John Lutz - Hot

“I don’t think you can. He told me he was about to be operated on, that’s why he wanted me to let you know where he was and why. He left a message on your office answering machine, he said, but he was afraid you wouldn’t get it. Mr. Tiller don’t trust anything with a microchip in it.”

“Me, either,” Carver said.

He thanked Effie the cleaning girl and hung up. Told Beth what had happened.

“Still driving to Key Montaigne?” she asked, crossing the room and handing him a brandy snifter.

“First thing tomorrow,” Carver told her, passing the glass beneath his nose and breathing in the sharp alcohol scent, like a head-clearing warning. “With a stopover in Miami.”

Faith United Hospital was on Hoppington Avenue in west Miami. Its main building was a five-story arrangement of pale concrete and arched windows, but onto this had been added long, three-story wings of pink brick and darkly tinted glass. The architecture clashed, making it look as if an old building had dropped from the past and landed in the center of a modern one.

At the information desk in the lobby, which was in the original building, an elderly woman behind a marble desk told Carver that Henry Tiller was in Room 504 and could have visitors, but Carver was to stop at the nurses’ station and let someone know he was there.

Carver thanked her, limped past a hideous piece of steel modern sculpture looming in the lobby, and rode the elevator to the fifth floor.

He didn’t like hospitals, and this one was no exception. The hall smelled faintly of disinfectant, and there was a hushed and impersonal efficiency in the midst of disease and suffering, as if Death were merely a member of the staff. White-uniformed nurses and occasionally people in pale green surgical gowns bustled meaningfully about the halls. Patients’ relatives slumped in plastic chairs and read dog-eared magazines, or wandered about with studiously nonchalant expressions, trying to come to terms with the realities of institutionalized illness. Carver told himself at least it was cool in here; outside it was ninety degrees even though it was only eleven o’clock.

There were two beds in 504, but Henry Tiller was the room’s only occupant. His upper body was slightly elevated, and his right leg was in a cast and raised on a thin cable draped over a stainless steel pulley contraption above the bed. A thin white sheet covered his lower body, and he had on a blue hospital gown tied with a drawstring at the neck. There was an opaque plastic tube fitted through one of his nostrils, and something clear was being fed to him intravenously. His eyes were closed, and he didn’t seem to be in any pain. He was much paler than he’d appeared in Carver’s office yesterday. Carver thought he looked dead, only his chest was rising and falling.

Carver stepped all the way into the room, which smelled like spearmint and was dark green on the bottom and pale green from halfway up the walls to the white ceiling. A nightstand with a phone sat beside the bed, and nearby was a traylike arrangement on a stand with wheels. A green plastic pitcher sat on it, and an upside-down clear plastic glass. There was a beige vinyl chair near the foot of the bed, with a pillow and folded blanket on it. Outside in the hall a couple of nurses hurried past, giggling softly. A job was a job.

Carver approached the bed, stood leaning on his cane, and Henry Tiller sensed he was there and opened his eyes.

Carver said, “I got your message. The girl, Effie, said you’d been hit by a car.”

“Effie Norton.”

“Guess so. She didn’t tell me her last name, only about you and the car.”

“Goddamned hit and run,” Tiller said. His voice was slow, a bit slurred, but his eyes seemed focused and knowing. He was making sense-for Henry Tiller anyway. “I was crossing the street after I stopped for supper, out shoots this big car away from the curb, and ka-blam! I was on the pavement ‘fore I knew what’d happened. Hell of a jolt, I can tell you.”

“I’ll bet. Get a glimpse of the license plate?”

“Didn’t even think about it till it was too late,” Tiller said disgustedly. “Figured it was an accident, then I realized the bastard drove off and left me.”

“Might still have been an accident,” Carver said. “Driver might have panicked.”

“Or knew just what he was doing,” Tiller said. He was probably right. “It was a Chrysler New Yorker or Fifth Avenue, all white, like the ones car rental agencies got by the thousands here in Florida. White, I said.”

Carver knew what he meant. Hitting a human being with a car often caused very little damage to the vehicle while smashing hell out of the victim. White paint was easy to match, so if minor damage to the car was quickly repaired by someone in on the crime, or who wouldn’t ask questions, after a short drive down a dusty road the car rental agency wouldn’t be able to tell the vehicle had been in an accident.

“See the driver?” Carver asked.

“Yeah, but it was all so fast I couldn’t give you an ID. A man, I’m pretty sure, but there was glare on the windshield and I can’t even be positive of that. I do know the bastard had both hands on the steering wheel and was staring straight ahead, at me. I got a mental image of that, all right.”

“You figure Walter Rainer’s behind what happened?”

Tiller snorted. “Whadda you figure?”

“How badly you hurt?” Carver asked. “I mean, how long they say you’re gonna be in here?”

“Weeks, the way it looks. Busted leg, cracked pelvis, and some internal injuries they ain’t quite sure about yet. They did some minor exploratory operating yesterday, and they’re gonna get into me good tomorrow morning. Know where that leaves us, Carver?”

“I know where it leaves you: right there in that bed, probably for the next month.”

“Where I’d like it to leave you,” Tiller said, “is in my cottage down on Key Montaigne.”

A young nurse came in, smiled at Carver, and walked directly to Tiller. She had blond hair pinned up off her neck, and wore one of those old-fashioned starched white caps that look like the newspaper hats kids make in grade school. After a concerned and appraising glance at Tiller, she adjusted the angle of his suspended leg slightly, then she peered at the glucose bottle as if it might be changing form before her eyes.

Gazing up at her, Tiller said, “You don’t come back in about ten minutes, I’m gonna yank all these tubes out and get outa bed so I can hop to the bathroom on my good leg.”

She grinned. “I’ll be back in nine minutes, Mr. Tiller.”

“Call me Henry,” he said as she sashayed out. He looked at Carver. “Whaddya say, Carver?”

“I think she’ll be back.”

“You know what I mean.”

Carver didn’t have to think about it for long. “Well, I was gonna call and tell you I was on my way there.”

Tiller’s right hand, the one with the IV needle in it, rose and fell feebly. A gnarled forefinger pointed. “My clothes are in that closet, key ring in a pocket. Take the brass key with the square top; that’s the one to the cottage. Address is number ten Shoreline Road. You remember that?”

“Sure.” Carver went to the locker-size closet and fished the key ring from Tiller’s pants pocket, then worked the brass key off the ring. He returned the cluster of keys to the pocket and left things the way they’d been in the closet, so Tiller’s clothes would be as little wrinkled as possible in two weeks or a month or whenever he’d put them back on.

“Tell me more about Effie the cleaning girl,” he said.

Tiller tried to shrug but only managed slight movement that obviously hurt. “She’s a fourteen-year-old kid lives nearby. Her daddy runs a gas station in Fishback, mentioned to me she was looking for work, asked if, being alone, I needed somebody to come in once or twice a week to clean. I told him sure, I’d help the kid out-not that I need anybody. I can damn sure look after myself.”