A Garden of Vipers

by Jack Kerley

  Lucas winked at the entrepreneur, then turned his attention to the sink, turning the hot water on and off.

  “The neighborhood seems quite nice, Ms. Verhooven, a warren of free enterprise.”

  “This is mid-Mobile’s most prestigious mercantile complex, Mr. Lucasian. An address here has cachet.” She pronounced it catch-hay. “You’re lucky. This location did have an interested party and a hold on the space for several months. But something fell through and it’s now available.”

  Lucas almost laughed. They used to be office parks, now they were mercantile complexes. With catch-hay, nonetheless. He looked through slat blinds at several small clusters of offices, redbrick buildings, the tallest four stories. The grounds were nicely landscaped, myrtle and dogwood. A few magnolia bushes, the ever-present azaleas.

  “You’re in a wonderful business community, Mr. Lucasian,” the rental agent chirped, seeing his eyes scanning the community of red boxes. “Accounting firms, brokerages, financial advisors, that sort of thing. Four or five doctors. Two corporate headquarters, three legal firms…”

  Lucas wandered through rooms smelling of fresh paint and cleanser. He struck several poses he found particularly businesslike: holding his chin and nodding out the window, clasping his hands at his belt and arching an eyebrow at the ceiling, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall.

  “It feels very businessy,” he said, pushing from the wall. “A place to call home.”

  Ms. Verhooven beamed. “What is it, basically, that your firm does, Mr. Lucasian?”

  “Basically, I’m in securities,” Lucas said. He chuckled at the wonderful double entendre: insecurities.

  Lucas looked across the street at the nearest building, a hundred feet distant. The top floor, fourth, was large and sparsely populated offices, a quiet little kingdom of teak and brass. On the next three floors, cubicle drones could be seen shuffling papers and talking on phones. There were four levels, but only the top floor interested Lucas. The space Ms. Verhooven was showing was on the fourth floor as well, but the building was on a slight rise, putting Lucas a bit above the level of the fourth floor across the way. The small discrepancy allowed Lucas to look down on the facing building, which tickled him.

  “Is the space to your liking, Mr. Lucasian?” the agent trilled. “Everything you need?”

  Lucas cut a glance toward the building across the way, marveling at his luck. Or had this perfect location been arranged by the man upstairs, divine guidance?

  “Yes, Ms. Verhooven,” Lucas said. “Everything is absolutely perfect.”

  After catching up on paperwork and calls, we returned to Harry’s. I was eager to look at Rudolnick’s records, Harry less so.

  My partner lived in a small enclave a couple miles west of downtown. The yards and houses weren’t large, but compensated with charm. There were trees aplenty, old live oaks and pecans and thick-leaved magnolias. Whenever I pulled into the neighborhood in summer, the shade made my soul feel twenty degrees cooler.

  Harry’s house was a compact single-story Creole with a full gallery and a magnolia in the front yard. The paint was coral with mauve accents which, for Harry, showed restraint. In the setting, it looked just right, a contented house.

  I felt as much at home as if I’d stepped into my own living room. Harry’s walls were red, the woodwork a light green. He had several pieces of art on the walls, primitive paintings of musicians picked up at the Center for Southern Folklore in Memphis. The art was my influence; I fell in love with art in college, passed my enthusiasm on to Harry.

  In return, he introduced me to jazz and blues. When we first started hanging out, he asked my musical influences, shaking his head at most. He’d pulled a vinyl of Louis Armstrong from its jacket, set it on the turntable, dropped the needle on a 1929 rendition of the W. C. Handy tune “St. Louis Blues.” It was like nothing I’d ever heard, bright and alive and flowing like a stream, and I was a convert before sixteen bars had passed.

  “Let me put on some tunes,” Harry said, kneeling by a stack of vinyls beside his sound system, his sole luxury, eight grand worth of electronics. Ferdinand La Menthe—better known as Jelly Roll Morton—started a piano solo in Harry’s living room.

  Harry handed me a beer. I sat cross-legged on his living room floor, Bernie Rudolnick’s professional life surrounding me in white boxes. It might have been a breach of doctor-patient privilege to have such records, and I was uncertain of the legalities. We weren’t about to ask, ignorance being, if not bliss, at least more comfortable than knowing we were in violation of something or other. Thus we had taken the records to Harry’s instead of the department.

  Harry said, “How about I unbox, unbundle, and stack each box’s contents in its own area, and you check what’s inside?”

  I shot a thumbs-up and surveyed materials at random. Harry grabbed a couple of beers to set by our sides. Having spent a fair portion of my six-year college career in the psych department, I was familiar with the language and methodology involved in Rudolnick’s materials.

  “What are we looking for?” Harry said. “There’s a half ton of files here.”

  “Anything pertaining to Leland Harwood. Or the penal system, halfway house, prison or jail consultations. We’re casting a wide net.”

  Harry studied the mountain of boxes. He made a sound like wounded bagpipes.

  CHAPTER 15

  Harry and I studied records until our eyes crossed, about four hours. I ran home, grabbed some sleep, was back at it in the morning, coffee replacing the beer. After two hours Harry tossed a pile of pages on the floor.

  “I can’t take shrink-jarg for four hours at a stretch. Let’s go beat the streets.”

  I rubbed my eyes, stretched my back.

  “How about we divide up what’s left, work on it solo every day. Half hour minimum. We’ll get through it in a week to ten days.”

  We beat the streets, reinterviewing everyone in Taneesha’s phone book, talking to her family, tracking down our snitches to offer money for anything they could dig up. At five we headed home. My path took me a few miles out of my way, passing by Dani’s place on the edge of downtown.

  Her car wasn’t in the driveway. I walked to her porch and rang the bell. There was no response, and I considered letting myself in with my key and waiting.

  “Carson?” I heard my name called in a quavering female voice. I turned to see Leanna Place, Dani’s elderly next-door neighbor. She gestured me over like I was a servant.

  “Come over, Carson. Look what’s here.”

  I sighed, not in the mood for Ms. Place. She thought dating a cop was too coarse for Dani, below her station. Ms. Place always pretended to be solicitous of my health and welfare, all the while launching small, backhanded missiles.

  I followed her inside her tidy home. Beside the threshold was a huge vase of flowers. At least I assumed a vase was beneath the explosion of color and scent. Roses and tulips and carnations reached to my waist.

  “It’s for DeeDee,” Ms. Place said. Like most, she used Dani’s television name. “The flowers came an hour ago. DeeDee wasn’t home so I took the delivery. Aren’t they gorgeous?” She gave me a wry eyebrow. “I wonder who they’re from.”

  It rankled that the old shrew thought me incapable of sending flowers.

  “Me, maybe?”

  She fluffed the blooms like a pillow, then tapped the small envelope wagging from the vase. “The flowers are from Jon-Ella’s, Carson. I’d guess three hundred dollars’ worth. Not something one gets on a policeman’s salary.”

  Jon-Ella’s was Mobile’s most hoity-toity florist, over in Spring Hill. I once priced a half dozen roses at Jon-Ella’s, gasped, got them at Winn-Dixie for a quarter of the price.

  I avoided telling Ms. Place that euthanasia’s not such a bad idea and toted the flowers back to Dani’s. I let myself in, set the massive arrangement on her dining room table. The sender’s card fluttered before my eyes, a small dot of tape holding it closed.

  I left i
t untouched.

  I made it all the way to the bottom of the porch steps before turning back. The tape peeled loose with ease and I slid the card from the envelope to my sweating palm.

  Dearest DeeDee…

  The beauty of these flowers pales beside your beauty.

  Love and Hot Kisses,

  Buck

  I left the flowers in the small vestibule outside the front door, where a delivery person would set them. I don’t remember driving home.

  I was sitting on my deck in the dark, clothing optional this time of night, nearing midnight. The wind had picked up, a hot breath keeping the mosquitoes at bay. Far across the water a drill rig flamed off gas, orange fire pressing indigo sky. There was a high whine in the back of my head.

  My dining room table was filled with my half of Rudolnick’s files. I’d put in a half hour of reviewing, pushed them away, come outside to think about nothing, Dani included.

  My cell phone rang from the table beside me. Dani, her voice a tight whisper.

  “Carson, I think someone’s been in my house.”

  “A break-in? Are the cops there?”

  A hesitation. “I didn’t call them.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s that there’s no…that is, the alarm didn’t go off.”

  “Where’d they get in? Door? Window?”

  “It’s not that there’s actually, uh…I’m scared, Carson. That much I know. Can you come over?”

  When I pulled to the curb in front of Dani’s house, I saw her at the window, backlit, the curtain pushed aside. Her outline was hauntingly beautiful, and I felt an ache simultaneously within me and far away. She opened the door as I stepped to the porch.

  “Thanks for coming so fast.”

  I brushed past and left her hug hanging in the air. Her front closet held the alarm center. No lights were flashing to indicate a breach.

  “You haven’t reset anything, have you?” I asked. “Moved the parameters higher?” The detection modes were set to thresholds so the system didn’t dial cops every time mail dropped through the door slot.

  She shook her head. “Haven’t touched it.”

  “No windows open, doors unlatched?”

  “No.”

  “Might I ask why you think someone’s been inside?”

  She beckoned me to follow her upstairs. Passing her bedroom, I glanced inside. An unmade bed, the covers a tangle, a big tangle.

  It seemed I could smell flowers coming from the room.

  Dani led me to her office, shelves of books and magazines, a couple of billowing ferns beside the window, a ceiling fan. The space was centered by a large teakwood desk. There was a credenza behind it, a chair between them. She pointed an accusatory finger at the chair.

  “Someone was at my desk.”

  “How do you know?”

  She sat, turned to the computer monitor. “I touch-type about seventy-five words a minute. I focus on the screen, watch the words. Because I never take my eyes away, everything’s set up to grab it efficiently. Like a blind person, maybe. Watch.”

  She opened a blank screen, began typing, her eyes riveted to the monitor. I stood beside her and watched the words race across the screen.

  I’m writing a story, Carson, but now I’ve decided I want to make a note, so I reach for a pencil…

  Her hand reached out to a mug of pencils. Two inches past her fingertips. She drew her hand back, kept typing.

  See? Too far away. I’m back writing my story. Uh-oh, I need to confirm some facts with a source. So I reach for the phone…

  She reached. This time her hand was an inch or so to the right.

  Suddenly I decide I need a telephone number. It’s in my PDA. Still banging away, I reach behind me to its usual place, right on the corner edge of the credenza, but…

  Her hand swung behind her, fingernails tapping the edge of the credenza, the PDA a book’s-width away. She turned to me.

  “See?”

  “Maybe you were having an off day. About an inch off. I’m not trying to be funny.”

  “I’ve been working like this for eight years. My office at the station is set up the same way. Someone was here, moving things.”

  “You’ve checked your files? Anything missing?”

  She opened the bottom desk drawer. A few hanging folders, scant pages in them. “Nothing I can see. No active stories. No names of people or companies being investigated, no secret meetings, no incriminating papers. All I have are outdated notes. What should I do?”

  I cleared my throat. “There’s no evidence someone’s been in here. It’s based on…ergonomics.”

  Her pink nails clacked on the credenza. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “I’m not sure what I believe anymore, Dani.”

  She frowned. “That’s a strange thing to say, Carson.”

  “Where are the flowers, Dani?”

  A pause. “What flowers?”

  “You haven’t seen Ms. Place, I take it? I stopped by earlier. She accepted a few hundred dollars’ worth of posies. I brought them over here.”

  “Uh, they’re in my bedroom. They were from the station. Uh, because of me being made an anch—”

  “Save yourself some lying. I read the card.”

  All color drained from her face. “Carson…”

  “I heard your phone message the other night, too. When did you start fucking Buck Kincannon? Recently? Or all along?”

  She closed her eyes. Swayed. At that moment I would have let her fall.

  “We, Buck and me…were dating before you and I met. It was over a year ago, obviously. What you’re thinking, it’s not…”

  I mimed pulling a card from an envelope, like at an awards show. Or from a florist’s delivery.

  “And my final question is…”

  “Please don’t, Carson.”

  “Have you been to bed with Buck Kincannon recently? The past month?”

  Her fists balled into knots. Tears streamed down her face. “Carson,” she whispered.

  “Answer me!” I screamed.

  She closed her eyes. Took a deep breath.

  Said, “Yes.”

  “You’ve got some items at my house, Ms. Danbury,” I said. “I’ll leave them on your porch in a day or two.”

  CHAPTER 16

  By two-fifteen a.m. I had all Dani’s possessions in a green garbage bag. I set the bag in the kitchen, but that didn’t feel right, so I put it on the deck. That felt wrong, too. The same with the stoop. I finally carried it downstairs and jammed it in the little cold-water shower beneath the house.

  I tried to sleep but pictures clashed in my head and feelings banged into feelings in my heart. The internal warfare kept me awake until four, when I went outside and fell asleep at the edge of the water. The sun woke me at daybreak. I stood, brushed sand from my clothes, and went inside to shower and make coffee.

  Though it was barely half past six, I decided to head into the department, get a jump on the day. I was still ten miles south of Mobile when I saw a plume of smoke rising above town, a heavy smear against the crystal-blue sky. I flicked the radio to the fire band, heard the cacophonous mix of voices that indicated a bad burn.

  “Jeffers here, on the east side. We’ve got flames from the fourth-story windows.”

  “Get a hose on it.”

  “All the high-volume hoses are working the south side.”

  “This is Smith. We’re losing pressure from the Corcoran Street hydrant. Get us a tanker, fast.”

  “Jeffers. I’ve got a woman says there’s people on the fourth. She heard screaming. Wait…I got a man at a window. Elderly. Jesus, he’s getting ready to—”

  I stuck the flasher on the roof, pushed the accelerator to the floor, aimed the truck at the plume.

  Eight minutes later I was weaving through the crowd of gawkers at the periphery. I pulled onto the curb a block away, staying well back from the firefighters. The last thing they needed to deal with was a vehicle blocking a needed path.
I flapped my badge wallet open, stuck it in my pocket, jogged toward the scene. The air was oily with the smell of smoke and steam.

  I knew the place, an old apartment building, four stories, maybe a dozen units per floor. The rent was inexpensive, but not so cheap the place became a haven for junkies and derelicts. I’d been on a few calls there as a patrolman, a couple domestic beefs and picking up a hooker on a bench warrant, no big deal. Back when I was working the streets, there were one or two hookers who lived at the place, out-service types, not streetwalkers. They tended to keep low and stay out of trouble and we pretty much left them alone, having a lot worse to deal with than call girls.

  I saw a firefighter buddy of mine, Captain Rawly Drummond, standing beside a truck and shedding his air tank and yellow flame-retardant coat. He shook off his gloves and wiped sweat from his forehead.

  “Hey, Rawly.”

  He turned, showed a smile beneath a red handlebar mustache that would have looked at home on a gold-rush prospector.

  “Yo, Carson. You here to see how real civil-service types work?”

  “I was looking for a doughnut joint, took a wrong turn. How’s it going?”

  “Tough at first, but we’re getting it knocked back. Lotta combustibles in that building.”

  “I caught some radio traffic. People in there?”

  The mustache turned down. “Don’t have a resident count, but it seems most people got out. An old guy panicked, dove from a window. Another two minutes and we could have had a ladder to him. They took him to the hospital, but it was over.”