Spark

14

Beth had figured the time right and was leaning on the LeBaron when Carver crossed Hughey. The late-afternoon sun highlighted her bold features, prominent cheekbones, elegant sinewy neck and arms. She looked like an Ebony model posing for a car ad. Her score was perfect; every passing male motorist did a double take.

Carver leaned on his cane in the heat and brilliance that she seemed to radiate and said, “You’re liable to cause a traffic accident.”

She said, “It’s happened before.”

They got in the car and she started the engine, switched on the air conditioner, but didn’t drive away. “Get what you wanted in there, Fred?”

He sat back and let cool air from the vents flow over him like water. “Yes and no.”

“What’d Desoto have to say?”

“He tried hard to impress upon me what a bad boy Adam Beed is.”

“Beed the guy did the job on you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So where’s that leave you?”

“Trying to impress upon you what a bad boy Beed is.” He told her what Desoto had said about Adam Beed, watching her profile as he spoke. His words didn’t seem to be making an impact. Nothing in her expression changed; she’d heard a lot, seen a lot, long before she’d met Carver.

“Some of this isn’t new to me,” she said when he’d finished. “I heard of Beed when I was with Roberto. He’s different for sure. You oughta be scared of him, Fred.”

Carver felt something in his gut tense. Muscle working on dread. “Beed know who you are?”

“No, he was making his reputation in Raiford, and Roberto was dead by the time he got out. He insulted a man who used to work for Roberto. Roberto passed the word and had one of his thugs behind walls work over Beed. About six months later, the man lost an arm. Roberto knew Beed was responsible and tried to have him killed, but Beed had changed in some spooky way and even the worst of the other inmates wouldn’t mess with him. Roberto kept track of him, learned more about him, and decided to leave him alone.” She turned her head to look straight at Carver for a moment. “Roberto never did that with anyone else. Never even considered it.”

Carver knew what she meant. Roberto Gomez had been vicious in the manner of big-time drug dealers who’d achieved success the hard way, and it was a point of honor and good business to make people pay for even the slightest affront. Once he’d set out to teach Beed a lesson, it had cost him plenty to back off. Yet he had. Beed must be something.

“You even a little bit considering walking away from this, Fred?”

“No.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“What about you going back to Del Moray?”

“I think not,” she said. She drummed long, red-enameled fingernails on the steering wheel, watching the traffic on Hughey streaking away from them. “What now? We gonna try to convince each other?”

He thought about it. “No,” he said. “You’re too stubborn. Here’s how we play it. You work under the cover of doing a feature article on Solartown for Burrow. That way you can be around, do some probing, and it’ll seem unconnected with what I’m doing.”

“That’s sensible enough, Fred. You think Beed will be watching you?”

“Beed or somebody else.”

“We been seen together already.”

“I don’t think we have by the wrong people. Beed’ll give it a few days before checking to see if I heeded his warning. The best thing for him would be if I faded quietly away. He might enjoy trouble, but from what I’ve heard he’s too smart to want it. He’ll combine business with pleasure only if there’s no other way.”

“I expect you’re right. Man can’t be a fool, more like a mean machine with a brain.”

“And if anybody does ask, say we met at the motel and you interviewed me about being a private detective. Always a subject of interest to those who never had to piss in a bottle on stakeout.”

“One hitch, here. I’m supposed to keep on with the interview while we’re sleeping together?”

“Won’t come up,” Carver said. “Register at the Warm Sands, so we can get together easily and talk, but we won’t share a room.”

She put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb, cutting off someone who reacted with a long, angry blast of the horn. She seemed not to hear. “Just what I always wanted to be, a celibate spy.”

“Best kind,” Carver said. “Can’t be blackmailed.”

“Until one night.”

“Drop me off by my car before you register at the motel,” Carver said. “I’m gonna go see Hattie and find out if Jerome Evans and Adam Beed might have been connected in any way.”

She drove silently for a few minutes. Then she said, “Since it’d be safer if you found Beed rather than vice versa, I can put out the word with some of my old contacts in the drug business, maybe learn where he can be found these days. He wouldn’t have to know who’s doing the asking.”

“I thought of that,” Carver said. “It can’t be a hundred percent safe. I’ll find Beed on my own. He’s on alcohol now, anyway, not part of the illegal drug scene.”

“That’s a maybe. If he was doing heroin or crack in a major way, alcohol’d only be so much water to him.”

“Solartown information’s all I want from you,” Carver said. “Or all I want that it’s smart for you to give.” He realized he was pressing the tip of his cane into the car’s floor, feeling road and engine vibration running through the shaft. “You’ll be safest if you’re simply a journalist who happens to be staying at the Warm Sands.”

“Want it or not,” she told him, “there’s something else I’m gonna do for you. I’m gonna drive into Del Moray and bring back your gun.”

He considered trying to talk her out of that, then thought about Adam Beed and said nothing.

He settled back in the vinyl upholstery, closed his eyes, and let his bruises heal.