Lightning

12

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.

“That wasn’t in the newspaper, Carver.”

“Is one of your FBI antagonists a tall blond guy, well groomed, with a crew cut and black horn-rimmed glasses?”

“I haven’t seen one fitting that description.”

“Any of your men look like that?”

“Not unless he’s working undercover at a CPA convention.”

“You want my cooperation, you’ve got to give me something,” Carver said.

“Okay, Norton’s an obvious nut case, one of those true-believer dingbats out to save the world from itself. His method is explosives. There, you have something.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

McGregor looked sly, He grinned and probed the space between his teeth with the tip of his tongue. “Oh? What is it you want from me in return for your cooperation, which you better give me anyway or I’ll see you under the jail and the key’ll be in the pocket of some pants I never wear and have forgot all about?”

“I want you to provide some protection for Beth at the hospital.”

“Huh? You know I couldn’t do that even if I wanted. Anyway, who’d want to hurt her now? Norton’s in jail. And she’s only a witness anyway, and not a damaging one. You think that clinic was blown up in an attempt on her life?”

“No. But I think somebody might want to scare me off the case through her, which means there’s something to be scared away from. And if I spend my time protecting Beth instead of investigating, there might be facts you and I never learn.” Actually Carver wasn’t sure Beth was in any danger, but she suspected she was. Possibly her instincts were affected by her grief and injuries, yet they were usually accurate. Then there was the WASP with the horn-rimmed glasses; maybe there was nothing to him as a threat, but only maybe. Beth would feel better, and Carver would, if she had protection until she was well enough to be released from hospital care.

“There you go, overestimating your own importance, dick-head,” McGregor snarled.

“You know better. I’m private and can do what you can’t, maybe follow a hunch that leads to the right place. If you didn’t think that was true and you didn’t think I was good at my work, you wouldn’t be here talking to me.”

“If you’re talking about breaking the law, using any means to gain an end, hell, I do that already.”

“But you’ve got superior officers watching you, and subordinates who hate your guts and’ll toss you to the wolves if they see the chance.”

“Well, that’s a fact . . .” McGregor rubbed his long chin with a long forefinger, then brushed back the lock of straight blond hair that was hanging over his forehead. “You know I’ve got a manpower shortage.”

“Always. That’s why you want me out there like another cop working for you. You need people who know which rocks to turn over, what to look for when they flip, and how to deal with whatever crawls out.”

“Stop trying to bullshit me. It can’t be done unless you’re more corrupt and devious than I am, and you’re not. You’re too naive and weighted down with scruples that are gonna take you to the bottom and drown you someday. Dumb fucking gimp.”

Carver knew McGregor was weakening. “I told you the deal, that’s all. There’s no bullshit involved.”

“You’re lucky,” McGregor said. “Timing and luck, that’s what’s kept you alive and outside the walls. It so happens I got a policewoman’s not worth spit. I can assign her to the hospital to watch over Beth. One useless cunt to guard another so your time’s freed up, that’s not a bad trade.”

“And politically correct of you,” Carver said.

“Well, we have to watch that stuff these days,” McGregor said earnestly, apparently missing Carver’s irony.

Carver would see to it that he missed more than that.