“Oh, Al,” I said, “that’s so sweet. Wait’ll I tell-”
“You tend to refer to your wife in diminutives,” Schultz said, a faceful of liquid nitrogen. “That’s interesting.”
“What do you call yours?” Hammond snapped. “ ‘Boss’?”
“We’re sort of straying here,” I said. “I want to call Sergeant McCarvey.”
“Hold on. Let me talk to Sonia.” The two of them conferred as I watched Schultz try, without success, to get his foot out of the armrest. He was taking off his shoe when Hammond came back on the line.
“I didn’t say this to you. No cop said this to you.”
“Got it. You’re in Hawaii.”
“If this balls up the investigation, you’re going to be unemployed, as in no license. Just don’t turn it into a felony. Use your real name. Tell the truth as much as you can. Don’t even hint that you’re a police officer, or you’ll be looking at Spurrier up real close. Better still, don’t make the call.”
“I’m doing it. They’re my goddamn dog tags.”
“Okay. A bonehead’s a bonehead. But you got the rules, right?”
“Right. Thanks.” Schultz had twisted his left foot into a position that would have startled a yogi. “What are you going to do now?”
“Me?” Hammond was all innocence. “I’m going to roll my little love-turtle on her back and see what happens. Hey, Norbert, you want to listen in? You might learn something.”
“Whoops,” Schultz said, grabbing the edge of the metal desk.
“He’s busy,” I said. “Have fun.”
“Sonia, I can’t believe this is legal,” Hammond said. He hung up.
Schultz was balanced on one wheel, most of his left leg protruding through the armrest, as though he’d decided to slide out that way. I got him back to earth and helped him work his leg free while he sputtered and protested and hung on to the desk. The moment he had both feet on the ground, he lit up.
“Hard to see you two as friends,” he said from the center of a cumulus cloud of smoke.
“What do you call your wife?” I asked.
“Evelyn,” he said with dignity.
“Well, she’s a lucky woman,” I said. “Having a man who steers clear of diminutives and all.”
“And you,” he said with the air of a man used to having the last word, “steer clear of intimate relationships.”
“You’re right, I do. And I’m thinking about it. Should I use the speakerphone?”
He was putting his shoe back on, trying to see his foot through the fumes. “For what?”
“For McCarvey.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” he said promptly.
“All brains and no guts.” I punched the button on top of the speaker to shut it off, picked up the phone, and dialed.
The recording told me in a chipper tone that the number I had dialed had been changed. The new number followed, spliced together to create a mechanically musical effect, like Chinese spoken by an android. I wrote it on my palm with Schultz’s ballpoint, which said PROPERTY OF ARLO’S HAPPY LIQUORS on the side.
“New number,” I explained, holding up my hand. Schultz, radiating disapproval, closed his eyes and puffed away.
Four rings, then: “Hello?” It was a woman’s voice, low, slow, and possibly drunk.
“Is Sergeant McCarvey there?”
A long pause. “Who is this?” She sounded like she’d been snakebit on the tongue.
Tell the truth. “My name is Simeon Grist. I’m in the office of Dr. Norbert Schultz, in Los Angeles.” Schultz’s eyes flew open but, hell, it was true.
“And you want to talk to Jace?”
“Well,” I said, choosing words, “we know that Sergeant McCarvey was under VA care for a while. This is just an informational call.”
The woman laughed. It sounded like her very first. “Fucking government,” she said.
Spurrier, wearing his latex gloves, breathed down the back of my neck. “This isn’t actually official government business-”
“My husband’s dead. He’s been dead two years and four months. Typical.” She laughed again, getting the knack, dark and loose and slurred. “You jackass,” she said.
“I’m sorry. Was his death service-related?” At the word “death,” Schultz got up and started to pace the room, trailing smoke like the little engine that could.
“Go to hell,” Mrs. McCarvey said. “Fucking bureaucrats. Jace was murdered. Eight years he gave you clowns, and you don’t even talk to each other.”
“This is very embarrassing,” I said. “Did they catch his, um, his murderer?” Schultz pushed the button on the speaker in time to hear her snort.
“Fat chance. Cops are no better than you are. Hey, wait a minute. You got anything to do with pensions?”
“Pensions?” Schultz waved his hand at me, trying for my attention.
“My pension. Jace’s pension. You listening, or what? Can you help me get it? I’ve been down there more times ’n I can count. I’ve sent letters-”
“I’m sure,” I said, looking at Schultz, “that if you’ve got all of Sergeant McCarvey’s papers-” Schultz nodded encouragingly.
“Course I got ’em. Jesus. Who else would have them?”
I covered the mouthpiece and drew a breath. So did Schultz. “And his dog tags,” I said. “They might want to see his dog tags.”
Silence. No, not quite. I could hear her breathing, and a television made meaningless happy noise in the background.
“Mrs. McCarvey?” I said.
“Don’t you dare come around here, Darryl,” she said at last. “Don’t you dare. I’ll cut your fucking head off.”
She hung up.
Schultz was staring at the speaker as though he expected Mrs. McCarvey to burst through it, knife in hand. “She thought you were him,” he said.
“And,” I said, “she knows who he is. Darryl.”
Schultz straightened the speaker on the desk and dropped into his chair. “You’re going to have to-”
“I know,” I said. I picked up the phone and called Ike Spurrier.
That night I stopped at the Paragon Ballroom on the way home. The only work in progress was being done by a very old man with an electric floor polisher who was buffing the hardwood in long slow straight sweeps, like someone cutting furrows into garden soil. The old man wore a loose, drab gray workshirt and baggy checked trousers, and he was bent forward in a position that looked painfully permanent, his shoulders hunched forward, rounded as a drawn bow. He never took his eyes from the floor.
Mickey Snell, who apparently never went home and never stopped talking, followed several steps behind, downloading information about the grain of the wood and the hardwood pegs that held the floor in place. The old man ignored him, wrapped in a cone of concentration and the hum of his machine.
The bar was in place against the wall, dark wood gleaming. Brass spigots spouted from its surface. On the other side of the room stood a gaudy vertical arrangement of three large glass seashells above a white porcelain basin: Ferris’s fountain for the holy water, dry for now, and surrounded by dozens of spiky orchid plants.
When I stepped further into the room, the bandstand sparkled. Foil stars had been pinned to the deep blue drape, and more stars, made out of cut glass and silver wire, hung overhead from lengths of nylon filament. Clouds of cotton blossomed above the stars. High above it all was a pale crescent moon of old-fashioned milk glass, lighted from within. Max’s heaven.
With the hum of the old man’s buffer and the squeak of Mickey’s voice for company, I walked through the building. The kitchen was, as Henry had promised, dire, but it was spacious and I couldn’t see the food handlers having any problems, and the ovens were too small for anyone to hide in. The bathrooms had been scrubbed until
