Scorcher

Chapter 15

What to do when confronted with a smooth surface and no handhold? Carver wasn’t sure, but the way things were going, he might have to find out. His visit with Dr. Elsing hadn’t exactly sprung open doors to fresh vistas of knowledge.

He didn’t know how long he’d be in the Fort Lauderdale area. That depended on Paul Kave. But it was here, near where Paul disappeared, that Carver had to seek the beginning of the trail, where he’d find something to grasp and build on and follow to ultimate revenge. Always there had to be at least some thin indication of direction. People changed the world as they moved through it, even as it changed them.

He drove north the short distance to Pompano Beach and registered where Laura had stayed, at the Carib Terrace Motel on Ocean Boulevard. He was given a ground-floor unit, and he sat for a while on the edge of the bed and gazed through the sliding glass doors at the beach.

It was essentially the same view as the one from the unit upstairs, where he’d visited Laura after Chipper’s murder. Probably some of the same sunbathers lounged out there on the pale sand, and some of the same children ran and kicked through the surf. Down where the beach was darkened from high washes of foam, an elderly man with his pants rolled into doughnuts just below his knees was walking slowly with his head down, squatting occasionally on spindly legs to examine seashells, none of which was apparently worthy of his collection. Not far from the glass doors, a potbellied man in violent tropical-print swimming trunks was trying earnestly to fold or unfold a bulky redwood lounge chair, wrestling with it as if it were his conscience.

After a while the glare outside caused Carver’s eyes to ache. He got up and pulled the drapes closed. Light and sound were instantly muted, and he suddenly felt isolated and lonely. Remotely afraid of something he couldn’t identify.

He phoned Adam Kave and told him where he could be reached if there was any news on Paul. Then he walked down the street to a Chinese restaurant and had a lunch of crab Rangoon appetizers, Hunan beef and broccoli, and two Budweisers. East meets West.

As soon as he returned, the motel owner’s wife stopped him as he passed the office door and told him he had two messages. He was supposed to call Nick Fanning sometime that afternoon or evening. And a Lieutenant Desoto had phoned from Orlando and wanted Carver to call back as soon as possible.

The youngish, pretty woman handed him a slip of lined paper with the phone numbers written on it. She yelled “Don’t run-walk!” at a skinny tan kid by the motel pool, then stepped back into the air-conditioned office. Sometimes good advice, Carver thought, sometimes not.

He glanced at Fanning’s number but didn’t recognize it. He did recognize the other number: Desoto’s extension at police headquarters in Orlando. The times of the calls to Carver were scrawled next to the numbers. Fanning had called half an hour before Desoto. Carver bore down on his cane and walked, didn’t run, away from the lapping blue pool and the acrid scent of chlorine and went into his room.

The phone was ringing. He lifted the receiver and said hello, expecting to hear Fanning or Desoto.

A man’s unfamiliar voice said, “Her tits swelled up and sort of split open when they burned, then they shriveled up. Hey, it was something to see. And hear. I’ll always think of her as my old flame.”

Carver sat on the edge of the bed, dragged the phone to him, and rested the base unit in his lap. His good leg was trembling. “Who is this?”

“You know who I am, Carver. And I know who you are. Yeah, I know.”

“Paul?. .”

Click. Buzz.

The connection had been gently but abruptly broken. Carver sat listening to the hum of the dial tone for a long time. It seemed as if the buzzing might be in his head, the sound of fury and futility. It was a frantic, wavering drone that made his pulse race and his hands clench. Don’t run, walk!

He made himself calm down and tried to memorize every nuance of the young male voice that had casually projected such horror in him. There was nothing distinctive about the voice. A nice normal voice; that was what had been so chilling about the words it had spoken.

He slowly pressed down on the cradle button, let it up, and pecked out Nick Fanning’s number. How had Fanning known where to phone him and leave a message? But Carver realized anyone might have followed him from the Kave estate and found out where he was staying, and then told anyone else.

“I was with Adam Kave when you called to let him know where to reach you,” Fanning said, after answering on the second ring and exchanging hellos. “I noticed the name of your motel when he jotted it down on his desk pad.” Very pat.

But it didn’t explain why Fanning had called. “Do you know something about Paul, Mr. Fanning?”

“More to the point,” Fanning said, “I think there’s something you oughta know. Whatever Paul’s problems, they aren’t entirely Adam Kave’s fault.”

“I didn’t suppose so.”

“You’re going to talk to people,” Fanning said, “and they’re going to give Adam a bad rap. Or is that the case already?”

“Adam Kave hasn’t rated glowing reports as a father,” Carver admitted.

“And it’s true he hasn’t been a good father to Paul, but probably not so true as some of the people you’ve talked to would have you believe. I’m in a position to know. I’ve watched their relationship, and even tried to intercede a few times. While Adam certainly is too critical of Paul, it’s also true that he loves Paul very much.”

“So why are you telling me this, Mr. Fanning?”

“Call me Nick. And I’m butting in because I owe a lot to Adam Kave, at least enough to set the record straight about him and Paul. Adam’s an exceptional man, Carver, a man who was driven by something in his youth that demanded unequivocal success, and still drives and demands. He’s not like the rest of us. He created a multi-million-dollar empire from nothing but an idea.” Fanning’s voice had taken on a lilt that was almost evangelical. He’s not like the rest of us.

“And now it’s the seventh day and he’s resting?”

“No, now he rules his kingdom. That’s the real stuff of his life. Exercising the unbendable will that enabled him to succeed spectacularly in business in the first place.”

“The Kave stubborn streak.”

“Sure. You can call it that if you want to simplify it. While Adam’s equipped to found and control business empires, he isn’t well equipped to be a father. He doesn’t know how and he never took the time to learn. But I’ve seen him try. It’s the only thing I’ve seen him try at and fail. And he fails as big as he succeeds. It’s painful to observe. He doesn’t know how to talk to Paul, even how to take a pass at it.”

“He still try?”

“The last few years he’s tried. But maybe it’s too late. There are emotions there he doesn’t seem able to handle; he grapples with them and loses and can’t figure out why. The thing for you to remember, Carver, is that at the base of all their troubles, Adam loves Paul even if Paul doesn’t know it.”

“And vice versa?” Carver asked.

“Yes,” Fanning said after a pause. “Paul would, deep down, like nothing more than to please his father. To earn the symbolic stamp of approval. Can you understand that?”

Carver thought back to his own childhood and felt a pang of resentment. He understood.

“Apparently approval can be earned,” he said. “Adam’s satisfied with your performance.”

“Yeah, but I’m not his son.”

“I’ll keep what you said in mind, Nick. Incidentally, did you mention this phone number to anyone?”

“No, of course not. Why?”

“Nothing. I only wondered.”

“When you find Paul, Carver, tell him his father loves him. God knows, Adam can’t do it himself. Fatherly love has made him mute when it comes to Paul.”

“I’ll tell him,” Carver said. “The idea is for me to help Paul, remember. To save him.”

“I know. Maybe only somebody from outside the family can do that. Don’t give up on the job.”

“I intend to keep at it,” Carver said.

He hung up the phone. You weren’t supposed to feel full thirty minutes after Oriental food, but the spicy Hunan beef rested in his stomach like a stone from the Great Wall of China. Carver closed his eyes for a minute, seeing only swimming fragments of golden sun that had followed him into his room. He didn’t feel good about what he’d just told Nick Fanning. Or about what Fanning had said about Adam actually being fond of Paul.

Somebody loved even Hitler, he told himself, and picked up the phone again and played the numbers to reach Desoto, oddly comforted by the thought.

“Somebody loved even Hitler,” he said, when Desoto had answered the phone and identified himself.

“Plenty of people would still love him, amigo, if Germany had won the war.”

“A measure of how fucked-up the world is,” Carver said. “How’d you know where to reach me?”

“I called McGregor and he told me.”

“How did he know?”

“He didn’t say. He’s the kind that hoards information like a squirrel hoards nuts. Knowledge is power, McGregor figures, and he’d just as soon not share it.”

“Not share anything.”

“Except blame, amigo. He’s good at passing that around. He’s one sneaky bastardo, a watcher who plans before he moves.”

He’s watching me. Having me shadowed. Carver automatically glanced at the sliding glass doors to outside, as if expecting to see McGregor or one of his men hunkered down and staring in through the crack in the drapes, like a peeping Tom.

“I’m sorry, amigo, but I’ve got something to tell you that will only worsen that fucked-up condition you mentioned. A woman here in Orlando burned to death in her shop a few hours ago. We’re still putting things together, but there’s not much doubt it’s just like the other killings.”

The knot in Carver’s stomach got heavier; his heart moved higher in his chest and fluttered. “Fifteen minutes ago I got a phone call.” He told Desoto what the caller had said. How the man had graphically described a woman burning.

“She was burned that way,” Desoto said quietly.

“Christ!. .”

“Paul Kave’s taunting you,” Desoto said. “Making it a game. Showing he can take the play away from you and be the hunter.”

For an instant Carver saw a tiger. “Why?”

“Amusement, amigo. Twisted kind of sex thing, maybe. We’ve both seen it. This time it’s mixed up with burning people to death. Know what? — I’m afraid for you.”

“I’m afraid for me, too.”

“Ah, but you feel something more potent than fear. And that’s what worries me, Carver.”

“I’ll worry enough for both of us.”

“I sincerely hope.”

“Any witnesses to the last murder?”

“None. What was left of the victim was discovered by customers when they walked into her dress shop over on Orange Avenue.”

“Orange in downtown Orlando?”

“Yeah. Not all that far from police headquarters. You want details by phone, or are you driving here?”

“I’ll check out now and get there soon as possible.”

“I oughta be in my office till late evening,” Desoto said. “Should have an autopsy prelim by the time you get here.”

“That’s fast.”

“There isn’t much left to autopsy,” Desoto said sadly. “This was a thorough job. Not an inch of her wasn’t burned. Sacra Madre!” Soft hissing on the line was the only sound Carver heard for a while. Desoto breathing into the receiver? Carver waited. He knew Desoto was thinking about the dead woman, reliving fresh and vivid impressions. Homicide cops were bedeviled creatures.

“Amigo, you think even Hitler ever did anything like this? I mean, personally?”

“If he didn’t,” Carver said, “I bet he could have worked up to it.”

It was something he thought about most of the way into Orlando, whether a murderer of historic proportion and bureaucratic distance like Hitler was actually as evil as Paul Kave, who stood face-to-face with his victims and watched their blazing agony and death throes. Worked painlessly inside their tortured flesh as an observer and enjoyed. The nature of evil was elusive. Like the truth.

When he reached the Bee Line Expressway on the outskirts of Orlando, he wondered if the white Ford rental behind him was the one that had haunted his rearview mirror all the way up from Pompano Beach.