painted a pale color Carver couldn’t identify by night, and had dark shutters and trim. Light edged out around closed drapes in a front window, where one of the shutters was twisted and dangled like a vestige of a prehistoric wing. The shrubs on the north side of the house were bathed in a faint yellow glow from a side window.
Carver eased his foot off the brake and let the Olds rumble slowly down the street until it had reached a point where he was half a block away but was able to see the lighted side window at an angle. He positioned the car just so, then killed the engine and got his 10x50 Nikon binoculars out of the glove compartment. Slumped low in the seat so he’d be almost invisible in the dark, he focused the binoculars on the window.
There was a bookcase that contained a few books and a lot of stereo equipment and record albums. With the powerful binoculars, he could almost make out the names of some of the albums. A dial on the stereo system was glowing; there would be music in the house. The back of what looked like a brown chair was visible. Also a table with an orange lamp on it. Carver figured he was looking at about a third of the living room.
A shadow passed over the wall, and a slender, red-haired woman came into view. She stood before the stereo for a moment and adjusted something, maybe changed stations, then moved back out of sight. He got the eerie impression she existed only when he saw her in the window, like a character in a play.
With the infinite patience of his trade, Carver stayed where he was for over an hour. He caught a few more glimpses of the redhead. She was wearing a green robe with wide three-quarter-length sleeves, several gold bracelets on her left wrist. Her hair was pulled back and up and lay in a swirl on the crown of her head. She had a pale complexion that made her dark eyes and lipsticked mouth vivid, and despite being too thin, she was attractive.
She didn’t come into view very often, but her shadow was active on the wall. She seemed to sit down for short periods of time in the chair whose back was visible to Carver, then she’d rise and her shadow would flicker across the room.
He pressed the binoculars to his eyes and adjusted the focus as she came into sight again. She stood with her hands on her hips, then her body jerked and she looked toward the front of the house. Someone must be at the door. She moved off in that direction.
When he lowered the binoculars for a moment, he saw the man on the front porch. He drew the dark form into focus just as the door opened. The redhead-Melanie Beame, Carver assumed-stood framed in light that spilled outside to illuminate a short, stocky black man wearing a gray suit. Melanie moved back and he entered the house. The front door closed.
Carver aimed the binoculars again at the side window and saw nothing. Not even moving shadows.
Lowering the binoculars, he studied the layout of the neighboring houses and yards. There was a spot where he might conceal himself in some shrubbery in the yard next to Melanie’s and have a more comprehensive view into the living room. It would be risky, but he didn’t see that he had much choice.
He climbed out of the Olds. Had to stand for a minute and stretch his cramped back muscles before closing the car door quietly and limping away.
A few porch lights were glowing, but no one was on the dark street. He was sure he wasn’t seen as he made his way over the neighbor’s sparse lawn to the dense mass of shrubbery.
There were fragrant blossoms on the bushes, but no thorns. He settled down among the branches and brushed away an insect that skittered across his bare arm, almost dropping the binoculars, catching them by the strap. In the distance a dog was barking frantically, but Carver was sure it had nothing to do with him. The sweet scent of the blossoms tickled his nose, and for a moment he had to resist the urge to sneeze.
He glanced around at the darkness, then raised the binoculars to his eyes and focused on Melanie Beame’s living room. He didn’t like this kind of thing; it made him feel like a voyeur. He wouldn’t want to try explaining his actions if someone saw him and called the police to report a peeping Tom.
Ah! He forgot his uneasiness as Melanie and the black man came into clear view. There was a blanket-draped crib in the room, and Melanie leaned over it and lifted out a baby that looked like Adam Gomez, but Carver couldn’t be sure. Infants tended to look alike to him, miniature old men with fat cheeks. This one had to be Adam, though. The black guy stood by Melanie and stared at the baby, then grinned and moved away.
Melanie put the baby back down. She fiddled around with it, then straightened up and stood for a moment staring down into the crib. The black guy came up behind her and gripped her waist with both hands, as if he might be trying to make his fingertips meet. She turned around, smiling, and he kissed her on the lips. It was a long kiss. Then Melanie and the black guy clung to each other for a while, until he pulled away, said something, and walked out of sight. She yanked the sash of her robe tight and went to the chair Carver could see all of now, plopped down in it, and began reading a glossy magazine. Looked like a
After about ten minutes her head jerked around and she laid the magazine, still open, on the table with the lamp. Carver knew what was going on; there was somebody else at the front door. He couldn’t see the porch from here, so he stayed focused on the window.
This time it was Beth Gomez, wearing the same khaki pants and white blouse she’d had on when she’d talked to Carver. She said something to Melanie, then walked directly to the crib and gazed down at Adam. She bent low and looked as if she kissed him. Then she stood up straight and tucked in her blouse in back, causing her heavy breasts to strain against the material of the blouse. Carver could see now that Melanie was much shorter than Beth, probably no more than five feet tall, as the two women stood and talked.
They both turned around, away from him; the black guy must have come back into the living room, but Carver couldn’t see him. Melanie walked out of sight. Beth sat down in the chair near the crib and crossed her legs. She picked up the magazine, then put it down almost immediately, as if it bored her. She sat there and stared at Adam.
Carver watched her until she got up and left the room. Lights winked on behind lowered shades in the rear of the house.
He let the binoculars dangle from their leather strap around his neck, grabbed his cane with both hands, and levered himself to a standing position. Listening to his own rapid breathing, he glanced around and then limped back to the Olds.
He sat for a while behind the steering wheel, listening to the screams of a thousand crickets and not moving, itching from the bushes and feeling a rivulet of perspiration trickle down the side of his neck.
So somebody else, the black guy, knew about Beth and Adam staying with Melanie. Beth hadn’t told Carver everything. But she’d been truthful about the rest of it, he figured. She’d really taken courses at the university. And she’d taken a chance by giving him Melanie Beame’s phone number.
He started the Olds, turned it around in a driveway, and returned to the Pelican Motel.
After draping a towel over the air conditioner’s vents to stifle the flow of cold air into the chilled room, he slept nude beneath a single sheet.
Early the next morning, he lowered the Olds’s canvas top and drove fast beneath a swollen gray sky to Orlando.
16
Desoto was dressed in white today except for a pale blue tie: tropical white suit, white-on-white shirt. He sat relaxed behind his desk and smiled with very white teeth.
Carver limped over to the chair near the desk and sat down. Desoto swiveled in his chair and turned down the volume of his Sony; a forlorn Reuben Blades song continued its soft and syncopated Latin beat. The office was cool and smelled pungently like an office, as if somebody had just sharpened a dozen pencils and left the shavings lying about.
Carver crossed his good leg over his bad and said, “The Roberto Gomez thing’s getting complicated.”
Desoto arched his dark eyebrows, still smiling like a Hollywood Golden Era matinee idol. “How so,
“The wife wants me to protect her from him.”
“No complication there,” Desoto said. “Don’t do it.”
“That’s what I told her the first time she asked. Roberto thinks their baby died just after childbirth because the wife was carrying a secret heroin addiction. That’s why he’s got his troops out searching for her. Why one of
