Midnight Guardians Page 4

  I didn’t turn the lights on, negotiating only by the stove’s overhead. I took two bottles of Rolling Rock from the refrigerator door and then stood at the sink, looking out the window at the rippling aqua glow while I drank the first beer with three long pulls. The coldness gave me a small brain freeze, and when I squeezed my eyes shut, I could feel tears at their edges. I rinsed the empty, dropped it into the recycling bin, and went back outside.

  Sitting in one of the patio chairs, I took off my shoes, rolled up my pant legs, and opened the second beer. I took a smaller sip this time and then sat for a bit, watching Sherry’s movements, the turn of her head, always breathing on the left side, not alternating like they teach you, her hands coming up out of the water, each stroke ending with a flip of the wrist: Reach out, pull through, kick out at the end, her rhythm like a metronome. And always the flump-flump of that single foot.

  There was no telling when she was going to stop. Sometimes she’d be at it for an hour, sometimes two. I told myself it didn’t bother me, and then moved down to the pool corner to sit on the steps. I sat on the edge, with my feet and calves submerged, and sipped the beer. I waited as I watched her head, her usual sunlight blonde hair darkened by the water.

  I knew what she was doing; I’d done the same thing myself when I came to Florida to get away from the streets of Philadelphia. Descended from a long line of policemen, I thought of the job as a duty, a lifelong commitment. Then one night, while responding to a store’s silent alarm, I came face-to-face with an armed robber. He got off the first round, his bullet piercing my neck.

  In reaction, I returned fire. But in my hesitation and piss-poor aim, I hit the second person coming out of the store, a thirteen-year-old accomplice who took my 9-mm slug in the back as he twisted away. The round severed his spinal cord, and he was dead before his body touched concrete. I left my career in the street, blood pooling under the body of a teenager.

  After Billy set me up in the research shack on the river, nearly every night there I’d paddle my canoe upstream into the Glades, keeping that rhythm, punishing myself, looking for some kind of solace. I knew Sherry was doing the same thing now, and I knew the answer wasn’t there.

  For several years, I’d kept up a habit of touching the spot on my neck where the robber had shot me. Unconsciously, my fingertips would go to the smooth, circular scar tissue and caress it. A while after I met Sherry, I quit the habit. Her love had helped me move on. I wanted to do the same for her.

  Staring down at my feet in the water, I was about to stand when the flump-flump stopped. By the time I looked up, she’d dipped her head under the water and executed a powerful breaststroke to move out of the current and over to my side. When her face surfaced, she was smiling and breathing hard—happy to see me.

  “Well, hello there,” she said in between deep gulps of breath. “How long have you been watching?”

  She was still floating, her chin just above the surface, those malleable blue-green eyes of hers taking on the color of the water, with the azure tint that always seemed to assert itself when she was in a good mood.

  I took a quick glance at my half-empty bottle and wagged it a bit.

  “Long enough for a couple,” I said.

  She took another stroke closer and half stood, putting her wet hands on my knees, and then pushed herself up with her arms, as if she were doing one of her impressive workout dips. Then she raised herself until her face was level with mine.

  “So, were you assessing my stroke, or what?” she said, her breathing starting to subside.

  “Pretty proficient,” I said, setting the bottle on the tile behind me without taking my eyes off hers.

  She pushed herself higher and closer. I could feel the water dampening my pants legs and dripping onto my shirt. She moved her lips onto mine and slightly opened her mouth; her breath was warm.

  When she broke off the kiss, we held eye contact. And I knew the question on her face was a reflection of the question on mine: Do you really want to do this?

  She answered it first. “Come on in,” she said, backing away with a teasing smile. “The water’s fine.”

  I undid the first button on my shirt and then gave up and pulled it over my head. My khakis came off with some effort, and I stepped down into the pool, the warm water sliding up my rib cage until I was nose-to-nose with Sherry. She kissed me again.

  With a nervous flutter in my chest—Was I fifteen again?—I asked myself: What do I do? Where do I go? How careful? How much?

  I touched her shoulders with my palms to shape the muscle there, and then let them slide to her back. She had a swimmer’s body, defined and hard. I pressed my fingertips into the muscle fibers and massaged them. She broke off the kiss with a shiver, hooked her thumbs under the shoulder straps of her suit, and slipped it down.

  Only then did I pull her to me, chest to chest, my nose in her hair, which had not lost the smell of her perfume, despite the chlorine. She nuzzled the side of my neck, and I let my hands flow over the curve of her hips. I was on my toes, partially floating, my knees flexed to match her height, forming a natural lap. I started to draw her onto me, holding the backs of her thighs—in that aching zone of passion, hunger, past my tentative beginnings. As I used my strength to pull her onto me, and my hand slid down her left thigh, it lost purchase at the point where that limb ended.

  I fumbled. She jerked at the touch of my palm across the flap of her amputation. I tried to recover, reaching again to hold her close, but she twisted and then pushed away like a young girl who’s realized she’s gone too far in her foreplay. I hesitated, and did not try to stop her from leaving.

  — 6 —

  AFTER MY HAND touched the skin flap of Sherry’s amputation, she’d quickly pulled up her suit and stroked over to the steps. On one leg, she hopped up and out of the water and grabbed a nearby towel, slung it around her waist, and made her way inside. I stayed in the water, rested the back of my head on the gutter, and closed my eyes, listening to the sound of night insects, taking in the odor of night-blooming jasmine.

  Later I sat at the kitchen counter, drinking beer in the dark, feeling sorry for myself. There were techniques I’d taught myself to control my anger when I worked on the streets of Philadelphia as a foot patrolman: when a punk-assed kid mouthed off when I asked him not to loiter in front of the bistro on South Street, or when some dealer was lucky enough not to be carrying when I finally thought I’d outsmarted him and he just smirked and turned out his empty pockets.

  Grain of sand, I’d tell myself, let it go. Form that omega sign with your ring finger and thumb, a reminder not to let the anger rule you. Get the small rubber pinkie ball out of your pocket and squeeze it in your palm—a hundred times, no, two hundred. I’m not sure any of them worked then; I wasn’t sure they’d do tonight.

  I’d made love to Sherry hundreds of times, many of them joyful moments in that very pool. But I’d never made love to one-legged Sherry. It had been nearly a year; no matter how understanding I tried to be, knowing my needs were no match for what she was enduring, I was still failing. You’re insensitive, Max. You’re thinking with your dick, Max. Don’t be a Neanderthal, Max. Finally, I poured half the beer out in the sink and rinsed it. The third bottle of the night wasn’t helping; a fourth or fifth wouldn’t, either.

  When I went to her room, the lights were still on. She was sitting up in bed, dressed now in one of my big Temple Owls T-shirts and a pair of sweatpants. She was on her side of the bed, the same side she’d had since our relationship started. But a long rectangular mirror was propped lengthwise against her inside hip and extended to the foot of the bed. From my viewpoint, it was a four-foot, framed length of particle board. The mirrored side faced her.

  “Hurting?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Yeah, a little bit,” she said without looking up. Her head was cocked to the side so she could stare into the mirror.

  Within the first couple of months of her amputation, Sherry had developed a
pain in her leg, the missing one. She began complaining that the missing leg was in such pain she couldn’t stand it. This is a woman with a pain threshold higher than anyone I’ve ever met. When I dragged her through the Everglades with a compound fracture, she’d refused to cry out. So my layman’s logic asked: How could something that’s not there anymore hurt? But I also knew that she was suffering.

  The pain was in her brain, as it is in everyone’s, her doctors told her. Pain is a perceived thing. They explained cortical perception and told her she would have to change the feeling that it manifests. Sherry was skeptical. Hell, I was completely unbelieving. But after a series of different techniques, Sherry’s therapists found that mirror-imaging treatment worked for her. By positioning the long mirror beside her, she could see the reflected image of her healthy leg, lying right there, a replacement, at least in her brain, for the missing limb. Using this, the pain subsided.

  I stripped off my clothes, put on a pair of workout shorts, and climbed into my side of the bed. I had always slept naked in the past. Sherry dimmed the lights but did not turn them off. I rolled onto my left shoulder, facing the opposite way, knowing she might spend hours gazing at the faux image of herself.

  Finally, she reached out and laid her fingers lightly on my head.

  “I’m sorry, Max.”

  “It’s OK, baby,” I said, lying again.

  “I thought I was ready,” she said. “I was trying.”

  “I know, baby. It’s OK.”

  The lying came off my tongue with such simplicity, with such martyrdom. I rolled over onto my back and took her hand in mine, interlacing our fingers.

  “It’s going to take time,” she said.

  “I know,” I said, and this time it was the truth. But the next lie came quickly, too. “I didn’t mean to pressure you.”

  When I looked at her face, the familiar line of her nose and slant of her jaw, the way her blonde hair fell across her cheek, I also saw the framed piece of particle board, the barrier between us.

  “Are you working for Billy tomorrow?” she said.

  “No. Not till Friday.”

  “Will you come with me to meet this guy at the gym?”

  “Which guy?”

  “The one I was telling you about—the deputy from the hit-and-run.”

  It is unusual for her to ask me along. In the past, we’d worked some cases together because the circumstances demanded it. But Sherry is the kind of detective who likes her independence, even when carrying out quasi-official duties.

  “OK, sure,” I said. “If you don’t think I’ll be in the way.”

  She squeezed my hand and grinned. “Just stay in the background. And don’t knock anything over.”

  I smiled back, right before she moved her eyes to the mirror again. I stared up at the ceiling, and at some point rolled back onto my shoulder.

  A bond between us is fraying, I thought, but we are both trying not to let the fibers go loose.

  AT 11:00 THE next morning, I loaded Sherry’s wheelchair into the bed of my truck and we took a drive up to A1A in Fort Lauderdale. I had the windows down, which I try to do whenever the temperature falls below eighty degrees. Out at my river shack at the edge of the Everglades, it never gets as hot as it does in the city. Out there, I am constantly shaded by towering water oaks and cypress trees that are hundreds of years old. And my shack sits up on stilts that are speared down into waist-deep water. You cannot get to my place without a canoe or flat-bottomed boat. The shade and the water eliminate two of the heat sources that plague South Florida: dominating sunshine and thermal-absorbing concrete. An eighty-five-degree day in downtown West Palm Beach or Miami is a seventy-five-degree one at my shady spot on the river.

  What I don’t have out there is the ocean breeze and the smell of fresh salt air. When we hit A1A at the Las Olas Boulevard intersection, I took a deep and appreciative lungful and looked out over the vast blueness of the ocean. I thought, If I could move my shade trees and my cool river water to the shore, I might live here forever. But the only way to do that would be to eliminate 120 years of urban development. Forget it, Max; this isn’t the Florida of the 1890s.

  When the driver behind me blew his horn, I realized I’d been sitting at a green light and moved on. A few blocks later, Sherry directed me to turn into a city parking lot. While I unloaded her chair, I surveyed the area. There was some sort of high-rise construction site to the south, the International Hall of Fame Pool behind us to the west, and an older, 1970s-style retail complex to the north. The north building was a two-story sun-washed stucco box. The first floor featured a liquor store, a sandwich shop, and a beachwear boutique. Upstairs was a place called the Iron Pump, which had a neon sign and floor-to-ceiling windows.

  I already doubted that there would be an elevator in the place as Sherry climbed out of the truck and into her wheelchair. But as we approached the entrance to the building, we got a heads-up from a skinny guy sitting on a stool just inside the shade. When he nodded, the cigarette in the corner of his mouth nodded with him.

  “You goin’ upstairs, they’s a freight elevator in the back there,” he said, hooking his thumb down the hall. The man’s arms were covered in tattoos from his wrists to his bony shoulders, and he was holding a small miniature poodle in his lap. His eyes were as yellow as the dog’s.

  Though both Sherry and I were casually dressed in shorts and shirts, they weren’t the kind that would indicate we were going for a workout. Our natural cop wariness must have shown.

  “They’s another chair dude up there now,” the man said, again with the nod. “Tol’ me to give y’all directions.”

  “Thanks,” I said, matching his head movement, minus the cigarette.

  The freight elevator was clunky and smelled of stale booze and sweat, which only served as a hint of odors to come. Sherry was silent. I knew she was anticipating the scene, steeling herself for the introduction to come, working out a dialogue ahead of time. I had already decided to make myself as unassuming as possible.

  When we got off the freight elevator, we entered a corridor open to the outside at either end. Along the hallway, there were two doors to the east, two to the west. On the west side, I could hear music. And it took a couple of measures before I tagged it as “Hell Patrol” by Judas Priest. I was guessing that if I put my fingertips on the cinderblock wall next to me, I would feel the bass vibration. But given the looks of the flaked and mildewed paint job, I kept my hands in my pockets.

  Sherry rolled down to a glass door and started to open it herself before I could get there; so I stood back after grabbing the handle to hold it. Anyone inside would see her glide in unassisted, with me following.

  Inside the music wasn’t as loud as I’d anticipated, and the clanking of metal was off the beat. There was one big room before us, spread out and planted with chromed-up exercise stations, as in some metallic cyber garden: iron stalks of pipes and steel cable, stacks of heavy black plates, and small cushioned red pads attached at seemingly impromptu places. The odor was of stale sweat and close heat and ripe testosterone.

  Sunlight was pouring through the windows onto a row of treadmills and stationary bicycles. But at mid-morning, there was only one person jogging there with his iPod strapped to his arm. I spotted an office cubicle carved out with a half wall of fabric at the far front corner. But the action was obviously in the back, where I could see the free weight stacks flanking the bench press and squatting rack, where eight big guys were milling in front of the wall of mirrors, looking at themselves. A couple of others were spotting for a man pumping a load on the bench press, his high-pitched hissing cutting through the music. No one looked directly our way, but I got that same feeling I did when entering a neighborhood bar where I was new: No one missed the entrance of strangers.

  While I was still taking in the scene, Sherry rolled off toward the back corner. She had spotted her appointment, a guy in a sleeveless sweatshirt with bulky shoulders and no legs. He was sitting in a wheelchair
and pumping a set of iron dumbbells with both arms. When we approached, I saw that his eyes were closed. Despite the fact that he was facing a wall of mirrors, he was not looking at his image. Sherry stopped a few feet away.

  “Marty Booker?” she said in greeting.

  The man did not stop his methodical curling; left, right, left, right. His biceps were bulging with the effort, blood pumping through engorged veins that looked like fat blue worms crawling just under the skin. He also did not open his eyes.

  “How’d you guess, Detective?” he said, the words leaking out between clenched teeth.

  “Familiar hair color,” Sherry said.

  There was a twitch of a smile at the corner of the guy’s mouth as he tightened his lips to finish the repetitions, and then dropped the weights to the floor beside him. Booker took a towel that was draped across one of his wheels and wiped his hands. He finally looked Sherry in the eye and offered his hand, which she shook, and then nodded up at me.

  “This is my friend Max Freeman.”

  The man’s handshake was hard, the skin almost hot to the touch. I could feel the callus on his inside palm. He looked me in the face.

  “You’re the dude who helped out with the junk man a few years back, right? The serial killer doing druggies in the northwest.”

  “It was Sherry’s case,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said, turning a smile back at Sherry. “She blew the guy’s face off, if I remember.”

  It was, in fact, a case I’d been pulled into by Billy. One result was that I had surprised the serial killer in his own lair only to have him get the drop on me. He was about to finish me off when Sherry saved my ass by putting a 9 mm into the man’s brain.

  Sherry said nothing, and kept any recognition of the incident from showing in her eyes. Instead, she looked down at Booker’s wheelchair.