by John Lutz
Lightning
John Lutz
FOR BOB AND MARTHAYN
Thanks for livening up
the old home turf
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A Biography of John Lutz
The winds grow high;
Impending tempests charge the sky;
The lightning flies, the thunder roars; and big waves lash the frightened shores.
—PRIOR, THE LADY’S LOOKING GLASS
1
BETH TOLD HIM NOT to be so gentle. Which surprised Carver as he made love to her in the beach cottage with the surf whispering outside in the night.
It was cool for a summer evening, and a soft breeze was pressing through the screened window along with bright moonlight. Laura, Carver’s former wife and the mother of his children, had during the early months of both of her pregnancies reassured him that he wasn’t going to injure her or the fetus during sex. In passion she’d urged him not to be tentative; she was pregnant, not breakable. Still, Carver had been careful.
Beth was careful, too.
She’d been pregnant once before and it hadn’t turned out well. The baby had been stillborn after strangling on the umbilical cord.
Since her pregnancy their lovemaking had been unlike its usual desperate pleasure driven by lust as well as love. Love had become ascendant.
Carver felt her long body become rigid and arc beneath him. Her stomach muscles tensed and rippled, and he became still for a moment. Then, propped on knees and elbows so his weight wasn’t bearing down so heavily, his bad leg slightly to the side, he resumed thrusting into her. Her moans merged with the sighs of the surf and were like the low keening of powerful breakers turning deep water as they rolled toward shore.
Then they were both still. A single bead of perspiration dropped from the point of his chin and landed near her left ear, then tracked glistening along her neck in the moonlight before disappearing in shadow.
He kissed her lips as he withdrew from her. For a while he lay beside her, one of her long dark legs flung sideways across his, and listened to the sounds of their breathing even out. The scent of their sex still lingered, but the ocean breeze was fast chasing it from the room. The currents of cool air felt good as they played over his perspiring chest and stomach.
He was going to be a father again. He hardly ever saw his daughter Ann, who lived with Laura and her third husband in Saint Louis. And Chip, his son, had been a murder victim four years ago here in Florida, burned to death by another doomed son whom Carver eventually had come to pity. During that time he’d almost made the mistake of trying to reunite with Laura. Moth to flame.
“What are you thinking, lying over there so quietly?” Beth asked beside him.
That doomed sons keep me in business. “About marriage,” he said.
She stirred suddenly and her leg dragged off of him. “Wouldn’t be a good idea,” she said.
She’d misunderstood. He hadn’t been suggesting marriage, thinking about them. But he found himself probing, defending the idea. “Why wouldn’t it?”
“Didn’t work out so well for either of us last time.”
“You were married to a drug lord,” he reminded her. She didn’t like to talk, or even think about, her years with the late Roberto Gomez, who’d blamed her for the death of their stillborn child and tried to kill her in retaliation,
“But you weren’t married to someone who was in that kind of life, Fred. And your marriage still failed.”
She could play mean, all right. Carver had struck a nerve and should have backed off. But he didn’t. Carver the moth.
“Marriage might be convenient, if nothing else,” he said. “We’re going to have a child, you and I, and the legalities ought to be clear.”
She raised her head and stared over at him, the moonlight highlighting her beautiful dark features, prominent cheekbones. She had the haughty air of an African princess, out of time and place, but royalty nonetheless. “This is going to be a racially mixed child, Fred. What problems there’ll be will have nothing to do with legal formalities. You want to get all legal, we can have an attorney draw up a prenuptial agreement.”
“You only have a prenuptial agreement if you’re planning on getting married,” he pointed out.
She let her head drop back on the pillow and laughed. “A few weeks ago you were willing to agree to my having an abortion,” she said. “Now you’re talking marriage. What’s next, a barbecue pit and a minivan with a flip-out infant seat?”
Carver didn’t think those infant seats were a bad idea. “I always wanted this baby,” he said. “You were the one considering an abortion. I would have gone along with it, not held it against you. It was your decision to make. That’s how I felt and still feel. There was never any doubt about that.”
She rolled over to face him, propped up on one elbow. She was smiling. “We arguing, Fred?”
He was quiet for a moment. “It does sound that way.”
“You gonna press me to get married?”
“No.” He hadn’t really thought hard about it, somehow knowing she wouldn’t consider it.
“I decided not to have an abortion,” she said. Her long forefinger with its bright red nail touched his lower lip. “Isn’t that what you wanted?” The nail was sharp and might have cut his lip if she hadn’t quickly withdrawn it.
“Is it what you wanted?”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s why I made the decision. I want this baby, Fred. Want it in the worst way, when I’m not sick in the morning or I don’t wake up with second thoughts.”
I never have any second thoughts.
But he didn’t say what he was thinking. He figured he’d better lay off talking about marriage. At least until he’d considered it some more. Maybe it wasn’t such an unacceptable idea. They weren’t a couple of kids shacking up in the seventies. He was in his mid-forties. She was thirty-six. Sometimes he was bothered by the idea of growing older. She never seemed to think about it. She was a survivor; maybe she assumed she could somehow survive old age, somehow manage to skip over the unpleasant and inconvenient business of death.
“You thirsty?” he asked.
“No. What I am is tired, and I’d better get some sleep. I’ve got an appointment tomorrow morning to interview John York.”
“Isn’t he the guy who wants to make handguns and automatic weapons illegal in Florida for anyone but police?”
“Yeah. Burrow wants to do a feature on him.” Burrow was the small and aggressive newspaper Beth wrote for. It specialized in going after stories that for one reason or another the mainstream press shied away from covering. Being a giveaway paper, it couldn’t afford to pay its journalists much, so for Beth her job was mostly a labor of love, an outlet for her own outrage and resentment at the abuses of power.
John York had built a surprisingly large organization that was becoming a pest in the state legislature, lobbying for a change in Florida’s lenient gun control laws. Carver wondered where Beth st
ood on the issue. She was familiar with guns and he’d seen her use one without hesitation. Even with enthusiasm.
He decided to avoid the subject. Why start another argument? And as a private investigator with a class G license, he’d continue to be able to carry a gun if he needed one. Any change in the law wouldn’t affect him, except perhaps to make his world a little safer and more predictable.
He sat up, swiveled around, and sat on the edge of the mattress. “I’m going to get something to drink,” he said.
She didn’t answer as he reached for his cane, levered himself to his feet, and limped barefoot into the cottage’s kitchen area. He opened the refrigerator, found a can of Budweiser hiding behind a plastic container of lettuce, and opened it. Some of the foam fizzed coolly over his hand, and a little of it dripped onto his bare right foot.
He stood for a minute or two leaning on the sink, taking pulls on the beer can and looking out at the immense blackness of the moonlit ocean beyond the wide window with its hanging potted plants. In the quiet night, the surf sounded closer than it was, rushing and slapping against the beach.
Carver returned to stand next to the bed, holding the Budweiser can out for Beth. “Sure you don’t want a drink?”
“I’m sure.”
He leaned his cane against the wall and lay down beside her. Stretched out on his back, his head propped on his wadded pillow still damp with sweat, he sipped the cold beer and listened to the ocean.
“We happy, Fred?” Beth asked drowsily beside him.
“We’re happy.”
2
IN THE MORNING, Carver went for his daily therapeutic swim in the ocean. It always made him feel better to swim far out from shore, kicking from the hip with both legs and stroking with his lean but powerful upper body. He was at no disadvantage in the sea, and not at as much of a disadvantage on land as some people might think. Using a cane, along with regular exercise, forged a strong torso and arms and a conditioned quickness. His grip was iron, and his walnut cane could become a lethal weapon in an instant.
He floated on his back for a while, looking in at the few early swimmers and sunbathers on the public beach beyond the crescent of land where the cottage sat. Near a corner of the cottage his ancient Olds convertible was parked beside Beth’s newer, white LeBaron convertible. The canvas top on his car was up, the LeBaron’s top was lowered. The grouping of three palm trees that had shaded her car when she parked it there yesterday afternoon were now casting their shadows in another direction. The LeBaron’s interior would already be hot to the touch.
He saw Beth walk out onto the cottage’s plank porch, raising her hand to her forehead to shield her eyes from the morning sun as she gazed in his direction. He lifted an arm and waved to her.
As he rolled over and began swimming toward shore, he caught a glimpse of her turning and going back inside. Then he scanned the beach, found his cane jutting from the sand as a marker, and stroked toward it. He swam hard in an Australian crawl, breathing rhythmically as he swiveled his head, keeping up a steady kick with his legs and reaching far out with his cupped hands with each powerful stroke. He’d taken it easy this morning, with too much floating on the gentle swells and luxuriating in the sun, and he wanted to extend himself, so he was breathing hard when he reached shore.
Carver entered the cabin still dripping with water, his towel slung over his shoulders like a cape. His breath was still a little ragged from his sprint to shore. He tracked sand on the plank floor as he made his way into the bathroom, removed his trunks, and showered.
After drying himself with a clean, rough terry cloth towel, he wiped the fog from the center of the medicine cabinet mirror and regarded his tanned features—catlike blue eyes tilted slightly upward at the corners, a bald pate, and a thick fringe of curly gray hair around his ears and growing too far down on the back of his neck. He ran his fingertips over his chin. Paperwork awaited him in his office on Magellan Avenue in nearby Del Moray. Only paperwork, no clients. Nobody to impress. Why not take advantage of the silver lining? He decided to skip shaving this morning.
Five minutes later, wearing gray slacks, black loafers he didn’t have to lace, and a white polo shirt, he poured himself a cup of coffee from the Braun brewer and sat on a stool across the breakfast counter from Beth.
She was almost finished with a plate of eggs, dry toast, and some asparagus spears left over from dinner last night.
Pregnancy.
“I left the eggs out for you,” she said. “If you don’t use them, put them back in the fridge.”
He sipped some of the strong black coffee, figuring he’d catch the news on TV before having breakfast. “I thought you had an interview to do this morning.”
“I do,” Beth said around a bite of egg. “At nine-thirty. I’ve gotta get out of here within a few minutes.”
“Better take a towel to sit on,” he told her. “You left your car’s top down.”
She smiled at him in a way he recognized. Oh-oh.
“It isn’t running right,” she said, “and I didn’t want to waste battery power raising or lowering the top. The engine’s missing like I might have bought some cut-rate gas that has water in it. Mind if I borrow your car for the interview?”
“I need to get into the office,” he said, “catch up on paperwork, pay some bills, see if the electric company’s turned off the power.”
She thought for a moment, chewing toast. “How about if you follow me into Del Moray, make sure I make it to the interview? Then if the LeBaron quits running I can call you on the cellular and you can pick me up.” She used the edge of her fork to cut an asparagus spear in half. “That is, if it starts in the first place.”
“I’ll follow you,” Carver said, “and after the interview phone me and we’ll take your car to a repair shop where they can drain the tank, if water in the gas is the problem.” He didn’t want her stranded somewhere in the summer heat. After all, she was pregnant. “If you got a bad tank of gas, you shouldn’t be driving around much anyway. Rough on the engine.”
She agreed to that plan, then sprinkled pepper on and consumed the asparagus spear. She glanced at her watch and frowned. Maybe she was going to eat it next.
Carver looked wistfully at the carton of eggs on the counter. Now that he knew breakfast would have to be delayed, he was hungry.
He took a throat-scalding gulp of coffee, then got down off his stool and put the eggs in the refrigerator. The second part of his plan would be to stop at Poco’s taco stand on Magellan for a takeout Mexican breakfast after making sure Beth got safely to her interview.
The day could be starting better.
3
CARVER FOLLOWED THE LEBARON down A1A, which jogged east just outside of Del Moray and for a few miles became Magellan Avenue. It was easy to keep the LeBaron, which had started easily and seemed to be running okay, in sight. Despite its advanced age, the Olds, with its powerful V-8 engine, was faster than the newer convertible, and Beth was wearing a very visible bright yellow headband to keep her hair neat in the swirl of wind.
They passed the strip mall on Magellan where Carver’s office was located next to Golden World Insurance, drove south for a while, then turned west on Flamingo. South again on de Leon Boulevard.
De Leon was a wide street with a grassy median lined with palm trees whose trunks were painted white to a height of about five feet. There were mostly office buildings and shops on both sides of the street, then farther west de Leon narrowed and the neighborhood became residential. In the extreme west end of Del Moray, it ran through a poor, mostly Hispanic neighborhood, then continued west through orange grove country and ended near Interstate 101. John York, the subject of Beth’s interview, lived outside Del Moray, so they still had a long drive ahead of them. Carver didn’t mind. He had the top up on the Olds, but all of the windows were cranked down and the morning breeze bounced and buffeted through the car’s interior. The vibration of the rumbling, prehistoric engine ran from the accelerator pedal and ste
ering wheel through his entire body. Shadows were still soft and the digital sign on the bank they were passing indicated that the temperature hadn’t yet touched eighty, He felt good, following Beth’s jaunty little convertible and watching errant strands of dark hair escape from beneath her headband and whip in the wind, loving her and contemplating their future with more pleasure than uncertainty. He didn’t mind the drive at all.
Brake lights flared on the LeBaron, and it slowed and veered toward the curb.
At first Carver assumed Beth was having trouble with the car. Then, ahead of them, just before the street began to narrow, he saw a crowd of people on the wide median directly across from a low brick building.
Beth let the LeBaron coast forward and parked half a block from the building. Carver saw now that the crowd was made up of demonstrators, many of them carrying placards. He couldn’t make out what the crudely printed signs said as he braked the Olds to a halt behind Beth’s car. The building they were picketing was, as far as he could determine, without lettering or a sign to indicate what went on inside.
Beth climbed out of her car and walked back toward Carver. He saw that she was wearing her sunglasses with the large round lenses. She was such a tall and graceful woman that her pregnancy, in its tenth week, was barely noticeable beneath the green blouse she wore loosely over tan slacks.
The sun was reflected in both lenses of her glasses as she approached the car, then leaned over to speak to Carver through his rolled down window.
“I’ve been meaning to phone this place and cancel my appointment,” she said. “Since we’re here, I think I’ll go in and cancel it in person.”
“This place is what?” Carver asked. But he had a pretty good idea. And he knew why Beth had stopped even though she was pressed for time.
“It’s Women’s Light,” she said. “An abortion clinic.”
Which explained the lack of a highly visible sign, Carver thought. “It would be easier to phone later from the cottage,” he said.