Deal to Die For (28 page)

He was stopped at another light now, saw he had passed Le Jeune, had very nearly reached the address of Rolle’s old clinic. Fifty-one years of practice, the last thirty in the same office, he was thinking. The old doc must have been doing something that drew them in.

He eased over into the right lane, behind a Sunbeam bread truck and in front of a battered pickup advertising lawn maintenance. He spotted an ancient Caddy pulling out of a spot just ahead, put on his turn signal. He eased to a stop, waiting for the Caddy to pull away, fully expecting an impatient blast from the horn of the pickup behind him, that being the standard Miami fuck-you for anyone so brazen as to half the flow of progress, but there was surprising silence from that quarter. He swung straight into the spot, and waved his appreciation as the pickup chugged on by. He thought he saw an answering wave from the driver, but he must have imagined it. That would have constituted road courtesy beyond belief. Maybe the guy had been actually waving a pistol.

Driscoll got out, checked to make sure he was within a couple feet of the curb, then surveyed the nearby storefronts. He’d pulled up in front of a café with a street window and a Brazilian flag draped over the entrance, covering up the numbers. To the east was a plumbing supply house, the numbers a few shy of the doctor’s old address. To the west of the café was a weed-strewn lot, and beyond that, a smallish strip shopping center about the size of the one Driscoll kept his offices in. There were some interesting-looking pastries piled up in a cake saver on the counter of the café, but he forced himself to turn away, head toward the shopping center. Dinner, he told himself, just hold out until dinner.

The builder of the strip had supplied handicapped parking slots, attractive barrel-tile overhangs to shield the various entrances, even some handsome window planters with actual living greenery in them to spruce up the front of the place. What the builder had failed to provide were street numbers. There were letters of the alphabet over each little entryway, A, B, C, and so forth, but nowhere could Driscoll find an address. He considered angling back across the parking lot onto the next building, but he could see the rear of that low-slung place from here: a tall chain-link fence topped with concertina wire surrounded what seemed to be a half block or more of mainly rusted-out, battered, and blasted automobiles, some of them dating well back into the history of transportation. It might have been a junkyard, or an impound yard, but he doubted it had ever housed a doctor’s office.

He turned back to the little center, hoping to find a
clinica
or
medico
or something of the sort, but the closest thing he saw was the Accurso Pain and Chiropractico Centro. The entrance was all the way down at the end of the colonnade, but it was good enough, he thought, ignoring Lilly’s Alternations, Fausto’s Hair Salon, and something called Cielito Lindo Dos on the way. Two Pretty Something or Others, he managed, then gave up. If he couldn’t even puzzle out the meaning of the sign, he thought, passing that doorway, why the hell bother going in?

The Accurso Pain Clinic was open, though there were no customers in the tiny waiting room. There was a wooden plaque hanging on one wall, with the name Dr. A. Agonistes and some strange lettering carved below. On a wall opposite was a life-sized schematic of a fleshless human body, its sinewy muscle groups spiked here and there with red arrows that he supposed were to indicate pain. The whole thing suggested a depiction of some flayed saint to Driscoll.

He saw a button beneath a frosted glass window, several words of Spanish on a card taped nearby. Driscoll stared at the Spanish for a moment. “Push,” he translated for himself, and held his thumb to the button. The window shot open almost instantly, startling him.

A handsome, dark-haired woman in a white lab coat looked out the window at him. “Yes?” she said, her eyes luminous, framed by a lustrous mane of hair.

He stared at her for a moment, then remembered why he’d come. “I was looking for Dr. Agonistes,” he said.

“Do you have an appointment?” she said, her English precise.

“Oh no,” he said, waving his hand in what he hoped was a disarming gesture. “I just wanted to ask him a couple of questions.”

“Are you a salesman?” she asked.

“No, no, nothing like that,” he smiled. “I’m just trying to find someone.”

“A bill collector,” she said.

Driscoll paused. He fished around in his jacket pocket, came up with a card. He checked to be sure he hadn’t written anything on the back of it, then handed it across the counter to her.

“I’m just trying to track down some information,” he said as she studied the card. “I thought maybe the doctor would be able to help.”

She glanced up from the card, looked him over carefully. “I am Dr. Agonistes,” she said.

“Oh,” he said, trying not to stare back. “Uh-huh. A lady chiropractor.”

She watched him quizzically. “There were several of us in my school,” she said.

“Oh, sure,” he said. He pointed to the sign. “Just all the Spanish and all…I thought…”

“My father was Greek, my mother was from Madrid,” she said, a smile playing about the corners of her mouth. “It’s a Spanish neighborhood.” She cocked her head at him. “Now what was it that you wanted to ask me?”

He nodded, still fighting the urge to step forward, peer over the counter, get a look at her legs. Jesus Christ, he thought, he was such a dinosaur when it came to women.

He cleared his throat, felt himself drawing in his gut. “First thing, I was wondering what your address was.”

She laughed. “This is what they send private detectives out for?”

He gave her his shrug. “You ever look outside? There didn’t any numbers.”

She raised her chin as if this were news to her. Then she pointed over his shoulder, out the tiny window that flanked the doorway. “You missed it coming in,” she said. “The mailbox.”

He turned, puzzled. “I looked,” he said, turning back to her. “There wasn’t any numbers on that mailbox.”

She looked at him patiently, as if he were a slow-learning child. “The pole that holds it up,” she said. “It’s cast in the shape of the address.”

He turned and looked again. From this angle it could have been anything supporting the box: a lightning bolt, a pole mangled by a careless driver. “Those are
numbers
?” he said.

“A four, a seven, a four, a seven.” She gave him a smile as he turned back to her. “How long have you been at this?” she said.

He paused, calculating, realizing he’d walked too far. He also had the strangest feeling coming over him. He’d spent a career among cops who loved nothing more than busting chops. But this woman? This Dr. Agonistes?

He nodded, gave her her due, then surveyed the empty waiting room. “So how’s the chiropracting business?”

She smiled. “Okay,” she said. “We’re even.” She folded her hands in front of her, leaned familiarly on the counter. “This is my first week in business. I think I’m going to have to advertise. What do you think?”

He nodded absently. “They say it pays,” he said. Though he’d noticed the absence of a wedding ring, his mind was scooting along now, wondering if was worth trying the Two Pretty What the Hells next door.

“You said you had a couple of questions,” she prompted.

“Yeah,” he said, drawing a weary breath. “But I think you just took care of it.” He had the paper out, checking the numbers just to be sure. “The place I was looking for seems to have been next door, where the empty lot is.”

She glanced out the window. “Gee,” she said. “I wouldn’t know. I think this building is seven or eight years old. Maybe they tore down what was next door the same time they built it.”

“Well,” he said, “thanks for your trouble.” He allowed himself a candid look at her lovely features. The legs would be great, he decided. He didn’t have to see. “I get a crick in my neck, I’ll come back and see you.”

She nodded. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you.”

“Are you kidding?” Driscoll found himself saying. “Just looking at you makes me feel better already, Doc.”

She laughed and Driscoll gave her his shrug, then let himself out. Maybe he shouldn’t wait for his neck to stiffen up, he was thinking as he moved on down the line. Maybe there was such a thing as preventive chiropractic.

The Two Pretty Whatevers had already closed up shop or were not answering his knock, and nobody in Fausto’s Hair nor Lilly’s seemed willing or able to deal with Driscoll’s English or untangle whatever he said to them in Spanish. He stood at the end of the shaded colonnade now, staring forlornly at the vacant lot that had apparently been the site of Dr. Rolle’s clinic, thinking that he very well might have come to the end of the road as far as determining Paige Nobleman’s true parentage was concerned. Of course, it was always possible that she’d gotten things mixed up in the heat of what had happened to her mother and sister. Maybe Barbara had said something entirely different and Paige had just heard it wrong, or the way she wanted to, whatever. Still, there was the matter of those photographs, and the fact that the infamous Dr. Rolle had been the one to deliver her…

…he shook his head, thinking he’d call the Nobleman woman and tell her he was still working on some leads, hoping that maybe Marie’s efforts up north would bear fruit but not really believing it, and was ready to head back to the café, pick up one of those pastries for tonight’s dessert, when he heard a popping sound nearby, and glanced over to see a guy at the verge of the vacant lot trying unsuccessfully to start up a string trimmer.

“
Jesú Cristo
,” Driscoll heard as the guy yanked the cord rhythmically. “
Cabron. Pendejo
.” The curses came casually, with no heat, as though it were some kind of litany meant to bring the spirit of the machine to life. The guy noticed Driscoll staring at him and smiled from beneath the broad brim of his straw hat.

“Hello, my friend,” the guy said, still pulling on the trimmer cord.

Driscoll saw that the lawn maintenance truck that had waited so patiently for him to park earlier was nosed up at the edge of the lot. Maybe the guy
had
been waving at him. Maybe that’s what happened: breathe lawn mower fumes all your life, you finally mellow out.

Driscoll nodded in return. “How you doin’, pardner.”

The guy took him at his word. “Oh, not so very well,” he said. “This machine…” He broke off, shaking his head. He flashed his smile again, leaned the thing against his truck. “Like me, is very old.”

Driscoll looked again. Hard to tell, the guy’s leathery face shadowed like it was. He could have been fifty-five, maybe. Maybe sixty.

“I am eighty tomorrow,” the guy said, as if he’d read Driscoll’s mind.

Driscoll turned and glanced in the direction of the Accurso Pain Clinic. Maybe the good doctor was right. Maybe he was in the wrong line of work.

“Well, Happy Birthday,” Driscoll said. He’d thought of something else worth mentioning. “And thanks for waiting for me to park out there on the street.”

The guy gave him a look. “That was you? Was nothing, my friend.”

“Yeah, well, there’s a lot of impatient people around these days,” Driscoll said.

The guy made a gesture with his hands. “Once you are getting older,” he said, “you understand certain things.”

Driscoll nodded, then glanced at the guy again. “Eighty, huh? You been working around here long?”

The guy laughed. “How long is long?”

“Since when there was a building here,” Driscoll said. “How about that?”

The guy waved it away. “Since long before that,” he said.

Driscoll reached into his pocket, pulled out the photocopy of the birth certificate. He pointed out the section where Dr. Rolle had filled in her particulars. “You recognize this?”

The guy shook his head, and Driscoll’s hopes evaporated. It had been a long shot anyway. He sighed and was about to fold the paper away when the guy spoke up. “I am not reading English,” he said.

Driscoll shook his head. Maybe he was just out of practice. “Okay,” he said. “I was wondering if you remember when a doctor used to have her office here. It was a woman…”

The old guy’s face lit up. “Dr. Rolle,” he said. “She was one good woman.”

“You knew her?” Driscoll asked.

“Of course,” the old guy said. “She own this property. I work for her one very long time.”

“Uh-huh,” Driscoll said. “Well, you wouldn’t have any idea what happened to all the stuff when they tore the building down. All the office equipment, the records, stuff like that.”

“Oh,” the guy said, shaking his head. “I don’t know about that things.”

The guy turned to survey the property as if he were able to see what had once stood there. “She help a lot of people, Dr. Rolle.”

“So I gather,” Driscoll said. He tried to imagine it, too, back in the old days when Miami was just like anyplace else, only hotter, and maybe even sleepier, a place they used to call “Magic City,” where a few folks came down for sun and fun, and a little glitter out on the beach…and way out here in what would have been the boonies then, some old building that wasn’t quite so old, maybe a wood frame house with gables and a high front porch, the kind that looked like your grandmother was inside baking cookies, couldn’t wait to sweep you in, put a big arm around you, make your troubles go away.

Except it wasn’t Grandma’s kisses and cookies, was it? It was what all those girls who came here had in the oven and the good doctor was knocking down a bundle running them in and out and never mind if things got too busy to keep the records straight. All that and more ran through his mind, none of it he saw the point of sharing with the old guy, who seemed to have drifted into the past.

Driscoll was about to give it up, clap the guy on the back and head on home, thinking he could always research the current owner down at County Courthouse, on the distant chance there was a storage room somewhere that still held what he needed, when it occurred to him. Jesus, he thought, it must have been early senility.

“So who do you work for now?” he said, waving his hand about the property. “Who pays you to cut the grass and all?”