The sweaty mountain in blue denim shut the door and was on Carver before he could think. This was no genial emissary from the World Wrestling Federation. A moist, thick arm almost casually brushed Carver off the bed and slammed him into the wall. Through his surprise, he saw that the man had ragged, short blond hair and tiny red-rimmed eyes. Carver knew the expression in those eyes. He’d first seen it years ago when a schoolmate had used lighter fluid to set fire to a kitten.
Carver wasn’t a kitten. And he’d managed to stay on his feet and keep his grip on his cane. The huge man had muscle, but much of his bulk was fat. He’d be strong, but probably not quick, and without much wind. And so far he hadn’t demonstrated much in the way of expertise. Crude hired help.
His thin lips were curled in a smile above his triple chin as he hitched up his crusty overalls and moved in on Carver again. As he came nearer, Carver could smell his stale sweat and what might have been gin on his breath.
“Gonna teach you a real hard lesson,” he growled, in a voice that would have suited a bear roused from hibernation.
Carver jabbed the cane’s tip into his stomach, but didn’t make contact with anything other than blubber.
The huge man almost managed to snatch the cane, then he backed off a few awkward steps on his tree-trunk legs. He was wearing a conservative yellow tie with a tiny blue diamond pattern, the sort sometimes referred to as a “power tie.” It was knotted loosely around his neck and tucked into the top of the overalls. On his feet were boat-size brown wing-tips with the laces untied and dangling for comfort, the leather tongues protruding as if desperate for water. Was this what investment brokers did on off days?
He came at Carver again, in a predictably straight line. Mistake. This time Carver jammed the cane’s tip into his chest just below the sternum, catching bone as well as fat. The big man grunted and his fleshy face twisted in a brief mask of pain. But in an instant pain became cunning. He said, “Tell you, motherfucker, all you’re doin’ is makin’ this rougher on yourself. Rougher’n it motherfuckin’ has to be.” He edged around where he could come at Carver from a different direction.
Carver scooted over into a corner, narrowing the man’s angle of approach.
“Motherfucker,” the big man said, momentarily stymied. Smiling widely, he stood motionless with his fists propped on his hips, his breath a little ragged now. No problem here, his expression suggested. He knew he had Carver on the defensive, so he’d have plenty of time to figure the best way to get to him. It was a puzzle that seemed to amuse him, total offense against a fixed target who’d be an interesting recipient of pain.
But Carver abruptly stepped away from the corner, settling his weight on his good leg as he lashed the cane across the huge man’s forehead. The mountain was slow, all right. His hands had barely lifted off his hips when the solid walnut thunked against solid bone. When he did get his hands raised to his bleeding head, Carver jabbed the cane deep into his fleshy stomach, drawing it back quickly before the man could grab it. As the cruel mouth formed an O, and breath and gin-smell hissed out, the big hands instinctively dropped again and Carver took another unsteady step forward and swung the cane like a baseball bat. As it met the wide head he felt the vibration shoot up his arm and almost dropped the cane. The big man stumbled backward, stunned, bleeding heavily now from a gash in his temple. Carver lunged, this time using the cane as a sword, aiming at the sloppy yellow tie knot. The fleshy giant gasped as the tip speared into his throat.
“I’ll kill you, motherfucker!” he said, his voice high and hoarse, even if still threatening. But now there was doubt in it; Carver was supposed to be afraid, supposed to buckle, but it wasn’t working out that way.
The phone rang. It was near Carver. Keeping his good leg pressed against the side of the bed for support, he used his cane to knock the receiver off the hook.
“Somebody probably complained about the noise,” he said. “Or maybe the smell.”
The huge man’s breathing hissed like a blacksmith’s bellows in the hot, tiny room. “Motherfucker,” he said again. Not much imagination, Carver decided. And apparently some kind of oedipal fixation.
“You should have brought a gun,” Carver said, reading fear in the cruel blue eyes. He smiled. “Yeah, you definitely need a gun.”
“I’ll bring one next time, motherfucker,” the man said. He showed no inclination to advance on Carver again.
“Somebody’s probably calling nine-eleven right now,” Carver said. “Why don’t you hang around and see who shows up.”
The agonized little eyes flickered with the knowledge that this might not be a bluff. Someone might well have complained about the noise, or heard the talk about guns over the phone, whose receiver was lying on the carpet with the line open. The law might swoop down on them like cavalry to the rescue.
It could all be true and both men knew it. The balance had shifted so noticeably that it seemed to have altered weight and gravity in the room. Carver’s assailant backed toward the door, glaring fearfully, as if Carver might suddenly charge with the cane.
Well, Carver might; he felt like it. God, he felt like it!
But he knew it would be stupid. If the huge man ever got hold of him where they’d be fighting in close, grappling, he’d be in trouble.
“You’re gonna be real sorry for this,” the man said, oozing his bulk out the door. “You’re a dead man, you are. Dead, dead, dead.”
Carver smiled and said, “Motherfucker.”
The huge man slammed the door hard enough to make a framed Norman Rockwell print drop from the wall. The one where the big ruddy cop is scolding the skinny, contrite boy for stealing apples.
Carver let out a long breath, then slumped down on the bed and picked up the receiver. Said, “Yes?”
“Housekeeping,” a voice said. “You got plenty of towels?”
Carver said thanks, the towels were fine, and hung up.
Limp now in action’s aftermath, he sat for a long, long time on the edge of the bed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, both hands cupped over the crook of his cane. Throbbing pain made him probe above his right ear. There was a lump there from when he’d struck the wall just after the huge man had entered the room. He realized he was miserably hot and sweat was pouring down his bare arms and dampening the thighs of his pants.
After drying off with a towel in the bathroom, he retrieved the notes he’d taken during his phone conversation with Desoto and made sure his keys hadn’t dropped out of his pocket. Then he slipped his stockinged feet into his moccasins and hobbled squinting from the room into the bright and baking morning.
The vestibule of the cracked, often-patched stucco apartment building on Morning Star smelled faintly of frying bacon. Graffiti on the peeling walls informed Carver of all sorts of interesting things he could do with his own body. He scanned the mailboxes and saw Roger Karl’s scrawled name above the slot for apartment 2E. There was an intercom system, but half the buttons were missing, including the one next to Karl’s apartment number. Didn’t matter, Carver discovered, because the door allowing access to the stairwell and halls was missing.
He set the tip of his cane down and climbed creaking wood stairs to the second floor, feeling the thick air get warmer as he rose. There was loose rubber matting on some of the steps; he made a mental note of that so he’d be careful if for some reason he had to take the stairs in a hurry on the way out. Walk with a cane and you had to plan ahead sometimes.
The scent of frying bacon was stronger on the second floor, nauseating him and making his head ache. The carpet here was worn in the center all the way through to the wood floor. A dirty window at the far end of the hall provided just enough illumination to make out the apartment letters painted large and bold and recently on the doors. From behind the nearest door came the faint sound of an infant screaming desperately. Carver limped down the alphabet and knocked on the door with the oversize black E painted on it like a “Sesame Street” graphic.
No answer.
A TV began playing loudly behind the door of F across the hall. “Here’s what you’ve won!” a voice cried ecstatically.
Carver tried E’s door.
He won just like the contestant on television. The door swung open and he stepped inside fast. If Roger Karl was alert, it would be best to surprise him.
The apartment was hot and still and furnished with cast-off furniture, not with the decorator touch. Carver limped across the faded blue carpet toward a door leading to the kitchen. “Roger Karl?” he called, being polite before he wrung Karl’s neck for siccing the menacing mountain in overalls on him.
No one answered.
He leaned on his cane and peered into the kitchen. There were some crumpled fast-food paper bags on the tiny Formica table, dishes in a rubber-coated pink drainer on the sink counter. A clock on the grease-stained wall above the stove said it was much later than it was. The clock probably had something there.
A yellowed coffee brewer sat on the table near the paper bags. It was plugged into the nearby wall socket, but there was no coffee in the glass pot other than a sludgelike residue from yesterday. If Karl had awakened here this morning, he’d eaten breakfast out.
Carver turned away from the kitchen and limped down a short hall off the living room. The bathroom was empty, not even a toothbrush. He looked in the medicine cabinet over the white pedestal washbasin. An empty aspirin bottle. A plastic disposable razor with a rusty blade that had been there so long it had left a mark on the glass shelf. There was a bar of soap on the washbasin. Carver ran his finger over it. Damp. Gummy, the way cheap soap got. A towel draped over the shower curtain rod was also damp. He looked into the tub and saw wet dark hair like a spider in a clump over the drain.
He backed out of the bathroom and shoved open the door that must lead to the bedroom, looked inside.
The bed was unmade. Crawling across the stained white sheet was the largest and blackest palmetto bug Carver had ever seen. He stepped the rest of the way into the bedroom. Two of the dresser drawers were half open, empty. He examined the other drawers. Also empty. When he opened the closet’s sliding door, he found only a worn-out striped shirt on a wire hanger, a black sock wadded in a dusty corner. He felt around on the rough closet shelf and came up with an empty shoebox and a pornographic novel about two cheerleaders forced to spend their summer vacation on a farm. He placed both items back where he’d found them.
The overalled mountain must have reported his failure to deter Carver from the investigation, must have given some hint as to the difficulty he’d experienced at the motel. Roger Karl had moved out, and in a hurry, possibly on Adam Beed’s orders. Beed wouldn’t have sent an unskilled laborer like the mountain to work on Carver, and he wouldn’t appreciate Roger Karl’s having done so.
The rooms had the look of a furnished apartment, so clothes and a few personal possessions would be all Karl had to gather and pack. Carver glanced over at the bed and couldn’t see the palmetto bug. It had probably crawled beneath the stained and wrinkled top sheet. Karl couldn’t have been too upset about having to leave this place, cozy though it was.
Carver nosed around the apartment for another fifteen minutes, not knowing what he was seeking, not knowing if he’d recognize it if he found it. He tried to remember if he’d ever found a genuine clue of the sort stumbled upon in novels and movies: a matchbook cover from a nightclub, a dying message, a bloody handprint. He didn’t think so. Well, a murder victim once.
This time, too.
Curled alongside the kitchen stove lay a dead brown and white beagle. It hadn’t gone easily. Its body was contorted with final agony and its teeth were bared. There was fresh blood in its mouth; it hadn’t been dead very long.
Carver saw something glittering in the partly eaten glob of dog food in a red plastic tray. He noticed an ice-cube grinder on the sink, the kind that prepares crushed ice for drinks. He went to it and found it contained the thick bottom of a drinking glass and some glistening shards like the ones in the dog food. Roger Karl had left in a hurry and fed his dog ground glass so he wouldn’t have to bother with it. Or maybe Adam Beed had taken care of that for him.
Carver limped from the apartment and back out onto Morning Star, where he could breathe easier, where the cruel sun at least seemed to purify the air.
Leaning on the warm trunk of the Plymouth, he decided that if he ever found himself in a different occupation, he’d miss the job but not the people.