“You still a cop?”
“In a way. I’m a private investigator.”
A gray eyebrow arched. “No shit? You investigatin’ Sam’s death?”
“Why? You think there’s something suspicious about it?”
“Ah, you’re a cop, all right. A question for a question.”
Carver knew he had to confide in someone inside Sunhaven. Kearny inspired a certain degree of trust. Kearny seemed mentally sharper than Birdie had intimated. Kearny had been Sam’s buddy. Kearny was the guy.
“How close were you to Sam Cusanelli?” Carver asked.
Kearny’s gruff facade slipped for a moment. The blue eyes misted and he turned away to stare out the window into the blasting sunlight. “Close enough I cried when he died.” The voice had risen an octave, with shrill panic in it. “I’d tell you I ain’t cried in a long time, but that ain’t so.” Kearny’s broad, square shoulders rose, then fell heavily as he blew out a breath. “Damned stupid, gettin’ to be friends with somebody in a place like this.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You will someday. Time’ll do it to you. When you’re young it buries your mistakes and works the rough edges off you. Then one day you find out it’s worn you down to within a shade of nothin’, and you can’t stand any more loss. You’ll learn what I mean.”
“I’ll ask again if there was anything suspicious about the way Sam Cusanelli died,” Carver said gently.
“And I’ll ask again if you’re investigatin’ his death.”
Carver jumped into deep water. “You might say I’m working for Sam. Desoto told me his uncle had hinted there was something wrong here at Sunhaven. He hired me to find out if Sam was right.”
Kearny turned away from the glaring sunlight and clumsily rubbed his eyes with his thick fingers. “A cop hiring a cop. Don’t make much sense.”
“The only way,” Carver said. “Desoto has no jurisdiction here on the coast, and his superiors might not like him making inquiries about his uncle’s death, since it isn’t even listed as suspicious. The Del Moray police wouldn’t like it, either, and Desoto doesn’t want them tromping through here and putting whoever might have something to hide on their guard. Main thing, though, he’s in Orlando and I’m here.”
Kearny wrestled the chair around so he was facing Carver, aiming a glance at the door to make sure it was closed. “Yeah, Sam told me what he thought.”
“Which was…?”
Kearny looked momentarily bewildered. “That something’s very wrong here.”
Carver was getting tired of this. “ What did he tell you was wrong?”
Fear slithered like live shadow across Kearny’s aged, stubborn features. “Twenty years ago I was a truck driver and a teamsters organizer. Break the arm of a man raised his fist against me. Back then I wasn’t scared of a thing, Carver. I am now.”
“Sam wasn’t afraid to tell Desoto.”
“And Sam’s dead.”
“You think that’s why? Because he was talking about Sunhaven?”
“I don’t know. People die here all the time. That’s what we wait for here. I don’t know that talkin’ too much isn’t why Sam died.” He massaged his gnarled knuckles; he’d been a rough man, long ago. “A natural death, in his bed. Ain’t that what we all want?”
“Sooner or later, I guess.”
“Sam wanted it later. He wanted to live a lotta years more.”
“He’d want you to talk,” Carver said.
“Ever meet Sam?”
“Never had the privilege,” Carver admitted.
“Well, you don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. Sam wouldn’t give a shit if I talked or not. ‘I’m dead, Kearny old sport,’ Sam’d say, ‘so nothin’ matters to me. Ashes to ashes. Ever seen a cigar butt gave a damn about anything? Do what you fuckin’ want.’ ” Kearny smiled. “He’d mean it, too. Sam’d say what he meant, then he’d shut up. One of the reasons him and me got along,”
Carver sensed he’d come to the end of the conversation. He planted the tip of his cane and stood up. The bedsprings sang as his weight released them.
“Hey, I’d tell you what I know,” Kearny said, “only I don’t really know anything. Just got my suspicions. Like Sam.”
“Suspicions of what?”
Kearny shook his head in frustration. “Hell, I ain’t even sure! You believe that? Well, it’s true. I don’t know any more than Sam did.”
“Okay,” Carver said. “Do me a favor and don’t tell anyone why I was here.”
“You got it,” Kearny said. “Last thing I want is for Nurse Rule to learn I was jawin’ with a cop.”
“Who’s Nurse Rule?”
“Head nurse here. Damn near runs the whole place. Sam didn’t like her.”
“You don’t either, I guess.”
Kearny’s features hardened into a seamed mask; his eyes looked inward and back along the years that had brought him to where he was, the people he’d known. “Not many here’d say they like Nurse Rule.”
“Mind if I come back to talk to you again?” Carver said. “Nobody’d be suspicious. I told them at the desk I was an old friend of Sam’s.”
“Hey, don’t you be seen talking too much to Birdie!” Kearny said in a hasty, hoarse whisper. “That little thing don’t deserve no trouble. She’s got no idea what goes on around here.”
“Nobody seems to,” Carver said. This wasn’t going according to his script. The deceased’s best friend was supposed to help try to avenge his death, if something really was wrong at Sunhaven.
He tightened his grip on the hard walnut crook of his cane and angled toward the door.
“You can’t blame an old man for being afraid, Carver.” Kearny’s voice was rising again. “You can’t.”
“I don’t,” Carver said, and went out.
As he was passing through the lobby, the old woman tied in her rocker with the yellow sheet stared up at him with vague, moist eyes and said, “In ’thirty-two I was elected homecoming queen at Tulane University and my sister Dolly got so jealous she slit both her wrists. Arm flopped outta the bathtub and bled under the door, or Daddy’d never have found her in time to save her. Lord, that was some day! You believe that?”
“Sure,” Carver said.
“Well, none of it’s true.” The old woman turned withered hands palms up and feebly extended her own scarred wrists.
Carver limped faster and pushed through the tinted glass door into the glare and crushing heat outside.
Sunhaven was a lot like the rest of the world, he decided. Uninhabitable.
A walk through there did wonders for the mood.
4
Edwina was still out trying to match buyer with condo. Carver got a can of Budweiser out of the refrigerator, popped the tab, and sat at the oak table in the kitchen. He stared out the window at the gulls doing aerobatics over the glittering sea and wondered if they somehow sensed how free they were. Free of a foreseeable future.
After a while he took a long, cold swallow of beer that made the back of his throat ache. Edwina had phones all over the house; she didn’t want to miss a potential deal because it took her an extra few seconds to answer a call. Carver dragged the one on the kitchen table over to him. It was a functional-looking gray model with oversized buttons. It remembered the last number called; it kept forty numbers in its permanent memory and would reach any of them automatically at the touch of a button; it chirped or rang or buzzed or whistled, however you set the controls. Its taped voice warned you if you punched out too many or too few digits in the number you were trying to code in. It would call someone you didn’t like and give them a shock over the line and then laugh at them. High tech was wonderful. Carver used the phone for the simple task of calling Desoto. It made short work of that.
“Been to Sunhaven?” Desoto asked immediately.
