John Lutz - Lightning

One of the regulars at Vinny’s was Paul Geary, a cop promoted to detective first grade after a recent shoot-out with drug traffickers in which he’d apprehended two suspects while bleeding from a bullet wound in his arm. A couple of years ago Carver had helped Geary’s daughter out of a problem concerning a manslaughter charge. Geary owed him, and Geary hated McGregor. When Carver phoned and asked for a meeting, Geary suggested Vinny’s. Carver liked that. It was very possible that if the two men met and talked at Vinny’s, someone would carry news of their meeting to McGregor, Geary’s superior. Geary obviously didn’t give a damn.

Vinny’s was cool after the noon heat outside. It was filled with a soft buzz of voices against the background noise of a country-western song coming from the speakers mounted behind the long bar. Randy Travis was crooning in his deep voice about something profound that had happened in a pickup truck somewhere in Tennessee. Carver paused inside the door, waited a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the dimness and acrid tobacco smoke, then looked around for Geary.

Most of Vinny’s business was in the evening, but even now, a little before noon, most of the stools at the bar were occupied. There were booths on the wall opposite the bar, and farther back toward the rear of the place were more booths along the walls and tables set out in the middle. The walls were paneled in light knotty pine and were decorated with clusters of sports memorabilia and photographs. About half of the tables and booths were occupied. There were only a few uniforms in the place, but Carver recognized some of the other faces and knew many of the customers were cops. Some of them surely recognized him, but gave no indication. Discretion was the better part of complication.

He noticed Geary seated in a booth toward the back, his bulky body hunched over a mug of beer. Geary had seen him enter and was watching patiently without expression as Carver made his way toward him. He was a medium-height but very broad man with a face that was ugly in an amiable way, like that of a veteran boxer who’d started his career handsome and whose features had been coarsened by years of battle. He always looked as if he needed a shave, perhaps all over his body. Hair sprouted thick and dark on his forearms and the backs of his hands. The hair on his head was worn in a dark buzz cut, short and bristly. Carver had never seen him with any other hair style and could easily imagine him having been born with such a haircut, as well as the rest of his body hair, the offspring of half-human, half-bear creatures.

When Carver approached, he didn’t stand up, but he extended his hand and smiled. He had long, yellow bicuspids that made him look even more like a bear when he smiled, but a sly bear.

Carver shook hands and slid into the seat opposite Geary in the booth. On the wall over the table were two crossed bats, and a Marlins baseball cap hung on a peg between their barrels. A tall, thin barmaid with long brown-gray hair, whose name Carver remembered was Tammy, came over and Carver ordered a Budweiser and a replacement for Geary’s half-empty beer mug.

“How’s Beth?” Geary asked.

“She’s going to be okay,” Carver said. He didn’t mention the baby. Geary didn’t know about that and didn’t have to.

Neither man spoke as Tammy returned to the booth and placed their drinks on the table. When she’d gone back behind the bar, Carver said, “How are you getting along with McGregor?”

Geary showed his yellow canine teeth again. “Nobody gets along with McGregor, he can only be endured.”

Carver slowly poured some of his beer from its bottle into a frosted mug, creating a small head of foam, “He got a statement from Beth this morning at the hospital.”

Geary grunted. “He should have sent somebody else.”

“He came himself because he enjoys the fact that she’s hurt, and that-it’s because she and I are together. You know, the racial thing.”

“McGregor!” Geary said with disgust, making a face as if he might spit. His wife was Cuban, as was their beautiful daughter Rachel, whom Carver had helped two years ago. “Was he rough on Beth?”

Carver poked at the head of his beer with his finger, as if that might deflate it and he could sip sooner without acquiring a foam mustache. “He would have been rougher if I hadn’t shown up. He tells me there’s a suspect in custody in the clinic bombing.”

“Yeah, a guy named Norton. It’ll be on tonight’s TV news, along with McGregor bragging and hogging time in front of the cameras.”

“You think Norton’s good for it?”

“Might be.”

“McGregor seems positive about him.”

Geary took a sip of beer. “Norton was in the wrong place at the wrong time-from McGregor’s point of view, anyway. He’s an auto mechanic lives over in Orlando, got a wife and kid. Religious fanatic. We got a warrant, searched his house and garage, and found detonators and books on bomb making. That’s when McGregor decided the charge would stick.”

“Heavy evidence,” Carver said.

“Sure is. And witnesses place him at the scene, inside the legal limit for demonstrators and running out from behind the building a short time before the blast.”

“He sounds good for it,” Carver said.

“He will be, if McGregor has his way.”

Carver watched Tammy serve a scotch to a compact black woman in a white dress, seated in the next booth. He thought she might be a police officer, Frances something . . . but he might have been thinking of someone else. “You don’t sound as sure as McGregor about Norton,” he said to Geary.

Geary rotated his beer mug on its cork coaster, leaving a dark, damp ring. “You gotta wonder if Norton acted alone or somebody put him up to it. McGregor doesn’t wonder. He figures if he wraps up this case all neat and tidy, he’s a cinch for a promotion. The slimy bastard wants to be chief someday.”

“But you don’t want him to be.”

“No cop working under him wants it. He only kisses ass and bullshits his superiors. Other people, he cuts their throats then steps over them on his way up, careful not to get blood on his shoes.” Geary raised one of his meaty hands, palm out. “But don’t get me wrong, Carver. If this Norton guy actually did the deed, I want him to go down for it. Every other cop on the force does, too.”

Carver wondered if by “every other cop” Geary meant one out of two.

“My brain tells me he’s guilty but my gut says he might be innocent,” Geary said. “Or that he was acting as part of somebody else’s plan.”

“What about Norton’s membership in Operation Alive?” Carver asked.

“They’re a religious group from Orlando, been demonstrating around the South against abortion. Some of them are extreme. There’s been violence at their demonstrations before. Nothing like what happened here, though.”

“Was Norton involved in any of the violence?”

“Not as a matter of record.” Geary took half a dozen swallows of beer, tilting his head way back. The tendons on each side of his thick neck stuck out like cords. When he set the half-empty mug back down, he said, “The thing about Norton is he says he’s innocent, but he also says he would have done it if he’d had the chance. He’s glad the clinic was bombed. He thinks abortion doctors are fair game.” Geary played with his beer mug and coaster again. “Guilty men don’t usually talk that way.”

“So there are reasons to doubt his guilt,” Carver said.

“Not many, but some. You have to look hard.”

Carver leaned back and gazed toward the front of the lounge, at the drinkers at the tables, some of them munching snacks or hamburgers. The drinkers slouched at the bar were more serious about their booze; no food visible there. That said something about them. Maybe. Psychology. It was easy to read so much into things, and so much of what you read could be wrong. The collar seemed to him to fit Norton almost perfectly.