Torch

by John Lutz

  “Another shooting.” Carver told him about the encounter with the Oriental man and asked if Desoto had any idea as to the assailant’s identity.

  “I might have,” he said. He asked Carver to wait, then got up and left the office. Carver knew he wasn’t going far; he’d left his cream-colored suit coat draped neatly on its hanger.

  Carver sat patiently without moving. The portable Sony on the windowsill was silent, and sounds from outside filtered into the office. People arguing, joking, laughing. Occasional footsteps in the hall outside. “I mean it,” a woman said loudly somewhere outside the office. “It’s true. I really mean it.” Trying hard to be believed.

  Ten minutes later Desoto returned with a mug book. His place had been marked by some fan-fold computer paper inserted between the pages. He laid the book on the desk where Carver could see it easily from where he sat, then opened it, withdrawing the computer printout and pointing to full-face and profile photographs of Carver’s Oriental attacker.

  The man’s name was Beni Ho, and the photos were three years old, from when Ho had done brief prison time on an assault charge. His height was listed as five feet even, his weight 119.

  “Him,” Carver said. He tapped the photo with his forefinger.

  Desoto leaned over Carver’s shoulder. “You’re sure this man did what you describe?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “He isn’t very big, amigo.”

  “Well, he’s wiry.”

  Desoto handed the printout to Carver. Beni Ho had a long record of assaults and had done two prison stretches.

  “There’s no need for you to be ashamed,” Desoto said. “This is a dangerous man, as several police departments would tell you.”

  Carver didn’t recall saying he was ashamed of anything.

  “Ho never uses a weapon,” Desoto said. “That and his diminutive size have impressed jurors and prevented him from taking up more or less permanent residence behind the walls. But he doesn’t need a weapon, apparently; he’s said to possess every color martial arts belt and even some suspenders. He’s injured several men severely, and rumor has it he’s killed more than one. He jumped parole in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, six months ago. The Baton Rouge police say he’s half Japanese, half Hawaiian, and all dynamite. An extremely lethal little package.”

  “What about Gretch?” Carver asked. “Anything else on him?”

  “No. Gretch, from his record and what you’ve told me, isn’t in Beni Ho’s league.” Desoto went back behind his desk. He switched on the Sony portable and tinkered with the dials but got only static. Apparently his favorite Spanish station was temporarily off the air. He turned off the radio and sat down, looking disconsolate. The beautiful, melancholy music was an important part of his days and his perspective.

  “Maybe lightning struck the station’s tower,” Carver said.

  “It hasn’t rained in a week. Which of Beni Ho’s legs did you shoot?”

  “His right.” Carver wondered what were the odds of a five-foot Oriental man checking into a hospital shot in the left leg and causing confusion.

  “I’ll run the routine check of medical clinics and hospitals,” Desoto said, “and phone you if Ho seeks treatment. But from what you said, and what we know about him, he might be able to tough it out without hospitalization. He’s a psychopath, and they sometimes have amazingly high pain thresholds.”

  “He was walking,” Carver said, “when most men would have stayed on the ground.”

  Desoto smiled. “You admire him, hey?”

  “The way I admired Hurricane Andrew.” Carver moved the tip of his cane in a tight circular pattern on the floor. “What more do you have on Mark Winship’s death?”

  Desoto raised a dark eyebrow in puzzlement. “He’s dead—what more is there? It was a suicide.”

  “Are you completely convinced? I think there are unanswered questions.”

  “They often are. People who commit suicide are usually more interested in getting out of this world than in any questions they might leave behind.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.”

  “But you’re not suicidal. Not right now, anyway.”

  “I understand all the evidence points to suicide, but there’s no way to completely rule out murder.”

  “True. But there’s not nearly enough there to prompt an official homicide investigation.” Desoto rubbed his chin with his thumb. “You really think Mark Winship was murdered?”

  “I think it’s possible.”

  “It feels like suicide. I wouldn’t question it. I’m surprised you would.”

  “I didn’t at first. But now I think there’s a chance he was shot by someone else.”

  “A very slim chance, amigo. But no doubt enough of one for you to take for a ride. Who do you like as his killer?”

  “What about Beni Ho?”

  “He would have used his hands, then pushed Winship off a bridge or out a window to make it look like suicide. He’s not a gun kind of guy. It’s against his religion. Makes him feel less than a man. Machismo, face, whatever you want to call it—it’s more important than life itself to a martial arts fanatic like Ho.” Desoto talked as if, on a certain level, he understood and approved.

  “What about Carl Gretch?”

  “I couldn’t rule him out. All we really know about him is that he doesn’t like you. But it takes more than that to figure a man with a hole in his head and a gun in his hand was murdered.”

  “I’ve seen Maggie Rourke, the woman Mark Winship was involved with, and not many men would voluntarily leave her for the state of being dead. Not many men would leave her to step outside for a minute to pick up the paper. She’s lovely and then some, the sort of woman whose beauty dominates her life and the lives of others.”

  “And that’s what makes you suspect he was murdered? Because it strikes you as odd that he’d kill himself and leave a woman as beautiful as his lover?”

  “Not entirely,” Carver said. “It strikes me as odd that Maggie Rourke assumes he would.”

  Desoto cocked his head to the side and looked pensive.

  Carver smiled. “I thought that was something you’d understand.”

  “I do,” Desoto said, absently caressing a sleeve of his soft white oxford shirt, “but that doesn’t change the evidence.”

  14

  CARVER DROVE TO Gretch’s apartment to see if Beth was still there. He found her parked in her white LeBaron convertible half a block down from the building. Her head moved slightly as she checked his approach in the rearview mirror.

  He parked the Olds behind her car, climbed out, and limped to the LeBaron. Invisible mosquitoes droned around him in the dusk, and he swatted one away from his eyes. Swatted at the faint, lilting buzzing, anyway.

  The LeBaron’s white canvas top was raised but the windows were rolled down. Despite the heat, Beth looked cool. She was seated motionless and unbothered; mosquitoes knew trouble when they saw it and stayed well clear of her.

  She was reading something. Carver put his weight over his cane and leaned down to peer into the car.

  She was studying a glossy mail-order catalog. Stacked next to her on the seat were more catalogs. He recognized them as the catalogs from the closet floor in Gretch’s apartment.

  “I already looked at those,” he said. “There’s nothing unusual about them. If they meant anything, Gretch wouldn’t have left them behind.”

  “That’s what Oliver North thought when he punched the delete button on his computer.” Beth had this thing about Iran-Contra. She’d done a series of “Ends Don’t Justify Means” articles for Burrow. Carver had seldom seen her work so hard on anything.

  “Did Hodgkins let you into the apartment?” he asked.

  “I never saw any Hodgkins. I let myself in without benefit of a key. Cheap-ass apartment locks. If I was a tenant there and got robbed, I’d sue.”

  Carver didn’t bother pointing out the illegality of what she’d done. Or that ends didn’t justify means, which
he was sure would be the case in this instance. The catalogs were worthless, some of them dating back over a year.

  “You’re right about there being nothing in these,” she said. “But what’s not in them might turn out to be interesting.”

  “Nothing’s been ordered from any of them,” Carver told her. “The oldest ones were on the bottom of the stack. Gretch probably got them in the mail and put them in the closet out of the way in case he decided to order something later, then when the new catalogs came he did the same thing. Maybe he threw them away every couple of years. Lots of people treat catalogs that way. This is the age of mail-order. Send away for anything in any catalog, and a week later they all have your name and address on gummed labels.”

  He noticed then that she had a sheet of paper in her lap. There were columns of numbers on it. As he watched, she added another number and tossed the catalog she’d been reading on the floor on the passenger side with half a dozen others. For After Eight was lettered on its glossy cover, which featured a foppish-looking young guy and girl in what looked like Spandex tuxedos. They were grinning at each other as if just last night they’d discovered sex. Carver ignored the girl’s figure and leaned closer and squinted at the columns of figures on the paper in Beth’s lap.

  “These are page numbers,” Beth said. “Or, more precisely, the numbers of the pages that have been torn out of these catalogs. I’m going to get copies of the current catalogs and see what was on those pages.”

  “Maybe Gretch has a crush on one of the models and he’s using the pages for pinups.”

  “Some of the pages are missing from men’s clothing catalogs, or the menswear section of general catalogs.”

  “Still possible,” Carver said. “It’s unlikely, though, considering his relationship with Donna Winship. But Gretch wouldn’t be the first bisexual gigolo.”

  Beth looked directly at him. She wasn’t smiling.

  “Okay,” Carver said, “I won’t deny it. You latched onto something I overlooked.”

  Now she smiled.

  He leaned closer and kissed her cool cheek. “Thanks for the good work.”

  “You’re improving, Fred. Growing as a human being.”

  He wasn’t sure if she was kidding, so he said nothing. He was at least as smart as the mosquitoes.

  He took over the stakeout for the rest of the evening, settling down in the Olds’s sticky warm upholstery and watching the taillights of Beth’s car draw closer together, then disappear in the dusk as she turned a corner. Maybe he should have made more of the catalogs. He had to admit that Beth might be right about the missing pages being significant. If that turned out to be the case, he’d go wherever her research led. He wasn’t going to be recalcitrant about it.

  Belt Street was quiet except for an occasional passing car. Carver could barely see the flow of heavier traffic on the major cross street three blocks down. As the evening deepened to blackness, the lights of the cross-traffic seemed to flow in steady bursts of red-tinted white streams each time the signal changed from red to green.

  He and Beth were only going to keep a loose stakeout on Gretch’s apartment; it would be almost impossible, and probably unproductive, for one of them to be in position all the time. Old Hodgkins would doubtless know if Gretch returned, and he’d call Carver.

  Carver turned on the radio and tuned it to a Marlins game, heard immediately that the score was nine to one in favor of the New York Mets, and sat only half listening. The play-by-play man gave the scores around the league and mentioned the St. Louis Cardinals. St. Louis, where Carver’s former wife, Laura, lived with their daughter, half a continent away from where Carver sat in the heat in an ancient convertible and watched a stucco apartment building darkening to join the shadows of the night,

  At least he shouldn’t have to worry about Beni Ho. The little man would have to take things slow for a while, maybe a long time if the bullet remained in his leg and he was forced to seek medical treatment from a doctor who’d follow the law and report a gunshot wound to the police.

  But Carver knew that people like Beni Ho had their own medical plans with doctors who’d been compromised. Beni Ho, bionic little bastard that he was, might be limping after a limping Carver in no time. And there was always the possibility that Desoto was wrong about Ho’s adherence to the martial arts’ manly code. Ho might be hiding in the foliage right now, drawing a bead on Carver through an infrared scope mounted on a rifle.

  Carver sat back and watched the apartment building through half-closed eyes, listening to the third inning and trying not to think about Beni Ho.

  He was about as successful as the Marlins.

  15

  A SMILING BENI HO crept toward Carver, who was teetering without his cane. When Carver turned to see if the cane was on the ground behind him, he saw that there was no ground. He was on the edge of an abyss that whistled and echoed with grief and loneliness. Ho stopped a few feet short of him, and with a wide, wide grin, extended a single, slender forefinger and nudged Carver into the abyss. As he plunged through blackness, wind or a scream whistling in his ears, he heard a voice say, “Stay away from that route if at all possible.”

  He realized he was no longer hurtling through blackness but was lying on his back on perspiration-soaked sheets, listening to the clock radio blare the morning traffic report.

  Beth was beside him, sleeping through the back-up on Magellan, the accident on the Camille drawbridge, the nude jogger running with a dog on the coast highway. The clock radio was on her side of the bed.

  “Beth!” he called fuzzily, still staring at the ceiling.

  There was only the ranting of the radio. A disc jockey had taken over from the guy in the traffic copter and was yammering almost faster than the ear could follow.

  “Beth!”

  “Whazzit, lover?”

  “Turn that damned thing off!”

  “ ’Zat?”

  “The clock radio—hit the button!”

  The deejay said, “Doin’ the rock an’ roll review to get you in the mood for the office zoo. We’ll play while you’re on your way for pay. We’re gonna spin till you clock in. Music back through the years just for your ears!”

  Stretched out on her stomach, her cheek mushed on her extended right arm, Beth opened her eyes sleepily and smiled at Carver.

  Carver said, “Clock radio. Please!”

  “Idea, Fred, is the device is s’pose to wake you up, get you vertical.”

  As Carver rolled onto his side and groped for his cane, he bumped it with his wrist and it clattered to the floor. Little Richard began to scream at him. He rolled onto his back again, bumping his bald pate on the wooden headboard. Ordinarily he liked Little Richard. But not at the moment. Not at the moment at all.

  “Beth!”

  She languidly reached out with a long arm, and silence dropped over the room like a blanket.

  After a while she said, “I’ll make coffee.”

  Carver said nothing. He found his cane, sat up with one leg on the floor, then swiveled around to slump on the edge of the mattress. He heard Beth, behind him, climb out of bed. The springs whined as she stood up. He sat staring at nothing, listening to her bare feet pad across the plank floor, hoping she’d get a splinter in a toe. She never had and didn’t this time. Probably the woman could walk barefoot on hot coals. Pipes bonged and banged in the wall, and tap water ran for the coffee.

  Too late on the stakeout last night, Carver told himself. It had been almost midnight when he’d driven away from Gretch’s apartment. He’d observed little other than old Hodgkins standing as motionless as a statue for half an hour, holding a hose at his hip and watering the pathetic lawn. Like a fountain statue of a gunslinger. The great patience of the old often amazed Carver. It was something you noticed in Florida.

  Drawing a deep breath, he stood up over his cane, steadied himself, and walked into the bathroom. He rinsed out his mouth, then splashed cold water on his face to wake up. Looked in the mirror. Looked qui
ckly away. Then he went back out to his dresser, got out his red pair of swimming trunks, and sat down on the bed and eased into them.

  “Coffee before or after?” Beth asked, when he was standing again and fastening the trunks’ drawstring.

  “After,” he told her, and got a white towel from the bathroom and left the cabin.

  The morning was cloudless but still cool. He hobbled toward the beach, walking with difficulty when he left the wooden steps and trod on sandy soil.

  Near the surf line, he stuck his cane in the sand, dropped his towel beside it, and crawled backward into the surf. The water felt cold at first, waking him all the way. When a large swell roared in and burst onto the beach, he shoved himself seaward with both arms and let the wave’s backwash carry him out to deeper water where he was floating free, then swimming.

  He swam straight out from shore, using long, reaching strokes and breathing deeply and evenly. Then he treaded water for a while, looking back in at the cottage where Beth was brewing coffee, or maybe sitting at the table by now sipping it from her mug that was lettered with reproductions of newspapers’ flubbed captions, such as Police Help Dog Bite Victim and Prison Warden Says Inmates May Have 3 Guns. Looking in at his life, really, and wondering why it had turned out as it had, what the mainspring was that powered its clockwork. But nobody ever really understood that one. Donna and Mark Winship hadn’t understood. He thought of beautiful Maggie Rourke, grieving by the sea for her dead illicit romance that had been doomed from the beginning. Love could be such a disease, sometimes fatal. Sorrow swelled in his throat for Maggie, who was still suffering because she was the one still alive. People only thought they knew the reasons why they acted, while they kept on loving and hating and moving through life toward death and not understanding that, either.

  He floated on his back for several minutes, staring now in the opposite direction, out to sea, focusing his gaze on a small patch of white sail. For a moment he felt an almost overwhelming impulse to swim toward it even though it was too far away to reach. Then he turned back toward the shore and the cottage and Beth.