“I’m not old, not paranoid.”
“Ah, and what have you seen here that disturbs you?”
“Raffy Ortiz.”
The beautiful, intelligent face was blank for a moment. “That man who comes here occasionally to see Dr. Pauly?”
“That one,” Carver said.
“He’s Dr. Pauly’s patient.”
“He needs another kind of doctor. He’s a sicko who’s dealt in drugs and death all his life.”
“That might well be, but it’s no concern of mine.”
“Isn’t it?”
She leaned back on the sofa and set one of her black high-heeled shoes bobbing rhythmically. It caused the muscle in her smooth calf to flex in the same tempo. Sexy. “I’m not interested in the histories of my staff physician’s patients,” she said. “Dr. Pauly might have his problems, but he’s quite competent and discreet. If he thought Mr. Ortiz’s presence constituted some sort of danger or disturbance, he’d drop him as a patient or see him elsewhere, I’m sure.”
“What kinds of problems does Dr. Pauly have?” Carver asked.
“The usual. But you figure it out. You seem to see problems everywhere-you might as well assign some to him.”
“How about Nurse Rule? She have problems?”
No change in Dr. Macklin’s mascaraed eyes. “None that I know of. No one at Sunhaven has personal problems of such magnitude that they affect their work. That’s the pertinent point.”
“Then you don’t mind cooperating with me.”
“But I do mind. You see, I know more about Sunhaven than you or anyone else possibly could. I’m sure I can’t convince you there’s nothing here to investigate, but I can do what’s possible to see that you don’t interfere with the care and well-being of our residents. That, Mr. Carver, is an important part of my job.” She stood up and smoothed her skirt over her lean thighs, slipped a nyloned foot all the way back into the high-heeled shoe that had been dangling from her toes while she pumped her leg. “It’s a job that requires a great deal of late afternoon and evening work. So please, if you don’t mind.. ”
Carver stood up and, with the aid of his cane, climbed out of the carpeted conversation pit. A clear path to the door now.
He said, “I notice your husband’s quite a bit older than you. It’s nice to see a May-December marriage that’s working.”
“I’m more like July, Mr. Carver.”
She strode ahead of him on those long, fine legs and opened the door. The room temperature rose a few degrees immediately with the influx of outside air. Heat inundating like water.
Carver said, “I came here on the off-chance you’d help me clear away whatever misconceptions there are about Sunhaven. Instead you’ve only added to my suspicions.”
“I think you carry your suspicions with you like building blocks, and place one atop the other whenever you want, no matter what you see or hear.”
No common ground here, Carver decided, and pushed past the perfumed, feminine warmth of Dr. Macklin and out into the diffused evening light so coveted by her husband.
“Please leave Sunhaven alone, Mr. Carver,” she said behind him. It was a plea for mercy, and it was a warning.
“I can’t,” he told her, and limped to his car through the soft sunlight that made everything seem unreal.
Or at Sunhaven, maybe it was unreal.
Instead of driving out of the parking lot, he circled around to the main building, parked, and went inside.
The lobby was deserted except for an old woman in a robe who was shuffling toward him on her way to a door at the far end of the building.
When she noticed Carver’s cane, she flashed him a sunken smile of kinship and for a moment raised her own cane. It had a rubber tip and made no sound, but her leather-soled slippers scuffed loudly on the smooth floor.
“Here for supper?” she asked. “Chicken casserole.”
“Another evening, thanks,” Carver said.
So it was dinnertime at Sunhaven. He remembered Desoto describing the dining room as a mess hall.
“Got no bones in it,” the woman assured him.
“Sorry, I’m not hungry.”
“Suit yourself,” the old woman said. She sounded somewhat insulted, as if he’d turned down an invitation for a meal she’d prepared. She shuffled back up to speed and moved away from him.
A white-uniformed attendant charged into the lobby and asked if he could help Carver. He was a tall, slender man with black wavy hair and the kind of pencil-thin mustache Errol Flynn used to wear. Deeply etched lines from the corners of his lips to the wings of his nose gave his age away. He was closing fast on the half-century mark.
Carver hadn’t seen the man before and wasn’t afraid of being recognized, so he asked if Birdie Reeves was around. The attendant told him Birdie had finished her day and left Sunhaven a little after five o’clock. Carver thanked him and went back outside to his car, aware the attendant was watching him.
He hoped no one else was watching.
When he got back to his cottage, he phoned Birdie at home.
She didn’t seem pleased to hear from him.
“I need a favor,” he told her.
“Well, if I can do it, Mr. Carver.” But not if it sounds too difficult.
“I need copies of the files of residents who died at Sunhaven during the past year.”
After a long pause she said, “I dunno about that.” She sounded somehow unnatural. Distraught. Her voice dragging.
“It’s very important. Will you get them for me?”
“It makes me scared, that kinda sneaking around.”
“ Can you do it? I mean, do you have access to the files?”
“No.”
“Birdie?”
“What you’re asking would be awful hard to do.”
“But possible?”
“Well, barely so.”
“Think about it, Birdie. If you can get file copies, mail them to me. Or phone me if you’d rather, and I’ll meet you somewhere or drive over to your apartment to get them.”
He made sure she had a pencil, then gave her his address slowly while she wrote it down. He hoped she was writing as he dictated. It would be hard to blame her if she wasn’t paying attention to him and was reading one of her supermarket tabloids while he talked.
The truth was he felt a little guilty. He was using Birdie, imposing his will on her to get what he wanted, as had other men in her life. She had no real choice but to try to get the files. Not if she didn’t want to run the risk of being sent back to Indiana. Ends justifying means, Carver told himself, but he wasn’t so sure. Maybe ends and means were one and the same.
“I’ll do my darndest,” Birdie assured him, still sounding frightened. She hung up, leaving him feeling low enough to crawl under the phone.
He replaced the receiver and sat there in the quiet, darkening cottage. It was as if he could see through the wall to the open grave only twenty feet from him. His grave. His own personal eternal resting place. He noticed the broken pieces of his cane propped now in the corner where he’d set them after McGregor returned them to him at Edwina’s. Carver didn’t want Edwina to see them and had tossed them into the Olds. Driven here with them. The ends were sharp and would poke holes in a plastic trash bag; he’d put them out next week when the bulk refuse pickup was scheduled. The cane had been snapped in half simply by the force of abruptly checked momentum. Carver could imagine the strength and ability that must take. His own upper body was unusually powerful, but he possessed only a fraction of Raffy Ortiz’s conditioning and quickness.
He stared at the broken pieces of cane until the cottage was almost completely dark. Then he picked up the phone again and pecked out Desoto’s number. To get an address on Raffy Ortiz.
Carver wasn’t superstitious or easily influenced by the power of suggestion. He also wasn’t out of time. The grave on the other side of the wall wasn’t yet occupied.
26
In the morning Carver drove down the heat-shimmering highway into Del Moray. On his left, the ocean rolled blue-green and too sluggish for whitecaps, as if it felt the burden of the heat and was lulled to lethargy. Gulls circled lazily above the waves, and in the gray haze of the horizon white sails seemed to hang by invisible threads attached to their points, like triangular pieces of a mobile. The fish-rot smell of the sea clung like a fog to the shore.