John Lutz - Torch

This time the redhead drove all the way back into Del Moray. She parked in the dark lot of a small, seedy motel three blocks from the ocean and went directly into one of the detached cabins, using a key she’d fished from her purse. Lights winked on inside the cabin, providing a view of a wall with an arrangement of framed prints on it, some of them hanging crookedly. Then the woman appeared at the front window and closed the drapes.

Half an hour passed. A paunchy but muscular man with tattooed arms came out of another of the run-down cabins and gave Carver a curious and hostile look as he swaggered to a dented gray pickup truck. Rap music blared from the cab as the truck kicked back gravel and roared away. Carver figured it would be wise not to be there when the man returned.

The shade was raised on the cabin window that held the air conditioner. Carver climbed from the Olds and walked along the line of cabins as if he had a firm destination. Yet he was moving slowly; a man with a cane could do that without attracting suspicion even if he were seen.

He moved even slower as he veered at an angle to where he could see inside the window, getting so close to the cabin that he could feel the hot breath of the wheezing old air conditioner.

He glanced quickly around. Took a chance.

Edging to the window, he tried not to breathe in the air conditioner’s fumes and peered inside.

The woman was wearing only black panties and bra, half reclining on a small sofa and talking on the phone. Her free hand held what looked like an ice pack on the side of one of her thighs. As Carver watched, she hung up the phone, then stood and walked into a small kitchenette, where she tossed the ice pack into the sink. The cabin was small; she was alone. She sat on the edge of the bed and unpinned her hair, let it fall and shook it out, her head hanging low. Something about the long red hair, swinging side to side and almost brushing the floor, held Carver spellbound.

A truck whined past out on the street, shifting through gears noisily and breaking the mood.

Feeling like a Peeping Tom, Carver backed away. He glanced guiltily around the shadowed parking lot. No one was on the lot or at any of the cabin windows. In fact, only two cabins’ lights were glowing other than the one near the street that served as the office.

Relieved, he went back to the Olds, got in, and started the engine. There was no more reason to be a voyeur. The redheaded woman was home-in her own motel room, anyway. He could leave and they could both go to bed and get some rest.

As he eased the big Olds as soundlessly as possible from the gravel lot and turned right onto the street, he thought of the gull he’d watched tracing patterns in the sky earlier that evening, and of the hypnotic spray and graceful arc of the woman’s long red hair swinging and almost touching the floor.

He tapped the brake and glanced back for a moment, not knowing quite what he was feeling, then drove away.

Beth was waiting for Carver on the beach the next morning when he came in from his swim. As he crawled up from the surf to where his cane protruded from the damp sand, he felt like some creature of early evolution, more at home in water but compelled by destiny to walk on land.

He grabbed the cane and levered himself to his feet, suddenly cool even in the morning sun, and joined Beth as she sat cross-legged on a large towel. She was wearing her red swimsuit but he doubted she would go into the water. She seldom swam or sought the sun. It amused her at times that some of the people who scorned her because she was black worked so hard to become one tenth as dark.

Beside her lay a white beach towel with a scene of a glorious setting sun and soaring gulls on it. Carver lowered himself onto the towel and leaned back toward the terrycloth sunset, supporting himself on his elbows and feeling the genuine sun and the soft sea breeze evaporating the salt water from his tanned flesh. Beth had been asleep when he’d returned last night, and still sleeping when he’d crept from the cottage half an hour ago to swim.

“How did you do last night?” he asked.

She remained sitting Indian fashion with her legs crossed, watching the sea. The sun was sparkling on the water like strewn diamonds. “I followed that good-looking dude to a hotel outside town where he met a woman about three times his age. They went to an expensive restaurant, then shopping. She tried on clothes for him and he made over her like she was young Liz Taylor, then they had a few drinks at a seaside lounge and he drove her back to the hotel.”

“He go upstairs with her?”

“Nope. He went home, to an apartment over on West Tenth. He did what an escort’s supposed to do, it seemed to me.” Squinting against the morning sun, she looked over and down at Carver. “What about that redhead you followed?”

Carver told her about the two men the woman had met, and the apparent photographing in the motel room of the woman and the second man having sex.

“Sounds like prostitution,” Beth said, “not to mention blackmail shaping up.”

“It might be a variation of the badger game,” Carver said, watching a pelican splash into the sea in an awkward dive for a fish, then come up empty. “The woman lures the man to a motel room, her confederate breaks in and photographs them, then says the woman’s husband hired him. The guy in the photos with the woman buys prints and negatives from the photographer and bribes him not to tell the woman’s husband. He can feel good about that. Not only won’t his wife find out he’s been a bad boy, he’s also nobly protecting his lover.”

“Why not simply the badger game?” Beth asked. “The man with the camera pretends to be the husband, and after threatening and arguing with the John, he calms down and generously agrees to accept a bribe not to tell the John’s wife.”

“The photographer wasn’t in the room long enough,” Carver said. “He got in and took his shots within seconds, then ran from the scene. There was no time for conversation.”

Beth brushed sand from her ankles, then flicked it off her towel. “That guy in Miami, Charlie Post, told you his wife had photographs of him and Maggie Rourke together.”

“I haven’t forgotten.”

“Seems too much of a coincidence.”

“Maybe. People have extramarital sex, other people photograph them to nail them with proof of infidelity. Happens all the time.”

“I figure there’s probably a common thread there,” she said.

“Maggie isn’t connected to Nightlinks.”

“You sure?”

“She says no.”

“Nixon said no about Watergate. Bush said no about Iran-gate.”

Carver grinned. “Maggie might not even be a Republican.”

Beth looked at him with disgust. “Woman probably don’t even vote. That’s not the point. She says no, and you believe her because she speaks through kissable lips. Jesus, Fred!”

He sat up straight so he was at eye level with her. “There isn’t anything suggesting Maggie even knows Nightlinks exists.”

Her expression of disdain lingered on her dark features, perspiring now in the glare of the sun. “That might be an acorn you haven’t stumbled across yet. But it might exist. Might even grow into an oak, you give it half a chance, a little of that fertilizer you spread around so well.”

“McGregor said something about me being blind and stumbling onto acorns.”

“Man must know a few things.”

“He calls you my dark meat.”

“Fuck McGregor!”

He laughed.

“You like getting me pissed, Fred?” She punched him on the upper arm. Hard. “You like it, do you?”

He laughed harder, but his arm was aching.

She punched him again, in precisely the same way in precisely the same spot, adding injury to injury. “You think it’s funny, do you?”