Spark

24

Carver had taken the last Percodan. He found a drugstore and bought a bottle of extra-strength Tylenol. He stood just inside the door, looking out at the sun-drenched avenue, and managed to swallow two of the tablets without water. There. Maybe his head wouldn’t explode.

Just swallowing the tablets seemed to lessen the throbbing ache behind his eyes. He touched a finger to the lump on the side of his head. It hadn’t realized he’d taken medication and was as egglike and painful as ever. First Beed, then the giant in bib overalls. It sure put a strain on a body. It would have been a lot worse if the big man in overalls had been good enough at his work to leave Carver with more than a headache. New bruises on top of the old ones inflicted by Adam Beed might have taken decades to heal.

He was about to push open one of the glass doors and reluctantly step outside into the heat, when he noticed a line of sit-down phone booths near the hair care aisle along a side wall of the drugstore. He fished for and found the proper change in his pocket, then limped to the end booth, settled down on the hard oak seat, and phoned Desoto.

“I don’t know anybody whose description fits your big friend in overalls,” Desoto said, when Carver was finished telling him about the morning’s events. “You want me to inquire?”

“No, I don’t think it matters. He was cheap help, and he’d probably have less idea than I do why he was hired.”

“You don’t think Adam Beed sent him?”

“Beed would have come himself,” Carver said, watching a pretty blonde in a white tennis outfit saunter down the aisle and study the hair spray display. “Or if he had hired some muscle, it would have been competent help.”

“So you figure Roger Karl did the hiring on his own, eh, amigo?”

“That’s how I see it. Then, when the job was botched and he knew I’d be coming for him, he told Beed about it. Beed instructed him to run, if Karl didn’t bolt on his own.” The blond woman bent low to pick up a pink can of hair spray with gold lettering. She had long, tan legs. The tennis outfit was stretched taut across her shapely hips and buttocks. Watching her, Carver thought of Beth even through the headache. True love? Or lust?

“Amigo?”

“I’m here.” He kept his gaze on the woman as she walked away toward the registers. He suspected she knew he was watching, but she was used to men watching her.

Desoto said, “You do want me to ask around and see if I can get a line on Karl’s whereabouts, right?”

“Him I’d like to see again,” Carver said.

“Would you like to see Adam Beed again?”

“At the proper time.”

“I can’t imagine a proper time for that. His execution, maybe. But I’ll keep you informed, you keep me informed, hey?”

“Your back and mine,” Carver said.

Desoto was quiet for a moment, then said, “Amigo, maybe we should end this conversation we never had.”

“I don’t recall any conversation,” Carver said. “But thanks just the same.”

He hung up.

He knew what Desoto meant. It wasn’t good for a police lieutenant to possess information about a parole violator and not take official action. Carver had placed Desoto in the position of betraying either professional ethics or personal friendship. Hardly fair. Carver felt rotten about it. On the other hand, it was Desoto who’d sent Hattie Evans to him. So Desoto had already committed himself to the personal code that at times overrode the restrictions of his job, that extended his neck to a length where his head might be lopped off. That was what made him a good cop and a better friend.

As Carver limped from the drugstore, he noticed the edge had been taken off his headache.

Then the heat struck him like a softly wrapped hammer, and he had to pause and lean on his cane. The headache was back with all its violent strength. He stood motionless for a few minutes before hobbling slowly to the car.

When he’d started the Plymouth, he switched on the air conditioner and aimed a vent directly at his face. The rush of frigid air chased away some of the dull throbbing in the front of his skull.

He drove around Lauderdale for a while, past the Big ‘n’ Yum, then the Cuban restaurant where Roger Karl had met Adam Beed last night. Where the briefcase had changed hands. As he cruised the sunny streets he watched for Karl’s boxy little yellow Isuzu, but he never saw it.

He drove out to Jamie Sanchez’s place on the ocean, but the gate was closed, along with a more serious looking tall chain-link gate behind it. Possibly Roger Karl had phoned. Or Adam Beed, assuming he’d learned by now where Karl had delivered the briefcase. For whatever reason, security had been tightened. He glimpsed lithe, low forms gliding through the foliage. There were dogs roaming the grounds. A metal sign bolted to the fence declared the estate was protected by an alarm system and trespassers would be prosecuted.

If they survived, Carver thought.

As he idled for a moment near the entrance, a huge black Doberman materialized from the shadows and leapt snarling at the chain-link fence. A man with a flattened nose that had its cartilage removed, in the manner of a professional boxer’s, also suddenly appeared near the gate and glared at Carver. He was wearing what appeared to be a chauffeur’s uniform, complete with cap. His lips were writhing beneath the mushroom nose. Carver cranked down the window so he could hear.

“. . . help you with something?” the man was almost shouting over the racket raised by the barking dog.

Carver said nothing.

The Doberman was joined by an identical twin. The barking was twice as boisterous.

“There’s nobody at home here,” the flat-nosed man said, still glaring fiercely at Carver. The dogs barked even louder and hurled themselves again and again at the fence, causing the chain link to rattle and bulge ominously. The metal NO TRESPASSING sign flapped and boinged each time the fence was hit by all that dog.

Concluding that he was probably unwelcome, Carver drove away. In the rearview mirror he saw the man in the chauffeur’s uniform walk out beyond the gate and stand hands on hips, staring after him.

Carver decided he’d pretty much worn out his welcome all the way around in the Fort Lauderdale area. After checking out of the motel, he turned the Plymouth in at the rental agency.

Then he treated himself to a couple more Tylenol tablets and drove the Olds to Solartown and beyond to the Warm Sands Motel.