Torch

14

Carver drove to Gretch’s apartment to see if Beth was still there. He found her parked in her white LeBaron convertible half a block down from the building. Her head moved slightly as she checked his approach in the rearview mirror.

He parked the Olds behind her car, climbed out, and limped to the LeBaron. Invisible mosquitoes droned around him in the dusk, and he swatted one away from his eyes. Swatted at the faint, lilting buzzing, anyway.

The LeBaron’s white canvas top was raised but the windows were rolled down. Despite the heat, Beth looked cool. She was seated motionless and unbothered; mosquitoes knew trouble when they saw it and stayed well clear of her.

She was reading something. Carver put his weight over his cane and leaned down to peer into the car.

She was studying a glossy mail-order catalog. Stacked next to her on the seat were more catalogs. He recognized them as the catalogs from the closet floor in Gretch’s apartment.

“I already looked at those,” he said. “There’s nothing unusual about them. If they meant anything, Gretch wouldn’t have left them behind.”

“That’s what Oliver North thought when he punched the delete button on his computer.” Beth had this thing about Iran-Contra. She’d done a series of “Ends Don’t Justify Means” articles for Burrow. Carver had seldom seen her work so hard on anything.

“Did Hodgkins let you into the apartment?” he asked.

“I never saw any Hodgkins. I let myself in without benefit of a key. Cheap-ass apartment locks. If I was a tenant there and got robbed, I’d sue.”

Carver didn’t bother pointing out the illegality of what she’d done. Or that ends didn’t justify means, which he was sure would be the case in this instance. The catalogs were worthless, some of them dating back over a year.

“You’re right about there being nothing in these,” she said. “But what’s not in them might turn out to be interesting.”

“Nothing’s been ordered from any of them,” Carver told her. “The oldest ones were on the bottom of the stack. Gretch probably got them in the mail and put them in the closet out of the way in case he decided to order something later, then when the new catalogs came he did the same thing. Maybe he threw them away every couple of years. Lots of people treat catalogs that way. This is the age of mail-order. Send away for anything in any catalog, and a week later they all have your name and address on gummed labels.”

He noticed then that she had a sheet of paper in her lap. There were columns of numbers on it. As he watched, she added another number and tossed the catalog she’d been reading on the floor on the passenger side with half a dozen others. For After Eight was lettered on its glossy cover, which featured a foppish-looking young guy and girl in what looked like Spandex tuxedos. They were grinning at each other as if just last night they’d discovered sex. Carver ignored the girl’s figure and leaned closer and squinted at the columns of figures on the paper in Beth’s lap.

“These are page numbers,” Beth said. “Or, more precisely, the numbers of the pages that have been torn out of these catalogs. I’m going to get copies of the current catalogs and see what was on those pages.”

“Maybe Gretch has a crush on one of the models and he’s using the pages for pinups.”

“Some of the pages are missing from men’s clothing catalogs, or the menswear section of general catalogs.”

“Still possible,” Carver said. “It’s unlikely, though, considering his relationship with Donna Winship. But Gretch wouldn’t be the first bisexual gigolo.”

Beth looked directly at him. She wasn’t smiling.

“Okay,” Carver said, “I won’t deny it. You latched onto something I overlooked.”

Now she smiled.

He leaned closer and kissed her cool cheek. “Thanks for the good work.”

“You’re improving, Fred. Growing as a human being.”

He wasn’t sure if she was kidding, so he said nothing. He was at least as smart as the mosquitoes.

He took over the stakeout for the rest of the evening, settling down in the Olds’s sticky warm upholstery and watching the taillights of Beth’s car draw closer together, then disappear in the dusk as she turned a corner. Maybe he should have made more of the catalogs. He had to admit that Beth might be right about the missing pages being significant. If that turned out to be the case, he’d go wherever her research led. He wasn’t going to be recalcitrant about it.

Belt Street was quiet except for an occasional passing car. Carver could barely see the flow of heavier traffic on the major cross street three blocks down. As the evening deepened to blackness, the lights of the cross-traffic seemed to flow in steady bursts of red-tinted white streams each time the signal changed from red to green.

He and Beth were only going to keep a loose stakeout on Gretch’s apartment; it would be almost impossible, and probably unproductive, for one of them to be in position all the time. Old Hodgkins would doubtless know if Gretch returned, and he’d call Carver.

Carver turned on the radio and tuned it to a Marlins game, heard immediately that the score was nine to one in favor of the New York Mets, and sat only half listening. The play-by-play man gave the scores around the league and mentioned the St. Louis Cardinals. St. Louis, where Carver’s former wife, Laura, lived with their daughter, half a continent away from where Carver sat in the heat in an ancient convertible and watched a stucco apartment building darkening to join the shadows of the night,

At least he shouldn’t have to worry about Beni Ho. The little man would have to take things slow for a while, maybe a long time if the bullet remained in his leg and he was forced to seek medical treatment from a doctor who’d follow the law and report a gunshot wound to the police.

But Carver knew that people like Beni Ho had their own medical plans with doctors who’d been compromised. Beni Ho, bionic little bastard that he was, might be limping after a limping Carver in no time. And there was always the possibility that Desoto was wrong about Ho’s adherence to the martial arts’ manly code. Ho might be hiding in the foliage right now, drawing a bead on Carver through an infrared scope mounted on a rifle.

Carver sat back and watched the apartment building through half-closed eyes, listening to the third inning and trying not to think about Beni Ho.

He was about as successful as the Marlins.