John Lutz - Hot

By eight-thirty he’d showered and dressed and was in the kitchen sipping steaming black coffee from one of Henry’s smiley mugs. At twenty minutes to nine he carried his coffee into the living room and called Effie Norton’s home number. The phone at the other end of the connection rang five times, and Carver was about to hang up when a man answered with a mumbled unfriendly hello. He had a deep voice that suggested a bear disturbed during hibernation.

“Sorry if I woke you,” Carver said. “I’d like to talk to Effie.”

“S’who is this?”

Carver told him.

“I’m Vic Norton, her father,” the man said. “And you didn’t wake me up. In fact, I was meaning to get by this morning and talk with you. Effie’s mom and I don’t think it’s a good idea, her getting involved in whatever it is you’re doing here on the island.”

“I’ve been trying to tell Effie that myself,” Carver said.

“Then why you calling? Gonna try telling her again? Or do you need the place cleaned?”

“Neither. I just wanna ask her one question. There’s no danger in her answering, believe me.”

“Uh-huh.”

“She still in bed?”

“Naw, she’s awake. Out in the yard helping her mother trim hedges. We was all doing yardwork, trying to get done early and beat the damned heat.”

“If you call her to the phone, I’ll only keep her a minute,” Carver said. “Not even that long.”

Vic Norton didn’t answer for quite a while, letting Carver know he was mulling it over. Well, Carver understood; if Effie were his daughter, he’d want her helping around the house or marching in the school band instead of mixed up with hit-and-run murder and narcotics.

“Neither of us wants to get Effie hurt, “Carver assured Norton. A bead of perspiration ran down his forehead, menaced the corner of his eye, then tracked down his cheek without veering. “All I need from her is some information.”

“I’ll go get her,” Norton said. “But I’d like your promise you’ll keep her outa your business from here on in.”

“Done,” Carver told him.

Distant plastic clattered as Norton laid down the receiver.

Carver waited and sweated, wishing he’d switched on the air conditioner. Finally Effie came to the phone.

“Dad said you had a question to ask me.”

“Your friend Bobby who works at’the Texaco station on Marathon Key, would he be on the job today?”

“Should be. Other’n Sundays, he works every day from eight to five. It’ll be that way till school starts.”

“Thanks, Effie. That’s all I needed.”

“How come you didn’t just call Bobby at the station?”

“I like to talk with people face to face, and without advance notice. I learn more that way.”

“Bobby wouldn’t mind talking if you called, and he wouldn’t run out on you. I told you, you can trust him.”

“I’m more concerned with whoever else might know I’d called.”

“Oh, I see what you mean. You don’t trust many people, do you?”

The question made him feel unaccountably ashamed. “A few. Only a few.”

“Mr. Carver, what’d Dad say to you?”

“We talked,” Carver told her, “and we decided you getting involved in what I’m doing isn’t a good idea. Your dad and I agree on that.”

“Yeah, well, you would.” She sounded petulant, as if she’d been denied permission to watch MTV.

“You’ve already been a help, Effie. You’ve done enough.”

“The other day you asked me not to go snooping around, and I promised I wouldn’t. No need to lie and say I solved the case.”

He smiled. “I didn’t exactly say that. Or even that anything was solved.”

“Guess you didn’t. You want me to come by like usual and clean today?”

“Sure.”

“It’ll be a while. They got me working in the prison yard here.”

“That’s okay, Beth’s still asleep. She was up late last night, so the later you get here the better.”

“She stayed awake trying to help you figure everything out, I bet.”

“That’s it. I’ll be gone part of the morning. Maybe you’ll still be at the cottage when I get back. You can have lunch with Beth and me if you want.”

“Sounds super. And don’t worry, I won’t wake Beth up if she’s still asleep when I get there.”

After Carver hung up, he wondered if Effie’s father would mind her staying at the cottage for lunch. Then he shrugged. Bullets didn’t figure to fly over sandwiches and potato chips.

He left Beth a note, switched on the window unit so the cottage would be cool when she woke up, then limped outside and got in the Olds. The sun was already on a rampage, so he set the car’s air conditioner on High and left the canvas top up for shade. The moody air conditioner decided to do its best today. In his bubble of cool air, he drove fast along Shoreline, past the Oceanography Research Center, then across the narrow bridge to Duck Key and on to Marathon Key.

Carver remembered the Texaco station from his drives north. It was equipped with over a dozen pumps, half of them under a slanted fiberglass roof. All the pumps were self-service, and the cashier was inside a little square brick building that doubled as a modest convenience store specializing in canned soda and packed snacks. There were two bays for oil changes and repair work. One of the overhead doors was open. Carver could see an old white Cadillac up on the rack, the kind with tail fins. A boy in blue work uniform with baggy pants was bustling around beneath the car, giving it a lube job. Every few seconds Carver heard the snakelike hiss of the air gun forcing grease into the fittings.

After parking the Olds alongside the building, near a Dumpster piled high with trash, he walked to the service bay with the open door. The air gun’s intermittent hissing was surprisingly loud now that he was so close, echoing in the barren brick and cinder-block bay.

The boy doing the work looked about sixteen, not fourteen, as Effie had said. He was short and stocky and had a wild thatch of blond hair above a round, guileless face with grease stains on it like Indian war paint. His blue uniform shirt was spotless, but his darker blue pants looked stiff with accumulated grease and oil. He noticed Carver, wiped his free hand on the front of his leg and smiled. He had teeth that were bad beyond redemption.

“Help you?”

“Maybe,” Carver said, limping into the shade of the service bay. The smell of oil was strong. A long, viscous strand of it was draining darkly from the Cadillac’s crankcase down into a wide, flat pan on a metal stand. “You Bobby?”

The blond boy nodded, held the grease gun to a balljoint fitting, and braced his legs as if he were about to open fire with a machine gun. Sssst! Sssst! Sssst! The car’s owner was getting his moneys worth; a tubular glob of grease oozed from the overflowing fitting and dropped to the painted concrete floor, where it lay like an inert snail.

“I’m a friend of Effie Norton.”

The boy’s eyes flicked to the cane. He seemed more curious than pitying. “Carver?”

“Right. I wanted to talk to you about the black van.”

Bobby resumed his work. “The one that creepy Davy guy drives?” Ssst! Ssst!

“That’s the one. How often’s he stop in for gas?”

“I’d say around the middle of every week, usually. Fills up the tank, always pays cash, goes on his way.”

“When he pulls outa the station, does he always turn north on the highway?”

Ssst! “Seems to, the times I can recall watchin’ him.”

“This station must do a lotta business. What would make you watch him in particular?”

“I dunno. I suppose ‘cause it’s such a neat van. Then there’s his tattoos and all. And once he gave Linda at the register a hard time cause she couldn’t change a hundred. Then I noticed the way, after he fills up, before he walks inside and pays, he always drives the van to the far end of the lot, like he don’t want anyone to peek into it. He does that, he has to walk a couple hundred feet in the sun to pay for his gas. Not that it’s that big a deal, but nobody else parks away over there before payin’.” He made a vague motion with his greasy right hand.