Burn

by John Lutz

  Pols from City Hall frequented Ruggeri’s. One of them Carver recognized, an assistant to the mayor, noticed Desoto and nodded to him. A police lieutenant in a city the size of Orlando did have some political pull. Outside the city limits, it might be a different proposition. But Desoto wasn’t a man to view as a handsome clothes horse and underestimate. Carver had seen him in action; he was hardly flash without substance.

  “I do know a circuit court judge who might drop a word in the right ear,” Desoto said. “But if McGregor is made aware that the Del Moray department’s handling of Marla Cloy’s complaint is being watched and evaluated, he’s going to guess why. He might come down even harder on you if and when he can.”

  “He’ll do everything possible anyway,” Carver said, “so I don’t see making him mad as much of a risk.”

  Desoto sipped Chianti and smiled. “You often have a purely pragmatic way of looking at things, amigo.”

  “It works with McGregor. He’s a pure pragmatist who’ll always act in his own best interest.”

  “True. But he might think destroying you is worth considerable inconvenience. You’re only a pragmatist some of the time. You have an integrity that at times causes you to act in ways McGregor sees as irrational. In fact, you sometimes act in accordance with your heart or your gut and are irrational, not to mention obsessive. People like you puzzle and irritate McGregor because you’re unpredictable. For instance, your client is Joel Brant, but you don’t discount the possibility he might actually be stalking Marla Cloy just as she claims. It’s inconceivable to McGregor that you might be genuinely concerned about Marla Cloy’s fate as well as Brant’s, because she’s not paying you. Yet you sometimes appear to act in her behalf. He sees altruism as a dangerous imponderable.”

  “He’s right about that,” Carver said.

  Desoto finished his spaghetti, sipped some more wine, then dabbed at his lips with his napkin. “You have never learned to be flexible, my friend.”

  Carver was becoming annoyed. “There’s nothing wrong with having values. They give the world weight and worth. You talk as if they’re some kind of affliction.”

  “People sink to the bottom of the sea clinging to their values. Are you going to have dessert?”

  Carver told him no, but to go ahead and order and he’d have coffee.

  Desoto settled on the spumoni, and when the waiter had left with the order said, “We managed to get a clear fingerprint from the trunk lid of Spotto’s car. We’ve run it through local computers and VICAP for comparisons, but nothing matches. It isn’t the print of any of the car rental agency employees, and we’re going to see about comparing it with prints of previous drivers. But my guess is it belongs to Achilles Jones. Lab whizzes say the finger that left it is huge.”

  Carver thought about the attack in his office.

  Desoto must have been thinking about it, too. “We’d like to dust your office for prints,” he said. “We might be able to determine if Spotto’s killer and your assailant are the same man.”

  “It should be done,” Carver said, “but as soon as Jones came through the door he got right to work, and I don’t think he touched anything other than me. He did snap my cane in half, but Beth threw it away when I was in the hospital. If this had happened earlier, we could have compared the prints from the car with my welts.”

  The waiter arrived with coffee and Desoto’s spumoni. Desoto assured Carver he’d talk to the circuit court judge about the Marla Cloy case, then carefully laid his napkin back in his lap. Carver knew that if any sort of stain marred Desoto’s clothes, there was a complete change of wardrobe waiting in a locker at police headquarters to restore him to his usual pristine condition.

  “Are you still wearing the support around your ribs?” Desoto asked.

  “No, I removed it yesterday.”

  Desoto seemed to savor his spumoni. “Time heals everything eventually.”

  “I’d like to think that,” Carver said, “but I’m not so sure.”

  “Me neither, I suppose,” Desoto said. “Having been raised Catholic.”

  They’d met at the restaurant and had separate cars, so Carver finished his coffee then left Desoto to enjoy the sin of gluttony.

  Carver got into the Olds and started the engine, then the air conditioner. The meeting with Desoto hadn’t been the only reason he’d driven into Orlando. Beth had told him which adoption agency the Brants had visited before the fatal accident, and it had an Orlando address.

  It was only ten minutes away from the restaurant on Washington.

  31

  THE EDGEWORTH AGENCY was in a modern glass-and-steel building that reflected the sun with an eye-aching blue brilliance and whose lobby directory boasted several law offices. Carver supposed that juxtaposition of services made good sense, as he rode a gleaming steel elevator like a rocket to the fifth floor.

  Despite the sleek modernity of the building, the offices of the Edgeworth Agency were comfortably cluttered. A young man with unruly dark hair and a harried expression sat behind a desk that was almost invisible beneath various pieces of electronic office equipment, fanned-out papers, and a sheet of crinkled aluminum foil on which rested a half-eaten turkey sandwich. His white shirt was rumpled, his tie was loosely knotted, and when he looked up and saw Carver he appeared startled.

  “It’s not always like this around here,” he said, smiling uneasily as if he’d been caught reading pornography. “I’m, uh, trying to get some paperwork in order.”

  The name plaque on the desk said he was Jim Martinelli. Carver introduced himself.

  “I’d like to ask some questions concerning a woman who came here about six months ago and inquired about adopting a child,” he said.

  Martinelli looked worried, then immediately relieved, “You’d want to talk to Ms. Atkinson. I’ve only been here a little over three months.”

  Carver nodded, waiting.

  “Oh!” Martinelli said. “Just a moment. Please.” He backed to a door, opened it, and disappeared into an inner office.

  A minute later he came out. “She’ll see you—Ms. Atkinson will.” He stood aside, holding the door open for Carver but not leaving him much room to pass. Carver considered bearing down with the tip of his cane on Martinelli’s toe, then decided there was probably nothing wrong with the flustered lad that a few years without a sore foot wouldn’t cure.

  Ms. Atkinson’s brass desk plaque said her first name was Ellen. She was in her forties, with a tightly sprung blond hairdo, bright red lipstick, and a smile as wide as a clown’s. As soon as Martinelli had closed the door and gone back to his wild paperwork, Ms. Atkinson shook her head with weary tolerance.

  “Jim tells me you want to know about something that happened here six months ago,” she said. She’d stood up when Carver entered. She was slender and wonderfully proportioned. Her crisp gray business suit, white blouse, and fluffy blue polka-dot bow tie seemed styled and tailored just for her and reminded Carver of Desoto. Now she sat back down. Her office was as neat as Martinelli’s was sloppy. She motioned an invitation for Carver to sit in a light oak and brown leather Danish chair in front of her desk.

  Carver sat leaning forward slightly with both hands resting on the crook of his cane. He said he wondered if she remembered Portia Brant.

  She studied him with bright and intelligent gray eyes. Though she wore little makeup other than the glaring lipstick, her complexion was smooth and unblemished except for a mole slightly off-center on the point of her jaw. “It’s our policy not to reveal information about any of our clients,” she said. “Confidentiality is taken seriously here.”

  “Here, too,” Carver said. “But Portia Brant wasn’t actually your client. I believe she came here and inquired about an adoption. If you’re still concerned about confidentiality, I can tell you she’s deceased.”

  Ellen Atkinson worried a pencil that was lying on her green felt desk pad, rolling it back and forth with alternating motions of the forefinger and middle finger of her right
hand, as if pretending the fingers were legs and her hand was a miniature lumberjack logrolling on a tiny hexagonal log. “I remember Portia Brant,” she said, “because of the accident.”

  “Have you seen her husband Joel since they were here?”

  “She was never here with her husband, Mr. Carver. She came here twice, alone.”

  “Was she serious about adopting a child?”

  The lumberjack stepped off the log. Ellen Atkinson forgot about playing with the pencil and sat back. “Who are you, Mr. Carver?”

  Carver considered using the old insurance agent con. Or maybe dropping indirect hints that he was with the police. Neither seemed the right thing to do. With Ellen Atkinson, he decided on the truth.

  “Interesting,” she said, when he was finished.

  “Was Portia Brant serious about adopting?” he asked again.

  “Oh, quite serious. In fact, she wanted a child—an infant— desperately. She was adopted herself, she told me, so she had insight. She said she knew what an adopted child needed.”

  “Why did she come here alone? Didn’t she want her husband to know?”

  “I never got that impression. She told me she was doing the preliminaries, and she’d bring him with her when they were actually ready to apply to adopt. It isn’t easy, you know. And we’re merely what you might call go-betweens in the process: we match prospective parents to child, provide legal advice, then counseling services after the adoption. It’s rewarding work, Mr. Carver.” Again her wide, infectious smile.

  “I can imagine. When was the last time she was here?”

  “Less than a week before she died. That’s why I remember her so clearly. I was horrified when I read about the accident in the paper. A drunk driver . . . such a shame. She was a beautiful and kind woman. Very active in charity work, you know.”

  Carver agreed that it was a shame a woman like Portia Grant had to die because of a drunk driver, and he said he knew about the charity work.

  “She’d told me she was bringing her husband next time,” Ellen Atkinson said, “and that they were planning to begin the actual process of adoption.” She shuddered as if she were chilled, burrowing her chin down into her voluminous silk bow tie until her mole was invisible. “They never kept the appointment, of course.”

  “Did she talk as if her own childhood had been difficult?”

  “Yes and no. Her adoptive parents were quite well off, and there was plenty of love in the family. But it was a surprise to her when they told her in her teen years that she was adopted. I think one of the reasons she wanted to adopt so much was that her childhood was a happy one. She was grateful, and she felt she had a debt that she could repay by giving another unwanted child a home. It’s not an uncommon reaction.”

  “Good,” Carver said, smiling. “Did she say her husband was also enthusiastic about adopting?”

  “Not directly that I can recall. But I assume he felt the same way, or she wouldn’t have come to us.” The many-lined phone on Ellen Atkinson’s desk trilled, and she excused herself and answered it. She said, “Yes, yes, of course, just a minute,” then covered the mouthpiece with her hand and started to say something to Carver.

  He raised his hand in a goodbye, mouthed “Thank you,” and stood up.

  She nodded to him, then said, “Yes, yes, of course,” into the phone again as he was leaving.

  Martinelli grinned and waved a cheery good afternoon to him as he passed through the tumultuous outer office and stepped into the cool hall.

  The stainless steel elevator dropped him smoothly to the warm lobby.

  He’d left the Olds parked in the lot adjacent to the gleaming blue building. It seemed to have absorbed the reflected glare and grown unnaturally hot.

  Carver cranked down the windows so the superheated air would swirl out as he drove, then switched the air conditioner on high. Within a few blocks, he should be able to raise the windows and stop sweating.

  At the first red traffic light, he rolled up the windows while waiting for green. The light changed before he’d finished closing the passenger-side window.

  As he straightened up and accelerated, he glanced in the rearview mirror to make sure he hadn’t delayed anyone.

  His seemed to be the only car around.

  But the man on the motorcycle was behind him again, half a block back and keeping pace. Though there was little to lend them scale, both man and motorcycle appeared huge. Carver was certain it was the same cycle and rider he’d seen earlier.

  His hands became slippery with sweat on the steering wheel. His eyes darting back and forth between the street ahead and the rearview mirror, he held the Olds’s speed at thirty.

  The motorcycle didn’t turn onto a side street this time. Its front wheel broke from the pavement as it reared high with power.

  It bloomed like a dark flower in the mirror as it came at Carver.

  32

  AS THE MOTORCYCLE pulled alongside the Olds with a roar like continuous thunder, Carver saw that it was a Harley-Davidson and had been crudely painted a lusterless gray. He had no time to take anything else in. The Harley shot even with the left front fender, then veered toward it.

  It all happened so fast that Carver instinctively jerked the steering wheel to the right. The Olds’s front tire jumped the curb, then wobbled back into the gutter, throwing the car out of control. The steering wheel came alive and writhed from his slippery grip, one of its cross-braces striking his thumb painfully. Tires squealed as the car swerved and rocked violently from side to side. His foot came off the accelerator, his body jerking with the force of the wild motion.

  Finally he managed to regain his hold on the wheel. He wrestled it so that the car’s course straightened and its rocking was less extreme.

  When the Olds’s speed had dropped somewhat, he jammed his foot down hard on the brake pedal. It responded sluggishly and he knew the engine had died and knocked out the power steering and brakes. The steering wheel’s stiffness confirmed this. Carver braced his back against the seat and shoved his foot down on the pedal with all his strength, and gradually the car slowed to a halt.

  The Harley had stopped about a hundred feet down the street. Before Carver could reach forward and try to restart the engine, the huge cyclist had dismounted, removed his helmet with its tinted plexiglass face guard, and was lumbering toward the car.

  As Carver was desperately twisting the key and the starter was futilely grinding, Achilles Jones, outfitted as before in dirt-encrusted jeans and filthy, wool-lined leather vest, casually swung the helmet at the driver’s-side window and smashed the glass. Carver’s hand slipped from the ignition key as he jerked his body to the side to avoid the giant’s grasp. A massive hand closed on his shirt, as his own hand gripped his cane, which had been leaning against the seat. He turned and saw the same mindless smile he’d seen in his office, the same pale blue eyes with the frightening void behind them.

  He jabbed the tip of the cane into one of the eyes. The big man, whose actions were cramped by the window frame and what was left of the glass, couldn’t fend off the cane. Or a second, more accurate jab. He released Carver’s shirt and backed away a step.

  As he stood there rubbing his eyes, Carver drove the tip of the cane hard into his throat. The giant gagged and leaped back out of his reach.

  It gave Carver time to get the Olds started.

  When Jones heard the sound of the engine turning over, he came at the car again immediately. But blindly this time. He bounced hard off the door as Carver jammed the accelerator down and the tires screamed and propelled the Olds forward with all the primitive power of its V-8 engine.

  Carver glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Jones mounting his motorcycle, shaking his head from side to side to try to clear his mind and vision.

  The Olds might have been able to outrun the Harley, but a large yellow Hertz rental truck entered the intersection directly in its path. Carver stomped hard on the brakes. The Olds’s hood dipped and it screeched sideways in t
he street.

  As Achilles Jones was larger than Carver, so the Olds was larger than the Harley. The dusk-colored bike slammed into the side of the car just behind the door, rocking it sideways. Carver heard something scrape across the canvas top, and he turned to see Achilles Jones land hard on his back in the street after the impact had flung him over the car. He hit so hard that dust flew.

  The Hertz truck had stopped and two husky men climbed down from the cab. They began walking toward Jones and the wrecked Harley. Attracted by the eeek! of tires and the sound of the collision, people began to appear on the sidewalk.

  Jones struggled up to his full height, and the men who’d been approaching to help him suddenly stopped and stood still, staring. Sirens began wailing frantic loops of sound, drawing nearer.

  Limping heavily, Achilles Jones ran from the street and between two buildings.

  Carver watched him, admiring his combination of size and speed despite his apparently injured leg. With time to think, it occurred to him that Jones might hold the key to understanding what really was going on between Brant and Marla Cloy. If Carver could discover who’d hired him to stymie the investigation, everything else might come clear. And Jones was hurt, maybe badly, from the accident. He could be controlled at least until the police reached the scene.

  Maybe.

  Ignoring the strong smell of gasoline that warned of possible fire, Carver twisted the ignition key and got the Olds started again. One of the men from the Hertz truck was yelling at him, but he couldn’t understand what he was saying and didn’t care. He backed the Olds away from the wrecked Harley, frantically maneuvering until it was pointed in the direction he’d just come from, then accelerated down the street, trying to get around the block in time to intercept Jones. If he had the chance, he wouldn’t hesitate to knock the giant down with the car. He had no doubt that Jones had intended to kill him.

  He jounced the Olds over the curb, rounding the corner and speeding to the next intersection so he could peer up the street.