John Lutz - Spark

Then the heat struck him like a softly wrapped hammer, and he had to pause and lean on his cane. The headache was back with all its violent strength. He stood motionless for a few minutes before hobbling slowly to the car.

When he’d started the Plymouth, he switched on the air conditioner and aimed a vent directly at his face. The rush of frigid air chased away some of the dull throbbing in the front of his skull.

He drove around Lauderdale for a while, past the Big ‘n’ Yum, then the Cuban restaurant where Roger Karl had met Adam Beed last night. Where the briefcase had changed hands. As he cruised the sunny streets he watched for Karl’s boxy little yellow Isuzu, but he never saw it.

He drove out to Jamie Sanchez’s place on the ocean, but the gate was closed, along with a more serious looking tall chain-link gate behind it. Possibly Roger Karl had phoned. Or Adam Beed, assuming he’d learned by now where Karl had delivered the briefcase. For whatever reason, security had been tightened. He glimpsed lithe, low forms gliding through the foliage. There were dogs roaming the grounds. A metal sign bolted to the fence declared the estate was protected by an alarm system and trespassers would be prosecuted.

If they survived, Carver thought.

As he idled for a moment near the entrance, a huge black Doberman materialized from the shadows and leapt snarling at the chain-link fence. A man with a flattened nose that had its cartilage removed, in the manner of a professional boxer’s, also suddenly appeared near the gate and glared at Carver. He was wearing what appeared to be a chauffeur’s uniform, complete with cap. His lips were writhing beneath the mushroom nose. Carver cranked down the window so he could hear.

“. . . help you with something?” the man was almost shouting over the racket raised by the barking dog.

Carver said nothing.

The Doberman was joined by an identical twin. The barking was twice as boisterous.

“There’s nobody at home here,” the flat-nosed man said, still glaring fiercely at Carver. The dogs barked even louder and hurled themselves again and again at the fence, causing the chain link to rattle and bulge ominously. The metal NO TRESPASSING sign flapped and boing ed each time the fence was hit by all that dog.

Concluding that he was probably unwelcome, Carver drove away. In the rearview mirror he saw the man in the chauffeur’s uniform walk out beyond the gate and stand hands on hips, staring after him.

Carver decided he’d pretty much worn out his welcome all the way around in the Fort Lauderdale area. After checking out of the motel, he turned the Plymouth in at the rental agency.

Then he treated himself to a couple more Tylenol tablets and drove the Olds to Solartown and beyond to the Warm Sands Motel.

They were in Carver’s room, in Carver’s bed, breaking the rules, maybe breaking the springs. Beth was sure no one had seen her come to his door, and Carver didn’t argue with her. He knew her; she was going to come to him when she wanted to anyway. Besides, he wanted to believe her.

Still breathing hard, he lay beside her, watching a rivulet of sweat wend its way slowly down her bare breast, along her ribs, clinging to her. Her ragged breathing rasped in rhythm with his own.

“Love in the afternoon,” she gasped. “Ain’t it grand?”

Carver rotated his sweaty wrist to glance at his watch. The crystal was fogged, obscuring the numerals. Beth laughed. He craned his neck to see the clock on the table by the bed. Three o’clock.

Beth clutched the top of the sheet and used it to pat her face dry. “Got things to tell you,” she said, breathing evenly now. It didn’t take her long to recover from most things, to recharge her batteries.

“You just finished telling me some interesting things,” Carver said. A car passed at a crawl outside in the parking lot, its tires crunching gravel with a sound like strings of tiny firecrackers exploding.

“I mean about what I learned on the Solartown reverse mortgage money. This is a business meeting, right?”

“The minutes are in my mind forever.”

“Better’n that headache you said you had.” She scratched her hip. “Hmph! We got rid of that sucker in a hurry.”

She was right. He decided not to tell her the headache was threatening to return, hinting at heaviness and pain behind his left eye. Not that he didn’t feel better in a lot of other respects. “So what’d you find out?”

She eased sideways on the bed, then reached out a long arm and grabbed the bulky attache case she’d brought with her. After dragging the case near enough, she opened it and withdrew a yellow legal pad with tiny, neat handwriting on it.

“Near as I can tell,” she said, “most of the money from the sales of reverse mortgage repossessions eventually goes into the Solartown, Inc. general cash fund. Immediately after the company reclaims a house, a small amount of ready cash is set aside to make whatever repairs are necessary and to maintain the property until it resells.”

“Do the figures tally?” Carver asked, meshing his fingers behind his head and staring at the ceiling. There was a bright rectangular pattern of afternoon sun there; it didn’t seem right to be looking at it while he was still perspiring from lovemaking. Beth could sure do things to a life.

“The numbers balance,” she said.

Carver gave that some thought. What were numbers but somebody’s information, good or bad? “Might somebody be cooking the books?”

“Always possible. You wanna check over the figures?”

“Later.” He knew she’d already checked and double-checked. “How’d you manage to get that kinda information?”

“Some of it’s public record. Some of it came by way of the custom software Jeff the computer whiz lent me. You feed it subject information, and it calculates various program passwords and file names the way it would chess moves. And Jeff would send me information via modem. What I did-”

“You or Jeff broke into Solartown’s computer system,” Carver interrupted.

“That’s illegal. Hackers go to jail for doing it.”

“Some do. Will Solartown be able to tell its data’s been raided?”

She let the legal pad drop onto the floor. “Maybe. Depends what kinda safeguards they had built in. We mighta tripped some delayed alarms.”

“If the company’s into something illegitimate, it makes sense they’d have plenty of safeguards and alarms built into their computer system.”

“Wouldn’t argue that.” She didn’t seem particularly apprehensive.

He watched a small spider make its way across the ceiling to the edge of the bright rectangle of sunlight, then veer away toward the supposed security of dimness. “Any way for Solartown to trace who gained access?”

“Doubt it. Jeff’s software has safeguards of its own.”

“Microchip eavesdropping,” Carver said. “I hate the age of the computer.”

“It’s like all progress, lover. You become part of it one way or the other, either by adapting or getting paved over.” She propped herself up on one elbow and stared at him. Her large breasts were so firm they barely sagged sideways. She was no longer sweating or breathing hard. She said, “You feel like telling me about that lump on the side of your head?”

Carver told her everything that had happened over in Lauderdale.

As he finished, she was gazing at him intently. Was she going to offer sympathy? Kiss the warrior’s wound?

“Just thought of something,” she said, and rolled sideways away from him to sit on the edge of the bed. She bent down to reach her open attache case, then swiveled on her bare rear end to sit cross-legged on the mattress with her back against the headboard. In her lap was her portable Toshiba computer.