Kiss (16 page)

Carver sat down in the chair near the desk and held his cane loosely with both hands. Since the central air conditioner did a poor job of cooling the tiny office, McGregor had improvised. There was now a portable unit in the one window; it chugged away with an irritating clinking sound and didn’t seem to do much to provide relief from the heat. McGregor was sweating. He had on a short-sleeved shirt and wasn’t aware of the scrap of paper sticking to his left elbow as he sat rolling the pencil and putting on a show of deep thinking. It really was a crummy office; Carver could see why McGregor wanted to move up in the department.

“You decide it was time to include me in your plans?” McGregor finally asked.

“That’s it,” Carver said.

“So there’s something the law should know about, hey?”

“Why I’m here.”

McGregor let the pencil drop on the desk, where it bounced three or four times with a rattling sound before rolling onto the floor. Carver sat quietly and let the lieutenant find his way to where he was going. McGregor was looking at him now. That was a start.

“Let’s agree I’m the only representative of Del Moray law you confide in,” McGregor said. “For the sake of efficiency and containment of knowledge. After all, there could be leaks to the media; innocent people might be put in jeopardy. How ’bout it? I painting the situation correctly?”

Carver smiled. “Let’s say a trade might be worked out.”

McGregor leaned his long body way, way back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his neck. The odor of perspiration and days-old underarm deodorant wafted to Carver and hit him hard in the stomach. “Didn’t think you came here to give away something for free, Carver. Comes right down to it, you ain’t so different from me.”

“What if I lie to you?” Carver asked. “What if we make an agreement and I break it?”

McGregor flashed his lurid grin and played the tip of his tongue behind the space between his front teeth. “Here’s what, fuckhead: I’ll drop on you like a forty-story building.”

“We’re no different in that respect,” Carver told him. “Don’t cross me.”

“You threatening the law, shit-for-brains? Actually threatening the law?”

“Sounds that way.”

“Now you made that point,” McGregor said, his grin twisting into a sneer, “tell me your information and
I’ll
tell
you
if it’s worth what you want in return.”

“We’ll talk about what I want first,” Carver said.

“Selfish, selfish. But go ahead; if you didn’t have your balls in a wringer you wouldn’t be here.”

“Protection for Edwina,” Carver said.

McGregor pulled his hands out from behind his long neck and dropped forward in his chair. He propped his bony elbows on the desk; the paper that had been struck to his damp left arm peeled away and fluttered unnoticed to the floor to land near the pencil. The lukewarm air from the window unit caught it and skittered it away beneath the desk. McGregor said, “She in some kinda danger because of her hero?”

“Can you assign some manpower to keep a watch on her?”

“With her knowing it?”

“Without. It’d be easier that way. She might object to being watched over.”

McGregor ran his tongue around the inside of his cheek, pretending to think about what Carver had requested while he luxuriated in his authority. He was such a prick.

“This is sure a crappy little office,” Carver observed, motioning in a sweeping gesture with his cane.

“I got the clout to give you what you want, Carver; you know that. Thing is, what you give me better make it worthwhile, or your ass is grass and I’m the lawnmower. Edwina’s safe soon as I pick up that phone.”

“You gonna pick it up or not?”

McGregor made a nodding gesture of acceptance, not just with his head but with his entire upper body. Only a very tall man could have managed it. “We got a deal. Now spill your guts.”

Carver told him everything. Almost. He didn’t mention the lesbian relationship between Dr. Macklin and Nurse Rule. And he omitted the fact that Birdie Reeves was a runaway. McGregor was the type to blackmail the two women and adopt Birdie for illicit purposes.

“It ain’t much,” McGregor said when Carver was finished talking. “Lotta circumstantial evidence, really. Mostly smoke without any guarantee of fire.”

“More than smoke,” Carver said. “You can feel the heat and see the red glare of the flames.”

“That’s opinion.”

“Most everything is, including a jury verdict.”

“So what’s your plan now?” McGregor asked. “I’m flying to New Orleans to talk to Kearny Williams’s family.”

“New Orleans, hey?” He was obviously thinking about Raffy Ortiz’s recent trip to the city. “That’s why you want Edwina protected; you’re gonna be outta town for a while.”

“That’s it,” Carver said. “And I’m moving back into my cottage until this thing’s resolved. No sense having Raffy Ortiz visit me at her place when she’s there.”

“Or visit
her
when
you’re
not there. Ortiz does very imaginative things to women, way I understand it. Abuses everything they got every which way. Maybe some ancient Oriental shit he picked up with all that martial arts training. Got it from the folks who gave us the Chinese water torture and the death of a thousand cuts.”

Carver felt himself flush with rage, and he fought not to slash his cane up and across the desk and smash McGregor’s long face. “That’s what you’re supposed to prevent. That’s what this is about.”

“Aw, she’ll be okay. Safe as the fucking queen of England. Even if I gotta assign six men to subdue bad-ass Ortiz. Long as you and me keep this matter strictly between ourselves for the time being. Remember, we’re partners, old buddy.”

“We made an agreement. I’ll keep it and you’d better take care of your end of it.”

“What about Desoto?”

“I phoned him this morning; he won’t say anything without telling you first. Police protocol.”

“Glad he finally remembered it,” McGregor said huffily.

Carver planted the tip of his cane on the smooth linoleum and stood up. His lower back was beginning to ache. It felt good to get out of the rigid chair. It would feel even better to get away from McGregor.

“Something for you to think about,” McGregor said when Carver was leaving. “You’re worried about Edwina here in Florida, but there’s nothing to prevent Raffy Ortiz from taking another trip to New Orleans.”

Carver didn’t answer. He’d already thought about that. It was why he was making no secret about leaving. Even super-naturally tough Raffy Ortiz couldn’t be in both cities at the same time. If Raffy had to be one place or the other, Carver preferred New Orleans.

He drove out of Del Moray and then north along the coast highway to his cottage. A few puffy white clouds kept pace with the car.

The inside of the place was hot and stale. A mud dauber droned around the dead potted plants suspended on chains before the wide window that looked out on the secluded beach and the sun-shot ocean. Waves were charging in high and wide against the beach, then withdrawing to leave creamy surf spilling over the sand.

The cottage was one large room, with a folding screen that partitioned off where Carver slept. Out of habit, he limped into the tiny kitchen area behind a breakfast counter to get something cool to drink.

He’d forgotten he’d switched off the main circuit and the cottage was without electricity. The little refrigerator stood with its door hanging open. It contained only two warm cans of Budweiser, left from when Edwina helped him load the last of his portable belongings into her car and the Olds. It was as if he’d taken up residence in her house bit by bit, one piece of him at a time.

He made his way to the circuit box in the corner and threw the main breaker. A lamp flickered on. The refrigerator clicked and gurgled and began to hum.

Carver switched on the air conditioner, then went to the refrigerator and shoved the door shut with his cane.

It didn’t take him long to carry his clothes from the back of the Olds into the cottage. Didn’t take more than ten minutes to pack what he’d need for his brief journey.

He had several hours before his turboprop commuter flight took off from the Del Moray airport for the short hop to Orlando, where he’d make the connection to New Orleans. Remotely, he considered driving down the highway and getting some lunch. But the heat had ruined his appetite and he decided against it.

He slumped in the webbed aluminum lounge chair on the cottage’s shaded plank porch, his stiff leg stuck out in front of him at a sideways angle, his good leg propped up on the porch rail.

He watched the ocean rolling beyond the toe of his shoe and waited for the beer to get cold.

C
ARVER CARRIED HIS
scuffed leather suitcase to the cabstand at the New Orleans International Airport and took a taxi into the city.

It was as hot here as in central Florida. As the cab drove through the poorer section of town, he saw that most of the women wore shorts or skimpy, loose-fitting housedresses of flimsy material. The men had on sports shirts or sleeveless T-shirts if they wore shirts at all. Quite a few people were out sitting on porches or concrete stoops, trying to take advantage of the somewhat cooler early evening air and get free of ovenlike, stifling apartments that heated up and stayed hot. An obese woman, patiently fanning herself with a folded newspaper, was slumped on a porch glider, surrounded by writhing, half-naked children and grandchildren. Poverty required endurance. The price of oil was low and Louisiana’s unemployment was high. The city was economically depressed. It showed.

The kind of hotel Carver checked into didn’t require a reservation. The Belle Grande was on Belton Avenue near Canal Street, in an old, mostly commercial neighborhood. It was small and retained a certain miniature faded elegance while it did battle to keep time at a standstill. Time would keep moving. The hotel was hanging onto respectability by a fingernail; in five years it would be a flophouse, if it still existed. Unless the neighborhood went the other way, in which case it would probably be an exclusive
concierge
hotel. It was downtown and within easy walking distance of the French Quarter. It suited Carver. He was paying for this trip.

His room was small and the furniture and carpet were threadbare, but everything seemed clean. The walls were papered in a busy fleur-de-lis pattern. Sound strategy; it would be tough to spot a roach crawling on them. Carver wondered if that was the sort of thing they taught in hotel management school. Probably.

He didn’t really unpack. Hung a few shirts and a pair of pants in the closet. Tossed his shaving kit on the chipped porcelain washbasin in the bathroom. The rest of what he’d require he’d take directly from the suitcase as he needed it. Life on the move.

He wrestled open the dirt-streaked window and checked the view from his tenth-floor room. Beyond the old office buildings across Belton, he could barely see Canal Street sweltering in the summer haze. A man and woman were holding hands and standing in the wide median, both staring raptly at a red light, waiting for electronic permission to cross the street. Even the traffic seemed to be moving slowly, almost dreamlike. Carver turned away from the window and sat down in the room’s one chair to read the
Times-Picayune
he’d bought in the lobby.

He’d had a reason, in addition to protection for Edwina, for making his arrangement with McGregor. Now he could invoke McGregor’s name and gain the cooperation of the New Orleans police if it became necessary. He might do that to help him stave off the legendary samurai-sadist Raffy Ortiz, or to aid him in finding out what he needed to know about Kearny Williams. He hoped he wouldn’t have to do it for either reason.

He learned from the newspaper’s obituary page that Kearny Williams was laid out at King’s Crown Mortuary before interment tomorrow morning. The death notice listed names of surviving relatives. The New Orleans phone directory contained the addresses and numbers of those relatives, and the address of the mortuary. Carver smiled. Who needed two healthy knees to do legwork?

He decided to postpone supper and shrugged back into the lightweight tan sport coat he’d worn on the plane. Briefly he thought about putting on the tie that he’d brought, then with open collar he limped from the room.

He had to walk all the way over to Canal Street to get a cab to take him to King’s Crown Mortuary.

The cab hadn’t been air-conditioned. Carver smoothed his hair back behind his ears, dabbed at his forehead with the sleeve of his sport coat, and made his way up the wide, shallow concrete steps toward the mortuary’s ornate entrance.

King’s Crown was a fortress of marble, brass, and black wrought iron. It reminded Carver of a bank with a select number of wealthy depositors. Sort of place that routinely turned down small business loans. He was surprised by its opulence.

A solemn man in a dark suit directed him to the “Williams suite,” and Carver walked down a carpeted hall to a large room furnished in expensive and subdued French provincial. There were sofas and chairs in pale blue with cream-colored wood trim. Long, royal blue drapes matched the carpet. About half a dozen people sat around the room talking in soft tones. At the far end was an open casket surrounded by floral sprays and wreaths. The coffin was obviously expensive; it was made of polished mahogany and had fancy brass trim and handles. The propped-open lid was lined with buttoned white satin. The latest in underground luxury.

Carver avoided the registration book, which lay open and softly lighted on its wooden stand, walked to the coffin and gazed down at what had been Kearny Williams.

The undertaker had done expert work. Kearny appeared much as he had the last time he’d talked with Carver. Carver almost expected the corpse to part its rouged lips and speak. Wished it could.

The walk back to the opposite end of the room gave him a chance to look over the various mourners.

There were four men and two women. Two of the men seemed ill at ease. The other two wore expensive suits and looked bored. One of the women was wearing a simple and elegant black dress and sat with one of the well-dressed men on a small sofa. They were staring at the coffin, not talking. As if they were in some sort of suspended animation that allowed only limited movement. The other woman, elderly and black, had on an ill-fitting gray dress with a blue flower design. She was very thin and sat hunched over with her bony hands folded in her lap. Though there was a quiet, subservient air about her, she looked angry. Angry at death? Or maybe something else? Carver changed direction and set course toward her.