“Anything interesting on the record?”
“Yes and no. Fucking commie sympathizer’s what he was. Maybe still is. Usual garbage on his sheet: resisting arrest, destruction of government property, that kinda thing.”
“What sort of government property?”
“Hah! Everything from a fence around a missile site to his tax form. He was one of them longhairs that stirred up so much shit back then. Now they’re artists and lawyers and whatever. Got secret drug habits and live in expensive condos with their wives, who used to wear love beads and fuck everything had pants with a zipper in front. Sophisticated, they call themselves these days. Junkies is what I call ’em.”
“I heard he had a drug problem.”
“Word I get is he does, but not a big one. Mostly pot. A little crystal meth. What the hell you expect, Carver, guy’s an arteest. Makes me wonder, too, what a used-up ex-hippie like that’s doing with a young goodie like the Macklin cunt.”
“You mean Dr. Lee Macklin.”
“Yeah. Sure as hell he ain’t hitting it like he should. Old pothead probably can’t even get his dong up anymore. Way I see it, theirs is a marriage for appearances only and hubby’s actually a closet fruit wants a sharp wife to show off to the world and help him financially with his career. I mean, hey, she’s a doctor; she’s busy looking down throats and up assholes and ain’t interested in sex anyway, so it works out nice for both of them.”
“Sound reasoning,” Carver said. He rolled his eyes. “Give me a call if you find out anything else about Brian.”
“Sure. And you call me if you find out anything about anything. But I guess you ain’t interested if we catch the guy broke into Raffy’s condo.”
“Only if it’s Brian,” Carver said, and hung up.
He plucked a Budweiser from the refrigerator and sat down again at the counter, where the ribbon from Raffy Ortiz’s typewriter was unfurled and draped onto the floor. He took up where he’d left off.
Near the end-or what to Raffy would have been the beginning-of the ribbon, his attention was heightened by a series of numerals, one of which had a slash typed through it: 50 3 4543–9876.
It didn’t take Carver long to figure out he was looking at a phone number preceded by an area code. The “3” key had been mistakenly struck instead of the “4” and then crossed out. The area code was 504.
Carver phoned the long-distance operator and was told the 504 area code included the city of New Orleans. He depressed the cradle button, then direct-dialed the area code and phone number.
The phone at the other end of the connection in New Orleans rang six times.
When it was answered there was music in the background, a trumpet solo. And voices. A shout, a woman’s laughter.
Then a vaguely familiar male voice said, “Melba’s Place in the Quarter.”
Carver said, “Oops, wrong number,” and hung up.
But his harsh features wore a predator’s smile. It hadn’t been a wrong number at all.
It couldn’t have been more right.
There was a subtle change of light in the cottage, the faintest of sounds from the front porch.
Carver grabbed his cane, went as quietly as possible to his dresser, and removed the Colt. 38 from where he’d placed it beneath his socks in the top drawer. He worked the action and there was a solid metallic double click as a round was fed from the clip into the chamber, then he moved toward the front of the cottage.
For an instant he caught a glimpse of someone peering through a window, then the image was gone.
Footsteps on the porch.
The doorknob rotated.
The door opened.
Edwina.
“I’ve been trying to catch you here,” she said. She noticed the gun but didn’t change expression. Always so cool.
“You and maybe somebody else,” Carver said.
“You’re in a shitty line of work,” she told him. She’d been working her own job; she was wearing a tailored gray business suit with a white blouse and oversized black bow tie. The skirt was short and slit up one side, showing off the fullness of her calves and a neat turn of nyloned ankle. In her right hand was her blue leather attache case. No doubt stuffed with hot contracts.
Carver said, “Maybe we both work too hard.”
Edwina smiled. “Not tonight, though, okay? We go have a quiet dinner someplace, then we go home-to my place.”
“I’m staying here because I don’t want to be seen at your place,” Carver explained. It sounded lame. He suddenly felt as if he’d been caught by a grown-up while playing a child’s game. It seemed absurd and adolescent. He was scared of a bully and didn’t want his girlfriend hurt if there was a showdown. Very dramatic.
But he knew that Raffy Ortiz and whoever else was involved in the Sunhaven deaths were more than mere bullies playing schoolyard games. Something other than a bloody nose was at stake.
“A motel, then,” Edwina suggested.
No child’s game there. Carver looked at Edwina and she looked back with those direct gray eyes that saw to the pit of his soul. They were two people closer to each other than either of them might have preferred. She knew what he was thinking. He could see the material of her white blouse, taut between her breasts, quake faintly with her breathing.
She said, “Trying to make up your mind?”
He imagined her breasts, her thighs, the soft and secret places of her body. Her flesh would be damp from the heat and humidity, smooth and yielding and the slightest bit sticky beneath his fingertips. She would taste like butterscotch and salt. She would be eager.
She was eager.
It was contagious.
He put the gun back in the drawer and went with her.
29
Carver slowed the Olds on the coast highway and turned onto the secondary road leading to his cottage. The car’s canvas top was up, but the morning sun beating through the windshield heated up the interior even though all the windows were cranked down. The warm, whirling air made the Olds a mobile blast furnace.
They’d taken separate cars to the restaurant, but only Edwina’s Mercedes to the Howard Johnson’s motel where they’d spent the night. She’d driven him to pick up his car only half an hour ago, then gone on to her place.
Carver shook his mind from the motion and warmth of last night and watched alertly as he approached the cottage.
The small, flat-roofed structure was still there; Raffy hadn’t burned it down or bulldozed it into the sea. It occurred to Carver that Raffy might not be sure who’d broken into his condo. No shortage of enemies for a guy like that.
But a scarcity of enemies with enough nerve to walk right into the beast’s lair and deliberately leave tracks.
Did Ortiz recognize that kind of nerve in him? Is that what there was about Carver that amused him and provided entertainment? Prey that might make for sport? It was an unsettling thought.
Though everything about the cottage looked reassuringly normal, Carver decided to play it cautious. He parked the Olds in its usual spot, but instead of walking up on the porch, he used his cane to move quickly in a hobbling gait toward the back of the cottage. The surf breaking on the beach seemed to be telling him Hush! Hush! No noise, or whatever he feared most might happen.
He took a quick look through a side window and saw no sign that anyone had been inside. A mosquito the size of a Cessna buzzed around his face and made him blink. He took a swipe at it and didn’t hit it, but the rush of air from his open hand drove it away. Careful not to stumble into the grave Raffy had prepared, he continued to the back and peered through another window.
No one. Nothing suspicious. He knew every inch of the cottage had been covered by his surveillance; unless Raffy had known which window Carver was going to look in next and figured out where to hide, the cottage was unoccupied. Raffy wasn’t psychic, even if he was a three-nutter.