Torch

by John Lutz

  “Part of my work.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “Not completely,”

  “You don’t have to sweet-talk me, Fred.”

  That was true.

  Partly.

  32

  WHILE CARVER SWAM the next morning, Beth drove into Del Moray to pick up the photographs of Nightlinks clientele. She’d left before he’d gone into the sea, and she’d already returned by the time he’d showered away salt water along with oil from the offshore freighters and dressed.

  She was seated on a stool at the breakfast bar. Before her were two coffee cups, a box of doughnuts, and the fat white envelope containing the photographs.

  Carver saw that her cup was full. He went to the Braun brewer and poured coffee into the cup she’d set out for him. Then he sat down on the stool diagonally across the counter from her.

  “Bought glazed,” she said.

  “Good.” He opened the box and withdrew one of half a dozen glazed doughnuts. Took a generous bite out of it, then set it down on a piece of the opaque paper that doughnut shops used because for some reason iced and sugar-coated doughnuts didn’t stick to the stuff. The doughnut was fresh and still warm.

  Beth took a bite out of another doughnut, brushed sugar and icing from her hands, then very deftly opened the envelope in a way that wouldn’t get it sticky. Carver sipped coffee and watched her thumb through the stack of photographs with equal dexterity. When she was halfway through, she gave him the ones she had seen.

  The camera and lens had worked well. Though blurred foliage in the foreground spoiled some of the shots, in most of them the unknowing subjects were framed as tightly as if the camera had been only a few feet from them.

  “Nice-looking folks,” Beth said, still studying the photos. “I guess you gotta be a looker to work as a paid escort.”

  “It can’t hurt,” Carver said.

  Beth examined some more photos, then said, “Hey! This guy.”

  Carver looked up at her.

  “This guy right here.” She laid a photograph on the counter.

  It was a shot of Harvey Sincliff and another man walking toward the Aero Lounge.

  “I saw him enter and leave Gretch’s apartment building more than once,” Beth said. Her long red fingernail tapped the image of Sincliff rather than his companion. A flake of glazed icing dropped from her finger onto the photo.

  “You sure?”

  “He was there at least twice,” Beth said. “I didn’t actually see him with Gretch, but Gretch was home each time he was in the building. I made a note of that, but didn’t think it was important. For all I knew he was there to see somebody else. Maybe even lived there.” She leaned forward and blew the flake of icing from the photo. “Who is he?”

  “Harvey Sincliff. He owns Nightlinks.”

  “Oh. Well, Gretch worked for him as an escort. Maybe that’s why he was there to see him.”

  “Sincliff told me he knew Gretch as Enrico Thomas, and then only slightly. Didn’t even recall who he was until I prodded his memory. He also told me he hadn’t seen Gretch in months.”

  “I guess he lied, then,” Beth said around a bite of doughnut. “No surprise. Question is why.”

  Carver finished his doughnut, then ate another one, pondering that question.

  “Maybe there’s more to Nightlinks than just an escort service,” Beth said.

  “There is. Sincliff is into prostitution, but it’s difficult to prove.”

  “I took that for granted. Most escort services are fronts for prostitution. I mean, maybe there’s even more to it than that.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “No. But people have died, Fred. It might be worth finding out Sincliff s real connection with Gretch, and what, if anything, Nightlinks has to do with it.”

  He’d been thinking about the best way to do that. “Busy tonight?” he asked.

  “Last night was fun,” Beth said. “What have you got planned for tonight?”

  “We follow some of the escorts, see who they meet, where they go, what they do.”

  She washed down a final bite of doughnut with coffee. “The ‘what they do’ part shouldn’t be difficult.”

  Carver said, “I’m more interested in the who and where. And the why.”

  “There might be something in this for a Burrow piece,” Beth said. “Following Nightlinks escorts could serve more than one purpose.”

  Carver said, “Too much in life serves more than one purpose, has more than one face.”

  Beth swiveled off her stool, stood at the sink, and poured the rest of her cooling coffee down the drain. “Maybe Donna learned that too late,” she said.

  After breakfast, Carver left Beth to her Burrow work and drove into Del Moray. He managed to see Ellen Pfitzer at the country club. Between sets of tennis she looked carefully at the Nightlinks photographs. She told Carver she recognized no one. If she was lying, nothing about her gave her away.

  He watched her bounce and struggle through a few games of the next set. Her opponent was a lanky woman in her fifties who went to the net too soon and too often, possibly because the sun was obviously making her suffer.

  Ellen was winning one of life’s battles and having a good time as Carver waved goodbye and went back to the Olds.

  After phoning Beverly Denton and setting up another meeting in the park across from Burnair and Crosley for that afternoon, he drove to his office and checked his messages.

  A woman whose missing daughter he’d located last year called to thank him again and assure him her check for final payment was in the mail. The realty company that managed the building where his office was located called to ask him why the rent check he’d assured them was in the mail hadn’t yet reached them.

  McGregor had left the same message twice, instructions for Carver to call him back without delay. At least Carver assumed he was “Dick-head,” since the message was on his machine.

  McGregor had nothing if not timing. Carver was reaching for the phone when the towering lieutenant strode into the office. The way he acted, it was possible he’d just bought the building.

  “I left a message to call me back, dick-head,” McGregor said. “Where you been?”

  “Swimming, eating doughnuts. You should knock. You’re liable to charge through a door someday into new construction, step on a nail.”

  “Knock you on your ass is what I’m liable to do. I thought I better drive over here and see you personally. You don’t possess the etiquette gene. It’s possible you might not have returned my call.”

  “I was about to do just that,” Carver said honestly. It felt strange, being honest with McGregor.

  “Sure, sure,” McGregor said with his lewd grin. “Probably you been fucking your jungle bunny all morning and you was about to call her and tell her you loved her.”

  “It’s good you’re in police work, with all your sensitivity.”

  “You’re such a politically correct fuck-head yourself.” McGregor hitched up his wrinkled pants and glowered down at Carver. The usual funk that emanated from him hung in the air from when his suitcoat had flapped open with the extension of his elbows. “It’s actually last night I’m interested in,” he said. “I had no idea you were such a party animal, knew so many rich and important people.”

  “Old friends, most of them.”

  “Don’t bullshit me. You and your dark meat were trespassing there. You crashed the party for a reason. And don’t tell me you were thinking about buying that yacht.”

  “There was no way to crash that party,” Carver said. “It was by invitation only, and they checked all the guests at the gangplank. You know that, otherwise you would have been on board scarfing down free food and liquor. The truth is, an old friend of Beth’s knew somebody who used to crew on the yacht, and he gave her a couple of invitations to repay a favor.”

  “Yeah?” McGregor didn’t sound convinced. “What’s this old friend’s name?”

  “I’m not sure. His friends call
him Ishmael.”

  McGregor wrote that down in his leather-covered notebook. “Last name?”

  “I don’t know. He tells everyone just to call him Ishmael.”

  “Black guy, I’ll bet.”

  “No. Why?”

  “Sounds like one of those black basketball players that change their names. Something about religion.”

  “He’s tall enough. He might be.”

  “What? A basketball player?”

  “Religious.”

  McGregor slapped his notepad shut and shoved it into his pocket. “I heard enough of your smart-ass chatter, Carver. You remembering to call me whenever you learn something?”

  “You bet.”

  McGregor waited for Carver to say more. Carver didn’t.

  After several seconds, McGregor took a few long paces, then stood squarely facing Carver, closer to the desk than before. “Know what worries me, piss-for-gray-matter?”

  “Yeah. Connections. You probably noticed Beth talking with the Senator.”

  “Senator?” McGregor faded back a step.

  “What worries you is the fact that I might know somebody well who was at that party, and that the muscle that goes with money might be dangerous to you if you fuck up so close to promotion time.”

  McGregor probed between his front teeth with his tongue, then smiled. “Well, you’re smarter than you look, but stupid at that.” Gone was the smile. “Sure, I get nervous automatically when there’s that kinda money involved. I been corrupted for so much less. But if you do me wrong, Carver, money and influence won’t bring you back to life.”

  Carver got the Nightlinks photographs from a desk drawer and laid them on the desk. “Know any of these people?”

  McGregor picked up the photos and looked through them. “The ugly one’s Harvey Sincliff. Owns Nightlinks escort service.” He dropped the photos back on the desk so they landed in a jumble. “Sincliff involved with the Winship suicides?”

  “Maybe. Donna Winship was going out with a guy who used to do escort work for Sincliff.”

  “What guy?” McGregor asked. “Give me a name.”

  “Enrico Thomas.”

  “So Donna and Mark were going out on each other. He was porking the Rourke woman and wifey was hiring an escort. Ain’t a woman alive won’t fuck around on her husband if the timing’s right.”

  “She didn’t hire Thomas as an escort,” Carver said. “She didn’t even know he worked for Nightlinks. His main profession was working as a photographer’s model. He’s in catalogs, cigarette ads, that kind of thing.”

  “So she got tired of hubby and went for some guy with looks and a bigger dick.”

  “Could be,” Carver said, letting McGregor’s imagination roam.

  “That it?” McGregor asked. “That’s all you know?”

  “So far.”

  McGregor cleared his throat noisily. Carver thought he was going to spit on the floor, but he swallowed instead. “I don’t believe that for a second, Carver. Even a dim bulb like you has had enough time to figure out more than what you just told me.”

  “Well, it’s your job to be skeptical.”

  McGregor ran his tongue around the inside of his cheek for a while, as if seeking morsels from his last meal. Carver had seen him do that before when he was thinking hard. “Carver, you get something on Harvey Sincliff and maybe you and I can be friends for about two seconds. Everybody knows he’s into prostitution, but it’s tough to nail him, what with the setup he’s got and the dumb-ass Constitution always getting in the way. Running an escort service isn’t against the law.”

  “If he shows up dirty and it can be proved despite the Constitution,” Carver said, “I’ll let you know.”

  “Let me know what you were really doing at that swank party sometime, too,” McGregor said.

  “I’ll do better than that. Next time I’ll make sure you get invited.”

  McGregor wasn’t sure if Carver was kidding, so he played it safe and didn’t reply. He placed his palms flat on the desk and leaned close enough for Carver to smell his fetid breath. “This has been a productive little visit, despite your lies. We’ll talk more often, and you better have more to say.”

  He straightened up in sections, the way extremely tall men do, then turned around and walked out of the office.

  Carver sat for a few minutes, then decided he’d leave, too. Any room was unpleasant for a while after McGregor had been in it. He seemed to taint the air wherever he went.

  Grabbing his cane from where it leaned against the wall, Carver stood up. After erasing his messages, he left the office. Possibly he’d be lucky and not see McGregor for a few days, he thought, locking the door behind him.

  But he knew it wouldn’t be much longer than that. He’d only tossed McGregor so much meat to chew on.

  33

  BEVERLY DENTON HAD only a few minutes to spare that afternoon. Burnair and Crosley were in the middle of a market upturn prompted by a drop in interest rates, and employees were taking abbreviated lunch hours. Standing in the shade of the palms in the pocket-sized park on Atlantic Drive, she examined the photographs Carver had handed her, going through them slowly, but she recognized none of the men or women who’d frequented Nightlinks.

  “Was this important?” she asked, giving the photos back to him. Her tone of voice suggested she thought she had let him down by not knowing any of the subjects.

  “It could be a help that you didn’t recognize any of these faces,” he told her, no doubt easing her regret but adding to her confusion. Not a bad trade, Carver thought. Unless you were in the business of clearing up confusion.

  She glanced over at two young boys climbing on the jungle gym under the supervision of a woman dressed as a nurse, then smiled at him.

  “Thanks to you and your fiancé,” he said, “I found Charlie Post and was able to talk with him.”

  “Warren tells me Post is a real womanizer, a kind of charming swashbuckler entrepreneur.”

  “That’s how he came across, all right.”

  “You have an interesting line of work,” she said, “meet interesting people.”

  “Yes, I’m here talking to you.”

  She laughed, then looked across the street at the gleaming vertical planes of Burnair and Crosley with something like trepidation. “I better get back. The place is a zoo today. The market’s in a rally and nobody wants to be left behind.”

  “Does that happen often?”

  “About as often as when the market’s falling and nobody wants to fall with it.”

  “Aren’t you going to have lunch?”

  “I already ate a sandwich at my desk.” She turned to cross the street, then said, “I hope you find whoever killed Mark Winship.”

  “Probably it’s the same person who killed Carl Gretch.”

  “Carl Gretch?”

  “Enrico Thomas.”

  She looked at him blankly. They’d never talked much about Donna Winship, mostly Mark. “Thomas was Donna’s extramarital friend.”

  Beverly’s eyes widened. “And he was murdered?”

  “Beaten to death by an interesting person.”

  “Jesus!” It was the first time he’d heard her use profanity. It surprised him. “That’s proof somebody’s trying to conceal the reasons for Mark and Donna’s deaths.”

  “Maybe not proof,” Carver said, “but strong indication.” He wanted to keep her there a few more minutes, though he wasn’t quite sure why. It was as if some part of him sensed she knew something he must learn. He used to think disdainfully of people who acted on instinct, but now he knew it could be as useful as logic. “How has Maggie Rourke been acting?”

  “Maggie? Normally enough, though she seems to be under a lot of stress. There was some kind of minor fuss at work this morning, I think.”

  “Fuss?”

  “I heard somebody came in and wanted to talk to Maggie but she refused to see him. He raised a bit of a ruckus, then went away quietly. At first I thought it might have b
een you, but nobody mentioned the man walked with a cane, and it didn’t seem like your style anyway.”

  “It wasn’t me. Do you know anything else about him?”

  “No, this was just something I heard mentioned in the rest-room. That’s the kind of thing that happens to women who look like Maggie; they have their admirers, men who become obsessed.”

  “It upsets lives,” Carver said. “At least she’s working today.”

  Beverly grinned. “Everybody’s working today.” She tapped her wristwatch with a fingernail. “Which reminds me.”

  “Okay,” Carver said, “thanks again.”

  “Anytime, Mr. Carver. I read the papers, catch the news on TV or the car radio. I’d like to see some justice for a change.”

  He watched her wait for a break in traffic, shifting her weight from one leg to another like a marathon runner eager for the gun. Then she hurried on her high heels across Atlantic Drive to be reflected and distorted and absorbed by the glimmering mirror-angled building that loomed like a tribute to the sun.

  Some justice for a change, he thought, driving back to his office.

  Maybe this time.

  A dusty blue Ford with rental plates was in the shady space where Carver usually parked. Annoying. Shaded parking slots were at a premium in Florida. He pulled into a slot several cars down and climbed out of the Olds.

  He was plodding through the sun, feeling heat working through the thin soles of his moccasins, when he noticed someone sitting behind the Ford’s steering wheel.

  Nearing the car, he saw the head of thick silver hair and recognized Charlie Post.

  Post was slumped with his head bowed, as if trying to figure out the car’s controls. He must have caught a glimpse of Carver in the corner of his vision, because he raised his head suddenly. For an instant there was fear in his eyes, then he grinned in relief. There was something wrong with him. When Carver got within a few feet of the car, he saw that one of Post’s eyes was swollen almost shut and a thin trickle of blood had wormed from his nose to meet his upper lip.

  As Carver opened the Ford’s door, Post said, “Had a minor altercation.” His clothes—gray slacks, white shirt, same blue ascot as in Miami—looked whole and unwrinkled, suggesting no injuries beneath.