Spark

by John Lutz

  “I thought of that,” Carver said. “It can’t be a hundred percent safe. I’ll find Beed on my own. He’s on alcohol now, anyway, not part of the illegal drug scene.”

  “That’s a maybe. If he was doing heroin or crack in a major way, alcohol’d only be so much water to him.”

  “Solartown information’s all I want from you,” Carver said. “Or all I want that it’s smart for you to give.” He realized he was pressing the tip of his cane into the car’s floor, feeling road and engine vibration running through the shaft. “You’ll be safest if you’re simply a journalist who happens to be staying at the Warm Sands.”

  “Want it or not,” she told him, “there’s something else I’m gonna do for you. I’m gonna drive into Del Moray and bring back your gun.”

  He considered trying to talk her out of that, then thought about Adam Beed and said nothing.

  He settled back in the vinyl upholstery, closed his eyes, and let his bruises heal.

  15

  THIS TIME CARVER REFUSED lemonade, then sat down across from Hattie in her quiet living room. He was in an upholstered chair with dark wood arms. She was perched primly on the edge of the cream-colored sofa. On a table not far from the door, a tall cut-glass vase held half a dozen roses. In the bowels of the house a blower clicked on. Cool air began to whisper through the vents.

  “Did Jerome ever mention a man named Adam Beed?” Carver asked. He laid his cane across his lap to avoid leaving a circular depression in the deep carpet. He’d been told about that.

  Hattie gazed off to the side, thinking. She said, “No, I’m sure he never mentioned the name.” She peered more closely at Carver. “Are those bruises on your arms?” Her tone of voice suggested he’d been fighting in the cloakroom and would be kept after class.

  “They are,” Carver confirmed, for some reason feeling guilty. Hattie hadn’t lost her schoolteacher ways; she could strike to vulnerability like a barbed arrow.

  “Something to do with Mr. Beed?” she asked.

  “I had some trouble with him. You’re sure your husband didn’t know Beed? He’s an accountant.”

  She smiled. “The sort of accountant I’d like to take with me for a tax audit. But neither Jerome nor I have had any dealings with the man.” Her back remained perfectly rigid as she folded her hands in her lap. “Why did he strike you, Mr. Carver?”

  “He suggested I stop looking into Jerome’s death.”

  “Ah!” Her shrewd eyes got a faraway look. She’d grasped immediately what that meant. “That means there must have been something irregular about what happened to Jerome.”

  “Means there probably was,” Carver said. “Doesn’t mean it can be proved.”

  “Isn’t proving it why I hired you?”

  “Yes, but I can’t manufacture evidence out of suspicion. Though it’s been done.”

  She stood up and began to pace, glancing at him now and then, making him feel he’d better not get caught cheating on an exam. “I’m more determined than ever to get to the bottom of this,” she said, “but I think you should take your leave of the case. I don’t want to be responsible for anyone getting seriously hurt.”

  “You can’t pursue this yourself,” Carver pointed out.

  She stopped pacing and faced him squarely. “What about the police? Considering what happened to you, won’t they take up the investigation?”

  Carver explained to her what Desoto had explained to him, that there wasn’t enough concrete evidence to justify diverting manpower for what still was officially a natural death. The war on drugs was the great consumer of police time, especially in Florida.

  She sat back down, looking thoughtful. Worried. “You mean they’re not interested in a possible homicide if the victim was old and nearing death anyway?”

  “No,” Carver said, “Desoto doesn’t think that way.” He didn’t tell Hattie that certain of Desoto’s superiors might follow that line of reasoning.

  She rubbed a finger along her chin. “Nevertheless, they won’t investigate.”

  “I will,” Carver said. “Things are getting too interesting for me to quit.”

  “I can’t ask that of you.”

  “Hattie, you can’t get me to stop.”

  She refolded her hands in her lap and stared at him. “No, I can see that you’re not persuadable on that point. But are you continuing down this road for the wrong reasons, Mr. Carver?”

  “Right reasons or wrong, the destination is the same.”

  “If you reach it.”

  “Someone will be helping me,” he said, “but don’t mention her. She’s Beth Jackson, a tall black woman. She’s a journalist doing a piece on Solartown. I’m telling you this only so you’ll know who she is if she contacts you.”

  “I believe I talked to her on the phone,” Hattie said. “She seemed a capable woman. I’m assuming knowledge of any connection between you two might place her in danger.”

  “From Adam Beed,” Carver said, “as well as other sources.”

  “There’s no shortage of people here who spread tales. I won’t mention her to anyone. Wagging tongues will be no problem.”

  Carver stood up. “I’ll keep you informed.”

  “Do you need more money, Mr. Carver?”

  “Not now. I’ll let you know.”

  “Please do.” She smiled sternly at him. “You’re making fine progress.”

  Carver got out of there before she pasted a star on his forehead.

  Instead of going to where the Olds was parked, he hobbled across sunbaked lawn to the house next door, VAL GREEN RESIDENCE was stenciled in green paint on a black mailbox. In the center of the door was a V-shaped brass knocker. Carver punched the doorbell button with his cane. Heard nothing from inside. He used the knocker, three brittle cracks of sound that had to be heard throughout the house.

  Still no answer.

  Val figured to be home; he’d driven as part of the Posse last night and probably had duty again tonight.

  Carver decided maybe he was sleeping and limped down from the porch. He was about to walk down the driveway to his car when he heard a faint popping sound coming from behind the house. Instead of heading for the street, he hobbled over rough ground along the side of the house.

  The sound was getting louder. It was now a series of chonks! with intervals of a few seconds between each one.

  Chonk!

  Carver peered around the corner of the house.

  Chonk!

  He saw a machete flash in the sun. A man with his back to him was chopping something on the ground. Fear slithered through Carver, to the core of him. He wished Beth had returned from Del Moray with his Colt .38 automatic and he had it with him.

  The man turned around and wiped his forehead with a red handkerchief.

  It was Val.

  He saw Carver and grinned, dropping the machete as if commanded to at gunpoint.

  As Carver limped toward him he realized what Val was doing. He’d been hacking the bottom fronds from a large palm tree, leaving only the upper branches and creating something that would resemble a giant pineapple. At the base of the tree were the fronds Val had removed, and he’d been chopping them into small sections he could bundle and tie to be hauled away.

  “Too hot for that kinda work,” Carver said.

  “Ain’t gonna get much cooler this evening.” Val used both hands to twist the red handkerchief tight, then stretched it and tied it around his head as a bandana to catch perspiration. “Besides, I gotta go back on duty at eleven.”

  “Ever heard of an Adam Beed?” Carver asked, standing there sweating in the sun and wishing he had a bandana.

  Val stared at Carver’s bruised arms. “He the guy did the heavy work on you?”

  Carver nodded, watching a cloud of gnats swarming around Val, who didn’t seem to notice them.

  “Never heard of Beed, but I’ll let you know if I do.”

  “How about Dr. Wynn, over at the medical center?” Carver asked.

  Val
shrugged, finally waved a hand at the cloud of gnats. “Oh, I know of him, all right. In charge of the whole shebang. Seems a good doctor, too. Does a fine job running the medical center. Ask me, he’s a straight enough sort. And I tell you, Carver, anything you wanna know about folks at the medical center, you just ask, ’cause I did volunteer work over there till about six months ago, when I quit so I could devote more time to the Posse. I know most all of ’em.”

  “Including Nurse Monica Gorham?”

  Val’s leprechaun features arced up in a smile. “Hard to leave her out. She’s some pumpkin, that one. Head nurse there, and really runs the other nurses. She knows her job medically and administratively. Rumor has it she’s involved with one of the doctors, but could be only rumor. Tales go around now and then about her being mixed up in some kind of kinky sex. Even stories about her mistreating some of the patients. But crazy gossip’s bound to spring up around a woman looks like Nurse Gorham.”

  “Ever have any trouble with her?”

  “No, we got along okay. But I saw some nurses get their tails chewed royally, and not for much reason. Nurse Gorham says jump, they’re already off the ground before they ask how high. Pretty as she is, ain’t no doubt she’s got a streak of cruelty in her, if you catch my meaning.” He sputtered, then spat out a gnat. Made a face and wiped a hand across his mouth. He glanced at the Evans house. “How’s Hattie doing?”

  “Good enough. She’s still determined to find out everything about Jerome’s death.”

  “Can’t blame her. She’s under one hell of a strain.”

  “Maybe she should move,” Carver said. “Get away from this place and its memories.”

  Val looked alarmed for a moment, then grinned and shook his head. “She won’t move. Can’t, really. I happened to learn one day from Jerome that their house was bought on the reverse mortgage arrangement.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Lotta Solartown residents sell their former homes, pay cash for the Solartown houses, and in effect become lenders to Solartown, Incorporated. Solartown then makes monthly payments to them for the rest of their lives. If for some reason a retiree wants to move, monthly payments stop, and full ownership of the house reverts to Solartown. We retire here because the system allows us to get more of a place for the money, while we allow Solartown to play the odds. Insurance guys figured it all out so Solartown does okay, but it’s gotta be a win-win situation for the buyer.”

  “How so?” Carver asked. He was suspicious of win-win situations. Politicians and confidence artists used the term frequently.

  Val said, “So long as the retiree lives in the house, it’s a good deal and provides the security of a monthly income. If the retiree dies before the full price of the house is paid out, it’s a bad deal, but so what, the owner’s dead and it don’t matter. There are no really bad deals for the dead, Carver. So, it’s win-win for us, and Solartown can’t lose in the long run because of the actuarial odds. Works out for most residents, but now and then Solartown reacquires a piece of valuable property that’s just been paid for in full within the last few years. So I can tell you they do just fine by the arrangement. Win-win. That make sense?”

  “For now it does,” Carver said, sensing a scam. Sensing a motive. “Where’s the Solartown developer’s office?”

  “In Orlando, on Orange Avenue. I went there once to sign some papers.”

  Carver thanked Val and turned to move away.

  “Hey there, Carver. You wanna ride patrol with me tonight? You can get an idea of what the Posse does around here.”

  “I’ll take you up on that some other time,” Carver said.

  “Any night’s okay. And remember to call on me if you want any sorta help with what you’re doing for Hattie.”

  “I might take you up on that, too,” Carver told him.

  “She’s a highly exceptional woman and don’t deserve all this crap,” Val said.

  Carver agreed, waving good-bye with his free hand as he limped across the yard toward the street. Sweat was rolling down his back. He could feel dampness around the waistband of his pants. Behind him, Val spat out another gnat.

  As Carver lowered himself into the Olds, he heard again the regular chonk! chonk! of the machete striking home.

  16

  CARVER SLEPT UNTIL AFTER nine the next morning, late for him. He reached over and felt smooth, cool linen and wished Beth were in the bed with him instead of in a room at the other end of the motel. When he started to sit up, a train smashed into him.

  He let himself drop back down onto the mattress, staring straight up at the ceiling. His injured muscles had stiffened, and his bruises were even more painful than they’d been yesterday. He knew it wouldn’t be easy to get the old machine moving this morning, but it had to be done. The curse of duty.

  This time when he worked himself into a sitting position he thought about Adam Beed. Barely pausing, he groped for and found his cane and levered himself up to stand near the bed.

  Ignoring the pain, the sour taste in his mouth, the fact that he was moving like a longtime Solartown resident, he hobbled into the bathroom. He reassured himself with the knowledge that Beed had skillfully not broken anything; he’d wanted Carver fit enough to travel.

  For a moment Carver studied himself in the mirror above the washbasin. The bruises marking his arms, chest, and shoulders were deep purple now, sometimes tinged with the ugly red color of ruptured small blood vessels close to the surface of the skin. Beed was good at his work, all right.

  After brushing his teeth to get the nasty taste from his mouth, he ran a glass of cold water. He downed a couple of Percodan tablets, then regarded the fool in the mirror and smiled tolerantly. The fool smiled back.

  Carver leaned his cane on the washbasin and used the frosted glass doors and a towel rack for support as he twisted the faucet handle and climbed into the shower. He kept his hand on the chrome handle jutting from the gray ceramic tile beneath the shower head and eased the water temperature to as hot as he could endure. Then he stood for a long time beneath the stinging needles of water as billows of steam rose around him to turn the tiny shower stall and bathroom into a sauna.

  Forty-five minutes later he was dressed, feeling less pain and stiffness, not ready to rumba, but moving reasonably well. After calling the motel office to have the lock on his door repaired, he got out of the cool room and had a waffle, Canadian bacon, and coffee at the Seagrill, glancing around for Beth while he ate, but not seeing her. Sleeping late, he figured. Or maybe she’d gone down to the artificial beach and lake for a morning swim. He pictured her in her skimpy yellow two-piece swimming suit, looking as if she belonged on a beach in Rio instead of in staunchly conservative central Florida. She’d raise some eyebrows down at the white sand beach. Probably more than eyebrows.

  After a second cup of coffee, he paid the cashier, limped outside, and stood for a few minutes in the building heat, letting the blazing sun warm his back and arms through his dark pullover shirt. He fired up a Swisher Sweet cigar. The smoke irritated the back of his throat, so he snubbed out the cigar on one of the rustic posts supporting a chain marking the limit of parking space. He flicked the dead cigar into dense green foliage at the edge of the gravel lot, then climbed into the Olds and drove for Orlando.

  Solar Tower was only about five stories, perhaps not tall enough to be called a tower, but it was a sleek, tinted Plexiglas and copper building that dominated the block it was on in downtown Orlando. The lobby was sparse and cool, clean except for a few cigarette butts and black heel marks on the veined marble floor. Carver studied the directory and saw that Solartown, Incorporated occupied the entire top floor. The rest of the building was leased out as office space to various smaller businesses. A doctor, a lawyer, no Indian chiefs.

  Carver located the elevators only by the floor indicators on the marble wall. He’d no sooner pressed a black plastic button than a hidden door hissed softly and slid smoothly open. A tall blond woman in a black business suit smile
d at him as she stepped from the elevator and hurried across the lobby toward the Orange Avenue exit. Carver watched her from the paneled and carpeted elevator until the doors slid shut. The control panel’s black plastic buttons, like the one in the lobby, were numbered one through four, but the top button for the Solartown offices was marked with an illuminated yellow-orange sun that emitted rays like daggers. The button was warm beneath Carver’s thumb as he depressed it and the elevator launched itself.

  On the fifth floor, an elderly woman in a flowing blue dress that was supposed to make her look slimmer smiled at Carver and asked how she could help him. He explained to her only obliquely what he wanted, and she advised him that the man he should talk to was Mr. Brad Faravelli, Solartown’s executive vice president in charge of development. The only hitch was, Mr. Faravelli was in a meeting.

  “Everybody I want to see spends a lot of time in meetings,” Carver said.

  The woman, whose desk plaque declared her to be Velma Lewis, flashed him a benign smile. “Perhaps you should have phoned for an appointment.”

  “I should have,” Carver admitted. He didn’t tell her he did that as seldom as possible; in his business it was best not to afford people the opportunity to prepare for his visits.

  “There’s no way to know for sure when Mr. Faravelli will be free,” Velma said. “But if you want to wait, I’m sure he’ll see you.”

  Carver thanked her and limped over to a modern gray sofa that went with the building’s sleek architecture. He settled into the sofa’s surprising comfort and propped his cane against a glass-topped coffee table with magazines fanned out on it like an oversize poker hand. He drew an issue of Forbes and thumbed through it, then a slick and colorful copy of Fortune. For a while he read about trade imbalances, junk bonds, commodities, the relative strength of the dollar, the capitalization of Eastern Europe, and marveled at how far all that was from the world in which he moved.

  By the time Velma informed him that Mr. Faravelli would see him and ushered him along an oak-paneled, carpeted hall to a spacious office, Carver felt poor.