John Lutz - Lightning

“Not thinking of FBI agents and local police lieutenants?”

“Yeah, as long as the competition doesn’t get in the way of cooperation.”

“Uh-huh. Like you cooperate with Lieutenant McGregor?”

Carver had gleaned Wicker’s angle. “Don’t you want me to keep cooperating with him, Special Agent Wicker?”

“Oh, I sure do. The question is, how fast? I mean, you got this piece of maybe important information, say. You’re gonna give it to both of us, but how soon and in what order? You understand?”

“I think so. You want to win this competition.”

“I want the bureau to know all about whatever and whoever was behind this bombing, and I want the bureau to make the arrests.”

“If there are going to be more arrests,” Carver said.

“I think there will be. I’ve heard tapes of Norton’s interrogation. He’s not what you’d describe as the mastermind type. He’s hung up on God, pickup truck, family, flag, in whatever order. That kind of guy.”

“God way out in front, I imagine,” Carver said.

“His idea of God, anyway. Angry old man with a white beard, hurling lightning bolts down at folks who don’t share Norton’s views.”

“Has he got a lot of views?”

“Uh-huh. And about a lot of things. Government conspiracies, the United Nations, bar codes, secret world governments, gun control, the Trilateral Commission, bankers of a certain ethnicity plotting to control the world’s economy, the Internal Revenue Service’s secret agenda, covert NATO operations meant to destabilize Europe so arms manufacturers can make a fortune, the murders of Marilyn Monroe, Vincent Foster, Elvis . . . the usual list. He’s a fool for talk radio.”

“Think he might be right about just a few of those things?” Carver asked.

Wicker stuffed his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “Elvis, maybe.”

Carver slid Wicker’s card into his shirt pocket. “Okay, you feebs are first on my list. Mostly because I hate McGregor.”

“Fine,” Wicker said. “I like the folks I’m involved with to know exactly where they stand. That was the real purpose of this conversation-so you’d know.”

“I’ve known from the beginning where I stand,” Carver said. “I’m in the middle.”

There wasMcGregor. His feet, anyway.

As Carver got out of the Olds and limped toward the cottage, he saw what had to be the soles of McGregor’s huge wing-tip shoes propped up on the porch rail. They weren’t simply long shoes, they were wide. Size fourteen double-E, McGregor had once bragged to Carver. Good for kicking ass, he’d pointed out.

When he got closer, Carver saw McGregor’s long form in the shadow of the porch roof. He was leaning back in one of the webbed aluminum lawn chairs with his legs propped at an extreme upward angle.

Carver stopped at the base of the three wooden steps that led up to the porch. He stood for a while looking at McGregor, listening to the surf whisper and slap on the beach, feeling the pressure of the ocean breeze against his back.

“You should have let yourself in,” Carver said, “helped yourself to a mint julep before you got all comfortable on my porch.”

McGregor held up a can. “Did go in and help myself to a beer.”

Carver was sure he had locked the door. “Through an unlocked window?”

McGregor grinned, yellow as mustard in the moonlight. “Nope. You didn’t answer my knock, door was unlocked, so I went inside to make sure you were okay. My professional duty, to serve and protect.” He took a long sip of beer, then lowered the drained can, squeezed it until it made a loud metallic pop as it buckled, then tossed it aside on the porch floor with a clatter.

“Where’s your car parked?” Carver asked.

“Outa sight, dickhead. I thought I’d just sit here in the dark and wait for you without you knowing anyone was around. No telling what I mighta seen, observing an odd mutt like you. Maybe you were gonna bring home a stray bitch to bed down with, what with your regular bang laid up in the hospital. You do fuck white women once in a while, don’t you?”

Carver felt his blood race hot, but he refused to let McGregor get him to show anger. He set the tip of his cane and thumped up the steps onto the porch. “What do you want?”

McGregor shifted his long body and let his feet clunk down on the plank floor, making the porch vibrate with the impact. Then he stood up, towering over Carver’s average height. “The feebs have come to town.”

“What’d you expect? You’ve got an abortion clinic bombing, a murder here that’s a federal case. That means FBI every time.”

“Oh, I expected them.” McGregor threw open his wrinkled suit coat and scratched an armpit. Body odor wafted to Carver. McGregor let the coat flop down to hang naturally, but he didn’t button it. He wanted his holstered nine millimeter to show. “Agent in charge is a guy named Wicker, little jerk-off dresses so sloppy you wouldn’t believe.”

What Carver couldn’t believe was what he’d just heard. He wanted to point out that Wicker was half as wrinkled and didn’t smell bad like McGregor, but that would mean he had to have met Wicker.

“Wicker’s gonna talk to you,” McGregor said, “if he hasn’t already. He’s gonna want you to pass on information to him immediately-which means seconds after you obtain it. I want it within nanoseconds.”

“And I know why. You don’t want the FBI exposing the clockwork behind the bombing before you do, don’t want them soaking up your limelight.”

“Nothing wrong with ambition. Even a slug like you must have some spark of it, so try to understand. I expect to be front and center throughout this case, Carver. Someday you’ll be able to tell your fellow losers you know Del Moray’s chief of police personally. Maybe even its mayor. This is a great country and an enterprising fella with balls can go far.”

“What if the FBI’s smarter than both of us and puzzles it all out first?”

“Smarter than one of us, is what they are. I want the dumber of the two of us to let me know if Wicker talks to him.”

“You mean starting right now, Mr. Mayor?”

“You got it, fuckhead. Soon as I leave here. Or sooner, if your phone rings. Also, I want to know whatever information you tell him, which better not be anything you haven’t already told me.”

“If you want me to let you in on anything new,” Carver said, “you should tell me what you already know.”

“Can do. It’s all in the papers anyway. Eyewitnesses sharper than you saw Norton run out from behind the clinic just before it blew up. He says he went back there to wave his sign at a window, never was inside or threw anything inside. We got a search warrant and found bomb-making literature inside his house. Later we found wires and blasting caps in his car, pushed back under the seat in a locked metal box. He claimed he was making bombs and planned to blow up a clinic, but hadn’t yet. His wife backs him up. When we brought him in he was spouting a lot of religious dribble, calling himself the swift sword and arm of the Lord. Now he’s not saying anything ’cause his attorney’s in on the game. Which is okay by me, since he was just transferred today to federal custody.”

“They going to leave him in Del Moray so the field agents can interrogate him from time to time?”

“That’s what they tell me, but you never know when to believe those ass wipes. Half of them are lawyers, the other half are accountants keeping track of how much the lawyers steal from the taxpayers.”

Carver had heard McGregor rant about suffering the disdain of federal agencies before and didn’t want to hear it again.

“How does Norton strike you?” he asked before McGregor could go off on a riff about the incompetence and audacity of the FBI.