John Lutz - Torch

Something about the tight, controlled way the small man moved alerted Carver, but too late. The man’s almost dainty right hand made a quick, elegant gesture, drawing Carver’s gaze as one of the small slippered feet flicked out and kicked the cane from his hand. The man’s other hand was against Carver’s chest, then he was three feet away and grinning down at Carver, who was lying on his back where he’d fallen on the floor. Carver had never seen anyone move so smoothly so fast.

“Maybe we should talk,” Carver said, raising himself on one elbow and noticing that his cane was too far away to grab.

The man kicked him in the ribs, almost casually, but so quickly that Carver couldn’t block the flashing foot or clutch it so he could pull the man down on his level. The smile stayed firm as a mask on the man’s face.

“Easy!” Carver groaned through his pain. “We’re both Bruce Lee fans.”

“Amateur shit,” the tiny man said. He did a complete turn so quickly it appeared that film had jumped frames. Carver felt but didn’t see the kick to his shoulder. His arm went numb as if it had been shocked with high voltage.

“I could splatter your brains on the wall just like a bullet had hit you,” the man said. He had only a faint Oriental accent that Carver couldn’t place. Everything he said sounded condescending. “I might mess up my shoes, though.”

“Don’t do that,” Carver said. “They look expensive.”

“They are made from the flesh of my enemies.”

Carver didn’t think the man was kidding. He lay still, figuring that was about the only defense he had. He didn’t want to be kicked in his good leg; that might immobilize him to the point of panic.

The little man kicked his good leg. Carver tried with his uninjured arm to grab the blur that was a foot but failed.

“Have we met someplace before?” he grunted, forcing himself with great effort to lie still now, not thrash around and go into a blind rage of pain.

“You’re Mr. Carver.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m tonight’s bad dream.”

“Today’s,” Carver said, taking another kick to the arm. There wasn’t much pain because the arm was already numb. The guy wasn’t perfect.

“You’re here to visit Mr. Gretch,” the man said, “but he doesn’t live here anymore. You and he aren’t friends anyway, so you shouldn’t try to locate him. There is no point.”

“I only want to talk to him,” Carver said.

“He doesn’t want to listen. He’s not a good listener. Are you a good listener?”

“I try.

“Mind your own business, or that of someone other than Mr. Gretch. Do you hear and comprehend?”

“Both those things.”

The tiny man floated across the carpet and picked up Carver’s cane. He twirled it as if he were a majorette leading a parade, then gripped it with both hands as if it were a sword and lashed the air with it in neat, symmetrical patterns. The last slash of the cane brought it straight down to rest lightly on Carver’s Adam’s apple.

Carver didn’t move. He felt sweat break out on his face and turn cold. His stomach was jumping around with fear in a way he wouldn’t have thought possible.

“You could be dead at this moment, Mr. Carver.”

Carver didn’t speak, only nodded.

The cane flashed up and away from his throat, and he closed his eyes, thinking it was about to descend with the same velocity and crush his larynx.

When he opened his eyes, the cane was lying near him and the tiny man was standing near the door. Still smiling like a character in an old Charlie Chan movie, the man nodded, almost a bow, then was gone.

Carver rolled onto his side and waited for the pain to subside and at least some feeling to return to his arm and good leg. The fear he’d felt when he thought he might be killed with his cane was still in his stomach, making him nauseated.

Fifteen minutes passed before he trusted himself to grip the cane and stand up. He didn’t move for a long time, because the room was tilting this way and that as if tossed on a wild sea. Everything hurt. He wondered if the quick little man had kicked him places he hadn’t even been aware of at the time.

When the room was at last still, he slowly descended the stairs and returned the key to Hodgkins, who said he hadn’t heard anyone on the stairs and had never seen a tiny Oriental man around the building.

“You mean like some kinda midget?” he asked, squinting at Carver as if suspecting some sort of joke.

“Almost a midget, but he packs a giant’s wallop.”

“Hmph! You find anything up there in the apartment?”

“Just that near-midget.”

“Well, if I see him I’ll sure phone you right away.”

Carver got to the Olds and drove back to Del Moray, then up the coast road to his cottage. He wanted to submerge his aching body in a bathtub full of hot water before he got too stiff to move.

All the way along the coast, with the ocean on his right and gulls keeping pace briefly with the car and wheeling and screaming over the beach, he wondered if Gretch had noticed that three of his photographs were missing.

Because of his bad leg, Carver usually showered instead of bathing. The tiny bathroom in the cottage was equipped with a small white fiberglass tub and shower stall. The tub was deep enough but not very long, which meant that when he sat in it he had to extend his stiff leg out at an uncomfortable angle over the curved edge into space. That was okay this time, since that leg was one of the few parts of him his attacker had ignored, probably following the maxim that if it ain’t fixed, don’t break it.

The hot water soothed his pain as he settled down as deep as possible in the tub. He wanted to avoid being so sore tomorrow that he’d be unable to get out of bed. He rested his head on the wall behind the tub and draped the hot, soaked washcloth over his face, thinking it had been one hellacious day.

Lying there healing with his eyes closed, he heard Beth say, “Kinda early for a bath.”

He removed the washcloth and looked at her standing in the doorway. She was wearing yellow shorts and a black tee shirt lettered GUNS DON’T KILL PEOPLE, PEOPLE WITH GUNS KILL PEOPLE. Her bare tanned legs looked impossibly long from Carver’s low vantage point, and her heavy breasts stretched the shirt’s fabric. She had on a yellow headband and bright red lipstick. It occurred to Carver that there was only one part of him that wasn’t stiff, and she was about to change that. He altered the direction of his thoughts and told her why he was in the bathtub letting hot water work its magic.

When he was finished, she leaned her shoulder against the doorjamb and crossed her arms. She said, “I want in, Fred.”

For a moment he thought she planned on getting into the tiny tub with him, then he realized what she meant. The Winship deaths called to her on a personal as well as journalistic basis. Donna had been her friend, and Beth had set up the meeting with Carver just before her death. That someone had tried to frighten Carver off the case in Gretch’s apartment meant that there was something to hide. Jeff Smith, her editor at Burrow , would be interested.

“You gonna keep me involved and informed?” she asked. Her expression was grave, her strongly boned face like something cast in bronze in a lost age.

Carver didn’t like the thought of the tiny Oriental destruction machine focusing on Beth. He knew she wouldn’t see it that way. She was physically tough herself and proficient in martial arts and probably figured she’d be a match for the little man. People who were into martial arts thought that way. Cockiness was part of the way they psyched themselves into knowing they could break wood or bricks with flesh and bone, psyched themselves into thinking it was important in the first place. He covered his face again with the washcloth.