Flashfire p-19 Page 6

  ‘That must be the reason I’m here,’ he said, and reached for her again.

  He’d been shot eight times, over the years, with puckered reminders still visible on his body, but the only one that showed when he was dressed was the little nick in the lobe of his right ear, as though he’d been docked for branding. A man named Little Bob Negli, who hadn’t yet figured out that his Beretta .25 automatic was shooting high and to the right, had made that nick, firing at him from behind. Negli, too, was dead, but Parker was alive, and in the cool dimness in Claire’s hotel room he felt that life quicken.

  In the morning, she said, ‘The mustache is wrong.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It’s a policeman’s mustache, too bushy. What you want is a lounge lizard’s mustache, smaller, daintier. Think of David Niven or Errol Flynn.’

  ‘You do it.’

  ‘All right.’

  They stood in the shower together, she very intent with her nail scissors, and he watched her eyes, how the light took them.

  Later he put on his strange clothes, and she watched him, amused. ‘Is that what you’ll wear when you come back,’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t get shot any more,’ she said, and kissed him, which covered the fact he didn’t have an answer for her. But she hadn’t asked him any questions, and she still didn’t.

  At two-thirty that afternoon, in bright sunlight, temperature 76, humidity not too bad, he drove in the yellow Jaguar over the Flagler Memorial Bridge onto Royal Poinciana Way, in Palm Beach.

  TWO

  1

  ‘Welcome to the Breakers sir.’

  ‘I have a reservation. The name is Parmitt.’

  ‘Yes, sir, here it is. You’ll be staying with us three weeks?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And what method of pay oh, I see. We will be billing your bank in San Antonio, is that right?’

  ‘They keep all my money. I’m not permitted to walk around with it myself.’

  The clerk offered an indulgent smile; he was used to the incompetent rich. ‘It must take a worry off your mind,’ he said.

  Parker touched the tips of two fingers to his lounge lizard mustache; it felt like half a Velcro strip. ‘Does it?’ he asked, as though the idea of having a worry onhis mind had never occurred to him. ‘Yes, I suppose it does,’ he decided. ‘In any case, I’m not worried.’

  ‘No, sir. If you’d sign here.’

  Daniel Parmitt.

  ‘Will that be smoking or non, sir?’

  ‘Non.’

  ‘And will you be garaging a vehicle with us during your stay, sir?’

  ‘Yes, I left it with the fellow out there. He gave me a wait, here it is.’

  ‘Yes, very good, thank you, sir. You keep this, you’ll show it to the doorman whenever you want your car.’ Parker held the ticket, frowning at it, then sighed and nodded and put it away in his trouser pocket. ‘I can do that,’ he decided.

  ‘And will you be needing assistance with your luggage, sir?’

  ‘The fellow put it on a cart, over there somewhere.’

  ‘Very good. Front! Do enjoy your stay with us, Mr Parmitt.’

  ‘I’m sure I will,’ Parker said, and turned to find a bellboy at his elbow, who wanted to know what room he was in. Parker didn’t know until the bellboy helpfully read it aloud for him off the little folder containing his keycard.

  ‘I’ll meet you up there, sir, with your luggage.’

  ‘Fine. Thank you.’

  He stood where he was until the clerk said, ‘The elevators are just over there, sir.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He rode the elevator up, alone in the car and strode down the quiet hall to his room. Entering, he faced a wide window, thinly curtained, with the ocean and the bright day visible outside. When he looked at the king-size bed, he thought of Claire, whom he would see again

  when? In three weeks? Sooner? Never?

  A rapping at the door meant the bellboy with the luggage. Parker went through the usual playlet with him, being shown the amenities, the luggage placed just so, lights switched on and off, then the bellboy accepting the rich tip Parker gave him and smiling himself back out the door.

  About to start unpacking, Parker caught sight of himself in one of the several mirrors and stopped. He studied himself and knew that what he was doing was the thing to do, the way to be here without being seen, without causing questions to be asked, but still, it felt strange and it looked strange. This person, in these clothes, in this room, on this island.

  Well. Whatever tactics he decided on in the next couple of weeks, he knew one thing for certain: he wouldn’t be intimidating anybody.

  2

  ‘This is my first time in Palm Beach,’ Parker told the real estate woman, ‘and I find I’m taking to it quite a bit.’ The real estate woman was pleased. A round-faced blonde of about forty, an ex-cheerleader with padding, she wore a beige suit, matching shoes, paler plain blouse, a gold pin of a leaping dolphin on her right breast, and a simple strand of pearls at her throat. She was one of an interchangeable half dozen of such women in this spacious cool office on Worth Avenue, where the only difference was in the color each woman had chosen for today’s suit (skirt, not pants); there was peach, there was avocado, there was coconut, there was canary yellow, and there was royal blue. It was a garden of padded real estate women, and how did they decide each morning which one would be Kim, which Susan, which Joyce? The one talking with Parker had chosen to be Lesley today.

  ‘Palm Beach isn’t for everyone,’ she said, though still with her welcoming smile. ‘Those who will find it theplace in their lives tend to know that right away.’

  ‘I don’t know as how it could be theplace for me,’ Parker told her, leaning into the characterization, knowing he would never be as seamlessly plausible as Melander, talking about the little Mexicans, but thinking he could do it well enough to pass. ‘I have other places I like,’ he explained. ‘South Padre Island. Vail. But Palm Beach has something that appeals to me.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said with that smile. Her teeth were large and white and even.

  ‘To have a place here, oh, for a month a year, January or February, that might not be bad.’

  She made a note, on the form on which she’d already filled in his particulars: name, home address, bank, staying at the Breakers. She said, ‘Would you be entertaining?’

  ‘You mean, how big a place would I need. Yes, of course, I’d have guests, I’d want room to spread out.’

  ‘Not a condo, then,’ she said.

  He already knew that much about Palm Beach. ‘Lesley,’ he said, ‘the condos aren’t Palm Beach. They’re south on the island, their own thing, little places for retired accountants. I’d want something well, you tell me. What’s the neighborhood I want?’

  She opened a desk drawer, pulled out a map, and laid it in front of him. With a gold pen, she made marks on the upside-down map as she described the territory. ‘The most sought-after section, of course,’ she told him, ‘is what we call between-the-clubs, because realPalm Beachers want to belong to both of the important clubs, so to have a place between them is very convenient.’

  ‘Sounds good.’

  ‘The Everglades Club, at the north, is here on Golf Road. Then the area of County Road and Ocean Boulevard here is the section I’m talking about, down to the Bath and Tennis Club, here where Ocean Boulevard turns inland at the Southern Boulevard Bridge.’

  ‘These are all oceanfront?’

  ‘Well, they’re both,’ she said. ‘Lake Worth runs along here, on the mainland side of the island. Here, just below Bath and Tennis, where Ocean Boulevard curves in away from the sea, we have estates with ocean frontage, but some of them have tunnels under Ocean Boulevard to the beach on Lake Worth, so the property actually extends through from ocean to lake.’

  ‘And the lake is more protected than the ocean.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Then she smiled and said, ‘One of our ladies,
some years ago, to keep from being served papers in a divorce, ran through the tunnel to escape. Unfortunately, they were waiting on the other side.’

  He saw that that was gossip that was supposed to make them more comfortable with one another, and that he was supposed to laugh now, so he laughed and said, ‘Too many people know about the tunnels. I guess.’

  ‘Not that they aren’t secure,’ she assured him. ‘No one you don’t want could get in.’

  ‘But if you go out,’ he said, ‘they’ll be waiting for you.’

  She smiled, a bit doubtfully. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘But this area,’ he said, running his finger along it on the map, ‘isn’t between the clubs, it’s south of them.’

  ‘But very close,’ she said. ‘It would be in the same range.’

  ‘And what is that range? What are we talking about along there?’

  ‘Whensomething’s available, and nothing is at the moment, you could expect to pay fourteen or fifteen.’ Parker shook his head, looking solemn. ‘My bank wouldn’t let me do that,’ he said. ‘For a month a year? No. I wouldn’t even raise the issue.’

  ‘Then you’re not going to be between the clubs,’ she said. She was very sympathetic about it.

  ‘I understand that,’ he assured her. ‘But there’s got to be something that’s not all the way up to these places but not all the way down to the condos.’

  ‘But with ocean frontage, you mean.’

  ‘Naturally.’ He shrugged. ‘You don’t come to Palm Beach notfor the water.’

  ‘Well, you can go south of Bath and Tennis,’ she said. ‘For quite a ways along there, you’ll find some verynice estates, mostly neo-Regency, on the sea, or some facing it across the road. Of course, the farther south you go, the closer you are to the condos.’ As though to say, the closer you are to the Minotaur.

  ‘I tell you what,’ he said. ‘Take half an hour, show me these neighborhoods, give me some idea what’s out there.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ she agreed, and pulled her purse out of the bottom drawer of her desk. ‘We’ll take my car.’

  ‘Fine.’

  It took more than half an hour; they spent almost two hours driving up and down the long narrow island in bright sunshine. Her car was a pale blue Lexus, heavily air-conditioned, its back seat full of loose-leaf ledgers and stacks of house-description sheets, many with color photos.

  She drove well, but didn’t give it much attention; mostly, she talked. She talked about the neighborhoods they were going through, about the history of Palm Beach, the famous people connected with the place, who mostly weren’t famous to Parker, and the ‘style’ of the ‘community.’ Styleand communitywere apparently big words around here, but both words, when they were distilled, came down to money.

  But not just any money, not for those who wanted to ‘belong’ another big word that also meant money. Inherited money was best, which almost went without saying, though Lesley did say it, indirectly, more than once. Married money was okay, second best, which was why people here didn’t inquire too much into new spouses’ pasts. Earned money was barely acceptable, and then only if it acknowledged its inferiority, and absolutely only if it wasn’t being earned anymore. ‘Donald Trump never fit in here,’ Lesley said, having pointed out Mar-a-Lago, which for many years had belonged to Mrs Merriweather Post, who definitively didfit in here, and which after her death had been for years a white elephant on the market nobody’s inherited money, no matter how much of it there was, could afford the upkeep of the huge sprawling place until Trump had grabbed it up, expecting it to be his entreé to Palm Beach, misunderstanding the place, believing Palm Beach was about real estate, like New. York, never getting it that Palm Beach was about money you hadn’t earned.

  ‘I should be pleased Mr Trump took over Mar-a-Lago,’ Lesley said, ‘I think we should all be pleased, because we certainly didn’t want it to turn into Miss Havisham’s wedding cake out there, but to be honest with you, I think a place must be just a littledœlassé if Donald Trump has even heard of it.’

  Parker let all this wash over him, responding from time to time with his Daniel Parmitt imitation, looking out the windshield at the bright sunny day, looking at the big blocky mansions of the unemployed rich. Neo-Regency style in architecture, when it was pointed out to him, seemed mostly inspired by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier: molded plaster wreaths on the outside walls, marching balustrades, outsize Grecian urns dotted around like game pieces.

  But although Daniel Parmitt was supposedly looking at all this with the eye of someone who just might want to buy into it, into the whole thing, the property, the community, the style, in which case Lesley would be the real estate agent, the mentor, and the guide, what Parker was looking for was something else. What he wanted was the house Melander had bought, partly with Parker’s money.

  And there it was.

  They’d traveled south, out of the commercial part of town, through between-the-clubs, where the big houses were mostly hidden behind tall hedges of ficus and, less successfully, sea grape. They’d driven on south beyond the Bath and Tennis Club, driving over the tunnels that let the ocean-facing residents swim in the lake, then past Mar-a-Lago, and past one of the very few public beaches on the island, Phipps Ocean Park, and then more big houses, and in the driveway of one of them, just barely visible past towering sea grape and a closed wrought-iron gate, squatted a Dumpster.

  ‘Work being done there,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, there’s always renovation, here and there,’ she told him. ‘There’s a more than adequate workforce over in West Palm, and people add things to their houses constantly. Lately, people have been putting lots of lights outside, to light up the ocean, so they can have their view all night long.’

  ‘And no burglars,’ Parker said.

  Lesley laughed, dismissing that. ‘Oh, no, there aren’t any burglars,’ she said. ‘Not here.’

  ‘The paper says there’s burglars.’

  She was still dismissive. ‘Oh, every once in a while, some idiots come up from Miami, but they never last long, and they always get caught. And the city keeps wanting to put some sort of control on the bridges, to get identification on everybody who comes to the island. There’s some sort of civil rights problem with the idea, but I really believe they’ll figure out how to do it someday. And you know, just here in Palm Beach, we have a sixty-seven-man police force.’

  Parker had been seeing patrol cars in motion every minute or two since they’d started to drive. ‘A lot of cops,’ he said.

  ‘Morethan enough,’ she assured him. ‘Crime is not the problem here.’ Then she giggled and said, ‘Liver transplants are more the problem than crime in Palm Beach.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Parker said. ‘But that place back there got me to thinking. The bank might like it if I found a fixer-upper.’ Surprised, she said, ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, they always talk about value-added, you know,’ he explained. ‘God knows I don’t want to work, I wouldn’t even oversee the job, but my man at the bank does like it if I put my money somewhere that it grows itself.’

  ‘Oh, I see what you mean. You’d put money into that kind of house, but then when you were finished it would be worth more than you put in.’

  ‘That’s what they like,’ Parker said.

  ‘Well, we don’t get that sort of thing very much, not around here,’ she said. ‘People tend to take care of their places in Palm Beach.’

  ‘Oh. That one back there just looked I suppose they were just renovating.’

  ‘No, you have a very good eye,’ she told him. ‘That place wasa wreck. A very sad history. They’d had a fire, and I don’t know, it had just been left alone too long.’

  ‘But somebody got there before me.’

  ‘I believe,’ she said, remembering, pleased by the memory, ‘I believe he’s also a Texan, like yourself.’

  Melander and his little Mexicans. ‘Lucky him,’ Parker said.

  ‘There’s nothing else lik
e that around right now.’

  ‘Just a thought,’ he said.

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I might still have the sheet on that. I didn’t sell it, but let me pull in at Monegasque.’

  That was a restaurant, not far ahead, a rare spot on this road where it was possible to pull off to the side. Lesley stopped in front of the place, ignored the valet parkers watching her, and grabbed the stack of house-description sheets from the back seat. She riffled through them and pulled one. ‘Here it is. You can see the trouble you missed. I don’t think fixer-uppers are worth the trouble, frankly.’

  Here it was. Color photo, taken from an angle to minimize the neglect. Floor plan. Entrances. Description of alarms.

  ‘I’ll keep this, if it’s okay with you,’ Parker said.

  ‘Go ahead,’ she said. ‘I don’t need it. That house is sold.’

  3

  A mile or so south of Melander’s house, the private estates began to give way to the hotels: Four Seasons, Hilton, Howard Johnson, all tending down toward the condos. Parker left the Jaguar, top up, in a parking area of the Four Seasons a little after midnight, made his way out to the beach, and walked north. Far ahead, he could see lights along the shore, probably for the night-time views of the sea Lesley had talked about, but along here the land and sea were both dark, the estates as private and closed away on this side as on the roadside.

  There was no moon, but starshine bounding from the sea outlined everything in shadowed silver. Walls and gates marked the properties, with more of those big urns looming at the corners. Almost all the houses tucked far back in there showed interior lights, but they were far away, screened, indirect; only twice did he see doors open to terrace or lawn, lights and sound spilling seaward, small parties in progress. Both times, he kept his head down so his pale face wouldn’t show, and moved closer to the shush of the waves, out of reach of the lights.

  He wasn’t carrying tonight and was dressed in dark but casual clothing and carried Parmitt’s identification. If he were to have a confrontation at all tonight, it would be with cops or private security, and with either one a gun would be more of a problem than a help.