Her phone rang twelve times before she answered, even though it was right beside her bed. He wasn’t surprised. She slept deeply.
She cleared her throat. “ ’Lo.”
“Edwina, this is Carver.”
“Four inna morning. Whassa matter?”
“I’m not sure. I’m sorry; I wanted to hear your voice.”
“S’okay. You know it is.”
“I almost shot Paul Kave last night.”
She paused one, two, three beats. “Why didn’t you?” As awake now as she could be at 4:00 A.M.
“I was seen and had to get away.”
“Will anyone be able to identify you?”
“I don’t think so.”
She was quiet for a while, then she said, “You still want to kill him?” He reached far back into the mysteries of his mind before he answered.
“Yes.”
“Sure?”
“Yeah.”
“You okay now?”
“Okay.”
“Sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Go to sleep then, baby. Go to sleep.”
“Edwina?”
“You rather talk awhile? It’s fine, if that’s what you want.”
“No, I guess not. No.”
“Go to sleep, baby.”
“All right.”
She waited for him to hang up first. He was finally able to sleep, but not without dreams or fear.
It was nine that morning when Carver knocked on Emmett Kave’s door. The sun was already glaring hot and harsh, angling in beneath the sagging gutters to cast brilliant rectangular patterns on the concrete porch. The porch floor had been painted gray long ago, but nothing of the color remained except for a stubborn peppering that had penetrated the concrete too deeply to be dislodged by weather. A large palmetto bug, brown and glistening and ugly, dragged itself across a sharp corner of sunlight and then disappeared beneath the wall near the edge of the porch, seeking darkness.
Carver had a headache; he wanted out of the sun, like the bug.
Emmett opened the inner door and peered through the patched screen at him. The old man was wearing a green, limp terrycloth robe that had gone through the wash too many times. When he swung the screen door open, Carver saw that the robe hung to his knobby knees, and his thin, hairless ankles disappeared into old leather slippers with dark stains on the toes, as if oil had dripped on them long ago. He said, “Don’t you look like something the cat crapped out this morning.”
“I didn’t get much sleep,” Carver said.
“Here to tell me about last night?” Emmett asked, shuffling backward so Carver could enter. The slippers made soft sighing sounds on the floor.
As the door slapped shut behind Carver, he noticed that the house smelled like frying bacon again. He wondered if it always smelled like bacon. Possibly that was all Emmett Kave ate. Maybe the preservatives kept him alive.
Emmett slouched down on the dark old sofa and motioned for Carver to take a chair. Carver declined. He didn’t feel like sitting. He leaned on his cane and looked around. Sunlight was trying hard to break in but hadn’t made it yet; the house was warm and gloomy. He wished Emmett would switch on the blue box fan that was wedged in the front window.
“Coffee?” Emmett asked.
“Nothing,” Carver said. “I missed Paul last night at the Mermaid Motel.” He was immediately aware of the irony of his words. Another few seconds and he wouldn’t have missed Paul; he’d have shot him dead-center through the heart.
“Television news said somebody with a gun was scared away at the Mermaid late last night. Didn’t say what room he was creeping around. Didn’t say much of anything, really. That’s TV news, ain’t it? Them fashion-plate fuckheads is so busy chatting and smiling at each other they don’t tell you beans in the way of details.”
“I don’t think it was Paul,” Carver said.
“Me neither. But it might’ve had something to do with him. Might’ve caused him to run, when all them police arrived and the commotion started.”
“Could be.”
“You know anything about what happened there?” Emmett asked.
Carver put on his best liar’s face, feeling the flesh beneath his eyes stiffen. “It happened before I got there. No one was in room one hundred when I arrived.”
Emmett’s bushy brows lowered and he looked appraisingly at Carver. He had the injured, shrewd eyes of a lifelong victim; a man not easily fooled even though distracted by demons. “You and me’s the only ones know Paul was at that motel last night, Carver, or the police’d be making a bigger hubbub about what happened.”
Carver stood waiting. He shifted position with the cane. Emmett suspected something, sensed an undercurrent. Carver would have to handle this carefully. The old guy was sharp enough to shave paper.
“Sure you don’t know anything about that man with the gun?” Emmett asked. “Seems awful coincidental, something like that happening when Paul was staying there.”
“Could have been a cop free-lancing,” Carver said. “Maybe he’d traced Paul there and was planning to take him alone, get all the credit. It’s rare, but it happens in cases like this that get a lot of publicity and can make careers.”
“You shittin’ me?”
Carver shrugged, wishing he’d come up with a better story. “Hell, I don’t know. I’ve got no idea what went on at the Mermaid before I got there. All I do know is that Paul was gone when I arrived.”
Emmett seemed to mull over this explanation, absently rubbing the sole of one of his slippers on the blackened toe of the other; a habit that explained the stains. “If what you said about a cop acting alone is true, the law would keep it quiet, I guess.”
“Sure. He’d be disciplined within the department, probably suspended. Things like that happen. Not often, but they happen. And the public never knows.”
“Humph! Police! Bureaucratic bastards!”
Carver was getting uncomfortable standing in one spot, but he didn’t want to sit down. He limped around slowly for a moment, then stopped and looked at a collection of old, framed photographs arranged on the faded wallpaper. The sun had found its way around a shade and illuminated that wall, and the photos were well lighted. One was of a young, square-jawed man standing alongside a short, somber woman with hair piled high on her head. Both wore dark clothes of almost Edwardian style. It was a crack-checked, very old photograph. Another photo was of a cluster of men or teen-age boys, snapped from a distance and out of focus, so that their features were indistinguishable. Behind them was a round lake with a fountain in the middle. There were some shots of a small, pale youth with unruly, very blond hair-possibly Paul as a schoolboy, though this child looked almost albino. Below these hung a group photo of some battle-grimy marines. The soldier on the end, grinning with his helmet tilted well back on his head, was unmistakably the young Emmett Kave. Every man in the photo appeared exhausted and was grinning. There was something about the scene that disturbed Carver, but he couldn’t define it. Or maybe it was the shot of the square-jawed man and his young, sad wife that had touched some sensitivity in the depths of Carver’s mind.
“Nice family photos,” he said. Down the block a power mower sputtered to life and began a monotonous drone; a conscientious homeowner getting in lawn work before the hottest part of the day. There was a smart-ass in every neighborhood.
