Free Burn by John Lutz Page B

he is your client?”
    “That’s not the entire reason, but it’s a factor.”
    “And if you find out he’s lying?”
    “Then he’s no longer my client.”
    “McGregor won’t help you at all,” Desoto said. “He’s a human reptile and should be shot.”
    “That’s why I called you,” Carver said.
    “Ah, to shoot him?”
    “Maybe someday. He won’t get involved in the Marla Cloy— Joel Brant problem until someone’s dead. But I figured you could help, since she lived in Orlando until about three months ago.”
    Desoto leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. The movement caused his jacket to gap, revealing an empty leather shoulder holster. Carver figured his gun was in a drawer. Desoto had all his suits altered to disguise the bulk of his gun, but he still resented the break in the line of his tailoring.
    “To be stalked like a prey animal is a terrible thing for a woman,” he said.
    “If that’s what’s happening. Why would Brant come to me, if he was really stalking Marla Cloy?”
    “Why would she lie about him stalking her?” Desoto asked.
    “I don’t know. To set him up, maybe.”
    “For what?”
    “I’m not sure. Possibly she wants to kill him and claim self-defense.”
    “That would sound more logical if she had a motive.”
    “I’m trying to find one,” Carver said. “Believe me, I want this to make sense.”
    “Yes, that’s how you are. You need for your little patch of the world to be a just and understandable place.”
    “Call it a character flaw.”
    “More like an obsession. Do you know how they catch monkeys in Africa?”
    Carver said that he didn’t.
    “They cut round holes in sheets of plywood just large enough for the monkeys to work their hands through to grab coconuts.” Desoto accompanied this information with appropriate hand motions, scrunching his fingers together with a forward, twisting motion. “They can’t remove their hands as long as they hold the coconuts, and the monkeys are too obsessed with the coconuts to release them.”
    “Catching monkeys in Africa, huh? That sounds like something you saw in one of those late-night old movies you watch.”
    “Well, maybe it was India. The point is, obsession can be dangerous. You’re involved with people who might be out to kill each other, for all you know. Maybe you should let this one play out by itself, without your help.”
    Carver said, “What about Marla Cloy?”
    Desoto turned his hands palms up in a gesture of hopelessness and did a thing with his eyebrows to show he’d at least tried to save Carver from himself. “She lived in an apartment in the 4400 block of Graystone Avenue until about three months ago, then moved to an apartment on Bailock where she stayed briefly before moving to Del Moray. She doesn’t have a police record, and the neighbors described her as a quiet woman. Her only family’s her mother and father. They live in Sleepy Hollow, a trailer court outside of town.”
    “What do you know about them?”
    “Not much. He’s a retired railroad worker. That’s all I managed to learn. I figured it was the daughter you were interested in.”
    Carver nodded. “The name Joel Brant pop up at all?”
    “No. But then it might not, when a policeman’s asking questions.” Desoto absently polished his pinkie ring on the arm of his jacket, four quick, short swishes to buff it to a brilliant-enough shine to send a pattern of light dancing over the papers on his desk. “There is one notable thing in her background, amigo. She moved from her apartment on Graystone because it was damaged when the building burned. Three of the tenants died. Arson squad said the fire might have been set deliberately, but they could never prove it. They also said it might have been the flame from a hot water heater igniting gasoline fumes from a nearby can where paintbrushes were being soaked to clean.”
    “Who’d be dumb enough to leave a can of gasoline near a hot water heater?”
    “No one