Angel of Mercy (4 page)

“This is a helluva sight for a man who nearly had a heart attack,”

Frankie muttered when he and Jennie were forced to stop at a green light to let a funeral procession go through the intersection. Behind the metallic black hearse, Tommy Livingston, his two sons, and their wives and children rode in a gray stretch limousine with tinted windows.

There were close to twenty-five cars of friends and relatives following.

After the last car passed through, the light turned red again before Frankie could go forward. He had insisted on driving, reminding Jennie that the doctor had said he could resume normal activities until he returned for the pacemaker.

“His idea of normal and yours are quite different, Frankie,” Jennie said, but she relented and permitted him to take the wheel. Now he twisted impatiently in the seat.

“I knew that light would change before we could pass.”

“We’re in no rush, Frankie,” Jennie said. “You might as well get used to the slower tempo of life right away.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” he said, although he had no idea what a slower tempo of life really meant.

“Look at the mountains, Frankie,” Jennie said. He gazed to his right.

“Doesn’t it look like a movie set, like someone just planted them there?

I never get used to them.”

He smiled. It was impressive—the city of Palm Springs built right at the foot of the mountain range, a true oasis in the desert. The light changed and they coasted down Palm Canyon Boulevard into the heart of the small city that had a native population of just over forty thousand.

But it was still the season, still busy. Small clumps of people sauntered down the sidewalks and over the crosswalks.

Despite his constant stream of anger and self-pity, Frankie felt the tension drain out of his body. This lazy vacationer’s mentality seemed to permeate the very air and infect every visitor with the same sense of relaxation. Here and there he spotted young lovers walking arm and arm, window shopping and giggling. People sat out on the sidewalks casually dipping plastic spoons into cups of frozen yogurt or ate salads and burgers under the protection of cool mists that emanated from the edges of the ceilings and awnings.

Frankie recalled how he and Jennie had first met in Palm Springs. They were both from larger cities, he from Los Angeles and she from San Diego. It had been something of a family foregone conclusion that he would work for his uncle in his uncle’s import-export business, but Frankie was always fascinated with police work. He had started with the LAPD as a foot pa patrolman, graduated to a black-and-white, and then quickly moved into plainclothes before he met Jennie while vacationing in Palm Springs with a few of his policemen buddies. She had come to live with her aunt and worked as a receptionist in the hotel where he and his friends were staying.

It wasn’t love at first sight for Jennie, but it was for him. He pursued her relentlessly until she agreed to the first date and then, as she revealed later, she saw a side of him that wasn’t visible until she had spent some time with him. He was soft, gentle, and compassionate just under that crust of granite he dressed himself in every morning in order to function as a big-city policeman.

Once they became serious, it was her decision that they live in Palm Springs.

“I’ll marry a policeman,” she told him, “but not one who works in a big city.”

At the time Palm Springs didn’t suffer from the same sort of criminal epidemic most of the bigger urban areas were experiencing. It was still small-time.

Lately, however, with the growing population and the influx of poorer people, those old distinctions were fading quickly.

But despite its coming-of-age problems, Palm Springs still had a fresh new face, at least on the main drag. There was a jewellike glitter to the sunlight that reflected off window panes, sidewalks, and expensive automobiles. Absent were the urban buildings defaced with the graffiti of madness sprayed in a frenzy by children of the ghetto searching for a way to achieve notoriety and meaning. There was little or no litter on the walks and streets. Some of the policemen wore shorts and rode bikes. Music emanated from sidewalk coffee bars, and the Plaza Theater at the center of town announced a follies review featuring a number of oldtime performers coaxed out of retirement.

The traffic picked up toward the south end of town and Frankie accelerated down Palm Canyon Boulevard South into what was called the Indian Canyons, where they had their three-bedroom hacienda-style home with its lemon, orange, and grapefruit trees. It was located on the west end in an area adjacent to a plush new eighteen-hole golf course.

A condo development had been constructed right beside them. It was a gated development of blue-roof-tiled structures with two swimming pools, carpetlike lawns and colorful gardens, four tennis courts and quaint walkways that wove from one end to the other. Lately Jennie had been verbalizing a desire to give up the house and move into one of those units, but up to now Frankie resisted anything that smacked of retirement.

“I’m not old enough for golf yet,” Frankie had quipped. Now he seriously wondered if golf would be considered too strenuous for a man with his condition.

They drove into their garage and entered the house through the kitchen.

“Why don’t you just relax in the den, Frankie, and I’ll make us some lunch,” Jennie suggested the moment they had walked through the door.

He scowled.

“Don’t make me into a couch potato immediately, Jen,” he said.

“I’m not. I just…”

“I’ll be all right,” he assured her. She nodded and bit down on her lower lip as if to keep herself from saying another word.

Frankie walked through the kitchen and did just what she suggested, however: he settled on the sofa.

For a moment he just looked around. How wonderful it was simply to come home, he thought, and he looked around his home as if it were the first time he had entered it. It took a brush with the Grim Reaper to get him to appreciate what he had. While most of his contemporaries in urban areas like Los Angeles lived in small homes or apartments, he had a thirty-two-hundred-square-foot home with a marble-floored entryway.

Unlike the inner-city apartments where some of his older acquaintances resided, he had an airy, bright, and cheerful house with new-looking beige Berber rugs, cream-painted walls, and large windows and skylights.

The bathrooms had brass fittings and plenty of mirrors. There was a tear-drop chandelier in the dining room and the living room had a bay window that looked out toward the San Jacinto Mountains, giving them a rather breathtaking view. Just outside the kitchen, they had a small patio which they could use as a breakfast nook. Why was it he had never stopped to appreciate all this before? he wondered. Jennie appeared in the doorway.

“I’ll make some soup and a toasted-cheese sandwich, okay?”

“Sounds good.” He smiled. “It’s good to be home.”

She returned the smile and went back to the kitchen.

He waited a moment and then slowly, quietly, he reached over and lifted the telephone receiver out of its cradle. As gently as possible, he punched out the station’s number.

“Billy,” he said when the dispatcher responded. “It’s Frankie. Give me Rosina.”

“Frankie! How you doin’ ?”

“Good.”

“What?”

“Good.”

“Why are you speaking so softly?”

“Just give me Rosina, Billy.”

“Right.”

The extension was rung.

“Detective Flores,” she responded.

“Who says you’re a detective?”

“Frankie! You’re home?”

“Just arrived.”

“How are you?”

“Great. What’s been happening?”

“Not a helluva lot,” she began and then said, “well, actually a helluva lot.”

Frankie smothered a laugh.

“What?”

“Seems this schoolteacher was porking the mother of one of his students… a divorcee, whose estranged husband remained possessive.”

“Killed her?”

“Killed the teacher. It will be in tomorrow’s Sun.”

“At least it’s open-and-shut. What else?”

“Had a suicide to investigate. Elderly gent who just lost his wife and seems to have offed himself by overdosing on her insulin.”

“Whatever happened to gas ovens?”

“Theirs was electric. It’s a sad one. He was very determined.”

“What d’ya mean?”

“Autopsy revealed he took a fistful of Dilantin, too.”

“Don’t be a big shot, Flores. What’s Dilantin?”

“Thought you former big-city detectives would know.” She laughed.

“It’s used as an anticonvulsant and sleeping aid, but one of its possible side effects, especially in large doses, is insulin shock.”

“I thought you said he overdosed on insulin?”

“I did.”

“So he took these pills besides?”

“I told you he was determined.”

Frankie was silent a moment.

“Where’d he get the pills? Were they his?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Couldn’t be his wife’s if she had diabetes then and was taking insulin, right?” Rosina was silent.

“You didn’t go through the medicine cabinet, review their drug history, contact their doctor?”

“I checked. There wasn’t any Dilantin in their medicine cabinet.”

“Not even an empty bottle?”

“No.”

“So?”

“Nolan says it’s open-and-shut and he doesn’t want me spending any more time on it. I have to go stake out this pump station on Alejo that might be a drugstore instead. The owner of the Seven-Eleven across the way tipped us.”

“You’re satisfied closing this suicide investigation, Flores?”

“Hey, the guy was married for nearly forty years to the same woman.

They live alone, one married daughter in Ohio. His wife kicks the bucket and he offs himself using her medication. We found him with their picture clutched to his chest. Nothing stolen that we can determine. Who’d want to hurt a bereaved old man? I know you don’t like Nolan, especially these days, but…”

“Fistful of Dilantin, but no bottle? It’s a loose end,” Frankie insisted.

Rosina was silent for a moment.

“I’m going to miss you, Samuels. No one else has your urban cynicism here.”

“What’s the victim’s name?”

“Murray, Sam Murray.”

“Call the coroner and see if he can tell you how long the Dilantin was in Mr. Murray before the insulin kicked in, too.”

“Why?”

“If he took so much sleeping powder and it would have knocked him out, he couldn’t have injected himself with insulin, now, could he?”

“Frankie, Nolan’s not going to…”

“Forget it. I’ll look into it while you pump gas.”

“Frankie.”

“I’ m bored.”

“Already’? You haven’t been off the job a week.”

“I haven’t?” He laughed. “Seems like a month. I’ll be in to see our beloved chief in a day or so. In the meantime…”

“In the meantime … Let there be a meantime, Frankie. I gotta go.”

“Vaya con Dios.”

“Great, you’re bilingual.” She laughed and hung up.

Frankie pressed down the button on the cradle to redial and speak to forensics, but he felt Jennie’s eyes.

He looked up quickly and saw her standing in the doorway.

“I’m just…”

“Hang that phone up, Frankie Samuels,” she ordered, her eyes full of fire. There was a crimson tint in her cheeks that told him she was about to erupt. Like a man under the gun, he obeyed. “You haven’t been home five minutes.”

“I just…”

“Don’t start your lying, Frankie. I can’t take it. Not along with everything else.”

He started to raise his hand to swear, but her smirk aborted the gesture.

“Your lunch is ready, Frankie. You’ll eat, go out on the patio and lie on the lounge. I’ll bring you the papers. After that, you’ll do what the doctor said and take it easy for the first day home. The children are coming down to have dinner with us tomorrow night. We’re ordering in Chinese.”

“Beth, too?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Now who’s lying.”

“I don’t know. She said she might go to Tucson to that demonstration, but…”

“That’s where she is, Jen. I’m second when it comes to the cause.”

“Please, Frankie, I can’t take any more tension.”

“All right,” he said rising. “Let’s eat.”

Hours later, after he did fall asleep on the lounge on the patio, he came in and flopped into the leather LaZ-Boy chair in the den to flick on the television set and get some local news. The teacher-parent love triangle murder was the headline story.

“I guess this ain’t the paradise it used to be,” Frankie commented when Jennie joined him. They talked quietly about the old days for a while until they were interrupted when Phil and Brenda Morton, their closest neighbors, arrived with a freshly baked coffee cake.

Phil had owned a hardware store in Akron, Ohio, and Brenda had been a school nurse. They were a pleasant, upbeat couple who had an almost monomaniacal drive to enjoy their autumn years. Their lives appeared to be built around their schedule of activities, from golf to bingo to senior-citizen day trips and show trips. The bulletin board on the right wall of their kitchen was inundated with messages and announcements concerning restaurants and department stores that awarded senior-citizen discounts and early-bird specials. Frankie used to joke about them, but for the first time, Frankie saw his and Jennie’s future in the same terms.

Later, when he and Jennie finally had a quiet moment, sitting on their settee on the patio, he confessed he was tired.

“This retirement business can wear you down,” he said.

“According to Phil and Brenda, there’s never a lack of something to do.”

“That’s what I was afraid of Let’s not run ourselves down filling our lives with things to fill our lives, Jen,” he warned.

“Don’t worry about me, Frankie Samuels. You just make sure you watch your medications and diet and tell me immediately if you’re too tired to do something.”

“Don’t start nagging. I can still go back to being a traffic cop giving out parking tickets,” he threatened.

She laughed. He embraced her and they sat there while the night continued to fall and the stars continued to pop to the surface of the vast desert sky. Unencumbered by the bright lights of the city, they were far more visible.