He’d stopped for supper, and it was dusk when he checked into the Pelican Motel, off A1A. It was on a side road and not near the ocean, so it was inexpensive and saved him the time of trying to find a beachside motel with a vacancy.
The Pelican was a rehabbed old tourist court whose individual stucco cabins had been converted to duplexes. All except the first and largest cabin, which was office and living quarters. There was a flying stork painted on the sign by the road, and plastic pink flamingos perched on thin metal legs were stuck into the lawn in front of the office. On the wall behind the desk was a large oil painting of a heron standing on one spindly leg by the sea. Not a pelican in sight. The place probably wasn’t owned or operated by ornithologists, but that was okay with Carver if the sheets were clean.
He registered and paid in advance, and the wry-faced old man behind the desk directed him to the end cabin, then handed him a key attached to a plastic tag in the shape of what looked like a seagull.
Carver drove the Olds to the far end of the gravel lot and parked it in front of the last in the line of small beige stucco cabins. There were only a few other cars parked at the motel, and he’d been told no one was staying in the other half of the cabin, so there’d be no loud TV or crying child to keep him awake. No late-night sounds of lovemaking to cause him to wonder what he was doing here instead of back in Del Moray with Edwina.
He lugged his suitcase to the cabin door, used the key, and pushed the door open with his cane. The air was hot and stale and smelled faintly as if someone had just stubbed out a cigarette. He flipped the light switch, then limped directly to the air conditioner jutting from one of the curtained windows and turned it on. It sounded as if it were trying to commit mechanical hara-kiri, but it shoved out a steady current of cold air,
The cabin was even smaller than it appeared from the outside. There was room for only a double bed, a time-scarred oak dresser with a mirror, a rickety wooden chair, and a TV mounted on a metal bracket that angled from the wall. The tiny bathroom was incongruously modern: white fixtures, white tile, and a white fiberglass shower stall. Black cockroach scurrying out of sight behind the vanity. Carver shut the bathroom door and turned back to the main room. There was only one small closet, standing open, and a bolted connected door to the other half of the cottage.
He didn’t bother unpacking, leaving his suitcase lying flat and unopened on the luggage stand at the foot of the bed. There was no way to know how long he’d be in Fort Lauderdale; might be a couple of hours, might be a couple of days. It depended on how things went at 242 Wayfare Lane.
He limped back down to the office and coaxed a Fort Lauderdale newspaper from a battered and stubborn vending machine, then asked the old guy behind the desk if he had a street map of Fort Lauderdale. He got no street map, but was told the drugstore a mile down the road sold that kind of thing and most any other item Carver might want. The old fella got so enthusiastic that Carver wondered if he owned part interest in the drugstore.
Carver returned to his cabin. It was too cool now; seemed the air conditioner’s thermostat wasn’t working. He turned the blower on low and stretched out on the creaking old bed, opened the newspaper, and read about the latest standoff between Congress and the White House, the Irish Republican Army killing a British trooper in Belfast, a man in Miami who’d set himself on fire to protest the rollback in civil-rights legislation. There sure were a lot of people out there with causes, but none with one so simple as that of Roberto Gomez, who had devoted himself to killing his wife. Carver turned to the comic strips and got a yuk out of “The Far Side,” the only sane thing in the paper.
When it was completely dark outside, he left the cabin and drove to the drugstore the old man had told him about. It was a new brick building as spacious as an airplane hangar, with wide aisles and low counters stacked with merchandise. There were T-shirts, luggage, books and magazines, hardware, auto accessories, groceries, housewares, electronics. In one corner there were even drugs, some over-the-counter medicines and a prescription window. Carver bought a detailed Fort Lauderdale street map, then drove into town.
Even in the dark, it didn’t take him long to find Wayfare Lane. It was in the west end of the city, a narrow street that wound beneath ragged palm trees and an occasional sprawling sugar oak.
Number 242 was a flat-roofed clapboard house set back on a small lot and surrounded by shrubbery. It was painted a pale color Carver couldn’t identify by night, and had dark shutters and trim. Light edged out around closed drapes in a front window, where one of the shutters was twisted and dangled like a vestige of a prehistoric wing. The shrubs on the north side of the house were bathed in a faint yellow glow from a side window.
Carver eased his foot off the brake and let the Olds rumble slowly down the street until it had reached a point where he was half a block away but was able to see the lighted side window at an angle. He positioned the car just so, then killed the engine and got his 10x50 Nikon binoculars out of the glove compartment. Slumped low in the seat so he’d be almost invisible in the dark, he focused the binoculars on the window.
There was a bookcase that contained a few books and a lot of stereo equipment and record albums. With the powerful binoculars, he could almost make out the names of some of the albums. A dial on the stereo system was glowing; there would be music in the house. The back of what looked like a brown chair was visible. Also a table with an orange lamp on it. Carver figured he was looking at about a third of the living room.
A shadow passed over the wall, and a slender, red-haired woman came into view. She stood before the stereo for a moment and adjusted something, maybe changed stations, then moved back out of sight. He got the eerie impression she existed only when he saw her in the window, like a character in a play.
With the infinite patience of his trade, Carver stayed where he was for over an hour. He caught a few more glimpses of the redhead. She was wearing a green robe with wide three-quarter-length sleeves, several gold bracelets on her left wrist. Her hair was pulled back and up and lay in a swirl on the crown of her head. She had a pale complexion that made her dark eyes and lipsticked mouth vivid, and despite being too thin, she was attractive.
She didn’t come into view very often, but her shadow was active on the wall. She seemed to sit down for short periods of time in the chair whose back was visible to Carver, then she’d rise and her shadow would flicker across the room.
He pressed the binoculars to his eyes and adjusted the focus as she came into sight again. She stood with her hands on her hips, then her body jerked and she looked toward the front of the house. Someone must be at the door. She moved off in that direction.
When he lowered the binoculars for a moment, he saw the man on the front porch. He drew the dark form into focus just as the door opened. The redhead-Melanie Beame, Carver assumed-stood framed in light that spilled outside to illuminate a short, stocky black man wearing a gray suit. Melanie moved back and he entered the house. The front door closed.
Carver aimed the binoculars again at the side window and saw nothing. Not even moving shadows.
Lowering the binoculars, he studied the layout of the neighboring houses and yards. There was a spot where he might conceal himself in some shrubbery in the yard next to Melanie’s and have a more comprehensive view into the living room. It would be risky, but he didn’t see that he had much choice.
He climbed out of the Olds. Had to stand for a minute and stretch his cramped back muscles before closing the car door quietly and limping away.
A few porch lights were glowing, but no one was on the dark street. He was sure he wasn’t seen as he made his way over the neighbor’s sparse lawn to the dense mass of shrubbery.