by John Lutz
“I’ll keep following him. If anyone other than Norton actually did the bombing, I think it’s Nate Posey. He’s the only one we’ve got with a motive we know about.”
“What about Martin Freel and Operation Alive?”
“They’ve got a motive to blow up anything and everything they want,” Beth said. “All they have to do is find the appropriate verse in the Bible, But they usually confine their activities to picketing and harassing. Slashed tires and midnight phone threats are more their speed. I don’t rule them out, but Posey is my favorite.”
“Maybe you should take Al with you tomorrow,” Carver suggested, wishing Anderson hadn’t been reassigned.
“I don’t need him.”
“He needs you. And if I’m gone all day too, there’s nobody to let him in and—more importantly—out.”
Beth looked down at Al. Al looked up at Beth. His vote was in his eyes.
“Majority rules,” Beth said, laughing and stroking Al’s scruffy neck. “Al goes.”
For good would be nice, Carver thought, but he knew better than to say it.
31
THE NEXT MORNING, Carver finished his swim in the ocean and limped up the beach toward the cottage, his white beach towel slung over his shoulders like a cape, leaning forward with each step as his cane sank into the warm sand. His swim had invigorated him and he felt wonderful. The sun was warm on his shoulders, and even the sand that had worked into his rubber thongs felt good between his toes.
His mood suddenly soured when he noticed the drab brown Plymouth parked near the cottage. It was the unmarked Del Moray police car McGregor usually drove.
On the porch, Carver tapped his cane against the edges of his thongs to knock sand from them, then opened the door and went inside.
The interior of the cottage felt chilly and the light was dim after the brilliance of the morning outside. It seemed even dimmer because of the looming presence of McGregor slouched on one of the stools at the breakfast bar, his long body twisted around in its baggy brown suit so he could look at Carver as he came through the door. Beth was on the kitchen side of the counter, standing tensely with her back rigid, using both hands to sip from a cup of coffee, as if she needed a prop to give her something to do so she wouldn’t appear agitated. McGregor had a cup of coffee on the counter, near his right elbow.
“I’m always amazed when you go out to swim and make it back,” McGregor said with his lewd grin. “You’d think a shark’d pick off a gimp like you thrashing around in the water.”
“I see you’re as cheerful and tactful as usual in the morning,” Carver said, slipping his feet from the still-gritty thongs and drying himself some more with the towel so he wouldn’t trail water. He wadded the towel, tossed it into the canvas director’s chair by the door that didn’t mind getting wet, and looked at Beth. “Is he trying to bother you?” He pointed at McGregor with his cane while steadying himself with a hand on the chair.
Beth shrugged. “Actually I think he was waiting for you for someone to really bother.”
There was a whining and scratching sound at the door, then a single demanding bark.
“That’s Al,” Beth said to Carver.
He turned around and opened the door. Al came in. He glanced at Carver then walked past him, stepping on Carver’s bare foot and causing considerable pain. Then he trotted over to McGregor, sniffed one of his boat-size brown wingtips, and began wagging his tail. McGregor smiled and absently patted the top of Al’s head, something Al wouldn’t ordinarily like. People were always patting dogs on the head, which wasn’t much to them but was probably like a cranial earthquake to the dog. But Al continued wagging his tail, then wagged everything from the midpoint of his body back.
“This is a nice mutt,” McGregor said. “Cute, too. He looks like he’s got eyebrows.” He stopped patting and straightened up. Al yawned, licked McGregor’s dangling hand, then stretched out on the floor at his feet. “He’s got good instincts.”
“Al and I are going to have a talk,” Beth said.
McGregor fixed a tiny, cruel blue eye on Carver. “Speaking of talking, I hear that’s what you’ve been doing, fuckhead, wandering around talking to people about the Women’s Light Clinic bombing.”
“I’m a detective,” Carver reminded him. “That’s one of the ways I detect.”
“Which brings us to why I’m here. It’s time for you to bring me up to date on whatever it is you’ve detected so I can see if it dovetails with what we in the department have learned. We detect also. You remember, don’t you, I’m with the police?”
“You’re only sort of with the police,” Carver said, walking over to the sofa to sit on its arm. “I’ve always seen you as working almost exclusively for yourself.”
“Well, I’m like you, then. An independent businessman only kind of employed.” He grinned fiercely. “And empowered. Something you should take into account. Time’s gonna come when this case is in the past and the FBI has gone back to fucking Washington where it belongs, then it’s gonna be you and me alone without the feebs to watch over you. And believe me, once they’re done here, they won’t give a fuck if I make sure you get life imprisonment for a broken taillight.”
Al raised his head and looked up at McGregor with seeming approval, then dropped his jaw back to rest on his paws.
“Now,” McGregor went on, “what do you know that I should know? Keeping in mind that anything you neglect to mention will almost surely come back to haunt you.”
Beth went to the brewer on the sink counter and refilled her cup with coffee, then stayed back where she was. Fading away, Carver figured, so McGregor wouldn’t ask her what she knew. That was sensible. McGregor was human waste, but he did have authority and would gladly misuse it.
Carver had played this game before with McGregor and had become good at it. He leaned forward, centering his weight over his cane, and told McGregor only what he had to in order to stay legal, but not enough for McGregor to find terribly useful.
When Carver was finished talking, McGregor leaned back against the counter and rubbed his jutting chin with long fingers. The crescents of dirt beneath his nails were vividly dark against his pale skin. Carver wondered if he’d been changing the oil in his hair.
“I didn’t know about the Benedict bitch leaving hubby,” McGregor said, “but I’m not surprised. The man spends most of his time looking at other women’s private parts.”
“I doubt that was the reason,” Beth said, biting off the words. Carver hoped she could control her temper.
“Then why’d she go?” McGregor asked Carver, as if genuinely befuddled. “She get the hots for somebody richer or better looking? Some guy better hung?”
“Operation Alive was demonstrating outside her house when I was there the day she left. The pressure they and people like them put on her and her husband finally got to her, made her break and run.”
“Hmm. Is that what she told you?”
“More or less.”
“My guess is it was just an excuse. Time for the doctor’s wife to cash in, drag hubby off the golf course and into court, come away with a nice settlement, the house and the Mercedes. One thing I know, Carver, it’s women.”
Beth moved forward a step, actually drawing her hand back to fling hot coffee at McGregor. Carver gave her a warning look and she seemed to relax. But only slightly.
“Whatever her reasons,” Carver said, “she left him.”
“So how’s Benedict taking it?”
“He doesn’t like it.”
“He’ll get over it. Doctor making all that loot, some other conniving cunt’ll put the spell on him, maybe maneuver him into marriage, and he’ll probably go through the same financial wringing-out process. That’s how women see guys like Benedict, kinda the way Indians used to look at buffalo, a source for everything they need in life. Only they don’t have to shoot them like buffalo, all they gotta do is marry them and then be set for life whether they stay or go.”
Beth couldn’
t remain silent. “Anybody who’d think that has buffalo chips for brains!”
McGregor didn’t bother to turn and look at her, only grinned and probed between his front teeth with the pink tip of his tongue, gratified by her anger, not knowing how close he’d come with the hot coffee.
“If you’re finished with your prairie philosophy,” Carver said, “we were about to have breakfast.”
“Oh? You’re inviting me to join you?”
“Inviting you to leave.”
McGregor got off his stool and stretched his long body. “Okay, I already had breakfast. Couple of guys like you.” He ambled toward the door with his lanky, disjointed stride. Then he turned. “Another interesting thing is Adelle Grimm, the late doctor’s grieving widow. Turns out she’s pregnant.”
Carver didn’t know what to make of that.
Beth said, “What’s she going to do?”
“Do?” McGregor looked puzzled. “Oh, you mean is she going to go ahead and have the kid? She’s—how’d she put it?—agonizing over it. Those were her exact words. Now that the doc’s dead, maybe she doesn’t want this kid or can’t afford it, or figures it’ll cramp her style in looking for another source of cash with a dick. So she’s agonizing like crazy, poor thing.” He laughed. “It’s ironic, ain’t it? Hubby short-circuits rugrats by the dozen every day, then gets killed by some dumb fuck with nothing better to think about or do with his time. Then it turns out the late doc’s own widow’s got one in the oven.” He waved a long arm. “Life’s just fucking grand!”
After McGregor had gone, Carver went to the door and opened it.
He let it stand open for a while. Clearing the air.
32
IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON when Desoto called Carver’s office. Seated at his desk, Carver had finished billing for the second time a client whose son had joined a paramilitary unit training in the Everglades. Carver had managed to talk the boy into coming home by persuading him that communism was dead or dying and his own government wasn’t plotting against him, thus taking away the reason and dignity of training in blackface for combat among the mangroves and making it a child’s game. So persuasive had Carver been that within days after returning home, the boy had joined the U.S. Marines. Now the boy’s parents, Carver’s clients, were refusing to pay him, on the grounds that Carver hadn’t recovered their son for them but had merely effected a transfer from one military unit to another. Even the uniforms were similar. Carver had included a threatening letter with their latest itemized bill, but he, and probably they, knew his threats were futile, what with the expense of actually following up with legal action. Official red tape! Sometimes Carver thought it was a government plot against him.
“You’ve come up with a real pip of a bad guy, amigo,” Desoto said as Carver sat back in his desk chair, pressing the cool plastic receiver to his ear. He gazed out the window at the traffic on Magellan baking and glinting in the tropical glare as it waited in the shimmering heat of exhaust fumes for the traffic light at the corner to change. “This photo you sent me was all I needed to get a quick trace. Your thug is one Ezekiel Masterson. He’s a former leg breaker for the union.”
Carver could hear Spanish guitar music faintly in the background, from the Sony portable stereo in Desoto’s office. “Which union?”
“Whichever needed him at the time. Ezekiel seems to be more of a tough guy for hire than a dedicated union man—unless there’s a skull smashers union. Thirty-five years old, blond and blue, 230 pounds, he’s from Miami originally, got a sheet there featuring three assaults and one attempted murder. Only one conviction, but it was for the attempted murder. Did six years and found religion somewhere in his cell or the weight-lifting room before he was paroled two years ago. That’s when he hooked up with Reverend Martin Freel and Operation Alive.”
“Hmm, you think he’s really found religion?”
“No, I think he’s found a new employer.”
“Norton’s a religious man, even though he killed. Or allegedly killed and is at least willing to do so, judging by what his wife says. She thinks it’s admirable to let blood for the Lord, too. Ezekiel Masterson might be the same kind of fanatic. He did spout scripture while he was killing Lapella.”
“No, what you just described is not my idea of religion.”
“If Ezekiel’s connected with Operation Alive, maybe Freel would go so far as to kill, and Norton was acting on the reverend’s orders. And Ezekiel was acting on Freel’s orders when he beat up and killed Lapella at the hospital in front of Beth.”
“I think it’s likely,” Desoto said. “But it’ll be impossible to get anything on Freel. He was here in Orlando when the deaths occurred in Del Moray.”
“Do you think they’re set-up alibis?”
“I don’t know. We’re going to look into them more closely and see if Freel can provide a lead so we can find Masterson. There’s a murder warrant out for Masterson now, for Lapella’s death. I’ve notified the FBI and the Del Moray police. He’s a cop killer, and we want him in the worst way.”
“He won’t be easy to find. Lapella’s death was in the news, and he knows he’s good for a murder charge. He’s got to be running hard.”
“Whichever direction he’s running, it’s toward a cop.”
Carver knew what Desoto meant. The fraternity of police made justice top priority when one of their own was murdered. And efforts weren’t restricted only to the police force to which the victim belonged. When a cop was killed, all police departments became one.
“Something else about Masterson,” Desoto said. “About a year ago, he wrote a letter to the Del Moray Gazette-Dispatch editorial page criticizing Dr. Harold Grimm. It contained nothing technically libelous or otherwise illegal, which is why he signed his name so the paper’d print his letter. It was part of a letter-writing campaign to discredit Grimm and the Women’s Light Clinic. When I talked to Wicker this morning, he said a similar letter was in Grimm’s mail postmarked last month, this one unsigned.”
Carver looked away from the bright light outside and thought about that one. “Maybe Norton didn’t plant the bomb. Maybe Masterson’s good for that one, too.”
“We’ll certainly ask him about it,” Desoto said, “and in the harshest possible way.”
“If you find him.”
“When we find him. And until then, you’d be smart to stay out of that particular hunt, try not to meet this guy again. Masterson might have found his version of religion, but the word is that he’s psychotic and an extremely volatile combination of steroids and Christian zeal. Probably sees himself as King David slaying the heretics.”
Carver was impressed by Desoto’s biblical knowledge. He knew Desoto was Catholic but couldn’t remember him ever going to church. On the other hand, Carver, an occasional Protestant, wouldn’t have seen him there.
“You need to exercise great care, my friend.”
“I will,” Carver said, “but with Lapella dying, Masterson’s probably fled the state.”
Desoto laughed softly, a sound as tragic as the music seeping softly from the Sony behind his desk.
“He won’t run that far, amigo. Remember, he knows he’s right.”
After hanging up on Desoto, Carver finished his paperwork, then drove by the post office and dropped the mail in an outside box for early pickup. He could feel heat emanating from the metal mailbox and wondered if glue would melt and the flaps on his envelopes would come unsealed. Nothing to be done about it now.
He drove up the coast highway toward the cottage, the top down on the Olds, hearing the sighing of the ocean on his right even over the rush of wind and the rumble of the dinosaur-ancient V-8. A pelican kept pace with him for a while, flapping along parallel to the coast and only about a hundred feet away from the car and fifty feet above the ground. It seemed to glance at Carver from its round, inhuman eye. Then the bulky yet graceful bird veered away toward to ocean, looking for fish flashing silver just beneath the sea’s surface so it could dive and catch one
for its supper. Everyone was trying to catch something for one reason or another. There were food chains and then there were food chains.
Beth wasn’t at the cottage. Neither was Al. Beth had left a note saying she was trailing Nate Posey again. Al hadn’t left a note, but Carver assumed he was with Beth. Carver was pleased about that. It did seem to him that Al should do something to earn his keep and make the cost of Bow-Wow-WOW!, marinated in beef broth, money well spent.
He sat out on the porch and watched the ocean for a while, trying not to think about Beth and Al and anything happening while she was watching Posey. He was sure Posey was a dead-end suspect despite the life insurance policy on his late fiancée. He’d met him, talked to him, and seen dark and real grief in his eyes, heard it in his voice. Beth was acting only on the dry facts of the case. She hadn’t had the opportunity to talk with Posey and feel the force of his despair.
After awhile Carver realized that the feeling in the pit of his stomach was hunger as well as worry. He went inside and put a frozen sirloin steak dinner into the microwave. The carton said the dinner was low in saturated fat and contained only 250 calories. Carver didn’t see how that was possible, but he wanted to believe.
When he was finished eating, he understood how it was possible to have steak with a minimum of fat and calories; the key was in eliminating taste.
Back on the porch, his stiff leg propped up on the wooden rail, he watched dusk close in and slowly smoked a Swisher Sweet cigar. His mind gave him no rest. Now he couldn’t help thinking about Ezekiel Masterson, about the letters sent to the Gazette-Dispatch and to Dr. Harold Grimm.
Then he looked at his wristwatch, barely visible in the gloom. He wanted to talk to Grimm’s widow Adelle, and it might be a good time to catch her at home. He doubted that she was eating dinner out these days, other than occasionally buying fast food somewhere and then returning to her house. Grieving widows tended to stay close to home, a tangible piece of their less troubled past.
He scribbled a note for Beth and left it next to the one she’d left him, then got in the Olds and raised the top before driving back into Del Moray.