by John Lutz
It was definitely a spider.
“Fred?”
He made an effort and dragged his mind down from the ceiling. “At the office,” he said.
“Fred!” Alarm in her voice now.
“C’mon in here. Need some help.”
“What’s happened?”
“Big guy . . . slammed my head , . . warned me . . .”
And suddenly he wondered if the man had been demanding he stop asking questions about Marla? Or about Brant?
That was the question Carver needed answered. Not the one about the spider.
“Beth?”
“I’m getting you an ambulance, Fred.”
“No, just you . . .”
“. . . ambulance,” he heard her say again as the room dimmed, then became dark.
He should never have called her. She was always bitching at him for never wanting to see a doctor, as if a pill . . .
The floor pressing against his back spun and dropped faster and faster through the darkness, a wild carnival ride from long ago.
His pain, and his question, followed him into unconsciousness.
19
CARVER FLOATED UP from sleep slowly, listening to women’s voices far away. Light seemed to sift beneath his closed eyelids, and he couldn’t understand what the women were saying. Soft voices, distant murmurs.
He moved his head only slightly, but it exploded in pain.
“Lie still,” one of the women was saying, nearer to him now. Was hers the hand on his shoulder? When he tried to move again, a sharp pain grabbed at his side and his headache flared.
“Lie still, Fred.”
He opened his eyes and saw Beth standing over him. Above her head was a white metal smoke alarm, and a stainless steel pipe with a green curtain slung from it by plastic hooks. A faint medicinal scent struck him and he knew he was in a hospital room.
“The nurse has gone to get an ice pack for your head,” Beth told him.
“It doesn’t hurt if I lie very still,” Carver said.
Beth smiled. “Good.” There were tears in her eyes. “Lie still, then.”
Most of the room’s illumination came from indirect lighting around the perimeter of the ceiling. Vertical blinds on the window were angled so that only cracks of light penetrated and he couldn’t see outside. “Where am I?”
“You’re in Good Samaritan Hospital, Fred. After you called me, you were found in your office unconscious.”
“So you brought me here?”
She shook her head no. “Ambulance. To Emergency. By the time I got here they were well on their way to having you diagnosed.”
“And?”
“Concussion, and a cracked rib.”
“How bad?”
“Rib not bad, concussion not good.”
“Huge guy came into the office—”
“I know, Fred. You were babbling yesterday when you were half conscious.”
Oh-oh. “Yesterday?”
“Right. It’s”—she glanced at her watch—“two-fifteen now. That’s in the A.M., Fred. You remember anything else about the big guy, now you’re awake?”
“That’s an odd question,” Carver said, “considering I was half conscious when you heard me tell it the first time and wouldn’t remember what I said.”
She grinned. “Testing you, Fred. Your gray matter’s still working OK.”
He told her the story as he recalled it. He didn’t remember calling her on the phone but he took her word for it, hoping it wasn’t another of her tests.
A stout, redheaded nurse came in with an ice pack and laid it gently on Carver’s forehead.
“Better?” she asked.
“I don’t need it,” Carver said.
The nurse removed the ice pack and set it on the green plastic tray on the table by the bed. Also on the tray were a green plastic water pitcher sweating with condensation and a small green plastic glass. Next to the tray was a box of white tissues, one erupting from it like a freeze-frame explosion.
“It’s right here if you change your mind,” the nurse said. She came around the bed and pinned the cord with the call button to the sheet where he could reach it easily. “I’ll be nearby if you need me.” Whenever she moved, her rubber-soled shoes yipped softly on the slick floor.
Another woman entered the room, dressed not in white like the nurse but wearing a surgical gown the same green as the water pitcher and glass. She was a dark-haired, attractive woman about forty, average height but slender, with shrewd, assessing eyes, gaunt cheeks, and lips that pouted crookedly as if she were thinking so hard she was making a face. The name tag on her gown said she was Dr. Woosman.
“How do you feel?” Dr. Woosman asked.
“OK if I don’t move,” Carver said.
“That’s to be expected.” She stared at him as if he were a cut of meat she was considering serving guests. “We’ll keep you here and monitor you for a while, Mr. Carver.”
“I want to leave in the morning.”
Dr. Woosman looked at Beth. Beth shrugged.
“It’s possible,” Dr. Woosman said. “We’ll see.” She shuffled some papers and looked at something on the clipboard she was carrying. “Your lowest right rib has a hairline fracture, so you’ll have to wear a support for a while. For the concussion, you need to rest, be observed, and take what I prescribe for you to alleviate pain. Don’t try to do anything the least bit violent. No exertion. No swimming or any other kind of exercise.”
“I’ll keep him still,” Beth said. The redheaded nurse, thinking no one was looking at her, grinned.
“Your head will let you know if you try to overdo. But don’t push it.” Dr. Woosman turned to face Beth. “Check his eyes from time to time. If they become dilated or one pupil is slightly smaller than the other, get him back in here.” She trained her shrewd brown eyes again on Carver. “The cuts on your head are only superficial,” she said, “and there are no skull fractures. The damage was done by the violent motion, the series of instantaneous reversals of direction when your head was struck or bounced off the wall. Each time, when your head stopped, your brain didn’t. It was bouncing back and forth off the inside of your cranium with considerable impact. That resulted in concussions. They’re to be taken seriously.”
“Feels serious,” Carver said.
“What happened to your rib?”
“I was kicked.”
“You didn’t mention that yesterday.”
“Didn’t seem I was kicked hard enough for anything to break, but then I wasn’t thinking too clearly.”
“It’s a wonder you were thinking at all.” She lifted the ice pack from the tray, as if about to place it on his forehead as the nurse had done. He shook his head no. Ouch! She put the ice pack back on the tray. “I’ll look in on you again,” she told him. “Tough guy, all right,” she said to Beth. Then she and the redheaded nurse left the room. He could hear the nurse’s shoes yipping a long way down the hall.
“You two have been talking about me,” he said to Beth.
“Uh-huh. Quite a lot, actually.”
Carver saw her eyes dart toward the door, and he braced for pain and slowly moved his head so he could look in that direction. The wide oak door was swinging open slowly.
It stopped when it was open about two feet, and McGregor poked his head around it. When he saw Carver, he smiled. Not the kind of smile to cheer an invalid.
“I wanted to make sure I had the right room,” he said. “Didn’t want to walk in on a nurse doing it with a doctor. That kinda thing goes on all the time in hospitals, you know. It’s all those empty beds. And the drugs.” He came all the way into the room. His brown suit was wrinkled, the coat unbuttoned to reveal a stained white shirt and the edge of his leather shoulder-holster strap. He glanced at Beth but didn’t otherwise acknowledge her presence.
“You two have met,” Carver said.
“Sure,” McGregor said. “Roberto Gomez’s widow.”
Carver saw Beth stiffen. She didn’t like
to talk about her marriage to the late drug czar. It was a life she’d escaped with Carver’s help and would rather not revisit even in conversation. There were memories there she shared with no one. Not even Carver,
“So you got the shit beat out of you,” McGregor said. “There is some justice.”
“Did the hospital call and report I was here?” Carver asked.
McGregor nodded. “Violent crime and all that. Ordinarily I would’ve waited a while and sent a man over. Then, when I realized it was you got beat up, I thought I’d handle it myself. Especially since I was the one warned you to stay out of that business with Marla Cloy.” McGregor walked closer to the bed, picked up the ice pack, and pressed it to his forehead experimentally.
“Why don’t you swallow that?” Carver said. “I’d feel better.”
McGregor dropped the ice pack and smiled. The pink serpent of his tongue peeked out from the space between his yellow front teeth. Carver could feel the hostility emanating from Beth. McGregor didn’t seem to notice it, but Carver knew he was basking in it.
“Some people have mentioned you’d been around asking questions,” McGregor said.
“What people?”
“Woman named Willa Krull, for one. Says she thought you were a cop.”
“I didn’t tell her that,” Carver said. “She must have drawn her own conclusion.”
“Oh, no doubt,” McGregor said. “I made sure that was how it happened and you took care to cover your ass. If I ever nail you for impersonating a police officer it’ll be to the cross, and you’ll fucking die and rot up there.”
“Why did Willa Krull call the police?”
“She was checking on you. Didn’t think you smelled right. Then we got another call, this one from Marla Cloy herself.” McGregor’s tongue flicked again and his smile widened. “A dickhead like you is full of surprises. Here I was thinking you were working for her, and it turns out she never heard of you till you came around pestering her.”
“Well, that’s a conclusion you jumped to on your own. You and Willa Krull will do that kind of thing.”
“Turns out you’re actually working for Joel Brant. Working for the guy that’s stalking her! That’s fucking great! What are you doing, helping him set the Cloy bitch up for the kill?”
“I’m doing that like you’re working to prevent her from being killed.”
“Preventing ain’t my job. After they bleed and shit their last is when I move in.”
“A crime was committed against Fred Carver,” Beth pointed out. “Isn’t that what you’re here to investigate?”
McGregor glared at her. “Sure, officially.” He got out a notepad and pencil from an inside pocket of his wrinkled suit coat. ‘I’ll try to be objective here, do my job. Did you get a look at this guy I already regard as a friend?”
“Too good a look. He was big, taller than you, and maybe two-eighty. Muscular, Wore a leather vest, no shirt, dirty jeans, white sneakers, no socks. Had grease smudges on him like he might have been working on a car or some other kind of machinery. Pale blue eyes, filthy, smelled bad, looked as if he wasn’t too bright. If you had a big brother, this guy might be him.”
“I like him more and more.”
“He might have been driving a black minivan.”
“Why ‘might’?”
“I remember catching a glimpse of one pulling into the parking lot a few minutes before he came in. Didn’t think anything of it at the time.”
“A black minivan almost ran me off the road near the cottage,” Beth reminded Carver.
McGregor gave her a look to let her know she was on hold, then turned his attention back to Carver. “Did you get the license-plate number?” he asked.
“Being unconscious when it drove away, I didn’t see the plates,” Carver said.
“What about you, Mrs. Gomez? You saw this phantom van too. You catch the plate number?”
Beth shook her head no, staring angrily at McGregor, “Do you have any idea who the assailant is?”
“No.”
“Are you going to find out?”
“Of course! I’m the law. But I have to warn you not to be optimistic. I mean, the description could fit almost anyone.”
“You’re really some kind of cop.”
McGregor grinned and absently scratched his left armpit.
“He tries to get people mad at him,” Carver explained to Beth. “He feeds on it.”
“He’s gonna goddamn choke on it,” Beth said softly.
McGregor loved it. He threw back his head and laughed, stretching his mouth open wide. A thousand fillings were visible.
“This guy who beat you up,” McGregor said, when he was finally finished laughing, “was he white, Hispanic, or Afro-fucking-hyphenated-American?”
“I told you he had blue eyes and brown hair. He was white.”
McGregor bent lower so he could look directly into Beth’s eyes. “Well, you never know, the way the races are mingling these days.” He snapped his notepad closed and tucked it inside his suit coat, then straightened up and poked his pencil into his shirt pocket.
“You truly are disgusting,” Beth said.
This time McGregor ignored her. He ran a hand through his lank, greasy hair, then turned to face Carver directly, pointing a long forefinger at him. There was a lot of dirt under the nail.
“Listen, dickhead,” he said, “you stop fucking around with this Marla Cloy thing. Final warning.”
“It’s no concern of yours until she’s been killed,” Carver reminded him.
“I’m making you my concern. You step an inch outa line and you’ll regret it forever. If Marla Cloy gets killed, I’ll see that you and Brant take the fall. They say once you try black you’ll never go back, and you ignore my warning and I’ll see you’re put away and you never get back to Mrs. Gomez here.”
Then he spun on his heel and strode from the room.
Beth was fuming, pacing pantherlike with her fists clenched. “That asshole!”
McGregor poked his head back around the half-closed door. He was grinning wickedly, his tongue flicking like a serpent’s between his yellow teeth.
Then he was gone and the door closed.
“That man is some ugly piece of work!” Beth said.
“He’d be complimented if he heard you say so,” Carver said. “I told you, he feeds on other people’s rage. It’s his way of establishing human contact.”
Beth was incredulous. “You telling me I should feel sorry for him because he’s lonely?”
“No, no,” Carver said. “Once people get to know him better they really hate him. Nobody feels sorry for him.”
“He should be shot,” Beth said. “He definitely should be shot.”
Carver said, “Hand me that ice pack.”
20
USING THE SPARE CANE Beth had brought from the office, Carver had left the hospital at nine that morning. Dr. Woosman had been busy in surgery, so there hadn’t been much of an argument.
But within fifteen minutes after they’d reached the cottage and Carver was lying on the sofa with the drapes closed, he heard Beth call Dr. Woosman and discuss the situation with her. He couldn’t understand any of her words, only her mood and speech rhythms. Beth spoke for ten minutes in that intimate, conspiratorial tone that women could achieve within a short time after meeting one another, and that men achieved only after years of tentative trust—unless they were used-car salesmen.
When she was off the phone, Carver called Desoto and told him about the attack in his office.
“So you’re all right?” Desoto asked when Carver was finished. Concern was evident in his voice.
“I will be soon enough.”
“I don’t think you can expect much help from McGregor,” Desoto said.
“That’s why I called you. The giant who did a job on me is a bad memory for anyone who’s seen him.” Carver shifted position slightly and the elastic support around his ribs reminded him it was there. “Have any idea who he might be
?”
“No, amigo, but I’ll see if I can find out. Crime in Florida these days has a high turnover rate. High mortality rate, too. They come and go. Sometimes I wish they wore numbers outside of prison. You said the big man told you to stop asking questions about Marla Cloy?”
“Not exactly. That’s part of the problem. I’ve done some snooping around about Joel Brant, too. I don’t know if the big man was warning me about Marla or about Joel.”
“You might consider not asking any more questions about either of them. No,” Desoto corrected himself quickly, as if he’d given it second thought and changed his mind, “that won’t happen. You’re probably even more obsessive now. If they had twins, you’d start asking about them, too.”
“I feel more concussive than obsessive,” Carver said.
“All the more reason you should lie low and rest.”
“Will you let me know as soon as you find out anything on my oversized friend?”
“Of course. Is Beth watching over you now?”
“Afraid so. Like a nurse from the CIA.”
“Good. You need somebody. Do as she says, amigo. Take your medicine like a big boy and try not to make an ugly face.”
Even as he spoke, Beth walked in from the kitchen area with a glass of water and the vial of pills Dr. Woosman had prescribed and no doubt reminded her about over the phone.
“I don’t have much choice,” Carver said, and hung up.
“If the subject of your conversation’s what I think it is,” Beth said, “you’ve got no choice at all.”
She watched while he swallowed the pill and downed the entire glass of water, then she switched on a lamp and leaned over him. “Now, let’s take a look at those eyes, see if the pupils are the same size or if one’s round and one’s square.”
He looked directly at her without blinking and thought about crossing his eyes to alarm her, then decided he’d better not if he didn’t want more medical input from Dr. Woosman.
At one o’clock, after Carver had felt well enough to sit up and managed to eat a light lunch, the phone rang.