by John Lutz
He had black coffee, half a grapefruit, and a piece of dry toast for breakfast. Then he stretched out an arm for the phone and called Desoto in Orlando.
“Still feel the way you did when we talked yesterday?” he asked, when the lieutenant had come to the phone.
“Same way, amigo. I know what you’re thinking, that my head’s not screwed on right at this time. But believe me, I gave the matter a lot of thought before driving there to talk with you.”
“It didn’t seem spur of the moment,” Carver assured him.
Desoto said, “You find out anything?”
“Hell, no. I just got up.”
“Hmm.” Disapproval.
“Who were some of your uncle’s friends at the retirement home?”
“You don’t keep friends very long at a place like that,” Desoto said sadly, “But I do remember one old guy. Name’s Kearny. That’s his first name. I think his last name’s Williams. He and Sam seemed pretty thick. Took their meals together in the mess hall they call a dining room, played checkers. That kinda stuff. They argued a lot, but they were friends. You could tell by watching them. I was glad Sam had somebody like that out there.”
“Kearny still at the home?”
“I guess so,” Desoto said. “If he’s still alive.”
“I’ll let you know when and if I do find out anything,” Carver said,
“I know you will.” Desoto paused. “You be careful, okay?”
“Of what?”
“I’m not sure. I got a feeling about that place. All that sadness, the ends of lives, and in so much sun and brightness. Maybe when you go there you’ll know what I mean.”
“We’ll find out this morning,” Carver said.
He stretched his arm again, leaning his weight on the cane, and hung up the phone. Then he limped out to his rusty Oldsmobile convertible, put down the canvas top, and drove through the morning heat toward Sunhaven Retirement Home.
He thought about Edwina kissing him good-morning. And about Uncle Sam, dying among hired help in a place that had made him uneasy.
It felt great to be alive and too young for Medicare.
3
There was a line of palm trees along the perimeter of the parking lot at Sunhaven, but they provided little shade. Carver nevertheless found a space in the dappled light beneath one of them and turned off the Olds’s ancient and powerful V-8 engine. In the sudden silence, palm fronds rattled in the warm breeze, speaking an old and indecipherable language.
He got out of the car, set the tip of his cane in the lot’s bleached gravel, and limped toward the nearest of the tinted cubes.
A transparent door was barely discernible as the entrance. Its copper tint gave back Carver’s reflection as he approached: a slightly crooked, featureless man with a cane, struggling in glaring two dimension. The heat from the gently inclined pale concrete ramp to the door radiated through the thin leather soles of his moccasins. The temperature might hit a thousand today.
But not inside Sunhaven. As Carver stepped in and the door swished closed behind him, the chill almost stopped his heart. All that tinted glass must make the air conditioning more efficient.
The lobby was done in pastels, mostly the pale blues and pinks seen in nurseries, as if to suggest the full circle of nothing to life to nothing. There were several residents seated in wicker chairs. The nearest, an old woman secured with a knotted yellow sheet so she wouldn’t topple from her rocking chair, lolled her head toward Carver and smiled as if she recognized him as a long-lost family member. It was quiet in the lobby and the runners on her rocker made soft, rhythmic creaking sounds. Hypnotic sounds. Two old men, one of them with a missing right arm, halted their game of checkers and glanced over at Carver. The nearer of them, hatchet-faced and obviously without his dentures, smiled in the same way as the woman in the rocker. The one-armed man, unnoticed for a moment, darted out his hand and furtively scooted a red checker forward on the board. Carver wondered if it had been his move.
In the center of the blue and pink and mauve lobby was a long, curved reception desk, the lower half of which was covered with what looked like pink industrial velvet. Beyond it were half a dozen tall, pastel dividers, partitioning off what probably were private areas where residents and visitors could talk uninterrupted.
Carver nodded to the checker players and limped toward the tiny, redheaded girl behind the reception desk.
She got younger as he got closer. He figured her for about fifteen, but she had the kind of looks that could confound the guy who guessed ages at carnivals. Her hair was carrot-colored and she had a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of a miniature, perfect nose. Her eyes were blue and widely spaced, with a dreamy quality and with that pink-rimmed look so often seen on redheads. She had a trim figure beneath her white-and-gray uniform: lean waist and high, small, protruding breasts-a teenage figure. Her hair was medium-length and combed back, arranged in a sort of bun on top of her head and held there with a blue ribbon tied in a large bow. The flared bow resembled an exotic butterfly that had found a suitable flower. There were errant, fiery wisps of hair curling in front of her ears. She looked to Carver as if she ought to be wearing pigtails and orthodontic braces and marching in the junior high school band. The plastic name plaque on the desk read “Birdie Reeves.”
She glanced up from the magazine she’d been reading and noticed Carver. She blinked once, slowly, as if there were sand beneath her eyelids and they hurt. Then she smiled. Her teeth were even but protruded; that only added to her Becky Thatcher look. She was so much the opposite of classic beauty that she made you see her own brand of beauty in her blazing youth.
She stood up behind the counter, though it was hardly noticeable, and said, “Can I help you?” There was a lilt to her voice, maybe a midwestern drawl.
“I’m looking for Kearny Williams,” Carver said.
Birdie’s smile kept splitting her features, causing the flesh at the corners of her eyes to crinkle in a parody of crow’s feet. People like her never really appeared old; they simply faded and reminded other people that time was passing. “Uh-hm, we got a Mr. Williams here. You a relative?”
“Friend of a friend. My name’s Fred Carver. Tell Mr. Williams I knew Sam Cusanelli.”
Birdie’s blue eyes widened and her sadness absorbed her smile. “Shame about Mr. Cusanelli,” she said. “He was a nice man. I’d say that about most any of the residents, I guess, but it really was true of Mr. Cusanelli. How well did you know him?”
“Very well, when he was younger.”
She was smiling again, waiting for Carver to say more. He didn’t.
“I see,” she said. A man and a woman wearing white uniforms bustled past, discussing something earnestly, oblivious of where they were. The man mumbled, “… a drop in the white cell count,” and the woman nodded thoughtfully. The old woman in the chair lolled her head and tried to lift a hand to wave but was ignored.
Birdie said, “Well, I s’pose it’s okay.” She pointed; her thin arm was freckled and dusted with reddish down. “Go on through that door and down the hall, then turn left and you’ll come to Mr. Williams’s room. I’m sure he’s there; he’s most always there.” She consulted a chart on a clipboard. “Room number’s one.”
“Easy to remember,” Carver said.
“Not for Mr. Williams sometimes.”
Carver said thanks and left her to return to her magazine. It had to do with heavy-metal rock stars. There was a glossy cover illustration of an insanely grinning thirtyish man dressed as an English schoolboy and aiming his elaborate guitar like a rifle. Birdie seemed enthralled by the magazine’s contents. Her lips moved soundlessly as she read.
A teenager with an MTV mind as a receptionist in an old-folks’ home. Well, why not? The place needed a fresh bloom in the midst of all the faded petals.
As Carver made his way cautiously over the slick tiled floor toward the wide door Birdie had pointed out, the door swung toward him and a heavyset woman wearing a unifo
rm like the receptionist’s wheeled a very old man in a chrome wheelchair into the lobby. Like the woman in the rocking chair, he was held firmly in place by a knotted sheet around his midsection. His head wobbled and a gleaming thread of saliva dangled from his chin, catching the light. Carver quickly looked away; here was the future for each generation’s survivors. It was something nobody of any age liked to think about, but it was there like cold, black reality on every life’s horizon.
He pushed open the swinging door with the tip of his cane and went through. Walked down the hall as Birdie had directed and made a left turn. He had to limp only a few feet before he came to a pastel blue door with a gold numeral 1 painted on it. Again using the cane, he knocked.
“… on in,” called a voice from the other side.
Carver rotated the knob and entered a small, sunny room furnished with a bed, a limed oak dresser, and a tiny color TV that was tuned soundlessly to a morning game show. A pretty blond woman on the screen spun an oversized roulette wheel, closed her eyes, and crossed the fingers of both hands. In front of the TV was a brown vinyl chair in which sat a broad, muscular man with wide, squared features. Moving with a difficulty and stiffness that revealed his advanced age, he stood up and turned to face Carver. He had a sacklike stomach paunch, and his throat was scarred and withered from a recent operation. His thick gray hair was precisely and severely parted, as if he’d spent a great deal of time getting it just right, maybe using scientific instruments.
“I’m a friend of Alfonso Desoto,” Carver said, leaning on his cane and extending his hand. “Name’s Fred Carver.”
Kearny had eyes like faded blue marbles. It took a moment for a light to shine in them. “Desoto? Sam’s nephew?”
“Right.”
A dry, powerful hand gripped Carver’s up to the wrist and pumped it almost out of the socket. The old guy was glad to see him. Maybe glad to see anybody. “I’m Kearny Williams.”
“I know.” Carver retracted his arm; his shoulder was sore. “I came here to see you about Sam Cusanelli.”
Kearny motioned for him to take the chair. When Carver declined, he said, “Guess you know Sam’s dead. Went three days ago.”
“Desoto told me.”
Kearny slumped down again in the brown vinyl chair. “Gotta get my weight off these legs after a while. It’s pure shit, growin’ old. Outlivin’ your body. It gets you down, knowin’ your good years are behind you. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise, Carver.”
The last sounded like a command. “I won’t,” Carver assured him. “When’s Sam Cusanelli’s funeral?”
Kearny shook his large head. Light from the window shot silver flecks through his hair. His clothes were neat and clean: loose-fitting jeans with creases ironed into them, a short-sleeved gray sport shirt with an out-of-style wide, wide collar. His shoes were black brogans, work shoes, but they were waxed shiny enough to gleam with reflected images. Carver wondered why he kept so well groomed when he was probably shut away in his room most of every day. “Sam was put in the ground this morning,” Kearny said. “Didn’t believe in long wakes for himself or anybody else. Told me he’d been grieving in this place long enough anyway.”
“He could have left here, couldn’t he?”
“He did leave here.”
“I mean some other way.”
Kearny snorted and looked angry. “Where would he have gone? It was his family in Saint Louis shoved him in here outta sight. That Desoto offered to put him up, but Sam chose not to be a burden. That’s us here at Sunhaven, Carver, don’t wanna burden the young and living.” He added ironically, “As if them and us was all one species.”
Carver was surprised Desoto had made such an offer. He lived in a small condo in Orlando. Red carpet, black furniture. A year’s salary in stereo equipment throbbing out the damned Latin music he seemed to crave listening to, sometimes in his bedroom with all the mirrors, sometimes with someone. No place for a seventy-six-year-old uncle. A lot of old people would think Desoto’s wardrobe alone was a sin.
Of course, Carver hadn’t known Uncle Sam and Desoto had. Maybe it would have worked. Casanova and Moses.
Kearny could read minds. “That Desoto, he’s a handsome young buck. Got him an eye for the women, right?”
“That’s him,” Carver said. An eye and anything else he can bring into play.
Kearny grinned and shook his head. “I envy him. He better get it while he can. Everything he can. Life’s here and then it’s gone. More precious than gold, but nobody knows it till it’s too late. Use every damn second of it, you hear me?”
The voice of command again. “Hear you,” Carver said. He sat down on the bed.
“How’d you get the bum leg?”
“I was a cop,” Carver said. “A holdup man shot me in the knee.”
“Desoto’s a cop in Orlando. That where you know him from?”
“Yeah. We been friends for years.”
“You still a cop?”
“In a way. I’m a private investigator.”
A gray eyebrow arched. “No shit? You investigatin’ Sam’s death?”
“Why? You think there’s something suspicious about it?”
“Ah, you’re a cop, all right. A question for a question.”
Carver knew he had to confide in someone inside Sunhaven. Kearny inspired a certain degree of trust. Kearny seemed mentally sharper than Birdie had intimated. Kearny had been Sam’s buddy. Kearny was the guy.
“How close were you to Sam Cusanelli?” Carver asked.
Kearny’s gruff facade slipped for a moment. The blue eyes misted and he turned away to stare out the window into the blasting sunlight. “Close enough I cried when he died.” The voice had risen an octave, with shrill panic in it. “I’d tell you I ain’t cried in a long time, but that ain’t so.” Kearny’s broad, square shoulders rose, then fell heavily as he blew out a breath. “Damned stupid, gettin’ to be friends with somebody in a place like this.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You will someday. Time’ll do it to you. When you’re young it buries your mistakes and works the rough edges off you. Then one day you find out it’s worn you down to within a shade of nothin’, and you can’t stand any more loss. You’ll learn what I mean.”
“I’ll ask again if there was anything suspicious about the way Sam Cusanelli died,” Carver said gently.
“And I’ll ask again if you’re investigatin’ his death.”
Carver jumped into deep water. “You might say I’m working for Sam. Desoto told me his uncle had hinted there was something wrong here at Sunhaven. He hired me to find out if Sam was right.”
Kearny turned away from the glaring sunlight and clumsily rubbed his eyes with his thick fingers. “A cop hiring a cop. Don’t make much sense.”
“The only way,” Carver said. “Desoto has no jurisdiction here on the coast, and his superiors might not like him making inquiries about his uncle’s death, since it isn’t even listed as suspicious. The Del Moray police wouldn’t like it, either, and Desoto doesn’t want them tromping through here and putting whoever might have something to hide on their guard. Main thing, though, he’s in Orlando and I’m here.”
Kearny wrestled the chair around so he was facing Carver, aiming a glance at the door to make sure it was closed. “Yeah, Sam told me what he thought.”
“Which was…?”
Kearny looked momentarily bewildered. “That something’s very wrong here.”
Carver was getting tired of this. “ What did he tell you was wrong?”
Fear slithered like live shadow across Kearny’s aged, stubborn features. “Twenty years ago I was a truck driver and a teamsters organizer. Break the arm of a man raised his fist against me. Back then I wasn’t scared of a thing, Carver. I am now.”
“Sam wasn’t afraid to tell Desoto.”
“And Sam’s dead.”
“You think that’s why? Because he was talking about Sunhaven?”
“I don’t know. People
die here all the time. That’s what we wait for here. I don’t know that talkin’ too much isn’t why Sam died.” He massaged his gnarled knuckles; he’d been a rough man, long ago. “A natural death, in his bed. Ain’t that what we all want?”
“Sooner or later, I guess.”
“Sam wanted it later. He wanted to live a lotta years more.”
“He’d want you to talk,” Carver said.
“Ever meet Sam?”
“Never had the privilege,” Carver admitted.
“Well, you don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. Sam wouldn’t give a shit if I talked or not. ‘I’m dead, Kearny old sport,’ Sam’d say, ‘so nothin’ matters to me. Ashes to ashes. Ever seen a cigar butt gave a damn about anything? Do what you fuckin’ want.’ ” Kearny smiled. “He’d mean it, too. Sam’d say what he meant, then he’d shut up. One of the reasons him and me got along,”
Carver sensed he’d come to the end of the conversation. He planted the tip of his cane and stood up. The bedsprings sang as his weight released them.
“Hey, I’d tell you what I know,” Kearny said, “only I don’t really know anything. Just got my suspicions. Like Sam.”
“Suspicions of what?”
Kearny shook his head in frustration. “Hell, I ain’t even sure! You believe that? Well, it’s true. I don’t know any more than Sam did.”
“Okay,” Carver said. “Do me a favor and don’t tell anyone why I was here.”
“You got it,” Kearny said. “Last thing I want is for Nurse Rule to learn I was jawin’ with a cop.”
“Who’s Nurse Rule?”
“Head nurse here. Damn near runs the whole place. Sam didn’t like her.”
“You don’t either, I guess.”
Kearny’s features hardened into a seamed mask; his eyes looked inward and back along the years that had brought him to where he was, the people he’d known. “Not many here’d say they like Nurse Rule.”