Lucas. The space Ms. Verhooven was showing was on the fourth floor as well, but the building was on a slight rise, putting Lucas a bit above the level of the fourth floor across the way. The small discrepancy allowed Lucas to look down on the facing building, which tickled him.
“Is the space to your liking, Mr. Lucasian?” the agent trilled. “Everything you need?”
Lucas cut a glance toward the building across the way, marveling at his luck. Or had this perfect location been arranged by the man upstairs, divine guidance?
“Yes, Ms. Verhooven,” Lucas said. “Everything is absolutely perfect.”
After catching up on paperwork and calls, we returned to Harry’s. I was eager to look at Rudolnick’s records, Harry less so.
My partner lived in a small enclave a couple miles west of downtown. The yards and houses weren’t large, but compensated with charm. There were trees aplenty, old live oaks and pecans and thick-leaved magnolias. Whenever I pulled into the neighborhood in summer, the shade made my soul feel twenty degrees cooler.
Harry’s house was a compact single-story Creole with a full gallery and a magnolia in the front yard. The paint was coral with mauve accents which, for Harry, showed restraint. In the setting, it looked just right, a contented house.
I felt as much at home as if I’d stepped into my own living room. Harry’s walls were red, the woodwork a light green. He had several pieces of art on the walls, primitive paintings of musicians picked up at the Center for Southern Folklore in Memphis. The art was my influence; I fell in love with art in college, passed my enthusiasm on to Harry.
In return, he introduced me to jazz and blues. When we first started hanging out, he asked my musical influences, shaking his head at most. He’d pulled a vinyl of Louis Armstrong from its jacket, set it on the turntable, dropped the needle on a 1929 rendition of the W. C. Handy tune “St. Louis Blues.” It was like nothing I’d ever heard, bright and alive and flowing like a stream, and I was a convert before sixteen bars had passed.
“Let me put on some tunes,” Harry said, kneeling by a stack of vinyls beside his sound system, his sole luxury, eight grand worth of electronics. Ferdinand La Menthe-better known as Jelly Roll Morton-started a piano solo in Harry’s living room.
Harry handed me a beer. I sat cross-legged on his living room floor, Bernie Rudolnick’s professional life surrounding me in white boxes. It might have been a breach of doctor-patient privilege to have such records, and I was uncertain of the legalities. We weren’t about to ask, ignorance being, if not bliss, at least more comfortable than knowing we were in violation of something or other. Thus we had taken the records to Harry’s instead of the department.
Harry said, “How about I unbox, unbundle, and stack each box’s contents in its own area, and you check what’s inside?”
I shot a thumbs-up and surveyed materials at random. Harry grabbed a couple of beers to set by our sides. Having spent a fair portion of my six-year college career in the psych department, I was familiar with the language and methodology involved in Rudolnick’s materials.
“What are we looking for?” Harry said. “There’s a half ton of files here.”
“Anything pertaining to Leland Harwood. Or the penal system, halfway house, prison or jail consultations. We’re casting a wide net.”
Harry studied the mountain of boxes. He made a sound like wounded bagpipes.
CHAPTER 15
Harry and I studied records until our eyes crossed, about four hours. I ran home, grabbed some sleep, was back at it in the morning, coffee replacing the beer. After two hours Harry tossed a pile of pages on the floor.
“I can’t take shrink-jarg for four hours at a stretch. Let’s go beat the streets.”
I rubbed my eyes, stretched my back.
“How about we divide up what’s left, work on it solo every day. Half hour minimum. We’ll get through it in a week to ten days.”
We beat the streets, reinterviewing everyone in Taneesha’s phone book, talking to her family, tracking down our snitches to offer money for anything they could dig up. At five we headed home. My path took me a few miles out of my way, passing by Dani’s place on the edge of downtown.
Her car wasn’t in the driveway. I walked to her porch and rang the bell. There was no response, and I considered letting myself in with my key and waiting.
“Carson?” I heard my name called in a quavering female voice. I turned to see Leanna Place, Dani’s elderly next-door neighbor. She gestured me over like I was a servant.
“Come over, Carson. Look what’s here.”
I sighed, not in the mood for Ms. Place. She thought dating a cop was too coarse for Dani, below her station. Ms. Place always pretended to be solicitous of my health and welfare, all the while launching small, backhanded missiles.
I followed her inside her tidy home. Beside the threshold was a huge vase of flowers. At least I assumed a vase was beneath the explosion of color and scent. Roses and tulips and carnations reached to my waist.
“It’s for DeeDee,” Ms. Place said. Like most, she used Dani’s television name. “The flowers came an hour ago. DeeDee wasn’t home so I took the delivery. Aren’t they gorgeous?” She gave me a wry eyebrow. “I wonder who they’re from.”
It rankled that the old shrew thought me incapable of sending flowers.
“Me, maybe?”
She fluffed the blooms like a pillow, then tapped the small envelope wagging from the vase. “The flowers are from Jon-Ella’s, Carson. I’d guess three hundred dollars’ worth. Not something one gets on a policeman’s salary.”
Jon-Ella’s was Mobile’s most hoity-toity florist, over in Spring Hill. I once priced a half dozen roses at Jon- Ella’s, gasped, got them at Winn-Dixie for a quarter of the price.
I avoided telling Ms. Place that euthanasia’s not such a bad idea and toted the flowers back to Dani’s. I let myself in, set the massive arrangement on her dining room table. The sender’s card fluttered before my eyes, a small dot of tape holding it closed.
I left it untouched.
I made it all the way to the bottom of the porch steps before turning back. The tape peeled loose with ease and I slid the card from the envelope to my sweating palm.
Dearest DeeDee…
The beauty of these flowers pales beside your beauty.
Love and Hot Kisses,
Buck
I left the flowers in the small vestibule outside the front door, where a delivery person would set them. I don’t remember driving home.
I was sitting on my deck in the dark, clothing optional this time of night, nearing midnight. The wind had picked up, a hot breath keeping the mosquitoes at bay. Far across the water a drill rig flamed off gas, orange fire pressing indigo sky. There was a high whine in the back of my head.
My dining room table was filled with my half of Rudolnick’s files. I’d put in a half hour of reviewing, pushed them away, come outside to think about nothing, Dani included.
My cell phone rang from the table beside me. Dani, her voice a tight whisper.
“Carson, I think someone’s been in my house.”
“A break-in? Are the cops there?”
A hesitation. “I didn’t call them.”
“Why not?”
“It’s that there’s no…that is, the alarm didn’t go off.”
