John Lutz: Torch

Sensing the balance shift, Carver moved slightly toward Thomas. The knife extended, Thomas backed several steps up the flight of stairs. He looked a bit startled, as if his legs had moved on their own.

Carver said, “Going down or up?”

“You say you know Miranda,” Thomas said, almost whining, “but I bet she wouldn’t have anything to do with a fucking cripple like you for any amount of money.”

“Well, you ask her when you see her. We’re crazy in love with each other. But you’re changing the subject. You coming down here with that knife?”

Time stopped in the bubble of events. Thomas licked his lips. Carver had assumed he was Latin, but up close, even in the dim light, he didn’t look Latin at all, despite the dark hair and mustache.

“Please come down here,” Carver said.

That did it. Thomas wasn’t the type to be told what to do, even if a “please” happened to be attached. Deftly folding the knife closed, he retreated another few steps, moving backward up the stairs easily, nimbly, still facing Carver. “I know what you look like,” he said, almost spitting the angry words. “Don’t you forget that.” He backed up two more steps, into the shadows of the landing.

“And I know what you look like,” Carver told him. “Like a million other guys who know that down deep they don’t have what they need.”

He edged to the street door, then pushed it open and moved outside. As he limped away, he listened for the door to sweep open behind him, for Thomas’s rushing footsteps.

But no one emerged from the building.

Carver returned to the Olds and lowered himself into the warm vinyl upholstery.

As he put the transmission lever in drive and pulled away from the curb, he saw Enrico Thomas in the second-floor-west apartment. He’d struck an absurdly dramatic pose, standing squarely at the window like an anorexic, miniaturized colossus with fists on hips, watching Carver as kings on balconies gaze down on subjects about to be ill-used.

Carver thought, A dangerous man with a knife.

He was shaking badly as he drove away.

The lights were burning in his modest but private beach cottage when Carver parked the Olds next to Beth’s car. Her car was a LeBaron convertible, like Donna Winship’s, only white rather than gray, the sort used in droves by car rental companies in Florida and then sold by local dealers. The similarities in the women’s cars was enough of a reminder of life’s impermanence that Carver was eager to get inside the cottage and talk with Beth, touch her, in appreciation of her continued if fragile existence. Of his own.

Beth, a tall black woman with the look of a tribal queen turned fashion model, was seated on the sofa by the lamp, barefoot and wearing Carver’s faded blue terrycloth robe. When he came through the door, she set aside the three or four sheets of white paper she’d been reading. She was a journalist for Burrow , a small and gutsy local weekly newspaper that sent its reporters where angels feared to tread. Beth liked that.

“Get what you wanted?” she asked. The lamp starkly side-lighted her strong features, her prominent cheekbones and forehead. She was a woman who’d seen far too much for most people, but not for her. She’d fought her way out from under, starting with the Chicago slum of her girlhood, and would keep fighting. Everything about her told you that, from her regal, undefeated bearing to the bite of her words when she was angry and the directness of her gaze as she assessed the world. Her eyes were different tonight, though; she’d been crying.

It was cooler inside the cottage, but still too warm. Carver crossed the plank floor to the small kitchen area, opened the refrigerator and got out a cold Budweiser. “I know where Enrico Thomas lives-if that’s his name.” He went to the couch and sat down next to Beth. She snatched away the article she’d been working on before he sat on it.

He was going to kiss her, but her arm was around his neck and she was kissing him. She smelled of scented soap and shampoo. She leaned away, smiling, but with her eyes still sad.

He said, “I appreciate you.”

“Works both ways, Fred.”

He told her about following Thomas from Riley’s Clam Shop into Orlando, the confrontation inside the building, the different name above the apartment’s mailbox.

“Where’s that leave you?” she asked.

“Waiting until morning. Then I’ll call Desoto and see if he’ll run the Corvette’s license plate number.” He glanced at the papers she’d placed next to the lamp on the table. They were marked with red felt-tip pen where she’d been revising. She was being careful with this article; often she sent in her story to the Burrow office using the modem in her computer. “I thought you were finished with the pollution story.”

“I am. This is something else. I’ve been working on it for a while and should be able to wrap it up soon.”

“What’s it about?” he asked, nodding toward the papers.

“A mail-order company that sends overpriced junk merchandise to grieving widows and pretends the husband ordered it just before his death. Bastards!” She sat back and crossed her improbably long legs, parting the robe high up her bare thigh. “Fred, I’m sitting here wondering if things would have worked out the same way today if I hadn’t arranged for you and Donna to meet.”

“They wouldn’t have worked out exactly the same,” he told her, “but the end result probably would have been the same. Your friend wasn’t holding up well under the strain of a disintegrating marriage, and like you said, she wasn’t the type to have an affair. Despite the glowing account of her relationship with Enrico Thomas, I suspect he only made things worse for her.”

What he didn’t say was that he’d been wondering the same thing as Beth: If he and Donna Winship hadn’t met and talked, would she still be alive? Not that he considered himself responsible for her impulse to destroy herself, but undeniably, if the kaleidoscope of fate had been turned a few degrees either way, things might be different. He told himself that life was a risk for everyone every second and he bore no blame, but how could he really know? Had he said something seemingly innocent to trigger the plunge of spirit that had prompted a desperate woman to take her last and fatal step?

Beth gently lifted the cold beer can from his hand and took a sip, then touched the rounded damp side of the can to her forehead as if trying to relieve a headache.

“There’s the matter of the thousand-dollar retainer she gave me,” Carver said.

Beth lowered the can but didn’t hand it back to him. “What about it?”

“Donna Winship hired me to follow her, and obviously that’s impossible now.”

“You followed that Enrico Thomas character.”

“To satisfy my own curiosity, not as part of why she hired me.”

“So the nature of the job has changed.”

“There is no client, Beth, so no job.”

“Well, you can’t very well return the money if Donna’s dead.”

“I won’t cash her check,” Carver said, “but it’ll be entered in her checkbook, so her husband will know about it. I’m going to have to talk to him, return the check to him.”

“Don’t do that, Fred. The way Donna talked, the guy turned away from her and tuned her out completely. Believe me, she wouldn’t want you to return the retainer.”

“If I simply hold the check, he’ll eventually contact me with his own questions.”

She looked thoughtful, then resigned. “I suppose that’s true. And if you do cash it, he can get you for fraud. Judging from how Donna came to think of him, he probably would.”

“So I’ll drop by and give him the check,” Carver said. “I’ll let him think she hired me to follow him, checking to see if he was having an affair.”