Kiss (3 page)

A teenager with an MTV mind as a receptionist in an old-folks’ home. Well, why not? The place needed a fresh bloom in the midst of all the faded petals.

As Carver made his way cautiously over the slick tiled floor toward the wide door Birdie had pointed out, the door swung toward him and a heavyset woman wearing a uniform like the receptionist’s wheeled a very old man in a chrome wheelchair into the lobby. Like the woman in the rocking chair, he was held firmly in place by a knotted sheet around his midsection. His head wobbled and a gleaming thread of saliva dangled from his chin, catching the light. Carver quickly looked away; here was the future for each generation’s survivors. It was something nobody of any age liked to think about, but it was there like cold, black reality on every life’s horizon.

He pushed open the swinging door with the tip of his cane and went through. Walked down the hall as Birdie had directed and made a left turn. He had to limp only a few feet before he came to a pastel blue door with a gold numeral
1
painted on it. Again using the cane, he knocked.

“. . . on in,” called a voice from the other side.

Carver rotated the knob and entered a small, sunny room furnished with a bed, a limed oak dresser, and a tiny color TV that was tuned soundlessly to a morning game show. A pretty blond woman on the screen spun an oversized roulette wheel, closed her eyes, and crossed the fingers of both hands. In front of the TV was a brown vinyl chair in which sat a broad, muscular man with wide, squared features. Moving with a difficulty and stiffness that revealed his advanced age, he stood up and turned to face Carver. He had a sacklike stomach paunch, and his throat was scarred and withered from a recent operation. His thick gray hair was precisely and severely parted, as if he’d spent a great deal of time getting it just right, maybe using scientific instruments.

“I’m a friend of Alfonso Desoto,” Carver said, leaning on his cane and extending his hand. “Name’s Fred Carver.”

Kearny had eyes like faded blue marbles. It took a moment for a light to shine in them. “Desoto? Sam’s nephew?”

“Right.”

A dry, powerful hand gripped Carver’s up to the wrist and pumped it almost out of the socket. The old guy was glad to see him. Maybe glad to see anybody. “I’m Kearny Williams.”

“I know.” Carver retracted his arm; his shoulder was sore. “I came here to see you about Sam Cusanelli.”

Kearny motioned for him to take the chair. When Carver declined, he said, “Guess you know Sam’s dead. Went three days ago.”

“Desoto told me.”

Kearny slumped down again in the brown vinyl chair. “Gotta get my weight off these legs after a while. It’s pure shit, growin’ old. Outlivin’ your body. It gets you down, knowin’ your good years are behind you. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise, Carver.”

The last sounded like a command. “I won’t,” Carver assured him. “When’s Sam Cusanelli’s funeral?”

Kearny shook his large head. Light from the window shot silver flecks through his hair. His clothes were neat and clean: loose-fitting jeans with creases ironed into them, a short-sleeved gray sport shirt with an out-of-style wide, wide collar. His shoes were black brogans, work shoes, but they were waxed shiny enough to gleam with reflected images. Carver wondered why he kept so well groomed when he was probably shut away in his room most of every day. “Sam was put in the ground this morning,” Kearny said. “Didn’t believe in long wakes for himself or anybody else. Told me he’d been grieving in this place long enough anyway.”

“He could have left here, couldn’t he?”

“He did leave here.”

“I mean some other way.”

Kearny snorted and looked angry. “Where would he have gone? It was his family in Saint Louis shoved him in here outta sight. That Desoto offered to put him up, but Sam chose not to be a burden. That’s us here at Sunhaven, Carver, don’t wanna burden the young and living.” He added ironically, “As if them and us was all one species.”

Carver was surprised Desoto had made such an offer. He lived in a small condo in Orlando. Red carpet, black furniture. A year’s salary in stereo equipment throbbing out the damned Latin music he seemed to crave listening to, sometimes in his bedroom with all the mirrors, sometimes with someone. No place for a seventy-six-year-old uncle. A lot of old people would think Desoto’s wardrobe alone was a sin.

Of course, Carver hadn’t known Uncle Sam and Desoto had. Maybe it would have worked. Casanova and Moses.

Kearny could read minds. “That Desoto, he’s a handsome young buck. Got him an eye for the women, right?”

“That’s him,” Carver said. An eye and anything else he can bring into play.

Kearny grinned and shook his head. “I envy him. He better get it while he can. Everything he can. Life’s here and then it’s gone. More precious than gold, but nobody knows it till it’s too late. Use every damn second of it, you hear me?”

The voice of command again. “Hear you,” Carver said. He sat down on the bed.

“How’d you get the bum leg?”

“I was a cop,” Carver said. “A holdup man shot me in the knee.”

“Desoto’s a cop in Orlando. That where you know him from?”

“Yeah. We been friends for years.”

“You still a cop?”

“In a way. I’m a private investigator.”

A gray eyebrow arched. “No shit? You investigatin’ Sam’s death?”

“Why? You think there’s something suspicious about it?”

“Ah, you’re a cop, all right. A question for a question.”

Carver knew he had to confide in someone inside Sunhaven. Kearny inspired a certain degree of trust. Kearny seemed mentally sharper than Birdie had intimated. Kearny had been Sam’s buddy. Kearny was the guy.

“How close were you to Sam Cusanelli?” Carver asked.

Kearny’s gruff façade slipped for a moment. The blue eyes misted and he turned away to stare out the window into the blasting sunlight. “Close enough I cried when he died.” The voice had risen an octave, with shrill panic in it. “I’d tell you I ain’t cried in a long time, but that ain’t so.” Kearny’s broad, square shoulders rose, then fell heavily as he blew out a breath. “Damned stupid, gettin’ to be friends with somebody in a place like this.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You will someday. Time’ll do it to you. When you’re young it buries your mistakes and works the rough edges off you. Then one day you find out it’s worn you down to within a shade of nothin’, and you can’t stand any more loss. You’ll learn what I mean.”

“I’ll ask again if there was anything suspicious about the way Sam Cusanelli died,” Carver said gently.

“And I’ll ask again if you’re investigatin’ his death.”

Carver jumped into deep water. “You might say I’m working for Sam. Desoto told me his uncle had hinted there was something wrong here at Sunhaven. He hired me to find out if Sam was right.”

Kearny turned away from the glaring sunlight and clumsily rubbed his eyes with his thick fingers. “A cop hiring a cop. Don’t make much sense.”

“The only way,” Carver said. “Desoto has no jurisdiction here on the coast, and his superiors might not like him making inquiries about his uncle’s death, since it isn’t even listed as suspicious. The Del Moray police wouldn’t like it, either, and Desoto doesn’t want them tromping through here and putting whoever might have something to hide on their guard. Main thing, though, he’s in Orlando and I’m here.”

Kearny wrestled the chair around so he was facing Carver, aiming a glance at the door to make sure it was closed. “Yeah, Sam told me what he thought.”

“Which was . . . ?”

Kearny looked momentarily bewildered. “That something’s very wrong here.”

Carver was getting tired of this. “
What
did he tell you was wrong?”

Fear slithered like live shadow across Kearny’s aged, stubborn features. “Twenty years ago I was a truck driver and a teamsters organizer. Break the arm of a man raised his fist against me. Back then I wasn’t scared of a thing, Carver. I am now.”

“Sam wasn’t afraid to tell Desoto.”

“And Sam’s dead.”

“You think that’s why? Because he was talking about Sunhaven?”

“I don’t know. People die here all the time. That’s what we wait for here. I don’t know that talkin’ too much
isn’t
why Sam died.” He massaged his gnarled knuckles; he’d been a rough man, long ago. “A natural death, in his bed. Ain’t that what we all want?”

“Sooner or later, I guess.”

“Sam wanted it later. He wanted to live a lotta years more.”

“He’d want you to talk,” Carver said.

“Ever meet Sam?”

“Never had the privilege,” Carver admitted.

“Well, you don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. Sam wouldn’t give a shit if I talked or not. ‘I’m dead, Kearny old sport,’ Sam’d say, ‘so nothin’ matters to me. Ashes to ashes. Ever seen a cigar butt gave a damn about anything? Do what you fuckin’ want.’ ” Kearny smiled. “He’d mean it, too. Sam’d say what he meant, then he’d shut up. One of the reasons him and me got along,”

Carver sensed he’d come to the end of the conversation. He planted the tip of his cane and stood up. The bedsprings sang as his weight released them.

“Hey, I’d tell you what I know,” Kearny said, “only I don’t really know anything. Just got my suspicions. Like Sam.”

“Suspicions of what?”

Kearny shook his head in frustration. “Hell, I ain’t even sure! You believe that? Well, it’s true. I don’t know any more than Sam did.”

“Okay,” Carver said. “Do me a favor and don’t tell anyone why I was here.”

“You got it,” Kearny said. “Last thing I want is for Nurse Rule to learn I was jawin’ with a cop.”

“Who’s Nurse Rule?”

“Head nurse here. Damn near runs the whole place. Sam didn’t like her.”

“You don’t either, I guess.”

Kearny’s features hardened into a seamed mask; his eyes looked inward and back along the years that had brought him to where he was, the people he’d known. “Not many here’d say they like Nurse Rule.”

“Mind if I come back to talk to you again?” Carver said. “Nobody’d be suspicious. I told them at the desk I was an old friend of Sam’s.”

“Hey, don’t you be seen talking too much to Birdie!” Kearny said in a hasty, hoarse whisper. “That little thing don’t deserve no trouble. She’s got no idea what goes on around here.”

“Nobody seems to,” Carver said. This wasn’t going according to his script. The deceased’s best friend was supposed to help try to avenge his death, if something really was wrong at Sunhaven.

He tightened his grip on the hard walnut crook of his cane and angled toward the door.

“You can’t blame an old man for being afraid, Carver.” Kearny’s voice was rising again. “You can’t.”

“I don’t,” Carver said, and went out.

As he was passing through the lobby, the old woman tied in her rocker with the yellow sheet stared up at him with vague, moist eyes and said, “In ’thirty-two I was elected homecoming queen at Tulane University and my sister Dolly got so jealous she slit both her wrists. Arm flopped outta the bathtub and bled under the door, or Daddy’d never have found her in time to save her. Lord, that was some day! You believe that?”

“Sure,” Carver said.

“Well, none of it’s true.” The old woman turned withered hands palms up and feebly extended her own scarred wrists.

Carver limped faster and pushed through the tinted glass door into the glare and crushing heat outside.

Sunhaven was a lot like the rest of the world, he decided. Uninhabitable.

A walk through there did wonders for the mood.

E
DWINA WAS STILL OUT
trying to match buyer with condo. Carver got a can of Budweiser out of the refrigerator, popped the tab, and sat at the oak table in the kitchen. He stared out the window at the gulls doing aerobatics over the glittering sea and wondered if they somehow sensed how free they were. Free of a foreseeable future.

After a while he took a long, cold swallow of beer that made the back of his throat ache. Edwina had phones all over the house; she didn’t want to miss a potential deal because it took her an extra few seconds to answer a call. Carver dragged the one on the kitchen table over to him. It was a functional-looking gray model with oversized buttons. It remembered the last number called; it kept forty numbers in its permanent memory and would reach any of them automatically at the touch of a button; it chirped or rang or buzzed or whistled, however you set the controls. Its taped voice warned you if you punched out too many or too few digits in the number you were trying to code in. It would call someone you didn’t like and give them a shock over the line and then laugh at them. High tech was wonderful. Carver used the phone for the simple task of calling Desoto. It made short work of that.

“Been to Sunhaven?” Desoto asked immediately.

“Just got back,” Carver said. “I talked to Kearny Williams.”

“He’s a sharper old guy than they give him credit for around there,” Desoto said. “What’s he think?”

“He thinks what your uncle thought.”

“And you,
amigo
? What do you think?”

“That it’s too early even to make guesses.”

“Ah, you called to tell me you have nothing to tell me.”

“Not exactly. I called to ask. I need a rundown on some of the people out at Sunhaven. A Nurse Rule—don’t know her first name. She’s the head nurse there. And the receptionist, young girl name of Birdie Reeves.”

“Don’t forget Dr. Lee Macklin.”

“Who’s that?” Carver asked.

“Sunhaven’s chief administrator.”

“The doctor who signed Sam Cusanelli’s death certificate?”

“No,” Desoto said. “A young staff doctor named Pauly signed it”

Carver looked out at the clouds scudding eastward, away from him, over the wide ocean. “I get the impression you might already have used the resources of the law to check on some of these people.”

“Only Macklin and Pauly,” Desoto said.

“And you came up with?”

“Nothing surprising. Macklin has the sort of background you’d expect. Administrator of a nursing home in Chattanooga before coming here with glowing recommendations. Married. No kids. Pauly, first name Dan, is a thirty-nine-year-old bachelor and earned his medical degree at Washington University in Saint Louis. Did a general medicine internship in Miami, practiced there for a while at a medical clinic, and two years ago opened his own practice in Del Moray. He has a contract with Sunhaven and calls on patients there daily.”