Flame (2 page)

Carver handed the paper back to Renway. “This probably doesn’t mean much legally,” he said.

Renway carefully refolded the paper and slid it back in his hip pocket. “I know, but it gives me some measure of protection.”

“Not enough.”

“Well, yeah. That’s why I’m here. Why I wanna hire you to find out what’s goin’ on. I drove back up to Del Moray to get some of my stuff outa the mobile home, and I figured I oughta hire an investigator here, seeing as Palmer and his friends must have been watchin’ me before I went to Fort Lauderdale.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Palmer knew a lot about me the first time we talked in the motel lounge. Even knew about Ella. That it was cancer took her.”

“You said ‘Palmer and his friends.’ ”

“Yeah. I never met anybody but Palmer, but he says ‘we’ now and then and talks like there’s others involved.”

Carver toyed with the crook of his walnut cane for a moment, then propped it against the desk. “What’s happened to you while you’ve been wandering around being Frank Wesley?”

“Nothin’ outa the ordinary, I might as well be Bert Renway, same as always, only I wouldn’t be gettin’ a couple thousand a week.” He leaned forward. “Whole thing, Carver, it makes me uneasy.”

“Know anything about Wesley?”

“Nope. Palmer wouldn’t tell me nothin’ about him. Lives in a nice place though. Man’s for sure got money. That’s his car out there, the big Caddie. Me, I usually drive an Escort.”

Carver said, “They give you any idea where Wesley is while you’re being him?”

“Not a hint. That’s why my feelin’ is that part of this two thousand a week oughta go to findin’ out
why
I’m collectin’ it.”

“Could be money well spent,” Carver agreed. He told Renway his fee. Got an advance in cash. The way to do business. He said, “What’s this Palmer look like?”

“Man about forty,” Renway said, “kinda handsome. Got straight black hair, dark eyes. Maybe part Cuban.”

“Spanish accent?”

“Just a trace, I’d say. Dresses like a million; always got on an expensive suit and tie. Drives a little gray car—don’t know what kind. Somethin’ foreign, maybe. I been livin’ as Frank Wesley for a little more’n three weeks now, and I only seen Palmer four times: when he hired me, and when we met the next three Friday nights and he paid me.”

“Where’d you meet?”

“We got an appointment every Friday evening at seven at a spot on the public beach. A bench near where Sunrise Boulevard meets Ocean.”

“Pay you in cash?”

“Yep. All in fifties or smaller bills. Money looks real enough. That’s some of it there on your desk. Him to me to you.”

Carver lifted the top two bills from the stack of fifties in front of him: Renway’s retainer. He snapped the bills through his fingers, rubbed the ink, held them up to the light, compared serial numbers. “Real stuff, all right.” He replaced the bills. “Can you give me your—Wesley’s—address and an extra key? I think I oughta look the place over while you’re out driving around. That way whoever might be watching you wouldn’t be near the condo.”

“I don’t think anybody’s watchin’ or followin’ me; I checked on that. Doubled back a few times. Kept a careful eye on my rearview mirror.”

“There are people who are very good at following,” Carver said. “Better write down Wesley’s phone number, too. I probably won’t use it, and it’d be best if you didn’t call here. For that matter, don’t make any call from the condo you might not want overheard.”

“Huh? You think the phone’s tapped?”

“I think we need to find out. If the people who hired you are pros, they might be doing all sorts of things without you being aware.”

Renway didn’t argue. He wrote down Wesley’s address and said he’d have an extra key cut that afternoon and drop it by Carver’s office. As if to emphasize his intention, he fished a key ring from his pocket. A bulky gold letter
W
was attached to it by a chain. He worked a brass door key from it and dropped the key into his shirt pocket. Sat clutching the gold ring with its car keys in his right hand.

Carver told him he’d type up a contract and trade it to him for the duplicate key when he came back. Gave him a receipt for the money. All above-board and businesslike. Unlike the Wesley deal.

Renway tucked the receipt in his pocket and raised himself out of his chair. “I feel better after talkin’ to you, Carver. I couldn’t go on not knowin’ and not doin’ a thing about this.” He snubbed out his cigarette in the seashell ashtray he’d been holding, then placed the pink-and-blue-tinged shell on a corner of the desk. A thin wisp of gray smoke continued to curl from it. Caught the draft from the air conditioner and dissipated.

He said, “Thanks, Carver. See you about two o’clock, okay?”

Carver said two was fine. Watched Renway walk from the office in his stiff, slow gait that said he was a senior citizen and taking it easy. No rush to be anywhere or do anything. Time was running out and he was going to be selfish and enjoy what was left. Only trouble was, he needed money and had to bend a little to get it. Like getting involved in something he didn’t understand.

Life kept demanding compromises, Carver mused. Never stopped.

He heard the Cadillac’s powerful engine turn over and roar.

His ears popped, as if he were in a plane climbing through changing air pressure. That was odd, but he didn’t have time to think about it.

The blast blew in the window and knocked him out of his chair.

H
E WAS DANCING, WHIRLING
on two good legs. The woman he was with was wearing heady perfume. A scent he couldn’t place. Diamonds shot sparks off her black velvet gown.

Carver opened his eyes wider.

There was no woman. He wasn’t dancing. The diamonds were fragments of glass. The velvet wasn’t a gown, wasn’t black, and wasn’t even velvet; it was the blue carpet in his office.

He was disappointed.

Why was he lying on the floor? Staring at a thousand glittering glass shards and wondering where the hell was his cane? A curl of blackness broken by light washed over him, then receded. Like a dark surf rushing in, rushing out. He tried to gather his senses.

What’s going on here?

Not sure.

You fully conscious, Carver? Reasoning straight?

Dumb question. How would I know? But yeah, I think so.

Where
was
his cane?

Stretched out on his stomach, he propped himself up on his elbows and looked around.

Whoa! The office was some mess. All the papers that had been on his desk were spread over the floor and up against the far wall, like leaves tossed by the wind. Nothing was left on the desk, not even the ashtray or the incredibly complicated Japanese-made combination answering machine, telephone, recorder, and Dictaphone Edwina had talked him into buying. The drapes hung limply at the window and were so shredded they admitted narrow sunbeams that dappled the floor and caused the broken glass to glitter.
Diamond, diamond.

Carver saw his cane lying on the floor near the desk. He started to drag himself toward it, then felt a shard of glass penetrate the heel of his hand and stopped and lay still.

The sharp pain cleared his mind. Gingerly, he pulled the splinter of glass out with his thumb and forefinger and dropped it off to the side.

Then he moved more carefully, picking glass out of the carpet before him. Like a fastidious maid removing dangerous lint.

He reached the cane and gripped it tightly, feeling the hard walnut warm to his grasp. But he didn’t try to stand up. The way he felt, that could wait a minute or two. Instead he worked his way to a sitting position and leaned his back against the wall, his stiff leg angled out in front of him, and wondered what had put him here, what had happened.

He heard the singsong wail of a siren, way off in the distance, yet red and blue light danced off the glass fragments remaining in the window frame. Roofbar lights. Odd. A police car had turned into the lot and was parking out front, but the siren seemed miles away. Sound and sight didn’t coincide. Didn’t make sense.

Then he realized there was something wrong with his hearing. And there was a high, steady buzzing in his ears, hardly noticeable because it was so monotonous it seemed part of normal background noise. He’d been ignoring it the way people ignore crickets screaming.

Then the sky outside the window darkened, lightened, darkened. Smoke drifting on the wind. He could smell it. And he could smell something else. Something sweet and cloying that was burning and creating the black smoke. And he remembered.

Said, “Holy Christ!” Grabbed the edge of the desk, planted the tip of his cane firmly in the soft carpet, and pushed himself to his feet.

His head ached and he was dizzy. And now that he’d remembered, he was trembling. He could feel the vibration running like electricity through the cane.

He leaned hard on the cane with both hands and waited, his body swaying. Finally the dizziness passed. The trembling ceased. The headache decided to stay.

Another siren wailed outside. Much louder than the first. Through the window, Carver saw the roof of another police car and its flashing red and blue lights as it braked to a halt outside.

Renway. It had to be Renway who’d triggered the explosion when he started the Caddie. Carver remembered how the sound of the big car’s engine turning over had preceded the blast. Renway, who’d been pretending to be someone else. Who? Oh, yeah, guy named Weston, or Wesley. That was it—Frank Wesley.

Carver hobbled to the window to make sure he was right about the source of the explosion. Peered outside and saw the long Cadillac burning despite the frantic efforts of two uniformed cops with fire extinguishers. The car’s twisted hood was lying on the ground nearby; its doors were blown open or had been opened by the cops. One of the rear ones hung crazily by only the bottom hinge, like some kind of injured wing.

The car’s interior was pure orange flame, fed by gasoline and not in the least affected by whatever the cops were spraying on it. The tires were already melted to globs of rubber. What Carver had smelled were the mingled odors of rubber—and Renway—burning. The sickening stench of charred flesh that lodged in the nostrils and lay thick on the tongue to become taste.

Through the pulsing, constantly unfolding orange blossom trapped in the car, a wizened black form could occasionally be glimpsed bent over the steering wheel as if trying to coax speed from hurtling steel, like Renway’s narrow shadow. Only it wasn’t his shadow, it was Renway himself. What he’d become in the blast furnace of the Cadillac.

People were standing across the street and on the edge of the parking lot. Staring, knotted close together as if for protection. Death was always an unpleasant reminder. Another uniformed cop was over there, strutting back and forth like a storm trooper and waving his arms, motioning for everyone to stay well back, though no one was moving. Carver knew there was no danger of another explosion. Everything explosive or flammable in the car was already blazing.

Sirens. Very loud now. And a clanging bell.

A yellow-and-chrome Del Moray fire engine, gaudy as a jukebox, belched black smoke of its own from its diesel exhaust, slowed down with more bell clanging, and turned off of Magellan into the driveway. Another patrol car arrived, following the fire engine like a pilot fish trailing a shark. No other vehicles moving out there; Magellan must be blocked to through traffic.

The breeze caught the smoke and the sweet odor again, carrying them Carver’s way.

He swallowed the syrupy taste at the base of his tongue and backed away from the window. Limped over behind his desk. Sat down hard in his chair. Dizzy like before. Not feeling well at all. His headache flared, pounded. Jesus! Soon as he felt like standing again, he’d root through the locked bottom drawer of the file cabinet, where he kept his gun and some Extra-Strength Tylenol. Needed three of four tablets to block this baby.

What happened next didn’t help his headache at all.

The office door opened and in stepped McGregor.

D
EL
M
ORAY POLICE LIEUTENANT
William McGregor was probably six-foot-six. In his early forties and skinny but with the kind of wiry, coiled strength seen in pro basketball players. He had straight blond hair, combed severely sideways and beginning to thin, a lock of it lying raggedly down his forehead. A long, narrow face with tiny and close-set blue eyes, a jutting jaw. He looked more Scandinavian than Scottish. His thin lips parted in a smile to reveal the wide gap between his front teeth, and he shut the door behind him and stepped all the way into the office. Like many very tall men, he seemed to move lazily, in sections. Broken glass crunched beneath his boat-size black wing-tip shoes.

He said, “Looks like your cleaning woman ain’t been in yet today.”

Carver said, “I’ll tidy up myself just as soon as you’re gone. I’d like to get to it.”

McGregor hitched his thumbs in his belt and stood with his legs spread wide. A colossus straddling anything he could bully. Not going anyplace. “This is police business, Carver. Let me ask, you notice a car explode right outside your window?”

Carver’s headache throbbed. “It didn’t escape my attention.”

“Now, the guy who’s barbecued in the driver’s seat might have come to this building to rent a car, only he arrived in what looks like it was a pretty new and nice car before it got all bent and scorched. Or he might have driven here to buy some insurance next door; that’d be a classic case of bad timing, hey? Or he might have come here to see you, a private investigator sitting with his thumb up his ass in his brand-new office. That seems most likely of the three. Incidentally, what made you rent an office? Edwina get tired of you and throw you outa her house?”

The last thing Carver felt like doing was talking to McGregor, the most self-involved, ambitious, and unscrupulous person he’d ever met. Add to that bad grooming. Even from a distance of over five feet, he could smell McGregor’s foul breath and cheap perfumy cologne. The afternoon Florida heat was pushing in through the blown-out window, too. Almost enough to turn the stomach.