Dead Street Page 7

  So did her dog. When my hand turned the doorknob, I heard Tacos’ soft yip and Bettie’s head turned and her smile reached between the two houses and she waved.

  She wasn’t wearing her sunglasses, and somehow her pupils followed me down the steps and across to her porch. When I reached her she held up her hand the way she used to twenty years ago and when I kissed it her eyebrows gave a minute twitch and nobody had to remind me that this was an unconscious act of remembrance. I had kissed her hand many times in the past, but not where somebody could see me do it. Big cops never did that sort of thing to young ladies. To their mothers, maybe, or grandmothers, but not to a beautiful, sensuous doll.

  Cops sure had a lot to learn.

  I pulled up another rocker and sat down beside her. I didn’t try to be surreptitious with my question, but something had to jar her recognition facilities and I said, “You used to work at a place called Credentials, didn’t you?”

  “Why.... ” Her mouth creased and she paused. “That sounds a little bit familiar. I think. Remember, I only think.”

  “Good enough.”

  “Is it important?”

  Now was the time I had to sink the barb in. I told her, “The man who owns Credentials was shot and the files ransacked. He was injured, but he’s alive. His name was Ray Burnwald.”

  “Mr. Burnwald!” she blurted out, almost painfully. The skin of her face paled.

  “Did you know him?”

  “I... I... don’t remember. It seems like....”

  “What?”

  “The name... I’ve heard it before.” She looked at me, not seeing me, but as if she were.

  “Would it bother you if I gave you some more information?” I asked her gently.

  “No, please.”

  I said, “You worked on computers at Credentials. Your job was data management.”

  Bettie seemed to mouth the words, a small frown tensing her lips. “Data management,” she repeated quietly. “Mr. Burnwald was... nice.”

  And that was all I got.

  But it was a start.

  Again, that look. She was seeing me without seeing me. Her pupils were locked directly on mine and there was a vague expression in them. It lasted for about five seconds, then went back to non-recognition again.

  That was a start, too.

  Her mood seemed to impart itself to the greyhound. He paused in the middle of a big yawn that showed a mouthful of huge teeth, and his head moved a few inches to scan the both of us, wondering what made this visit so intense.

  I reached over, squeezed her arm and said, “How about us three taking a drive? It’s a beautiful day and...”

  “But I can’t see it, Jack.”

  “So I’ll describe it to you and you can smell the flowers. Tacos can bark at passing cars.”

  “Tacos doesn’t do that,” she said.

  “Good. Now let’s go.”

  The greyhound hopped into the back seat, happy to have the space all to himself, with the window cracked down so he could smell the flowers too. We drove through the center of the village and friends of Bettie called out to her and waved. Two of my old buddies made some odd grimaces when they saw me out with my blind, but very striking, lady friend.

  Two blocks up the musical bells of an ice cream truck rolled out its national theme song. I asked Bettie if she wanted a cone and she shook her head. “Those boys on those trucks are too fresh.”

  “What did they do?”

  “I was walking the dog and they whistled and made pretty rude remarks.”

  “What were you wearing?”

  “Halter top and shorts. It’s what all the girls wear.”

  “Bettie,” I said, “you are not built like all the other girls. With your shape in shorts, kid, you’re a stone killer.”

  “Stone killer?”

  “Absolutely. You can be a danger to the younger population.”

  Directly ahead was the entrance to Garrison Properties and this time there was a uniformed guard at the small building. He came out with a clipboard, took down my New York license plate numbers and asked if he could help me.

  “Just want to look at some properties,” I told him.

  “The Garrison office is right at the center of the village. You can’t miss it.”

  I told him thanks and drove up the road.

  I could see what Darris Kinder meant when he said what the Garrison group was up to, with their estates across the way and allying themselves geographically to Sunset Lodge to entice future buyers. Stakes marked out generous areas for ownership and as I drove closer to the buildings of the village, the houses went from typical Florida-style residential homes with two- or three-bedroom capacities to enormous and expensive multi-story buildings with expensive foreign and domestic vehicles parked in tree-shaded driveways.

  Bettie broke the long silent moment with, “What are you looking at, Jack?”

  “Big money,” I told her. “This bunch in Garrison is loaded with the green.”

  “It’s so quiet.”

  “Money buys that, too,” I reminded her.

  “Sunset Lodge isn’t like that at all.”

  “You ever know any rich cops or firemen?”

  She shook her head and laughed. “But I don’t know anybody, anymore. Do you know any rich ones?”

  “Only if they went into the movies or hit a national jackpot,” I said, not mentioning the handful of bent ones I’d come across. Then I added, “Well there aren’t any cops or firemen out this way. Right from here I can see three mansions that must’ve cost in the two-million dollar range to build. Off to the right there’s one hell of a golf course with one hell of a clubhouse on it.”

  “Who’s playing on it?”

  “Nobody,” I informed her. “It’s probably too hot for the big shot tourists.”

  There was a crossroad just ahead of me with a stop sign facing us and I slowed down to let two ice cream trucks go by. There were no jingling bells ringing out on this hallowed ground. They were following the road that led to the boat basin to peddle the ice cream to the fishermen. When I told that to Bettie she let out a soft laugh and said, “Good luck to them, then. The fishermen at Sunset all drink beer.”

  She was right. Sunset Lodge was where the great masses went.

  So why would anybody want to edge in on Sunset’s popularity? You would think the mob element Garrison catered to would want to be anywhere but next door to a bunch of retired law enforcement. Or were they just thumbing their nose?

  “What’re you thinking?” Bettie asked.

  “Old-time cop thoughts,” I answered.

  “You people are weird,” she giggled.

  Before she could close her mouth I leaned over and kissed her. Her hand lay beside my leg and she gave my knee a gentle squeeze. She used to do that back in the days long ago. It was her way of saying thanks. Something in her mind hadn’t been destroyed after all. Those involuntary reflexes seemed to work on their own. But squeezing my leg wasn’t a true involuntary reflex. Her head suddenly turned and she was looking straight at the side of my face and I knew she was smiling. Then she leaned over and lightly brushed her mouth across my cheek.

  So I squeezed her leg. Soft and easy. I could say thanks too.

  There were commercial buildings waiting for occupancy and several stores at full development, but not teeming with shoppers. Nor were there many people on the sidewalks. A car lot one block off the main road held about thirty high-priced vehicles and only two men were looking at the mechanical marvels.

  This town wasn’t dying, it just hadn’t come alive yet. Everything was here, waiting for its birth, but the critical time hadn’t arrived yet. It was coming, but it had a way to go.

  “You want to stop for anything?” I asked Bettie.

  “Can I let Tacos out?”

  “Sure. There’s a big empty lot up ahead.”

  I parked while she let the dog walk and when he finished his business, she started back to the car then tripped over something. T
he dog picked it up and carried it between his teeth.

  I said, “I think Tacos made a find....”

  Bettie said, “Now what’s he got?”

  “Not a bone.”

  I held out my hand and the dog dropped a well-used little gadget in my hand. I didn’t tell his mistress it was an expensive hand-carved miniature ivory pipe, the sort rich little slobs liked to tote around to puff on weed or hash. This one was a slinky little off-white dame designed to have a glowing red head. At night these dark, empty fields made great playgrounds. And there should be plenty of young rich slobs around to have some crazy games.

  I said, “A kid’s toy.”

  “Oh? What kind?”

  “A bubble pipe,” I lied.

  “The hell it is,” she contradicted me softly. “Let me feel it.”

  I dropped it in her palm and watched the way she rolled it around before handing it back to me.

  I said, “So?”

  “Carved horn or ivory, probably the latter. The engravings are still fairly sharp-edged, so it isn’t antique, is it?”

  “No.”

  “It’s supposed to be a woman, isn’t it? With a curvy figure?”

  “Not as curvy as yours.”

  She sniffed it. “Smells like hash.”

  “You got it, doll. It’s not even an interim action any more. It becomes a dependency, but an affordable one. If you got wealthy patrons, you got it made. If not, you can steal, rob or merchandise the junk until you get slapped into a jail cell.” Then I put in, “Or killed. I almost forgot the tag line. Captain Kinder says, despite the money clientele coming in, some youth gangs still operate out of here. Maybe one of those punks dropped that pipe.”

  This time Bettie wasn’t looking toward my face. She was staring straight ahead watching a mental picture flash through her mind. I kept quiet, letting her focus on her thoughts, wondering what direction it was taking.

  She finally said, “Credentials,” and her right hand was squeezed into a tight fist. She draped one arm over the back of the car seat and let Tacos lick her skin.

  I nudged her memory and softly said, “Credentials,” until her head bobbed in acknowledgment and she said, “There was an employee there. A young man. He had a pipe like that. I can even remember... remember what it smelled like.”

  “Who, Bettie? What was the young man’s name?”

  She shook her head. The big black cloud had come over her again.

  “I don’t know,” she murmured.

  I had handled enough blackout cases who were behind bars for some wild criminal activity and watched them dissolve into total ignorance under pressure. You had to let it alone until some semblance of memory came back and they were able to talk about it. It could be frustrating as hell, but you were the cop and you stayed with it until the door opened on their thoughts and you got another little piece that made sense.

  I cut over to the main thoroughfare and steered to the entrance gate. On the way out there was no query by the guard, just a short wave, then we were on the highway again. In the back of the car the greyhound knew we were going home and gave out a cheery yip to tell us about it.

  At the house I walked Bettie up the steps, my arm around her waist. She wanted me to stay for supper. I begged off, telling her I had a lot of work to catch up on, but I’d see her later.

  This time she smiled gently, licked her lips and held her face up to mine.

  I said, “Somebody might be watching.”

  “Nobody’s around, Jack. Tacos would have seen them if there were.”

  So what’s an old cop to do?

  Her mouth was warm and damp and quivering and things began happening to me so that I untangled myself gently. She knew what I was feeling. She let me go. Her eyes still had that blankness, but she knew.

  When Tacos went in the front door ahead of her, I went down the steps and across to my house. My notebook was on the end table beside the big chair and when I’d made myself comfortable, I uncapped my ballpoint pen and started writing down events of the day with my own little interpretations of them.

  I took the ivory pipe, wrapped it in a couple of tissues and put it on the shelf in the secret cabinet with my guns. I wasn’t concerned with prints on the surface. The carved engravings were too intricate to have picked up any full impressions. But whoever had made the piece might have left an identification in his own fancy artwork.

  A half hour later I caught Davy Ross as he was coming off duty and asked him who was handling identifying unusual criminal artifacts and he gave me the phone number and office address of the right department and I dialed it into the phone. It was after office hours, but cops with a scientific bent don’t hold to absolute schedules.

  The officer that answered the phone the squad used to make a joke out of because he came from a wealthy family, had two degrees from major universities and all he had ever wanted was to be a cop. He worked and studied his way to sergeant, had a chest full of awards he was embarrassed to wear because he thought unusual heroics in enforcing the law was what he had been hired for. Then finally, when he provided some super cop with super rank certain critical scientific evidence that resulted in some grand busts, he was installed in the slot he had always wanted. His name was Paul Burke and he was glad to hear from me.

  I said, “Hi Paul, Jack Stang from...”

  “Come on, Jack, you’re still a legend around here. What’s going on?”

  “I found what looks to be a finely tooled ivory hash pipe. It may have some significance, but it doesn’t appear to be the kind just any punk would have.”

  “Intricate carvings?”

  “Very.”

  “Can you send it up here FedEx?”

  “Consider it shipped. You still at the same location?”

  “Right between the microscopes and the test tubes.”

  “No street work anymore?”

  “Oh, I wangle that in when I can. Shot me a robber last week. Just a nick, but it sure scared the hell out of him.”

  “What were you aiming for?”

  “The spot right where I hit him,” he told me. “Hell, I didn’t want to take him down permanently.”

  “Pal, you’re an oddball cop, you know that?”

  “Sure I do. Did you know I’m up for a promotion?”

  “Great!”

  “I won’t take it unless I can stay right here.”

  After a few seconds I asked, “What do you do with all your dough, Paul?”

  “Send decent kids to college who couldn’t afford it otherwise. Two of them are going into the Academy this year.”

  “You are some recruiter, buddy.”

  “Get that pipe up to me fast, okay?”

  “You got it,” I said.

  With FedEx you make one phone call and they have it on the way in no time. Not every change has been for the worse.

  Just most of them.

  It’s odd to watch a blind person prepare supper.

  You expect them to break a dish or shake in something that doesn’t belong there or not find the filter basket with a spoonful of coffee and spill it all over the counter. The TV was on the evening news but I wasn’t bothering to watch it. Bettie’s body was in beautiful motion, the way I had always thought it would be. There was grace in every movement and whatever she did had deliberate thought behind it.

  I sat across the table and she knew I was studying her, watching every move she made and storing it away in my memory banks. I didn’t have to tell her. She knew. When she cleared away the supper plates and set a fat piece of fresh apple pie in front of me, she asked me, “Jack... how did this all happen?”

  “Kismet,” I said.

  “Oh? Simple fate?”

  “Not so simple.”

  “You’re thinking something else, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “It had to happen.”

  “Why?”

  “Kismet,” I repeated.

  Outside, the sun was set
ting in the west and some shore birds were cutting streaks through the darkening sky. Bettie and I rocked in unison in the big wicker-backed chairs and my mind was a million miles away from the cacophony of sounds that made New York City the Big Apple. It was a great nickname until you remembered that people took bites out of big apples and if one of those bites nipped your rear end, it shouldn’t be a total surprise.

  Darris Kinder’s Batman car turned the corner, pulled up in front of Bettie’s house and he cut the engine. He came out of the vehicle, took a casual look around the area and walked up to the porch.

  I stood up and said, “Captain, it’s good to see you. What’s happening?”

  “Got to make sure all our new guests are comfortable.”

  “Can’t you tell?”

  Kinder looked at the two of us and grinned. “Oh, yeah. I can see that.”

  I pulled over another rocker and said, “Have a seat. This is the first time we’ve had any real company.”

  His face had a bland expression, but I had seen bland expressions before and the look I gave him said I got the implication of what he was thinking.

  “It’s a quiet night,” I offered.

  He nodded in agreement. “We’ve always had quiet nights,” he said, but there seemed to be some almost-silent emphasis on the word “quiet.”

  He went on: “The guys at the Station House had a meeting earlier. They want to get you ‘initiated.’ “

  “I already signed up.”

  “That’s not being initiated.”

  “Darris, it’s great to be here, but I’m not the ‘joiner’ type. You know?”

  “Sure, but tell your old buddies that, not me.... Say, you remember Pudgy Gillespie, don’t you?”

  “From the thirty-second? Yeah.”

  “Well, he’s thinking of moving down here.” Darris passed me a sheet of small notepaper. “Here’s his number. Give him a call.”

  His voice was friendly and bland, but there was a funny tone in it and I nodded and said, “Sure thing, I’ll get him later.”

  When he left, Kinder looked back at me for a quick second and his eyes were telling me something that Bettie couldn’t see.

  But Bettie had been blind for a long time. Sight wasn’t a total necessity for her vision any longer. There were other ways she could see, and when Kinder drove off Bettie very quietly asked, “What was that all about, Jack?”