Kiss

37

Sanderson’s Drugstore was a stop on the way. Carver left the Cadillac double-parked on Ocean Drive with the lights on and the engine idling as he limped inside with the shovel. The girl behind the checkout counter stopped chewing her gum. Customers stared. A white-haired man holding a bottle of mouthwash backed away from Carver, almost knocking over a rotating rack of paperback novels. The rack squealed as if in surprise and did half a turn, to the mystery section. Carver thought, Stranger than fiction.

He made his way directly to the display of canes and crutches and quickly selected a wooden cane, leaning on it to test strength and flexibility, taking a few steps to make sure it was the correct length. Good enough, if not perfect.

He left the shovel leaning against the shelves and hobbled back to the front of the drugstore and the checkout counter. Tossed a twenty-dollar bill on the counter.

The girl at the cash register was unconsciously working her jaws again, red lips parted so her purplish wad of chewing gum was visible. But there was awe and fear in her eyes as they locked on the dirt-stained madman who’d wandered in with a shovel and was buying a cane.

“I was digging in my garden,” Carver said. “Cane broke and I had to get a replacement right away.”

The girl nodded and said, “Oh.” She didn’t halfway believe that one, but she wasn’t going to argue about it. She counted out Carver’s change and gave it to him, withdrawing her hand as quickly as possible, as if her fingers were burned.

He knew she was watching him as he limped outside and climbed back in the Caddie. As he settled into the seat he caught a glimpse of his face in the rearview mirror and knew why the checkout girl had stared and feared. The curly gray hair around his ears was mussed; his tanned face was darkened with dirt including a black glob on his bald head that reminded him of Gorbachev’s birthmark; his eyes seemed a paler blue and were direct and wild. He’d be afraid of a man with eyes like that.

As he drove the rest of the way to the corner of Delta and Citrus, he smoothed back his hair and then wiped his shirtsleeve over his face. Checked his image in the mirror again. An improvement had been worked. He looked less like a maniac and more like a chimney sweep.

There was only one apartment building where Delta Avenue crossed Citrus. Neither street was busy. The corner was in the depressed part of town where Raffy had pursued Carver’s car and taken a shot at him. A steamy low fog had moved in, and the streetlights bending overhead glowed in brilliant swirling hazes that didn’t reach the ground.

Carver parked half a block down on Citrus, got out of the Cadillac, and walked back toward the apartment. His arms still ached from shoveling, and the sweat-smeared dirt that covered them was beginning to itch.

The building was a six-family, gloomy structure with two stories. A light gleamed faintly above the entrance, near where the bricks were darkly stained from a neglected gutter leak. The windows had shades but not drapes, and a few of them had broken panes with cardboard taped over them. The rent here had to be low and the roaches probably ran the place. Melanie Star must have thought she was in paradise when she stayed with Raffy in Executive Tower. The hitch to that Eden was that she had to sleep with the serpent. Or maybe that was what appealed to her.

Carver pushed open the heavy, brown-enameled door and entered the vestibule. Somebody had swished a dirty mop over the cracked, hexagonal-tiled floor not long ago; a soapy ammonia odor lingered in the sweltering air.

He saw “M. Star” printed in the slot above the mailbox for unit 1-B. Folded religious fliers stuck out of all six locked mailboxes. Carver pulled one out and glanced at it. Prayer was the solution to all problems, it proclaimed. At the bottom was the name of a church and a form to send in if you wanted to make a donation. He tucked the flier back in the mailbox.

He decided to try the rear door of 1-B, and he quietly left the vestibule.

Carver had to take only a single step up a flight of rickety wooden stairs to be on the landing in front of Melanie Star’s back door. There was a rusty barbecue cooker tucked in a corner against the wooden rail. A can of charcoal starter lay on its side nearby. The door was paneled and had four small windows in it. A heavy orange curtain hung loosely over the windows, but enough illumination filtered through to suggest there was a light on in the kitchen.

Carver was in shadow, not visible from the street or the block behind the building. He leaned nearer the door, listening. Heard nothing from inside.

He slowly rotated the knob and pressed in on the door, careful not to make noise. The bottom of the door gave a fraction of an inch but there was a lock of some sort, probably a sliding bolt, holding the upper half firm against the doorjamb.

It was time to forsake caution.

He backed up so his buttocks were against the wooden rail, raised his good leg, and kicked the door open. Somehow he’d knocked over the metal barbecue grill and it clattered down the step to ring on concrete.

The kitchen was empty. As he stormed through it, his cane crashing on the linoleum floor, Carver was aware of litter on the table, dirty dishes stacked high in the sink. On the wall over the table were three successively smaller ceramic mallard ducks, winging toward Lake Mediocre.

Then he was in a tiny hall. He stopped and glanced to his right. A bathroom. Cracked pedestal washbasin, yellowed toilet lid, wadded gray towel on the floor. Looked to his right. A bedroom. Violet walls. Four-poster bed with white canopy. Low dresser with mirror that reflected a hundred perfume bottles.

Melanie Star stood alongside the bed with her glamorous eyes wide and a hand raised to her mouth, one fingertip denting her lower lip.

Birdie Reeves lay curled in the fetal position on the bed’s white cover, the gray skirt of her Sunhaven uniform twisted and hiked above her knees. Her eyes were open but she was staring straight ahead at the violet wall, as if listlessly mulling over whether she approved of the decor.

Carver moved into the room. The apartment was hot, but there was an air-conditioner in one of the bedroom windows, thrashing away at the heat and spitting out tiny ice crystals that glittered beautifully in the lamplight.

Melanie Star was wearing red shorts, a tucked-in white T-shirt lettered “Shit Happens,” and red high heels. She extended both arms straight out in front of her with her fingers spread wide. She backed away from Carver, around to the other side of the bed. Tight muscles rippled in her long legs.

“She’s okay!” she said, motioning with her head toward Birdie. “She’s okay! Really! Please?” Her voice broke to a terrified whine, as if it were changing in adolescence.

Birdie hadn’t moved.

“She’s on meperidine, that’s all,” Melanie Star explained. “It’s like Demerol. Won’t hurt her. No kidding. Just to keep her quiet till Raffy’s back.”

Carver limped toward the bed. “Raffy’s not coming back.”

“Why not?”

“It’s impossible. It’ll stay that way.”

Her voice hit that broken whine again. “He’s not dead, is he? I know he’s not dead!”

“You’ll be able to visit him,” Carver said.

He sat on the edge of the bed and bent over Birdie. When he touched the back of her hand, he was shocked by the coolness of her flesh.

“I only did what I had to,” Melanie Star said. “To get what I needed. Honest, there was no other way for me.”

Carver ignored her. He was tired of people telling him there was only one way for them in life.

Melanie Star said, “Goddamn it, what was I supposed to do? What do you want outta me?”

Carver said, “Birdie?” Trying to rouse her. In the corner of his vision he saw Melanie Star edging around the bed toward the door. He didn’t try to stop her. “Birdie?” He heard the staccato burst of high heels on linoleum, the squeak and slam of the back door, fainter footfalls on the wooden porch and step. The rusty barbecue grill clanged on concrete again.

Birdie gazed up at Carver, smiled dreamily, and said, “Wheee!”

Carver said, “I know everything.”

Birdie worked her elbows beneath her and scooted backward so her head was supported on a fluffed white pillow. She looked like royalty resting in the vast, canopied bed. Carver wondered how drugged up she really was. She said, “Know everything? Know I helped?”

“Know you killed,” Carver told her.

She smiled faintly. “Helped is what I did. A mercy. What they wanted even if they didn’t know it. You understand that, don’t you, Mr. Carver?”

“No.”

“Raffy’d give me the name of a resident and I’d shine up to him. Get something going, you know what I mean? Not necessarily sex, like, but intimate stuff. I’d sneak into his room when I was on the night shift, sometimes even when I wasn’t on duty but’d come out to Sunhaven without being seen. Sometimes get in bed with him, like with my father. Do things. Let him do things. Kiss him on the ear and use my tongue, like was done to me. And then one day Raffy’d give me the word.”

“What word?”

“To end it.”

“How would you end it, Birdie?”

She sniffled. Her innocent child’s eyes were moist but he didn’t think she was crying. It seemed hard for her to find words, drifting between sleep and awareness, on a hazy plateau where she had little control.

“When I was real, real young,” she said, “I read or heard about this long-ago princess, or maybe it was a peasant girl, that killed the evil king by letting a drop of melted lead fall in his ear when he was sleeping. I remembered that, Mr. Carver. In fact, it’s still my favorite story. Raffy knew how I did it but he didn’t care, long as it worked out all right.” She smiled and looked around. “You ever see walls like these? So bright?”

“Is that how you killed the Sunhaven victims?” Carver asked. “Melted lead?” He was still trying to grasp this. He hadn’t completely believed Dr. Pauly. Was he actually looking at a mass murderer?

Birdie said, “Sure. Me or Dr. Pauly’d see they got a strong sedative before they went to bed. Then I’d creep into their rooms. Oh, if they woke up they was glad to see me, even though they’d be in a foggy state of mind. Some of them said they loved me. Well, I loved them back. Really I did. I’d have this bunsen burner and this little glass beaker, and just a few ounces of lead. And I’d let the lead be melting while they was asleep or I was in bed with them. Most of them thought I was a nurse or something anyway, so even if they’d wake up they didn’t ask questions. And if they did I’d just say it was a medical procedure for another resident I was getting ready to see. And when they was asleep I’d take this little glass funnel and lean over them and put the end of it in their ear, just like the princess in the story, and I’d pour the melted lead into the funnel. At times, if the funnel tickled at first, they’d think I was giving them a kiss, but then they’d just moan and kinda curl up. Sometimes their eyes’d fly open and they’d sit bolt upright and you could see they was confused and wondering what happened. Even try and struggle up outta bed. But that was only for a moment. It was quick. None of them ever made much noise, only thrashed around some.” She licked her lips and sighed drowsily. “There was never any bleeding or anything.”

Carver could imagine the melted lead, lumping up and sizzling through the brain like a slow-motion bullet, cauterizing tissue behind it so there was no bleeding. No obvious cause of death. The pain, if there was any after the initial burning, would have been paralyzing and occurred simultaneously with disorientation in the last few seconds of life, while the lead seared through delicate matter until it cooled enough to become a solid mass again and stop at the core of the brain. He said, “Sweet Jesus!”

Birdie said with sudden alarm, “They won’t send me back, will they?”