“He didn’t kill you,” Carver said. “That’s as much forgiveness as you could expect from Roberto Gomez.”
“I don’t often talk about those years. There’s no point to it. But I remember my guilt and fear. I don’t want to decide alone.”
“I don’t know if I can help you,” Carver said.
“Maybe you can’t. But I wanted you to know ahead of time I might abort. At least I’ve told you that. We’re in it together.”
Carver watched a sailboat far out in the sunny haze. “I don’t know what to do,” he said helplessly.
“Now you know how I feel, though,” she said. “I wanted you to understand.”
He reached over and held her hand, watching sunlight glimmer and move like inexorable time over the ocean. The waves foamed higher and higher on the beach as the tide slowly rose, reminding of things gestating, always. Life was as persistent as death.
The cordless phone chirped alongside her chair and her hand jumped beneath his. She answered the phone, then gave it to Carver.
Desoto.
“A few pieces of news,
“It’s not that simple. What do you think this is, Disney World? The big man who beat up on you is a giant will-o’-the wisp, which in itself is odd. But he might be Achilles Jones, out of Georgia. Not much is known about him even by the Georgia law, other than that he rides a big Harley motorcycle and is rumored to have killed people. They say he has some sort of mental deficiency, the IQ of a child. People hire him for things like beating up other people, and he no doubt gets his money in other ways, but he has no police record. No one seems to know where he came from. One day he was just there. Georgia State Patrol heard about him, even pursued him once after he beat a truck driver almost to death in a motel restaurant. That’s one of the places they got his name and description, and an idea he wasn’t quite right in the head. He’s right in the body, though. The driver he beat up used to be an NFL lineman. So Jones is genuinely tough even in his weight class. Nature compensates, I guess.”
“Was he registered at the motel?” Carver asked.
“Yes. As Achilles Jones of Atlanta. They never heard of him there, though. Handwriting like a child’s, and he spelled it ‘Atlantis.’ The address he put down doesn’t exist. He’s probably a thug-for-hire without roots. There are freelancers like that, though usually not so conspicuous. We’re checking to see if anyone like him was sprung from a mental institution.”
“I doubt if they rode Harleys in Atlantis. If there really was an Atlantis. If there really is an Achilles Jones.”
“Slow progress, I admit.”
“Hardly progress at all. We know nothing about the giant in my office except who he might be pretending to be.”
“It’s more than we knew before.”
“Hardly qualifies as news, though,” Carver said. “What’s your other scoop?”
“A body was found a few hours ago in a rental car in a parking lot downtown. Little guy dressed like a Wall Street banker down on his luck. At first the lot attendant thought he was sleeping, then he saw that his head was turned the wrong way so he was staring backward. His neck was broken.”
Carver felt his breath turn icy in his chest. “Charley Spotto,” he said.
“That’s right. Did you know him?”
Carver told him he did know Spotto, and told him how.
“You’re a strong swimmer,
“Achilles Jones is the shark that killed Spotto,” Carver said.
“Maybe. He’s number one on our list right now. I’m afraid it’s not a very long list. We need to keep each other informed on this matter.”
“Don’t worry about that from this end,” Carver said. “I’m the one with the most to lose.”
After hanging up, he told Beth what Desoto had said, saving news of Spotto’s death until last.
She looked at him with a kind of deep sadness in her dark eyes. He wondered if she was weighing his world as she had Roberto Gomez’s.
Then she stood up. “I’m going inside and get a beer, Fred. You want one?”
He told her yes. She hardly ever drank beer.
The screen door slammed behind her and he stared out at the ocean. Life and death.
26
In Beth’s car again, Carver parked on Jacaranda Lane.
Less than an hour later, Marla emerged from her house. She was wearing dark slacks and a lacy white blouse that crisscrossed in some way in front and was tied at the small of her back. Her oversize purse was slung securely across her body by its thick strap and she was carrying a plaid tote bag.
She passed out of sight for a moment while she went to her car in the driveway. Carver could see the rear of the little Toyota. Its exhaust pipe vibrated and sent out a brief puff of oily black smoke as the engine was started.
Feeling rather foolish, he slouched down out of sight as the Toyota began to move. Marla would be looking over her shoulder as she backed the car from her driveway, increasing the odds that she might see him. And though she would probably drive toward busy and accessible Shell Avenue, there was the possibility she’d point the Toyota in Carver’s direction and pass him where he sat parked by one of the frazzled-looking palm trees that lined the block like tired sentries.
His bad leg didn’t want to fit beneath the dashboard, so he had to edge over at an awkward angle and bend his neck uncomfortably. Looking up at palm fronds silhouetted jaggedly against the cloudless sky, he listened to the sound of the Toyota’s clattering engine.
When he was sure it was moving away from him, he sat up straight, started the LeBaron, and followed as he rubbed the back of his neck.
Marla turned right on Shell and drove past the McDonald’s where she claimed she’d last been threatened by Joel Brant. A few blocks down Shell, she stopped at the Good Times Liquor Emporium, went inside after locking her car securely, and soon came out carrying what could only be a brown-bagged bottle.
Carver had brought along his Minolta 35-millimeter camera with a 200-millimeter zoom lens. If Marla claimed to have been elsewhere at the time he was following her, he wanted a photographic record to prove she was lying. The photos, along with his statement and statements from the liquor store clerk and from wherever else she might stop, should accomplish that. He hurriedly focused the lens and got two quick shots of her with the liquor store in the background as she was walking toward her car. Then he did his unseemly scooting low in the seat again, his stiff leg angled beneath the dashboard and his neck and the left side of his head crammed against the door, as she backed out of her parking slot in front of the liquor store. He was getting too old for these kinds of contortions, and he found himself wondering briefly what he’d do when and if he no longer practiced his arcane trade.
He didn’t think Marla would take the bottle home, and he was right. A few seconds later he was following her again through the brisk traffic on Shell, in the same direction she’d been driving.
Within ten minutes, he knew where she was going.
He watched the Toyota’s brake lights flare as she parked on Fourteenth Street across from Willa Krull’s apartment.
He eased the LeBaron to the curb half a block away, where he had a clear view but wouldn’t be noticeable.
Carrying the plaid tote, possibly now containing the brown bag, Marla crossed the street and walked beneath the rusty iron trellis of bedraggled roses. She was halfway around the dry pond and fountain with its defaced swordfish statuary when Willa Krull came out of the building to meet her. Willa had on white shorts, revealing spindly legs, and a pink T-shirt yanked tight at the waist and knotted elaborately on her thin right hip.
The two women stood alongside the ruined pond talking for a few minutes, still-life figures in the genteel
