how some of ’em drop their drawers soon as they see a uniform.”
“There’s a special place in hell for you,” Carver said. “It’s just like here on earth only it never ends.”
“Hey, you think I’m unhappy?”
“You gotta be miserable being you. Anybody would be.”
McGregor turned and gave Carver his leering, gap-toothed grin. “You got it wrong. I’m a contented man. I know what I am, and I know the truth about things. Got no illusions. You’re just like me, Carver, only you got illusions. You put yourself on. Sorta guy makes me wanna puke. People are only out for themselves, and that includes the two of us. It’s a shit world. I see it and you don’t. I roll in it and even kinda enjoy it, and you can’t. Your hard luck.”
Carver suddenly had to get away from McGregor, from the sight and sound and corrupt smell of him. He flung open the cruiser’s door, swiveled on the seat, and planted his cane on the gravel driveway.
“People are all alike,” McGregor said. “Life teaches you that. Grinds it into you. Ask your feeble friends out at Sunhaven; they been around awhile and they’ll tell you. A shit world, all right. That’s the reason most of ’em are actually looking forward to dying even though they’re scared to piss in their pants.”
“Jesus!” Carver said. He straightened up out of the car.
“Him? He was invented for fuckheads like you.”
Carver slammed the door and limped toward the house.
McGregor was some way to start the day.
16
“What’s McGregor doing in Del Moray?” Edwina asked when the cruiser had driven away. She was standing at the sink, rinsing the uniform’s coffee cup. Her own cup was still on the table half full, steam rising from it like an unformed thought.
Carver told her. Then he told her where he was on the Sunhaven case, and the reason for McGregor’s visit.
“I loathe that man,” Edwina said, not for the first time.
“Most everyone does. He prefers it that way. As long, as everybody’s his enemy, he can feel justified doing anything to anyone. A foolproof system.”
Edwina nodded. She understood. Larry, maybe. Or perhaps she was thinking about herself during the first year after her divorce, when she was fighting to establish her own identity and her territory in life. That was when she’d made big mistakes, and then made things right again and became for the first time the real Edwina. It hadn’t been an easy passage.
After breakfast out on the veranda, Carver phoned Sunhaven and asked Birdie if Dr. Pauly was there. It was Dr. Pauly’s day off, Birdie informed him. No, the doctor didn’t have any practice other than at Sunhaven and he’d probably be at home.
“Not on the golf course?” Carver asked.
“Dr. Pauly’s not the golf type,” Birdie said.
“What’s he usually do on his days off?”
“I dunno, Mr. Carver. Never heard him talk about it. But I’m not really around him that much; he’s busy when he makes his rounds. Says ‘hi’ and ‘bye’ to me, is all. But he’s a nice man. Always smiles as he hurries on past the reception desk. Now and then gives me a look when a resident does something really crazy, like only me and him understand what’s going on. Stuff like that.”
“Birdie-”
“Gotta hang up. Sorry.” The last in a whisper.
Click… buzz.
Someone must have been approaching her desk. Birdie didn’t want anyone at Sunhaven to know who was on the other end of the connection. Instincts of a survivor.
Carver had a second cup of coffee, kissed Edwina, and then made his way to the garage, where the Olds was parked next to her Mercedes; a hulking heavyweight has-been next to a trim young middleweight.
As he drove from the shadowed garage into the glaring morning, he glanced over at Edwina sitting gracefully at the outdoor table, holding her coffee cup poised while her hair caught the sun and her silk gown flowed with the currents of the breeze. Beauty crystallized in memory.
For one instant, he felt sorry for McGregor.
The wooden flower boxes beneath the windows of Dr. Pauly’s Hansel-and-Gretel house were dripping darkly and the geraniums stood at glistening attention. Someone had recently watered the plants. Overwatered them.
When Dr. Pauly answered Carver’s knock, he was wearing a pair of those leather sandals with recycled tire- tread soles, faded blue jeans cut off just above his knees, and a white T-shirt with “WHY ME?” printed across the chest in black letters. Not the kind of guy you’d want to see stroll into the operating room as you drifted off under an anesthetic, but on the other hand, it was his day off.
Carver identified himself.
Dr. Pauly smiled. “I know who you are. You’ve been out at Sunhaven a few times. Caused something of a stir.” He was a fortyish man with dark hair that had receded. There was no way to know how far, because it was combed straight down onto his forehead in sparse bangs, Roman emperor style. His features were sharp but pleasant, with gray eyes deep-set and friendly beneath symmetrical bushy black brows. His chin was as sharply pointed as his nose; when he got very old, like his patients at Sunhaven, chin and nose would strive to meet.
“Stir?” Carver said.
“Maybe that’s an exaggeration,” Dr. Pauly said. “C’mon in where it’s cool.” He stepped back to let Carver move inside.
The tiny house’s living room was neat now, but through an open door Carver could see into a bedroom strewn with clothes and newspapers. A corner of a bed with tangled sheets was visible. There was a large wicker laundry basket heaped with wrinkled clothes next to it, with a wadded pair of gray sweat-socks on top as if for dour decoration. In the doorway to the kitchen stood an upright vacuum cleaner and a maze of spiraled hose and attachments. A faint pine disinfectant scent hung in the air, probably from some sort of cleaner or floor wax. Apparently Dr. Pauly cleaned house on his day off, working front to back.
Carver sat down on a small brown sofa and propped his cane against his leg. Dr. Pauly stood smiling with his hands clasped behind his back, at military parade rest, and said, “Rumor has it you think something’s wrong out at Sunhaven.”
“ Is there something wrong?” Carver asked.
“Sure.”
Carver waited, aware he’d edged forward on the sofa. A picture of expectation.
Should have known better.
Still smiling, Dr. Pauly said, “But not any more wrong than at any other nursing home, Mr. Carver. Old age can be a trial sometimes, but we try to make it as pleasant as possible. That means ‘merely endurable’ for those in a badly deteriorated condition. Oh, I know how younger people feel walking through a place like Sunhaven. The depression, the sympathy. There’s something personal working there because we all know we’re going to get old ourselves. But believe me, in general the residents are contented. At least as contented as we can make them.”
“I understand Kearny Williams died last night.”
Pauly’s bushy dark eyebrows almost knitted together for a moment in a look of surprise and concern. “How’d you know that?”
“I was told by the authorities. You signed the death certificate.”
Dr. Pauly nodded, then raised his very expressive eyebrows and said, “You’re not suggesting there was anything suspicious in the way old Kearny Williams died, are you? Good Lord, is that the sort of thing you mean by ‘something wrong at Sun-haven’?”
“Not suggesting,” Carver said. “He died of heart failure?”
