“I’m wondering if it’s somebody’s personal fortune,” Carver said.
“Uh-huh. You want me to follow the money, Fred?”
“Can you do it?”
“Won’t be easy. Banks are secretive.”
“But money can always be traced, and I know you have your wily ways.”
“I have those,” she admitted, “but I can’t promise you they’ll work. Banks weren’t computerized, this might not be possible.”
“I’m not asking you to do anything illegal.”
She laughed. “Don’t try to bullshit me, Fred.”
“Okay, I’m asking you not to get caught.”
“That’s my Fred.” She hung up.
Carver called the Warm Sands again, this time identifying himself, and asked if there were any messages for him.
There was one: He was supposed to call a Mr. Van Meter as soon as possible.
Ah, traction! That would mean direction. The day’s prospects were improving.
Not minding the heat and exhaust fumes now, or the persistent aftertaste of the chili, he fished in his pocket for change.
Van Meter said a contact in a detox center in Jacksonville reported that a woman with delirium tremens had muttered Adam Beed’s name. Beed had done something to her, but she wouldn’t say what, and when she’d regained her composure she wouldn’t talk about him at all. She was scared sober, the detox guy had said. But while drunk she’d mentioned being with Beed near the ocean in a tall pink building in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, and she kept holding up her right hand with two missing fingers and saying something that sounded like “Hen power.”
“You sober yourself?” Carver asked, watching a pickup truck towing a trailer thread dangerously through traffic at high speed. Idiot! Where was a cop when you needed one? Out by the golf course.
“There’s a tall pink building on Ocean Boulevard in Lauderdale called the Heron Tower,” Van Meter said.
“It’s flamingos that are pink.”
“Sure, but try to make ‘hen power’ out of ‘flamingo.’ ”
“Is Beed listed at that address?”
“No, but he wouldn’t be using his real name. I don’t know if it all means anything, Fred. Up to you if you wanna drive over and check.”
“What’s your gut tell you?” Carver asked.
“Besides that I’m hungry?”
“Besides.”
“Hen power,” Van Meter said.
He gave Carver the address.
21
Carver rented a plymouth from Budget Rent-a-Car in Fort Lauderdale and drove to nearby Lauderdale-by-the-Sea.
There was the Heron Tower at the address Van Meter had given him, a sleek building about twenty stories high that was constructed mainly of cast concrete embedded with what looked like pink seashells. The front of the building faced North Ocean Boulevard, the back looked out on the Atlantic. Pink-tinted glass doors flanked by columns resembling busty mermaids formed the entrance. Off to the side was a narrow concrete driveway that led to ground-level parking beneath the building, a shadowy cavern with concrete pillars that acted as piers supporting the entire structure.
After sitting in the parked blue Plymouth for fifteen minutes, Carver decided there was no doorman. He waited another fifteen minutes, until dusk had become darkness, then he climbed out of the Plymouth, hobbled quickly across North Ocean Boulevard to beat the traffic, and entered Heron Tower.
The lobby was mostly a checkered pattern of gray and black marble veined in pale pink. It was swank, but it reminded Carver of a marble chess set he’d bought years ago in Mexico. The pawns cracked easily.
He limped across the bare floor to the bank of mailboxes and intercoms, his footsteps and the tapping of his cane echoing over hard surfaces.
It was difficult to guess which of the names in the slots above the mailboxes might be Adam Beed’s alias. Most of the slots contained the names of women or families. An even half-dozen contained only men’s names. Alan Brake, in the penthouse, seemed a likely possibility. Same initials. Beed was getting plenty of money from somewhere and living high, so why not the penthouse?
An elderly couple walking a practically bald poodle entered the lobby and glanced at Carver as they waited for the elevator. When they’d gone upstairs, he made a note of the six male names, then returned to the Plymouth and sat with the motor idling and the air conditioner humming away on high. He wouldn’t draw much attention where he was parked, so he settled back and let himself slide into his waiting mode, a sort of state of relaxation combined with an acute awareness of what was going on around him. It was a systematic shutting down of those parts of the mind not needed for the task and was a knack you developed after dozens of stakeouts; he thought sometimes it might be a form of self-hypnosis. Whatever it was, every good cop had it, and it allowed him to tolerate hours of stillness and waiting with the self-contained patience of a sniper.
Tenants and visitors came and went at the Heron Tower, none of them without Carver noticing.
When the sun had been down for about an hour, the evening finally began to cool and he switched off the engine and air conditioner and cranked down the Plymouth’s front windows. A gentle, fetid breeze that smelled of the ocean worked its way through the car. He turned on the radio and played the push buttons, momentarily hearing a Spanish station and thinking of Desoto.
He switched the radio off as he saw a new black Cadillac Seville slow down and then turn into the Heron Tower driveway. Carver watched the car’s bright taillights disappear into the bowels of the building, like wary red eyes sinking below ground level. He was sure Adam Beed had been behind the wheel.
Quickly Carver climbed out of the Plymouth, hobbled across the street, and entered the Heron Tower lobby. Planting the tip of his cane carefully on the smooth marble floor, he stood off to the side and watched the digital floor indicators above the two elevators.
One of the elevators descended from the third floor to garage level, then began to rise.
Carver had an uneasy moment as it reached the lobby. There was nowhere to conceal himself if Beed had decided to take a walk or go out and buy a bottle before going up to his apartment, and got out of the elevator.
But the elevator rose past the lobby. Carver watched it stop at the fifteenth floor. The number fifteen continued to glow in orange letters above the elevator.
After a few minutes Carver limped from the lobby and returned to the Plymouth. He checked his list of male tenants. There was only one living on the fifteenth floor: Bernard Altman. Okay, Adam Beed’s initials reversed. The apartment number was 15-B. Carver had calculated the Heron Tower numbering system and figured it had to be a corner unit overlooking the beach and ocean.
He drove around the block and parked farther up the street, where he could see an illuminated window on the fifteenth floor. The window faced north and was just around the corner from a small balcony that provided a view of the sea. No movement behind the window was visible, but the light itself suggested there was someone home and it was the right apartment. Beed wasn’t likely to raise the blinds and pose for Carver.
Well, maybe, if he knew someone was watching.
After about twenty minutes a figure did pass the window. Even in silhouette, Carver recognized the bulk and confident carriage of Adam Beed.
Carver kept an eye on the apartment until almost ten o’clock, getting out and walking around every now and then, once buying a cup of frozen yogurt from a shop down the block and sitting on a bench with it for a while, so he wouldn’t appear suspicious if anyone did notice him. The street here was mostly condos and apartment buildings, some with shops on the lower floors, but more tourists than tenants were driving past or wandering the sidewalks. All of them seemed too preoccupied to pay much attention to Carver.