from each other, and shouldn’t pry. One of the reasons for the disintegration of the American family, he thought, was that there was too much communication within marriage.

“I guess I agree with you,” he said. “But I’m not so sure it should be a crime at all. Society ought to grow up and decriminalize it, leave both parties undisturbed.”

“Very progressive of you, Fred. A lot of men think the same way, some of them in the legislature. But the women doing for men are the ones still getting dragged into court, while the guys who pay them for their services walk and don’t even get their names in the paper.”

“It’s not a fair world,” Carver said.

“That your explanation? Well, the wives of those guys who are going out and diddling with strange pussy would agree with you. Think of that hypocrite bastard Devine preaching family unity and urging the government to withhold welfare payments to single mothers, then going out and lying down with some poor woman who probably loathes him but needs his money to feed her kids.”

“I doubt if Mandy Jamison has any kids,” Carver said. He could see Beth getting more annoyed by the second, yet he kept saying things that made things worse. He wondered if, on a certain level, he might be doing it deliberately.

“You really think that redhead’s the only strange wiggle he’s paid for?”

She was slipping into street slang, getting angry deep down. Carver knew that was a sign he should back off. “For all we know she does have kids,” he admitted.

“Fuck Reverend Harold Devine and his whole army of hypocrites. They’re the assholes would have been wearing white sheets not too many years ago. Might even wear them now. If the two-faced bastard is getting blackmailed, good. If you need to make his name public to get the answers on the Winship deaths, you do it. And if you don’t, I will!”

She stood up and he saw that her fists were clenched into tight brown knots. The bright red of her painted nails made it appear that each hand was squeezing something that was bleeding. She strode to where her portable computer sat and snatched it up, then made for the door.

“Where you going?” Carver asked.

“Going to
Burrow.
You damn well better remember what I said, Fred!”

“About what?”

She slammed the door hard on her way out.

He didn’t get a chance to tell her he agreed with her.

He had a ham sandwich and a Budweiser for lunch, then drove into Del Moray and parked at his vantage point where he could watch the Nightlinks office. He’d developed a sense for where the energy in a case emanated from, where the epicenter lay. More and more, what had happened to Donna and Mark Winship seemed to be connected to Nightlinks. He wasn’t sure what he might learn from a daylight stakeout of the escort service, but maybe things went on here by the light of the sun. Maybe Mandy Jamison arranged for child care and worked days. Carver the cynic.

But Mandy didn’t appear. Only three people came and went at Nightlinks in the two hours he sat sweltering in the Olds, a man and two women. Early afternoon was obviously a slow time for escort services.

Carver sat up straighter when he saw Beni Ho emerge from the office, slip a pair of dark glasses onto the bridge of his nose, and get into a black Porsche that looked like the Bat-mobile. Ho was moving better but still limping along with a cane, like Carver, and he was carrying a briefcase. The last time Carver had seen him leave Nightlinks he was carrying a briefcase.

The Porsche either needed a muffler or its exhaust system was set up to roar mightily in a projection of power. It rolled smoothly and noisily from the parking lot.

Things were slow here anyway, and stifling, so Carver wiped sweat from the corners of his eyes, started the Olds, and drove down to Telegraph Road.

Ho knew his car, so Carver had to be especially careful. He stayed far back, sometimes losing sight of the black Porsche in the bright traffic and sun glare, but he was able to stay with it.

Ho drove to an apartment building on Seventh Street, a four-story blue and white structure with a wooden railing around the perimeter of its flat roof. Carver parked beneath a bent and shaggy palm tree a block down and watched, listening to the drooping fronds rattle in the breeze.

Ho entered the building carrying the briefcase, then returned to his car about five minutes later, still with the case.

He drove over to Egret Avenue and made a similar visit to a small, vine-covered house. Then it was all the way to the other side of town for another brief stop at an apartment building. He headed east then, toward the ocean.

Carver followed, but he was getting worried. Ho was driving at the speed limit, not behaving in any way unusual, but he wasn’t the sort anyone could follow indefinitely without being seen. Carver hoped the little assassin’s dark glasses obstructed his vision enough to take the edge off his awareness.

It wasn’t until Ho had parked and climbed up out of the Porsche again that Carver realized where they were. At the motel where he’d last seen Mandy Jamison after her date with Reverend Devine. The place she seemed to call home.

He took a chance and let the Olds’s idling engine ease it down the street so he could see where Ho was going.

The little man limped directly to Mandy’s cabin. He rapped on the door with the crook of his cane, as Carver might have done. Mandy opened the door. Carver caught a glimpse of her, wearing jeans and an oversized blouse and looking ghostly pale without makeup, as she moved back to let Beni Ho enter.

Ten minutes later, Ho hobbled outside and back to his car. He drove over to Ocean Drive, then south. Turned right on Wellington. There wasn’t much traffic now, so Carver had to stay even farther behind the Porsche. At one point he even cut over to run parallel to Ho in the next block for a while, sneaking looks at the black Porsche at intersections, guided at times by only the throaty roar of its powerful engine.

The neighborhood began to decline. Run-down office buildings, some of them boarded up, lined the streets. Here and there stood a desolate house or apartment building with despondent-looking old men or women on the porches or stoops. More of the businesses on the street seemed to be permanently closed than open.

When Carver cut back to the next block to fall in behind the black Porsche again, he was surprised to find that the neighborhood looked familiar. He was on Gull Avenue.

Then the Porsche’s brakelights flared. Carver slowed the Olds and pulled to the curb.

Ho parked across the street from Shellie’s Lounge and limped inside.

Carver drove past, then parked around the corner. He walked back to Gull and found a spot near a bus stop where he could stand back in the doorway of a boarded-up shoe store and not attract too much attention. Passersby would take him for a man waiting for a bus, or for a wino or junkie seeking shade.

He settled back, sweated, and waited.

Ho was inside Shellie’s for almost half an hour. When he returned to the Porsche and drove away, he didn’t have his briefcase.