Flame

by John Lutz

  Carver said, “Let’s get off this thing.”

  She stood and led him up the companionway and onto the deck. Though there was a breeze, the air was warm and thick. The motion of the boat seemed more violent up here, the night sea angrier. Whitecaps shimmered in the vast darkness.

  Courtney opened a square hatch and dragged out a folded rubber raft, some collapsible oars.

  She’d calculated this before. Within a few seconds she’d yanked on a cord and a CO2 cartridge inflated the raft. It was good size, about ten by six, probably built to accommodate four to six people.

  The Bold Entrepreneur was making only ten or fifteen knots. Carver and Courtney slid the surprisingly heavy raft overboard. Courtney immediately dropped down into the waves less than six feet from it and scrambled into the raft. Carver jumped into the water after her, making sure not to loosen his grasp on his cane. Sank for what seemed forever and then came up about twenty feet from the raft. He roller-coastered on a wave, stroked toward the raft, and found that the ocean was moving it away from him.

  Courtney stared at him, as if making up her mind. Then she shifted position and raised one end of the raft to change its angle into the waves. Somehow steadied it in place.

  After a struggle, Carver got close to it. Hooked it with the cane and dragged himself aboard, sprawling on his chest and stomach. Coughed up sea water. Courtney helped him get turned around. He was surprised by her strength.

  Slumped on the undulating rubber bottom, he felt his waistband and discovered he’d lost one of the guns. Jefferson’s pistol.

  For a few moments he and Courtney sat watching the receding lights of the Bold Entrepreneur.

  Then Courtney said, “They’ll be out of where you put them pretty soon.”

  “We’re not far from shore,” Carver told her. “They won’t find us in the dark.”

  She said, “Don’t be so sure,” and with a strong and skillful wrist motion extended the telescoped oars.

  The wind seemed brisker now, and the sound of the unseen ocean was an endless and imponderable murmur of surrounding power. Now and then a wave would slap the raft hard, sloshing water on board and sending the oblong rubber craft spinning.

  Carver and Courtney fitted the oars into the hard rubber oarlocks, then began rowing toward the low galaxy of lights that was the shoreline of Del Moray.

  Chapter 37

  WHEN THEY GOT CLOSE to shore they saw the red and blue flashing lights, the commotion on the dock. Scurrying figures, arriving vehicles. Carver was pretty sure it was near where the Bold Entrepreneur had been docked and he’d thrown the injured drug runner overboard. He looked at Courtney, her compact body straining forward and back rhythmically, her features set in determination as she leaned into the oars. She couldn’t know that in a little while the Bold Entrepreneur would be blown apart and everyone on board would die, as Bert Renway had died in Wesley’s car outside Carver’s office.

  Carver’s back and arms ached from rowing. His stiff leg, extended straight out so his foot was between Courtney’s feet in the water sloshing in the bottom of the raft, was beginning to cramp. There was still a controlled desperation in their rowing, though he was sure that by now the Bold Entrepreneur was no longer searching for them—if it had ever searched. The sea at night was an arena that had concealed battleships.

  He let up a little on the left oar as he rowed, altering the raft’s course so it would land away from the red and blue lights and the people milling around on the distant dock.

  Courtney glanced darkly at him. Realized what he was doing and didn’t object. In fact, she changed the rhythm of her own strokes to help him angle the raft in toward shore. Above the rush and crashing of the sea, the plaintive wail of a police siren drifted out to them on the night. A lonesome call from another world.

  When the raft was about three hundred yards from the dock, a spotlight picked it up. Carver was momentarily blinded as it pinned the raft in a wavering circle of white light. He saw Courtney wince and duck her head, averting her eyes.

  Another spotlight found them. Another. With their heads lowered, they kept rowing. Carver was getting a cramp in his left arm.

  Courtney said, “You fucked things up, Carver. How you gonna explain? Huh?”

  “You’ll find out around ten o’clock.”

  “Which means?”

  “Just what I said.” He decided he wouldn’t tell her about the explosives. Jefferson had used her to plant them, but now she was safe. And Edwina was safe. Now Jefferson’s plan didn’t sound so unreasonable. Carver decided to let fate and Jefferson, and maybe justice, have their way with the Bold Entrepreneur.

  The Del Moray police were all over the dock. As soon as rubber bumped wood, grasping hands were reaching down to pull Carver and Courtney up out of the raft. Carver dropped his cane, told the two cops yanking on his arms to ease up. Recovered the cane. Felt whole again.

  Found himself standing on the dock beside Courtney, surrounded by uniforms. People were yammering at him but he wasn’t listening; it took a few minutes for him to stop feeling the motion of the sea. For the earth to level.

  The tall figure of McGregor shoved its way through the uniforms. He looked confused and mad. Said, “Carver, we’re gonna talk. You’re gonna tell me what the shit’s goin’ on here, and you’re gonna tell it straight.”

  Carver hadn’t seen Ralph Palma, but the DEA agent was there beside Courtney. His suitcoat was slung over his shoulder and he was wearing a white shirt and dark suspenders. He gazed dispassionately at McGregor and said, “Sorry, but I gotta talk to both of them first.” He flashed his credentials at McGregor, who didn’t even glance at them. He knew who Palma was.

  “You feds can’t just charge the fuck in here and push the local law aside,” McGregor said. “Ain’t Constitutional.” But there was no conviction in his voice.

  “Watch me do it,” Palma said softly.

  McGregor started to say something else, then he clamped his mouth shut. He knew where power lay, and when not to draw a line. And he knew Palma was serious.

  Carver felt Palma grip his upper arm. Holding Courtney’s elbow with his other hand, the DEA agent led the two of them away from the knot of police and toward the gray Dodge parked near the edge of the dock.

  “We’re gonna get together later, Carver,” McGregor called behind them. “Bet your sweet ass on that!”

  Palma said, “He’s a charmer, no?”

  “No,” Courtney said.

  When they reached the Dodge they didn’t get in. Stood beside it and stared out at the ocean. Listened to the waves lap against the pilings. Palma carefully folded his suitcoat, lining side out, and laid it on the car’s hood. Other than that, the three of them hardly moved. Carver’s arms felt heavy. Now and then he felt a twinge in his back.

  After a while, Courtney said, “I need a smoke.”

  Palma said, “I got a pack in the car.” He opened the door and leaned down to fish around in the glove compartment, supporting himself with one hand on the seat.

  That was when the car’s dome light winked on and Carver saw the rifle lying on the backseat. The weapon that had long ago killed Martin Luther King but not the dream.

  The rifle, but not the duffel bag.

  Carver felt a cold, tight turning in his mind. A realization that was growing into something that angered and astounded him.

  Palma had straightened up and slammed the car door. Was lighting Courtney’s cigarette with a paper match, cupping his free hand to protect the wavering flame from the breeze.

  Carver said, “Where’s Jefferson?”

  Courtney drew on her cigarette. Exhaled. The sea breeze snatched the smoke away from before her face. She was staring at Palma as Carver was, waiting for his answer.

  Palma flipped the still-burning match away. It arced toward the water like a tiny shooting star and disappeared. He looked at Courtney, then Carver. Then he gave an odd kind of smile. A slow and elegant shrug.

  Carver stood staring out at
the black waves, hearing and feeling their weight and power even if he couldn’t see them except as occasional whitecaps that caught the moonlight. He knew Courtney hadn’t actually taken explosives on board the Bold Entrepreneur. And he knew why Jefferson had lied to him about Edwina being on the boat. Jefferson had let him escape at the restaurant. Knew he’d head for the Bold Entrepreneur. Had sent him. Sent Carver not to rescue Edwina but to save Courtney, or at least to give her better odds.

  Carver had still been a step behind and not realized it. Been used.

  But now he understood. Jefferson had understood him, and Carver understood Jefferson. Wolf and gray wolf. Carver knew why Jefferson had wanted Courtney to have her chance to get off the boat.

  And he knew what was in the green duffel bag, and why the rifle but not the bag had been left in the car. And what had happened to the electronic receiver that was missing from the front seat of the Ford in the restaurant parking lot.

  There was a broken kind of roar. From farther up the dock a long, sleek speedboat shot into open water. It was the projectile-shaped boat Carver had seen docked earlier. The favorite of drug runners. The Cigarette.

  Courtney had figured it out, too. She moaned, “Oh, God! No, no, no . . .”

  Palma rested a hand very softly on her shoulder.

  The speedboat bucked the incoming waves, its snarling twin engines racing whenever the stern cleared the water, then digging in solid when the boat settled back down.

  It was headed straight out to sea now. Soon they could only hear it and see its long moonlit wake, curving like a silver ribbon away from the shore. Then the shimmering wake, too, disappeared and there was only the blackness of the night sky and ocean, a void as empty as eternity.

  Palma said, “Those are fast boats. Catch anything that floats.”

  Courtney said nothing. Carver could see her shoulders quaking, as if she were cold in the sultry night.

  After about ten minutes, she seemed calmer and moved away from Palma’s hand, taking a step out toward the sea. Stood bent forward from the waist, poised.

  Carver leaned on his cane, waiting. Squeezing the hard walnut that was worn to his grip. About now. About now.

  “Any moment,” Palma said softly. “Any goddamn moment.”

  Time seemed to drag to a halt, as if the planet had broken rhythm in its rotation. The stillness around them had weight.

  For an instant the fireball that blossomed on the eastern horizon was brighter than the sun. Then the low and echoing voice of the blast rolled across the waves to shore, bouncing off the surface of the sea like wild and thunderous laughter.

  The fireball lost its perfect rose configuration and contracted to a small, steady orange glow that lasted a long time and then flickered and disappeared, leaving only darkness beyond the coast.

  Courtney’s lips were compressed and her jaw muscles flexed. But she didn’t cry. Not Courtney. Finally she turned away and walked along the dock, toward the flashing red and blue lights of the police cars. Toward the motionless, silent figures still staring out to sea. She moved slowly and smoothly, as if through water.

  Beside Carver, Palma said, “I tell you one thing, that was all he thought about, ever. Like he was fuckin’ haunted, you know? I loved him, but he was one crazy son of a bitch.”

  “Maybe,” Carver said.

  Chapter 38

  NO ONE EVER KNEW the real source of the explosion that destroyed the Bold Entrepreneur and killed everyone on board. The news media played it as a tragedy, and the feds pressured local law into agreeing. There were glowing eulogies for some of the victims. A televangelist who’d been the recipient of SCBL donations held a series of coordinated TV prayer and memorial services throughout the South.

  Carver heard months later that the city of Atlanta had named a street after Frank Wesley.

  No connection was made between the boat explosion and the DEA agent who disappeared fighting the illicit drug trade in Florida. Apparently Ralph Palma wasn’t talking. Or the DEA didn’t want it made public that one of their agents had acted illegally, murderously, and without proof. Finished business, and the kind of thing the government preferred kept confidential.

  Carver checked out what Jefferson had told him, and it was true. The gun recovered after the Martin Luther King assassination was never linked directly to the bullet that killed King. A smokescreen of legal technicalities and wild rumors had obscured the very suspicious facts of both the murder and the time afterward. From somewhere, James Earl Ray had received enough money to travel all over the world before running afoul of customs at Heathrow Airport in London. From somewhere.

  One day, not knowing why, Carver detoured from where he’d been driving and found himself at Beach Cove Court. Drove down Little Cove Lane to Bert Renway’s mobile home. Renway, the little man who’d been made a pawn in a big game.

  Everything looked the way it had when he’d first come here. He parked the Olds and limped over to the white double-wide trailer with trim the color of egg yolks. Started to knock on the aluminum door and then changed his mind. If someone did answer his knock, he wouldn’t know them. He’d have nothing to say. He wasn’t sure himself why he’d come here, except that it still bothered him, the way Bert Renway had died and why.

  He backed away from mobile home, from the sun’s heat glancing off the smooth white metal. Limped across a hard, weedy stretch of ground to the Willa Hataris trailer.

  He stood in the shade of the metal awning and knocked on the door. Knocked again, harder.

  No one came to the door and there was no sound from inside.

  Carver gave up and started toward the parked Olds.

  Halfway there, he saw a thin haze of dark smoke hanging above the Renway trailer. After staring at it for a moment, he hobbled over the rough ground toward it.

  He stopped and watched the man standing behind the trailer. Probably the tenant or the new owner who’d just moved in. A small, gray-haired man wearing a sleeveless undershirt and baggy brown slacks held up by suspenders. He was obviously clearing the trailer of Renway’s possessions. Using a rake handle to poke tentatively at a glowing fire inside a wire barrel.

  Burning trash.

  Carver limped back to his car and drove away.

  He smelled the smoke for miles.

  A Biography of John Lutz

  John Lutz is one of the foremost voices in contemporary hard-boiled fiction.

  First published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine in 1966, Lutz has written dozens of novels and over 250 short stories in the last four decades. His earliest success came with the Alo Nudger series, set in his hometown of St. Louis. A meek private detective, Nudger swills antacid instead of whiskey, and his greatest nemesis is his run-down Volkswagen. In his offices, permeated by the smell of the downstairs donut shop, he spends his time clipping coupons and studying baseball trivia. Though not a tough guy, he gets results. Lutz continued the series through eleven novels and over a dozen short stories, one of which—“Ride the Lightning”—won an Edgar Award for best story in 1986.

  Lutz’s next big success also came in 1986, when he published Tropical Heat, the first Fred Carver mystery. The ensuing series took Lutz into darker territory, as he invented an Orlando cop forced to retire by a bullet that permanently disabled his left knee. Hobbled by injury and cynicism, he begins a career as a private detective, following low-lifes and beautiful women all over sunny, deadly Florida. In ten years Lutz wrote ten Carver novels, among them Scorcher (1987), Bloodfire (1991), and Lightning (1996), and as a whole they form a gut-wrenching depiction of the underbelly of the Sunshine State. Meanwhile, he also wrote Dancing with the Dead (1992), in which a serial killer targets ballroom dancers.

  In 1992 his novel SWF Seeks Same was adapted for the screen as Single White Female, starring Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh. His novel The Ex was made into an HBO film for which Lutz co-wrote the screenplay. In 2001 his book The Night Caller inaugurated a new series of novels about ex-NYPD cops who hunt s
erial killers on the streets of New York City, and with Darker Than Night (2004) he introduced Frank Quinn, whose own series has yielded five books, the most recent being Mister X (2010).

  Lutz is a former president of the Mystery Writers of America, and his many awards include Shamus Awards for Kiss and “Ride the Lightning,” and lifetime achievement awards from the Short Mystery Fiction Society and the Private Eye Writers of America. He lives in St. Louis.

  A two-year old Lutz, photographed in 1941. The photograph was taken by Lutz’s father, Jack Lutz, who was a local photographer out of downtown St. Louis.

  A young Lutz with his little brother, Jim, and sisters, Jacqui and Janie.

  Lutz at ten years old, with his mother, Jane, grandmother, Kate, and brother, Jim. Lutz grew up in a sturdy brick city house that sat at an incline, halfway down a hill; according to Lutz, this made for optimal sledding during Missouri’s cold winters.

  Lutz in his very first suit, purchased for his grade school graduation.

  Lutz’s graduation photo from Southwest High School.

  Lutz sitting on the front porch of the first house he and his wife, Barbara, ever owned. According to Lutz, the square footage rendered the house smaller than his last apartment; nevertheless it was an important milestone and tremendous relief—there was no one upstairs to abuse their stereos or bang on the floor (or to complain when they did the same).

  On January 6, 1966, Lutz officially became a “professional writer” with his first story sale to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. After the publication of his first story, Lutz quickly became a regular contributor to the magazine. Lutz has said that he enjoys writing, “as much as when I began. It’s a process that lives and grows.”

  Lutz in St. Louis with his daughter Wendy.

  Lutz in his home office in the early eighties. When asked about his discipline and writing practice, Lutz has said that “being a writer is like being a cop; you’re always on, even off duty.” In the late sixties and early seventies, he published four books and many celebrated short stories.