He listened to the rhythmic creaking of the rocker’s runners as he limped the rest of the way to the door. It was an oddly reassuring sound that suggested there was some simplicity and goodness in the world.
Nurse Rule was waiting for him outside.
She was standing in the sun near his car. She’d been there for a while; her white-and-blue uniform was damp with perspiration. A mustache of moisture glistened above her upper lip, which at the moment was contemptuously curled in reaction to Carver. Her feet were planted wide and her sturdy body looked immovable; her breasts swelled with firm assurance beneath her blouse. For an instant Carver thought about her with Dr. Macklin at the motel.
“Were you considering moving into Sunhaven?” she asked, motioning with her head toward the clothes piled on the backseat of the Olds. The car might have belonged to a gypsy.
“Maybe in the fullness of time,” Carver said. “How come you object to my presence?”
“You’re causing unease among the residents.”
“It’s because of unease among the residents that I’m here.”
“I have the authority to have you forcibly removed from the premises, if that becomes necessary.”
Carver looked beyond her to see two burly attendants standing side by side with their arms crossed. As if Mr. Clean had been cloned.
“Were you here last night when Kearny Williams died?” he asked.
“Mr. Williams’s death doesn’t concern you.”
“But it does,” Carver said. “And apparently it concerns Raffy Ortiz.”
She glared coldly and directly at him, as if she were diagnosing cataracts. Carver understood how she’d sapped the fight from Amos Burrel. She said, “Just how’s Kearny Williams of any interest to Mr. Ortiz?”
“I’ll eventually be able to answer that question,” Carver said. He adjusted the position of his cane and opened the car door. He patted his pockets. “Spare a cigarette?”
“I don’t smoke, Mr. Carver. Smoking blackens the lungs with tar and causes death by cancer. If I had a cigarette, I’d give it to you. But you wouldn’t smoke it here at Sunhaven. It’s absolutely forbidden.”
“You seem to live in a world of absolutes,” Carver said.
“It’s the kind of world I prefer. I’d also prefer that you weren’t part of it.”
Carver lowered himself behind the steering wheel and shut the door. The window was cranked down. He started the engine, then looked up at Nurse Rule. “If anything happens to Amos Burrel,” he said, “I won’t rest till I learn everything about it.”
“Mr. Burrel suffers from paranoid delusions, which is why I want you to stay away from him.”
Carver said, “Uh-huh.” He slipped the Olds’s shift lever to Drive and pulled out of the lot. In the rearview mirror he saw that the two attendants, disciplined as harem eunuchs, hadn’t changed position in the searing sun. If they ever left Sunhaven, they could always find work as gateposts.
As soon as he was half a mile down the highway, he fished his pack of Swisher Sweet cigars from the glove compartment and fired one up,
He couldn’t remember enjoying a cigar more. Might have something to do with Nurse Rule. Puff! Puff!
18
From Sunhaven Carver drove to Del Moray police headquarters to keep the appointment he’d made by phone with McGregor.
Going to see McGregor was never an act that lifted the spirit. Carver found himself driving a few miles per hour under the speed limit. The Olds was passed by tractor-trailers and motor homes. By vans and station wagons loaded with children Disney World-bound. Tires sang on the highway as miles and minutes ticked away; despite Disney, the children would find themselves in the real world all too soon.
McGregor was sitting behind his gray steel desk, thoughtfully rolling the eraser of a pencil over his chin, when Carver entered. The lieutenant pretended he was still alone. His visitor was scarcely worth acknowledging. That was how McGregor saw life; he was three-dimensional and everyone else was cardboard.
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.