Flame

Chapter 2

Renway absently drew a pack of Winstons from his shirt pocket, then looked down at them as if seeing them for the first time. He peeled off the tinted glasses and raised his gray eyebrows inquisitively at Carver. “Okay if I smoke?”

“Sure.” Carver was guilty of an occasional cigar, so who was he to object? He stretched out an arm and handed Renway the seashell ashtray from the corner of the desk. Its occupant was long gone and wouldn’t complain.

Renway placed the ashtray in his lap, then got out one of those cheap disposable lighters that encased a fishing fly as if it were an insect in a kill bottle. Touched flame to cigarette and inhaled deeply. He said, “I guess the beginning’s back when I retired from the railroad up north and moved down here to Florida with my wife, Ella, to live on my pension. It was gonna be the beginnin’ of the good years.” He picked a shred of tobacco from his lower lip and flicked it away. “Things didn’t work out. Pension money didn’t go as far as we thought, then six months ago cancer took Ella. After she died, I kept livin’ in the mobile home we’d bought east of town, Beach Cove Court. You know the place?”

“Been past it.”

“I didn’t see any reason to move away from Del Moray. Didn’t see any reason to do much of anything. Kinda went on automatic pilot, if you know what I mean.”

Carver said, “I know. I’ve been in the same flight pattern.”

A long blue-and-silver tour bus rumbled past outside. Exhaust fumes wended their way into the office, maybe through the air-conditioning system, and competed with the scent of tobacco smoke.

“ ’Bout a month ago,” Renway went on, “I was invited down to Fort Lauderdale to visit another old railroad man retired and moved to Florida. Fella I used to work with in the Alton and Southern switchyards. He lives in this little one-bedroom apartment with his wife, so I stayed the night at a motel. We had a nice visit, and when I went back to the motel, this fancy-dressed guy stopped me in the parkin’ lot. Called me by name. Said he had a business proposition that was perfectly legal and would earn me a lotta money. I figured I didn’t wanna see a condominium or time-share project, so I politely told him I wasn’t interested. That’s when he peeled off five one-hundred-dollar bills and handed them to me. Said all I had to do was listen and I could keep the money.”

“What’d you do?” Carver asked, knowing it was a silly question. He wanted to keep Renway rolling so everything would come out and his words wouldn’t be so carefully chosen.

“I invited him for a drink in the motel bar. We had some daiquiris, and he laid out the plan for me.”

“Plan?”

“Well, too simple to be called a plan, really. I was supposed to stay in Fort Lauderdale and live in this condominium unit on Ocean Boulevard. Call myself Frank Wesley, if anybody was to ask. Drive this guy Wesley’s car and even wear some of his clothes. As for my other duties, all I was supposed to do was leave every morning before noon and drive around a while. Stop off for lunch. Drive around some more. Go to the movies if I wanted. Spend some of the money I was gettin’ paid.”

“How much money?”

“Two thousand dollars a week.”

Carver studied a bluebottle fly crawling straight up the edge of the window. It reached the top, made a sharp right turn, and began moving horizontally, as if there might be some purpose to what it was doing. “You didn’t think there might be something off-center about the deal? Impersonating this man Wesley?”

“I said two thousand a week, Carver. And, sure, I figured somethin’ wasn’t right, so I asked Palmer-”

“Palmer?”

“Sorry. Ralph Palmer, the fella who hired me. I asked him to sign a paper I drew up proclaimin’ that what I was doin’ was perfectly legal. A contract. We both signed it.” Renway drew a sweat-damp, folded sheet of white paper from his hip pocket and handed it across the desk to Carver. “Bear in mind I ain’t a lawyer,” he said apologetically. No need to apologize for that.

The “contract” was typewritten, with a lot of whited-out mistakes. What it said, basically, was that Palmer had hired Renway to live in Wesley’s condo as Frank Wesley for three months or until his services were no longer needed. It also stated that nothing illegal was occurring and that the real Wesley was aware of the impersonation and approved of it. The financial terms were also spelled out. Renway’s clumsily scrawled signature was at the bottom alongside Palmer’s tight neat one.

Carver handed the paper back to Renway. “This probably doesn’t mean much legally,” he said.

Renway carefully refolded the paper and slid it back in his hip pocket. “I know, but it gives me some measure of protection.”

“Not enough.”

“Well, yeah. That’s why I’m here. Why I wanna hire you to find out what’s goin’ on. I drove back up to Del Moray to get some of my stuff outa the mobile home, and I figured I oughta hire an investigator here, seeing as Palmer and his friends must have been watchin’ me before I went to Fort Lauderdale.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Palmer knew a lot about me the first time we talked in the motel lounge. Even knew about Ella. That it was cancer took her.”

“You said ‘Palmer and his friends.’ ”

“Yeah. I never met anybody but Palmer, but he says ‘we’ now and then and talks like there’s others involved.”

Carver toyed with the crook of his walnut cane for a moment, then propped it against the desk. “What’s happened to you while you’ve been wandering around being Frank Wesley?”

“Nothin’ outa the ordinary, I might as well be Bert Renway, same as always, only I wouldn’t be gettin’ a couple thousand a week.” He leaned forward. “Whole thing, Carver, it makes me uneasy.”

“Know anything about Wesley?”

“Nope. Palmer wouldn’t tell me nothin’ about him. Lives in a nice place though. Man’s for sure got money. That’s his car out there, the big Caddie. Me, I usually drive an Escort.”

Carver said, “They give you any idea where Wesley is while you’re being him?”

“Not a hint. That’s why my feelin’ is that part of this two thousand a week oughta go to findin’ out why I’m collectin’ it.”

“Could be money well spent,” Carver agreed. He told Renway his fee. Got an advance in cash. The way to do business. He said, “What’s this Palmer look like?”

“Man about forty,” Renway said, “kinda handsome. Got straight black hair, dark eyes. Maybe part Cuban.”

“Spanish accent?”

“Just a trace, I’d say. Dresses like a million; always got on an expensive suit and tie. Drives a little gray car-don’t know what kind. Somethin’ foreign, maybe. I been livin’ as Frank Wesley for a little more’n three weeks now, and I only seen Palmer four times: when he hired me, and when we met the next three Friday nights and he paid me.”

“Where’d you meet?”

“We got an appointment every Friday evening at seven at a spot on the public beach. A bench near where Sunrise Boulevard meets Ocean.”

“Pay you in cash?”

“Yep. All in fifties or smaller bills. Money looks real enough. That’s some of it there on your desk. Him to me to you.”

Carver lifted the top two bills from the stack of fifties in front of him: Renway’s retainer. He snapped the bills through his fingers, rubbed the ink, held them up to the light, compared serial numbers. “Real stuff, all right.” He replaced the bills. “Can you give me your-Wesley’s-address and an extra key? I think I oughta look the place over while you’re out driving around. That way whoever might be watching you wouldn’t be near the condo.”

“I don’t think anybody’s watchin’ or followin’ me; I checked on that. Doubled back a few times. Kept a careful eye on my rearview mirror.”

“There are people who are very good at following,” Carver said. “Better write down Wesley’s phone number, too. I probably won’t use it, and it’d be best if you didn’t call here. For that matter, don’t make any call from the condo you might not want overheard.”

“Huh? You think the phone’s tapped?”

“I think we need to find out. If the people who hired you are pros, they might be doing all sorts of things without you being aware.”

Renway didn’t argue. He wrote down Wesley’s address and said he’d have an extra key cut that afternoon and drop it by Carver’s office. As if to emphasize his intention, he fished a key ring from his pocket. A bulky gold letter W was attached to it by a chain. He worked a brass door key from it and dropped the key into his shirt pocket. Sat clutching the gold ring with its car keys in his right hand.

Carver told him he’d type up a contract and trade it to him for the duplicate key when he came back. Gave him a receipt for the money. All above-board and businesslike. Unlike the Wesley deal.

Renway tucked the receipt in his pocket and raised himself out of his chair. “I feel better after talkin’ to you, Carver. I couldn’t go on not knowin’ and not doin’ a thing about this.” He snubbed out his cigarette in the seashell ashtray he’d been holding, then placed the pink-and-blue-tinged shell on a corner of the desk. A thin wisp of gray smoke continued to curl from it. Caught the draft from the air conditioner and dissipated.

He said, “Thanks, Carver. See you about two o’clock, okay?”

Carver said two was fine. Watched Renway walk from the office in his stiff, slow gait that said he was a senior citizen and taking it easy. No rush to be anywhere or do anything. Time was running out and he was going to be selfish and enjoy what was left. Only trouble was, he needed money and had to bend a little to get it. Like getting involved in something he didn’t understand.

Life kept demanding compromises, Carver mused. Never stopped.

He heard the Cadillac’s powerful engine turn over and roar.

His ears popped, as if he were in a plane climbing through changing air pressure. That was odd, but he didn’t have time to think about it.

The blast blew in the window and knocked him out of his chair.