Flame (11 page)

“I’m countin’ on it.”

Courtney crossed her legs the other way with a loud swish of nylon and kept staring at Carver. Smoke from the cigarette holder trailed across her face but she didn’t blink. Telling him she was a hard number and not to look in her direction for sympathy.

Butcher drew a bone-handled knife with a long, thin cutting blade from beneath his shirt. The kind used in slaughterhouses to strip meat from bone. Said, “Ever seen how livestock starts out on its trip to the dinner table, Carver?”

Carver knew this was all being done for effect. These three, laying it on thick. An act designed to intimidate, with Ogden, who seemed to have an agile mind behind his good-ol’-boy-sophisticate pose, the director. Still, it was working. Butcher’s words, Butcher’s baleful steady gaze, sent a tiny cold centipede scurrying up the nape of Carver’s neck. He said to Ogden, “Spare me the scary part and get to the point. Then get outa my room.”

Courtney said in a calm, Deep South voice that held a hint of Spanish, “He talks like a real rough man, don’t he, though?”

“Not actually,” Ogden said. “But I hope he’s a sensible one. What I’d sure like to know, Mr. Carver, is why you went to Wesley Slaughter and Rendering and represented yourself as someone else. And why you just attended the memorial service for a man you never met.”

“Didn’t stay for the service, actually.”

“Smart fucker,” Butcher said. Then to Ogden: “Sometimes them kind’s the most fun. Don’t take ’em long to realize they ain’t so smart, though, then they’re like all the rest. People an’ hogs; ain’t none of ’em more’n just blood, guts, an’ bone.”

Carver thought he saw Courtney shiver. Genuine revulsion? Or more playing for effect?

Ogden, using a more reasonable tone of voice, said, “It’s this way, Mr. Carver. Wesley Slaughter and Rendering’s in a very competitive business, and there’s some delicate negotiations going on that will continue despite Mr. Wesley’s death. We don’t want anything happening that might upset those negotiations.” He smiled. “This all clear to you?”

“Sure. You think I’m an industrial spy.”

“I think it’d be smart of you not to show your face around Wesley Slaughter and Rendering again. Not to ask any more questions about poor Mr. Wesley. Not to trespass on private property. Spy on grieving widows. That kinda thing.”

“Or?”

Butcher smiled. Carver like him better leering.

Carver said, “Your buddies tried to scare me off this case down in Florida. They the ones aimed you at me?”

Butcher stiffened. Drew invisible little circles in the air with the point of the knife. Ogden seemed genuinely puzzled. “What buddies in Florida?”

“You know the two. Down in Fort Lauderdale. Black guy and a Hispanic.”

Courtney drew in her breath sharply.

“Their act wasn’t nearly as frightening as yours, though,” Carver said. “Guns and tough talk was all. Gun can do more damage in a second, but there’s something unsettling about a knife.”

Butcher said, “Ain’t there, though?”

Ogden said, “Well, you shoulda listened to those fellas, Mr. Carver. Been best all around.” He reached into his suitcoat and drew a fat white business envelope from an inside pocket. “Here’s the way we can do it,” he said. “There’s a lotta money in this envelope, and I’m gonna leave it down at the desk for you. Come morning, you and that envelope be gone. You understand?”

Carver said, “People don’t run other people out of town anymore. Not even very often in the movies.”

“Ain’t no movie,” Butcher said.

“If I reclaim that envelope tomorrow, you’ll wish you’d beat me to it,” Ogden said. “We clear on that?”

Still looking at Ogden, Carver pointed with his cane at Butcher. “Didn’t you just hear Butcher say this wasn’t a movie?”

“Think on it,” Ogden said. “Whatever it is, it’s up to you whether it has a happy ending.”

Courtney stood up from the bed. She was shorter than Carver had imagined. Nicely built but thick through the waist. She drawled, “You better listen and do, Mr. Carver.”

“He’s been given time to consider,” Ogden said. He started toward the door. Butcher followed. Then Courtney. Like ducks in a row.

As he passed Carver, Butcher reached into his pants pocket and held up what looked like a rawhide necklace strung with about half a dozen tiny misshapen beads of leather. Said, “I carry this here for luck, Carver.”

“They’re earlobes,” Ogden explained. “Real ones, you can be sure. He’s got him a little eccentricity and sorta collects them.”

Courtney looked bored but slightly ill.

Carver said, “They bring you luck, Butcher?”

“More luck than the folks I cut ’em from,” Butcher said logically, grinning and slipping the leather loop back into his pocket, He smoothly inserted the long-bladed knife into its sheath beneath his shirt.

Ogden smiled and said, “Don’t trust too much in
your
luck, Mr. Carver.” He held the door open as Courtney and Butcher slid past him into the hall. Shook his head and said in an amused, boys-will-be-boys tone, “Earlobes. Ain’t that something?”

“Something,” Carver agreed.

But the door had already closed.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, as he limped through the Holiday Inn lobby, Carver tried not to look at the envelope stuffed in the box beneath his room number. A lot of money, Ogden had said. And, to Ogden, a lot would indeed be a lot. There was no telling how much was in the bulging white envelope. Maybe even six figures. Possibilities endless and shining.

Better not think about that.

But his mind kept returning to the knowledge of the envelope the way the tip of a tongue keeps returning to an aching tooth. And finding decay.

He got the Ford from the hotel garage and drove through iridescent streets damp from a dawn rain to the Atlanta Public Library, only about six blocks away on the corner of Carnegie Way and Forsyth.

The library was a gray stone building with dark-tinted windows. There was a wide concrete area out front that seemed to be home to half a dozen street people. This was a teeming corner, with lots of traffic, both car and pedestrian. Busy Atlantans rushing here and there, conducting the business of the New South.

Inside, the library was cool and spacious, with beige carpet and cream-colored walls. Carver pushed through a turnstile, and a woman at an information desk told him newspaper back issues were kept on microfilm on the fourth floor, then with a darting glance at his cane directed him to an elevator.

Same beige carpet on the fourth floor. Same cream-colored walls. Microfilm records were stored in rows of multicolored file drawers, while current newspapers were kept in racks in their original form.

After removing the appropriately dated small cardboard boxes from one of many gray drawers, he sat at one of half a dozen blue-and-gray viewers and got busy.

He had to sift through several microfilm spools before he found what he wanted in a July 12, 1970, edition of the
Constitution.
The moving of Wesley Slaughter and Rendering’s corporate headquarters to Atlanta from New Orleans, along with plans to construct a vast operation south of the city, was front-page news in the financial section. There was a separate item on Wesley himself, recounting how he’d been born in New Orleans into one of the city’s oldest and most prestigious families. His father had been a local political kingmaker,
his
father a two-term congressman in the U.S. House of Representatives. Wesley had made a name for himself as a high-school halfback, but he hadn’t played college football because of a knee injury. He’d attended Washington and Lee University, graduating
magna cum laude
within three years. In a surprising move, he’d used family money to buy into Clark Rendering with a college friend, Keith Adkins. The two of them soon had corporate control. Within five years Adkins left the company, whose name was changed to Wesley Slaughter and Rendering. Under Wesley’s guidance, it soon became the largest operation of its kind in the South. Wesley was also a member of an organization called the Southern Christian Businessmen’s League, as well as several other civic groups.

Next to the news item was a photograph of Frank Wesley in his forties, dark hair worn long over the ears, drooping dark mustache, the sort of smile people associate with daredevil pilots and heartbreakers. Nice-looking guy in a suit and tie, posed with his arms crossed, a freshly slaughtered hog dangling upside-down on a meat hook in the background. Today’s carcass, tomorrow’s bacon.

It was a striking photograph for several reasons, but the reason it struck Carver was that he was sure the man in the 1970 newspaper photograph and the man who’d died in the car bombing in Florida were two different people.

He turned the knob that made the lens zoom in on the section of the newspaper page containing the Wesley story. Figured out the instructions printed on the side of the microfilm machine, fed a quarter into its plastic and metal guts, and in a slanted plastic tray received a copy of what was on the screen. Wesley’s photograph had reproduced beautifully.

Then he leaned back in his chair, holding the copy and the crook of his cane in the same hand, thinking.

The two gunmen in Wesley’s condo in Fort Lauderdale hadn’t seemed surprised when he’d walked in through the unlocked door. It was almost as if they’d been ahead of him in the game and were sitting there waiting for him. And if he was any judge, Ogden, Butcher, and Courtney had been genuinely surprised by his mention of the two in Florida. As if they actually had no connection with them. Maybe didn’t even know who they might be. Then he remembered Courtney’s sharp intake of breath at the mention of the Fort Lauderdale conversation. Wondered what, if anything, that might mean.

But the discussion of the two gunmen was the only even slight digression from their scare-Carver act. It was as if they’d talked over beforehand what might frighten him into leaving Atlanta, then gone through their routine in his room and sweetened fear with money. Powerful motivators, cold fear and cold cash.

Carver had been tempted, but he’d never considered asking the desk clerk for the envelope in his room slot. Not really. Not beyond toying with the idea. He knew better than to take the money. Knew what part of himself he’d be selling. Convinced himself of that, anyway.

But he couldn’t shake the fear.

Even if he did keep seeing Butcher’s tiny, intense eyes behind the thin-bladed boning knife, even if he did keep thinking about the photograph of a young Frank Wesley standing and smiling in front of a fresh-killed hog, Carver assured himself that he was leaving Atlanta because he had no more business here at the moment.

As he checked out of the hotel that afternoon, he saw that the envelope was no longer in his box. He asked the desk clerk, a tall, elderly man with gray hair and a crooked spine, if he knew what had happened to it.

“Gentleman that left it came by this morning and picked it up,” the man said, regarding Carver as if peering around a corner.

“Remember what time?”

“I’d guess about ten, sir.”

Carver felt a sinking, cool sensation. They hadn’t given him much time to claim the money. As if they didn’t really care how he played it and could handle him easily either way. Hadn’t been bluffing an iota. This wasn’t comforting.

“That’s okay, I hope.” The desk clerk’s gray eyebrows formed a sharp V of concern. “When he left the envelope, he said whoever was on the desk at the time was to give it to whichever of you two gentlemen asked for it.”

“It’s okay,” Carver told him. “I just wanted to make sure he got it.”

He put his room charges on his Visa card and said yes, he’d enjoyed his stay.
Especially the guy with the knife.

Digging the cane hard into the lobby carpet, he refused to let a bellhop carry his suitcase as he limped toward the exit. Despised the man’s pitying and patronizing smile.

An hour later, he’d turned the rental Ford in to Hertz at the hectic Atlanta airport and was on a plane heading back to Florida.

The air was calm; the flight was smooth. He sat quietly sipping beer from a plastic cup, watching shredded cotton clouds glide past. Wondering what and how big was the thing he’d become involved in, and where it was taking him.

And how much had been in the envelope he hadn’t claimed.

O
N THE VERANDA AT
Edwina’s house, Carver was watching McGregor. McGregor was watching the ocean, thinking over what Carver had just told him about what had happened in Atlanta. A gull circled in, screamed, and swooped at something out of sight below on the beach, soared almost straight up and flapped back toward the sea. The flashing white undersides of its wings were visible for a long time against the blue sky. The ocean breeze ruffled McGregor’s sparse blond hair, causing a lock of it to flop down Hitler-style above his left eye.

He aimed his close-set little eyes at Carver. Said, “It don’t make fucking sense, you telling me Wesley’s alive.”

“Has Bert Renway surfaced?”

“No,” McGregor said. “I’ve had his trailer watched and he ain’t shown.”

“Then it makes sense that far.”

A trickle of sweat ran down McGregor’s forehead, into the corner of his eye. Seemed not to bother him. “ ’Cause nobody’s seen a man in a while, that don’t mean he’s dead. Might be he’s visiting his old mother in another state; that ain’t quite like being dead. Or maybe he met up with a hot opportunity and he’s balling some divorcée tourist or something in a motel down the coast. Having himself a fine time and let the rest of the world go squat. Dipshits like you always assume the worst.”

“Renway’s almost sixty-five years old.”

“Hey, you think that means he can’t get it up?”

Carver said, “Christ!”

McGregor said, “There’s a name pops up all over Florida, crime capital of the country.”

“Frank Wesley wasn’t in my office,” Carver said simply. “He wasn’t in that car when it was blown up.”

“Sorry donghead, but it had to be Wesley, Dental records don’t lie. No two bicuspids are alike, that kinda shit.”

“Uh-huh,” Carver said. “Like snowflakes and fingerprints. What are you telling the news media?”