John Lutz - Lightning

“What about your other client?” Carver asked.

Brama stared at him across the table, letting his eggs cool in the breeze. “What other client?”

“Reverend Martin Freel.”

“Oh! He truly isn’t connected with the Norton case except in the most peripheral manner. The FBI, your friend Wicker, will attest to that.”

“Sometimes a man like Freel uses the Bible as a shield to guard and conceal his true self,” Carver said.

“That certainly is a bare, undeniable fact about some people.” Brama tasted a bite of egg, decided it was cold, and lowered his fork. “But it isn’t true of Reverend Freel. I know the mind and soul of the man.”

“What do you know about his marriage?”

Brama slowed his hand almost to a stop as he lifted his tea cup.

“I know for sure it’s a sound and joyous union. Reverend Freel and Belinda Lee are in love in the best and most wholesome sense of the word.”

“Have you ever seen the reverend with Adelle Grimm?”

“Adelle who?”

“Grimm. She’s the widow of one of the murder victims.”

“Ah, Dr. Grimm the late abortionist. Why would Reverend Freel be with his widow?”

“Perhaps because of love not in the best and most wholesome sense of the word.”

Brama sat motionless, then let his jaw drop as if he were momentarily speechless. If he was feigning shock, he was good at it. Carver couldn’t decide if he was acting or was honestly surprised.

“Do tell me you’re joking, Mr. Carver.”

“Can’t do that,” Carver said.

Brama laughed loudly, incredulously, as if he thought a romance between Freel and Adelle Grimm was as likely as one between a plant and an animal. The laugh sounded genuine. “Well, I do admire someone who doesn’t joke about such things, Mr. Carver. But I can assure you, on or off the record, there is nothing to the notion of any sort of, er . . . romantic involvement between Reverend Freel and Adelle Grimm.”

“People lead secret lives,” Carver told him.

“Oh, everyone does. But Reverend Freel is my client. I know his secrets.”

Carver decided he should be the one to end the conversation, to keep Brama off balance-if he actually was off balance. If he’d ever been off balance in his life. “There are secrets and then there are deep, dark secrets,” he said.

“And how did you come by what you consider to be knowledge of Reverend Freel’s deep, dark secret?”

“Since I’m going to be subpoenaed anyway,” Carver said, “I prefer to save that answer for when I’m under oath.”

“Well, ordinarily that would be wise of you, only I don’t intend to enter into that area of inquiry.”

“Maybe the prosecution will.”

“Oh, I do doubt that,” Brama said. “It’s not a thing to be taken lightly, spreading tales when the facts aren’t known and proof isn’t forthcoming.”

“The longer we talk, the more you sound like an attorney.”

Brama poured hot water into his cup and dropped in a fresh tea bag. “Mine’s a twenty-four-hour-a-day occupation, I’m afraid. Like yours, Mr. Carver.”

Carver pushed back his chair, scraping its iron legs over the balcony’s concrete floor, and stood up.

Brama didn’t try to stop him from leaving, which meant he’d accomplished his purpose. He’d wanted to talk with Carver to determine what he knew about Freel and Adelle Grimm, and to warn him, however subtly, about a libel suit if he continued to defame the reverend. It didn’t shock Carver that Brama had somehow found out about him following Adelle and seeing her meet Freel at the Blue Dolphin Motel. An attorney of his stature and with his connections would have informants, but not necessarily ones who knew all the facts. Or maybe Freel or Adelle had noticed Carver observing them and informed Brama. Either way, Brama had to be aware that he might not know everything pertinent about his clients. It had to be a worry.

Carver smiled down at him. “Don’t interrupt your breakfast. I’ll show myself out.”

“We should talk again,” Brama said. “I enjoyed it.”

Carver nodded, leaned his weight over his cane, and turned to walk back inside the room.

Brama unconcernedly resumed eating his scrambled eggs with obvious appetite and enjoyment.

But Carver knew they were cold.

Back at his office, Carver turned up the air-conditioning, then called Desoto in Orlando and told him about his conversation with Jefferson Brama.

“The man has a point,” Desoto said. “Operation Alive has Brama on retainer, and if you go around slandering Freel, you might find yourself slapped with a defamation of character suit. A con man with a congregation can’t have a devil like you threatening the bottom line.”

“You’re suggesting I should ignore his secret meeting with Adelle Grimm at a motel outside of town?”

“Maybe it was innocent.”

“You know better. How many reasons are there for a widow to meet her late husband’s possible killer?”

“I wouldn’t hazard to guess,” Desoto said, “and neither should you. Listen, amigo, I’m a sympathetic ear, but you should stop talking about this until maybe someday in court. I’ve come around to your way of thinking that Freel and Operation Alive planned the Women’s Light bombing and Norton was acting as their agent. The Coast Medical Services bombing, with clues left all over the place that it was the work of the same bomber, doesn’t mean to me that Norton’s innocent and both bombings were the work of somebody other than Operation Alive. That’s like when Hitler burned down the Bundesbank and blamed his enemies.”

“Wasn’t it the Reichstag Building Hitler burned down?”

“Whichever it was, it only worked for a while. And Hitler eventually wound up being the one who got burned.”

Desoto was quiet for a moment while Carver considered this shorthand interpretation of history. Spanish guitar played softly in the background like Muzak.

“I wonder if Dr. Grimm knew about his wife sneaking around behind his back with somebody like Freel,” Desoto said.

“I doubt it. People like Grimm are dedicated and pretty much blind to what’s going on in their personal lives.” Carver thought about Leona Benedict climbing into the taxi that would take her away from her life of pressure and fear. She had decided she’d had enough, and her choice had become simple. Cab fare was cheaper than the price of marriage to a man with a mission. Adelle Grimm had endured the same ugliness and threats, existed under the same kind of terrible and destructive pressure.

“Perhaps Dr. Grimm stopped paying attention to his wife in the essential ways,” Desoto said.

Carver knew he didn’t mean sex alone.

“There are rumors here in Orlando,” Desoto said, “that Belinda Lee Freel has the same sort of problem with her husband. His cause has consumed him and left nothing for her.”

“Except money,” Carver said.

“It’s not a question of either-or, my friend. She and the good reverend have shared more than the same toothbrush through the years. Belinda Lee’s name is on most of the corporate papers. The Freels’ business interests are entwined in ways that will guarantee her at least half their worldly goods. And if she gets a good divorce lawyer, Reverend Freel might walk out of court with only otherworldly goods.”

“That means if Freel killed Dr. Grimm, maybe Belinda Lee is next.”

“God would frown,” Desoto said.

“Possibly somewhere along the line Freel changed gods, and now he worships money. The dead presidents on money never frown.”

“But those presidents are stern. Money can be a harsh god, amigo. And unlike the other God, it’s unforgiving.”

“Wicker says Freel’s alibi for the time of the bombing is tight.”