Hot

by John Lutz

  “Okay,” the man finally said, after more than a sec, smiling and walking over to the break in the fancy, tarnished brasswork.

  “What room are the Evermans in?” Carver asked. “Frank and Selma.”

  The desk man gave him what might have been a surprised look, then raked his fingers through his impossibly black hair and consulted the registration book. “Five-oh-five. If you wanna call upstairs, house phones are over there.” He motioned to a lineup of dreary gray phones mounted on the wall near the desk. “Just punch out the room number.”

  Carver used one of the phones and waited through ten rings on the other end of the connection. He hung up, stood for a few seconds, then decided since he’d driven all this way, he’d go upstairs and see if he could rouse the Evermans by knocking on their door, just in case they were late sleepers. If they asked who was there, he could yell in that he was from room service, come to give them their complimentary champagne-and-omelet breakfast. They might believe that.

  The desk man was wrestling with paperwork again as Carver limped to the elevators.

  The floor indicator’s brass dial above the middle elevator lurched numeral to numeral from 12 to 1. When the doors opened, a bedraggled woman with a preschool child that might have been either sex hurried out and through the lobby. Carver stepped in and watched them push out into the bright day as the elevator doors glided closed.

  The fifth-floor hall was warm and smelled musty, and the white paint on the gently rounded walls was mildewed in places and beginning to flake. Every ten feet or so tarnished brass chandeliers cast dim pools of light. Carver had to be careful not to let his cane snag in a loose thread on the worn and faded blue carpet that should have been replaced a decade ago.

  He knocked softly on the door to 505, then loudly with the crook of his cane. Tried the knob to make sure the door was locked. Knocked again. The door to 508 across the hall opened and an old woman with wild white hair glared silently out at him, but no one came to 505’s door. Carver smiled at the woman and said he was sorry if he woke her. She smiled back and closed the door gently, as if she didn’t want to wake him.

  So maybe the Evermans had gone out for breakfast or their morning walk. He decided to drive to the hospital and see Henry, then return later in the morning and try again to catch one or both of them in their room.

  He took the elevator back down to the lobby, thought better of leaving a message for the Evermans, and limped outside past the old men in the armchairs. One of them was reading a crinkled Miami Herald now. It looked like yesterday’s edition.

  When Carver arrived at Faith United Hospital, he was afraid visiting hours might not have begun, so he acted as if he belonged and limped purposefully past the nurses’ station without stopping and talking to anyone.

  The door to Henry’s room was closed. He worked its large push-handle, like something on a theater exit, and eased it open so he could peek inside. He didn’t want to embarrass Henry by charging in when the nurse was removing the bedpan.

  But the bed was empty.

  Carver felt a cold apprehension.

  “You looking for Mr. Tiller?”

  He turned and was staring at the inquisitive features of a nurse approximately his size. The name tag on her white uniform said she was Pru, short for “Prudence,” Carver assumed. He said he was looking for Henry, then added, “He isn’t. . . ?”

  “No,” the nurse said, with something like a smile, “he’s become comatose and was taken to ICU this morning.”

  “ICU?”

  “The intensive care unit.”

  “But how’d that happen? He was doing so well.”

  “Are you family?”

  “A friend. Can I see Henry?”

  “You can look in on him. I’m afraid he won’t know you’re there.” She shot a glance at a large round wall clock with oversized black numerals that looked as if they belonged on an antique watch. “Listen, the doctors are due to make their rounds soon. Why don’t you wait in Intensive Care and I’ll have Dr. Montrose talk to you.”

  “All right,” Carver said, “where’s —”

  She interrupted him and gave directions to Intensive Care. Pru wasn’t a woman with time to spare.

  “Doctor’ll see you soon as he can,” she assured him, then strode down the hall and disappeared into one of the other rooms.

  It was permissible only to view Henry through an observation window. His eyes were closed and he was pale. He looked untroubled and oddly younger, as if his mind had been wiped clean, worries and all. One of his fingers twitched regularly, but that was the only movement in the small green room. There was what looked like a feeding tube running into one of his nostrils, an intravenous tube leading to a needle in the back of his right hand, and another tube, probably a drain, that disappeared beneath the white sheet midway up his still body.

  Carver didn’t like the way Henry looked. Not at all. He went back to the ICU waiting room and watched some daytime TV until a harried-looking man in white trudged in and asked for him. Dr. Montrose.

  “Your friend’s latest CAT scan and MRI revealed extreme trauma to the right temporal region of the brain,” the doctor explained. He reeked of some chemical that made Carver dizzy.

  “I didn’t think he hit his head,” Carver said.

  “He wouldn’t necessarily have had to. Hemorrhaging might have occurred due to extreme and sudden movement of the brain inside the cranium. An accident like Mr. Tiller’s could cause that to happen. The impact would be that of the brain’s outer membrane contacting the inside of the skull. It’s similar to what happens to a boxer when he’s punched hard enough.”

  “He seemed okay yesterday when I talked to him on the phone.”

  “He probably felt relatively well, too. It took time for the pressure and resultant impairment to develop. Early this morning his left side was partially paralyzed. Then he lost consciousness and hasn’t yet regained it.” Dr. Montrose raised his shoulders beneath his white jacket. “Someone his age, it’s even possible this is a coincidental stroke and had nothing to do with the accident.”

  Carver knew what Henry would think of that possibility. “How likely is that?” he asked.

  “Not very,” the doctor admitted, “but I’ve seen it happen. Especially with patients Mr. Tiller’s age.”

  “So what’s the prognosis?”

  “I’m afraid we’re in a wait-and-see mode, Mr. Carver. But I have to be honest with you, he might never regain consciousness. Are you family? We might need you to sign some forms.”

  “Just a friend,” Carver said. “I don’t think he has any family left.”

  “I see.” Dr. Montrose looked thoughtful. “Would you like us to call if anything else develops?”

  Carver said he would. He thanked Dr. Montrose, then left his name and the phone number of Henry’s cottage with Pru at the nurses’ station.

  Then he went downstairs, sat in the quiet coolness of the hospital cafeteria, and had a salad and a dry roast beef sandwich for lunch. He was sure Henry had been run down deliberately. To think otherwise would be stretching anyone’s idea of the limits of coincidence.

  The game might be about to change. If Henry died, Carver would be investigating a murder.

  Of course, if Henry died, Carver would no longer have a client. Questions could be left unanswered. There’d be nothing compelling him to continue his investigation.

  Like hell there wouldn’t.

  He left his sandwich half eaten and drove back to the Blue Flamingo, fighting the heat and frustration of sitting still every few blocks in the sluggish Miami traffic. Maybe Frank and Selma Everman had returned.

  Maybe something about this Miami trip would go right.

  14

  THIS TIME CARVER didn’t phone upstairs first. He limped across the Blue Flamingo’s lobby and stepped into an elevator waiting with open doors. The lobby had been deserted except for an ancient black man napping or dead in one of the armchairs. The desk clerk was facing the other way,
apparently checking cubbyholes for room keys or messages while he talked on the phone.

  Carver’s luck was beginning to change. On the fourth floor the elevator stopped and a skinny little man with haunted dark eyes and thin black hair pasted severely sideways over a bald spot got in. Entering the elevator with him was the smell of perfumy cologne or deodorant and stale sweat, nauseating in such close quarters. The man was holding a gray plastic ice container with a blue flamingo decal on it. It was full of ice, which apparently was available on the hotel’s even-numbered floors. The man glanced at the control panel, saw that the only glowing button said 5, and simply stood with his head tilted back, staring solemnly at a point above where the elevator doors met. He’d never acknowledged Carver’s presence and might as well have been alone. Elevator etiquette.

  On the fifth floor Carver hung back and let the man with the ice leave the elevator first. When the man turned left, Carver held the Open button in so the elevator would stay as it was, and waited a few seconds before stepping out into the hall. He stood leaning on his cane and bowed his head, as if trying to remember something, playing it casual.

  The man with the ice bucket had paused and knocked on a door. Now he was shifting his weight from side to side, like a worn-down nervous boxer who has no punch left and is afraid of getting hurt. As the door opened and he edged inside, he looked back at Carver with the hostile’ hope of the poor and dispossessed.

  Only when Carver approached the door and saw the room number was he sure it was 505; the man with the ice must be Frank Everman, and probably his wife, Selma, had let him into the room. There was music playing in 505.

  Carver rapped firmly three times on the door with his cane. Everman had seen him and knew he’d been seen, so Carver wasn’t going to go away. No use pretending the room was unoccupied; there was little choice for Everman but to open the door to nasty and persistent reality.

  Which he did.

  Everman was no longer holding the ice bucket, and was wiping his damp hands on his blue polyester pants. He was about fifty, but the deeply etched map of pain that was his face said it had been a tough half-century. The top two buttons of his white shirt were unfastened to reveal what appeared to be a rawhide necklace disappearing among his gray chest hairs. He was short as well as skinny, and he looked up at Carver as if he’d just done something wrong and been struck a blow in anger. There was little hope in his eyes now, and only a glimmer of hostility. He wasn’t sure about Carver, despite the cane. He’d been around enough to recognize a certain dangerous kind of man.

  Behind him, standing in the middle of the room and peering over his shoulder, was a tall but stooped woman with gray hair, badly fitted dentures, and a bewildered expression. She was wearing baggy green slacks and a yellow blouse with a stain on it that looked like coffee. There was a robust polka playing in the room, a slightly cracked record, heavy on the tuba and accordion.

  Carver said, “Mr. and Mrs. Everman?”

  “Yeah?” said the man, making it a question.

  “I’m from Key Montaigne,” Carver said, raising his voice so he’d be understood over the music. “I’m here to talk about your son.” Oompah! said the tuba, vibrating the floor.

  A blank look came over the face of the man. Fear crept into the woman’s woeful blue eyes.

  “Our son’s dead,” Frank Everman said.

  “I know. That’s why I’m here. To ask you a few questions. I don’t like it, but that’s my job. Can I come in?” Oompah! Oompah!

  Everman didn’t know how to say no. Carver inserted his cane into the room first, as if it were part of him that was already inside, then limped through the door and past Everman, who made a sort of acquiescent grunt as he shuffled aside. The hall had been hotter than the lobby, and the room was hotter than the hall. It was actually a small suite. Carver could see beyond the overstuffed old sofa that matched the lobby furniture and into a room where the corner of an unmade bed was visible. Alongside the sofa was a fancy brass floor lamp with a bent yellow shade. A cheap reproduction of a Frederic Remington painting, a weary Indian on a wearier horse, hung on one wall. There was a bookshelf on another wall, but it held stacks of 33 rpm records instead of books, and a brown stereo turntable with lots of controls but only one knob, and that one cracked in half. The woman walked over and used the cracked knob to switch off the turntable, then lifted the stylus and carefully set it aside in its bracket. The room was astoundingly quiet in the absence of polka. It smelled of stale tobacco smoke and strong insecticide, now that Frank Everman was out of range with his cologne.

  The woman must have seen Carver’s nose twitch. “I just killed the biggest roach you ever seen,” she said, and crooked her forefinger over her cupped hand as if depressing the button on an aerosol can.

  “I’m glad you nailed him before I got here,” Carver said, smiling. Selma might be easier to deal with than the whipped loser Frank.

  Frank tried to take charge, backpedaling quickly to the center of the room so he was standing next to his wife and facing Carver. “So whad’ya need to know about Lenny? I thought we told you guys everything possible.”

  “Probably you did,” Carver said sympathetically, “but we need to hear it again to verify it.” He looked over at Selma. “Losing your son as you have, you must understand we have to learn everything possible so we can try to prevent other kids from leaving home and ending up the same way. The streets are the worst kind of life for a minor.”

  “For anybody,” Selma said.

  “It was the drugs,” Frank said. “Goddamn drugs and the scum that sells ’em is what killed our boy.” He clenched his fists and looked fierce enough to tackle any drug dealer smaller than five feet tall.

  Selma bowed her head. “Time to time, the way God works His will is hard to bear up under.” She’d produced a wadded white Kleenex from somewhere and used it to dab at her eyes. Tiny pills of tissue appeared on her blouse to join the coffee stain.

  “Did Leonard have a history of drug use?” Carver asked.

  Frank looked puzzled, then said, “We told you fellas he did. His fuckin’ peers got him using the stuff when he was no more’n eleven years old. Hell, we was surprised to find out. Exactly the kinda unsuspecting parents you read about. Lenny was hard to roust outa bed some mornings, but other’n that we seen no sign whatsoever he had a problem.”

  “What kinda drugs he use?” Carver asked.

  “You name it and Lenny probably tried it in his young life. Toward the last he was smoking crack cocaine, is what I gather. But we don’t know for sure except for what they found in his blood test after he . . . was gone. Once he got past twelve years old, Lenny never let us in on what was happening in his life. Lousy peers took over.”

  “That’s not exactly true,” Selma interjected, defending her dead son and her competence as a mother. “It was just the drug part of his life he kept secret.”

  Frank snorted. “My feeling is drugs were his whole life. Him and the other poor fucked-up kids that caught a habit. Not to mention the bastards that deal the stuff. You lie down with them dogs, you’re gonna get up with plenty of fleas. Then one day you don’t get up at all.”

  “That’s what usually happens,” Carver agreed. “And Leonard had run away before, right?”

  “Just temporarily,” Selma said.

  “Till the police brung him back,” Frank told Carver, ignoring Selma. “Once when he was ten, and another time when he was eleven.”

  “How long was he gone those times?”

  “When he was ten he was away less’n a week. Cops found him way the fuck up in Haines City. Time he was eleven, he was gone two months and some social worker found him right here in Miami, selling artificial flowers at a busy intersection.”

  Two months, Carver thought. That was a long time for an eleven-year-old boy to be on the streets and not fall prey to the perverts or the dope dealers. Time enough to become savvy and cynical and lost to yourself as well as the people who might be searching for you. It
would be so easy for us to alleviate our social problems by making sure every kid in the country had education, medication, and some sort of basic physical and emotional nourishment. But Carver knew it wasn’t going to happen. Fifteen or twenty years would have to pass in order to see the results, and political horizons extended only to the next election.

  Selma said, “Looka here, Mister . . . ?”

  “Carver.”

  “Mr. Carver. We’re living in this hotel on welfare ‘cause of Frank’s disability.”

  “Got injured in an industrial accident,” Frank said, with what sounded like pride.

  “What I’m saying,” Selma went on, “is that we don’t wanna make no waves and bring the case worker down on us for neglecting Leonard—which we definitely did not do. But folks on the dole don’t wanna call attention to themselves, you know?”

  Carver said he understood. He looked hard at her. “You really think it’s plausible your runaway son went swimming in the ocean and drowned under the influence of cocaine?”

  “Ain’t that what happened?” Frank asked.

  Selma said, “Leonard was a good swimmer.”

  “Not juiced up on coke, he wasn’t,” Frank said bitterly. He screwed up his face and trained his injured eyes on Carver. “To answer your question, yeah, it fits the way Lenny was, the way he was living at the time, that he mighta done something like that. Anyway, I guess the proof’s in the pudding, ain’t it?”

  “Afraid it is,” Carver said.

  Selma moved her pale and flabby arm in a tired gesture toward the ice bucket. A bottle of bourbon and a plastic liter bottle of Coca-Cola Classic sat beside it on an old elliptical mahogany coffee table that looked like a surfboard on legs. “You wanna drink, Mr. Carver?”