Carver knew McGregor was weakening. “I told you the deal, that’s all. There’s no bullshit involved.”
“You’re lucky,” McGregor said. “Timing and luck, that’s what’s kept you alive and outside the walls. It so happens I got a policewoman’s not worth spit. I can assign her to the hospital to watch over Beth. One useless cunt to guard another so your time’s freed up, that’s not a bad trade.”
“And politically correct of you,” Carver said.
“Well, we have to watch that stuff these days,” McGregor said earnestly, apparently missing Carver’s irony.
Carver would see to it that he missed more than that.
13
Carver went for his usual therapeutic swim in the sea the next morning, stroking far out from shore. He rolled over and floated on his back, feeling the heat of the morning sun soak into him as he rode the swells, still gentle this far from shore before they met the resistance of land and began their rise. He liked to gaze in at his cottage perched on the crescent of beach that lent it some privacy, at his life. It gave him the perspective of distance, providing a core of peace if not understanding. It was the need to understand that kept him alive in a business where knowing too much could prove fatal.
On the public beach to the left of where his cottage sat, beyond the curve of sandy shore, a few sunbathers and swimmers were already appearing, spreading out towels or venturing down into the cool surf. A woman carrying a child on her hip was walking gingerly parallel to the surf, now and then allowing the white foam to reach and engulf her bare feet and ankles, while behind her a man was carefully setting up some sort of portable lounger. A young man and woman walked past the man with the lounger, their steps kicking up rooster tails of sand at their heels, each of them gripping a handle of a large white plastic cooler with a blue lid. A woman’s happy shouts and high laughter drifted out to Carver from shore. He turned his head in the water and saw a young woman with long blond hair running and splashing in the surf, while a man with his pants legs rolled to the knees stood with his arms crossed and observed her as if he were going to grade her.
Carver watched them for a moment, then rolled over onto his stomach and began to swim for shore, feeling the coolness of his wet back warming quickly in the sun. He glanced toward the beach where his white towel lay folded and his cane jutted like a beacon from the sand, then changed the angle of his direction slightly and lengthened his strokes. He cut through the water swiftly, swiveling his head to breathe regularly and deeply as he kicked gracefully from the hip. By now he was so at home in the ocean that he almost felt he was experiencing evolution in reverse. He told himself that, rather than suppose his occasional thoughts of succumbing to the pull of distance and swimming straight out toward the misty horizon line of sea and sky were suicidal musings.
After returning to the cottage, showering, and getting dressed, he prepared a breakfast of Cheerios, toast, and coffee. He ate seated at the breakfast bar while he watched CNN on the TV that was angled so that it could be seen from the kitchen area.
It wasn’t long before the Women’s Light Clinic bombing was covered. Bobbi Batista, an anchorwoman with luminous blue eyes, was seated between a woman in a severe pinstriped business suit who was an abortion rights activist, and a man wearing army camouflage fatigues who was referred to as Major. Both guests were talking at once, gesticulating animatedly and arguing about the difference between murder and political terrorism. None of this was comprehensible. Carver used the remote to mute the TV as Bobbi went to a string of commercials about hidden germs in the mouth, a phone company’s offer of long-distance discounts for far-flung family members, and the ergonomics of a Japanese car. Carver took a last bite of toast and washed it down with coffee.
When the news came back on, a correspondent was interviewing a man standing in front of a colorful stained glass window. The man was about fifty, stockily built beneath a tailored gray suit that had a lot of silk in the material. He had wavy gray hair parted as neatly as if he’d used a ruler and combed sharply to the side, and strong features frozen into a perpetual smile that was more a chance arrangement of muscle and bone structure than an expression of good humor. He would be smiling even as he slept. The caption at the bottom of the screen identified him as the Reverend Martin Freel of Operation Alive.
“. . . might indeed be God’s way,” he was saying as Carver used the remote to bring the sound back up, “but he certainly wasn’t acting at the direction of Operation Alive.”
“And was Adam Norton?” asked the correspondent, a somber-looking black man in a white shirt and wild tie, but without a coat.
“Of course not. We don’t even know if Mr. Norton is guilty.”
“But he was a member of your congregation here in Orlando, and of Operation Alive.”
Freel widened his frozen smile. “Many people are, but they don’t resort to violence, and neither did Mr. Norton on behalf of Operation Alive.” The smile turned wise and tolerant. “I certainly don’t think the media should convict him even before he’s tried. And I might add that if any one person or thing influenced whoever committed this sad, sick act, it could easily have been the media with its lurid coverage and inflammatory rhetoric concerning other such acts.”
“Wasn’t it Operation Alive and not the media who instigated the violence at the abortion clinic in Houston last year, Reverend Freel?”
“That was certainly the media’s spin on what happened. Our view and the view of true Christians everywhere is that those who instigated the violence were the people inside the clinic who were slaughtering unborn innocents.”
“But one of your own demonstrators was badly injured when a car drove over her legs.”
“The young woman was and still is a soldier in the army of the Lord and told me personally she doesn’t regret what happened. And of course we know her accident was the result of overzealous and overreactive police.”
“Thanks for taking the time to talk to us, Reverend Freel,” the correspondent said. Then, in another tone of voice, he said, “Bobbi,” and stared into the camera until Bobbi Batista appeared on the screen again.
“We’ll be right back,” Bobbi said only to Carver. The same commercial about ergonomics came on again, a sleek black sedan cruising along a wickedly curving road while its unconcerned driver, a blissfully smiling woman, switched on the windshield wipers and adjusted the stereo’s volume as she chatted on a car phone while driving through a virtual hurricane. Carver used the remote to switch off the TV.
Maybe it had been the car phone. He pulled the phone on the breakfast bar over to him, then got out Special Agent Sam Wicker’s card and pecked out his number.
He was surprised when Wicker himself answered. That kind of directness and efficiency didn’t suit the bureau’s hierarchical image.
“Ah, you have information for me,” Wicker said when Carver identified himself.
“Actually I want information from you,” Carver said.
“You’re turning out to be a disappointment.”
“Give me time. Do you have an agent who’s tall, broad shouldered, sharply dressed, maybe in a blue suit, has a crew cut, and looks like a typical WASP, wears black horn-rimmed glasses?”
“Other than the glasses, that could be me,”
“Let’s include the glasses.”
“None of my people fits that description. Why do you ask?”
“A man like that wandered into Beth’s room at the hospital yesterday. There was a nurse with her, and when he saw she wasn’t alone, he smiled and ducked right back out.”
“Maybe he was there to visit somebody and entered the wrong room.”