Spark

by John Lutz

  Halfway there he realized he was limping along faster than most people were walking, drawing stares and working up a sweat that ran in rivulets. Breathing hard, too. Punishing himself. He made himself slow down, determined not to let the futility of the day get to him. It had been one of the hardest things in life for him to learn, not to be his own enemy. Sometimes he still forgot the lesson.

  He had chili for lunch, another wrong decision. When he left the restaurant, he found a public phone at the corner and stood miserably in the exhaust fumes and terrible sun. He called the Warm Sands Motel and asked for Beth’s extension.

  Ah! She’d returned from her Faravelli interview.

  “Faravelli spent most of our time together bragging about Solartown,” she said. “A real PR guy. He made the most of the interview.”

  “You get into the reverse mortgage arrangement?” Carver asked.

  “Far as I could, without him suspecting I was targeting it. He gave me some straight information. Made a good case that the purpose of the program was not only to sell more houses, but to improve the quality of life for buyers by providing them with a better home than they might otherwise be able to afford, plus a monthly income for the rest of their natural lives.”

  “Sounds good when you say it fast.”

  “That’s how he said it. He’s a charmer when he wants to turn it on.”

  “Doesn’t it figure?”

  “Maybe not. You want my opinion, Fred, the guy seems like a legitimate corporate climber. He might doctor reports or evict old ladies to improve the bottom line, but I don’t see him getting involved in murder unless there’s some kinda blackmail being worked.”

  “Always a possibility with such an upright citizen.”

  “Such a cynic,”

  “I get called that a lot. People are thoughtless that way.”

  “Where are you, Fred? You finally buy yourself a car phone?”

  “I’m in Orlando talking at one of those outside phones. That’s why you hear traffic. You get any figures on the percentage of houses Solartown repossesses after the owner’s death?”

  “Easy,” she said. “A hundred percent.”

  “Huh?”

  “About half the homes in Solartown are sold on the reverse mortgage plan. The loans are amortized at a thirty-year rate. Virtually no retiree who buys will live the full thirty years. How much profit or loss Solartown makes on the repossessed houses depends on how long the occupants collect the monthly payments and how much the houses appreciate. In effect, Solartown’s buying back the house from the owner, until the owner’s death, which will always occur before the full price is paid.”

  “You don’t see that as a motive?”

  “I would, Fred, if I could make the numbers add up to the point where the profit was worth the risk of being found out and ruining a much more lucrative legitimate enterprise. It simply looks like a winning situation for both parties, a marketing angle Faravelli boasts about with some justification.”

  Carver wondered if Faravelli had been even charming enough to fool Beth. That seemed impossible. But so did the collapse of the Soviet Union, and here we were. He said, “I noticed Maude Crane’s house is for sale.”

  “Matter of fact, Faravelli mentioned that one. It’s been taken back by the company, and he admits they’ll realize a large profit on it. Said it was an example of what made it possible for Solartown to lower its profit margin on newer housing and undersell competitors. Good fortune growing from misfortune, he called it.”

  “I’m wondering if it’s somebody’s personal fortune,” Carver said.

  “Uh-huh. You want me to follow the money, Fred?”

  “Can you do it?”

  “Won’t be easy. Banks are secretive.”

  “But money can always be traced, and I know you have your wily ways.”

  “I have those,” she admitted, “but I can’t promise you they’ll work. Banks weren’t computerized, this might not be possible.”

  “I’m not asking you to do anything illegal.”

  She laughed. “Don’t try to bullshit me, Fred.”

  “Okay, I’m asking you not to get caught.”

  “That’s my Fred.” She hung up.

  Carver called the Warm Sands again, this time identifying himself, and asked if there were any messages for him.

  There was one: He was supposed to call a Mr. Van Meter as soon as possible.

  Ah, traction! That would mean direction. The day’s prospects were improving.

  Not minding the heat and exhaust fumes now, or the persistent aftertaste of the chili, he fished in his pocket for change.

  Van Meter said a contact in a detox center in Jacksonville reported that a woman with delirium tremens had muttered Adam Beed’s name. Beed had done something to her, but she wouldn’t say what, and when she’d regained her composure she wouldn’t talk about him at all. She was scared sober, the detox guy had said. But while drunk she’d mentioned being with Beed near the ocean in a tall pink building in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, and she kept holding up her right hand with two missing fingers and saying something that sounded like “Hen power.”

  “You sober yourself?” Carver asked, watching a pickup truck towing a trailer thread dangerously through traffic at high speed. Idiot! Where was a cop when you needed one? Out by the golf course.

  “There’s a tall pink building on Ocean Boulevard in Lauderdale called the Heron Tower,” Van Meter said.

  “It’s flamingos that are pink.”

  “Sure, but try to make ‘hen power’ out of ‘flamingo.’ ”

  “Is Beed listed at that address?”

  “No, but he wouldn’t be using his real name. I don’t know if it all means anything, Fred. Up to you if you wanna drive over and check.”

  “What’s your gut tell you?” Carver asked.

  “Besides that I’m hungry?”

  “Besides.”

  “Hen power,” Van Meter said.

  He gave Carver the address.

  21

  CARVER RENTED A PLYMOUTH from Budget Rent-a-Car in Fort Lauderdale and drove to nearby Lauderdale-by-the-Sea.

  There was the Heron Tower at the address Van Meter had given him, a sleek building about twenty stories high that was constructed mainly of cast concrete embedded with what looked like pink seashells. The front of the building faced North Ocean Boulevard, the back looked out on the Atlantic. Pink-tinted glass doors flanked by columns resembling busty mermaids formed the entrance. Off to the side was a narrow concrete driveway that led to ground-level parking beneath the building, a shadowy cavern with concrete pillars that acted as piers supporting the entire structure.

  After sitting in the parked blue Plymouth for fifteen minutes, Carver decided there was no doorman. He waited another fifteen minutes, until dusk had become darkness, then he climbed out of the Plymouth, hobbled quickly across North Ocean Boulevard to beat the traffic, and entered Heron Tower.

  The lobby was mostly a checkered pattern of gray and black marble veined in pale pink. It was swank, but it reminded Carver of a marble chess set he’d bought years ago in Mexico. The pawns cracked easily.

  He limped across the bare floor to the bank of mailboxes and intercoms, his footsteps and the tapping of his cane echoing over hard surfaces.

  It was difficult to guess which of the names in the slots above the mailboxes might be Adam Beed’s alias. Most of the slots contained the names of women or families. An even half-dozen contained only men’s names. Alan Brake, in the penthouse, seemed a likely possibility. Same initials. Beed was getting plenty of money from somewhere and living high, so why not the penthouse?

  An elderly couple walking a practically bald poodle entered the lobby and glanced at Carver as they waited for the elevator. When they’d gone upstairs, he made a note of the six male names, then returned to the Plymouth and sat with the motor idling and the air conditioner humming away on high. He wouldn’t draw much attention where he was parked, so he settled back and let himself slid
e into his waiting mode, a sort of state of relaxation combined with an acute awareness of what was going on around him. It was a systematic shutting down of those parts of the mind not needed for the task and was a knack you developed after dozens of stakeouts; he thought sometimes it might be a form of self-hypnosis. Whatever it was, every good cop had it, and it allowed him to tolerate hours of stillness and waiting with the self-contained patience of a sniper.

  Tenants and visitors came and went at the Heron Tower, none of them without Carver noticing.

  When the sun had been down for about an hour, the evening finally began to cool and he switched off the engine and air conditioner and cranked down the Plymouth’s front windows. A gentle, fetid breeze that smelled of the ocean worked its way through the car. He turned on the radio and played the push buttons, momentarily hearing a Spanish station and thinking of Desoto.

  He switched the radio off as he saw a new black Cadillac Seville slow down and then turn into the Heron Tower driveway. Carver watched the car’s bright taillights disappear into the bowels of the building, like wary red eyes sinking below ground level. He was sure Adam Beed had been behind the wheel.

  Quickly Carver climbed out of the Plymouth, hobbled across the street, and entered the Heron Tower lobby. Planting the tip of his cane carefully on the smooth marble floor, he stood off to the side and watched the digital floor indicators above the two elevators.

  One of the elevators descended from the third floor to garage level, then began to rise.

  Carver had an uneasy moment as it reached the lobby. There was nowhere to conceal himself if Beed had decided to take a walk or go out and buy a bottle before going up to his apartment, and got out of the elevator.

  But the elevator rose past the lobby. Carver watched it stop at the fifteenth floor. The number fifteen continued to glow in orange letters above the elevator.

  After a few minutes Carver limped from the lobby and returned to the Plymouth. He checked his list of male tenants. There was only one living on the fifteenth floor: Bernard Altman. Okay, Adam Beed’s initials reversed. The apartment number was 15-B. Carver had calculated the Heron Tower numbering system and figured it had to be a corner unit overlooking the beach and ocean.

  He drove around the block and parked farther up the street, where he could see an illuminated window on the fifteenth floor. The window faced north and was just around the corner from a small balcony that provided a view of the sea. No movement behind the window was visible, but the light itself suggested there was someone home and it was the right apartment. Beed wasn’t likely to raise the blinds and pose for Carver.

  Well, maybe, if he knew someone was watching.

  After about twenty minutes a figure did pass the window. Even in silhouette, Carver recognized the bulk and confident carriage of Adam Beed.

  Carver kept an eye on the apartment until almost ten o’clock, getting out and walking around every now and then, once buying a cup of frozen yogurt from a shop down the block and sitting on a bench with it for a while, so he wouldn’t appear suspicious if anyone did notice him. The street here was mostly condos and apartment buildings, some with shops on the lower floors, but more tourists than tenants were driving past or wandering the sidewalks. All of them seemed too preoccupied to pay much attention to Carver.

  Finally he decided Beed was in for the night, so he drove up 1A1 to the Sandy Shoes Motel on El Mar Drive, where he’d registered earlier.

  After stripping down to his underwear, he arranged for a wake-up call at six the next morning, then stretched out on his back, lay listening to the breaking surf, and fell asleep.

  He had to sit in the parked Plymouth for more than an hour the next morning before seeing Adam Beed drive from the Heron Tower parking garage in his black Cadillac.

  Carver started the Plymouth’s engine and pulled out into traffic behind the Caddy, driving with the window open in the still-cool morning. It was going to be a beautiful day even if oven temperature; sunlight glinted off chrome and glass and concrete and made everything seem new and clean. The brightly and casually clad vacationers and locals strolling along the sidewalk were chatting and smiling. Joggers bounced with vivaciousness, birds sang, a soft breeze blew, gulls screamed with unbridled joy. It was a fine morning to be following a monster.

  He stayed well back, switching lanes from time to time, making sure Beed wouldn’t notice the unobtrusive blue car in his rearview mirror. Plymouths like this were rented by the hundreds in central Florida; that was why Carver had requested one.

  Beed steered the Cadillac into the parking lot of the Big ‘n’ Yum restaurant on Talmont Avenue. Carver drove past, parked down the block, and walked back.

  He stood across the street and studied the Big ‘n’ Yum. It appeared to be a topless bar at night and a restaurant that served breakfast and lunch during the day. A sign proclaimed the daylight specials to be topless egg-and-sausage sandwiches until 10:00 A.M., then hamburgers on topless buns until 5:00. It was the kind of entrepreneurship Carver admired.

  The Big ‘n’ Yum was indeed large, a low brick building with planters along the sills of windows that had been walled up to leave rectangles of newer, lighter bricks. Long vines dangled from the planters, but Carver saw no flowers. There were six such windows and planters on the long side of the rectangular building, bordering the parking lot where Adam Beed’s Cadillac sat among half a dozen other cars and a yellow Isuzu off-road vehicle, all gleaming in the sun as if they were freshly painted.

  With so few customers apparently inside, Carver didn’t think he should risk entering the restaurant. He also didn’t want to push things by sitting nearby in the parked car. Unremarkable as the rental car was, Adam Beed might remember glimpsing it near the Heron Tower, or driving behind him this morning.

  He bought a Sun Sentinel from a vending machine and sat down on a small stone wall that ran in front of a travel agency that seemed to be closed. A kid about twelve wandered by wearing a Tampa Marlins baseball cap. Carver spun him a tale about being a fan and bought the cap for ten dollars. The kid was astounded and happy. He’d rush home and tell his mom or dad; they’d never figure it out.

  Carver sat wearing the billed cap, head bowed, pretending to study the newspaper in his lap. The bill, the covered baldness, made for good camouflage. Even if Beed looked hard, he wouldn’t be able to identify him from this distance.

  About nine o’clock, when Carver’s pelvis was beginning to go numb from contact with the low stone wall, Beed and a barrel-chested, dark-haired man in an expensive blue suit emerged from the restaurant. The man was short, and he looked squat and diminutive alongside Beed’s muscular bulk, like a noontime shadow. They stood on the sunny sidewalk and talked for a few minutes, each listening intently to the other. Then they shook hands and Beed got into the Caddy. He started the motor but didn’t drive away until the well-dressed, stocky man climbed into the Isuzu and drove from the lot.

  For a moment Carver wondered if he should follow the Isuzu, but he decided to stay with Adam Beed. That was why he’d come here, right? He put the yellow Isuzu out of his mind.

  Beed drove to a drugstore on Sunrise and bought a newspaper and a small item Carver couldn’t make out from where he stood near the magazine rack.

  Carver limped back to the Plymouth before Beed came back out into the sun and climbed into the Caddy. Beed had walked from the drugstore with a sense of purpose, and he drove that way, too. The Cadillac kept to the speed limit, wove through traffic to Langdon Street, in a wealthy suburb east of town, and parked in front of a large stucco house with a green tile roof and green canvas awnings. Number seventeen, according to black iron scrollwork near the driveway.

  Carver found an unobtrusive spot to park in the shade and watched Beed get out of the Caddy and stride toward the house with all the confidence and determination of a man selling encyclopedias.

  He stayed inside until almost noon, and when he came back out he had his dark suit coat slung over his bulky shoulder and was carr
ying a tan leather briefcase. He tossed the briefcase on the passenger-side front seat of the Cadillac, then walked around and got in behind the steering wheel.

  Carver followed him to a restaurant near the ocean and sat sweltering in the parking lot while Beed ate lunch. Then he kept him in sight while Beed drove back to the Heron Tower and jockeyed the Caddy into the concealing shadows of the parking garage.

  After fifteen minutes, Carver figured Beed would stay home for a while and drove to a McDonald’s. He ordered a low-calorie McLean burger, large fries, and a chocolate milkshake, figuring it was a good day for irony if not cholesterol, and what the hell, he hadn’t had breakfast.

  When he returned to the Heron Tower, he drove into the garage to make sure Beed’s Cadillac was still there. He didn’t want to park back out on the street and sit in the car until Beed left again, and he was sure to draw attention if he parked there in the garage.

  He sat in the coolness of the garage with the Plymouth’s motor idling, thinking it all over, then he drove back out into the brilliant sunlight and down the street to a strip of souvenir shops. He bought a couple of large beach towels, swimming trunks, a cap, and a T-shirt. The cap had LIFE’S A BEACH lettered on it. The T-shirt proclaimed GOOD HAPPENS.

  After paying for everything, he put the trunks on beneath his pants in the changing room, explaining to the clerk that he wanted to go directly to the public beach. Then he drove back to the Heron Tower and parked down the street. He slipped out of his pants, shirt, and socks in the car, banging his elbow on the steering wheel and dash. Then he put his moccasins back on and got out of the car. He stuck the cap on his head, thinking of Hattie.

  Carrying the wadded towels and T-shirt, he cut through the lobby of the hotel two buildings down from the Heron Tower and limped the short distance to the beach. For all anyone knew, he was a guest; and he was wearing the kind of attitude that didn’t invite inquiry.