Torch (3 page)

Carver climbed out of the car and crossed the moonlit lot, the shadows of the breeze-tossed palm trees dancing at his feet. The brunette with her arms crossed glanced at him, then leaned with her shoulder against the thick post supporting the ship’s bell. She smiled, uncrossed her arms, and gave the spoked wooden wheel a turn, as if it were a wheel on a TV game show allowing her to choose a vowel. Carver doubted if she’d ever been to sea.

Inside the restaurant the music was deafening, provided by a five-piece all-female band featuring a shiny and complicated electric keyboard. Carver sat at the bar and lip-synched to the bartender that he wanted a draft beer.

He sat sipping his beer from its frosted mug and trying not to listen to the music for a few minutes, looking over the crowded restaurant. All the tables were occupied by at least two people. There were half a dozen or so men seated or standing at the long bar who might be by themselves. A sign over the door advertised that there would be a bikini contest next Friday, Jello wrestling the Friday after that. Carver saw no reason why the two events shouldn’t be combined.

Carrying his beer, he went outside and across wooden planks to a public phone he’d noticed mounted on a corner of the building. The brunette near the ship’s bell smiled at him again. He was about to phone Beth, so he didn’t smile back, but he raised his stein in a kind of salute to her and all womanhood.

Beth wasn’t in her apartment, so he called his beach cottage five miles up the coast highway. She had a key and came and went pretty much as she pleased. Which was most of the time. He’d given Belquest the cottage as her address because she’d be easier to reach there, and he’d know about it sooner rather than later. It was only when she had a work overload, as she had now, and had to hole up to meet a deadline, that she spent nights in her closetlike efficiency miles from the beach.

She answered on the second ring and said, “Where you been, lover?”

“How’d you know it was me?”

“I been waiting long enough for you, Fred, it doesn’t matter much anymore if it’s you.”

“I thought you’d be at your apartment tonight.”

“No, I finished the polluted fish story. You talk to Donna?”

So Beth didn’t know, hadn’t caught the information on the news.

“Fred?”

He set the beer mug on the shelf above the tattered phone directory. “I’ve got some bad news about Donna,” he said. And he told her what had happened.

She was quiet for a long time. Then, “Christ, Fred! You think she really killed herself by stepping in front of a speeding semi?”

“It looks that way. She might have been in that kind of mood, the way she was acting in the restaurant.”

“What about Megan? Her little girl.” Beth sounded as if she might be about to cry. Not like her at all; she treated tears as if they were acid that might sear her cheeks to the bone.

“She’s with Donna’s mother. The mother, the husband, they probably know by now.”

“Lord! What do you suppose they’ll tell Megan?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure what I’d tell a four-year-old kid in this situation. Or how soon.”

“Fred, before Donna left the restaurant, did she tell you what was bothering her? Why she wanted to talk to you?”

“Yes and no.” He told Beth about Donna paying him to follow her.

“And she wouldn’t tell you why?”

“No.”

“It’s not Donna at all, this stepping-out-on-her-husband business. She’s not the type, though we both know almost everybody can be.”

“Almost everybody,” Carver said. “My impression was the husband pushed her into it. Did you ever meet him?”

“Couple of times. He seemed nice enough. Donna said he had a temper, though never with her. They seemed happy together. That was a few years ago, though. Things can change.”

“Can and do,” Carver said, thinking of his own life.

“What are you gonna do now, Fred?”

“Follow somebody else. That’s part of why I called you.”

He gave Beth the phone number of Riley’s Clam Shop and asked her to wait a few minutes, then call and ask for Enrico Thomas.

When he went back inside, he saw that his place at the bar had been taken. He stood near the door, beneath the bikini and Jello sign, idly sipping his beer and studying the men at the bar who didn’t appear to be with someone or were in a waiting attitude. There was a big man in a plaid sport jacket, looked like a high-pressure salesman. An athletic type in a pullover shirt—Carver could picture him as Donna’s secret lover. A man about Carver’s age, bald on top like Carver, was seated near the far end of the bar, staring morosely into his beer as if he might have been stood up. Could be the guy who’d swept Donna off her feet and into infidelity, Carver thought. Or maybe he was flattering himself because of his resemblance to the man.

The phone rang, and the bartender, a wiry little gray-haired man in a white shirt and checked vest, hurried over to answer it.

He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece and shouted, “Enrico Thomas?” Looking up and down the bar. “Enrico Thomas here?”

A few of the men glanced at him, but no one wanted the call.

“Go see if there’s an Enrico Thomas out at one of the tables,” the bartender shouted to a blond waitress, and set the phone next to the beer taps. Carver could hear the waitress’s high, cutting voice calling Thomas’s name.

From nearby a voice shouted, “Hey! Over here! I’m Enrico Thomas.”

The bartender pointed to the phone, and the man who’d spoken moved toward it.

He’d just come out of the restroom, a slight man with dark hair and eyebrows and mustache. He was wearing gray pleated slacks and a black sport coat, white shirt, no tie. He was very well groomed, wore his clothes well, and he crossed the room toward the phone with the fluid economy of a nifty lightweight boxer or dancer.

Carver saw rather than heard him say hello, then yes, then look puzzled and place the receiver back down on the bar. Beth had gotten him to confirm he was Enrico Thomas, then hung up as instructed.

Thomas looked all around the bar, then walked to the wide arch separating it from the main restaurant and gazed around, standing for a moment up on his toes for a better view. Gleaming Italian loafers flat on the floor again, he glanced at his watch. Carver shot a look at the beer-ad clock behind the bar—illuminated, flat-bellied surfers sitting around a campfire and boozing it up with beautiful girls who looked about sixteen. Ten-twenty. He took a sip of beer, watching the small, neat man rub his chin over and over and rock slightly on the balls of his feet. He acted as if he was waiting for someone, all right, getting impatient. Someone who was fifteen minutes late and would never be on time again.

Thomas found a spot to stand near the end of the bar and ordered a drink that looked like bourbon and water. He stood there sipping it slowly, talking to no one, switching his gaze back and forth from the ball game on the TV above the bar to the door. Somebody on TV hit a home run, but Thomas seemed disinterested.

At exactly 10:35, looking slightly agitated, he dropped a couple of bills on the bar and walked past Carver, out the door.

Carver waited a few seconds, then followed. As he made his way to the Olds, he saw Thomas getting into a red Corvette convertible. Carver lowered himself into the Olds and got it started just in time to follow the Corvette from the lot.

He made a note of the license plate on Thomas’s car, then stayed well back from it. Within minutes they were outside the Del Moray city limits, traveling south along the coast highway. Then Thomas cut west to 95, drove south to the Bee Line Expressway and headed west again, toward Orlando.

The Olds’s huge prehistoric engine was made for gas guzzling and highway speed. Carver had no trouble keeping the Corvette in sight. He sat in the rush of warm wind and noise, feeling the vibration of road and engine running through the car, along the backs of his thighs, knowing it would be late tonight before he’d see Beth.

Enrico Thomas slowed the Corvette on Belt Street in Orlando and cruised along at about thirty. Then the low-slung car’s brakelights flared as it made a sharp right turn into a low garage alongside a two-story beige apartment building with cracked stucco, ornate rusty iron balconies, and thick vines crawling wild up its north side. The garage door had either been open, or Thomas had signaled an automatic opener as he approached. The glow from the sodium streetlight on the corner tinted everything, including the blooms on the vines, a sickly orange color.

Carver pulled the Olds to the curb on the opposite side of the street and watched Thomas emerge from the shadows of the garage. He appeared to point inside the garage’s dark interior, and the garage’s overhead door slowly lowered until it met the ground. Thomas then locked the door with a key before walking toward the apartment entrance. A car like the Corvette would be stolen every other day in this neighborhood unless its owner took precautions.

Carver could call his friend, Orlando police lieutenant Alfonso Desoto, and probably get Thomas’s precise address from the Corvette’s license number, but he was here and wanted to make the trip bear fruit as soon as possible.

Letting the Olds’s engine idle, he took his foot off the brake and the big car crept along the curb until it was almost directly opposite the apartment building. All of the building’s windows facing the street were visible from here.

Within a minute or two after Thomas had entered the building, lights winked on in the second-floor-west corner unit.

Carver switched off the softly rumbling engine, climbed out of the car, and crossed the street.

The blossoms on the vines had a perfumed scent that carried on the warm night air, but the building’s vestibule smelled oddly of fresh paint and stale urine. There were crumpled, paint-spattered newspapers on the dirty tile floor. Carver saw that graffiti had been recently painted over on the wall above the bank of tarnished brass mailboxes. That “Miranda loves” someone or something was still visible through the new, thin coat of blue paint. Carver figured what Miranda would really love would be to move out of the building.

He saw her name right away in the slot above one of the mailboxes: Miranda Perez. There were eight units in the building. Carver checked the mailbox slots for Thomas’s name but didn’t see it. The upper west corner unit appeared to be occupied by someone named Carl Gretch—at least Gretch got his mail there.

“What the fuck you doing?”

The voice made Carver jump.

He gripped his cane tightly just below the crook, ready to use it as a weapon.

“Who the fuck are you?” the voice said.

Carver peered up the dark stairwell and saw Enrico Thomas poised halfway down the steps to the vestibule, leaning forward and glaring at him. In his right hand was a knife with a long, thin blade that reflected what little light there was in the dim building.

“I’m looking for Miranda Perez,” Carver said.

“Don’t play stupid; I saw you at Riley’s Clam Shop, saw you following me in that big tub of shit you drive. All the way here from Del Moray.”

“I drove here to see Miranda,” Carver said. “She loves me.”

“Loves everybody with a few dollars to spend, but I doubt she and you ever met. Like I asked before, what the fuck do you want?”

There was nervousness in Thomas’s voice now. Carver wasn’t playing his part the way Thomas had imagined, didn’t seem scared enough. Well, Carver knew he was scared. On the other hand, there was something about the way the almost girlishly thin man on the stairs held the knife—too tightly, too near the glint of the blade. He obviously wasn’t an experienced knife fighter. Carver decided to run a bluff.

“I’m leaving,” he said. “I might even call the cops.”

“You’re not going till you say why you followed me.”

“Sure I am. I pretty much go where I please, and a scrawny little player like you doesn’t bother me much.”

“Fucking gimp, I got a mind to saw off your good leg if you don’t start talking.”

Carver turned to face Thomas directly, balancing himself and lifting the cane. “Close quarters here. You really want to use that blade?”

“Just try me.”

“If you come down those stairs with that knife,” Carver said, “there’s no going back for you. I’m going to take it away from you and feed it to you sideways. I’m going to enjoy doing it.”

Thomas hadn’t expected this, aggression from a cripple, a cane brandished as a weapon. Carver was in his forties with a stiff left leg, but his upper body was lean and powerful. And though he was average size, he was still larger and more muscular than Thomas.

Sensing the balance shift, Carver moved slightly toward Thomas. The knife extended, Thomas backed several steps up the flight of stairs. He looked a bit startled, as if his legs had moved on their own.

Carver said, “Going down or up?”

“You say you know Miranda,” Thomas said, almost whining, “but I bet she wouldn’t have anything to do with a fucking cripple like you for any amount of money.”

“Well, you ask her when you see her. We’re crazy in love with each other. But you’re changing the subject. You coming down here with that knife?”

Time stopped in the bubble of events. Thomas licked his lips. Carver had assumed he was Latin, but up close, even in the dim light, he didn’t look Latin at all, despite the dark hair and mustache.

“Please come down here,” Carver said.

That did it. Thomas wasn’t the type to be told what to do, even if a “please” happened to be attached. Deftly folding the knife closed, he retreated another few steps, moving backward up the stairs easily, nimbly, still facing Carver. “I know what you look like,” he said, almost spitting the angry words. “Don’t you forget that.” He backed up two more steps, into the shadows of the landing.

“And I know what you look like,” Carver told him. “Like a million other guys who know that down deep they don’t have what they need.”

He edged to the street door, then pushed it open and moved outside. As he limped away, he listened for the door to sweep open behind him, for Thomas’s rushing footsteps.

But no one emerged from the building.

Carver returned to the Olds and lowered himself into the warm vinyl upholstery.