Spark

by John Lutz

  He set the tip of his cane down and climbed creaking wood stairs to the second floor, feeling the thick air get warmer as he rose. There was loose rubber matting on some of the steps; he made a mental note of that so he’d be careful if for some reason he had to take the stairs in a hurry on the way out. Walk with a cane and you had to plan ahead sometimes.

  The scent of frying bacon was stronger on the second floor, nauseating him and making his head ache. The carpet here was worn in the center all the way through to the wood floor. A dirty window at the far end of the hall provided just enough illumination to make out the apartment letters painted large and bold and recently on the doors. From behind the nearest door came the faint sound of an infant screaming desperately. Carver limped down the alphabet and knocked on the door with the oversize black E painted on it like a “Sesame Street” graphic.

  No answer.

  A TV began playing loudly behind the door of F across the hall. “Here’s what you’ve won!” a voice cried ecstatically.

  Carver tried E’s door.

  He won just like the contestant on television. The door swung open and he stepped inside fast. If Roger Karl was alert, it would be best to surprise him.

  The apartment was hot and still and furnished with cast-off furniture, not with the decorator touch. Carver limped across the faded blue carpet toward a door leading to the kitchen. “Roger Karl?” he called, being polite before he wrung Karl’s neck for siccing the menacing mountain in overalls on him.

  No one answered.

  He leaned on his cane and peered into the kitchen. There were some crumpled fast-food paper bags on the tiny Formica table, dishes in a rubber-coated pink drainer on the sink counter. A clock on the grease-stained wall above the stove said it was much later than it was. The clock probably had something there.

  A yellowed coffee brewer sat on the table near the paper bags. It was plugged into the nearby wall socket, but there was no coffee in the glass pot other than a sludgelike residue from yesterday. If Karl had awakened here this morning, he’d eaten breakfast out.

  Carver turned away from the kitchen and limped down a short hall off the living room. The bathroom was empty, not even a toothbrush. He looked in the medicine cabinet over the white pedestal washbasin. An empty aspirin bottle. A plastic disposable razor with a rusty blade that had been there so long it had left a mark on the glass shelf. There was a bar of soap on the washbasin. Carver ran his finger over it. Damp. Gummy, the way cheap soap got. A towel draped over the shower curtain rod was also damp. He looked into the tub and saw wet dark hair like a spider in a clump over the drain.

  He backed out of the bathroom and shoved open the door that must lead to the bedroom, looked inside.

  The bed was unmade. Crawling across the stained white sheet was the largest and blackest palmetto bug Carver had ever seen. He stepped the rest of the way into the bedroom. Two of the dresser drawers were half open, empty. He examined the other drawers. Also empty. When he opened the closet’s sliding door, he found only a worn-out striped shirt on a wire hanger, a black sock wadded in a dusty corner. He felt around on the rough closet shelf and came up with an empty shoebox and a pornographic novel about two cheerleaders forced to spend their summer vacation on a farm. He placed both items back where he’d found them.

  The overalled mountain must have reported his failure to deter Carver from the investigation, must have given some hint as to the difficulty he’d experienced at the motel. Roger Karl had moved out, and in a hurry, possibly on Adam Beed’s orders. Beed wouldn’t have sent an unskilled laborer like the mountain to work on Carver, and he wouldn’t appreciate Roger Karl’s having done so.

  The rooms had the look of a furnished apartment, so clothes and a few personal possessions would be all Karl had to gather and pack. Carver glanced over at the bed and couldn’t see the palmetto bug. It had probably crawled beneath the stained and wrinkled top sheet. Karl couldn’t have been too upset about having to leave this place, cozy though it was.

  Carver nosed around the apartment for another fifteen minutes, not knowing what he was seeking, not knowing if he’d recognize it if he found it. He tried to remember if he’d ever found a genuine clue of the sort stumbled upon in novels and movies: a matchbook cover from a nightclub, a dying message, a bloody handprint. He didn’t think so. Well, a murder victim once.

  This time, too.

  Curled alongside the kitchen stove lay a dead brown and white beagle. It hadn’t gone easily. Its body was contorted with final agony and its teeth were bared. There was fresh blood in its mouth; it hadn’t been dead very long.

  Carver saw something glittering in the partly eaten glob of dog food in a red plastic tray. He noticed an ice-cube grinder on the sink, the kind that prepares crushed ice for drinks. He went to it and found it contained the thick bottom of a drinking glass and some glistening shards like the ones in the dog food. Roger Karl had left in a hurry and fed his dog ground glass so he wouldn’t have to bother with it. Or maybe Adam Beed had taken care of that for him.

  Carver limped from the apartment and back out onto Morning Star, where he could breathe easier, where the cruel sun at least seemed to purify the air.

  Leaning on the warm trunk of the Plymouth, he decided that if he ever found himself in a different occupation, he’d miss the job but not the people.

  24

  CARVER HAD TAKEN THE last Percodan. He found a drugstore and bought a bottle of extra-strength Tylenol. He stood just inside the door, looking out at the sun-drenched avenue, and managed to swallow two of the tablets without water. There. Maybe his head wouldn’t explode.

  Just swallowing the tablets seemed to lessen the throbbing ache behind his eyes. He touched a finger to the lump on the side of his head. It hadn’t realized he’d taken medication and was as egglike and painful as ever. First Beed, then the giant in bib overalls. It sure put a strain on a body. It would have been a lot worse if the big man in overalls had been good enough at his work to leave Carver with more than a headache. New bruises on top of the old ones inflicted by Adam Beed might have taken decades to heal.

  He was about to push open one of the glass doors and reluctantly step outside into the heat, when he noticed a line of sit-down phone booths near the hair care aisle along a side wall of the drugstore. He fished for and found the proper change in his pocket, then limped to the end booth, settled down on the hard oak seat, and phoned Desoto.

  “I don’t know anybody whose description fits your big friend in overalls,” Desoto said, when Carver was finished telling him about the morning’s events. “You want me to inquire?”

  “No, I don’t think it matters. He was cheap help, and he’d probably have less idea than I do why he was hired.”

  “You don’t think Adam Beed sent him?”

  “Beed would have come himself,” Carver said, watching a pretty blonde in a white tennis outfit saunter down the aisle and study the hair spray display. “Or if he had hired some muscle, it would have been competent help.”

  “So you figure Roger Karl did the hiring on his own, eh, amigo?”

  “That’s how I see it. Then, when the job was botched and he knew I’d be coming for him, he told Beed about it. Beed instructed him to run, if Karl didn’t bolt on his own.” The blond woman bent low to pick up a pink can of hair spray with gold lettering. She had long, tan legs. The tennis outfit was stretched taut across her shapely hips and buttocks. Watching her, Carver thought of Beth even through the headache. True love? Or lust?

  “Amigo?”

  “I’m here.” He kept his gaze on the woman as she walked away toward the registers. He suspected she knew he was watching, but she was used to men watching her.

  Desoto said, “You do want me to ask around and see if I can get a line on Karl’s whereabouts, right?”

  “Him I’d like to see again,” Carver said.

  “Would you like to see Adam Beed again?”

  “At the proper time.”

  “I can’t imagine a pr
oper time for that. His execution, maybe. But I’ll keep you informed, you keep me informed, hey?”

  “Your back and mine,” Carver said.

  Desoto was quiet for a moment, then said, “Amigo, maybe we should end this conversation we never had.”

  “I don’t recall any conversation,” Carver said. “But thanks just the same.”

  He hung up.

  He knew what Desoto meant. It wasn’t good for a police lieutenant to possess information about a parole violator and not take official action. Carver had placed Desoto in the position of betraying either professional ethics or personal friendship. Hardly fair. Carver felt rotten about it. On the other hand, it was Desoto who’d sent Hattie Evans to him. So Desoto had already committed himself to the personal code that at times overrode the restrictions of his job, that extended his neck to a length where his head might be lopped off. That was what made him a good cop and a better friend.

  As Carver limped from the drugstore, he noticed the edge had been taken off his headache.

  Then the heat struck him like a softly wrapped hammer, and he had to pause and lean on his cane. The headache was back with all its violent strength. He stood motionless for a few minutes before hobbling slowly to the car.

  When he’d started the Plymouth, he switched on the air conditioner and aimed a vent directly at his face. The rush of frigid air chased away some of the dull throbbing in the front of his skull.

  He drove around Lauderdale for a while, past the Big ‘n’ Yum, then the Cuban restaurant where Roger Karl had met Adam Beed last night. Where the briefcase had changed hands. As he cruised the sunny streets he watched for Karl’s boxy little yellow Isuzu, but he never saw it.

  He drove out to Jamie Sanchez’s place on the ocean, but the gate was closed, along with a more serious looking tall chain-link gate behind it. Possibly Roger Karl had phoned. Or Adam Beed, assuming he’d learned by now where Karl had delivered the briefcase. For whatever reason, security had been tightened. He glimpsed lithe, low forms gliding through the foliage. There were dogs roaming the grounds. A metal sign bolted to the fence declared the estate was protected by an alarm system and trespassers would be prosecuted.

  If they survived, Carver thought.

  As he idled for a moment near the entrance, a huge black Doberman materialized from the shadows and leapt snarling at the chain-link fence. A man with a flattened nose that had its cartilage removed, in the manner of a professional boxer’s, also suddenly appeared near the gate and glared at Carver. He was wearing what appeared to be a chauffeur’s uniform, complete with cap. His lips were writhing beneath the mushroom nose. Carver cranked down the window so he could hear.

  “. . . help you with something?” the man was almost shouting over the racket raised by the barking dog.

  Carver said nothing.

  The Doberman was joined by an identical twin. The barking was twice as boisterous.

  “There’s nobody at home here,” the flat-nosed man said, still glaring fiercely at Carver. The dogs barked even louder and hurled themselves again and again at the fence, causing the chain link to rattle and bulge ominously. The metal NO TRESPASSING sign flapped and boinged each time the fence was hit by all that dog.

  Concluding that he was probably unwelcome, Carver drove away. In the rearview mirror he saw the man in the chauffeur’s uniform walk out beyond the gate and stand hands on hips, staring after him.

  Carver decided he’d pretty much worn out his welcome all the way around in the Fort Lauderdale area. After checking out of the motel, he turned the Plymouth in at the rental agency.

  Then he treated himself to a couple more Tylenol tablets and drove the Olds to Solartown and beyond to the Warm Sands Motel.

  25

  THEY WERE IN CARVER’S room, in Carver’s bed, breaking the rules, maybe breaking the springs. Beth was sure no one had seen her come to his door, and Carver didn’t argue with her. He knew her; she was going to come to him when she wanted to anyway. Besides, he wanted to believe her.

  Still breathing hard, he lay beside her, watching a rivulet of sweat wend its way slowly down her bare breast, along her ribs, clinging to her. Her ragged breathing rasped in rhythm with his own.

  “Love in the afternoon,” she gasped. “Ain’t it grand?”

  Carver rotated his sweaty wrist to glance at his watch. The crystal was fogged, obscuring the numerals. Beth laughed. He craned his neck to see the clock on the table by the bed. Three o’clock.

  Beth clutched the top of the sheet and used it to pat her face dry. “Got things to tell you,” she said, breathing evenly now. It didn’t take her long to recover from most things, to recharge her batteries.

  “You just finished telling me some interesting things,” Carver said. A car passed at a crawl outside in the parking lot, its tires crunching gravel with a sound like strings of tiny firecrackers exploding.

  “I mean about what I learned on the Solartown reverse mortgage money. This is a business meeting, right?”

  “The minutes are in my mind forever.”

  “Better’n that headache you said you had.” She scratched her hip. “Hmph! We got rid of that sucker in a hurry.”

  She was right. He decided not to tell her the headache was threatening to return, hinting at heaviness and pain behind his left eye. Not that he didn’t feel better in a lot of other respects. “So what’d you find out?”

  She eased sideways on the bed, then reached out a long arm and grabbed the bulky attaché case she’d brought with her. After dragging the case near enough, she opened it and withdrew a yellow legal pad with tiny, neat handwriting on it.

  “Near as I can tell,” she said, “most of the money from the sales of reverse mortgage repossessions eventually goes into the Solartown, Inc. general cash fund. Immediately after the company reclaims a house, a small amount of ready cash is set aside to make whatever repairs are necessary and to maintain the property until it resells.”

  “Do the figures tally?” Carver asked, meshing his fingers behind his head and staring at the ceiling. There was a bright rectangular pattern of afternoon sun there; it didn’t seem right to be looking at it while he was still perspiring from lovemaking. Beth could sure do things to a life.

  “The numbers balance,” she said.

  Carver gave that some thought. What were numbers but somebody’s information, good or bad? “Might somebody be cooking the books?”

  “Always possible. You wanna check over the figures?”

  “Later.” He knew she’d already checked and double-checked. “How’d you manage to get that kinda information?”

  “Some of it’s public record. Some of it came by way of the custom software Jeff the computer whiz lent me. You feed it subject information, and it calculates various program passwords and file names the way it would chess moves. And Jeff would send me information via modem. What I did—”

  “You or Jeff broke into Solartown’s computer system,” Carver interrupted.

  “That’s illegal. Hackers go to jail for doing it.”

  “Some do. Will Solartown be able to tell its data’s been raided?”

  She let the legal pad drop onto the floor. “Maybe. Depends what kinda safeguards they had built in. We mighta tripped some delayed alarms.”

  “If the company’s into something illegitimate, it makes sense they’d have plenty of safeguards and alarms built into their computer system.”

  “Wouldn’t argue that.” She didn’t seem particularly apprehensive.

  He watched a small spider make its way across the ceiling to the edge of the bright rectangle of sunlight, then veer away toward the supposed security of dimness. “Any way for Solartown to trace who gained access?”

  “Doubt it. Jeff’s software has safeguards of its own.”

  “Microchip eavesdropping,” Carver said. “I hate the age of the computer.”

  “It’s like all progress, lover. You become part of it one way or the other, either by adapting or getting paved over.” She p
ropped herself up on one elbow and stared at him. Her large breasts were so firm they barely sagged sideways. She was no longer sweating or breathing hard. She said, “You feel like telling me about that lump on the side of your head?”

  Carver told her everything that had happened over in Lauderdale.

  As he finished, she was gazing at him intently. Was she going to offer sympathy? Kiss the warrior’s wound?

  “Just thought of something,” she said, and rolled sideways away from him to sit on the edge of the bed. She bent down to reach her open attaché case, then swiveled on her bare rear end to sit cross-legged on the mattress with her back against the headboard. In her lap was her portable Toshiba computer.

  Carver watched silently as she raised the lid, booted the system, and began working the keys. Within a few seconds her expression became that of a mystic gazing into a crystal ball that held all answers to all questions. Computers did that to people.

  After a while she said, “Keller Pharmaceutical.”

  The name was barely familiar to Carver. “What about them?”

  Instead of answering, she played the keyboard some more. The disk drive clucked and whirred softly, as if in pleasure.

  At last she said, “Major-league pharmaceutical company. They’re one of the suppliers for the Solartown Medical Center.” Studying the glowing monitor, she looked disappointed. “I thought I remembered . . . wait a minute.” Her long fingers danced gracefully over the gray keyboard. “Not Keller—Mercury Laboratories.”

  “They supply the medical center, too?”

  “They don’t supply; they’re a much smaller company that does research and development for Keller Pharmaceutical. I came across them when I was following Solartown funds to various subcontractors and suppliers. When the recipients were publicly owned companies, I used accessible information to carry the trace several steps further, assuming they might be acting as money launderers.”