John Lutz - Spark

There. That brought things up to date. He felt perversely proud. He’d wrapped up his statement without having lied, and without having mentioned the involvement of Val or Desoto.

“That’s it, Mr. Carver?” Metzger asked. He didn’t look or sound dubious. Which meant nothing.

“It,” Carver said.

“A busy time for you.”

“And painful.”

Metzger pulled a pack of Salems from an inside pocket and touched the flame of a silver lighter to a filter-tip cigarette. As he clicked the hinged cap back down on the lighter, he held the pack out toward Carver.

Carver told him no thanks.

“You don’t smoke?”

“A cigar now and then,” Carver said.

“Explains the ashes in your car’s ashtray.”

Carver glanced at Desoto, who looked remotely amused. Metzger was putting on the clever act to show how futile it would be for Carver to lie. Scare him into thinking he might be in deep trouble if his statement didn’t hold up.

“Anything at all in your statement you might want to change before we have it transcribed?” Metzger asked. “Before we hang it around your neck and make it yours forever, to float or to sink?” He said this with a straight face.

“No,” Carver told him, “it’s as accurate as my memory can make it.”

“Good. I figured you’d be straight with us. You and Lieutenant Desoto know each other well, right?”

Carver said that was right. Desoto said nothing.

Metzger inhaled, exhaled. He held his cigarette between thumb and forefinger, with the burning end in toward his cupped palm, as if shielding the ember from the wind. “You were on the force here, I’m told. I don’t remember you.”

“It was before you came here,” Carver said.

“I’ve been here almost five years.”

“I’ve been gone five.”

“Well, yeah, I recall now hearing about you and the shooting at that little market. Off-duty, too. A shitty thing to happen. You had the reputation of a good cop.”

Carver said, “I was careless that time.”

“That’s how I saw it, too.” Metzger nodded toward the cane leaning against Desoto’s desk, pointing at it with the dead end of his cigarette. “You pulling disability for the leg?”

“Some.”

“Good.” Metzger walked over and extended his hand to Carver. “We appreciate your help, Mr. Carver. And we’ll get finished with your vehicle soon as possible. You need transportation back to your motel?”

Carver grabbed his cane and stood up over it, shaking hands with Metzger in the same motion. “No, I’ll pick up a rental car here in town.”

“I’ll phone when you can have the car back,” Desoto said. “You gonna be out at the same motel?”

“For a while,” Carver said.

Metzger said, “That’d be a good idea.”

“You gonna let me know what you find?” Carver asked.

Metzger studied the glowing tip of his cigarette. “In the car, you mean?”

“Anywhere.”

“If it concerns you.”

“It’ll concern me,” Carver said. “A dead man sitting in my car, I see that as some sort of message.”

“There’s a possibility hasn’t escaped us,” Metzger said.

“You take care, amigo ,” Desoto said, trying to hurry Carver out the door before the fragile pane of professional civility was shattered. Metzger was one of those tightly wrapped types with a temper. Frustration became rage became explosion. The sequence was inevitable; the trick was not to be around him when he detonated.

Carver said he’d take care and limped from the office, wondering if Metzger’s intense stare would leave burn marks on the back of his shirt.

He phoned before driving the rented Ford over to Desoto’s condo that evening.

Desoto was wearing a blue sport shirt open at the collar, a gold neck chain, well-cut beige slacks, and beige loafers with silver-tipped tassels on them. His sleek black hair was impeccably combed as always, probably would be if you woke him up at three in the morning. He smiled but at the same time appeared sad as he invited Carver in.

The condo’s living room had deep-red carpeting and drapes. The furniture was made up mostly of black leather or vinyl, stainless steel, high-gloss laminated wood. The carpeting and drapes were deep red. There was an expensive Fisher stereo on a wall shelf, softly pumping out somber Latin music. Not the kind of music Carver would want to listen to if he needed cheering up, but then he wasn’t Desoto. Had never tangoed, and never would.

“Want a drink, amigo ?” Desoto asked.

Carver said he didn’t and settled into a black leather sling chair with gleaming steel arms. He noticed a painting on the wall behind the sofa, a watercolor of a black man strumming a guitar and grinning fiercely before a backdrop of dark and decrepit slum buildings. Desoto was heavily into art as well as women and Latin music, and, of course, catching the bad guys. Something about this painting drew and held the eye and the conscience. “New one, huh?” Carver said, pointing at it with his cane.

“Yeah. Fella out in California named Davis painted it, Guy with a lot of talent.” Desoto’s smile was one of pleasure and possessive pride now. “You really like it?”

“Sure. It’s not the usual sort of thing I see around here.” From where he sat, Carver could glimpse just a corner of the painting of a reclining nude woman in Desoto’s bedroom. About half the prints or paintings Desoto had collected were nude studies. He had a weakness for women in the flesh and on canvas.

“You talk to Beth?” Desoto asked. How the man’s mind worked.

“Just left her,” Carver said. “Metzger and a uniform visited her at the motel, took her statement. She walked the line perfectly. Charmed Metzger, in fact.”

“Nobody charms Metzger.”

“Beth gave away nothing,” Carver said, maybe too defensively. He knew Desoto had never become totally sold on Beth. Desoto couldn’t completely overlook her background, her marriage to Roberto Gomez. The Chicago slums, then the cruel, posh life bought with Roberto’s big-money drug dealing. Excitement and casual death in a sea of green. Not many escaped that world.

Desoto sat down on the sofa. He tugged upward on the crease of his pants so it wouldn’t lose its sharpness, then crossed his legs. “This dead man in your car changes things, amigo .”

“Certainly for him,” Carver said.

Desoto didn’t smile. “It’s got to come out that I’ve known for some time where Adam Beed might be found, hey?”

“Maybe eventually,” Carver said.

“Beed should be the prime suspect in Roger Karl’s murder. I know that, but the rest of the department doesn’t.” Gold rings and a gold wristwatch glinted as he spread his hands palms up in a helpless gesture. “I’m a cop, amigo. This is a situation I can’t let continue to exist. I mean, I realize I sent Hattie Evans to you, and nobody held a knife to my throat to get me to agree to the rest of it, but-”

“I understand,” Carver interrupted. “I won’t like seeing you getting mauled by Metzger for withholding evidence.”

“And I won’t like seeing you having to go into some other kind of work, amigo. I mean, we’re both too good at what we do for that to be a positive thing.”

Carver tapped the carpet soundlessly with the tip of his cane.

“You at all close to having the Jerome Evans death figured out?” Desoto asked.

“Can’t be sure,” Carver said honestly.

Desoto flicked real or imagined lint off his thigh, leaving his hand suspended in the air as if the lint might try to return. “Then it’s a rough thing I have to do.”

“Better tell Metzger tomorrow,” Carver said, taking the load off Desoto. “You get clean soon as possible and you’ll be in deep shit for a while, but your career will recover. You sit much longer on homicide evidence, you’ll wind up suspended or worse.”