Kiss

15

Not the phone, the doorbell.

At first Carver hadn’t been sure what had awakened him. There was a breeze sighing through the bedroom window, but it was a warm one. The doorbell was quiet now; he could hear the sea gushing on the beach.

He lay in bed and watched Edwina struggle into her gray silk robe and stumble from the room. She was still half asleep, walking stiffly and bent forward slightly at the waist, like an actress in a low-budget zombie movie. Some zombie, even in the morning.

A minute later her voice drifted faintly to him from the foyer, mingled with that of a man. The male voice sounded vaguely familiar to Carver, but he couldn’t place it. He rotated his body, sat up on the edge of the mattress, and reached for his cane. He used the crook of the cane to snag a belt loop on his pants, which were folded on the chair near the bed. He drew them to him and put them on. Pulling on his pants involved half sitting, half lying on the bed while working his stiff leg through to the cuff. It was a knack. He’d gotten used to it, then good at it. Hardly thought about it now. Routine. Shoes were no problem; he almost always wore the kind without laces. Usually moccasins. But socks required effort, so he decided to remain barefoot until he found out what was going on.

He glanced at the clock: 9:15. At his reflection in Edwina’s dresser mirror. Tanned, oily complexion. Wavy hair around his ears mussed. Where were his eyes? There! Blue things way in there. He smoothed back the wings of gray hair with his hands, then stood up with the cane. Shirtless, he limped down the carpeted hall to the living room. The soft carpet felt great beneath his bare feet.

The uniform who’d driven Carver to see McGregor yesterday was standing just inside the door with Edwina. He looked fresh and cool this morning, as if he’d just been manufactured. There were sharp creases in his short-sleeved shirt and brown uniform pants. He spotted Carver over Edwina’s shoulder, flicked a smile, and nodded a good morning. An amiable public servant.

“You’re here to give me the bad news,” Carver said. “McGregor’s been shot.”

The smile again, but brief. Guy had control. “Don’t know what the news is, but it’s not that. McGregor’s the one gonna tell you the news.”

“The news for him is this,” Carver said. “Even a police lieutenant can’t send one of his men around on a whim to drag citizens off to the station so they can chat at his convenience. Where does he think he is-Mayberry?”

“No need for anybody to get dragged anyplace,” the uniform said patiently. Here he was again trying to pacify Carver. This wasn’t why he’d become a cop. “The lieutenant’s waiting for you right outside in the cruiser. Wants for you two to talk in private. Guess he figured you’d object to another ride to headquarters. He wanted me to tell you that this time you’d be glad you and him got together.”

Carver took two lurching steps to a side window. There was a Del Moray patrol car, parked in the shade of the three closely grouped palm trees near the gate. There was the elongated, looming form of McGregor, bent over in the backseat. The car’s whip antenna was vibrating in time with its idling engine and the windows were up. McGregor had the air conditioner on.

“Had your morning coffee?” Edwina asked the uniform.

“Some. Wouldn’t turn down another cup, ma’am.”

“In the kitchen,” Edwina said. “It’ll have to be instant.”

“I was told there was no other kind.” He followed her from the living room, studiously looking away from her swaying hips.

Carver stood still for a moment, then he went outside to talk with McGregor. The gravel driveway was hot and sharp on his bare soles. He walked gingerly, flicking some of the larger pieces of gravel aside with his cane. The temperature had to be well into the eighties already. Today would be warmer than yesterday. Maybe the weather would continue to heat up until there was spontaneous combustion.

“Don’t it hurt your feet to walk around without shoes or socks?” McGregor asked when Carver had slid in next to him in the back of the cruiser.

“Only tickles. Trick I learned in India.”

McGregor gave him a long, appraising look, wondering if he was kidding. Decided it didn’t matter. He stared straight ahead out the cruiser’s windshield at the vast ocean. Even though the air conditioner was whining away, it was warm in the car. “You been keeping busy on this Sunhaven thing?”

“Sure,” Carver said. Throw McGregor for a loop with the truth.

McGregor didn’t act thrown. He picked almost daintily at the gum line of his front teeth with a little finger, keeping his head bowed so he wouldn’t bump it on the car’s sloping roof. “Then I guess you know about the death out there last night.”

Something cold moved in Carver. He was tired of dealing with McGregor’s selfish, twisted attitude. His callow disregard for people he couldn’t use. Sharks had more compassion.

“Who died?” Carver asked simply.

“Old fucker name of Williams. Kearny Williams. Girl out there, little cunt behind the reception desk, said you was a friend of his. Came to see him.”

“How’d he die?”

“Oh, some sort of stroke or attack.”

“What sort?” Carver asked levelly.

“Aortal aneurysm, the doctor said it was. Fibrulation caused a ruptured wall of the main artery leaving the heart. Heart wore out, is what it all means. Fucking cardiac arrest.”

“Did Williams have a history of heart problems?”

“Hey, he’s your friend; you tell me. You say you knew him well enough to go out there and see him. Old Kearny ever mention a bum ticker?”

“No,” Carver said. “There gonna be an autopsy?”

“ ’Course not. Law don’t provide. Natural death. Nonviolent. Not at all unexpected, according to the doctor. How come you figure there should be an autopsy? Think the medical examiner’s got time instead of internal organs on his hands?”

“What if the family requested an autopsy?” Carver asked.

“That’d be different. Thing is, they was asked if they wanted to have the dear departed laid open and looked into. Talked to them myself just this morning by phone. They said no. Said Kearny Williams’s been living on borrowed time the last five years ’cause of his bad heart. Said let the poor old bastard rest in peace. Not them words exactly.”

“I bet they felt better after you talked to them.”

“Cheering up mourners ain’t my job. Protecting the dumb-ass public is. Speaking of which, have you noticed Raffy Ortiz hasn’t tried to crush your windpipe or peel back your fingernails lately?”

“I owe you for that benign neglect?”

“Not exactly. But since you and him are, in my estimation, linked in some way possibly illegal, I had him followed the past couple days. He took a short trip. Flew up to New Orleans early yesterday and got back last night. Guess he had more important things to do than bounce you around.”

“Where’d he go in New Orleans?”

“That I don’t know. I contacted the New Orleans police and they sent someone to fall in behind him, but they weren’t even out of the airport before Raffy’d slipped away.” McGregor paused for a moment and ducked his head for a better angle to peer out the windshield at a pelican winging past over the ocean. The morning sun was striking sparks off the water, making it hard to stare in that direction. Still squinting at the pelican, McGregor said, “You got any idea why your rough playmate would up and fly to New Orleans?”

“It’s a big city,” Carver said. “Lots of reasons to go there.”

“Sure. You can listen to hot jazz, or poke a southern belle, or dine in fine fashion. But hell, you can do all them things right here in Florida and have some fresh-squeezed orange juice before and after.”

“Maybe Raffy likes Cajun cooking,” Carver suggested.

“Maybe this is no time for you to be a smart-ass.”

Carver said, “I don’t know why Raffy went to New Orleans.”

“Well, you do know he’s back. I just told you. It oughta give you something to think about. He’s a regular wrecking machine. Into martial arts. Knows karate, kung-fu, all that slant stuff that makes people dangerous even if they ain’t natural killers from the get-go. Which, in fact, he is.” McGregor scooted around to face Carver directly. The sickening odor of cologne and stale perspiration was almost overpowering in the stifling car. “Another thing I want you to think about is our last conversation. Anything you find out, I get to learn next and in a hurry. Understand?”

“Yeah. But will you be able to retain it?”

McGregor faced forward and folded his long arms across his chest. “Out, assface. Conversation’s over. Go in the house and send my man back out here. I was you, I’d get limping. He’s got a way with the ladies. And you know how some of ’em drop their drawers soon as they see a uniform.”

“There’s a special place in hell for you,” Carver said. “It’s just like here on earth only it never ends.”

“Hey, you think I’m unhappy?”

“You gotta be miserable being you. Anybody would be.”

McGregor turned and gave Carver his leering, gap-toothed grin. “You got it wrong. I’m a contented man. I know what I am, and I know the truth about things. Got no illusions. You’re just like me, Carver, only you got illusions. You put yourself on. Sorta guy makes me wanna puke. People are only out for themselves, and that includes the two of us. It’s a shit world. I see it and you don’t. I roll in it and even kinda enjoy it, and you can’t. Your hard luck.”

Carver suddenly had to get away from McGregor, from the sight and sound and corrupt smell of him. He flung open the cruiser’s door, swiveled on the seat, and planted his cane on the gravel driveway.

“People are all alike,” McGregor said. “Life teaches you that. Grinds it into you. Ask your feeble friends out at Sunhaven; they been around awhile and they’ll tell you. A shit world, all right. That’s the reason most of ’em are actually looking forward to dying even though they’re scared to piss in their pants.”

“Jesus!” Carver said. He straightened up out of the car.

“Him? He was invented for fuckheads like you.”

Carver slammed the door and limped toward the house.

McGregor was some way to start the day.