That was when the car’s dome light winked on and Carver saw the rifle lying on the backseat. The weapon that had long ago killed Martin Luther King but not the dream.
The rifle, but not the duffel bag.
Carver felt a cold, tight turning in his mind. A realization that was growing into something that angered and astounded him.
Palma had straightened up and slammed the car door. Was lighting Courtney’s cigarette with a paper match, cupping his free hand to protect the wavering flame from the breeze.
Carver said, “Where’s Jefferson?”
Courtney drew on her cigarette. Exhaled. The sea breeze snatched the smoke away from before her face. She was staring at Palma as Carver was, waiting for his answer.
Palma flipped the still-burning match away. It arced toward the water like a tiny shooting star and disappeared. He looked at Courtney, then Carver. Then he gave an odd kind of smile. A slow and elegant shrug.
Carver stood staring out at the black waves, hearing and feeling their weight and power even if he couldn’t see them except as occasional whitecaps that caught the moonlight. He knew Courtney hadn’t actually taken explosives on board the Bold Entrepreneur. And he knew why Jefferson had lied to him about Edwina being on the boat. Jefferson had let him escape at the restaurant. Knew he’d head for the Bold Entrepreneur. Had sent him. Sent Carver not to rescue Edwina but to save Courtney, or at least to give her better odds.
Carver had still been a step behind and not realized it. Been used.
But now he understood. Jefferson had understood him, and Carver understood Jefferson. Wolf and gray wolf. Carver knew why Jefferson had wanted Courtney to have her chance to get off the boat.
And he knew what was in the green duffel bag, and why the rifle but not the bag had been left in the car. And what had happened to the electronic receiver that was missing from the front seat of the Ford in the restaurant parking lot.
There was a broken kind of roar. From farther up the dock a long, sleek speedboat shot into open water. It was the projectile-shaped boat Carver had seen docked earlier. The favorite of drug runners. The Cigarette.
Courtney had figured it out, too. She moaned, “Oh, God! No, no, no . . .”
Palma rested a hand very softly on her shoulder.
The speedboat bucked the incoming waves, its snarling twin engines racing whenever the stern cleared the water, then digging in solid when the boat settled back down.
It was headed straight out to sea now. Soon they could only hear it and see its long moonlit wake, curving like a silver ribbon away from the shore. Then the shimmering wake, too, disappeared and there was only the blackness of the night sky and ocean, a void as empty as eternity.
Palma said, “Those are fast boats. Catch anything that floats.”
Courtney said nothing. Carver could see her shoulders quaking, as if she were cold in the sultry night.
After about ten minutes, she seemed calmer and moved away from Palma’s hand, taking a step out toward the sea. Stood bent forward from the waist, poised.
Carver leaned on his cane, waiting. Squeezing the hard walnut that was worn to his grip. About now. About now.
“Any moment,” Palma said softly. “Any goddamn moment.”
Time seemed to drag to a halt, as if the planet had broken rhythm in its rotation. The stillness around them had weight.
For an instant the fireball that blossomed on the eastern horizon was brighter than the sun. Then the low and echoing voice of the blast rolled across the waves to shore, bouncing off the surface of the sea like wild and thunderous laughter.
The fireball lost its perfect rose configuration and contracted to a small, steady orange glow that lasted a long time and then flickered and disappeared, leaving only darkness beyond the coast.
Courtney’s lips were compressed and her jaw muscles flexed. But she didn’t cry. Not Courtney. Finally she turned away and walked along the dock, toward the flashing red and blue lights of the police cars. Toward the motionless, silent figures still staring out to sea. She moved slowly and smoothly, as if through water.
Beside Carver, Palma said, “I tell you one thing, that was all he thought about, ever. Like he was fuckin’ haunted, you know? I loved him, but he was one crazy son of a bitch.”
“Maybe,” Carver said.
Chapter 38
No one ever knew the real source of the explosion that destroyed the Bold Entrepreneur and killed everyone on board. The news media played it as a tragedy, and the feds pressured local law into agreeing. There were glowing eulogies for some of the victims. A televangelist who’d been the recipient of SCBL donations held a series of coordinated TV prayer and memorial services throughout the South.
Carver heard months later that the city of Atlanta had named a street after Frank Wesley.
No connection was made between the boat explosion and the DEA agent who disappeared fighting the illicit drug trade in Florida. Apparently Ralph Palma wasn’t talking. Or the DEA didn’t want it made public that one of their agents had acted illegally, murderously, and without proof. Finished business, and the kind of thing the government preferred kept confidential.
Carver checked out what Jefferson had told him, and it was true. The gun recovered after the Martin Luther King assassination was never linked directly to the bullet that killed King. A smokescreen of legal technicalities and wild rumors had obscured the very suspicious facts of both the murder and the time afterward. From somewhere, James Earl Ray had received enough money to travel all over the world before running afoul of customs at Heathrow Airport in London. From somewhere.
One day, not knowing why, Carver detoured from where he’d been driving and found himself at Beach Cove Court. Drove down Little Cove Lane to Bert Renway’s mobile home. Renway, the little man who’d been made a pawn in a big game.
Everything looked the way it had when he’d first come here. He parked the Olds and limped over to the white double-wide trailer with trim the color of egg yolks. Started to knock on the aluminum door and then changed his mind. If someone did answer his knock, he wouldn’t know them. He’d have nothing to say. He wasn’t sure himself why he’d come here, except that it still bothered him, the way Bert Renway had died and why.
He backed away from mobile home, from the sun’s heat glancing off the smooth white metal. Limped across a hard, weedy stretch of ground to the Willa Hataris trailer.
He stood in the shade of the metal awning and knocked on the door. Knocked again, harder.
No one came to the door and there was no sound from inside.
Carver gave up and started toward the parked Olds.
Halfway there, he saw a thin haze of dark smoke hanging above the Renway trailer. After staring at it for a moment, he hobbled over the rough ground toward it.
He stopped and watched the man standing behind the trailer. Probably the tenant or the new owner who’d just moved in. A small, gray-haired man wearing a sleeveless undershirt and baggy brown slacks held up by suspenders. He was obviously clearing the trailer of Renway’s possessions. Using a rake handle to poke tentatively at a glowing fire inside a wire barrel.
Burning trash.
Carver limped back to his car and drove away.
He smelled the smoke for miles.