by John Lutz
He went over and bought a frozen custard cone, then found a spot where he could sit as if watching the ocean, which was kind of feisty this evening, with a strong landward breeze. Actually he was watching the Nightlinks escort and his client eating at a table by the window. From where he sat, he could also see the corner doorway where the man and woman would emerge from Aruba after their meal. He wished the people he followed would always be so cooperative.
An hour later they left their table and stepped out onto the sidewalk. The man was carrying his sport jacket. He draped it over the woman’s shoulders like a cape to protect her from the sea breeze. Carver made a mental note to remember that move.
They wandered around the area for about half an hour, not going far as they ducked in and out of souvenir shops. Carver found it easy to stay relatively out of sight and keep an eye on them. When they came out of the third shop, the woman was wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat with a colorful bow on it. She removed it as the man drew her close and kissed her with conviction. Carver wasn’t surprised when they finally ended the kiss and walked hand in hand toward the hotel where the Buick was parked.
Not surprised either when they walked past the Buick. The man had already registered. He unlocked the outside door to one of the rooms and ushered the woman inside, his hand resting gently against the small of her back.
Carver went to the Olds and sat watching, listening to a Braves game on the radio.
The lights in the room were turned off in the seventh inning. Didn’t come back on until the postgame interview.
Went out again an hour later. Love and money, Carver thought, could be effective aphrodisiacs.
It was almost 2:00 A.M.when the lovers came out of the room. The woman waited in the car again while the man checked out. This time she sat with her head tilted back against the headrest, as if she might be napping.
She sat up straight when the man came outside and got into the car. They talked for a few minutes, then the Buick’s lights came on and it backed out onto El Mar.
Carver followed as it cut west on Commercial, then drove all the way to 1-95 and turned north. Love and money having been spent, they were taking the fast way back to Del Moray, rather than the scenic and romantic route along the ocean.
The woman was dropped off back at the Sea Lord, where the man had picked her up. There was a goodnight kiss, but it was perfunctory, almost businesslike. Then the man drove to his apartment on Tenth Street and presumably went to bed, this time to sleep.
Everybody seemed happy but Carver, who was tired and irritated, though he’d actually expended little energy.
Beth was in bed asleep when he got back to the cottage.
He left a note instructing her not to wake him in the morning, then lay down beside her and felt his weariness make his body seem heavy enough to sink all the way through the mattress.
Staring into darkness, he thought about the man and woman he’d followed, and the artificial happiness and passion that had seemed so real, and maybe been as real as many of life’s sustaining illusions. The ocean rushed noisily onto the beach, and the wind off the sea was moaning softly in the cottage eaves. Beth’s long thigh was resting lightly and warmly along his own. She moaned the same soft song as the wind and stirred, moving her leg closer, then away, leaving him detached and alone in the night.
He was thinking about waking her, holding her, when he fell asleep.
She had coffee ready for him when he struggled out of bed the next morning.
“Figured you’d need this, Fred.” She handed him his cup with the leaping marlin on it.
He needed it, all right. His mind was still webbed with sleep and his body seemed to respond to each of his brain’s commands a few seconds after they were given. He sipped. The coffee was too hot but his tongue was thickly coated and didn’t get scalded. That was how it felt, anyway; maybe he simply hadn’t yet picked up the sensation of pain. “Time’s it?” he asked.
“Nine-thirty. Late for you to be getting up.”
“Got in late last night. I’m getting too old for that kind of thing, stolen wild sex in hotel rooms.”
“Is that why you look so used up this morning?”
“Probably. I feel foggy and deprived.”
“Deprived, huh? We can fix that.”
“Not now,” he said, “or someone would have to fix me.”
“Poor Fred. Voyeurism can be so wearing.” She got the glass pot and topped off his coffee. Maybe she wanted it hot enough to sear his entire intestinal tract. “Gonna have your swim?” she asked, returning the pot to its burner.
“Not this morning.”
“Say, you must have had some workout last night!”
He was getting tired of being punctured by verbal darts. He sipped some more coffee, feeling it burn the roof of his mouth this time, then found his cane and stood up. He made his way into the bathroom and showered and shaved. As he got dressed in the screened-off bedroom area, he smelled bacon frying.
When he returned to the cottage’s main room, he found that Beth had a plate of bacon and eggs on the breakfast counter for him along with a fresh cup of coffee.
“You act very much like a wife sometimes,” he said, sitting on a stool.
She didn’t answer. Instead she carried her coffee outside onto the porch.
By the time he’d finished eating he felt human again. Up to the Bronze Age, anyway. He joined Beth on the porch.
She was sitting in one of the webbed aluminum lounge chairs. She had on some kind of wispy white dress that the wind parted to reveal her calves and a good stretch of thigh. . . . Some workout you didn’t have last night.
Carver sat down in the chair next to hers and propped his good leg up on the porch rail. He stared out at the ocean rolling beyond his moccasin. Clouds were stacked high on the horizon but didn’t seem to be moving.
“What about your night?” he said.
“Same old same old,” Beth told him. “Our redheaded friend spent time with a man in a motel room, then returned to Nightlinks. She was inside the office for about fifteen minutes, probably looking at profiles, then she came out and drove to meet another man at another motel. She was back home by ten o’clock.”
“Looking at profiles?”
“Escort services usually ask a prospective client certain questions, develop a kind of profile of the man—or woman—so they can provide the right escort. But the service and the escorts also use the profiles to screen clients. The redhead is hooking, Fred. My guess is she takes on the late callers, goes into the office sometimes to see what’s acceptable, the least risky. Otherwise she’d do business from home. She probably wants to talk to whoever’s handling the phone at Nightlinks and get their personal impression of the men she might go to meet.”
“Did you get the Johns’ license plate numbers last night?” Carver asked.
“They’re in my notebook on the table with my computer.” She adjusted her dress so it covered her legs, reminding him for an instant of the plump woman working herself out of the Buick last night. “What about your guy?”
“He’s hooking, too,” Carver said.
“Sometimes it seems like the whole world’s hooking, one way or another,” she said.
“Sometimes.” He let his foot drop from the rail to thunk on the plank porch. Reached for his cane. “Gotta make a phone call.”
“Man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do,” Beth said, not moving.
Carver couldn’t quite make out what kind of mood she was in. But he knew that was part of why he loved her, not knowing exactly where he stood or what to expect next. She was a package of surprises, some of them harrowing. Hadn’t she said some men were drawn to dangerous women?
He phoned Desoto and asked him to run the license plate numbers he and Beth had collected during the last two nights. He also told Desoto why he wanted them.
“You give this information to McGregor yet?” Desoto asked.
Carver knew what he was thinking. “Not yet. But don
’t worry, I’m not withholding information in a homicide investigation, since McGregor insists the Winships’ deaths were suicide.”
“What about Carl Gretch?”
“That’s murder, but it’s your case, not McGregor’s. That’s why I just gave you this information.”
“And asked for information from me.”
“Sure. But I wouldn’t take for granted there’s any connection between Nightlinks and Carl Gretch’s death.”
“Everything’s connected in some way or other with everything else. Haven’t you noticed?”
“I’ve noticed you’re the second person I’ve met this morning in a philosophical frame of mind.”
“Murder does that to people. To the people who weren’t murdered, anyway. Speaking of murder, what’s going on with the little Oriental destruction machine?”
“Beni Ho? He’s walking with a cane now. Also with revenge in his heart.”
“He’s all the more dangerous crippled.”
“That’s what Beth said.”
“Hm. Listen to Beth on this one. I’ll get back to you soon as I can on the license numbers.”
Carver hung up the phone, then he returned to the porch and sat down again next to Beth. She was still staring straight ahead at the ocean. The sea wind hadn’t budged the clouds stacked on the horizon, but it had parted her dress again, revealing her legs.
“What now?” she asked, not looking at him.
“We wait for Desoto to call back.”
“You ask him to run those plates?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Might be a little while before he calls.”
“Might.”
She finally looked over at him and smiled. It was a smile he knew. “Know how we might pass that time?”
“Not charades?”
“Not charades,” she said.
37
DESOTO DIDN’T PHONE until noon.
He gave Carver the names and addresses of the Nightlinks clients and escorts who’d apparently engaged in prostitution. Two of the clients were from out of state, driving rental cars.
Desoto had taken so much time to get back to Carver because he had had to check the rental car agencies for names and addresses. Also a woman’s mutilated body had been found in Lake Eola Park, floating out by the fountain near the center of the lake. Some tourists in one of the boats built to resemble swans had discovered it. The experience was nothing like Disney World. Much of Desoto’s morning had been spent taking the sobered tourists’ statements.
After telling Carver what he needed to know, Desoto had to terminate the conversation rapidly. The medical examiner’s preliminary findings on the woman in the lake had arrived. Someone in the background was yelling something about a saw.
Carver hung up the phone and sat staring at the paper on which he’d scrawled the Nightlinks information with a black felt-tip pen. Beth had showered and was dressed in tight slacks and a gray tee shirt lettered SAVE THE MANATEE across the chest. The propagation of the sea beast was a cause with many Floridians, and the sluglike animal appeared on license plates, bumper stickers, and souvenirs up and down the state. Carver wondered why there wasn’t as much enthusiasm to save the human victims of crime in Dade County.
Beth kissed the back of his neck and peered over his shoulder. “That’s our list of bad boys, huh?”
“And girls. The redhead’s name is Mandy Jamison.” He traced his finger down the list. “This is the one that interests me. The driver of the blue ’93 Cadillac.”
“The one that got himself photographed?”
“Reverend Harold Devine,” Carver said. “He’s pastor of a church in Miami and does a weekly TV spot.”
“He’s more than that,” Beth said. She was still looking over his shoulder, and her breath was warm in his ear. He didn’t mind.
“Desoto mentioned he was director of something called Operation Revert.”
“That’s right, Fred. They oughta be called Operation Regress. Burrow did a piece on them last year when some of their members chained themselves to the doors of a television network affiliate in Miami. They believe all of society’s ills can be traced to the disintegration of the family, and they think the media are the primary cause of that decline. They want to turn back the clock to ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ time, reestablish the dominance of the American family. The problem is, they don’t care how they accomplish it.”
“And you don’t care for them,” Carver said.
“More’n a few of those true-blue model families had colored maids at minimum wage.”
“And ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ time was also separate drinking fountains time.”
“Not to mention separate lynchings.” Beth walked to the other side of the breakfast counter and perched on a stool facing Carver. “Also not to mention Barney Fife time. Funny little guy, sure. But how’d you like to be hassled by that jerk for real if he had the power to get you convicted?”
Carver knew she had a thing about Barney Fife, believing the Mayberry TV character had made a generation of abusive cops seem sympathetic, so he said nothing. He didn’t want to get into an argument over reruns.
“Devine’s the one got himself photographed,” she said, “so that makes the blackmail scenario most likely.”
“The Cadillac has dual registration. He has a wife, according to Desoto. Cindy Sue, believe it or not.”
“I believe,” Beth said.
“Maybe Cindy Sue hired a detective to follow her pious husband and get the goods on him. Or maybe his political enemies wanted something heavy to hold over his head. Plenty of folks might want to take advantage of the fact that the good reverend has a weakness for prostitutes.”
“What about the others on the list?”
“Nothing about them jumps out,” Carver said. “One’s a furniture dealer from Wisconsin, another sells cars up in Jacksonville. Guys with money to spend and looking for a good time, most of them probably married. It’d be a shame to shake up their lives by making it public record they were Nightlinks customers.”
“Oh, really?” Beth drew back and glared at him. “I always regarded prostitution as a crime it took two people to commit. And sometimes there’s a crime within a crime, and no legal recourse for the victim. I know what I’m talking about, Fred.”
He didn’t ask what she meant by that. He knew part of the price she’d had to pay to escape her upbringing. Some parts he didn’t want to know. Most men and women should keep some things secret from each other, and shouldn’t pry. One of the reasons for the disintegration of the American family, he thought, was that there was too much communication within marriage.
“I guess I agree with you,” he said. “But I’m not so sure it should be a crime at all. Society ought to grow up and decriminalize it, leave both parties undisturbed.”
“Very progressive of you, Fred. A lot of men think the same way, some of them in the legislature. But the women doing for men are the ones still getting dragged into court, while the guys who pay them for their services walk and don’t even get their names in the paper.”
“It’s not a fair world,” Carver said.
“That your explanation? Well, the wives of those guys who are going out and diddling with strange pussy would agree with you. Think of that hypocrite bastard Devine preaching family unity and urging the government to withhold welfare payments to single mothers, then going out and lying down with some poor woman who probably loathes him but needs his money to feed her kids.”
“I doubt if Mandy Jamison has any kids,” Carver said. He could see Beth getting more annoyed by the second, yet he kept saying things that made things worse. He wondered if, on a certain level, he might be doing it deliberately.
“You really think that redhead’s the only strange wiggle he’s paid for?”
She was slipping into street slang, getting angry deep down. Carver knew that was a sign he should back off. “For all we know she does have kids,” he admitted.
“Fuck Reverend Harold Devine a
nd his whole army of hypocrites. They’re the assholes would have been wearing white sheets not too many years ago. Might even wear them now. If the two-faced bastard is getting blackmailed, good. If you need to make his name public to get the answers on the Winship deaths, you do it. And if you don’t, I will!”
She stood up and he saw that her fists were clenched into tight brown knots. The bright red of her painted nails made it appear that each hand was squeezing something that was bleeding. She strode to where her portable computer sat and snatched it up, then made for the door.
“Where you going?” Carver asked.
“Going to Burrow. You damn well better remember what I said, Fred!”
“About what?”
She slammed the door hard on her way out.
He didn’t get a chance to tell her he agreed with her.
He had a ham sandwich and a Budweiser for lunch, then drove into Del Moray and parked at his vantage point where he could watch the Nightlinks office. He’d developed a sense for where the energy in a case emanated from, where the epicenter lay. More and more, what had happened to Donna and Mark Winship seemed to be connected to Nightlinks. He wasn’t sure what he might learn from a daylight stakeout of the escort service, but maybe things went on here by the light of the sun. Maybe Mandy Jamison arranged for child care and worked days. Carver the cynic.
But Mandy didn’t appear. Only three people came and went at Nightlinks in the two hours he sat sweltering in the Olds, a man and two women. Early afternoon was obviously a slow time for escort services.
Carver sat up straighter when he saw Beni Ho emerge from the office, slip a pair of dark glasses onto the bridge of his nose, and get into a black Porsche that looked like the Bat-mobile. Ho was moving better but still limping along with a cane, like Carver, and he was carrying a briefcase. The last time Carver had seen him leave Nightlinks he was carrying a briefcase.
The Porsche either needed a muffler or its exhaust system was set up to roar mightily in a projection of power. It rolled smoothly and noisily from the parking lot.