by John Lutz
When the man and woman and kids had disappeared in the direction of the beach, he got out of the Olds and headed toward the lobby.
There were several people coming and going, or waiting for elevators. A black-and-gold metal sign on a stand was shaped like an arrow and pointed toward registration, out of sight around a corner. To the left were a tourism and ticket desk, car rental agency, and gift shop with a display of nondescript neckties in its window. The lobby was carpeted in green and had lots of artificial potted ferns and comfortable-looking beige chairs scattered about. Carver sank the tip of his cane in the soft carpet and walked around the corner, where he knew the cocktail lounge had an entrance off the lobby.
He didn’t have to go inside. He found a thickly upholstered beige chair from which he could see into the lounge and sat down, leaning forward to pick up a golf magazine from a bulky dark-wood table with a glass top.
From where he sat he could see Marla Cloy seated alone in a small booth along the wall. She was staring straight ahead and holding a stemmed glass with both hands. White wine again. He was watching her almost in profile. Her face was one that became more attractive the longer he looked at it. The angle of her nose and the line of her jaw suggested a simple and pleasant serenity that had to be deceptive. He knew it concealed either willful duplicity or genuine fear.
He looked away from Marla when he noticed a small, skinny, slightly hunched woman in a brown skirt and blazer walk past him into the lounge. She left in her wake the faint scent of mothballs. He saw Marla look at her and smile. The woman picked up speed and scurried rather than walked directly to the booth and sat down opposite Marla, then placed her hands out of sight beneath the table as if she were ashamed of them.
A barmaid appeared and took the woman’s order, then brought her a drink that looked exactly like Marla’s. Both women sipped their wine simultaneously, pausing as they lifted their glasses to their lips, almost in a toast.
They talked for about half an hour, sometimes seriously, sometimes laughing at what might have been a shared joke. Next to Marla, the thin woman looked particularly drab in her brown suit and with her lifeless brown hair. Her coloring and ferretlike features brought to mind the word “mousy.” Even from this distance Carver could see that she wore very little makeup and no fingernail polish. Her pale hands, animated when she talked, were quick and nervous.
Marla dragged the blue attache case onto the table and unzipped it. When she opened it, Carver caught a glimpse of compartments in the lid that contained several yellow file folders. Marla drew a thick brown envelope from the case and laid it on the table in front of the mousy woman. It was a large envelope, almost square.
Marla got a pencil from the case and wrote something on the envelope, then she and Mousy put their heads close together and discussed whatever it was she’d written. Mousy borrowed Marla’s pencil and added something of her own on the front of the envelope. Then she rested her arm over the envelope in a casual but possessive manner.
When the attache case was zipped and placed back on the floor, the two women finished their drinks somewhat hurriedly. Then Mousy stood up, carrying the brown envelope. Marla remained seated and was fishing around in her purse for money to pay the check. Carver figured he’d have to make a decision soon. He already knew what it would be.
He laid the golf magazine back on the table, then gripped his cane and stood up. By the time Mousy came out of the lobby carrying the envelope, he was already in the Olds with the engine running. She walked around the corner of the building, and he had to drive fast along the row of parked cars to keep her in sight.
She climbed into a gray Volkswagen Rabbit, and when she left the parking lot and turned left onto Magellan, he was behind her.
The mousy woman slowed her car on Fourteenth Street, in a neighborhood of small shops and old two-story apartment buildings, and parked it nose-in to a low stone wall in front of a building set well back from the street and shaded by mature sugar oaks. With the brown envelope tucked beneath her arm, she walked under a wrought-iron entrance arch that served as a trellis for bedraggled-looking roses. Carver watched her make her way around a pond with a statue of a leaping fish in its center, then enter the building through a large, heavy door with a decorative black iron ring for a knocker.
He got out of the car and saw “2-D” in faded black paint on the stone wall in front of the parked Rabbit. There were other such markings, obviously designating each of the parking slots to correspond with apartments. He stood for a moment listening to the Rabbit’s little four-banger engine ticking as it cooled, then he traced the mousy woman’s steps, passing through the rusty iron trellis of roses, noticing that the pond in the entrance courtyard was dry and contained a scattering of dirt and sun-browned dead weeds. Many of its square blue tiles were cracked or missing. The leaping fish had once been a sword-fish, he noticed, but now its sword was a mere jagged stub where it had been broken off, perhaps by vandals.
The building’s foyer was small, also done in blue tile, but in better repair than the pond and fountain outside. There was a faint medicinal smell to it, or maybe the lingering scent of mothballs from the mousy woman’s passage. Some of the tiles were cracked and some were replacements that were a brighter blue outlined in the pristine white of fresh grout. There was a bank of fancy brass mailboxes and buzzer buttons, old and slightly tarnished.
Carver saw that the building contained twelve apartments. The name above 2-D was W. Krull.
He thought about going upstairs and talking to W. Krull, trying to discover what was in the envelope Marla had given her, then decided against it. He doubted that she’d be cooperative or unsuspecting. Possibly it was his imagination, but there seemed to have been something vaguely furtive about the meeting in the Holiday Inn lounge and the exchange of the envelope. W. Krull might suspect he’d followed her from the hotel and be a good enough friend to tip off Marla.
Better to wait a while before approaching her.
Mildred Fain said he was a talented guy. He should be able to think up something more convincing than that insurance agent act.
8
Carver had met with attorneys at four o’clock to give a deposition concerning a woman who’d hired him to find her missing teenage daughter, whom he’d found living with her forty-year-old uncle in Orlando. The girl had been fourteen, but she looked and acted like a twelve-year-old. After the daughter’s return to her parents, statutory rape charges had been filed against the uncle. Carver’s deposition would be instrumental in the ongoing plea bargaining process. Despite the prosecutor’s tough talk, Carver figured the uncle’s attorneys would whittle away the sentence so that the man would receive a short jail term and be placed on probation. Carver was thinking about the uncle’s walking when he saw Beth’s white LeBaron convertible pull into the lot and park in front of the office.
She entered the office smiling, wearing a gauzy tan blouse and a flowing darker brown skirt hemmed down around her ankles. Three-piece, square onyx earrings, loose-fitting gold and black bracelets, and a necklace of large black and green stones dangled and clicked and clacked as she walked.
She sat down in front of Carver’s desk, her back rigid and not touching her chair, yet she seemed totally relaxed. Her hair was combed back to a bun and she wore a black headband. He thought she looked particularly regal today. She wore dark red lipstick and had her eyes skillfully made up so that they seemed faintly oriental. Her rigid posture caused her breasts to challenge the thin material of her blouse.
The air conditioner clicked on. Carver didn’t blame it.
“I was in town for an appointment,” she said, “so I thought I’d drop in.”
“I’m glad.”
“Give your deposition?” she asked.
He nodded. “I think the uncle’s going to walk.”
“Should he?”
“No. Where he’ll walk is straight back to that kid, if it isn’t prevented. She doesn’t look old enough to trust with the toaster.”
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“Nothing you can do about it,” Beth said. “It’s up to the court. Maybe you should concentrate on what you can do something about.”
“Marla Cloy?”
“Uh-hm. What have you learned?”
He told her about this morning’s conversation with Mildred Fain. Then about Marla’s meeting W. Krull at the Holiday Inn and handing over the envelope.
“Doesn’t sound so suspicious to me,” Beth said. “Maybe they met on business.”
“I’m wondering what kind,” Carver said.
“You’d like to catch her in a narcotics exchange, wouldn’t you?”
“It would make things simpler. And it’s not so illogical. After all, there’s snow as well as sand in Florida.”
Beth stared at him. “Maybe the meeting was for a payoff-a down payment, anyway-and Marla hired the woman to kill Brant before he makes good on his threat and murders her.”
“I thought of that. This woman wouldn’t strike you as a hired killer.”
“You know better than that, Fred.”
He did.
“Are you going to talk to W. Krull?” Beth asked.
“Tomorrow.”
“What lie are you planning to tell her? That pathetic insurance agent thing?”
“No,” he said. “I’m going to tell her the truth, that I’m investigating the matter of Joel Brant threatening Marla Cloy.”
“Going to say you’re with the police?”
“Of course not,” Carver said. “I’ll let her decide that on her own.”
Beth gazed out the window for a moment, then turned to face him with a somber, oddly pained expression he was seeing for the first time. It transformed her features so that at a glance he might almost have thought he was looking at another woman. She was always doing things like that, revealing new and unexpected facets of herself. Carver had the feeling her capacity to surprise him was infinite; she was a puzzle he would never quite solve. It bothered him when he couldn’t get to the truth and meaning of things he cared about. It also kept him intrigued.
“I told you I had an appointment today,” she said. “It was with a doctor.”
There was something in her voice that scared him. He felt his heart accelerate. His mind whirled and searched for hints that she might be ill, symptoms he should have noticed. He knew he could be blind to such things.
“You’re OK, aren’t you?” he asked.
“I’m not sure. It depends.”
“On what?”
“I’m not sure of that, either.”
“You feel all right?”
“Yes and no.”
“Damn it, Beth!”
He was shocked to see the flesh beneath her eyes dance. A look of wonder and fear crossed her face before she bowed her head and began to sob almost silently.
This was not her. Not her at all.
Using the desk and chair for support, he went to her and lowered himself to kneel on one leg beside her chair, his bad leg extended in front of him. He balanced himself with one hand on the chair while he held her with his free arm.
“Whatever it is,” he said, “don’t panic. These things are hardly ever as serious as they seem at first. We’ll get second and third opinions, find a specialist.”
She stopped sobbing, then she drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, using fresh oxygen to compose herself. She dabbed daintily at her eyes with a tissue, smearing her mascara. She sniffed, and wiped her nose.
“I’ve already got a specialist, Fred. An obstetrician.”
9
Carver sat across from Beth at one of the small, round, white-enameled tables clustered around Poco’s taco stand on Magellan, where he often ate lunch. They’d just left his office and he’d automatically driven her to Poco’s, not remembering until they were already seated and he’d brought the food to the table that she didn’t like to come here, as she hated the food. He was still in something of a daze from hearing her tell him she was pregnant.
A kind of instinct had taken over. He didn’t want to talk to her about the pregnancy until he’d had time to assimilate the news and figure out how he felt about it. The wrong words spoken now could haunt them later.
He watched her looking at him calmly, her eyes still swollen with her tears. The white hulls of pleasure boats moored at the dock bobbed gently and in perfect unison behind her, as if in a subtle dance, the evening sun glancing off their brightwork.
“I’m still trying to digest the news,” he said.
“It should be easier than digesting that taco,” she told him, motioning with her head toward the greasy wrapper in front of him on the table.
“I got you a burrito,” he said.
She glanced down at the contents of the small plastic tray he’d placed between them. “I think I’ll just drink my soda, Fred. You know this isn’t my favorite place. The food tastes like a bad day at cooking class.”
“I forgot you didn’t like it here,” he explained, squeezing a plastic envelope and squirting hot sauce on his taco. Some of it splattered onto his shirt. Oh, hell! He wiped at the stain with a finger and made it worse.
“I’m not hungry anyway,” she said, “Maybe it’s because-”
“An irregular appetite is one of the symptoms,” he interrupted.
She smiled. “I’m reassured I have an expert to consult.” She touched a long, red fingernail to the side of her soda cup but didn’t drink. She began pecking the fingernail against the cup, making a persistent tapping sound. “What are we going to do, Fred?”
“I don’t know. Are you absolutely sure you’re pregnant?”
“The doctor’s sure. At least six weeks. I’ve missed two periods, and the uterus. . well, never mind.” She stopped tapping with her fingernail and laid her hand in her lap. “Believe it. I’m pregnant.”
He didn’t know what to say, so he poked at the taco in front of him as if it might have something to add to the conversation.
Beth touched the back of his hand very lightly. “Do you want me to have this baby?”
He continued staring at the taco. Suddenly he wasn’t hungry either. An infant certainly didn’t figure in his plans. And he was too old to be a father for the third time.
Still, somewhere in the core of his mind or soul, he was pleased by the news. He told himself it was a dangerous reaction, some reflexive thing that happened to help ensure survival of the species. Something out of the ooze. But he really was pleased.
“Fred?”
“My gut instinct is to say yes, have the baby.” He tried to tilt the umbrella sprouting out of the center of the table so it blocked the low angle of the sun. Something was wrong with the aluminum mechanism and the umbrella kept rocking back to its previous position. He reached into his shirt pocket for his sunglasses and put them on, wondering if Beth would think he didn’t want her to read his eyes. “There are problems, of course.”
“Of course,” she said.
“But as of this moment. . yes.” He fought a crazy impulse to leap up and whoop, as he had when Laura had told him about her first pregnancy.
“I’m not sure I’m going to go through with this, Fred.”
He’d somehow known she was going to say it. The prospect of parenthood had been hanging off-kilter over them, like the umbrella. “Is it your decision alone?” he asked.
“I’m not sure. I’m not sure of anything right now. Goddamned hormones or something.”
“You’re not going to cry again, are you?”
“I make no promises.” But she didn’t look as if she was about to cry.
“We talking about an abortion?” he asked.
“Yes.” She looked directly into his eyes, her own dark eyes still with a hint of the pain he’d glimpsed in his office.
He removed his sunglasses and wiped their lenses on his shirt, watching a bus bluster and bully its way through traffic on Magellan until it passed out of sight, leaving behind it a low, dark haze of diesel exhaust that dulled the gleam of sunlight on the lineup of le
ss aggressive vehicles.
“How do you feel about abortion, Fred?”
“In this case, I don’t know. It’s different when it isn’t in the abstract, when it’s you.”
“I always thought it was strictly the woman’s call and that I’d opt out of a pregnancy,” Beth said. “Maybe I still feel that way, but I gotta tell you, it’s weighing on me. And I don’t want to leave you out of it.”
He put his sunglasses back on and smiled. “You want to share the guilt?” He hadn’t meant to say it; he believed in a woman’s fundamental right to control her own reproductive system.
“Dammit, don’t start laying that kind of shit on me, Fred.”
Quickly he said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean. . Jesus, I don’t know!” He bit into his taco savagely and dribbled more sauce on his shirt. Quite a mess. He held the taco in one hand and used the other to pick up his napkin and wipe his shirt as clean as possible. “You’re right,” he said, dropping the taco, “these don’t taste good. Not this evening, anyway.”
“I’ve got to think hard on this, Fred. I don’t know what I’m going to decide. What I have a right to do-or not do. It’s a tough decision either way. I never did believe that bullshit about millions of women having abortions as a casual form of birth control. Now I know it’s not true; nobody could take this lightly.”
“A few people could,” Carver said. “You’re not one of them.”
“Who I am is part of the problem, too.”
“Meaning?”
“The child will be biracial. That carries its own troubles.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he snapped, defending his offspring already.
“Not to you or me, obviously. But it matters to some people, and the child would suffer for it. I’ve seen people caught in that cold, empty zone between the races. And it ripples through generations. I’ve seen it cause agony and even death.”