The Hundredth Man (12 page)

Then, over a period of fifteen minutes, her silences became forced, almost troubled. Her eyes wavered from mine and their incandescence waned. Ava sat forward and rubbed her forehead. “Doggone,” she said, “I brought you the copy of the preliminary report. It’s in my car. I’ll be right back.”

“I don’t need it now. I’ll wait for finals.”

“After I’ve brought them here by land and sea? You’re getting them.” Her smile was strained, like trying to smile while lifting weights.

“Just summarize. Similarities and differences in twenty-five words or less.”

She rubbed her forehead. “I was struck by how similar the bodies were, like twin brothers, except, had they been brothers, Deschamps worked out two hours for every one of Nelson’s: more pronounced musculature, primarily in the upper body.”

“Great,” I said. “All I needed.”

She stood. “I’ll get the report.”

“I’ll come with you,” I offered. “Show you the exotic sights under my house. You’ll love my kayak.”

She handed me her glass. “Fix me another, please. Light. I’ll be right back.”

Shapes of the past: Ben “The Bear” Ashley, my first partner, finding reasons to get me out of the car. “Gimme a pack of gum, Carson,” “Run in and grab me some smokes, bud.” Bear sent me inside fast-food joints for the food instead of using the drive-through. I also recalled Bear’s low moods before he’d command some odd errand. Until learning the truth I thought it a rookie initiation or show of pecking order.

After mixing two more drinks I returned to the porch and waited, a weight pressing my heart. Ava stepped outside with a manila folder. A new scent of mint suffused the air. She rolled her head as if loosening her neck. Two minutes later she was laughing like a tickled bell.

The indications were there, but I needed to know for sure. I smacked my forehead. “Damn,” I said. “I’ve got to take out the trash. If I forget I’ll find ants everywhere in the a.m.”

“Ants! Of coursh,” Ava slurred. “Pesky things.”

I grabbed a half bag of trash from the container and wrapped it for show, heading downstairs. She’d locked her car and I got the slim-jim from mine, a two-foot strip of thin steel slipped between door and window to pop the lock. Ava’s door opened in seconds. The glove box had the usual automotive records, plus several packs of gum, breath mints, and other scented candies. I patted beneath the passenger seat. Nothing. My hand crawled beneath the driver’s seat and found a long brown bag that sloshed as I retrieved it. Inside was a liter of bottom-rung vodka, a third empty. A sales receipt fell out. Beneath the imprint of the package store was the name and price of the vodka, plus date and time of the purchase.

7:01 p.m. Tonight.

Jesus. Ava had sucked down eight or so ounces of liquor before she’d arrived. No wonder she’d looked incandescent at the door; she was lit up with first-flush alco-energy, blazing. But it’s a fire ravenous for fuel and her featherweight drinks lacked the voltage, so she’d hustled to her car for an eighty-four-proof jump-start.

Bear was an alky who pulled chugs from a bottle under the seat when I picked up smokes and burgers. Ten months with him taught me if Ava could drink that much and still present a sober facade, she’d had practice handling it. She was experienced enough that leaving the report in the car let her socially birdie-sip her drink, having an excuse to head to the well if the itch started. Alcoholics are master planners at sneaking drinks.

The slurring had started. With a fresh surge of ethanol in her system she’d start showing its effects, but perhaps be too affected to realize it. Letting her drive back to Mobile was unthinkable. I felt like an amateur juggler handed two lit blowtorches and a Roman candle: how to proceed without getting burned?

“How’s your trash prollem?” Ava said loudly as I stepped back outside. Her glass was fuller than when I’d left, and I realized she’d slipped inside and poured one. It didn’t seem the best way to begin a relationship, she sneaking my booze while I broke into her car.

I said, “It’s solved. No ants in my pants tonight.” “What about your pantch?” Her esses had moved from slippery to slushy.

“Nothing. Just a comment on entomology.”

“Ettamolgy? Where words come from, right?”

She squinted slightly, a reaction to blurring vision. After several seconds spent studying her watch Ava jumped up as if bee stung.

“Pas’ my bedtime. Gotta run.” She started to walk but wavered. “Whoopsie,” she said, covering. “Leg fell asleep.” She bent and pretended to massage sparkles away.

“And a very nice leg at that,” I said.

She grinned crookedly. “Thanks. Got another’n just like it over here.”

She wobbled again. If she got in her car I’d have to call the Dauphin Island cops and have her stopped. I couldn’t sober her up quickly, but I could push her the other direction.

“Just one more small one?” I suggested. “A light light for the road?”

“Nope. All done.” But her eyes weighed the notion and her feet weren’t moving.

“Please, just one more with me,” I said. “Sit, darling.”

“Darling?” she echoed as I went to the kitchen. A minute later I handed her three shots of vodka with tonic to take it to the rim. I’d added a hefty squeeze of lime, hoping its citrus bite masked the potency. Ava was past sipping for show and drained a third of the glass in a single swig. She cocked her head my way and her eyes took a two-count to focus.

“Carshon, did you call me darling before?”

“Yes, I did, Ava.”

“Why?” she said, turning the word into two syllables.

“It seemed appropriate.”

Ava rose with a waver and walked toward me. She leaned my way and I thought her equilibrium was failing until her lips found mine. She tasted like lime perfume and her lips were cold. But her tongue was warm and we held tight as her hands stroked my back and kneaded my buttocks. Between the lime and vodka I smelled the heat of her need. We half walked, half staggered to the dimly lit bedroom. I sat her on the bed and she nibbled between my neck and ear. Despite the circumstances I heard the amoral beast of my body howling.

“Wait here, darling,” I said. “I want to take a quick shower. But first let me get your drink.”

“Oh, God, pleash hurry,” she said, and I wondered if she was referring to the shower or the booze. I brought her another thermonuclear blast of vodka.

I sat on the toilet seat and ran a cold shower for several minutes before climbing in myself. Fifteen minutes later she was sprawled and snoring. When I tugged the cover up to her neck, my knuckles touched the warmth of her lips, and I let them rest there. I had so far seen two Ava Davanelles, the first a joyless, brooding ghost, alert to slights and quick to anger, the second a sun-bright dazzle of the delicious, all smile and wit and sweet, laid-back laughter. Were both no more than fables from a bottle? If so, where between the extremes resided the true Ava Davanelle?

Was it the woman I saw in the hall outside Willet Lindy’s office, her fists knotted tight and her face a white horror of conflict and struggle?

I should have felt anger and betrayal, not by the woman whose breath warmed my hand, but by myself. My self-serving need to understand and battle discord had drawn me to a place where I lacked knowledge or solution. I could not understand the situation, but since it had crossed into my life, I could not in good conscience turn and retreat.

Or could I? None of this was of my making.

I oversaw Ava’s sleep for twenty minutes, then went to the deck and watched the stars assemble until their noise overwhelmed me and I went to bed.

CHAPTER 12

I
once found Bear on his knees in front of the toilet, hand jammed in his mouth and tickling the back of his throat to jump-start the retching that pushed the hinge-toxins from his stomach. At 6:30 I awoke to the same sounds behind my bathroom door.

I knocked tentatively. “Ava? Are you all right?” “Give me a few minutes,” she said. “I’m I’m ill.” A muffled moan. More gagging. I put bread in the toaster in case she needed something in her stomach. Five minutes passed before the door opened, last night’s ethanol glow replaced by the starchy pallor I’d seen at the morgue. Her eyes were wet and red.  Beads of sweat covered her forehead. I’d opened the windows and the sound of the Gulf poured in.

“I, um, I’m so embarrassed,” she said. “I must have the flu or something. I guess the drinks must have gone to my head.” She pushed strands of hair behind her ears with shaking fingers.

“You were pretty gone.”

“Flu,” she said. “It’s been going around at work.”

“Sure.”

“Uh, did we that is …”

“We were the epitome of propriety. You got tired, I steered you to the bedroom. I took the couch.” I hoped my collar hid the bite marks she’d sucked into my neck as I’d wrangled her to the bed.

Relief dropped her shoulders a full inch. “I’m sorry to put you out, I I don’t remember much. Didn’t I just have two drinks?”

Groping through the blackout.

“Maybe three,” I said. “Are you sure it’s the flu?”

“I what do you mean?”

“I got the impression that you had a few pops before you arrived.”

“What?” A show of surprise. Moi?

I shrugged my shoulders “An impression.”

“Are you saying I showed up drunk?” An edge to the question. I noticed her color was returning.

“I’m saying you got pretty blitzed for a couple light-light drinks, Ava.”

“Maybe they weren’t as light as I asked for.”

Nobody does defensive better than a guilty alky. Her voice was getting stronger and her shakes were gone. “I thought it was the flu,” I said.

She’d stopped sweating. Her eyes were clearing. They flared at me. “Maybe that’s just part of it. Maybe you got me plastered. Maybe you “

“Maybe I’m the one who planted that stash of vodka in your car.”

Her eyes went saucer-wide. “You looked in my …” Guilt and anger fought in her face and anger won. “I think you’re a bastard,” she hissed, grabbing her purse from the table. She blew by me and I saw wobble in the legs, smelled sweat and vomit and an astringent tang in her wake. The door slammed shut and seconds later came a grinding of sand as she fishtailed away.

I pretty much knew what I’d find before I went to the cabinet. I shook the vodka bottle and watched it bubble abnormally and heard a hiss as I unscrewed the cap. Watered. I checked the bathroom wastebasket and found a crumpled Dixie cup hidden at the bottom. It smelled as expected, making her morning passage easy to map: she awakened with the craving, pulled a cup from the bathroom dispenser, and tiptoed to the liquor cabinet to fill it. She replaced the removed vodka with water and returned to the bathroom to alternately drink and vomit until she absorbed enough alcohol to start the buzz. When the door opened she was already getting straight, if that’s what you’d call it shakes leaving, eyes clearing, mind defogging. Right now she was working on the vodka under her car seat. Hair of the dog that bit you, it was humorously called. But I knew this dog. It didn’t bite; it ate you whole, and there wasn’t a damn thing funny about it. I gave Ava twenty-five minutes and phoned her home. No answer. I gave it another heart-pounding five before re dialing.

“Hello?” she chirped a little too loudly, but pleasant and controlled. Juiced again, but at least she was home. I gave silent thanks to whoever pulls the levers and gently hung up.

Harry and I headed toward downtown to interview a woman who’d known Deschamps both personally and professionally. I was in a funk and lying in the backseat with my arms tight over my chest, a doleful mummy.

Harry shook his head with regret. “That pretty little doc, a drunk. Sad.”

Like me Harry didn’t use the word drunk as a pejorative; we both knew too many recovering alcoholics AA folks, mainly who easily referred to their drinking selves as drunks, alkys, booze hounds or whatnot. I figured it for a badge of courage, the guts to look in the mirror and tell the truth. Then get healed if you stayed honest with your reflection.

“When she gets found out it’ll be her job,” he said. “And she’ll get found out.”

Harry was right; when Ava’s alcohol abuse was discovered she’d be sent to a rehab program and reassigned to a lesser position, like filing. Another pathologist would be hired.  Ava’d eventually get eased out the door like a bulldozer eases aside a sapling. It’d be a fast track to the street Clair wasn’t long on sympathy.

Harry spoke over his shoulder. “What you figuring on doing about it, Cars?”

“Why would I be doing something about it?”

“You got a feeling for the girl, don’t you?”

“I barely know her, Harry.”

He swung the car down a side street and jammed on the brakes. I felt the front tire bang the curb, roll up over it, fall back down. Harry parking.

“Come and sit up front, bro.”

I got out and switched seats. We were in an old neighborhood and the street was bordered by spreading oaks and tall pines thick with cones. I figured some of the trees predated the War Between the States. The antebellum houses sat distant from the pavement behind azaleas, magnolia, red tips and myrtle, as if hiding in the past and eavesdropping on the present.

Harry said, “We got a full plate, what with the murders, Squill hijacking the PSIT. It could turn into a king-hell political mess, eat us alive. If that little lady’s got the alcohol sickness, and you got a feeling for her, you can get ate up from that side too.”

“You telling me leave it alone?”

He smiled with a touch of sadness and shook his head. “You’re gonna do what you’re gonna do. I know it, you know it, and all the angels above know it. I’m just saying to watch out for yourself.”

I stared out the window. Down the street a frail and elderly woman watered her flower garden. She looked like an ornament, she was so still.

Harry said, “You keep pretty tight inside yourself, Cars. Nothing wrong with it. But you find those old wires tightening around you, don’t go nowhere but to me, right?”

His phrasing struck a disconcerting note in my head. “What old wires? What are you talking about?”

He looked away, put the car in gear.