Kiss by John Lutz

for his driver’s license.
    Instead, the dry, official voice said, “Lieutenant McGregor wants to talk with you.”
    Was that what this was about?
    “He knows my address,” Carver said. “My phone number, too.”
    “All I know,” the uniform said, “is my job’s to see you come to headquarters and be interviewed. Immediately.”
    “What’s with McGregor? He doing this to demonstrate his authority?”
    The cop’s beefy, perspiring face almost broke into a smile. They were getting to know McGregor in the Del Moray department. Getting to fear him, too. “He’s got the authority to demonstrate, Mr. Carver,” the uniform said. “So do I, you want to make things difficult. No sense creating a problem, though. Will you follow my car, sir?”
    “All right,” Carver said. Why fight this? He’d see McGregor and get it over with as soon as possible. “I’ll be in your mirror, officer.”
    Now the ruddy-faced cop did smile. It was an almost apologetic flickering in the blue eyes and at the corners of the mouth. He didn’t like this. He had more important things to do than errand-boy bullshit for the higher-ups and he was relieved Carver was cooperating. McGregor must have suggested there might be an argument; take the hard-ass line with that rebel Carver, if you have to. No need. Carver had kept it as cool as possible in ninety-degree heat.
    The uniform said, “Thanks, Mr. Carver.”
    Carver started the Olds engine and waited until the patrol car had pulled out onto the road and moved in front of him.
    Though he knew where police headquarters was, he kept the Olds’s long hood aimed at the cruiser’s back bumper all the way. Make the uniform feel useful.
    Del Moray police headquarters occupied a converted brick house with tall white colonial pillars supporting a miniature porch roof. The roof wouldn’t be of much use in providing shade or shelter from rain. The booking area was in what had been the living room. A curved stairway led to offices and holdover cells upstairs. Lockers, the squad room, and briefing and interrogation rooms were in the basement. There were more offices beyond the booking desk, small ones, made by partitioning the area that had been the dining room, kitchen, and a downstairs bedroom. Despite the presence of uniformed police, the institutional green paint on the walls, and the crackling background chatter of a dispatcher, to Carver the place still felt more like someone’s home than a police station. Beaver Cleaver might burst in to get his bat and glove any minute.
    There was an Amoco service station across the street that kept the patrol cars running. On the left of headquarters, a parking lot and then the intersection. On the right was a grassy, vacant lot, and then a row of houses similar to headquarters, only these were real houses, where families lived.
    The uniform who’d summoned Carver had gone on about his business, and it was a short, young, blond policewoman who ushered Carver into McGregor’s office. She was overweight but well proportioned and walked lightly, on the balls of her feet and with her toes pointed out, like a dancer. Very official in her tan uniform and beige-tinted nylons. Carver noticed she didn’t carry a side arm.
    “Thanks, Myra,” McGregor said from behind his desk. “That’s all for now, babe.” Myra looked slightly ill and withdrew without speaking.
    McGregor said, “Small-town bitch thinks she’s Cagney or Lacey and wants to be out on the street her first year on the force. I’m keeping her here till she gets more experience. Let her type reports, do filing. Office stuff. Best thing for her at this point.”
    “For her own good,” Carver said, leaning on his cane.
    “Mine, too. ’Cause I’d rather look at her ass all day than at some spread-hipped copper who’s spent half his life squatting in a cruiser. See you got a new walnut cane, Carver. Siddown, why don’t you, before you break that one, too.”
    The office was tiny, not what