Kiss (26 page)

“That where you’re calling from, Pauly’s house over on Verde?”

“I’m standing in his kitchen.”

“Some more breaking and entering, huh?”

“I told you the front door was open.”

“Got any idea where the good doctor ran off to, Carver? Could it have been some humanitarian mission came up suddenly? Maybe a guy having a heart attack? Or some fruit just realized he got AIDS?”

“No idea,” Carver said.

“Well, I think I might know something about it. ’Cause Raffy Ortiz has disappeared, too.”

Uh-oh!
“Disappeared how?”

“I had a man watching him, and it seems Raffy knew about it but didn’t let on till he was ready. Early this morning he did some fancy maneuvering and breaking of the speed limit in that white caddie of his and shook my guy. Raffy’s on the loose now and unsupervised. Running away, it looks like. Same as Dr. Pauly.”

“You saying Raffy and Dr. Pauly were partners and decided it was time to leave the scene?”

“Looks that way. They been partners before. Hey, you know how I found that out? I know about that plea-bargain deal in Miami. We weren’t gonna talk about that one, though, were we, fuckhead?”

“Sure we were. You didn’t give me a chance,”

“Yeah, I shouldn’t butt in the way I do. With you just bubbling over to spill everything to me. My bad manners cause me to miss a lot in life. Tell you, Carver, you keep your ass right where it is, and I’m coming over to look at whatever it is you seen at Pauly’s. Don’t dick around with the evidence or you got trouble.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Why’s a loose cannon like you do anything? You’re just a bit smarter than a parking meter, I guess.”

“I’ll be here,” Carver said. “Help myself to a beer from the fridge while I wait.”

“Only one,” McGregor said. “You ain’t gonna make sense when I get there, I’m sure, but I’d like it to be in your usual way.”

He plonked down the receiver. Unnecessarily hard, Carver thought.

Ah, the doctor drank Budweiser.

McGregor was accompanied by the uniform who’d been at Edwina’s, but he left him sitting in the patrol car parked out on Verde and entered Dr. Pauly’s house alone. He made the place seem even smaller.

He nodded to Carver, who was sitting on the sofa holding a beer can. Then he glanced around. “High-rent neighborhood, but not such a hot-shit house for a medical doctor, hey?”

“He probably still has an expensive habit. Even doctors have to pay something for drugs. Pauly’s not exactly at the apex of the medical profession, and who knows how much he’s been paying Raffy Ortiz, if Raffy’s been bleeding him for the past couple years?”

“That’s a point. Guy with three nuts, he’d probably be worse’n the IRS. But maybe not.”

McGregor took his time. He walked around, looked things over, touched things, came to the same conclusions Carver had reached.

“He’s been gone for a while,” McGregor said. “No telling for sure how long.”

“He’s with Raffy, like you said.”

“Maybe. Or maybe he ran off on a Caribbean cruise with some hot nurse he knows. Doctors do that kinda thing, just like anybody else.”

“He left in a hurry,” Carver reminded McGregor.

“Coulda been one fine nurse. Didn’t wanna be kept waiting to spread her legs on board ship.” He squinted from up high, down at the beer can in Carver’s fist. “There more of that stuff on ice?”

Carver said there was.

He watched McGregor stride into the kitchen, then return with his own can of beer.

McGregor wiped his big hand on his pants, leaving a damp spot from the condensation on the can. He tapped the side of the can with a fingernail. “Doc wouldn’t care if he was here, I’m sure, seeing it’s such a hot day.”

He sectioned his long body down into a chair opposite Carver and sighed. His cheap cologne was hard to endure in the warm house. He said, “Tell me what you been doing this morning.”

Carver told him, but he didn’t mention the list Birdie had given him. Only said he’d driven to her apartment and talked to her before she’d left to go to the dentist.

“You didn’t go by her place to give her your own kinda root-canal treatment, did you?” McGregor asked. “There ain’t nothing wrong with that undernourished kinda cunt; put her on your prick and spin her like a propeller, hey?”

Carver said, “You’re sick as Raffy Ortiz.”

McGregor grinned, showing the pink tip of his tongue between his widely spaced front teeth, “Sure, and you’re as upright a guy as Jerry Falwell. I mean, girl young enough to be your daughter and all that. Is that what you’re gonna tell me? Don’t mean diddly, Carver. Birdie’s not
that
young. She was probably popped years ago. You could have good sex with her and then lay around and talk about the new Whitney Houston album.”

“Maybe you’re even
more
messed up in the head than Raffy.”

“You don’t like Whitney Houston? Fine black stuff. Like to put it to her and listen to her sing her best.”

“You know my meaning.”

“Yeah. I know something else, too. Your cock’s got no conscience. Not really. You’re no exception to the human race.”

“I am to the human race the way you see it.”

McGregor took a long pull of beer. Some of it spilled sideways out of the can and dribbled down his chin onto his shirt. “Naw. Difference is I
do
see it and you don’t.” He grinned again and stretched out his long, workable legs and crossed them at the ankles, wriggling both feet, as if rubbing it in that he could walk and Carver needed the cane. Actually stared hard at the cane leaning on the cushion beside Carver; still grinning, trying to get to Carver. No mistaking what he was thinking. Doing. Some guy.

He said, “Tell me again about this morning, Carver. Lay it all out for me. And yesterday, too. Sure. What the fuck, why not yesterday?”

It was three-thirty before Carver finally got out of there and drove toward the coast highway and then north.

When he opened the door of his cottage the phone was ringing.

A
MOS
B
URREL’S VOICE ON
the phone sounded faint but vibrant with frustration. “He snatched her right away from here, Carver! Drove right up and dragged her into his car and screeched to hell and gone outta here with her! Damn!”

Something inside Carver grew cold and sank. “Slow down and tell me the who and what of it, Amos.”

“Nurse Rule’d have a cow if she knew I phoned you,” Amos said. “But there comes a time for a man not to give a shit—I believe that, Carver.”

“And maybe you’re right, Amos. What happened?” Carver wanted to get the story out of the old man before he was discovered on the phone at Sunhaven and the conversation was terminated.

“I seen it only five minutes ago. That Latin thug in the white Cadillac; he’s the one talked to Nurse Rule that night. He drove up and parked right near the front entrance. Little later I seen him walk back out with Birdie at his side. At first I thought the poor little thing was going with him willingly, though that sure didn’t strike me as right. Then I seen that as they got closer to the car she started trying to hang back, dragging her feet. He had her tight by the elbow then. When he had the car door open she tried to jerk away but he laughed and wouldn’t let her. Laughed, goddamn him! Having himself a good time!” Amos began to cluck his tongue; Carver could imagine him shaking his head.

“Go on, Amos. Then what?”

“She tried to kick him but he shoved her into the car on the driver’s side, then across the front seat while he climbed in himself. I think she tried to open the door on the other side and jump out, but it looked like he slapped her one and yanked her over close to him while he started the car. Slapped her hard! Then he gunned the motor and sped outta the lot. Nurse Rule, along with one of the attendants, came running out after him, but all they did was stand and watch him drive away with Birdie. Useless as tits on a boar hog. Jesus, Carver, it ain’t right, what happened. You shoulda seen it!”

Carver stared out the window at the vast blue plain of the ocean and the gulls circling above it, wings flashing white in the sun. “Anybody out there call the police?”

“I guess so, but hell, I dunno! I ain’t the only one seen what went on. What they’re mostly doing here’s running around trying to convince people nothing outta the ordinary happened. Like they think they can smooth things over and nobody’ll get upset and their heart give out. But I tell you, Carver, it won’t take them long to see that won’t wash. Birdie didn’t leave here of her own free will, and I don’t give a hot damn who says otherwise.”

The old guy had his fighting blood up, all right. Carver was glad to hear the spirit back in the cracking voice. “I’ll call the police, Amos. You did the right thing, but you better get back to your room. Keep a low profile, you understand?”

“I don’t feel like keeping no low profile. Feel like grabbing that Cuban punk by the throat and giving him a shake. Teach him some civility. Goddamn, that’s what I’d do if he was here now!”

Carver said, “Don’t grab anybody’s throat, Amos. Go on back to your room. Okay?”

“I’ll do that knowing you’re calling the police,” Amos said reluctantly. “And that’s the only way I will.”

Carver understood why he didn’t want to return to his room and a nonactive role. Big things were happening and he wanted to be part of them. Fuel that fed life.

“I can’t call the police while I’m talking to you, Amos. Now, don’t start anything else out there; wait for the law.”

Amos slammed the phone down. Hurt Carver’s ear.

Carver depressed the cradle button, then called McGregor at Del Moray police headquarters.

There was a lot of hissing and crackling on the switchboard, and then half a minute of the Muzak version of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” before the phone rang in McGregor’s office.

“No time to talk,” McGregor said, as soon as he learned it was Carver. “Squeal just came in about an abduction at Sun-haven. Your little twist Birdie. Sounds like Raffy Ortiz took her.”

“Who called?”

“Sergeant said it was Nurse Nora Rule. He checked the call for authenticity before he had a unit dispatched.”

“You going to Sunhaven now?”

“Not actually. Instead I’m wasting my time talking to the jerkoff mighta caused all this.”

Carver said, “I’ll see you there,” and hung up.

There were four Del Moray squad cars parked at haphazard angles near Sunhaven’s main entrance. Red and blue roof-bar lights still rotated and flashed on two of them, but weren’t making much of a showing in the bright early evening sun. A door was hanging open on one of the cars, and a radio was squawking loudly and intermittently. Just outside Sunhaven’s tinted-glass entrance, a uniform stood slouched with his arms crossed, talking to a bespectacled blond man in a brown suit. Another uniform stood with his foot propped on the front bumper of the nearest patrol car. His head was bowed, as if he were thinking deeply. Or maybe the heat had gotten to him.

When he heard Carver approaching he looked up. His face was flushed and shiny with perspiration, but his marksman-blue eyes were calm and alert. He said, “Yes, sir?” in a neutral tone that meant who the hell are you and what are you doing here.

The plainclothesman in the brown suit heard the uniform and swiveled his head to stare blankly. He was a small man with a narrow, wise face. Studious-looking. The kind of guy who years ago had learned devious ways of dealing with the class bully. “You Fred Carver?”

Carver said he was.

“Lieutenant said a bald guy with a cane’d be out here,” brown suit said. He smiled, shifting position slightly. The round lenses of his glasses blazed as twin reflected suns. “Said he’d be a little younger than the others. Go on in.”

Carver didn’t return the smile as he limped inside.

The bright lobby had been cleared of residents. The checkerboard on the table across from the desk held half a dozen checkers, including three red kings. A game had been interrupted. Black was probably glad. In a far corner was a line of chrome-spoked wheelchairs, collapsed in on themselves and stacked neatly against one another. They looked too frail to support the burden of years and human experience.

McGregor stood leaning with one giant palm flat on the reception desk. His dark suitcoat was unbuttoned and draped from his shoulders awkwardly. The butt of his Police Special peeked from its shoulder holster, only partly concealed by his lapel. Part of a crescent of underarm perspiration stain on his white shirt was visible, too.

Nurse Rule stood next to him with her feet planted wide and her fists on her hips. Dr. Macklin, wearing a tailored beige blazer and skirt, was cupping her elbows in her palms and rocking back and forth slightly on her high heels, as if she were cold. Maybe she was, in the spacious, air-conditioned lobby. Behind the curved desk, the attendant with the pencil-thin mustache was manning the phones. The two women looked concerned, angry, and somewhat dazed, as if events had caught up with them and then run over them. McGregor had on his cop face and appeared remotely interested and in calm and complete control. Carver knew better.

When he saw Carver, McGregor said something to Dr. Macklin and walked away from her and Nurse Rule, so he could talk privately to Carver. Nurse Rule stared at Carver, then looked away as if she’d glimpsed something uniquely repulsive.

“Looka what you stirred up,” McGregor said.

Carver said, “It was here before I touched it with a spoon. I didn’t create it.”

McGregor surprised him. “Guess you didn’t.”

“Get the story?” Carver asked.

“Sure. Simple enough. Raffy parked out front, came in and talked to Birdie Reeves for a few minutes, then they left together. Looked like she was going willingly with him, but when they got near the car she put up a struggle. Before anybody could do anything about it, he shoved her in the car and drove away. It wasn’t neat, but it was quick. Sometimes that’s better.”

“Any doubt it was Ortiz?”

“Naw, none at all. He’s been out here before and some of the people know his face. And he was driving his hotshot white Caddie.”

“Why would he nab Birdie at all? And why would he take her in plain view of the staff and some of the residents?”