“Just a friend,” Carver said. “I don’t think he has any family left.”
“I see.” Dr. Montrose looked thoughtful. “Would you like us to call if anything else develops?”
Carver said he would. He thanked Dr. Montrose, then left his name and the phone number of Henry’s cottage with Pru at the nurses’ station.
Then he went downstairs, sat in the quiet coolness of the hospital cafeteria, and had a salad and a dry roast beef sandwich for lunch. He was sure Henry had been run down deliberately. To think otherwise would be stretching anyone’s idea of the limits of coincidence.
The game might be about to change. If Henry died, Carver would be investigating a murder.
Of course, if Henry died, Carver would no longer have a client. Questions could be left unanswered. There’d be nothing compelling him to continue his investigation.
Like hell there wouldn’t.
He left his sandwich half eaten and drove back to the Blue Flamingo, fighting the heat and frustration of sitting still every few blocks in the sluggish Miami traffic. Maybe Frank and Selma Everman had returned.
Maybe something about this Miami trip would go right.
14
This time Carver didn’t phone upstairs first. He limped across the Blue Flamingo’s lobby and stepped into an elevator waiting with open doors. The lobby had been deserted except for an ancient black man napping or dead in one of the armchairs. The desk clerk was facing the other way, apparently checking cubbyholes for room keys or messages while he talked on the phone.
Carver’s luck was beginning to change. On the fourth floor the elevator stopped and a skinny little man with haunted dark eyes and thin black hair pasted severely sideways over a bald spot got in. Entering the elevator with him was the smell of perfumy cologne or deodorant and stale sweat, nauseating in such close quarters. The man was holding a gray plastic ice container with a blue flamingo decal on it. It was full of ice, which apparently was available on the hotel’s even-numbered floors. The man glanced at the control panel, saw that the only glowing button said 5, and simply stood with his head tilted back, staring solemnly at a point above where the elevator doors met. He’d never acknowledged Carver’s presence and might as well have been alone. Elevator etiquette.
On the fifth floor Carver hung back and let the man with the ice leave the elevator first. When the man turned left, Carver held the Open button in so the elevator would stay as it was, and waited a few seconds before stepping out into the hall. He stood leaning on his cane and bowed his head, as if trying to remember something, playing it casual.
The man with the ice bucket had paused and knocked on a door. Now he was shifting his weight from side to side, like a worn-down nervous boxer who has no punch left and is afraid of getting hurt. As the door opened and he edged inside, he looked back at Carver with the hostile’ hope of the poor and dispossessed.
Only when Carver approached the door and saw the room number was he sure it was 505; the man with the ice must be Frank Everman, and probably his wife, Selma, had let him into the room. There was music playing in 505.
Carver rapped firmly three times on the door with his cane. Everman had seen him and knew he’d been seen, so Carver wasn’t going to go away. No use pretending the room was unoccupied; there was little choice for Everman but to open the door to nasty and persistent reality.
Which he did.
Everman was no longer holding the ice bucket, and was wiping his damp hands on his blue polyester pants. He was about fifty, but the deeply etched map of pain that was his face said it had been a tough half-century. The top two buttons of his white shirt were unfastened to reveal what appeared to be a rawhide necklace disappearing among his gray chest hairs. He was short as well as skinny, and he looked up at Carver as if he’d just done something wrong and been struck a blow in anger. There was little hope in his eyes now, and only a glimmer of hostility. He wasn’t sure about Carver, despite the cane. He’d been around enough to recognize a certain dangerous kind of man.
Behind him, standing in the middle of the room and peering over his shoulder, was a tall but stooped woman with gray hair, badly fitted dentures, and a bewildered expression. She was wearing baggy green slacks and a yellow blouse with a stain on it that looked like coffee. There was a robust polka playing in the room, a slightly cracked record, heavy on the tuba and accordion.
Carver said, “Mr. and Mrs. Everman?”
“Yeah?” said the man, making it a question.
“I’m from Key Montaigne,” Carver said, raising his voice so he’d be understood over the music. “I’m here to talk about your son.” Oompah! said the tuba, vibrating the floor.
A blank look came over the face of the man. Fear crept into the woman’s woeful blue eyes.
“Our son’s dead,” Frank Everman said.
“I know. That’s why I’m here. To ask you a few questions. I don’t like it, but that’s my job. Can I come in?” Oompah! Oompah!
Everman didn’t know how to say no. Carver inserted his cane into the room first, as if it were part of him that was already inside, then limped through the door and past Everman, who made a sort of acquiescent grunt as he shuffled aside. The hall had been hotter than the lobby, and the room was hotter than the hall. It was actually a small suite. Carver could see beyond the overstuffed old sofa that matched the lobby furniture and into a room where the corner of an unmade bed was visible. Alongside the sofa was a fancy brass floor lamp with a bent yellow shade. A cheap reproduction of a Frederic Remington painting, a weary Indian on a wearier horse, hung on one wall. There was a bookshelf on another wall, but it held stacks of 33 rpm records instead of books, and a brown stereo turntable with lots of controls but only one knob, and that one cracked in half. The woman walked over and used the cracked knob to switch off the turntable, then lifted the stylus and carefully set it aside in its bracket. The room was astoundingly quiet in the absence of polka. It smelled of stale tobacco smoke and strong insecticide, now that Frank Everman was out of range with his cologne.
The woman must have seen Carver’s nose twitch. “I just killed the biggest roach you ever seen,” she said, and crooked her forefinger over her cupped hand as if depressing the button on an aerosol can.
“I’m glad you nailed him before I got here,” Carver said, smiling. Selma might be easier to deal with than the whipped loser Frank.
Frank tried to take charge, backpedaling quickly to the center of the room so he was standing next to his wife and facing Carver. “So whad’ya need to know about Lenny? I thought we told you guys everything possible.”
“Probably you did,” Carver said sympathetically, “but we need to hear it again to verify it.” He looked over at Selma. “Losing your son as you have, you must understand we have to learn everything possible so we can try to prevent other kids from leaving home and ending up the same way. The streets are the worst kind of life for a minor.”
“For anybody,” Selma said.
“It was the drugs,” Frank said. “Goddamn drugs and the scum that sells ’em is what killed our boy.” He clenched his fists and looked fierce enough to tackle any drug dealer smaller than five feet tall.
Selma bowed her head. “Time to time, the way God works His will is hard to bear up under.” She’d produced a wadded white Kleenex from somewhere and used it to dab at her eyes. Tiny pills of tissue appeared on her blouse to join the coffee stain.
“Did Leonard have a history of drug use?” Carver asked.
Frank looked puzzled, then said, “We told you fellas he did. His fuckin’ peers got him using the stuff when he was no more’n eleven years old. Hell, we was surprised to find out. Exactly the kinda unsuspecting parents you read about. Lenny was hard to roust outa bed some mornings, but other’n that we seen no sign whatsoever he had a problem.”