He approached unit number eleven.
The venetian blinds on the unit’s windows were drawn.
He climbed the low wooden stoop, approached the door, and knocked on it.
“Who is it?” a woman’s voice asked.
In the Computer Room of the Public Safety Building some five miles south and four blocks west. Officer Charles Macklin yanked several sheets of paper from the dot matrix printer. He had not three minutes earlier typed Arthur Nelson Hurley’s name into the computer, and then the letters RS for “Record Search,” and the letters AC for “A Capo” (the technician who’d devised this particular program was Italian), which called for a search as far back as the records went rather than a limited search going back say five, six, seven years, which would have been called for by typing in a numeral when the prompt appeared on the screen. At the next prompt, Charlie had typed in the letters FL for “Florida” instead of US for “Nationwide” because Charlie knew a state-by-state search had to tap into FBI files and that would have taken hours.
Charlie — although he was not at the moment sitting the Parrish house — was nonetheless still moonlighting because here he was doing work for Warren Chambers while collecting a salary from the Calusa PD. Charlie could not figure out why he liked that nigger so much. He just knew that he wanted Chambers to bust whatever it was he was working on. In fact, he couldn’t wait to tell Chambers that he’d run a routine check on Hurley and had fallen into what looked at first glance to be a whole big potful of shit.
Without bothering to tear off the detachable margin strips on the printout, Charlie began reading it. Hurley’s record — a full page of printout — went back some twenty years, to when he was first arrested for assault. His most recent arrest had taken place eight years ago, in Tallahassee; he had been charged with aggravated battery and attempted murder because he’d attacked a man with a broken beer bottle and almost killed him.
Charlie let out a long, low whistle.
5. This is the maiden all forlorn that milked the cow with the crumpled horn…
The girl who opened the door to unit number eleven at the Calais Beach Castle could not have been older than nineteen. She was wearing baggy white shorts and a white smocklike blouse that hung loose over the shorts. The yoke neck of the blouse was embroidered with a yellow-and-blue floral design that matched the color of her long straight hair and her wide-set eyes. Matthew guessed from the size of her belly that she was at least six months pregnant.
“Yes?” she said.
“I’m looking for Mr. Hurley,” Matthew said. “Arthur Nelson Hurley.”
“Art isn’t here just now,” she said.
“Is he expected?”
“Tell me your name again?”
“Matthew Hope.”
“Does Art know you?”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“You should’ve told me that before I opened the door. I wouldn’t have opened the door for a stranger.”
“If you’ll let me in out of the rain,” Matthew said, “perhaps we can…”
“Who is it, Hel?”
A young man’s voice, coming from somewhere inside.
“Somebody named Matthew Hope,” she called over her shoulder.
The young man suddenly appeared behind her. Twenty-two or — three years old, Matthew guessed, red hair and blue eyes, face covered with freckles. He was wearing faded blue jeans, a pale blue T-shirt, a silver-studded belt, and sandals.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I’m an attorney,” Matthew said. “I’d like to…”
“Did Grandma send you?” the girl asked suddenly, her eyes opening wide. “Why didn’t you say so? Come on in.”
“Thank you,” Matthew said.
He closed his umbrella, shook it out while he was still standing in the doorway, and then stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.
He was thinking: Grandma.
There were two beds in the room, side by side. A couple of suitcases in the corner. A television set. An open door, bathroom beyond it. Nobody in the bathroom.
He wondered if he should tell them Grandma hadn’t sent him.
“Are you Arthur Hurley?” he asked the young man.
“Nope. I’m Billy Walker.”
“Is this your wife, Mr. Walker?”
“Nope.”
“I’m Helen Abbott,” the girl said. “I knew she’d come around eventually, Billy, didn’t I tell you?”
“That’s what you said, all right.”
“But why’d she send you looking for Art?” she asked Matthew. “Art only talked to her on the phone.”
“Well…” Matthew said.
“I mean, Art never had any personal contact with her. It was my father who went to see her the first time, just before Christmas. And then me, last month sometime.”
“Uh-huh,” Matthew said.
“I know you can’t negotiate with my father, not while he’s in the hospital. But can’t you talk to me? I mean, I’m the granddaughter, not Art. What the hell does Art have to do with Grandma?”
Matthew didn’t know what Art had to do with Grandma. He didn’t even know what Art had to do with Helen, unless he was the one who’d knocked her up. He knew only that Arthur Nelson Hurley owned a car that had been parked across the street from the Parrish house on Saturday afternoon. Two men had been sitting in that car, casing the house. One of them forty years old and wearing black. The other one a young redhead. Billy Walker was a redhead in his early twenties. Matthew figured the one in black had been Arthur Nelson Hurley.
“Any idea when he’ll be back?” he asked.
“I guess that’s my answer, huh?” Helen said. “She wants you to talk to him. That really ticks me off. She makes out that fucking check, it better be in my name, I’ll tell you that.”
Matthew said nothing.
“Is she going to meet my price?” Helen asked.
Matthew still said nothing.
“You sure know how to take orders, don’t you?” Helen said. “Grandma tells you talk to the man, you talk to the man.”
There was the sound of an automobile outside.
Helen went to the door and opened it.
A blue Honda Civic was just nosing in through the rain, braking to a stop in front of the unit.
The door on the driver’s side of the car opened. The man who stepped out of the car and came sprinting toward the cabin was at least forty years old. He was wearing not black, but green. Green polyester slacks and a green short-sleeved sports shirt. There was an earring in his left ear. The two cops sitting the Parrish house had mentioned that the one dressed in black had worn an earring in his left ear. He had worn his black hair long. He had looked like a total friggin’ hippie asshole.
“That’s Art,” Helen said.
Arthur Nelson Hurley came into the room.
“Damn rain,” he said, and looked at Matthew and said, “Who’s this?”
“Grandma’s lawyer,” Helen said.
“Oh?”
He looked at Matthew more closely.
“He’s got orders to talk only to you,” Helen said.
“Who are you representing?” Hurley asked. “The old lady? Or both her and her daughter?”
“Well…”
“What I’m asking, does Helen’s mother know you’re here? ”
“Well… no,” Matthew said.
“Then whatever you’ve got to say is coming from the old lady, is that right? Elise has nothing to…”
“Well, no, I wouldn’t say that, either.”
“What would you say?”
Matthew noticed that he had a tattoo on his left forearm. A huge snake strangling some kind of small helpless animal.