John Lutz - Spark

For a moment Carver wondered if he should follow the Isuzu, but he decided to stay with Adam Beed. That was why he’d come here, right? He put the yellow Isuzu out of his mind.

Beed drove to a drugstore on Sunrise and bought a newspaper and a small item Carver couldn’t make out from where he stood near the magazine rack.

Carver limped back to the Plymouth before Beed came back out into the sun and climbed into the Caddy. Beed had walked from the drugstore with a sense of purpose, and he drove that way, too. The Cadillac kept to the speed limit, wove through traffic to Langdon Street, in a wealthy suburb east of town, and parked in front of a large stucco house with a green tile roof and green canvas awnings. Number seventeen, according to black iron scrollwork near the driveway.

Carver found an unobtrusive spot to park in the shade and watched Beed get out of the Caddy and stride toward the house with all the confidence and determination of a man selling encyclopedias.

He stayed inside until almost noon, and when he came back out he had his dark suit coat slung over his bulky shoulder and was carrying a tan leather briefcase. He tossed the briefcase on the passenger-side front seat of the Cadillac, then walked around and got in behind the steering wheel.

Carver followed him to a restaurant near the ocean and sat sweltering in the parking lot while Beed ate lunch. Then he kept him in sight while Beed drove back to the Heron Tower and jockeyed the Caddy into the concealing shadows of the parking garage.

After fifteen minutes, Carver figured Beed would stay home for a while and drove to a McDonald’s. He ordered a low-calorie McLean burger, large fries, and a chocolate milkshake, figuring it was a good day for irony if not cholesterol, and what the hell, he hadn’t had breakfast.

When he returned to the Heron Tower, he drove into the garage to make sure Beed’s Cadillac was still there. He didn’t want to park back out on the street and sit in the car until Beed left again, and he was sure to draw attention if he parked there in the garage.

He sat in the coolness of the garage with the Plymouth’s motor idling, thinking it all over, then he drove back out into the brilliant sunlight and down the street to a strip of souvenir shops. He bought a couple of large beach towels, swimming trunks, a cap, and a T-shirt. The cap had LIFE’S A BEACH lettered on it. The T-shirt proclaimed GOOD HAPPENS.

After paying for everything, he put the trunks on beneath his pants in the changing room, explaining to the clerk that he wanted to go directly to the public beach. Then he drove back to the Heron Tower and parked down the street. He slipped out of his pants, shirt, and socks in the car, banging his elbow on the steering wheel and dash. Then he put his moccasins back on and got out of the car. He stuck the cap on his head, thinking of Hattie.

Carrying the wadded towels and T-shirt, he cut through the lobby of the hotel two buildings down from the Heron Tower and limped the short distance to the beach. For all anyone knew, he was a guest; and he was wearing the kind of attitude that didn’t invite inquiry.

The beach was crowded with sunbathers, kids building odd structures in the sand, young lovers letting people know it, and several teenagers tossing Frisbees that threatened to spin out of control and decapitate entire families. Keeping to the wet and firmly packed sand just beyond the surf line, Carver limped parallel to the sea and found a spot on the beach near the back of the Heron Tower, where he could see the driveway from the parking garage.

He spread out one of the towels and weighted it down with his moccasins. Then he peeled his T-shirt over his head, stuffed it in his cap so the wind wouldn’t take it, and laid it on the spread-out towel next to the other, wadded towel.

In the interest of realism he limped to the water’s edge and left his cane jutting from the sand. He went for a short swim, not very far out, then came back and stretched out on his stomach on the towel, wishing he’d bought some sunscreen and keeping an eye on the black Caddy he could barely make out in the angle between the Heron Tower garage’s concrete pillars.

After a while he spread the other towel over him to protect against sunburn, plunked the cap tightly over his bald head, and settled down like a hunter in a blind, which in fact he was.

It was almost five o’clock when he saw Adam Beed walking through the garage toward the Cadillac.

Carver shoved his bare feet into his moccasins and used his cane to stand up as he grabbed towels and T-shirt. He hobbled as fast as he could back into the hotel lobby and through to the street to where the Plymouth was parked. He was trailing sand and drawing some stares now, but it didn’t matter.

As he reached the car, he saw that Beed had already pulled from the garage and the Caddy was turning the corner at the end of the block. Carver got the Plymouth going and cut over a cross street at close to fifty miles an hour.

As he made a right turn he saw the black Caddy in front of him, about a block away.

He relaxed and followed.

Beed met the same short, stocky man he’d seen at breakfast. They had dinner at a small Cuban restaurant downtown. Like the topless lounge this morning, this was the kind of place a man dressed as well as Beed’s companion-and for that matter Beed-didn’t figure to frequent. And there seemed to be something furtive in their mannerisms. Carver considered that they might be homosexual lovers meeting on the sly, but despite Beed’s background in prison, that didn’t quite ring true. There was nothing in the glances they exchanged, and there was no touching. The relationship seemed more businesslike than personal. Still, it would be interesting to see if they went their separate ways when they left the restaurant.

They did. But not before Beed had removed the leather briefcase from the trunk of the Caddy and placed it in the back of the yellow Isuzu.

The barrel-chested man in the business suit sat for a few minutes in the Isuzu, then drove away last, as soon as Beed’s black Cadillac had disappeared.

This time Carver followed the yellow Isuzu.

The squarish little yellow vehicle was easy to keep in sight as it cut east, then made its way north on 1A1 along the shoreline. Carver noticed for the first time that there was a small dog in the Isuzu. Occasionally it would leap up to lick the driver’s face. It was too far away for Carver to see what breed it might be, but it appeared to have short hair. Once the man, still staring straight ahead at the road, reached over and ruffled the dog behind the ears. The dog shimmied its neck and head as if trying to shake off the sensation.

Carver drove with the windows down, now and then glancing to his right at the ocean rolling its inexhaustible life out on the beach. From here the splaying white surf appeared pure, unsullied by the debris carried in on the swells, the blackened seaweed and the occasional globs of oil from distant passing tankers. The ocean’s convergence with the land was as it had looked thousands, perhaps millions, of years ago, as long as it was viewed from a car doing sixty miles an hour on a road that hadn’t existed at the beginning of the century.

Several miles north of Fort Lauderdale the Isuzu slowed and then turned into the driveway of one of several luxurious private homes with ocean views. Twin stone pillars marked the mouth of the driveway, and there was a chain-link gate across it that must have been opened when the Isuzu entered, but was now closed. The house itself was out of sight except for a long, red-tiled roof.

Carver parked in the shade of a grouping of date palms, made a note of the Isuzu’s license plate number and the address of the house, then waited.