“So you didn’t report it,” I stated.
“Fortunately not,” he answered quickly. “My father checked with one of his friends on the local police force, who told him that the heat was on like never before and whatever that girl had could break up crime outfits from the city to Las Vegas.”
“But nothing ever happened,” I said. Something had rasped my voice. It sounded low and scratchy.
“Wouldn’t have mattered,” Brice told me.
“Why not?”
He let a few seconds pass before he said, “Because the girl... and she was a girl, twenty, twenty-one... had no memory at all of anything that had happened before the car crash.”
And it was my turn to take a deep breath. “Nothing.”
Dr. Brice shook his head.
I felt like vomiting. “Damn!”
“And that’s not the only thing,” he added.
“Oh?”
The eyes narrowed behind the lenses. “More than her memory was gone, Captain — she was blind. A terrible blow to her head had rendered her totally sightless. She would never be able to identify anybody ...or be able to remember her past.”
“So she was no threat to the mob....”
“Come on, Captain. You know different. Until an identifiable body turned up, those people would never stop looking.”
“That was more than twenty years ago,” I reminded him.
Brice nodded slowly, his eyes on mine.
Before he could say anything, I let the words out slowly. “Where is she?”
He didn’t tell me. He simply said, “That’s why I’m here.”
I knew there was a quiver in my voice when I asked, “Is she still alive?”
He nodded a yes and my pulse rate went up ten points.
She was alive! My Bettie was alive! I didn’t care how she looked or how she remembered things, what she could see or couldn’t see; my Bettie was alive and that’s all that counted.
The old waitress came over, cleaned up what I had left of my bagel and refilled my coffee cup. I dropped in a couple of Sweet’N Lows and stirred them around. She squeezed my shoulder like she always did, and when she had walked away I asked the vet, “Where, Brice?”
“Safe,” he told me.
“I didn’t ask you that.” There was an edge in my voice now.
“Can I finish the story?”
It was moving too damn slowly, but I wasn’t leading the parade this time. It was his fifteen minutes of glory and, unless I wanted to risk slapping him around and losing his good will, I had to let him spell it out his way.
This is what he said:
“My father raised her. He nurtured her, cared for her in every way, educated her, made her self-sufficient in every manner imaginable. She was like a daughter to him.”
“And a sister to you?”
Brice nodded. Then he leaned forward. “But there was always a little twitch in her memory, so to speak, that indicated she had a past somewhere. Not that it ever bothered anybody. In time even that went away.”
“Did it?” I asked. “You’re here now.”
His smile was thinner than he was. “Very astute, Captain.”
“Where is she?” I asked again.
“Safe,” he said again.
“Where?”
“A prelude first... friend?”
“Make it quick. Friend.”
“My father knew he was dying. The disease was incurable, but it gave him time to accomplish what he had to do.”
“Oh?”
“His priority was to make sure Bettie was well taken care of. She had to be protected.” He paused and added, “Well protected.”
I nodded again, wondering where all this was leading.
Brice asked me, “Have you heard of Sunset Lodge in Florida?”
I bobbed my head quickly. “Sure.”
He waited, wanting a further explanation.
“It’s an SCS place.”
When he scowled, I added, “Special Civil Service. A lot of the retired civil servants from the big city wind up their retirements there. Now they got the Jersey troops and the firemen in for neighbors.”
“What else have you heard?” he asked me.
“Hell, they even have their own fire stations down there and the old cops are playing around with the kind of equipment we used to beg for. Man, the power of retirement voters.”
“Florida loves them,” Brice told me. “The cops all carry badges, legal but generously given, have permits to carry weapons; the firemen have all the best equipment and a real playground to spend their retirement years in.”
“Who pays for all this?”
He didn’t tell me. He simply said, “You’d be surprised.”
We stared at each other across the table.
I finally said, “And she’s there.”
Dr. Brice looked at me sagely and nodded.
“She’s safe?”
“Surrounded by experienced ex-officers, I’d say yes, quite safe. They think she is the wife of a former officer who died in the line of duty. And believe me, those ex-cops take care of their own.”
“But she’s blind....”
“Yes, and she lives alone. But her neighbors know her special needs, and those needs are surprisingly small. Anyone outside of this closed community of cops, well, she could fool into thinking she’s sighted.”
“Don’t shit a shitter, Doc.”
He shook his head. “I assure you, I’m not. Her physical actions... and reactions... are incredible. Her response to voices and sounds belies her blindness. She has a dog... not an ordinary seeing-eye dog, but a greyhound that had used up his running life on a racetrack. They were going to dispose of it until she took him in. That dog is her right hand and as friendly as it is, I’d hate to be a person who tried to attack her.”
“Has anyone tried?”
“Not so far.”
When the waitress came by again, I waved her off. Across the table Brice was watching me closely. But this was an old game with me and I played all my cards right.
I asked, “She lives alone, you say?”
“My late father bought a home outright, deeded it to her, established some investments that feed a healthy account in a local Florida bank that should take care of all her needs for... for as long as she lives.”
The doctor didn’t know that I could read eyes as well as I could. A tight grin was twitching at my mouth when I said, “But that’s the issue, right, doc? As long as she lives? What’s the rest of the story?”
A subtle smile turned the corner of his mouth up and he remarked, “I’m playing in your back yard now, aren’t I?”
I just nodded. There are times when it’s better not to say anything.
“My father left money in a trust and gave me instructions, in the event that I thought it necessary to... well, I bought you the house right next door, Captain Stang.”
“What?”
He slid the folder he had been carrying over to me. “All the paperwork is in there. You also have a bank account opened in your name for one hundred thousand dollars. That and your pension should set you up pretty well. Just sign the papers and turn them in. I’m sure you’ll know what to do.”
I didn’t bother to look. Crazy as it sounded, I knew what he was telling me was the truth and small shivers were beginning to run up my back. Not the money shivers. Not shivers from the owning of property. Just shivers from knowing that she was alive. She was twenty years older. She had a seeing-eye dog and now she was living next door to me. At Sunset Lodge. Damn.