by John Lutz
“Sure as I need to be.”
“I guess in that business the customers gotta work and can’t get away during regular hours, so they meet all them sexy real-estate ladies in empty houses most anytime day or night. Some of those display houses, Carver, they even got water beds, mirrors on the ceilings. You’d be surprised what’s done to close a deal.”
Bastard, Carver thought. It was time to make McGregor uncomfortable. “How come you’re not still a captain in the Fort Lauderdale police department?”
McGregor didn’t look uncomfortable or embarrassed. Few had ever remarked on his sensitivity. He pursed his lips and spat out whatever it was he’d been chewing on. “Politics. Something you never understood. Now, I tell you, this ain’t a social call. I’m on the Del Moray force these days.”
“A lieutenant, aren’t you?”
“Politics again. And again something you wouldn’t grasp, old pal. Point is, like your live-in Edwina, I’m working tonight. Report came in a while ago of a fight over on Ashland Avenue. Real lively one. This guy had a stick or a cane, swung it and broke it on something, maybe the other guy’s cranium. Couple of cars sped outta there before the police came. One of the cars was seen close enough that somebody gave us the license number. We run a make on the car, and it turns out it’s a prehistoric Oldsmobile registered to you. Christ! I think. My old buddy in some kinda jam? So I drive over here and figure I’ll ask you. I’m now asking.”
“I’m not in any sort of jam,” Carver said. He watched the darkening ocean behind McGregor. Far out at sea the lights of a ship glistened in the void of an indistinct horizon.
“Could be the witness read the license plate wrong,” McGregor said. “They do get excited and make mistakes. And you got no injuries. None I can see, anyway. Other hand, you got no cane, either. Tough gimp like you, it don’t seem logical you’d limp around all the time with an umbrella. Kinda sissified, you know what I mean. And I gotta say, it don’t look a bit like rain.” He tilted back his long head. “Hey, check out that moon!”
“I told you I ran over my cane,” Carver said.
“Yeah. Thought it was a snake, I guess.” He lowered his head, then tipped it back again to drain his beer can. He set the empty can down hard on the metal table and fixed his creepy pale eyes on Carver. “You on a case?”
“Sure. How I earn my bread.”
“Got anything to do with this scuffle over on Ashland you weren’t in?”
“No.”
“Do me any good to ask you to fill me in on the facts?”
“Nothing to fill in. No concern of the law. I know my professional boundaries. It’s not an open case with the police, and no crime I know of has been committed and needs reporting.”
“I guess a domestic thing’s what it is,” McGregor said.
“That’s right. Family matter.”
McGregor grinned. “Family, hey? Well, there’s all kinds of families. You ain’t fucking with the Mafia, are you, Carver?”
“If I was, I’d sure tell them about you and let you in on the deal.”
“And you’d let me in, too, I’m presuming, if there turned out to be a crime committed. Or if you stumbled across anything the law’d like to know. Being a relatively new man on the force, it’d be to my advantage to bring in a prize soon as possible,”
“Way I hear it,” Carver said, “you don’t need to crack a case and make an impression here; you know the mayor. Know him even better than he’d like.”
“Nothing wrong with using a little suck to attain a position, Carver. But it still wouldn’t hurt if I made it evident I’m better at my work than anybody else in this piss-ant department. Hell, that shouldn’t be hard. I don’t plan on being a lieutenant all my career. I caught your name when the plates were run, knew you weren’t the type to foul your own nest, so if you were working on something right here in Del Moray it must be important.”
“It’s nothing for you,” Carver said. “If it turns into something, you’ll hear about it.”
“I better,” McGregor said. “And hear about it personally and confidentially, you to me, for my ears only.” His close-set little eyes got intense and mean. He was no hypocrite. He was a man who knew what he was and reveled in his own evil. “Even a mere police lieutenant can make things tough for private heat in the old hometown, hey?”
True enough, Carver had to concede.
McGregor stood up in sections, in the manner of six-and-a-half-feet-tall misplaced basketball centers. He extended his long arms and stretched languorously. Then he looked around and nodded approval, as if he were some kind of city inspector and everything checked out fine. “Hell of a nice place,” he commented. “You hooked yourself one with money. Hey, maybe you oughta marry her before she gets wise to you.”
“I’d show you out,” Carver said, “only I can watch from here and be sure you’re really gone.”
“S’okay. I wouldn’t want you following me around like a disabled Mary Poppins anyway.” He reached awkwardly behind his back, inside his ill-fitting suitcoat, and withdrew something and tossed it on the ground. Carver recognized the clatter of hard wood on bricks. He looked down and saw both halves of his broken cane. “Case you might wanna walk on your knees sometime,” McGregor said.
He ambled toward the gate, calling back over his shoulder, “You stay in touch.”
“Count on me,” Carver said.
He sat on the veranda and listened to McGregor’s car start. The bastard had parked it around behind the garage so it wouldn’t be visible and he could take Carver by surprise when he arrived. Maybe get him to say something while he was off guard. Gaining the advantage was McGregor’s way of life.
The smooth, pale roof of the unmarked Ford dipped out of sight as the car descended the winding driveway.
Carver sat where he was and stared out at the ocean while it got completely dark and the moon took over. It made luminous the whitecaps of the breakers rolling in. One day like today was enough in anyone’s life, he thought. The rush of surf on the rocks below was like the hectic whispering of gossips.
Where was Edwina this late?
Damn McGregor!
He got up and hobbled into the house, then to the front hall, where he got his spare cane from the back of the guest closet.
Carver felt whole again with the cane, more confident. It bothered him that he’d grown so dependent on it. He was a man who loathed dependency more than loneliness. That had caused problems in his life.
He heard the garage-door opener’s wavering hum, and he limped into the living room and waited for Edwina to come in.
When she saw him she did a double take, smiled, and said wearily, “The buyer brought his attorney to the closing with him. Lawyers! They don’t do anything but make things more confusing so they take four hours instead of one.”
She tossed her purse and attache case on a chair and walked over to Carver and kissed him. He pulled her down, held her tightly, and kissed her back. They were the sort of kisses that might lead to something.
They did.
Carver was lying nude beside Edwina in the soft glow of the bedside lamp, perspiring and listening to the ocean’s now kindly whispers, when the phone rang.
Edwina stirred sleepily and beautifully. She kissed him on the arm, and then rolled to her side of the bed to stretch so she could lift the receiver. McGregor was right: the real-estate business knew no regular hours.
She mumbled a hello, then let her head drop back on the pillow and held the receiver out toward Carver. Her breasts and stomach were still reddened from the friction of his body. “For you. Dunno who.”
Carver pressed the receiver to his ear; the plastic was cool and gave off a dry, acrid scent.
Before he could say hello a voice asked, “Fred Carver?”
Carver said he was.
“Name’s Amos Burrel. I live out at Sunhaven.” The voice was aged but still vibrant, with an edge of irritability and defiance, as if its owner wished he could simply disregard the
years but knew that was impossible. “You the Fred Carver visited Kearny Williams here this morning?”
“The same.”
“I got the room next to Kearny’s. Walls are paper thin. Heard everything the two of you said.”
Carver smiled, but at the same time made a mental note to speak more softly at Sunhaven. “You shoulda come over and joined the conversation,” he said.
“Nope. I think you and me better have our own conversation.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow morning suit you?”
“If it’s convenient for you,” Carver said.
“Hell, anytime’s convenient for me. I never leave here. Catch me when I ain’t on the pot, we can talk.”
“I’ll be there around ten,” Carver said.
“Anybody asks, tell ’em you came to visit Kearny,” Amos Burrel said. “But you come see me instead. Got that?”
“Got it,” Carver said, and hung up.
“Who was it?” Edwina asked, half asleep and staring blankly at the ceiling.
“You know that old caution about the walls having ears?”
“Sure.”
“That was Ears.”
10
Birdie Reeves recognized Carver immediately and brightened the already brilliant reception area with her country-girl smile. Even her freckles seemed to glimmer. “Here to see Mr. Williams?”
Carver nodded and mumbled and gave back the smile. Birdie had been leafing through a sheaf of papers on the curved reception desk and diligently returned to the task as he limped past. Like yesterday, there were several Sunhaven residents in the lobby area. But the cast had changed except for the two men playing checkers, who again stopped their game to observe Carver’s passage. No one had to be restrained in their rocking chair or wheelchair with a knotted sheet. No one was drooling or rambling incomprehensibly. The great dignity of age lay over the place today, and not the physical infirmities that assaulted that dignity.
In the hall, a white-uniformed attendant gave Carver a head-peck hello and bustled on. Carver passed Kearny Williams’s closed door and knocked on the next one. The knock sounded surprisingly loud.
The door opened immediately and a once tall, now stooped man with gravity-drawn features stared out at Carver. His face was long and jowly, as if it were melting, and there were wattles of flesh beneath his chin. He was wearing old-fashioned horn-rimmed glasses that made him look like an owl after an all-night binge, yet there was a hint of defiance in his unblinking brown eyes and even in the way he held his emaciated bent body. Not defiance of Carver, but of diminishing time. Of where his world had finally cornered him. It was a defiance that rang hollow because it was born of his personal realization of mortality and his abject fear of it. Courage had become bluff.
“Amos Burrel?” Carver asked.
“Me,” the man said.
“I’m Fred Carver.”
“Hell, I know that. C’mon with me.” He stepped into the hall and shut the door to his room. “Wish I could lock that damned thing, only they won’t let us do that here. People steal any loose item they can get their hands on in a place like this. Steal a wart right off your ass just for the joy of it if they thought it could be removed. Get their jollies that way, some people. Figure you might not be around long enough to accuse them if you ever do work out who’s the thief. Damned senior-citizen punks!”
“I thought we might talk privately in your room,” Carver said.
“Why in hell would we do that when I told you it was you and Kearny talking in his room prompted me to phone you? Think the wall’s any thicker from the other direction? Huh?”
“Guess not,” Carver said, extending the cane as far in front of him as he dared with each step and struggling to keep up. Amos was at least in his mid-seventies, but he had a long-legged, awkward stride, a kind of rhythmic lurching that covered ground amazingly fast. If the Senior Olympics had a hall-walking event, Amos would be the guy to beat.
They left the building and crossed to another by way of a walkway walled with pink plastic panels. Beyond the tinted panels were pink-hued palm trees, a pink resident gliding past, pushed in her wheelchair by a pink attendant. Beyond pink palms rolled the endless pink ocean. In the hot sunlight streaming through the panels, Carver glanced down at his hand gripping the crook of his cane. Pink.
A sign read VISITOR CENTER. An extra-wide pneumatic door hissed open, and fast Amos led Carver inside. It was much cooler in the visitor center, a relief. Carver was breathing hard. Amos wasn’t.
The color of the panels had changed; everything here had a slight copper tint. It added color to some of the residents being visited by family and friends, made them seem almost robust despite the wheelchairs, canes, and metal walkers. Despite the infirmities dragging them down. Carver wondered if there were green plastic panels anywhere at Sunhaven.
The copper-hued rectangular room was one large area where vinyl sofas and chairs were clustered about in conversation groupings. So visitors wouldn’t feel as if they and the aged residents were being eavesdropped upon, or too closely overseen by the uniformed staff that roamed casually about. Care was taken so the attendants didn’t bring to mind the word guards. The building had long, thick brown drapes along the west wall, almost like theatrical curtains. The floor was carpeted in beige. The ceiling was white acoustical tile. Sound didn’t carry well here, as Amos knew.
“Siddown, Carver,” he said, dropping into a low brown vinyl sofa so hard Carver was afraid the old guy might snap a bone. The sofa sighed in protest, realized Amos didn’t weigh more than a hundred and forty pounds, and immediately shut up.
Carver sat opposite Amos in a matching brown armchair. He glanced around. There were about a dozen other residents in the room, chatting with visitors whose dark hair and supple bodies made them seem as out of place here as extraterrestrial beings. The nearest of these was a young woman talking to an older woman in a wheelchair. They both had wide cheekbones and identical turned-up noses. Carver was sure they were mother and daughter. The young one looked infinitely sad, then momentarily panic-stricken, as she studied the woman in the chair, whose faded eyes had for a second been averted. The future was as real as the past. Waiting.
“We can talk okay here,” Amos said. “Far as the attendants know, you’re my son from Syracuse come to visit me.”
“You got a son in Syracuse?” Carver asked.
“Could have. I was a policeman there forty years ago, before I became a paint salesman.”
“What’s being a policeman got to do with fathering a son?”
“Not s’posed to have anything to do with it, but it did. That’s why I left the force and sold paint. First it was all oil-based and didn’t move for shit, then when we started carrying a latex-based line I made a damned good living out of it. Stores can’t sell people paint they gotta spend the whole day washing off themselves and everything else after they change the color of a wall. Latex is water-soluble and don’t cause that problem. Know that?”
“Know it,” Carver said. “You’re not still selling paint, are you, Amos? You didn’t lure me here so you could talk me into two-coating my house?”
Amos adjusted the horn-rimmed glasses where they rested on his ears and looked angry. “I tend to ramble now and again,” he admitted. “It aggravates the piss outta me, Carver, even while it’s boring you. But don’t worry, I don’t lose my place. I know why I asked you here.”
“You overheard the conversation I had with Kearny Williams,” Carver said.
“No need to remind me. Nor to remind me what was said. So Sam Cusanelli suspected there was something wrong with this place, did he? Well, lah-de-dah.”
“That’s what he told me yesterday. But you know that; you were listening.”
“Well, Sam was right. When I heard you were private heat and a friend of that Lieutenant Desoto, I figured you’d be the one to tell.”
“Tell what?”
Gray bushy eyebrows shot up in irritation. “Why, that there
really is something wrong here in this colored ice-cube tray of a hell.” Amos wasn’t going to be used in any testimonial ads by Sunhaven.
“Why don’t you leave here?” Carver asked.
Amos’s jowly chin quivered and then became firm. “I as much as been told by my no-good daughter and son-in-law that if I do, they’ll start legal proceedings to have me declared non compos mentis, unable to handle my own affairs.”
“Really? Could they do that?”
Amos grinned, the loose flesh of his face arranging itself into a thousand creases. A light danced in his brown eyes. “It ain’t a hundred percent certain. So they’d rather keep footing the bill for me here, while they wait patiently for me to die so they can inherit my money.”
“How much wealth does a latex paint salesman accumulate?” Carver asked.
Amos’s grin turned foxy. “Question is, how much do some people think he can accumulate?”
Carver was getting tired of this; he decided to drive to the point. “Can you tell me what’s going on here that had Sam Cusanelli suspicious?”
“Same thing had me suspicious, maybe. ’Bout a month ago old Jim Harrison died. Nicest fella. From Eugene, Oregon.”
Carver waited, watching Amos, whose eyes remained alert yet somehow disengaged, as if looking at some portion of the past that had abruptly materialized around them and that Carver couldn’t see.
“People die here, Amos,” Carver said gently.
“Yeah, it’s that kinda place. And Jim had been sick. Like half the folks inside these walls. He had the room right opposite mine, and the night before he died I heard noises, somebody coming and going there. Wouldn’t have struck me as odd, only it was three in the morning.”
“Maybe Harrison felt sick and called for a doctor.”
“No, I heard voices, but they weren’t talking that way at all. Not like doctor and patient.”
“Talking how, then?”
“Not arguing, just talking normal, but I couldn’t make out the words. I happened to be awake, took the wrong goddamn pill for my arthritis and it got me hyper as a cat.”
And maybe imagining things, Carver thought.
