by John Lutz
“Can you walk okay, Charlie?”
“Sure. Just been sitting here waiting for you.”
“Come on into the office where it’s cool.”
Carver tried to help him out of the car, but Post refused his proffered hand and stood up by himself.
He was shaky for only a moment, leaning with his hand on the car roof until he gained his balance. “Damned heat,” he said. “Good for you only if you’re an orange.”
Walking near each other, but refusing to lean on each other for help, the old man who’d been beaten and the man with the cane walked through the sweltering tropical heat into Carver’s office.
It was plenty cool in there. “Sit down, Charlie.” Carver rolled his vinyl-padded swivel chair out from behind the desk for Post. Then he sat on the edge of the desk and waited until the injured man was situated.
Post seemed to realize for the first time that his nose was bleeding. He drew a white handkerchief from a pocket and dabbed at it, examined the blood on it and shook his head. “I don’t think it’s broken,” he said.
“Doesn’t look like it.”
Post dabbed again, wincing this time. “Violent people,” he said reflectively. “There are more of them than there used to be in Florida. More crazies with guns. The drugs, maybe.”
“Maybe,” Carver said. “Can I get you some water?”
“No, I’m fine. I’m not as frail as I look.”
“What happened, Charlie?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Why are you in Del Moray?” But Carver had a good idea why.
“Maggie,” Post said. “After talking to you, I kept thinking about her. I decided I wanted to see her one more time, get everything clear between us so the memories were unsullied. It’s not as if I’m an old man trying to set everything in order toward life’s end,” he added defensively, “it’s just this seemed like personal business that needed wrapping up.”
“Sure,” Carver said.
“So I rented a car in Miami, drove up here, and tried to see her where she worked.”
So this was the man who’d tried without success that morning to talk with Maggie at Burnair and Crosley.
“She was there but she wouldn’t see me,” Post said. He sounded more mystified than disappointed.
“One of the stockbrokers get rough with you?” Carver asked.
Post broke out his creased and charming grin. “I’m more lover than fighter, Carver. Not that I haven’t been beaten up in the stock market before. Not this time, though. I was outside the building, walking back to my car, when a fella approached and asked me to get into a car with him if I wanted to talk about Maggie Rourke. I asked why we couldn’t talk out on the sidewalk, and he said it was too hot. So we got into a big car, a Chrysler, I think. It was black and the windows were tinted. Right away he started beating on me. Not as hard as he could, just as hard as he had to so I couldn’t fight back. He was good. He was experienced. Nobody could hear me or see in through those tinted windows, and it all happened fast.”
“What did he look like?” Carver asked.
“Big, dressed casual but nice. Dark eyes, I think. Brown hair. About forty. I asked him who he was, and all he’d say was that he was Maggie’s special friend and I was to leave her alone, not try to see her again.”
“You agreed, I hope.”
“Sure did. He had all the cards and all the chips. When I was bent over trying to get my breath after a punch in the stomach, he started the engine and drove away. I got plenty scared then, but we only went a few blocks and he pulled to the curb again. He asked if I got the message about staying away from Maggie. When I said yes, he reached over, opened the door, and told me to get out. I did, made it back to my car, and drove to the address on your business card. You weren’t here, so I went to a motel and checked in, rested a while, got cleaned up and came back. I thought I felt okay, but the engine started to overheat sitting there at idle with the air conditioner on, so I had to turn it off for a while and the heat caught up with me. A little while later, you came along.”
“Would you recognize the man if you saw him again?”
“Definitely. But I think he was somebody’s hired goon. I’ve been around in my life; I’ve known people like that, and he had all the earmarks.”
“You think Maggie would hire that kind of guy?”
“Maggie? No, not her. But somebody looking out for her, maybe that person would hire professional muscle.”
“Did you ever notice Maggie having a problem with alcohol?”
“You mean drinking too much? Not a chance. Never seen a sign of that in Maggie.”
“Uh-huh,” Carver said, thinking even the recollection of love could be blind.
He asked Post to excuse him, then went out to the parking lot and got the envelope with the photographs from the Olds’s glove compartment. When he returned, he removed the photos and handed them to Post. “Is the man who beat you in any of these?”
Post looked through them, then shook his head. “Don’t recognize a soul here.” He handed the photographs back to Carver.
Carver laid them next to the phone, then leaned back with his buttocks against the desk, holding the cane loosely and horizontally with both hands. “I think you oughta do what the man said, Charlie. About leaving Maggie alone.”
“I intend to. But what about Maggie? I’ve got some concern there. She fall in with some rough friends?”
“At least one,” Carver said.
“You don’t think that muscle was really her boyfriend?”
“I don’t know,” Carver said honestly. “Maggie’s a mystery.”
“Isn’t she, though?” Post said, grinning.
“You want me to take you to a doctor?” Carver asked.
“No. Nothing’s broken. Anyway, I’m between medical insurance policies right now. I’ll just go back to my motel and soak in a warm bath.” He stood up, looking strong and steady. “I thought you’d want to know about this, thought maybe you had some idea what it was all about.”
“I wish I knew.”
“All I wanted was to tie loose ends, but apparently Maggie’s not of the same mind. Like I said before, I know when something’s over and done with. I’m going back to Miami in the morning.”
“Feel well enough to drive?”
“Sure. There won’t be any problem. It’s good highway the whole trip.”
“I mean back to your motel.”
“Of course. I got here, didn’t I?”
Carver considered that one of the few questions he could answer just then with certainty.
With Post’s permission, Carver drove behind him to the Sea Horse Motel on the coast highway to make sure he got there okay. It wasn’t easy. Post drove the way he’d lived, fast and with risk and a sense of immortality. The car rental agency in Miami had no idea what it had loosed onto the highways.
They had a few drinks in the cool and dim motel bar, sitting in a booth and talking about women and yachts and the way Disney World was going to grow and grow and devour Florida.
“You make sure Maggie doesn’t get hurt in whatever’s going on,” Post implored several times.
Carver assured him he’d do what he could.
Post began to talk about making his next fortune when Cuba was open for travel again and would be a boat and tourist mecca. It all sounded good. All it needed was for Castro to move out of the way of dreams.
When Post was finally settled in his room, Carver drank two cups of black coffee to shake the effects of the liquor. Then he left the motel and drove to meet Beth so they could follow some of the Nightlinks escorts into the dark and humid unknown.
34
THEY KILLED TIME, then had an early supper before arriving in separate cars to park at the far end of the lot where Nightlinks was located.
Beth drove from the lot first, following the man Carver had photographed walking to the Aero Lounge with Harvey Sincliff. Twenty minutes later, Carver left the parking space he’d used before
to take his photographs. When he reached Telegraph Road he turned left and fell in behind a sleek black Miata convertible driven by the beautiful redhead he’d seen on his first visit to Nightlinks.
Despite the flamboyant package of car and woman, she was a cautious driver and easy to follow. She left the Del Moray city limits and took A1A north along the coast for a few miles. The Miata’s convertible top was lowered and her red hair whipped and waved like a proud flag as the little car cut through the ocean breeze.
After passing a row of motels along the shoreline, she slowed and made a right turn into the parking lot of the Red Dolphin Inn, an upscale motel overlooking the sea.
Carver followed and parked at the other end of the lot. The Red Dolphin Inn was built of heavy red and brown stone and exposed rough-hewn beams. The office sported particularly bulky and graceless architecture and was built in an A-frame that was fronted with darkly tinted triangular glass and had a slate-shingled roof and heavy wooden doors fitted with iron rings for handles. Jutting from each side of the office was a long, two-story wing where the rooms were located. The wings looked like cheaply built blockhouses that had been added as afterthoughts and didn’t fit in with the heavy rustic quality of the rest of the motel.
The redhead had parked near the office, but she didn’t enter it. Instead she climbed from the Miata and went through a door to the right of the main entrance.
Carver waited a few minutes. A silver minivan containing a man and woman and two kids drove into the lot and parked in front of the office. The man, a skinny guy still in his twenties, got out of the van, stretched as if he’d just awakened from a ten-year nap, then walked stiffly inside to register. The woman sat still, but the kids were bouncing around inside the van as if they were on fire.
A dark blue Mercury pulled in and looked as if it were going to stop behind the minivan. Then it drove around the boxy little vehicle and parked halfway down the wing nearest Carver.
The driver, a middle-aged man wearing sunglasses and a gray suit, climbed out and walked directly to one of the lower-level rooms. He unlocked the door but didn’t enter. After poking his head into the room and glancing around, he shut the door again and walked back toward the office. He moved into the stark shadow of the peaked roof and entered the office just as the minivan driver was coming out clutching a key with a big green plastic tag as if it were a prize.
Wondering if the redhead had simply used another entrance to the office and registered, or if she’d gone directly to a room out of his vision, Carver worked his way out of the Olds and headed toward the door she’d used. The sun was low but still hot; its energy seemed to resist him like warm liquid until he reached the cool shade of the building.
He opened the door slowly, feeling a rush of cool air, and found that it led to the motel lounge. When he stepped all the way inside he saw the redhead seated in a dim booth near the back. The guy who’d gotten out of the Mercury was with her. He must have come through the door between office and lounge. He’d removed his dark glasses and he and the woman were staring at each other over drinks and a generous flower arrangement in the center of the table. Neither of them noticed Carver. There were only four other customers in the lounge: two men seated at the bar, and two women in business clothes in another booth, studying and conferring about something on a notebook computer.
Carver slid into a secluded booth away from the door and ordered a Budweiser from the tired but smiling woman who plodded over from behind the bar.
He sat sipping his beer from its frosted mug, waiting for the redhead and the Mercury driver, knowing he could see them if they left by the outside door or passed through the doorway into the office.
When they’d finished their drinks twenty minutes later, they went directly outside. They were holding hands. The man glanced at Carver without interest while the redhead, even more beautiful up close, stared straight ahead with a slight smile on her very red lips. It was the kind of smile even a monk might read a lot into.
Carver followed just in time to see them enter the room whose door the man had opened earlier.
He went back to the Olds, jotted down the Mercury’s license number, then waited in the heat. Quickly he settled into the patient, seemingly half-asleep mode of a cop on a stakeout or a sniper surveying terrain from cover. He was actually super-alert to everything around him. He saw the young mother from the minivan plod down the fancy iron stairs and get four cans of soda from a machine. Watched her go back upstairs, a pair of cans clutched close to her body in each hand as if she were applying cold compresses to wounds. In the darkening sky beyond the horizontal line of the motel’s roof, a gull was soaring in abrupt, measured patterns, as if trying to spell out something in the air. A riddle for Carver that he might solve too late.
It was dark when the redhead opened the room’s door and stepped out, smoothed her skirt over her hips, and strode to the Miata. With practiced ease, she raised the little car’s canvas top before driving away. There still was no sign of the man as Carver started the Olds and followed her out to the highway, then back toward Del Moray.
She didn’t drive far. After a few miles, she parked in the lot of another motel and followed much the same procedure. This time she drank alone in the lounge for about fifteen minutes before a tall man with raven black hair and wearing a black suit showed up.
He didn’t even sit down. Didn’t say hello or so much as nod to her. The woman rose, wearing her siren’s smile, and they walked together from the lounge and up a flight of inside stairs to the upper rooms. Carver followed halfway up the stairs and then paused, watching them enter one of the rooms and noting its number: 203.
He had a second beer before returning to wait in the Olds. It was easy to find the outside entrance to 203 from the catwalk that fronted the building. If the woman and the dark-haired man left by either door, he’d be able to see them.
He was surprised when a crack of dim light appeared as the room’s door onto the catwalk opened. More surprised when he caught a glimpse of a dark figure entering the room. He sat up straighter, staring through the windshield.
The room’s drapes were closed but glowed several times in quick succession in brilliant flashes of light. The door opened again, a shadowy figure ran out, and Carver saw a short man in dark clothing hurl himself down the stairs, then run across the parking lot. He heard but didn’t see a car roar away, glimpsing twin red taillights and nothing more as it reached the highway.
The whole thing had taken less than a minute.
The room’s door was still open. A light came on, and for an instant a nude man appeared in the doorway, body hunched and long black hair wildly mussed. Even from this distance Carver could see the look of horror on his face as he slammed the door.
Less than fifteen minutes later the black-haired man, fully dressed now but carrying his suit coat, emerged from the room with the woman. She was dressed as before but had her hair pinned in a pile on top her head. They stood for a few minutes at the base of the stairs, talking earnestly in the faint glow of the vending machines. The man was waving his long arms, obviously upset. The woman touched his cheek gently from time to time, calming him. He slipped into his suit coat and stood still, listening to her. Then they kissed briefly and parted. Carver had a chance to get the license number of the man’s black or midnight blue Cadillac before following the Miata.
This time the redhead drove all the way back into Del Moray. She parked in the dark lot of a small, seedy motel three blocks from the ocean and went directly into one of the detached cabins, using a key she’d fished from her purse. Lights winked on inside the cabin, providing a view of a wall with an arrangement of framed prints on it, some of them hanging crookedly. Then the woman appeared at the front window and closed the drapes.
Half an hour passed. A paunchy but muscular man with tattooed arms came out of another of the run-down cabins and gave Carver a curious and hostile look as he swaggered to a dented gray pickup truck. Rap music blared from the cab as the truc
k kicked back gravel and roared away. Carver figured it would be wise not to be there when the man returned.
The shade was raised on the cabin window that held the air conditioner. Carver climbed from the Olds and walked along the line of cabins as if he had a firm destination. Yet he was moving slowly; a man with a cane could do that without attracting suspicion even if he were seen.
He moved even slower as he veered at an angle to where he could see inside the window, getting so close to the cabin that he could feel the hot breath of the wheezing old air conditioner.
He glanced quickly around. Took a chance.
Edging to the window, he tried not to breathe in the air conditioner’s fumes and peered inside.
The woman was wearing only black panties and bra, half reclining on a small sofa and talking on the phone. Her free hand held what looked like an ice pack on the side of one of her thighs. As Carver watched, she hung up the phone, then stood and walked into a small kitchenette, where she tossed the ice pack into the sink. The cabin was small; she was alone. She sat on the edge of the bed and unpinned her hair, let it fall and shook it out, her head hanging low. Something about the long red hair, swinging side to side and almost brushing the floor, held Carver spellbound.
A truck whined past out on the street, shifting through gears noisily and breaking the mood.
Feeling like a Peeping Tom, Carver backed away. He glanced guiltily around the shadowed parking lot. No one was on the lot or at any of the cabin windows. In fact, only two cabins’ lights were glowing other than the one near the street that served as the office.
Relieved, he went back to the Olds, got in, and started the engine. There was no more reason to be a voyeur. The redheaded woman was home—in her own motel room, anyway. He could leave and they could both go to bed and get some rest.
As he eased the big Olds as soundlessly as possible from the gravel lot and turned right onto the street, he thought of the gull he’d watched tracing patterns in the sky earlier that evening, and of the hypnotic spray and graceful arc of the woman’s long red hair swinging and almost touching the floor.