Torch

by John Lutz

  “Maggie would never tell me, even if I asked.”

  “No, she wouldn’t. But I’m reasonably sure he wrote a letter of reference for her.”

  Understanding, Beverly tilted back her head and ran her fingers through her short brown hair, causing sun to spark off an earring. “You want me to sneak a look at her personnel file.”

  “Can you manage it?”

  “I think so.”

  “Will you?”

  “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “It’s risky.”

  “You’re the one who told me the Winships’ deaths needed to be investigated. That’s what I’m trying to do. It’s important that I learn this man’s name.”

  “You’ve got to understand, I’d lose my job if someone discovered me raiding Personnel’s files. They’re not locked, but they’re supposed to be private.”

  He wondered for a moment if she was actually fearful or if she might be trying to work some money out of him.

  Then she said, “But I’ll do it. At least I’ll try.”

  “Thanks. You still got my number?”

  “I think so. I’ll phone you when I know. If I know. You want half a ham sandwich? I’m only going to feed it to those squirrels otherwise.”

  He accepted the sandwich and sat down for a while beside her on the hard concrete bench, eating and watching the two squirrels she’d referred to edge ever closer to them, moving then posing and giving them sideways glances, seeming to feign disinterest. Finally she laughed and began breaking off pieces of bread and tossing them to the squirrels, who pounced on them voraciously. The pigeons returned but kept their distance. The hierarchy of nature.

  Carver finished most of his sandwich, tossed the rest to the pigeons beyond the squirrels, then said good-bye to Beverly. She assured him again that she’d phone him if she found out what he needed to know. She picked up her detective novel and seemed already engrossed in it as he turned away.

  After leaving Beverly Denton, Carver drove to Telegraph Road and found a spot to park adjacent to the strip shopping center that contained Nightlinks’ offices. He was some distance away, up the road and beyond the vacant and overgrown lot alongside the center. Still, he had a clear enough view of Nightlinks through the foliage.

  He got out his Minolta and affixed its 200-millimeter lens, then focused on the area of Nightlinks’ entrance.

  He spent the next several hours photographing the attractive people who came and went. Nightlinks might have done a lot of business by phone and fax, but someone entered or left the office every twenty minutes or so. Once Harvey Sincliff emerged and walked with a tall, well-dressed man to the Aero Lounge at the other end of the shopping strip. An hour later, the tall man drove away and Sincliff returned alone to Nightlinks while Carver sat in the hot car and watched.

  Carver’s back began to ache but he continued to keep the camera trained and steady. The Minolta’s long lens would provide some good close-up shots. It might be interesting to see if Desoto, Beverly, Maggie, or Ellen Pfitzer would recognize any of the subjects.

  Long shots in every sense of the word, Carver thought, rotating the lens to draw a beautiful Latin woman closer and tripping the shutter.

  He’d dropped off the film for development and was in his office doing paperwork a few minutes before five o’clock when Beverly Denton phoned.

  “Got it, Mr. Carver,” she said as soon as he’d picked up the receiver and identified himself. She sounded breathless and proud of herself. Clandestine operations could be addictive. “Maggie was recommended by a man named Charles F. Post. He was a wealthy yacht broker in Palm Beach when he and Maggie were an item. He’s not so wealthy now.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Remember I told you my fiancé Warren refurbishes yachts? Well, when I saw Post was in the boat business I called Warren, and sure enough Warren had heard of him. Post was something of a character, a real charmer and ladies’ man even though he was married. And a shrewd businessman. A yankee trader, Warren called him. Post Yacht Sales did millions of dollars in business a year.”

  “Why past tense?” Carver asked.

  “Two reasons. Gambling and divorce. Charlie Post—Warren said everybody called him Charlie—liked to gamble and dropped a lot of money at the dog track and in Atlantic City. Also, last year he and his wife were divorced, and she got most of what he owned.”

  Carver wondered if the divorce was because of Maggie. Probably, he decided. He could think of worse reasons.

  “Did Warren tell you where Post is now?” he asked.

  “He didn’t know. After the divorce, Post moved out of North Palm Beach. It takes money to keep up with the Joneses there, and he no longer had it.”

  “What about the wife? She still in Palm Beach?”

  “Warren said she was.”

  “Did he know her name?”

  “No, but she should be easy to find. She owns and manages Post Yacht Sales.”

  “You gave me more than I asked for,” Carver said. “Thanks.”

  “I hope it helps.”

  “Thank Warren, too,” Carver told her.

  After hanging up on Beverly, Carver phoned Post Yacht Sales in Palm Beach and asked to talk with Mrs. Post. He was told she wasn’t in, but he did manage to wrangle her first name from the woman on the phone. May. Then he pretended to be an old business associate of Charlie Post and tried to get Post’s address. No luck there.

  He called Palm Beach information and asked for the number of May Post and was told it was unlisted. So he called Beverly Denton back and asked if she’d see if Warren could call Post Yacht Sales and get Charlie Post’s address, citing unfinished business in the refurbishing of a yacht.

  Half an hour later, she called and told him Warren had been successful. Then she gave him an address on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach and the name of a residential hotel.

  Carver recognized the hotel as one of the South Beach remnants of the Art Deco era that hadn’t yet been gentrified and reopened for tourists. Not exactly a flophouse. Not exactly.

  Charlie Post had fallen a long way from North Palm Beach.

  29

  THE HOTEL MIRANDA on Collins was two buildings south of a gleamingly rehabilitated luxury hotel that was a forerunner of what the “Florida Riviera” was beginning to provide.

  Each time Carver came to the area, he marveled at the changes taking place. The crumbling Art Deco buildings were one by one being restored to their former ornate and stylish selves. Entire blocks of forlorn residential hotels that housed the poor and the desperate were becoming high-toned resorts. The poor were moving out. Money was moving in, and gaining momentum the way money did when it became concentrated.

  The Hotel Miranda hadn’t yet succumbed to the process. It was a faded and mottled green stucco structure five stories high and topped with an ornate neon sign that probably hadn’t glowed since the forties. Its wooden window frames, once white and now a muddied cream color, were chipped and peeling. Wide glass double doors, webbed with finely turned wooden framework, formed the entrance. Above them a fan-shaped window bore the name of the hotel in fragmented gold letters. The doors had been painted recently, though not scraped or sanded, and the wood was in slightly better condition than the window frames. The oversized brass hardware was ornate and polished, even if irretrievably tarnished. Carver eased his shoulder into the flat brass push-plate and entered the lobby.

  It was dim in the lobby and smelled musty, and the past was almost palpable. He was standing on a black-and-white tiled floor darkened by years and ground-out cigarette butts. Faded green carpet stretched in front of the scarred old registration desk, then up a wide flight of stairs. Beyond the desk were elevators with clocklike brass floor indicators above the doors, fancy arrows that rotated along Roman numerals. One of the elevators had an Out of Order sign taped to its door. It looked as if it had been there since 1967.

  Two old women sat in oversized brown vinyl chairs and talked around a dusty artificial fern as if it wer
e the ghost of a husband being snubbed. They glanced at Carver as he made his way to the desk, then resumed their conversation.

  The desk clerk was a man of about sixty with a lean, lined face and thinning hair so black it had to be dyed. His unshaven left cheek was concave, as if all the molars on that side were missing. He had on a threadbare blue suit, white shirt, and red tie, a stab at respectability in a hopeless situation.

  “Charles Post’s room number, please,” Carver said. The two old women looked over at him at the mention of Post’s name.

  “We don’t give out our guests’ room numbers,” the clerk said with a whiff of morning gin. “I can give you Mr. Post’s extension and you can phone upstairs to him.”

  Carver said that was good enough, and the clerk directed him to the house phones that squatted on a gray marble shelf, two yellowed plastic units without dials or punch pads.

  Charlie Post answered on the second ring and didn’t even bother to ask why Carver wanted to talk to him. He seemed eager for company and invited him up to his fifth-floor room.

  He was standing with the door open when Carver stepped off the elevator. Though he was at least in his midseventies, he was still a handsome man, with erect posture, broad shoulders, silver hair, and a waistline that had spread but was under control. He was wearing pleated brown pants, a blue-striped white shirt open at the collar, and a navy blue ascot.

  “Charlie Post,” he said with a creased and handsome smile as Carver moved within handshaking range.

  Carver introduced himself and shook Post’s cool, dry hand, wondering if after a certain age people stopped perspiring.

  Post stepped back and waved an arm in a reserved yet gracious motion for Carver to enter. He didn’t smell of age, like a lot of old people; there was about him the scent of soap and shampoo. Not perfumed, though; some brand of masculine cologne Carver couldn’t place. Carver saw that Post’s thick gray hair was still damp in back from his morning bath or shower.

  “I can offer you coffee,” he said in his firm, amiable voice.

  The room was large, well worn but comfortable, with a double bed with a white spread, dark mahogany dresser and wardrobe, and the same green carpet that was in the lobby and hall. A window was open about six inches and white sheer curtains undulated softly in the slight breeze that pushed its way in. The room was clean and filled with the scent of fresh-perked coffee sitting on a hotplate on a small table near the bed. A clear glass cup of black coffee on a chipped saucer sat on a low table in front of a brown sofa with ball-and-claw legs.

  Carver declined coffee, and Post waved him into a well-padded if threadbare wing chair, then sat down on the sofa. He looked smilingly and inquisitively at Carver, waiting for whatever it was Carver wanted to say. It occurred to Carver that anyone selling anything could have gained entrance as easily as he had, and he wondered how naive Post had become in his not-so-golden years.

  He said, “I’m here to ask you about Maggie Rourke.”

  Post’s smile faded and for an instant was replaced by an expression of hope. Carver recognized the look, the dreamer dreaming the dream. “Maggie, huh?” Post said. He seemed lost in memory for a few seconds. The sound of traffic down on Collins drifted into the room with the breeze. “That Maggie . . . You know where she is?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No, she left my life the way she entered it—like a visiting angel.”

  Surprised, Carver said, “That’s poetic.”

  “Maggie’s the kind of woman that inspires poetry.”

  Carver didn’t argue. “Your former wife May told me I might find you here,” he said, bending the truth a little.

  Charlie Post sipped coffee, then placed the cup back in its saucer, clinking glass against china. His hand was trembling. “May inspires things other than poetry.” Carver wondered if the trembling hand was the result of his mentioning Maggie, or May. Or maybe it was simply due to advancing age. Seemingly in complete control of his emotions again, Post pretended to examine his fingernails, as if to demonstrate to himself and to Carver that his hand was now steady, and said, “May took everything I owned. My business, my home, my old life.”

  “Was the divorce because of Maggie?”

  “Oh, yes and no. May knew I was seeing someone else, even had us followed and obtained . . . er, indelicate photographs of us. But the truth was, Maggie wasn’t the first of my indiscretions, and May knew it. I won’t say May drove me to infidelity; it’s never that simple. I’m a man who should never have married. I love beautiful women the way I love beauty in nature and in the line of a fine ship. So I suppose it wasn’t entirely May’s fault. I’ve always liked the opposite sex, and they’ve always appreciated my appreciating them.”

  “Was Maggie named as co-respondent in the divorce?”

  “No. Maggie dropped out of sight the day after we were photographed in the stateroom of a yacht. She couldn’t stand what she knew was coming, the embarrassment and shame. I wasn’t about to give out her name, and May never learned it. Actually that worked in May’s favor, that I seemed not even to know the name of the woman in the photographs, like I was a real lowlife who went to bed with anyone on short notice. One-night-stand Charlie. That’s how she painted me, anyway. It tilted things even more in her direction in court. So Maggie had nothing to do with the actual divorce proceedings, but she would have if I’d fought May. I was glad when Maggie disappeared. I mean, the thought of those photographs being made public. I couldn’t have that, so I was hobbled in the divorce negotiations despite the slickest attorneys I could buy. May cleaned me out.”

  “And you’ve never seen Maggie since?”

  “Nope. We had an arrangement we both understood. I know she wasn’t heart-throbbing in love with me, but I thought eventually she might be. We talked about my leaving May, but I think Maggie figured that’s all it really was, just talk and wishful thinking. So she broke it off the quickest, cleanest way possible.” He smiled, his blue eyes clouding. “Still, I’d like to see her once more, tell her everything’s all right between us.”

  “Is it all right?” Carver asked. “I mean, your former wife has everything you owned.”

  “Sure. But on a certain level—the important level—I don’t regret what happened. I know what you’re thinking: For love of a woman a kingdom was lost. I’ll tell you, Carver, Maggie was worth it. And at that point in my marriage, May really didn’t care that I was being unfaithful. Hell, she probably only married me for my money in the first place. After a while, we didn’t love each other at all and didn’t mind saying so when we argued. Which was often, until we got tired even of that. Then along came Maggie.” He sipped more coffee and looked wistful. His hand was still steady. “Sometimes, Carver, you have to grab life by the balls and live it and damn the consequences. Maggie wasn’t like the others. I knew right away she was a one-time thing for me, maybe a last chance at the grand prize. I admit I became obsessed. She was the whole unimagined world and I wanted her, and for a short time she was mine. Whatever I’ve lost because of it, I say it was worth it and I’d do it again.”

  Carver thought about that, then said, “I see what you mean.”

  “Do you really?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Liberating, ain’t it,” Post said, grinning hugely.

  Carver laughed.

  “Not so long ago I was one of the most successful businessmen on the Gold Coast, now here I am and I’m not complaining. Know why?”

  “You just told me,” Carver reminded him. “Maggie.”

  “Maggie, all right, but also the fact that this pisshole isn’t my last stop. Nothing can whip me but time, and it hasn’t yet. I’ve been getting in touch with some of my old contacts, raising capital. I’ve lost more than one fortune, Carver, and made them back. And I’ll bounce back from this loss, too. Bet on it.”

  “If I could afford it,” Carver said, “I would bet on you.” He shifted his weight and leaned his cane against his chair arm, thinking age hadn’t ro
bbed Post of his deviousness and charm. “Did you ever come in contact with anyone named Enrico Thomas or Carl Gretch?”

  Post didn’t even have to think about it. “Nope.”

  “Beni Ho?”

  “Sounds like a restaurant. Oriental fella, I assume. Nope, never heard of him, either.”

  “Your ex-wife May,” Carver said, “does she know how to manage Post Yacht Sales?”

  “Oh, sure. May’s wicked smart. That’s how she nicked me for damn near everything I had.”

  Carver thought, Some nick. He said, “Maggie told me you wrote her a letter of reference, got her a position at Burnair and Crosley in Del Moray.”

  Charlie Post glanced sideways at Carver and grinned like a kid caught in a schoolyard lie. “Did she now?”

  “I thought you told me you didn’t know what happened to her after she left you,” Carver said.

  “I said such a thing?”

  “Sure did. Not five minutes ago.”

  “Well, let’s just say I was protecting her privacy. It is true I’ve never seen her since the night of those photographs. She phoned about two weeks later though, asking for help after she lost her job in the brokerage firm where she was an account executive. She was desperate, even doing part-time work modeling. That didn’t sound like her at all, though she sure had the looks. Well, I’d done plenty of business with Burnair and Crosley, and Ken Crosley was an old friend of mine. So I wrote a letter of reference for Maggie and they made an opening for her. I tried phoning her there a few times, but I was always told she wasn’t in.”

  “So you did know where to find her, but you never tried to see her.”

  “That’s true. Because I know when something’s ended, Carver. Much as I don’t like it, I can swallow it. That’s one of the best things to know in life, when something’s over. Even better’n recognizing opportunity when it knocks. Keeps you outa lots of trouble.”

  Carver didn’t know what to believe. Post was a disarming conniver and equally persuasive about both sides of a story. It was easy to understand how he had his way with women.