“How so?” Carver asked. He was suspicious of win-win situations. Politicians and confidence artists used the term frequently.
Val said, “So long as the retiree lives in the house, it’s a good deal and provides the security of a monthly income. If the retiree dies before the full price of the house is paid out, it’s a bad deal, but so what, the owner’s dead and it don’t matter. There are no really bad deals for the dead, Carver. So, it’s win-win for us, and Solartown can’t lose in the long run because of the actuarial odds. Works out for most residents, but now and then Solartown reacquires a piece of valuable property that’s just been paid for in full within the last few years. So I can tell you they do just fine by the arrangement. Win-win. That make sense?”
“For now it does,” Carver said, sensing a scam. Sensing a motive. “Where’s the Solartown developer’s office?”
“In Orlando, on Orange Avenue. I went there once to sign some papers.”
Carver thanked Val and turned to move away.
“Hey there, Carver. You wanna ride patrol with me tonight? You can get an idea of what the Posse does around here.”
“I’ll take you up on that some other time,” Carver said.
“Any night’s okay. And remember to call on me if you want any sorta help with what you’re doing for Hattie.”
“I might take you up on that, too,” Carver told him.
“She’s a highly exceptional woman and don’t deserve all this crap,” Val said.
Carver agreed, waving good-bye with his free hand as he limped across the yard toward the street. Sweat was rolling down his back. He could feel dampness around the waistband of his pants. Behind him, Val spat out another gnat.
As Carver lowered himself into the Olds, he heard again the regular chonk! chonk! of the machete striking home.
16
Carver slept until after nine the next morning, late for him. He reached over and felt smooth, cool linen and wished Beth were in the bed with him instead of in a room at the other end of the motel. When he started to sit up, a train smashed into him.
He let himself drop back down onto the mattress, staring straight up at the ceiling. His injured muscles had stiffened, and his bruises were even more painful than they’d been yesterday. He knew it wouldn’t be easy to get the old machine moving this morning, but it had to be done. The curse of duty.
This time when he worked himself into a sitting position he thought about Adam Beed. Barely pausing, he groped for and found his cane and levered himself up to stand near the bed.
Ignoring the pain, the sour taste in his mouth, the fact that he was moving like a longtime Solartown resident, he hobbled into the bathroom. He reassured himself with the knowledge that Beed had skillfully not broken anything; he’d wanted Carver fit enough to travel.
For a moment Carver studied himself in the mirror above the washbasin. The bruises marking his arms, chest, and shoulders were deep purple now, sometimes tinged with the ugly red color of ruptured small blood vessels close to the surface of the skin. Beed was good at his work, all right.
After brushing his teeth to get the nasty taste from his mouth, he ran a glass of cold water. He downed a couple of Percodan tablets, then regarded the fool in the mirror and smiled tolerantly. The fool smiled back.
Carver leaned his cane on the washbasin and used the frosted glass doors and a towel rack for support as he twisted the faucet handle and climbed into the shower. He kept his hand on the chrome handle jutting from the gray ceramic tile beneath the shower head and eased the water temperature to as hot as he could endure. Then he stood for a long time beneath the stinging needles of water as billows of steam rose around him to turn the tiny shower stall and bathroom into a sauna.
Forty-five minutes later he was dressed, feeling less pain and stiffness, not ready to rumba, but moving reasonably well. After calling the motel office to have the lock on his door repaired, he got out of the cool room and had a waffle, Canadian bacon, and coffee at the Seagrill, glancing around for Beth while he ate, but not seeing her. Sleeping late, he figured. Or maybe she’d gone down to the artificial beach and lake for a morning swim. He pictured her in her skimpy yellow two-piece swimming suit, looking as if she belonged on a beach in Rio instead of in staunchly conservative central Florida. She’d raise some eyebrows down at the white sand beach. Probably more than eyebrows.
After a second cup of coffee, he paid the cashier, limped outside, and stood for a few minutes in the building heat, letting the blazing sun warm his back and arms through his dark pullover shirt. He fired up a Swisher Sweet cigar. The smoke irritated the back of his throat, so he snubbed out the cigar on one of the rustic posts supporting a chain marking the limit of parking space. He flicked the dead cigar into dense green foliage at the edge of the gravel lot, then climbed into the Olds and drove for Orlando.
Solar Tower was only about five stories, perhaps not tall enough to be called a tower, but it was a sleek, tinted Plexiglas and copper building that dominated the block it was on in downtown Orlando. The lobby was sparse and cool, clean except for a few cigarette butts and black heel marks on the veined marble floor. Carver studied the directory and saw that Solartown, Incorporated occupied the entire top floor. The rest of the building was leased out as office space to various smaller businesses. A doctor, a lawyer, no Indian chiefs.
Carver located the elevators only by the floor indicators on the marble wall. He’d no sooner pressed a black plastic button than a hidden door hissed softly and slid smoothly open. A tall blond woman in a black business suit smiled at him as she stepped from the elevator and hurried across the lobby toward the Orange Avenue exit. Carver watched her from the paneled and carpeted elevator until the doors slid shut. The control panel’s black plastic buttons, like the one in the lobby, were numbered one through four, but the top button for the Solartown offices was marked with an illuminated yellow-orange sun that emitted rays like daggers. The button was warm beneath Carver’s thumb as he depressed it and the elevator launched itself.
On the fifth floor, an elderly woman in a flowing blue dress that was supposed to make her look slimmer smiled at Carver and asked how she could help him. He explained to her only obliquely what he wanted, and she advised him that the man he should talk to was Mr. Brad Faravelli, Solartown’s executive vice president in charge of development. The only hitch was, Mr. Faravelli was in a meeting.
“Everybody I want to see spends a lot of time in meetings,” Carver said.
The woman, whose desk plaque declared her to be Velma Lewis, flashed him a benign smile. “Perhaps you should have phoned for an appointment.”
“I should have,” Carver admitted. He didn’t tell her he did that as seldom as possible; in his business it was best not to afford people the opportunity to prepare for his visits.
“There’s no way to know for sure when Mr. Faravelli will be free,” Velma said. “But if you want to wait, I’m sure he’ll see you.”
Carver thanked her and limped over to a modern gray sofa that went with the building’s sleek architecture. He settled into the sofa’s surprising comfort and propped his cane against a glass-topped coffee table with magazines fanned out on it like an oversize poker hand. He drew an issue of Forbes and thumbed through it, then a slick and colorful copy of Fortune. For a while he read about trade imbalances, junk bonds, commodities, the relative strength of the dollar, the capitalization of Eastern Europe, and marveled at how far all that was from the world in which he moved.