Kiss

11

When Carver left Sunhaven he drove south on Route 1, then west on the Bee Line Expressway toward Orlando. He left the convertible’s top up to block the sun, but all the windows were cranked down and the wind whirled and roared like a hurricane in the speeding car, whistling through the cracked windshield, slapping taut canvas against the steel struts above Carver’s head. Mach one! Mach two!

At much slower speed, he maneuvered the Olds through downtown traffic in Orlando to the tan brick and pale stone Municipal Justice Building on Hughey. He parked in the side lot, near a row of dusty tan patrol cars.

When he went inside to talk to Desoto, he was told by a desk sergeant named Markus that the lieutenant was at lunch. Carver knew Markus slightly from his time on the force, and Markus wanted to pass the time of day with cop talk, but Carver had things to do and got out of there as soon as he could.

He limped from the building and made his way toward Orange Avenue, where he was sure he’d find Desoto in Rhonda’s Restaurant. Heat rose in waves from the city’s baked concrete, which never cooled completely this time of year, except in the early morning hours or after late rains.

It wasn’t much of a walk, even for a man with a cane, but by the time Carver pushed open the door to Rhonda’s and basked in the rush of cool inside air he was soaked with sweat and felt slightly light-headed. He wondered how people had managed to live in Florida before air conditioning. And why. Heat, alligators, and mosquitoes weren’t much by way of attractions. Standing just inside the door, he back-wristed perspiration from his forehead, then looked around in the dimness.

Rhonda’s specialized in spicy Italian food, a weakness Carver and Desoto shared. The restaurant had a small bar off to the left and about twenty white-clothed, round tables arranged along the walls. There were half a dozen more tables on a raised area accessible by three wide, carpeted steps. The lunch crowd was still evident; there were only three or four empty tables.

As the headwaiter was angling over to seat him, Carver heard Desoto say, “Your aging eyes going bad as your leg, amigo?”

Desoto was sitting alone at a table not five feet from Carver. He’d finished eating; dishes were spread out in front of him, pushed back on the table, and he was enjoying a stein of beer. It was dark beer with no head on it.

Carver waved the waiter away and sat down opposite Desoto. He decided not to acknowledge that crack about his eyes. Sure, it wasn’t really so dim in Rhonda’s, but he’d trudged all the way up here from Hughey in bright sunlight. Because it took a while for his eyes to adjust didn’t mean they were going bad, that he was getting old. But it occurred to him that everyone was getting old. Nobody got off the treadmill. And the treadmill never stopped.

“Had lunch?” Desoto asked.

“Don’t want any. Too hot to have an appetite.”

“It is hot out there. You’ve worked yourself into a lather pursuing my case, eh?”

“Exactly.”

A waitress popped out of nowhere, a middle-aged woman with a dour expression and gray-brown hair bunched with oversized bobby pins in a bun like a bird’s nest on the back of her head.

Carver asked for a draft beer. Not much of a tip in that, the woman’s face seemed to convey, as she nodded and ambled away on sturdy legs to place the bar order.

After she’d returned with his drink, Carver brought Desoto up to date on everything that had occurred since they last spoke. He described in detail his morning visit with Amos Burrel.

Desoto listened without once interrupting, his head slightly bowed and his dark eyes serious. It was as if something on the tablecloth had gripped his attention. Now and then he sipped at his beer. When Carver was finished, Desoto signaled the dour waitress for another drink.

“Did Sam ever mention Amos Burrel?” Carver asked.

Desoto shook his head no. He held what he was going to say until the waitress had delivered the fresh beer and then left, juggling an armload of dishes as she waddled toward the back of the restaurant. “This Amos. From what you say he sounds like some of the others I met out at Sunhaven.”

“What others?”

“Residents. Friends of Uncle Sam. Some of them, I tell you I don’t know about. Sad. People get old, they begin suspecting everyone’s out to get them. They think people are talking about them, stealing from them. I know Sam wasn’t like that, but the others I’m not so sure. Old age can be like a curse, amigo. Primitive societies used to think old people got irrational because in their enfeebled state they became possessed by demons. Some religious folks here in Florida still believe that. You believe in God and his angels, it follows there’s a devil and his demons, eh? It divides the world nicely and makes things simple.”

“I can’t judge whether Amos is senile,” Carver admitted. “He’s suspicious and unpredictable, but maybe he’s been that way all his life. Maybe he’s telling the truth right on the mark and has good reason to be afraid.”

Then he told Desoto about the folded scrap of paper Amos had thrust into his hand as he was leaving. He gave the paper to Desoto, who studied it, shrugged, and excused himself.

Carver watched him, a tapered, elegant figure that turned female heads, walk to the end of the bar and ask to use the phone. He was going to run a make on the license number. It wouldn’t take long.

Five minutes later, Desoto-pale suitcoat buttoned, tie neatly and securely knotted, looking like the coolest thing in the room-returned to the table and said, “White ’eighty-seven Cadillac sedan registered to Raphael Ortiz. Address in Del Moray.”

Desoto sat back down, tried a sip of beer, and then set the stein in the center of the table as if the taste disagreed with him. “This Raffy-as he’s called-is a major-league bad-ass, amigo.”

Carver was surprised by the distress in Desoto’s voice. “How bad can he be?” he asked.

“Ah, you might say he’s almost a legend. Anyway, I and many others know him by reputation. He’s a Marielito who came over in the boat lift from Cuba. Computer says in Cuba he was convicted of murdering his brother. Then, while in prison, he gouged out a guard’s eyes with a broken bottle, and his sentence was changed so he could never be released. He built himself up with weights in prison-not weights like Nautilus equipment; he used stones. Then he became an expert in martial arts. Made himself into the baddest of hombres. No one would cross him. He ran the place-the warden, the guards, everything. Castro must have been overjoyed to be rid of him. That’s Raffy Ortiz.”

Carver waited, his wrist resting on the curve of his cane.

Desoto leaned forward and his handsome face took on a somber look. “Now, there’s something I know that isn’t common knowledge or part of Raffy’s sheet. Four years ago in Miami a crooked pharmacy was robbed of some designer drugs. Ecstasy, Eve, that kinda crap. A hostage was taken, young girl who was working behind the counter and was the wife of one of a rival faction in the drug trade. She was found in the swamp a week later. Usual things had been done to her, the M.E. said, but also some unusual things. While she was alive. Miami said she had to have been looking forward to finally dying. Said they had it on good authority it was Raffy’s work. But there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him.”

“Means he’s sick, not tough,” Carver said.

Desoto tilted back his head and arched a dark eyebrow; he wasn’t finished talking. “The dead woman’s husband went berserk and vowed revenge, went looking for Raffy. The story is Raffy came to him. With Raffy’s buddies looking on, Raffy and the husband had their left wrists tied together and commenced to carve themselves up with knives. You know the ceremony: test of machismo. We of Latin temperament do that kinda stuff. Some of us.”

Carver was familiar with the bound-wrist method of knife fighting to the death. It made Roman gladiators seem like pansies.

“Raffy enjoyed it, they say. And was very skilled. After slitting the husband’s throat he castrated him and stuffed what was cut off into his mouth. That’s the supreme insult in Raffy’s world.”

“Hard to insult somebody who’s dead,” Carver observed.

Desoto stared hard at Carver. “You hear what I said, amigo? Please don’t take it light. This Raffy, he enjoyed all of what I described. I heard he gets a hard-on when he fights.” Desoto touched his beer stein but didn’t lift it. He sat back. “Thing is, I regret getting you into this, my friend. It’s time we give it to the Del Moray police, eh?”

“There’s nothing to give them,” Carver said. “The word of an old man that he saw somebody in a car he thinks had that license-plate number, talking to the head nurse at Sunhaven. No crime there. And remember, Amos’s family’s about an inch away from having him declared legally insane so he’ll be committed. Some potential witness.”

Desoto sat silently for a moment and considered what Carver had said. He didn’t seem impressed. “The fight you had, Carver. If you can call it a fight. The assailant you described fits Raffy Ortiz. Got to be him. This is more than I wanted from you. Let’s give it to McGregor, let him deal with Raffy.” Desoto smiled. “It could be interesting: J. R. Ewing versus Godzilla.”

“Not yet,” Carver said. “You hired me, so I’ll do it my way.”

“ Your way? Don’t hand me that Frank Sinatra shit.”

“Lyrics are Old Blue Eyes’s, sentiment’s mine.”

“He won’t bleed, you will.”

“I’ll try to approach this so it doesn’t work out that way.”

“I can fire you, amigo.”

“Someone who hasn’t paid somebody can’t fire them,” Carver said. “Though I admit it’s a fine legal point.”

A tragic expression slid into Desoto’s liquid brown eyes. He knew Carver. “So that’s where we are. You can’t turn loose of this one, can you?”

“Won’t turn loose.”

“Same thing. You don’t know the difference; that’s your problem.”

“I’m in it till it’s settled,” Carver said.

Desoto sighed.

“That’s how it is,” Carver said. He spoke calmly but there was no compromise in his voice.

“Then I’ll give you more information about the people you’re dealing with at Sunhaven,” Desoto said. “I checked further on Birdie Reeves. She’s a fifteen-year-old runaway from Indianapolis. Playing big girl, driving around Florida without a license. Real name’s Beatrice Reeves.”

And her landlady knows about it, Carver thought. That explained the suspicious, protective attitude when he’d gone to her apartment building. And someone in administration at Sunhaven might know Birdie’s true age and her past.

“We could turn her in and see she’s sent back,” Desoto said, “but she fled a hellhole. Mother beat her since she was an infant, and her father was a sicko who found her impossible to resist when she got to be eleven. The court sent her to a foster home two years ago and she was molested there. She ran. Who could blame her?”

“She seems to be doing okay here,” Carver said. “Got a job, her own apartment. Not much, but something. Best thing to do is leave the kid alone, let her pretend she’s grown up. She really will be soon enough.”

“My recommendation also,” Desoto said. “Though not officially. We never talked about this, okay?”

“Talked about what?” Carver asked.

Desoto stood up and tossed two folded bills, a ten and a five, on the table. “Beer’s on me.”

“I’m grateful.”

“I’m grateful, too,” Desoto said sincerely. “Also fearful.” He smoothed nonexistent wrinkles in his coat and pants. “I’m glad you decided not to order anything to eat. I’d have felt like I was dining with someone during their last meal.”

“I’ll report to you again soon,” Carver said, “if for no other reason than to get my confidence restored.”

Desoto flashed a smile that was very white in the dim restaurant and clapped Carver on the back. “My way of saying be careful, amigo. Please don’t underestimate Raffy Ortiz. This is a guy can make your childhood nightmares seem pleasant.”

He left the restaurant hurriedly, looking straight ahead, back and neck rigid, like a kid who’d just as soon not glance at shadows. Handsome in his tailored suit. Dashing as a movie star.

The glum waitress coasted in, scooped up the bills from the table, and asked Carver if he wanted anything else. He told her no. She seemed glad as she set off toward another table.

He sat quietly and finished his beer. He couldn’t specifically recall any of his childhood nightmares, but he knew he’d had them. Was sure he had. He was no exception. They were part of his experience, vague and undefined and still with him. Submerged in a dark tidepool of his mind.

And closer to the surface than they’d been in years.