Accustomed to the Dark

by Walter Satterthwait

  “Joshua, I think you should come back. Before something happens to me.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

  I was about an hour past Pensacola. Green pine forest rose up on either side of the Interstate, the tree trunks tall and slender, the flat earth brown with needles beneath them. The telephone rang.

  “Yes?”

  “Joshua, it’s Leroy.” His voice was urgent. “Look, you’ve gotta get back here, man.”

  “Wait.”

  I braked, pulled the Cherokee over to the shoulder. An angry horn blared as a car whizzed by me. “What is it?” I said. “Rita?”

  “She’s bad, man. It looks like she’s got some kind of infection. Her temperature’s way up there, man. They’re afraid it might be meningitis.”

  “What are they doing? The doctors?”

  “Shit, man, I don’t know.”

  “You have her doctor’s phone number? The surgeon. What’s-his-name—Berger?”

  “Yeah, wait a minute. Okay, here.” He read it to me.

  “I’ll call you right back.”

  “Joshua, you really should get here, man.”

  “I’ll call you right back, Leroy.”

  I dialed the doctor’s number, reached his secretary. I told her who I was. She asked me to hold. I listened to Muzak for five minutes.

  He finally picked up the phone. “Good afternoon, Mr. Croft. What can I do for you?”

  “You can tell me what’s happening to Mrs. Mondragón.”

  “Mrs. Mondragón is running a temperature, and her white blood cell count is higher than we’d like it to be. There’s the possibility of an infection. We’ve taken cultures. We expect to hear from the laboratory within forty-eight hours.”

  “That’s two days.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “What could be causing the infection?”

  “Until we get the lab results, we don’t know that there is an infection. If there is, it could be any of a number of things.”

  “Meningitis?”

  “Cerebral meningitis is one possibility, yes. But, as I say, we won’t know for another two days.”

  “And if she has meningitis?”

  “Then we have a different scenario here. But, as I told you earlier, Mr. Croft, I have every expectation that Mrs. Mondragón will recover. She’s going through a crisis at the moment, yes. There is cause for concern, yes. But it’s a rare brain injury that doesn’t pass through some sort of crisis.”

  “She hasn’t regained consciousness?”

  “No. Not as yet.”

  “And she won’t, either, if she dies.”

  “We’re doing everything we can, Mr. Croft. Mrs. Mondragón is a strong, healthy woman. She’s fighting this. Despite the setback, I have every reason for confidence.”

  “Yeah. All right, doctor. Thank you.”

  I didn’t know whether his confidence was real, whether it was a product of his own egotism, or whether it was a sham, designed to placate and dismiss petty annoyances like me.

  I did know that even if I were in Santa Fe, there was nothing I could do to help Rita.

  I dialed Leroy’s number.

  He picked it up on the first ring. “Yeah?”

  “Leroy, I just talked to the doctor. He thinks she’s going to pull through.”

  “Man, that guy is an asshole. He’s just sayin’ that to stop you from bugging him. Joshua, you really gotta get here. She’d want you here, man. Where’re you now? Can you catch a plane?”

  “Leroy, I’ve got a line on Martinez and—”

  “What’re you talking about, man? Martinez and Lucero, they’re dead. You didn’t hear? They were roasted, man, in New Orleans. They’re pork chops.”

  “I heard. It was a fake, Leroy. They’re still alive. They were spotted in Miami.”

  There was a pause. “But …”

  “I’m in Florida now,” I said. “I’m going after them.”

  “But they were identified, man. It was in all the papers. It was on the TV.”

  “They set it up. They were seen in Miami yesterday.”

  “Where’re you getting that from? Who saw them?”

  “They were seen. I’m going after them. Leroy, I’ll call you later. You call me if anything happens.”

  Another pause. Then, surly, he said, “Anything happens, man, it’ll be Rita dying.”

  “I’ll call you, Leroy.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Right.” He hung up.

  I closed the phone and set it on the passenger seat. I took a deep breath, let it slowly out.

  The cops had stopped looking for Martinez and Lucero. If I didn’t find them, no one would.

  And there was nothing I could do in Santa Fe.

  I checked the rearview mirror, pulled out onto the highway.

  I was doing the right thing, I told myself. I told it to myself several times.

  About fifteen minutes later, Hector called. “What’s this crap about Martinez and Lucero?”

  “You talked to Leroy.”

  “He called me. Josh, they’re dead. They were positively ID’ed, all three of them. The money’s been recovered.”

  “Some of the money. They had at least seventy or eighty thousand dollars, that we know of. Hector, I saw a video of those bodies. They could’ve been anyone.”

  “There were fingerprints—”

  “There was one fingerprint. Off a finger that just happened not to get burned.”

  “You want them to be alive. You want to keep tracking them, you want revenge. So you’re refusing to accept the facts. Give it up, Josh. Get back here. Rita’s in a bad way.”

  “There’s nothing I can do for her, Hector, except what I’m doing.”

  “You’re not doing that for her, goddamit. You’re doing it for yourself.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m doing it.”

  He was silent for a moment. Then he said softly, “You do it, then. You do what you want. I’m going to the hospital.”

  And, like Leroy, he hung up.

  A car raced by me, and then another.

  I was doing the right thing, I told myself. But I flicked the switch that turned off the power to the telephone.

  At five-thirty I was coming up on Tallahassee. I took the first exit available, eased the Cherokee into the first gas station I found. Stiff and sore, moving like a robot, I filled the tank.

  I climbed back into the car and turned the phone back on, flipped it open. Jepson, in Miami, had given me both his office and his home number. Too late for him to be at the office. I dialed his home.

  He was there. “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you all day,” he told me. “I left a message with Ted Chartoff in Dallas.”

  “The phone was off. You have anything?”

  “I do. I got this from a guy works for the Ortega family. They’re the people Lucero used to work for, here in—”

  “Yeah, I know. What’ve you got?”

  He paused. People were pausing a lot lately when they talked to me. “The information was expensive,” he said.

  “You can send me a bill.”

  Another pause. “I’ll do that,” he said, and his voice had grown cooler. “All right, according to my guy, Lucero and Martinez are hiding out in the Glades. Off the Tamiami Trail, near a place called Harmony Station. You know where that is?”

  “No idea.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Tallahassee.”

  “You want the cops in on this? They still think that Lucero and Martinez are dead.”

  “You think we can persuade them otherwise?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. But I can’t give up my source.”

  I was still angry at Hector. “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “I want those two myself. You’re sure this guy’s reliable? Your source?”

  “Stake my life on him.”

  “Fine. But he doesn’t know where, exactly, Lucero and Martinez are hiding out?”

  “Somewhere near Harmony S
tation. Back in the swamp somewhere. But listen. I’m way ahead of you. There’s a man in Clearwater—that’s near Tampa. He knows the Glades. Probably better than anybody in the state. Used to live there. I talked to him. He’s willing to go in there with you, help you find them, but he’s going to cost.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Carpenter. That’s what he calls himself, anyway. I think the name’s a flag. I’m pretty sure he used to be a spook. CIA, maybe.”

  “I don’t care what he calls himself, so long as he can help me find Martinez.”

  “If they’re there, he’ll find them. You want his number?”

  “Go ahead.”

  He gave it to me.

  “Thanks, Dick,” I told him. “Look, I apologize for being so abrupt. I’ve been kind of ragged lately.”

  “Yeah, I know. No problem. Give Carpenter a call. He’s expecting to hear from you.”

  “I’ll call him now.”

  “Listen, one other thing. He’s a little weird. Carpenter, I mean.”

  “Weird how?”

  “You’ll find out. I just wanted to let you know up front.”

  “All right, Dick. Thanks. I’ll talk to you later.”

  We hung up. I dialed the number he had given me. After two rings, a man’s voice came on. “Carpenter.” The voice was soft but raspy, almost a whisper.

  “This is Joshua Croft. Dick Jepson said I should call you.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Tallahassee.”

  “Jepson said you left New Orleans this morning.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Get some sleep. In the morning, find Nineteen South and take that. You’re about five, six hours away. Call me when you get to Dunedin. I’ll give you the rest of the instructions then. Got it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did Jepson tell you how much this’ll cost?”

  “No.”

  “Five hundred a day. Thousand-dollar retainer.”

  “Fine,” I told him.

  “See you tomorrow,” he said.

  25

  I LEFT TALLAHASSEE at seven-thirty in the morning. The sun was shining brightly in a sky of blue, a blue much softer and paler than the blue that domed the New Mexico high desert. The air was warm and threatened to become a lot warmer.

  For a few hours, Route 19 was mostly clear, slowly rolling over green farmland and pasture. But when it entered Pasco County, it became an endless belt of shopping centers, gas stations, automobile showrooms, fast-food emporiums, malls that ranged from strip to large to very large. The empty plains of Kansas and Texas began to seem a lot more inviting.

  The speed limit was posted at fifty miles per hour, but not many of the drivers seemed to notice, probably because half of them were legally blind.

  Years ago, when I was first learning to drive, someone told me that if you saw, sitting in the front seat of the car ahead, two white-haired women or a single man wearing a hat, you should start being very careful. A lot of the cars on Route 19 held two white-haired women or single men wearing hats. Some of the cars seemed to hold no one at all—until I passed them, cautiously, and looked to the right and saw a tiny old man, or a tiny old woman, leaning forward to peer over the dashboard, hands grimly clamped to the sides of the steering wheel.

  I reached Dunedin at a little after one. I pulled into a 7-Eleven, refilled the gas tank, and called Carpenter. He gave me terse, whispered directions. I returned to the car and I followed them.

  I got off Route 19 at Sunset Point Road, turning right, and followed that for a mile or so and then turned right again and drove past a small lake on my left, bordered with what looked like saw grass. I turned left, drove for about a hundred yards, and turned left again, into Carpenter’s gravel driveway. It was hard to believe that I was within a pistol shot of Route 19 and its traffic.

  It was a big white frame house with a big screened-in porch on a huge piece of property that sloped down to the flat blue lake. The sweep of lawn was very green in the shade of tall live oaks bearded by lacy wisps of Spanish moss. On the lush grass before the house stood two white statues of storks, and I was just thinking that they were a bit hokey when the statues lifted their wings in slow motion and magically rose off the ground to sail slowly up between the trees and vanish.

  I parked the car beside an old gray Ford pickup, got out, walked up to the front door. I knocked at the door.

  The door opened.

  Carpenter was tall and rangy, in his late fifties but very fit. His square face had the kind of reddish tan you don’t get from coconut oil. His white hair was closely cropped, brushed flat and forward along his scalp. He wore brown leather walking boots, neatly pressed khaki slacks, and a gray plaid shirt of thin flannel, the sleeves folded back from thick red wrists.

  Across his corded throat, notching the bottom of his Adam’s apple, was a thin white scar. Whatever had caused the scar had probably also caused the raspy whisper I’d heard over the phone.

  He held out his hand and I took it. It was calloused and strong.

  “You had lunch?” he whispered.

  “No.”

  He nodded. “Not much in the house. I’ll take you out. You want to drive?”

  “You’re welcome to it.”

  He nodded. “We’ll use the truck.”

  Carpenter drove the truck back to Sunset Point Road and aimed it toward the west.

  “What kind of food?” he asked me. “Any preference?”

  “So long as it’s not gray,” I said.

  He turned to me. “Gray?”

  “I’ve been eating a lot from the gray food group lately.”

  He smiled briefly, a flicker of movement at the right side of his mouth, quickly there, quickly gone. It seemed less a sign of amusement than a recognition that amusement was expected. “Chinese okay?” he said.

  “Fine.”

  He nodded. “I know a place.”

  He didn’t say anything else for a while. I assumed that when he wanted to talk about Lucero and Martinez, he would.

  Traffic was heavy but he drove well. We went past neighborhoods of low, ranch-style suburban homes. Past a small shopping center—a 7-Eleven, a pizza place. Past a large brick church on a broad green lawn. Past some more suburban neighborhoods. Into, and then out of, the shade of some overhanging live oaks. Past another neighborhood, this one older, the houses taller, their paint chipped and faded.

  The road ended at an intersection. Beyond the cross street was the Gulf of Mexico, the blue water winking in the sunlight, a few faraway sailboats loafing across it. This was the first time I’d been near a large body of water since Rita and I had stayed in Catalina. Out there in the distance, maybe a hundred feet up, a pelican wheeled in a turn and then knifed back its wings and plunged like a rocket toward the sea.

  Carpenter made a left. As we went through a short strip of cheap motels, the Gulf disappeared behind them. We drove through a quiet, slightly rundown area. Through downtown Clearwater, brick buildings, old-fashioned gaslights. Past a park on the left, a large brown hotel on the right.

  Marching along the sidewalks in front of the hotel were brisk young men and women wearing what looked like uniforms, some of them nautical, some of them military.

  “Who are they?” I asked him.

  “Scientologists,” he whispered. “The hotel, that’s their international headquarters.”

  I couldn’t tell from the whisper how he felt about Scientologists. He didn’t ask me how I felt, and I didn’t tell him.

  We drove for another two or three miles and then Carpenter turned right. Past a golf course, down a slope through some trees, up to what appeared to be a guardhouse squatting in the center of the road. As Carpenter rolled down the truck’s window, a fat man in a security guard’s uniform leaned from the window of the small building.

  “Lunch,” Carpenter told him.

  The man nodded, saluted him with a jaunty wave.

  Carpenter shifted gears and gave the truck some
gas. He turned to me, smiled his fleeting smile. “They like to keep out the riffraff.”

  “Who could blame them.”

  When we swung up to the right, through some more trees, I saw an enormous white building about two hundred yards away, three or four stories tall and stretching out, left and right, for hundreds of yards.

  “The Belleview Mido,” Carpenter said.

  We parked in the big parking lot and we walked up to the entrance. Shiny glass and polished copper, it had obviously been added long after the original building had gone up.

  Inside, beyond the expanse of gleaming lobby, the corridors seemed to go on forever. We finally reached the restaurant. It was a small place, elegant and subdued, done in black and dark blue. A hostess seated us and asked if we’d like a drink. I asked for a beer, Carpenter for an iced tea.

  A waitress brought us the drinks and a pair of menus, left us to decide. “What’s good?” I asked Carpenter.

  “Most of it,” he said.

  Small talk evidently wasn’t his strong suit.

  When the waitress returned, Carpenter ordered something with tofu. I ordered hot and sour soup and Szechuan Chicken.

  As she left, Carpenter sat back in his chair and said to me, “Okay. What’s the story on these men?”

  I told him about Martinez first. I was halfway through with it when the waitress came back, carrying our food. Carpenter held up his hand to me. “Eat now,” he whispered. “Talk later.”

  We ate. The food was good. After the waitress had cleaned away the plates, Carpenter nodded to me. “Go ahead,” he said.

  I told him the rest of it. I mentioned Rita’s coma, but not the fever. He listened quietly, nodding from time to time.

  Then I told him about Luiz Lucero. He showed only two reactions throughout it all. When I said that Lucero had been a Marielito, he frowned slightly. When I told him about Lucero shooting his victims in the eyes, his mouth twitched in that small quick smile, and he shook his head slightly. I got the feeling that he’d made an aesthetic judgment.

  “Okay,” he said, when I finished. “We find them. Then what?”

  “We bring them back.”

  “Likely they’ll have something to say about that.”

  “We may have to persuade them.”

  “Uh huh. You have weapons?”