Spark (16 page)

“I’ll kill you, motherfucker!” he said, his voice high and hoarse, even if still threatening. But now there was doubt in it; Carver was supposed to be afraid, supposed to buckle, but it wasn’t working out that way.

The phone rang. It was near Carver. Keeping his good leg pressed against the side of the bed for support, he used his cane to knock the receiver off the hook.

“Somebody probably complained about the noise,” he said. “Or maybe the smell.”

The huge man’s breathing hissed like a blacksmith’s bellows in the hot, tiny room. “Motherfucker,” he said again. Not much imagination, Carver decided. And apparently some kind of oedipal fixation.

“You should have brought a gun,” Carver said, reading fear in the cruel blue eyes. He smiled. “Yeah, you definitely need a gun.”

“I’ll bring one next time, motherfucker,” the man said. He showed no inclination to advance on Carver again.

“Somebody’s probably calling nine-eleven right now,” Carver said. “Why don’t you hang around and see who shows up.”

The agonized little eyes flickered with the knowledge that this might not be a bluff. Someone might well have complained about the noise, or heard the talk about guns over the phone, whose receiver was lying on the carpet with the line open. The law might swoop down on them like cavalry to the rescue.

It could all be true and both men knew it. The balance had shifted so noticeably that it seemed to have altered weight and gravity in the room. Carver’s assailant backed toward the door, glaring fearfully, as if Carver might suddenly charge with the cane.

Well, Carver might; he felt like it. God, he felt like it!

But he knew it would be stupid. If the huge man ever got hold of him where they’d be fighting in close, grappling, he’d be in trouble.

“You’re gonna be real sorry for this,” the man said, oozing his bulk out the door. “You’re a dead man, you are. Dead, dead, dead.”

Carver smiled and said, “Motherfucker.”

The huge man slammed the door hard enough to make a framed Norman Rockwell print drop from the wall. The one where the big ruddy cop is scolding the skinny, contrite boy for stealing apples.

Carver let out a long breath, then slumped down on the bed and picked up the receiver. Said, “Yes?”

“Housekeeping,” a voice said. “You got plenty of towels?”

Carver said thanks, the towels were fine, and hung up.

Limp now in action’s aftermath, he sat for a long, long time on the edge of the bed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, both hands cupped over the crook of his cane. Throbbing pain made him probe above his right ear. There was a lump there from when he’d struck the wall just after the huge man had entered the room. He realized he was miserably hot and sweat was pouring down his bare arms and dampening the thighs of his pants.

After drying off with a towel in the bathroom, he retrieved the notes he’d taken during his phone conversation with Desoto and made sure his keys hadn’t dropped out of his pocket. Then he slipped his stockinged feet into his moccasins and hobbled squinting from the room into the bright and baking morning.

The vestibule of the cracked, often-patched stucco apartment building on Morning Star smelled faintly of frying bacon. Graffiti on the peeling walls informed Carver of all sorts of interesting things he could do with his own body. He scanned the mailboxes and saw Roger Karl’s scrawled name above the slot for apartment 2E. There was an intercom system, but half the buttons were missing, including the one next to Karl’s apartment number. Didn’t matter, Carver discovered, because the door allowing access to the stairwell and halls was missing.

He set the tip of his cane down and climbed creaking wood stairs to the second floor, feeling the thick air get warmer as he rose. There was loose rubber matting on some of the steps; he made a mental note of that so he’d be careful if for some reason he had to take the stairs in a hurry on the way out. Walk with a cane and you had to plan ahead sometimes.

The scent of frying bacon was stronger on the second floor, nauseating him and making his head ache. The carpet here was worn in the center all the way through to the wood floor. A dirty window at the far end of the hall provided just enough illumination to make out the apartment letters painted large and bold and recently on the doors. From behind the nearest door came the faint sound of an infant screaming desperately. Carver limped down the alphabet and knocked on the door with the oversize black
E
painted on it like a “Sesame Street” graphic.

No answer.

A TV began playing loudly behind the door of
F
across the hall. “Here’s what you’ve won!” a voice cried ecstatically.

Carver tried
E
’s door.

He won just like the contestant on television. The door swung open and he stepped inside fast. If Roger Karl was alert, it would be best to surprise him.

The apartment was hot and still and furnished with cast-off furniture, not with the decorator touch. Carver limped across the faded blue carpet toward a door leading to the kitchen. “Roger Karl?” he called, being polite before he wrung Karl’s neck for siccing the menacing mountain in overalls on him.

No one answered.

He leaned on his cane and peered into the kitchen. There were some crumpled fast-food paper bags on the tiny Formica table, dishes in a rubber-coated pink drainer on the sink counter. A clock on the grease-stained wall above the stove said it was much later than it was. The clock probably had something there.

A yellowed coffee brewer sat on the table near the paper bags. It was plugged into the nearby wall socket, but there was no coffee in the glass pot other than a sludgelike residue from yesterday. If Karl had awakened here this morning, he’d eaten breakfast out.

Carver turned away from the kitchen and limped down a short hall off the living room. The bathroom was empty, not even a toothbrush. He looked in the medicine cabinet over the white pedestal washbasin. An empty aspirin bottle. A plastic disposable razor with a rusty blade that had been there so long it had left a mark on the glass shelf. There was a bar of soap on the washbasin. Carver ran his finger over it. Damp. Gummy, the way cheap soap got. A towel draped over the shower curtain rod was also damp. He looked into the tub and saw wet dark hair like a spider in a clump over the drain.

He backed out of the bathroom and shoved open the door that must lead to the bedroom, looked inside.

The bed was unmade. Crawling across the stained white sheet was the largest and blackest palmetto bug Carver had ever seen. He stepped the rest of the way into the bedroom. Two of the dresser drawers were half open, empty. He examined the other drawers. Also empty. When he opened the closet’s sliding door, he found only a worn-out striped shirt on a wire hanger, a black sock wadded in a dusty corner. He felt around on the rough closet shelf and came up with an empty shoebox and a pornographic novel about two cheerleaders forced to spend their summer vacation on a farm. He placed both items back where he’d found them.

The overalled mountain must have reported his failure to deter Carver from the investigation, must have given some hint as to the difficulty he’d experienced at the motel. Roger Karl had moved out, and in a hurry, possibly on Adam Beed’s orders. Beed wouldn’t have sent an unskilled laborer like the mountain to work on Carver, and he wouldn’t appreciate Roger Karl’s having done so.

The rooms had the look of a furnished apartment, so clothes and a few personal possessions would be all Karl had to gather and pack. Carver glanced over at the bed and couldn’t see the palmetto bug. It had probably crawled beneath the stained and wrinkled top sheet. Karl couldn’t have been too upset about having to leave this place, cozy though it was.

Carver nosed around the apartment for another fifteen minutes, not knowing what he was seeking, not knowing if he’d recognize it if he found it. He tried to remember if he’d ever found a genuine clue of the sort stumbled upon in novels and movies: a matchbook cover from a nightclub, a dying message, a bloody handprint. He didn’t think so. Well, a murder victim once.

This time, too.

Curled alongside the kitchen stove lay a dead brown and white beagle. It hadn’t gone easily. Its body was contorted with final agony and its teeth were bared. There was fresh blood in its mouth; it hadn’t been dead very long.

Carver saw something glittering in the partly eaten glob of dog food in a red plastic tray. He noticed an ice-cube grinder on the sink, the kind that prepares crushed ice for drinks. He went to it and found it contained the thick bottom of a drinking glass and some glistening shards like the ones in the dog food. Roger Karl had left in a hurry and fed his dog ground glass so he wouldn’t have to bother with it. Or maybe Adam Beed had taken care of that for him.

Carver limped from the apartment and back out onto Morning Star, where he could breathe easier, where the cruel sun at least seemed to purify the air.

Leaning on the warm trunk of the Plymouth, he decided that if he ever found himself in a different occupation, he’d miss the job but not the people.

C
ARVER HAD TAKEN THE
last Percodan. He found a drugstore and bought a bottle of extra-strength Tylenol. He stood just inside the door, looking out at the sun-drenched avenue, and managed to swallow two of the tablets without water. There. Maybe his head wouldn’t explode.

Just swallowing the tablets seemed to lessen the throbbing ache behind his eyes. He touched a finger to the lump on the side of his head. It hadn’t realized he’d taken medication and was as egglike and painful as ever. First Beed, then the giant in bib overalls. It sure put a strain on a body. It would have been a lot worse if the big man in overalls had been good enough at his work to leave Carver with more than a headache. New bruises on top of the old ones inflicted by Adam Beed might have taken decades to heal.

He was about to push open one of the glass doors and reluctantly step outside into the heat, when he noticed a line of sit-down phone booths near the hair care aisle along a side wall of the drugstore. He fished for and found the proper change in his pocket, then limped to the end booth, settled down on the hard oak seat, and phoned Desoto.

“I don’t know anybody whose description fits your big friend in overalls,” Desoto said, when Carver was finished telling him about the morning’s events. “You want me to inquire?”

“No, I don’t think it matters. He was cheap help, and he’d probably have less idea than I do why he was hired.”

“You don’t think Adam Beed sent him?”

“Beed would have come himself,” Carver said, watching a pretty blonde in a white tennis outfit saunter down the aisle and study the hair spray display. “Or if he had hired some muscle, it would have been competent help.”

“So you figure Roger Karl did the hiring on his own, eh,
amigo
?”

“That’s how I see it. Then, when the job was botched and he knew I’d be coming for him, he told Beed about it. Beed instructed him to run, if Karl didn’t bolt on his own.” The blond woman bent low to pick up a pink can of hair spray with gold lettering. She had long, tan legs. The tennis outfit was stretched taut across her shapely hips and buttocks. Watching her, Carver thought of Beth even through the headache. True love? Or lust?

“Amigo?”

“I’m here.” He kept his gaze on the woman as she walked away toward the registers. He suspected she knew he was watching, but she was used to men watching her.

Desoto said, “You do want me to ask around and see if I can get a line on Karl’s whereabouts, right?”

“Him I’d like to see again,” Carver said.

“Would you like to see Adam Beed again?”

“At the proper time.”

“I can’t imagine a proper time for that. His execution, maybe. But I’ll keep you informed, you keep me informed, hey?”

“Your back and mine,” Carver said.

Desoto was quiet for a moment, then said, “
Amigo,
maybe we should end this conversation we never had.”

“I don’t recall any conversation,” Carver said. “But thanks just the same.”

He hung up.

He knew what Desoto meant. It wasn’t good for a police lieutenant to possess information about a parole violator and not take official action. Carver had placed Desoto in the position of betraying either professional ethics or personal friendship. Hardly fair. Carver felt rotten about it. On the other hand, it was Desoto who’d sent Hattie Evans to him. So Desoto had already committed himself to the personal code that at times overrode the restrictions of his job, that extended his neck to a length where his head might be lopped off. That was what made him a good cop and a better friend.

As Carver limped from the drugstore, he noticed the edge had been taken off his headache.

Then the heat struck him like a softly wrapped hammer, and he had to pause and lean on his cane. The headache was back with all its violent strength. He stood motionless for a few minutes before hobbling slowly to the car.

When he’d started the Plymouth, he switched on the air conditioner and aimed a vent directly at his face. The rush of frigid air chased away some of the dull throbbing in the front of his skull.

He drove around Lauderdale for a while, past the Big ‘n’ Yum, then the Cuban restaurant where Roger Karl had met Adam Beed last night. Where the briefcase had changed hands. As he cruised the sunny streets he watched for Karl’s boxy little yellow Isuzu, but he never saw it.

He drove out to Jamie Sanchez’s place on the ocean, but the gate was closed, along with a more serious looking tall chain-link gate behind it. Possibly Roger Karl had phoned. Or Adam Beed, assuming he’d learned by now where Karl had delivered the briefcase. For whatever reason, security had been tightened. He glimpsed lithe, low forms gliding through the foliage. There were dogs roaming the grounds. A metal sign bolted to the fence declared the estate was protected by an alarm system and trespassers would be prosecuted.

If they survived, Carver thought.

As he idled for a moment near the entrance, a huge black Doberman materialized from the shadows and leapt snarling at the chain-link fence. A man with a flattened nose that had its cartilage removed, in the manner of a professional boxer’s, also suddenly appeared near the gate and glared at Carver. He was wearing what appeared to be a chauffeur’s uniform, complete with cap. His lips were writhing beneath the mushroom nose. Carver cranked down the window so he could hear.