John Lutz - Torch

He waited while she laid a yellow file folder on the table and opened it.

Inside were copies of catalog pages. They were fastened together with a paper clip and there was a yellow Post-it stuck to the top one with the date and name of the catalog scrawled on it. He assumed they were copies of the pages missing from the catalogs in Gretch’s apartment.

“I found eight of the catalogs so I could see what was on the torn-out pages,” she said. She turned the folder around so Carver could examine the pages right-side up.

He removed the paperclip and leafed through them. They were sharp copies, though not in color like the pages themselves. They all showed a series of male models wearing foppish clothes, from evening wear to bikini swim trunks.

“So whaddya think?” Beth asked from across the table. She placed the olive from her martini between her lips, sucked on it to enjoy the gin flavor, then deftly let it roll back on her tongue. Probably giving the Gator Baiters fits.

Carver said, “I think I wouldn’t wear much of this stuff. Well, maybe the black leather jacket with the steel spikes running up the arms.”

“You could bring it off,” Beth said.

They were both aware that he sometimes dressed in a way not all that different from the catalog models. Wore dark pullover shirts, dark slacks, and Italian loafers he didn’t have to lace. No steel spikes, though.

He started to close the folder.

Beth said, “Look again.”

He did.

This time he saw it immediately.

He examined each of the copies carefully. One of the models on every page was Carl Gretch. There he was in a European-cut sport coat, there in a striped silk shirt with a wild tie, there in an elaborate and probably wildly colorful kimono. In one shot he was seated at an outdoor table dining with a smiling blond woman with a spiked hairdo and a see-through top.

Carver straightened the copies and closed the folder, grinning. “Great work, Beth. I can check with the catalog publishers, get the photographers’ names, then the name and address of the modeling agency that represents Gretch.”

Beth tossed down the rest of her drink. “I already did that, Fred. It’s the Walton Agency on Sunburst Avenue in west Del Moray.”

Carver touched the back of her hand. “I’m proud of you.”

She said, “Sometimes I’m proud of you, too, Fred.”

The Walton agency was a small, modern brick building angled on a narrow lot on a pretty good block of Sunburst. The bricks had been painted the dull brown color of an apple that surprises when you bite into it and find it rotten.

Carver entered the lobby through a tinted glass door, and found himself on plush beige carpeting. A middle-aged woman with unnaturally dark hair and troweled-on makeup sat at a marble-topped desk that had nothing on its surface but a complicated, many-lined white phone and an acrylic plaque that said Verna in graceful green script. On the wall behind her were dramatic color and black-and-white photographs of beautiful people. Years ago she might have been one of them. She was still hanging on by her long, painted nails. She smiled at Carver with lips the color of fresh blood. It was a wicked, guilty smile, as if she were a vegetarian caught being a carnivore.

He said, “You’re one of the models, right?”

Verna’s smile didn’t seem to change physically, yet somehow it became more genuine. She had great-looking capped teeth. “Once upon a time,” she said in a husky voice that probably sounded sexy on the phone. He saw that behind the makeup she was pushing sixty, but you had to look closely to know it.

“Is Mr. Walton in?” Carver asked.

The smile stayed on the red lips but faded from her mascara’ed eyes. She dragged a large appointment book up from a shelf behind the desk and started to open it slowly, as if its leather cover were almost unbearably heavy.

“I don’t have an appointment,” Carver said, “but Mr. Walton will see me. It’s about one of his clients.”

“Are you looking for a model?” Verna asked.

“Yes. A man named Enrico Thomas.”

She studied him for several seconds, as if trying to determine if he was one of the good guys. “Just a minute, please, Mr. . . . ?”

“Fred Carver,” Carver said, smiling.

She got up from her chair and walked to the nearer of two oak doors, the one with VINCENT WALTON on it in black block letters. She still walked like a model, as if confidently and contemptuously striding along an invisible tightrope.

When she emerged from the office less than a minute later, she stood to the side and held the door open as an invitation for Carver to enter. He caught a whiff of strong perfume and sour breath as he slid past her.

The plush carpet in Walton’s office was the same color as in the reception area, only foam-padded and twice as deep. Carver’s cane sank into it as if it were cake.

Vincent Walton was standing behind his desk and smiling. He was a tall man with a long, handsome face and coarse dark hair with wings of gray combed straight back above his ears. He had a bristly, neatly trimmed mustache like a toothbrush that was also going gray. His eyes were genial but with a sparkle of the sort that suggested it was camouflage for what might be going on inside his head. His chalk-striped, double-breasted gray suit, pinched at the waist, looked like something from one of the catalogs in Gretch’s closet.

He said, “You a photographer?”

“Detective.” Carver decided to let Walton assume he was with the police.

“Private, I’ll bet,” Walton said, his gaze flicking to take in the cane.

Oh, well. “I’m trying to locate Carl Gretch.”

“He’s inherited some money, right?”

Carver was beginning to dislike Walton a lot. “He owes some people.”

“Well, can’t say I ever heard of him.”

“How about Enrico Thomas?”

Walton laughed. “Him I know. Enrico’s one of my models.” He sat down in the brown leather swivel chair behind his desk. On the wall behind him were framed photographs of more of his clients. Carver looked but didn’t see Gretch. “It’s not unusual for a model to use a pseudonym, especially if it makes him seem more ethnic. Enrico hasn’t been sent on a job for quite a while. It’s been so long, in fact, that I no longer know how to reach him.” He sat forward and rotated a large black knob that flipped cards in a huge Rolodex. “Last address I have on him is on McCrea Avenue. When I tried to call him about six months ago to go on a shoot, his phone had been disconnected. A letter I sent him came back to me, and I was told by the post office he’d moved and left no forwarding address.”

“Was he in much demand as a model?”

“For a while, until he became difficult. Ethnic male models as well as female are in demand these days, and Enrico has great personality and attitude.”

“Is that necessary in still photos?”

“Very much so. He carries himself with a kind of natural poise and arrogance that transfers well to film.”

“How did he become difficult?” Carver asked.

“Temper. He’d get in arguments with the photographers, sometimes the other models, and upset the mood on sets. A couple of times he threatened people. Once with a knife. You don’t last long in this business that way.” Walton winked at Carver. “I bet that’s why you’re looking for him, right? He lost his temper and punched somebody, maybe cut them. Got his ass sued and lost.”

“Something like that. Was he especially friendly with any of the other models?”

“Nope. Enrico sort of kept to himself. And this is a job. Most of my models barely know each other. They get called, they go on a shoot, they work hard while they’re there, then they go home and wait for another call. You should see how a lot of them dress at home. You’d never guess they were models. Most of them can’t afford the clothes they wear in front of the camera. Quite a few of them hold down other jobs.”