Hot

by John Lutz

  He felt totally exposed and vulnerable on the wide lot, unable to maneuver with the cane. If the motel desk man or a guest saw him and suspected something was going on, there was no way to flee. If Davy saw him, it would be stand and fight time. Tonight, right now, Carver didn’t feel like fighting.

  He reached the van and casually as possible attached the beeper to the inside of the back bumper, first peeling the paper from the back so the disk would be affixed with adhesive as well as magnetism. He tapped it with his forefinger. It seemed firmly mounted.

  As he straightened up, one of the motel doors opened and a man in shorts and a sleeveless white undershirt stepped out. He saw Carver, looked surprised, then nodded.

  After nodding back, Carver moved around, kicked the van’s left rear tire as if he owned the vehicle and was checking on it, and watched the man walk to a lighted break in the motel’s line of rooms. There was a soda machine there, and a couple of vending machines that dispensed junk food.

  Carver walked around to the far side of the van and stood listening to the clunk! clunk! of the soda machine reluctantly parting with its wares. He tried to peer inside the van’s tinted windows, but the light reflecting on the outside of the glass made that impossible.

  The man in the shorts and undershirt didn’t look at him as he returned to his room with two soda cans. He was wearing rubber thongs; Carver could hear them slapping his heels as he trudged to within twenty feet of the van, opened the partly latched door to his room, and disappeared inside.

  Breathing easier, Carver used a more circuitous route to reach the edge of the motel lot, then made his way back to the rental car. He drove around the block and parked where he could still see Davy’s van, but where Davy wouldn’t notice him as he checked out tomorrow and drove from the motel.

  Carver got the square black receiver from the shoe box and plugged it into the cigarette lighter socket. Immediately it broke into deafening cricketlike beeping, as if it were a geiger counter on top of a pile of uranium. He fumbled for the control knob and turned down the volume. Whew! Much better.

  Satisfied that the transmitter and receiver were working, he twisted the car’s ignition key to Off so the lighter socket was dead.

  With a final glance at the black van, he settled back in the Ford’s deep upholstery and allowed himself to doze lightly, never falling completely asleep, maintaining a twilight level of awareness. He’d done this sort of thing before and had the knack.

  Though the car’s windows were down, it was warm inside and would stay warm. He knew he wouldn’t get much rest, but it was unlikely Davy could leave tomorrow without Carver knowing about it through his hunter’s sixth sense that seldom failed him.

  The game was on and Van Meter was right: an essential part of him was enjoying it.

  Enjoying the hell out of it.

  He rested his bald pate on the padded headrest and crossed his arms, leaving his eyes narrowed to slits, feeling miserable and elated at the same time. Not quite sleeping.

  Eager for morning.

  30

  JUST AFTER NINE o’clock Carver knuckled sand from his eyes and watched Davy’s black van jounce over the raised concrete apron as it drove from the motel lot. It hadn’t stopped at the office; apparently Davy had paid cash, or the desk clerk had run his credit card through the night before. If Carver hadn’t been half awake and watching, he would have missed him. Davy was a guy usually better missed, but not this time.

  Carver worked the ignition key and the Ford’s engine kicked to life and smoothed out. He pulled away from the curb and hung steady about a block behind the van. The beeper receiver rested next to him on the seat, already plugged into the lighter socket, but he didn’t switch it on. There was no sense using it as long as he could see the boxy black form of the van. The sun hadn’t gotten mean yet, and he drove with the window down, enjoying the cool breeze. Despite a stiff neck and the foul taste in his mouth, this wasn’t half bad; he felt as if he had things more or less under control and was shaping events.

  The van stopped at a McDonald’s, and Carver waited, hungry, while Davy ambled inside and had breakfast. He was pleased to see that Davy acted nothing like a man suspicious of being followed. Carver could see him through the window, leaning back in his plastic chair and raising and lowering his plastic fork.

  When Carver’s stomach growled, he was tempted to chance getting something from the drive-through window, but he decided against it. Davy might happen to glance in his direction during the exchange of cash for McMuffin. So he sat with the Ford backed into one of the lot’s yellow-bordered parking slots and waited, trying not to notice the fuzz on his teeth, or that he needed to use the rest room. These were occupational discomforts. He should have brought his plastic Porta Potti.

  Finally Davy swaggered from McDonald’s as if leaving a just-docked freighter. Without glancing around, he climbed up into the van and drove from the lot. Carver started the Ford’s engine, glad to switch on the air conditioner now that the sun was higher and more serious. But he didn’t pull out of his parking slot.

  Tires squealing, the van had made a U-turn and was bouncing back in through the McDonald’s exit, speeding the wrong way past irate drivers lined up at the drive-through window. Horns honked. A woman yelled something indecipherable. Carver ducked out of sight and listened to the van roar past. He realized he was smiling. Davy, Davy, you seafaring scoundrel!

  He knew Davy was making sure he wasn’t being followed. When Carver figured the van had exited from the entrance driveway, he switched on the receiver, sat up behind the steering wheel and followed the beeps instead of the van itself.

  It was the first time he’d ever tried to keep track of another car this way, and after some initial doubts, he found it much simpler than he’d anticipated. The variance in tone and volume of the beeps emitted by the receiver was easy to detect, and any change in the unseen van’s direction was noticeable. And when the intermittent beeping became fainter, Carver sped up and regained volume, knowing he was keeping the distance between Ford and van more or less constant. His curiosity about where Davy might lead him became sharp and goading.

  Then the beeping got suddenly very loud and began a fluttering beat that was almost an unbroken electronic scream.

  Startled at first, Carver realized the van had stopped.

  He steered the Ford to the outside lane, slowing to around fifteen miles per hour. Davy must be parked somewhere ahead. Keeping his speed slow, Carver peered through the windshield, scanning the sunny street, not wanting to stop too close to the black van.

  But before he saw the van, the beeping abruptly changed tone and began to fade again. Davy was on the move after only a brief pause. Okay, so maybe he’d only stopped for half a minute at a traffic light. Carver urged himself to be more alert, to think of that sort of thing and not jump to conclusions.

  His cane shifted sideways where it leaned against the seat, its crook bumping the receiver as he veered the Ford back to the outside lane and picked up speed to keep the volume constant.

  After about five minutes the beeping grew louder again, changed tone.

  The van was motionless again.

  But not for long. The high-pitched beeps grew farther apart and fainter. The van was now on the move, probably after another brief wait for a traffic signal to change.

  Only Carver didn’t pass a traffic light for the next five blocks, and he was sure the van wasn’t farther ahead of him than that. This was—

  Uh-oh. The beeping indicated the van was stopped once more. Carver pulled the Ford to the curb and waited, this time for almost two minutes. Longer than any traffic light.

  Beeep beeep . . . beep . . . beep . . . beep . . .

  Davy on the go again, according to the tiny transmitter on the van’s bumper.

  Stop, start, stop, start. What the hell was the game here?

  Carver studied the wide, four-lane avenue ahead of him. Heavy Miami traffic, even this late in the morning. Lots of pedestrians on th
e sidewalk, window shopping, standing at—

  Goddamnit!

  He swerved around a pickup truck and goosed the Ford’s speed up to fifty, flying past slower traffic in the curb lane. The beeping got louder and louder.

  Became almost unbearably loud and constant.

  And Carver saw the bus.

  He parked.

  Watched the bus pull away after picking up passengers.

  The beeping receded.

  Two blocks farther down, when the lumbering vehicle angled to the curb to pick up and drop off more passengers, the beeping flared again. It faded as the bus rumbled away, leaving a dark haze of diesel exhaust.

  Carver’s heart took a dive. He swerved the Ford to the curb lane and parked, switching off the receiver. Then he slapped the dashboard hard enough to sting his hand and make something drop with a tiny tinkling sound somewhere in the car.

  Davy had figured it out, maybe even seen him plant the bumper beeper on the van last night at the motel. He’d tricked Carver, been toying with him. Placed the beeper on the back of a bus while he went about his business, leaving Carver to start and stop along the vehicle’s route. Davy’s little joke.

  Not funny to Carver.

  After sitting for a while seething and trying to think in the glaring sunlight, he decided there was only one way he might salvage something from this trip north. Still smelling diesel fumes, he almost broke the Ford’s key twisting it in the ignition to restart the engine. Then he drove to the Blue Flamingo Hotel. There was the slim possibility the Evermans had checked back in. And if they hadn’t, he could talk to some of the other residents and try to get a line on where they might have gone.

  And there was another possibility. He was sure Davy was wily enough to figure out his trail might be picked up again at the Blue Flamingo, yet Davy’s arrogance and sadistic streak might compel him to go to the hotel for no reason other than to taunt Carver. How likely that was, Carver wasn’t sure, but he decided to give psychology a chance.

  He’d leave the Ford parked out of sight, then check into one of the nearby hotels that was a notch above the Blue Flamingo and buy some shorts and sunglasses, a hat to protect his bald head from the sun. Maybe he’d smear a glob of that white suntan lotion on his nose, become unrecognizable. There was no shortage of men who walked with canes in this area. He could wander unobtrusively down Collins Avenue, or possibly along the beach like a shell collector, and wait to see if Davy showed up at the Blue Flamingo. Carver the man of a thousand disguises.

  If Davy showed, Carver would attach the second transmitter to the van, this time someplace where it wouldn’t be noticed.

  If Davy didn’t show, at least Carver would return to Key Montaigne with an enviable tan, and feeling qualified to drive a bus in Miami.

  31

  CARVER DROVE BACK to Key Montaigne the next morning still wearing his tourist garb’ arid sunglasses, the bridge of his nose painfully sunburned despite the glob of white lotion he’d smeared and left on it. He’d missed a spot. The sun had found it.

  No one at the Blue Flamingo even knew who the Evermans were when he’d asked about them. It was a place where questions weren’t welcome, and that included the ones posed by Carver. And Davy hadn’t reappeared in the vicinity of the old art deco hotel. At least not in any way Carver could detect. So much for abnormal psychology.

  He hadn’t rushed leaving Miami, figuring why not temper his disappointment with a large and leisurely breakfast, then a cigar.

  He’d indulged himself at the Osprey restaurant, overlooking the ocean, and decided he’d return there sometime when he got back to Miami. After breakfast he walked along the beach smoking, even though he’d had more than enough of the sun while staking out the Blue Flamingo. It felt good to be among the hundreds of tourists; his was a lonely line of work, and even this impersonal human closeness helped relieve the pressure of solitude.

  By the time he’d driven to Key Montaigne and returned the Ford to Hertz, it was well past noon. Since his sunburned nose still hurt, he drove the Olds with the top up. Beth was sitting on the screened-in porch when he parked in front of the cottage and climbed out of the car in his red and black striped shorts, T-shirt with the flying fish on it, long-billed white cap, and reflector-lens sunglasses. She walked out and stood on the porch steps with the door open, staring at him.

  “Been in some kinda accident, Fred?”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Nothing. What’s that white gunk on your nose?”

  “Sunscreen. Makes it feel better.”

  “Oh. I’d ask you how it went up in Miami, but I can tell by your face it didn’t go well.” When he got close enough, hobbling up the steps with his cane, she kissed him on the chin, well below nose level. “Want a beer?”

  He nodded and lowered himself into one of the chairs on the porch, then sat tracing idle patterns on the floor with the tip of his cane. It was dim there compared to the brilliant sunlight beyond the dark screen, almost cool.

  She returned with two opened cans of Budweiser, gave him one and settled into the metal glider with the other. She had her hair pulled back and tied with a yellow ribbon today. The ribbon matched her shorts. She looked cool as ice cream and twice as—

  “Been some news here while you were gone,” she said, interrupting his thoughts, even his plans. “Came over the local radio station this morning. The head of the Oceanography Research Center was found dead. Hanged himself, news said.”

  Carver planted the tip of his cane on the floor and pushed himself up straighter in the chair. “Dr. Sam?”

  “Yeah. Only the news called him Dr. Bing.”

  “Who found him?”

  “His assistant—that Katia woman. S’posed to have come in for work around eight this morning to open the aquarium for tourists, and there the good doctor was hanging.”

  Carver breathed out and sat still for a moment, digesting what Beth had told him. “They calling it suicide?”

  “Sure. According to Chief Wicke, there was no doubt.”

  “Bing leave a note?”

  She shrugged, sipped Budweiser, wiped a bit of foam from her upper lip. “News didn’t say.”

  Carver set his beer can aside and stood up, leaning on the cane.

  “Guess I don’t have to ask where you’re going?” Beth said.

  “Guess not.”

  “Want me to come along?”

  Carver stood thinking about that. Beth had a way with distraught members of her own sex. She’d suffered and she understood their suffering, and she might notice something he’d miss in a conversation with Millicent Bing or Katia. “It’d be a good idea,” he said. “You ready to go?”

  She didn’t move. “Only on one condition.”

  He cocked his head and looked questioningly at her. What had she cranked up to throw at him now?

  “You gotta change clothes, Fred, get rid of that white stuff on your nose.”

  Easy enough.

  He’d expected to see police cars parked at the research center, but the lot was empty. The law had come and gone, shaping death to the brisk, efficient routine of bureaucracy and making it seem comprehensible to the only species that thought about it before it happened. A cardboard sign next to the parking lot entrance, printed crudely in thick black marking pen, informed visitors apologetically that the center was temporarily closed.

  With Beth beside him, Carver limped to the tinted glass entrance, hoping someone was still inside. There must be chores here that had to be done, cleaning tanks, feeding sea life, whatever was necessary to maintain a patch of ocean on dry land. He noticed the Fair Wind still at its dock and riding gently on incoming ripples, as if dancing lightly to the music of the wind through its myriad antennae. The breeze off the ocean made the place seem sad and desolate, touched by undeniable mortality. Death itself could haunt.

  Carver pounded on the door with the crook of his cane.

  “Place feels unoccupied,” Beth said.

  But it wasn’t.
The door opened about six inches and Katia Marsh peered out. There were deep crescents of grief beneath her eyes; she’d been crying and it hadn’t helped much.

  “We’re closed,” she said. “Dr. Sam—”

  “I know,” Carver told her. “We heard about it on the news. This is my associate, Beth Jackson. Can we come inside, Katia?”

  She hesitated a moment, then stepped back and opened the door wider so they could enter. Before closing the door, she glanced around outside, as if suspecting they might be the advance guard for an army of interlopers. Maybe she feared the news media. Or the police converging on her again.

  It was blessedly cool in the research center. The only sound was an air-conditioning unit, or possibly a filtering system, humming away somewhere.

  “I was cleaning some of the displays,” Katia said, “trying to keep busy.” With a weak smile she turned and walked to the door leading to the live exhibits. Carver and Beth followed her through the door and down the steel steps. Beth looked at the circling shark behind the glass wall. It looked back at her. She shivered.

  Katia picked up some kind of instrument, a screened scoop on the end of a wooden handle, and began listlessly skimming the surface of the shallow water in which a small sea turtle was displayed.

  “Is this where you found Dr. Sam?” Carver asked.

  The sifter jerked, causing ripples in the shallow water. Beth looked hard at Carver, somewhat the way the shark had looked at her.

  “I’m told you were close to the doctor,” she said to Katia. “We’re sorry about what happened. Really.”

  Katia dropped the sifter and rubbed her eyes with knuckles still wet from the tank. Carver felt guilty for being cynical enough to wonder if there’d been anything beyond business going on between the late doctor and his attractive young assistant. He said, “I’m sorry about Dr. Sam, and sorry to have to ask you these questions.”