Gecko by Ken Douglas Page A

off duty weapon and a faded blue sweatshirt with cut off sleeves. He wasn’t going to eat in the Shore and embarrass Glenna by showing up in one of the old suits from his detective days. Especially not that beat up brown job he was wearing this morning. He was going to look young and hip, like he belonged. Casual.
    Dressed, he started for the door, then turned back toward the bathroom for a dose of Skin Bracer to set his face tingling. He looked in the mirror, touched the bandage on his forehead and winced. It hurt. Then he opened the medicine cabinet and reached in for the after shave, when a gecko scurried from the top shelf, jumped onto his bare arm, ran up his sleeve, over his shoulder, brushed along his neck, then dove five feet to the floor and dashed out of the bathroom.
    He jumped back and slammed into the wall behind, banging his head. He pushed himself away from the wall, catching his breath and feeling foolish, while he tried to calm his raging heart.
    He hated surprises.
    “ What the hell?” he muttered. “First the hospital and now here.”
    It was unusual, almost impossible and under different circumstances he would have worried about it, but he had other things on his mind. A new job, finding Jim Monday and lunch with Glenna. He wanted her to be the first to know that he was finished with the department. No more gray moods and never being there when he was needed. From now on his family came first. Jane, Glenna and himself—family.
    He checked his watch on the way out the door. He had plenty of time to take the bus down Ocean to get his car. At the station he crossed the parking lot to where Power Glide lay, parked between two newer Chevrolet relatives, a Corvette on the left, a souped up Z28 on the right. They may be sporty and fast, he thought, but his Impala captured all the eyes. She was old and sometimes hard to start and maybe even harder to keep running, but she looked like the day she came off the showroom floor, waxed and new.
    He ran his hand along the hood and flecked some bird droppings off the windscreen with his index finger.
    “ No shit on you.” He unlocked the door, got in. She started immediately, a good sign.
    Since he was early, he figured he might get in a little work before lunch, so he drove to Dr. Kohler’s clinic on Lakewood Boulevard.
    Bernd Kohler’s Clinic de Beauté was a modern three story structure near the Traffic Circle, where the old Circle Drive-In Theater used to be. He was one of those plastic surgeons that advertised in TV Guide. His ads pictured young, nude women, hidden in shadow, always under the caption, “We can make you look the best you can be.” Not very good English, but effective. Kohler was a rich man.
    He parked in the clinic lot, locked the car and made his way to the reception, where he was confronted by a beauty that looked like she stepped straight out of a centerfold. A perfect advertisement for Kohler’s practice.
    “ Do you have an appointment?” she asked in the kind of voice that made men stammer.
    “ I’m a police officer.” He showed his badge. “I’d like to talk to Dr. Kohler about what happened yesterday morning.”
    “ He’s not here, won’t be for the next two weeks.”
    He was about to ask the next most obvious question, when she answered it without his asking.
    “ He’s at his place up north. He has a summer home in Tampico.”
    “ Really? I grew up in Palma. A stone’s throw away.”
    “ Dr. Kohler’s place is on Mountain Sea Road. Do you know it?”
    “ I know it well.” Washington smiled, putting the woman at ease.
    “ You’d love his house, everybody does,” she said. “It has the woods in front and a cliffside view of the ocean from the rear. I love sitting on that deck and listening to the waves.”
    “ Sounds like a neat place,” Washington said.
    “ Gorgeous, but only from the inside. It looks like a prison from the outside. Gray, with bars on the windows. He has to keep it that way to keep the