Accustomed to the Dark (25 page)

Carpenter poked and prodded at the vegetables like a finicky housewife—spring onions, bok choy, carrots, broccoli, ginger, jalapeño peppers—before he loaded them into the cart. He lifted a brick of tofu, squeezed it gently, placed that beside the vegetables. He turned to me. “Okay. Anything you want?”

“Jack Daniel's?”

The mouth twitched, more of a frown this time than a smile. “You a juicer?”

“Would I admit it if I were?”

“I don't want any surprises down there.”

“No,” I said. “I'm not.”

“You can live without it?”

That was his creed, apparently—if you could live without something, you did.

“Yeah,” I told him.

He nodded. “Might as well start now.”

I was more annoyed than I should have been.

Back at Carpenter's place, he directed me to the porch. Both of us carrying bags, we entered through the screen door. The only furniture was an aluminum beach chair and an aluminum chaise lounge. Carpenter set the groceries down on the concrete floor. “We'll bring it all in first,” he said. I put down my bag.

After two more trips, one of them to the Cherokee to grab my luggage, everything was on the porch. Carpenter sat down on the chaise lounge and began to unlace his boots. He looked up at me and said, “I'd appreciate it if you'd take off your boots.”

It was his house. I sat down on the chair and pulled them off.

He unlocked the door and we started to shuttle the stuff in.

The first room was the kitchen, and it was spotless. Every surface was gleaming—the tile floor, the gray marble counters, the butcher block table in the center of the room.

When all the supplies were inside, Carpenter turned to me. “Get your bags,” he said. “I'll show you where you sleep.”

I got my bags.

“Follow me,” he said.

I followed him.

Like the kitchen, the big living room was spotless. It was also nearly bare. No paintings on the wall, no bric-a-brac, no bookcases, no rugs, no television, no stereo. There was an oak futon sofa and an oak futon chair, both futons dark blue. In one corner stood a small oak pedestal cabinet that held a framed photograph. Against one blank wall, along the shiny wooden floor, lay a black mat, about three feet by two. Atop it was a plump round cushion. I'd lived in Santa Fe long enough to know that the cushion was designed for meditation.

I was beginning to get the feeling that Carpenter didn't do much entertaining.

In the hallway, we passed one door, shut. The next door was open and I glanced into the room. I stopped walking. Every wall was covered by white bookcases, and all the shelves were filled. Not with books, though. With Barbie dolls.

There must have been thousands of them in there, blonde, brunette, red-haired, standing at stiff attention on the white shelves, wearing thousands of stiff and brightly colored outfits, none of them the same—business suits, bathing suits, cocktail dresses, summer dresses, sheaths, muumuus, jeans, sweaters, denim jackets, flight jackets, fur coats, woolen coats, wedding gowns, evening gowns, nightgowns.

Carpenter turned around, saw me staring at them. “It's a hobby,” he told me. “I collect them.”

I nodded.

“Here's your bed,” he said, and nodded toward the next room. It was even more spare than the living room. Just a single bed, neatly made, covered with a plain white cotton spread. At the opened window, before the screen, stood a small white fan, softly whirring.

“Bathroom's there,” he said, nodding to the last door in the hallway. “You want to sack out for a while? I need to make some phone calls.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks.”

“We'll have dinner when you're hungry.”

“Fine.”

He nodded once, then left me.

Barbie dolls?
I thought.

I set the suitcase on the floor, set Leroy's briefcase beside it, closed the door, lay down on the bed.

I looked over at the briefcase. I'd put the phone inside it. I hadn't talked to anyone in Santa Fe since this morning.

I knew I should call the hospital.

But I was working now on the principle that Rita would recover from her fever. That the right thing for me to do was to continue looking for Martinez and Lucero. Calling would've been an admission of doubt—not so much to Leroy and to Hector as to myself.

So I lay there and I remembered things. And I argued with Rita.

I didn't really expect to sleep, but after a while the warm air, the drone of the fan, put me under.

I awoke suddenly, startled from some unpleasant dream I couldn't recall. I was slick with sweat. For a few moments I had no idea where I was.

The orangish light of early evening slanted through the window. I looked at my watch. Seven o'clock.

I got up, left the bedroom, walked down the hallway in stockinged feet. The first door—Carpenter's bedroom—was shut and I could hear nothing coming from inside.

I walked into the living room. No one there.

I walked over to the oak pedestal in the corner and picked up the framed photograph. It showed three people. One was a younger version of Carpenter, in army fatigues, smiling hugely. His arm was draped over the shoulders of a young Asian woman with long black hair. She wore a white blouse, a black skirt, and she seemed as happy as he did. The third person was a girl, perhaps ten years old, in a white dress and white patent leather shoes. She was grinning and she was holding both small hands up to her chest, and clutched in her slender fingers was a Barbie doll.

“My wife,” Carpenter said behind me. “And my daughter.”

26

M
Y HEART DID
a little skip. I hadn't heard him come up behind me.

I put the photograph back on the cabinet, turned to face him.

“What happened to them?” I asked.

He was standing there with the folded camouflage shirts tucked under his left arm. “Automobile accident. Over on Nineteen.”

“When?”

“Five years ago.” He handed me the shirts. “Washed and dried.” They'd been ironed, too. “Wait here. I'll get the gear. We'll pack.”

I waited.

He made several trips back to his bedroom to fetch the equipment. Two external frame backpacks, olive drab. Two lightweight sleeping bags, olive drab. A ripstop nylon tent, olive drab, tightly rolled. Two aluminum one-quart canteens in olive drab canvas covers. Two Thermarest air mattresses, olive drab.

He didn't ask for help. When I offered it, he told me he wouldn't need it, thanks. It seemed to me that he didn't want anyone else in his bedroom.

When he carried in a hip holster and attached belt, olive drab, that held a government issue Colt automatic, he said to me, “A Beretta, you said?”

“Yeah.”

He lay the gun belt along the futon chair, padded back to his bedroom. He came back with another gun belt and holster, empty. He tossed it to me. “Okay. You'll need three changes of clothing. Underwear and socks. One pair of pants, plus the pants you wear.”

“It'll take us three days?”

“If we don't find them in two, we come out and restock. The third set is backup.”

We spent the next half an hour getting organized. He stuffed more equipment into his own pack than into mine—a brass Optimus stove, an aluminum fuel bottle, a mess kit, a first aid kit, a drop line and some hooks.

“We're going fishing?” I asked him.

“If we have to.”

“Have to?”

“We get stuck and run out of food.”

I didn't ask him how, or why, we might get stuck.

When the pack was full, he tied the tent to its bottom, his sleeping bag to its top.

He turned to me and said, “You hungry?”

“I could eat.”

He nodded.

He didn't want any help with the cooking either, so I sat there at the butcher block table while he cut up the vegetables and the tofu. When everything was chopped, he stir-fried it all in a big cast-iron skillet, seasoning it lightly with fish sauce and sake. Your strong silent types like to go light on the seasoning.

We sat at the table to eat. Once again, chat was kept to a minimum.

At the end of the meal I told him, truthfully, that the food had been good.

He nodded. “My wife taught me.”

“She was Vietnamese?”

“Cambodian.” He looked at his watch, then abruptly stood, lifting his plate. He held out the other hand for mine, and I gave it to him. “Time to call it a night,” he said. “We're up at four.”

I stood. He set the plates on the counter, turned back to me. “Think you'll have trouble sleeping?”

He still believed that I was an alcoholic. “I slept this afternoon,” I said.

“Afternoons are easy.” He turned, opened a cabinet, took out a small brown plastic bottle, turned back and tossed it to me over the table. He was clearly a man who liked to toss things. His aim was always good.

I read the label. Melatonin, three-milligram tablets.

“One or two of them should do it,” he said. “Three, if you need it. They won't hurt you.”

“I won't need them.”

He shrugged. “You've got them. I'll take care of the dishes. See you in the morning.”

I had been dismissed.

Maybe I'd slept for too long in the afternoon. Or maybe Carpenter was right—maybe I was a boozer. But I couldn't sleep that night.

Finally, at eleven o'clock, I climbed out of bed, turned on the light, opened the briefcase and took out Leroy's phone. I dialed his number. It was nine o'clock in Santa Fe.

“Hello?”

“Leroy? Joshua. How's she doing?”

“Her temperature's still up there, a hundred and three, but she's holding on. No thanks to you, man.”

“They still don't know yet what it is?”

“Lab results come in tomorrow.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“Come on back, man. You should be here.”

“Soon as I finish up.”

“It's not right, Joshua. What you're doing. They're dead, those two.”

“I'll try to call you tomorrow,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, and hung up again.

After another fifteen minutes, I took two of the melatonin tablets. Twenty minutes later, I was out.

Carpenter woke me at four. I showered and toweled myself dry. I stared at myself for a while in the mirror and wondered who I was.

After I dressed, I slipped Leroy's telephone into the left breast pocket of the camouflage shirt and I buttoned the pocket closed.

In the living room the backpacks were gone—out in the truck, presumably. Carpenter had already made the coffee, and we sat at the kitchen table to drink it.

In a neatly ironed camouflage shirt of his own, he looked more alert than I felt. But that couldn't have been very difficult.

I asked him, “How long will it take to get down there?”

He shrugged. “Six hours, seven.”

That was pretty much the entire discussion. He never appeared to resent the questions I asked, but he never appeared inclined to enlarge upon his answers, either. He seemed perfectly content to sit there and stare down into his coffee cup.

After another five minutes, he drained the cup, looked at me, and asked, “You ready?”

“Yeah.”

He nodded. He lifted his saucer and cup, stood, held out his hand for mine. I passed it over. He carried them to the sink, washed them, set them in a rack to dry. We went outside and I transferred the Beretta, the shotgun, the boxes of shells, and Rita's .38 from the Cherokee to the Ford, stashing everything behind the seats. I took my sunglasses from the glove compartment, put them on.

Carpenter spent a few minutes checking the packs, and then we were on the road.

There was still traffic on Route 19, even at five in the morning, but it wasn't bad. By five-thirty we were on the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, high over the entrance to Tampa Bay. To the east, the sky was growing pearly. To the west, below us, running roughly parallel to this bridge, was what looked like the truncated spur of another one.

“What happened to it?” I asked Carpenter. “The old bridge.”

“Freighter hit it,” he said.

On the far side, we headed east for about five miles, then picked up I-75 South.

Carpenter kept the truck at a steady seventy-four, nine miles above the speed limit, as the highway ran through the pine forests. At seven o'clock, we were passing exit signs for Port Charlotte.

At nine o'clock we were passing signs for Fort Meyers. Once we left them behind and crossed the Caloosahatchee River, the pines slowly gave way to cedar forest and patches of marshland. None of it looked very inviting.

Throughout it all, the conversation wasn't any different from what it had been since I met Carpenter. I would ask him a question—“What are those trees, down there by the water?” He would answer it—“Mangrove.” Now and then, not often, he volunteered something—“See that? Sandhill crane.”

About thirty miles past Fort Meyers, we took the exit for East Naples. On Highway 41, the Tamiami Trail, Carpenter pulled the truck into a gas station. While he filled the tank, I called Leroy.

Rita was the same. I told him that I'd be out of touch for a while. He said, “Yeah,” and hung up again.

I put the telephone back into my shirt pocket. It would be useless in the swamp, I knew that, but it was my only connection to Santa Fe.

I ducked inside the station and bought a ham and cheese sandwich. I carried it back into the truck, ate it while Carpenter drove.

He looked over at me. I could see my reflection in his sunglasses. “You know how many nitrates are in that thing?”

“Seven,” I said. I could be strong and silent, too.

He shook his head. He didn't smile.

The countryside was getting wetter. Between the stands of cedar there were sometimes acres of swamp, tall green grasses poking from the dark slick of water. Now and then, I saw a heron stalking thoughtfully through the shallows.