“Damn it, Fred! I told you, keep that kind of shit to yourself!”
“All right! Some of the women in my family believed in it. I mean, I was just sitting here and I remembered it for some reason.”
“You didn’t have to tell me about your family’s superstitious nonsense. Or maybe you did have to. You’ve taken leave of your senses and you’re acting out of compulsion. It’s like you’re goddamned hormonal!”
She slammed down the receiver.
Hormonal, she’d said. He sat there for a minute with the dead phone to his ear, amazed that she’d accuse him of precisely what he’d been thinking about her.
Maybe pregnant women were sometimes psychic.
34
Carver decided not to drive to the cottage to get the gun he’d forgotten this morning. It might be best if he gave Beth time to cool down. He understood her fear. The breech birth and umbilical-cord strangulation of her child by Roberto Gomez had a grip on her mind.
He drove instead to the taco stand on Magellan and had a burrito, diet Coke, and some sort of odd deep-fried dessert sprinkled with powdered sugar. When he was finished, he planned on driving to Jacaranda Lane to see what if anything was happening with Marla Cloy. Following Joel Brant had resulted mostly in further confusion.
He’d just fired up a Swisher Sweet cigar when a long shadow drifted across his legs and the tray on the table containing the remains of his early supper. A whiff of cheap lemon-scent deodorant and stale perspiration told him who’d cast the shadow even before he looked.
McGregor was standing with his fists on his hips, grinning and gazing over at the pleasure boats bobbing lazily at their moorings in the public marina. He’d cut himself shaving this morning, and from Carver’s low angle a large bead of dried blood on the underside of his jaw could be seen still clinging stubbornly.
“Some day I’ll be able to afford one of those babies,” Mc shy;Gregor said, pointing to the expensive array of boats.
“Yours will be the only yacht with a lifeboat that seats one,” Carver said.
McGregor probed between his front teeth with his tongue, still staring at the boats. “Women and children first, I always say. First into the drink, that is.” Carver didn’t doubt that he meant it. McGregor turned his mean little blue eyes on Carver, then carefully surveyed the cardboard plate and waxed wrappers on the table. “You really like that rat food?”
“Wouldn’t eat here if I didn’t. And it’s a great place to be left alone-usually.”
“Don’t smart off with me, ass-face, or you’ll be carting around a plasma bottle by the time you get the trots from this chow.”
“A threat from a police officer?” Carver asked.
“Uh-huh. Direct threat.”
Carver took a drag on the Swisher Sweet and watched the breeze play with the smoke. He appreciated the sharp scent of the cigar; it alleviated the odor of the habitually unclean Mc shy;Gregor. “How’d you know I was here?”
“I know everything about you, jerkoff. When you weren’t at your office, I called your cottage. Dark meat said you weren’t there and probably weren’t gonna be home for supper. So I figured you’d be here at one of your favorite five-star restaurants stuffing your face, and sure enough, here you are.”
“Do you have some reason to look me up,” Carver asked, “or do you just want to sit around and talk about yachting?”
“I came to tell you that if you know where your client is, I’d better know right along with you. And I mean within ten seconds.”
“Why should I know where he is?”
“Marla Cloy reported a car like Brant’s almost ran her down, then sped away. She’s sure Brant was at the wheel. That’s attempted murder, not to mention violation of a restraining order. I sent a couple of uniforms to pick up Brant for questioning. He blew his cool in their presence and swore he’d kill Marla for what she’s done to him-that’s the way he expressed it, anyway.”
“Then why isn’t he in custody?” Carver asked.
McGregor looked uncomfortable, then angry. The breeze off the ocean whipped the tail of his suitcoat around, revealing his holstered nine-millimeter. He raised a hand and touched its checked butt lightly, as if he longed to draw the weapon and shoot Carver.
“Your client escaped, Carver. That makes things worse for the two of you. He’s a fugitive now, and you’re an accessory if you know where he is.”
“Escaped how?”
“He walked into the kitchen to get his sport coat where it was draped over the back of a chair. The next thing my guys knew, they heard a car engine. By the time it occurred to them there was a door to the back stairs from the kitchen, Brant was hauling ass away in that high-powered sports car of his. Nobody’s seen him since.”
“Your officers give chase?”
“For about a block, then a tree stopped them.”
“Some police work,” Carver said. “Reflects on their immediate superior, don’t you think?”
“What I think is that your ass is in more of a sling than those dumb-fuck uniforms I sent to pick up Brant.”
“I don’t see it that way,” Carver said. “Brant’s my client, not my brother. I can’t tell you where to find him. What you should do, though, is watch Marla Cloy. You said he threatened to kill her.”
“Not the first time,” McGregor said.
“Maybe not. Have you got somebody over at her place on Jacaranda?”
“She’s gone. I called ahead and told her what happened, told her to stay put. What we found when we got to her house was a note saying she’d left town and wasn’t coming back until Joel Brant was in custody.”
“More solid police work,” Carver said, smiling around his cigar. “The way you’re going, you’re never going to be promoted out of your broom-closet office.”
McGregor stuck out his long jaw, almost making the bead of blood fall off. He curled his upper lip up close to his nose. “It would behoove you to find Brant and give him to me, or you’re gonna find yourself in a cell even smaller than a broom closet.”
“I’m not on your payroll.”
“But you are on my shit list. Doesn’t pay as well, but it’s more certain.”
“What else was in Marla’s note?” Carver asked.
“Why? You think if you find her you’ll find Brant?”
“They’ll come together eventually,” Carver said. “We both know that.”
McGregor turned his head to the side and spat between his teeth onto the pavement. A woman at a nearby table paused with her burrito near her mouth and glared furiously at him. “It was a simple typewritten note, nothing more in it than what I told you.”
“Signed?”
“Not in pen or pencil. She typed her name at the bottom, left the note under a ketchup bottle on her kitchen table.” Mc shy;Gregor spat again, near Carver’s chair this time. “There is, of course, the possibility she wrote the note under duress, and your client abducted her.”
“He said he wanted to kill her, not kidnap her.”
McGregor flicked his tongue around between his teeth. “Maybe he wants to kill her slow and milk it for enjoyment. I would.”
“You’re not Joel Brant. You’re not most people.”
“Thank fucking God for that. But don’t get too concerned about who I’m not. You got other worries. The wheels have come off this thing, Carver, and you better help get ’em back on.”
Carver snuffed out his cigar in the hammered tin ashtray sitting on the table. It died hard, with a final, wavering curl of smoke. “I’ll do everything I can,” he said. It was a good thing to say for the record.
“You better do just that,” McGregor said. He used the bulky sole of one of his huge brown wing tips to grind the glob of phlegm he’d expectorated into the concrete.
Carver was beginning to sweat heavily. The heat, McGregor’s body odor and behavior, and the aftertaste of salsa and cigar were making him slightly nauseated. He sat quietly, very still, hoping McGregor wouldn’t notice a sheen of perspiration on his forehead. McGregor homed in on signs of potential weakness like a carnivore on the prowl. Carver moved a hand with deliberate steadiness and took a sip of his cold but watered-down Coke.