Kiss

29

Carver slowed the Olds on the coast highway and turned onto the secondary road leading to his cottage. The car’s canvas top was up, but the morning sun beating through the windshield heated up the interior even though all the windows were cranked down. The warm, whirling air made the Olds a mobile blast furnace.

They’d taken separate cars to the restaurant, but only Edwina’s Mercedes to the Howard Johnson’s motel where they’d spent the night. She’d driven him to pick up his car only half an hour ago, then gone on to her place.

Carver shook his mind from the motion and warmth of last night and watched alertly as he approached the cottage.

The small, flat-roofed structure was still there; Raffy hadn’t burned it down or bulldozed it into the sea. It occurred to Carver that Raffy might not be sure who’d broken into his condo. No shortage of enemies for a guy like that.

But a scarcity of enemies with enough nerve to walk right into the beast’s lair and deliberately leave tracks.

Did Ortiz recognize that kind of nerve in him? Is that what there was about Carver that amused him and provided entertainment? Prey that might make for sport? It was an unsettling thought.

Though everything about the cottage looked reassuringly normal, Carver decided to play it cautious. He parked the Olds in its usual spot, but instead of walking up on the porch, he used his cane to move quickly in a hobbling gait toward the back of the cottage. The surf breaking on the beach seemed to be telling him Hush! Hush! No noise, or whatever he feared most might happen.

He took a quick look through a side window and saw no sign that anyone had been inside. A mosquito the size of a Cessna buzzed around his face and made him blink. He took a swipe at it and didn’t hit it, but the rush of air from his open hand drove it away. Careful not to stumble into the grave Raffy had prepared, he continued to the back and peered through another window.

No one. Nothing suspicious. He knew every inch of the cottage had been covered by his surveillance; unless Raffy had known which window Carver was going to look in next and figured out where to hide, the cottage was unoccupied. Raffy wasn’t psychic, even if he was a three-nutter.

Carver went in through the back door and locked it behind him. Still cautious, he limped through the cottage and was satisfied that everything was in place before he relaxed and switched on the air conditioner.

He decided to let some fresh air in the place while waiting for the window unit to take over. The breeze from the blower was stirring icily around his ankles, but he knew it would take a while before it spread and built high and filled hot space.

When he opened the front door he saw the penciled note that had been slipped halfway under it and picked it up off the threshold. It was written on paper ripped from a spiral notebook: Mr. Carver, I came by to see you about the things we talked about but you weren’t here. Meet me at my place soon as you can. Please. Birdie

Carver crumpled the sheet of lined paper with the raggedly torn edge, slammed the door, and said, “Shit!”

He wasn’t sure if Birdie had left the note last night or this morning. What if somebody else had come here after her visit and seen the note? Whoever the person might be, he or she might want answers from Birdie, and God knew what ways might be used to persuade the young runaway to talk. Images flashed on the screen of Carver’s mind. He shivered and forced the screen to go blank. Some things you didn’t want to imagine, suspecting that reality might be worse.

He called Sunhaven and was told Birdie wasn’t there-she’d phoned in sick. Then he called her apartment and got no answer.

As he dropped the receiver into its cradle he noticed the back of his hand was glistening with perspiration. It was still hot in the cottage, making it difficult to breathe. Summer, with its humid Florida air that it was almost possible to drown in.

He made sure the cottage was locked. The Olds was waiting for him, ticking like a bomb in the heat.

He got in and drove.

The old apartment building on West Palm Drive sat glaring in the sun. Its curlicued wrought iron showed it needed paint badly in the cruel slanted light. Its cracked tile and patched stucco were lent beauty by the red-blossomed bougainvillea and rose vines writhing up the walls. Nature was trying to reclaim the ruin before developers and yuppies moved in. Nature didn’t have much chance.

Carver had parked around the corner on Newport and walked back. Noting with satisfaction that the inquisitive and combative Mrs. Horton didn’t seem to be around, he limped with care over the uneven walk, through the gate and beneath the iron-arch trellis overgrown with roses. He pushed the button next to Birdie’s door. He heard the faint, faltering sputter from inside the apartment, as if the buzzer were thirsty for more electricity. The sun pressed hot against his back and shoulders like the confining embrace of an unwelcome lover.

Holding his breath, he thumbed the push button several times in succession, as if he were grinding a tiny insect into a smear. Time and silence were accumulating. So was concern. He didn’t want to force his way in, or rouse Mrs. Horton and talk her into using her passkey. Didn’t want to look at what might be inside.

But there was a metallic snick on the other side of the shiny new dead-bolt lock and the door opened on a chain. A wary blue eye appeared in the crack between door and frame. The eye brightened and sprang wide.

“Mr. Carver!” Birdie breathed his name with relief.

The door closed, the chain clattered, and she swept the door open and motioned for him to come in, while her gaze darted about behind him.

When he was all the way inside she closed the door and dramatically reattached the chain lock. Checked the dead bolt. The child in her was enjoying what she perceived as an adventure, but at the same time real fear glinted like underwater diamonds in her eyes.

The apartment was still a mess; he could see into the bedroom, where clothes and a towel were heaped on the floor. A showbiz magazine that promised to reveal how Elvis Presley’s spirit possessed Sean Penn was spread out on the sofa. It was hot in the apartment. Carver couldn’t imagine what Presley would want with Penn.

On the carpet near the sofa was a dog-eared paperback romance novel with a cover illustration of a knight leaning low from a charging horse to scoop up a woman whose breasts threatened to spill out of her bodice. Carver couldn’t be sure if the woman wanted to be scooped up by the knight or was trying to flee from him, but he thought the artist had done a dandy job.

Birdie lifted a corner of the painted crate that was her coffee table and withdrew a red spiral notebook. There were ink doodles all over the cover, mostly crude flowers and what looked like English castles. The TV was tuned without sound to a soap opera. A handsome guy with an engineered hairdo was moving his lips in silent earnestness while another with a black patch over his eye was listening and frowning. Two beautiful women observed them gravely. The guy doing the talking had on a sharp dark sport coat. The listener was wearing a shirt with a turned-up collar, unbuttoned so a gold chain was visible. A macho guy, all right. Everybody had perfect teeth and wore new-looking clothes. It was as if department-store mannequins had sprung to life and developed big problems.

Birdie tore the first page out of the notebook and handed it to Carver. It was the same kind of lined paper that had been tucked under the front door of his cottage. There were some names scrawled on it in the same pale shade of pencil.

“When did you come by my place to give me this?” Carver asked.

Her eyes got shallow and guilty, as if he might accuse her of having done something naughty and of course he’d be right. “This morning, about eight o’clock.” A little girl’s voice.

“What about your job?”

“It’s okay, I phoned Sunhaven and said I had a dentist appointment.”

“I don’t want to scare you, Birdie, but you oughta be more careful.”

“About the dentist story?”

“The note. Somebody looking for me might have seen it and figured you were involved. They might have taken it without me ever finding it and be here now instead of me.”

Her mouth fell open for a moment and then she clamped it shut. Just a glimpse of white teeth and pink gums. “Yeow! I never thought about that! It’s okay, though, isn’t it? I mean, like you got the note and nobody else saw it, did they? You suppose?”

“I think it’s all right,” Carver said. But he couldn’t be sure. No way to be sure. He looked down at the notepaper, not carefully yet, not reading it.

“I couldn’t get actual filed information, Mr. Carver. I only got you the names. Otherwise I think I mighta got caught where I shouldn’t of been. I mean, it woulda been my butt for sure.”

“Caught by Nurse Rule?”

“Yeah. She can come right outta the walls sometimes. Anyway, those are the names of all the Sunhaven residents that died the past year.”

Carver looked at the list. Nine names. Less than he’d expected. Two of them were female. Sam Cusanelli’s name was there. So was Kearny Williams’s. “Why so many more men than women?” he asked.

“It’s just that way, I guess. They say women live longer. Must be some truth in it.”

“This about an average number of deaths for a nursing home the size of Sunhaven?”

“Retirement home, they like to call it.”

“Okay, we’ll call it that, too.”

Birdie’s frail shoulders rose and fell in an exaggerated shrug. She looked about twelve years old. “I dunno, tell you the truth. I expect it depends on the kinda home it is. Some of the old folks out at Sunhaven are sick, and some of them are just old and like can’t make it on the outside. A home where the people are all sick’d have more deaths every year, don’t you think?”

Carver said he thought so.

“I really don’t wanna get into any trouble over this,” Birdie said. “I mean, with my job and all.”

“Nobody’ll learn from me where I got this information,” Carver said, waving the notepaper. “Should we take a blood oath of secrecy?”

She looked too pale even to contain any blood. She smiled. That made Carver feel good. “Guess not.”

“Birdie, you scared?”

“Yeah, I am.”

“Of losing your job, or of something else?”

“I’m not sure. I wonder what might be going on out there. It’s creepy to think people you know might be mixed up in… whatever. I mean, it’s like folks live in two worlds. There’s one we see, and another one nobody talks about.”

Like the one in Indianapolis.

Carver said, “Birdie, I saw Linda Redmond. She sends her love and wants you to call her sometime.”

Birdie winced; she’d been kicked hard in the psyche. “You went to Indianapolis? You saw Linda? You talked to her?”

“Want her phone number?”

Birdie swallowed. Carver actually heard her Adam’s apple work. “Tell you, Mr. Carver, I got Linda’s number. Had it since I left that place. But I never called her.”

“Why not?”

“Well, let’s just say she’s done enough for me. More’n she had to. I was trouble for her and I don’t wanna be again.”

“She doesn’t see you as trouble. Though she says you shouldn’t go back to Indianapolis, and she’s probably right. But if you ask me, it wouldn’t hurt to call her and talk.”

Birdie’s lower lip did a tremulous dance. She dug her front teeth into it and said nothing. She stood that way for a while. Wasn’t going to talk. Not about back home in Indiana. Finally the teeth loosened their pressure and the lip stayed steady. She had hold of her emotions.

Carver said, “As long as you got these names without being seen, I think you’ll be safe enough out at Sunhaven. You might attract more suspicion if you don’t go in this afternoon.”

“Oh, I’m gonna go to work. No other reason, I need the money bad. I’ll say my mouth’s still sore from the dentist.”

“That’d be my advice,” Carver told her. He leaned nearer with the cane, reached out with his free hand and patted her arm. “Thanks, Birdie. You’ve been a big help. I really appreciate it.”

She couldn’t meet his eyes; she turned her face away sharply, as if he’d struck her. Not many adults had thanked her or given her words of approval. Not when it counted. She had a hunger for it and she wouldn’t-and probably couldn’t-admit it, except maybe only to herself momentarily in the dim, dawn hang-point between sleep and wakefulness.

At that moment, though he’d never met the man and never would, Carver hated Clement Reeves.

John Lutz

Kiss