He shook his head. “I assure you, I’m not. Her physical actions... and reactions... are incredible. Her response to voices and sounds belies her blindness. She has a dog... not an ordinary seeing-eye dog, but a greyhound that had used up his running life on a racetrack. They were going to dispose of it until she took him in. That dog is her right hand and as friendly as it is, I’d hate to be a person who tried to attack her.”
“Has anyone tried?”
“Not so far.”
When the waitress came by again, I waved her off. Across the table Brice was watching me closely. But this was an old game with me and I played all my cards right.
I asked, “She lives alone, you say?”
“My late father bought a home outright, deeded it to her, established some investments that feed a healthy account in a local Florida bank that should take care of all her needs for... for as long as she lives.”
The doctor didn’t know that I could read eyes as well as I could. A tight grin was twitching at my mouth when I said, “But that’s the issue, right, doc? As long as she lives? What’s the rest of the story?”
A subtle smile turned the corner of his mouth up and he remarked, “I’m playing in your back yard now, aren’t I?”
I just nodded. There are times when it’s better not to say anything.
“My father left money in a trust and gave me instructions, in the event that I thought it necessary to... well, I bought you the house right next door, Captain Stang.”
“What?”
He slid the folder he had been carrying over to me. “All the paperwork is in there. You also have a bank account opened in your name for one hundred thousand dollars. That and your pension should set you up pretty well. Just sign the papers and turn them in. I’m sure you’ll know what to do.”
I didn’t bother to look. Crazy as it sounded, I knew what he was telling me was the truth and small shivers were beginning to run up my back. Not the money shivers. Not shivers from the owning of property. Just shivers from knowing that
Only I was twenty years older, too. And I’d always been older than Bettie, and...
No. Hell no. Age was gone. Age was something that was starting all over again. Starting now.
I grinned and wouldn’t let Dr. Brice pay the tab. Not after his father’s generosity — and his own. I laid a ten-dollar bill on the waitress’ check, and we walked out.
On the sidewalk we shook hands solemnly and Brice said, “For a minute there I thought you were going to shoot me.”
“For a minute there,” I said, “I was.”
Maybe he thought I was just fooling, but there was a cloud in his eyes. When I grinned at him the cloud bled away and he smiled back.
I know I slept that night. I didn’t think it possible, but I did. I dreamed wild, exotic dreams that had vicious overtones because a face kept appearing that I recognized but couldn’t identify and hot, mean hatred crept into that mental picture and I knew I would have to find that face because twenty-some years of life had been twisted into nothingness to satisfy his ambitions.
No, not ambitions — that wasn’t the word at all. It was too damn scholarly.
Desires? No. It was more of a primitive, unhealthy
The face was there in my head and I couldn’t make out the features at all. But I would. I would.
In the morning I went to the offices that housed the old files of known criminals, stuff that hadn’t ever made it onto the computers, and sat at a table with three mugbooks dating back to twenty-some years ago and opened the dusty cover on the earliest.
Duffy Gross gave me a big smile and wanted to know if he could be of any help. I told him I just wanted to refresh my memory and saw him wink at Hump Bailey, another near-retirement cop, and knew what they were thinking. The retired ones never really come off the Job, they were thinking. Someone was always out there they had to catch. After the real heart-stoppers of wild chases and riotous shootouts, TV was dull, plain civilian life too damn quiet.
I said, “Don’t laugh, wise guys — I might have a million-dollar joker in mind.”
Hump muttered, “Sure, Jack.”
Duffy did better than that. He added, “I still got three on
It was like going through an old photo album. There were a lot of faces you recognized, but today most of them would be dead or shriveling up behind bars. A few had gotten too old to be troublesome and were rotting away in a rocker somewhere on a back porch where the neighbors couldn’t see them. Lucky neighbors.
I didn’t find anybody I was looking for. I closed the last of the battered old books and put them back on the shelves and went downstairs to have lunch. But the face was still there. It was blank, but there was a word that could describe it.
Damn. Now I had to find a name for
