by John Lutz
Before leaving the drugstore, Carver bought a pack of Swisher Sweet cigars at the front counter, where a couple of teenage girls were studiously taking some kind of inventory of Kodak film. One of the girls had a phone tucked between her jaw and shoulder. She giggled. He wondered if she might be talking with the girl back in the phone booth.
He smoked a cigar on the drive out to Sunhaven.
Birdie hadn’t made it in to work yet. The attendant with the Errol Flynn mustache was behind the reception counter. There were bags under his eyes today and he looked haggard, maybe hung over; ten years older than he’d appeared last time Carver had seen him. No more leading-man roles. Carver told him he wanted to see Dr. Pauly.
“Not in today,” the attendant said. He tapped a pencil point rapidly on the desk, as if impatiently wishing he were someplace else. Carver didn’t blame him.
Across the lounge, the old checker player with the hawk nose was locked in a serious game with an obese old guy Carver hadn’t seen before. The game was down to kings and hatchet face had four black ones to his opponent’s two red. The outcome was easy to predict but the fat guy, a scrapper, kept fighting, moving toward opposite corners of the board to engage in a holding action.
“Maybe they’ll let you sit and watch the next game,” the attendant said to Carver. Might have been sarcastic, but Carver wasn’t sure.
“You expect Dr. Pauly in later today?”
The attendant said, “Expected him here by now. He was due early this morning.”
“He call in?”
“No, sir. Not while I been on the desk. Wanna leave your phone number, I can tell him you were by.”
The hatchet-faced player shouted “Gotcha!”
Carver said, “No, nevermind,” and went out.
Nurse Rule, vigilant as ever, was standing with her arms crossed and her buttocks pressed against a front fender of the Olds. The sun’s glare made her broad features appear harsh and vaguely mongoloid, but the combative glint in her eye would have been there even in shadow.
When Carver got close to her he stopped and leaned with both hands on his cane. He didn’t say anything. The drone of insects was loud from the grass beyond the lot.
She said, “May I ask your business here?”
“I suppose so; you’re in charge.”
“I’m surprised to hear you acknowledge that, Mr. Carver. Doesn’t answer my question, though, does it?”
“I came to see Dr. Pauly. He isn’t here.”
She stared at him, still with her arms crossed, her blocky body motionless as a rock and firmly rooted as an oak. “Why’d you want to see him?”
“Can’t tell you,” Carver said. “Patient-client stuff.”
“You’re sure you didn’t come here to see Amos Burrel? Or Birdie Reeves?”
“I told you—Dr. Pauly. Know where he is?”
“No. He didn’t phone.”
“Maybe he’s with Raffy Ortiz.”
She shifted away from the car. Lowered her arms to her sides. She was bulky but balanced, ready to move in any direction. “Why do you say that?”
“They know each other, that’s all. How come you object to my talking to Birdie, if there’s nothing outside the rules going on here?”
“It’s for Birdie’s sake.”
“I got a good idea why you might say that. But I don’t believe it.”
“She’s an innocent young girl.”
“One you were all over until you got warned away.”
Nurse Rule stood straighter and inhaled. Stomach in, chest out, like a soldier at attention. A speech that would have made Oliver North proud was coming, Carver could sense it. “I’m not ashamed of my sexuality, Mr. Carver. When I found out Birdie was fifteen instead of eighteen I backed off. My private life’s no business of a shit-disturber like you, but for what it’s worth, I don’t molest children. And I don’t like seeing them taken advantage of, which is why I object to you and Raffy Ortiz sniffing around Birdie.”
“Raffy Ortiz bothered Birdie?”
“He did. I had a talk with him in his car and warned him about it. Warned him sternly. Since then he’s stayed away from her when he’s come to see Dr. Pauly. You damn well better follow suit.”
Carver remembered the blond woman, Melanie Star, in the Polaroid shots. The adhesive tape over her mouth, some of it over her hair. The drugged, gloomy expression in her eyes. He didn’t want to think about what Raffy might have had in mind for Birdie.
Nurse Rule said, “I mean it. Stay clear of Birdie. Don’t see her here or anyplace else.”
“What if I told you I was trying to help her?”
“I wouldn’t believe you. I can tell the type of man you are. Like the rest of your kind, like Raffy Ortiz. You think with your crotch; it’s a male trait.”
Carver said, “Well, sometimes it works out as if I did.”
“I’ll just bet.” She shifted her weight in a way that conveyed menace. “Time to leave, Mr. Carver.”
He smiled, squinting into the bright sun, and nodded. Then he limped toward the car door. No sense arguing with Nurse Rule while she was protecting her territory. And God it was miserably hot, standing here in the parking lot! Though she didn’t seem to be in any discomfort. She wasn’t even perspiring.
As he was lowering himself in behind the steering wheel, Nurse Rule, seeming a little surprised by his sudden compliance, walked around to stand near him and said, “What do you know about Raffy Ortiz?”
“More than you wish I knew.” Carver closed the door. He twisted the key to start the engine. Tapped the accelerator so the car roared and vibrated with throaty power. Nurse Rule glared at him and didn’t move.
She watched him back the Olds out of its parking slot and drive away, the expression on her face unchanging.
31
CARVER DROVE TO A restaurant on Marina Drive, where he sat at the bar and had a dozen oysters on the half shell with lemon while he sipped beer. His kind of lunch.
Outside the wide window the bright white hulls of pleasure boats belonging to Del Moray’s wealthier citizens bobbed gently at their moorings in unison, as if doing a slow and lazy dance. The brilliant sunlight seemed to purify the air and gave objects a dazzling clarity. People in expensive sportswear and flashing gold and silver jewelry wandered along the dock. Lots of stomach paunches and white shoes, white belts, and white hair. In the past few years Del Moray had become essentially a rich retirement community. It was what enabled Edwina to make so much money turning real estate. It was what had raised the median age of the small city on the coast well up into the bracket of graying hair and growing waistlines. And what made “retirement homes” like Sunhaven such lucrative operations.
After lunch Carver phoned Sunhaven and was told by Birdie that Dr. Pauly hadn’t arrived to make his regular rounds, and that he still hadn’t phoned in. The restaurant phone was in the open, at the far end of the bar, and the mingled sounds of conversation, ice clinking in glasses, and occasional loud laughter made hearing Birdie’s small voice difficult. It was like listening to someone from another, distant universe.
“Everything okay there?” Carver asked.
“Just fine,” Birdie said.
“I mean, about the toothache.”
“That? It’ll be okay.”
“You sure?”
“Sure.”
She seemed hesitant to talk, and Carver didn’t feel like forcing her.
He told her good-bye and hung up, then left the restaurant to drive to Pauly’s house on Verde Avenue. It was good to get away from the crowded bar and inane cocktail chatter.
The sun hadn’t let up at all. He could still taste the oysters and beer and felt a little queasy in the heat.
Verde was an old street, one of the first in Del Moray, and was lined with tall, gracefully bent palm trees and spreading sugar oaks. The houses were of varying size and architecture and set on large lots. Dr. Pauly’s little house with its window flower boxes looked cool recessed in the deep shade o
f its overgrown yard.
As soon as Carver stepped up on the low concrete porch he saw that the door was open a crack.
He sounded the door chimes, but no one came. Birds were nattering like crazy in the backyard. An orange-striped cat emerged from beneath an azalea bush, gazed with disinterest at Carver, then slunk in the direction of the birds like a minitiger on the hunt.
Because the foliage was so thick, Carver wasn’t very noticeable from the street. That was fine with him. He left the porch, found some firm ground with the tip of his cane, and limped to the attached one-car garage. It had a wooden overhead door with a line of small windows in it. He moved close, raised himself up slightly with a push on the cane, and peered inside.
Sunlight slanted into the garage at a sharp angle, swirling with dust and fractioning the dimness. He saw a power lawnmower with a drooping grass bag attached, metal shelves against the back wall that seemed to contain assorted junk and lawn-care tools. A few loose, unfinished boards and what looked like a length of pipe were laid crookedly overhead on the rafters. A paint-spattered aluminum extension ladder rested horizontally on hooks along the side wall away from the house. No car.
Maybe Dr. Pauly, realizing he’d overslept, had left the house in such a hurry he’d neglected to close the front door all the way. Hustling healer, late for his rounds. Could have happened.
Carver made his way back onto the porch, pushed the door all the way open, and walked inside. Called, “Dr. Pauly? Man losing blood here!”
Silence and heat.
He shut the door behind him and noticed that a mahogany plant stand near the door had been knocked over. An orange ceramic pot lay shattered and dirt had been scattered to expose the roots of a green viny plant. Someone, in their haste to get out of the house, might have struck the plant stand and kept on going.
Carver moved farther inside. He looked around the living room but saw no disorder. As he went down the short hall, he glanced into the kitchen. There was a plastic milk jug and a half-full glass of milk on the sink counter. Next to them, on a white paper towel, lay a wheat-bread sandwich with only a couple of bites out of it. Someone had been interrupted during their snack, or had simply lost all appetite. Shaken by startling news? A phone call? A visitor?
The bedroom was still a mess. Clothes and shoes were scattered on the floor and the bed was unmade, the sheets twisted. The room smelled of stale sweat and desperate emotion. As if it were the scene of recent sexual coupling.
Carver moved carefully, noting the areas of the room blocked from his sight by furniture. Slowly he shifted position until he could see the floor on the other side of the disheveled bed, the space in the corner beside the tall chest of drawers. Everywhere that might shield a body from view.
Satisfied that he’d covered the bedroom itself, he limped to the closet and slid open its tall doors on their growling rollers.
There were gaps where Dr. Pauly’s clothes were draped on wire hangers from the smooth metal closet rod. Half a dozen hangers lay tangled on the floor.
Among the boxes and folded clothes stacked on the closet’s crowded shelf was a space large enough to have accommodated a suitcase.
Carver ran his hand over the shelf there and examined his fingertips. No dust.
He went into the bathroom. A half-used, dry bar of soap lay on the tile floor. None of the towels on the racks was damp. No toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving lotion, or deodorant. No razor, either blade or electric. Not even a comb.
Dr. Pauly had packed and left home in a hurry, not worrying about leaving a mess behind.
Again Carver realized how warm the little house was. Pauly had either gone this morning before the sun had gotten brutal, or been out of the house at least long enough for the air-conditioned atmosphere to have been displaced by heat.
Carver limped into the kitchen and touched the backs of his knuckles to the half-full glass of milk. It was room-temperature. So was the milk in the plastic jug. A tiny brown roach scurried out of sight beneath the lunchmeat-on-wheat sandwich on the paper towel.
There was a wall phone in the kitchen, a beige push-button job with a long, coiled cord that touched the floor. Carver used it to call McGregor.
“Time to share,” he said when McGregor had come to the phone. “I’ve got some information for you.”
McGregor said, “My ear’s all tuned.”
“Dr. Dan Pauly’s disappeared. Didn’t show up at Sunhaven to make his rounds this morning. I went by his house to talk to him; front door was open and it looks like he packed and left in a hurry.”
“Packed, did you say?”
“I said. I’d also say he’s been gone for a while. Several hours at least.”
“I’ll be damned. Your detective training tell you that, or what?”
“My police training. Same training you got, only I didn’t forget mine.”
“That where you’re calling from, Pauly’s house over on Verde?”
“I’m standing in his kitchen.”
“Some more breaking and entering, huh?”
“I told you the front door was open.”
“Got any idea where the good doctor ran off to, Carver? Could it have been some humanitarian mission came up suddenly? Maybe a guy having a heart attack? Or some fruit just realized he got AIDS?”
“No idea,” Carver said.
“Well, I think I might know something about it. ’Cause Raffy Ortiz has disappeared, too.”
Uh-oh! “Disappeared how?”
“I had a man watching him, and it seems Raffy knew about it but didn’t let on till he was ready. Early this morning he did some fancy maneuvering and breaking of the speed limit in that white caddie of his and shook my guy. Raffy’s on the loose now and unsupervised. Running away, it looks like. Same as Dr. Pauly.”
“You saying Raffy and Dr. Pauly were partners and decided it was time to leave the scene?”
“Looks that way. They been partners before. Hey, you know how I found that out? I know about that plea-bargain deal in Miami. We weren’t gonna talk about that one, though, were we, fuckhead?”
“Sure we were. You didn’t give me a chance,”
“Yeah, I shouldn’t butt in the way I do. With you just bubbling over to spill everything to me. My bad manners cause me to miss a lot in life. Tell you, Carver, you keep your ass right where it is, and I’m coming over to look at whatever it is you seen at Pauly’s. Don’t dick around with the evidence or you got trouble.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Why’s a loose cannon like you do anything? You’re just a bit smarter than a parking meter, I guess.”
“I’ll be here,” Carver said. “Help myself to a beer from the fridge while I wait.”
“Only one,” McGregor said. “You ain’t gonna make sense when I get there, I’m sure, but I’d like it to be in your usual way.”
He plonked down the receiver. Unnecessarily hard, Carver thought.
Ah, the doctor drank Budweiser.
McGregor was accompanied by the uniform who’d been at Edwina’s, but he left him sitting in the patrol car parked out on Verde and entered Dr. Pauly’s house alone. He made the place seem even smaller.
He nodded to Carver, who was sitting on the sofa holding a beer can. Then he glanced around. “High-rent neighborhood, but not such a hot-shit house for a medical doctor, hey?”
“He probably still has an expensive habit. Even doctors have to pay something for drugs. Pauly’s not exactly at the apex of the medical profession, and who knows how much he’s been paying Raffy Ortiz, if Raffy’s been bleeding him for the past couple years?”
“That’s a point. Guy with three nuts, he’d probably be worse’n the IRS. But maybe not.”
McGregor took his time. He walked around, looked things over, touched things, came to the same conclusions Carver had reached.
“He’s been gone for a while,” McGregor said. “No telling for sure how long.”
“He’s with Raffy, like you said.”
&nb
sp; “Maybe. Or maybe he ran off on a Caribbean cruise with some hot nurse he knows. Doctors do that kinda thing, just like anybody else.”
“He left in a hurry,” Carver reminded McGregor.
“Coulda been one fine nurse. Didn’t wanna be kept waiting to spread her legs on board ship.” He squinted from up high, down at the beer can in Carver’s fist. “There more of that stuff on ice?”
Carver said there was.
He watched McGregor stride into the kitchen, then return with his own can of beer.
McGregor wiped his big hand on his pants, leaving a damp spot from the condensation on the can. He tapped the side of the can with a fingernail. “Doc wouldn’t care if he was here, I’m sure, seeing it’s such a hot day.”
He sectioned his long body down into a chair opposite Carver and sighed. His cheap cologne was hard to endure in the warm house. He said, “Tell me what you been doing this morning.”
Carver told him, but he didn’t mention the list Birdie had given him. Only said he’d driven to her apartment and talked to her before she’d left to go to the dentist.
“You didn’t go by her place to give her your own kinda root-canal treatment, did you?” McGregor asked. “There ain’t nothing wrong with that undernourished kinda cunt; put her on your prick and spin her like a propeller, hey?”
Carver said, “You’re sick as Raffy Ortiz.”
McGregor grinned, showing the pink tip of his tongue between his widely spaced front teeth, “Sure, and you’re as upright a guy as Jerry Falwell. I mean, girl young enough to be your daughter and all that. Is that what you’re gonna tell me? Don’t mean diddly, Carver. Birdie’s not that young. She was probably popped years ago. You could have good sex with her and then lay around and talk about the new Whitney Houston album.”
“Maybe you’re even more messed up in the head than Raffy.”
“You don’t like Whitney Houston? Fine black stuff. Like to put it to her and listen to her sing her best.”
“You know my meaning.”
“Yeah. I know something else, too. Your cock’s got no conscience. Not really. You’re no exception to the human race.”
“I am to the human race the way you see it.”