Burn

26

In Beth’s car again, Carver parked on Jacaranda Lane.

Less than an hour later, Marla emerged from her house. She was wearing dark slacks and a lacy white blouse that crisscrossed in some way in front and was tied at the small of her back. Her oversize purse was slung securely across her body by its thick strap and she was carrying a plaid tote bag.

She passed out of sight for a moment while she went to her car in the driveway. Carver could see the rear of the little Toyota. Its exhaust pipe vibrated and sent out a brief puff of oily black smoke as the engine was started.

Feeling rather foolish, he slouched down out of sight as the Toyota began to move. Marla would be looking over her shoulder as she backed the car from her driveway, increasing the odds that she might see him. And though she would probably drive toward busy and accessible Shell Avenue, there was the possibility she’d point the Toyota in Carver’s direction and pass him where he sat parked by one of the frazzled-looking palm trees that lined the block like tired sentries.

His bad leg didn’t want to fit beneath the dashboard, so he had to edge over at an awkward angle and bend his neck uncomfortably. Looking up at palm fronds silhouetted jaggedly against the cloudless sky, he listened to the sound of the Toyota’s clattering engine.

When he was sure it was moving away from him, he sat up straight, started the LeBaron, and followed as he rubbed the back of his neck.

Marla turned right on Shell and drove past the McDonald’s where she claimed she’d last been threatened by Joel Brant. A few blocks down Shell, she stopped at the Good Times Liquor Emporium, went inside after locking her car securely, and soon came out carrying what could only be a brown-bagged bottle.

Carver had brought along his Minolta 35-millimeter camera with a 200-millimeter zoom lens. If Marla claimed to have been elsewhere at the time he was following her, he wanted a photographic record to prove she was lying. The photos, along with his statement and statements from the liquor store clerk and from wherever else she might stop, should accomplish that. He hurriedly focused the lens and got two quick shots of her with the liquor store in the background as she was walking toward her car. Then he did his unseemly scooting low in the seat again, his stiff leg angled beneath the dashboard and his neck and the left side of his head crammed against the door, as she backed out of her parking slot in front of the liquor store. He was getting too old for these kinds of contortions, and he found himself wondering briefly what he’d do when and if he no longer practiced his arcane trade.

He didn’t think Marla would take the bottle home, and he was right. A few seconds later he was following her again through the brisk traffic on Shell, in the same direction she’d been driving.

Within ten minutes, he knew where she was going.

He watched the Toyota’s brake lights flare as she parked on Fourteenth Street across from Willa Krull’s apartment.

He eased the LeBaron to the curb half a block away, where he had a clear view but wouldn’t be noticeable.

Carrying the plaid tote, possibly now containing the brown bag, Marla crossed the street and walked beneath the rusty iron trellis of bedraggled roses. She was halfway around the dry pond and fountain with its defaced swordfish statuary when Willa Krull came out of the building to meet her. Willa had on white shorts, revealing spindly legs, and a pink T-shirt yanked tight at the waist and knotted elaborately on her thin right hip.

The two women stood alongside the ruined pond talking for a few minutes, still-life figures in the genteel decay of the front courtyard. Then Marla reached into the plaid tote bag and handed Willa a large envelope like the one she’d given her in the hotel lounge the first time Carver had seen them together. Another article to be copyedited and word processed?

Marla reached into the bag again and lifted out what appeared to be a wine bottle. She gave it to Willa, and both women laughed and chatted a while longer. Carver used the camera to get a shot of them, then backed up the lens to include more of the building to establish locale.

He thought they’d part there by the dysfunctional fountain and that would be that, but a few minutes later Marla followed Willa into the building.

He could see the windows of Willa’s apartment from where he was parked, but the lowering evening sun reflected off them in a golden glare that made it impossible to see inside.

More waiting. It was what his line of work was mostly about.

He switched on the radio and listened to an all-talk station while he sat watching the apartment building. A listener called in and claimed that the evidence indicated the same person was behind the J.F.K. and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations, and that person was Charles Manson. It was something Carver had never considered.

In the soft light of dusk, Willa Krull and Marla came out of the building together. Marla no longer had the wine bottle or plaid tote bag, or else they were stuffed down inside her big purse. She and Willa stood talking again almost where they had stood before, Willa raised a hand slowly, tentatively touching her mousy brown hair above her ear, as if reassuring herself of an elaborate and delicate bouffant that had the fragility of meringue.

Marla said something to her that made her smile and duck her head. She turned and started to move away, but Marla reached out and touched her shoulder, stopping her and drawing her back without any discernible physical effort. Then she kissed her swiftly but firmly on the mouth.

Willa pulled away again, twisting her body with unexpected grace and dexterity, but she was laughing. Marla said something else to her, then turned and walked beneath the rose trellis and toward the street and her car. She paused once, looked back, and waved to Willa.

Willa stood motionless with her hands at her sides, watching Marla as she crossed Fourteenth Street, climbed into the little Toyota, then drove away.

Carver stayed where he was. He couldn’t follow Marla without driving past Willa and risking being recognized by her.

He waited a few minutes after Marla’s car had disappeared. Willa still hadn’t moved.

Finally he started the LeBaron and backed it into a driveway, then emerged to aim the gleaming white hood in the opposite direction, away from the apartment building.

As he drove away he caught a glimpse of Willa in the outside mirror, still standing motionless by the dry fountain in the amorphous shadows of dusk.