“I didn’t. I couldn’t. But she knew it was me. She said I should come home, that she’s been getting my checks, that the children miss me. She didn’t say that she missed me.”
“Go home Victor,” I said.
“Can’t.”
“I forgive you. Catherine forgives you. I don’t think Cook County forgives you, but that’s between you and the Cook County state attorney’s office, and I don’t plan to give them any information.”
It was pretty much what I had been saying to him for more than two months. I didn’t expect it to work this time.
“Forgive yourself,” I tried. “Hungry?”
“No.”
“You can do me a favor,” I said. “In the morning, go to Starbucks or Borders, plug your computer into the Internet, and find some information for me.”
“Yes.”
“You might have to do some illegal things to get what I want. I want whatever you can find about a Ronald Gerall, probably born somewhere in California.”
It was busywork. Dixie would get me whatever I needed in the morning.
“Yes,” he said.
“You want me to turn the light out?”
“Yes.”
“Good night.”
I went into my room, placed the towel on the back of my chair, put on my extra-large gray T-shirt with the faded full-color image of Ernie Banks on the front.
I turned the night light to its lowest setting and got on the bed. I stayed on top of the covers, lay on my back, and clutched the extra pillow.
The room was bigger than my last one in the office building behind the Dairy Queen. I looked up at the angled ceiling.
I like small spaces when I sleep. This room wasn’t large, but it was bigger than I liked. I would have slept in a closet were there one large enough to sleep in. I cannot sleep outdoors. I can’t look up at the vastness of the sky without beginning to feel lost, like I’m about to be swept into the universe. This room was tolerable, but it would take some getting used to.
I lay without moving, looking upward, growing too tired to move, going over whether Ronnie Gerall had killed his father-in-law and why, and wondering if he had killed his wife and Blue Berrigan.
Thoughts of Sally Porovsky came and went like insistent faces of forgotten movie actors whose names just managed to stay out of reach.
Sometimes when I fall asleep, an idea comes, and I feel energized.
Usually, if I don’t write down the idea, I’ll lose it with the dawn. I did get an idea, then, or rather, a question. Why were all the Corkles paying me to save Ronnie?
His family would be better protected by having Ronnie locked away until he was too old to appreciate a handy dandy Corkle Electrostatic CD, LP, and DVD cleaner. I didn’t write down my idea, but this time I remembered it. When I sat up in the morning, I heard my dark curtains open, saw bright morning light, and looked up at Greg Legerman and Winston Churchill Graeme.
“He’s out,” said Greg, handing me a steaming Starbucks coffee.
“Who?”
“Ronnie. Who did you think I was talking about, Charlie Manson?”
“What time is it?”
“Almost nine,” said Greg.
“I know Ronnie’s out,” I said. “Who let you in?”
“The Chinese guy,” said Greg.
“He’s Japanese,” Winn Graeme said.
“He’s Chinese,” I said.
Greg took the only chair in the room and pulled it over to my bedside.
“You want your money back?” I said. “Fine.”
“No, you need it. You live in near squalor.”
“Greg,” Winn warned.
Greg Legerman’s response to the warning was to reach up and punch the other boy in the arm. Winn took it and looked at me.
“How long have you known old Ronnie?” I asked.
Greg thought about it, but Winn answered.
“He transferred to Pine View after his sophomore year. Came from Texas, San Antonio.”
“He have a girlfriend?”
“Lots. He had a fake ID,” said Greg. “Went out to bars, picked up women. Said he wasn’t into high school girls. Why?”
“He ever mention Rachel Horvecki?”
“Horvecki’s daughter? No,” said Greg. “I don’t remember. Why?”
“Have any idea where he might be now?”
I got up and went to the closet for a clean pair of jeans and a blue short-sleeved Polo pullover.
“No,” said Winn.
“Any idea where your mother is?”
“My mother?”
“Your mother.”
“No. Home. Shopping. Buying. I don’t know. I don’t keep track of her. Why do you want to know where my mother is?”
“Just a few questions I need to ask her.”
“My mother?”
“Your mother.”
“I said no. Have you found out who killed Horvecki yet?”
“No, but I will.”
Greg had clasped his hands together and was tapping his clenched fist against his chin.
“You need more money?”
“More time,” I said. “Now, it would be nice if you left.”
“Sorry,” said Winn.
He adjusted his glasses and reached over to urge his friend out of the chair.
“I’ve got more questions,” said Greg.
“I can’t give you answers now,” I said. “Ronnie’s out on bail.”
Greg reluctantly rose from the chair, nodded a few times as he looked at me, then turned and, after a light punch to Winn’s arm, went through the door. Winn Graeme hesitated, looked at me and whispered, “Nickel Plate Club.”
Then he was gone. I stood listening while they opened the outer door and moved into the day.
I put on my Cubs cap and stepped into my outer room. Victor was sitting on the floor on his sleeping bag, a cardboard cup of coffee in his hand, looking up at one of the Stig Dalstroms on the wall.
A cup of coffee sat on my desk alongside a paper bag which contained a Chick-Fil-A breakfast chicken sandwich. I sat and began working on my breakfast. I put the coffee in my hand next to the one on my desk.
“I looked,” he said.
“At…”
“Internet. Ronald Owen Gerall.”
The door opened, and Ames came in bearing a Styrofoam cup of coffee. He nodded at Victor and handed the coffee to me. I put it alongside the others.
“I just had a visit from Winn and Greg,” I said working on one of the coffees. “They think we haven’t made any progress. Progress is overrated. Victor has some information for us about Ronnie.”
“He is married,” said Victor. “To Rachel Horvecki.”
“That a fact?” Ames said, looking at me for an explanation for why we were listening to something we already knew.
“Ronald Owen Gerall spent a year in a California Youth Facility when he was sixteen. Assault.”
That was new information.
“There’s a little more,” said Victor, showing more signs of life than I had ever seen in him before. “Because he was under-age when he came to Sarasota and he claimed to have no living relatives, he needed someone to vouch for him, help him find a place to live, and accept responsibility.”
“Who?”
“Sally Porovsky.”
While Ames, riding shotgun, went off with Victor to try to find Ronnie Gerall, I went to Sally’s office at Children and Family Services to do the same thing. I could have called to find out if she was in or off to see a client, but I didn’t want to hear her say that she was too busy to see me. Besides, I don’t like telephones. I don’t like the silences when someone expects me to speak and I have nothing to say or nothing I want to say. I use them when I must, which seemed to be a lot more of the time.
I parked the Saturn in the lot off of Fruitville and Tuttle where Children and Families had its office. Then I picked up my ringing phone and opened it. It was Dixie.
“Your Ronnie Gerall problem just got
a little more complicated.”
“How?” I asked.
“Ronnie Gerall is dead.”
“When?”
“Six years ago in San Antonio,” Dixie said. “Which means…”
“Ronnie Gerall is not Ronnie Gerall. He stole a dead boy’s identity.”
“Looks that way,” she said. “But there’s more. I tried a search of the back issues of the San Antonio newspaper for a period a year before your Ronnie got here. I tried a match of the photograph of him in the Pine View yearbook.”
“And?”
“Bingo, Bango, Bongo. Newspaper told me his name is Dwight Ronald Torcelli. He fled an indictment for felony assault. Then I did a search for Dwight Ronald Torcelli. He’s twenty-six years old. His birthday’s tomorrow. He’ll be twenty-seven. Maybe you should buy him a cake or give him some Harry amp; David chocolate cherries.”
“Is that a hint?”
“Hell yes. I love those things. Want me to keep looking?”
“Try Rachel Horvecki or Rachel Gerall,” I said.
“They may have a license and a minister’s approval, but they are definitely not married.”
“I wonder if she knows that.”
“Good luck investigating, Columbo.”
We hung up, and I looked at the entrance to Building C of a complex of bored three-story office buildings that couldn’t decide whether to go with the dirt-stained brick on the bottom half or the streaked once-white wooden slats on top. Building C was on the parking lot between A and D. There was a neatly-printed sign plunged into the dirt and grass in front of the space where I parked. The sign said there was an office suite available and that it was ideal for a professional business.
The offices were almost all occupied by dentists, urologists, and investment counselors who promised free lunches at Long-horn for those who wanted to attend an equally free workshop on what to do with their money. A four-man cardiology practice had recently moved out and into a building they had financed on Tuttle, about a mile away.
Cardiologists, cataract surgeons, specialists in all diseases that plagued the old and perplexed the young are abundant in Sarasota, almost as abundant as banks.
John Gutcheon was seated at the downstairs reception desk making a clicking sound with his tongue as he wrote on a yellow pad.
John was in his mid-thirties, blond, thin, and very openly gay. His sharp tongue protected him from those who might dare to attack his life choice, although he had told me once, quite clearly, that it was not a choice and it was not an echo. His homosexuality was a reality he had recognized when he was a child. There were those who accepted him and those who did not. And he had come to terms with that after many a disappointment.
“Still wearing that thing,” he said, looking up at me and shaking his head. “Lewis, when will you learn the difference between an outrageous fashion statement and bad taste.”
“I like the Cubs,” I said.
“And I like sea bass but I don’t wear it on my head. There are other ways of expressing your bad taste,” he said.
“My wife gave me this cap,” I said.
“And my cousin Robert wanted to give me an introduction to a predatory friend at a gay bar,” he said. “I made the mistake of accepting that introduction. You could at least clean that abomination on your head.”
“I’ll do that,” I said.
“Lewis, ’tis better to be cleanly bald than tastelessly chapeaued.”
“I’ll remember that.”
“No, you won’t, but I feel as compelled as a priestly exorcist to remind you.”
“Sally in?” I asked.
“All in,” he said folding his hands on the desk.
“How is your writing coming?”
“You remembered,” he said with mock joy. “Well, thank you for asking. My writing career is at a halt while several online and one honest-to-God publisher decide whether it’s worth continuing.”
“Ronnie Gerall,” I said.
He looked up. I had struck home.
“He… I can’t discuss clients,” he said, measuring his words careful. “Lawsuits. Things like that. You know.”
“You’ve talked to me about lots of clients.”
“Have I? Shouldn’t have. She’s in. I assume you didn’t come to see me.”
“You have a favorite first line of a novel?” I asked.
He pulled open a drawer of his desk and came up with a thin paperback with ragged pages. He opened the book and read: “ ‘Where’s Papa going with that ax? said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.’ ”
“Stephen King?” I guessed.
He held up the book to show me its cover. Charlotte’s Web, by E. B. White. Then he said, “Where’s Lewis going with that ax?”
“No ax,” I said.
“Liar,” said Gutcheon.
“No,” I said.
“Always a pleasure to talk to you,” he said as I headed for the elevator.
The elevator rocked to the hum of a weary motor. I wasn’t fully certain what I was doing here or what I expected when I talked to Sally. I had a lead. I was following it. At least that’s what I told myself.
The elevator door opened slowly to a Wall Street stage, only the people in front of me in two lines of cubicles were dealing in human misery, not stocks and bonds and millions of dollars. It was a busy day for the caseworkers at Children and Families. There was no shortage of abuse, anger, and neglect.
A few of the dozen cubicles were empty, but most were occupied by a caseworker and at least one client. Almost all the clients were black. Sometimes the client was a tired parent or two. Some were sullen or indifferent, others were frightened. Some were children. The mornings were generally for taking in clients at the office. The afternoons and evenings were for home visits throughout the county. Sometimes the day was interrupted by a court appearance. Sometimes it was interrupted by something personal-personal to the life of the harried caseworker, something like Lew Fonesca.
Sally’s back was to me. In the chair next to her desk sat an erect black man in a dark suit and red tie. In the man’s lap was a neatly folded lightweight coat. He was about fifty and lean, with graying temples. He looked at me through rimless glasses. He reminded me of a sociology professor I had at the University of Illinois, a professor who, when he looked at me, seemed to be in wonder that such a mirthless silent specimen should have made it to his small classroom.
I stood silently while Sally went over a form in front of her. When she spoke, she had to raise her voice above the hubbub of voices around her.
“He’s in school now?” she asked.
I stood back, knowing that she would eventually turn and see me, or her client would gaze at me again and catch her eye.
“Yes, he is. At least he is supposed to be.”
His voice was deep, even.
“Thurgood is a good student?” Sally said, looking up from the form.
“When he goes to school, and if you should meet him, he will not answer to the name ‘Thurgood.’ His middle name is Marshall. Thurgood Marshall Montieth.”
“He is,” said Sally, “twelve years old.”
“Soon to be thirteen,” said Montieth. “And, if I may, I will encapsulate the data you have in front of you in the hope of speeding the process so I can get back to work. My name is Marcus Montieth. I’m forty-seven years of age. I am a salesman and floor manager at Joseph Bank clothing store in the Sarasota Mall. My wife is dead. Thurgood is my only child. He is a truant, a problem. He has run away four times. I do not beat him. I do not slap him. I do not deprive him of food. I do not try to instill in him a fear of God because I do not believe in a god or gods. My health is good, though there is a history of heart attack in my family.”
“Thurgood is an only child?” asked Sally.
“And for that I would thank God were I to believe in one. May I ask you two questions?”
“Yes,” said Sally.
“What can be done for my son, and why
is that man hovering over our conversation?”
Sally turned enough in her desk chair to look over her right shoulder at me.
“Lewis, could you…” she began.
Something in the way I looked told her this was not one of my usual visits. Usually, I called before I came. Usually, I waited downstairs and listened to John Gutcheon while I waited for her to be free. Usually, there was no sense of urgency in my appearance. Usually, I did not hover near her cubicle.
“I’ll be with you in a few minutes,” she said.
I thought it unlikely she would ever be with me. I had let Sally Porovsky move into my life-no, to be fair, I had moved into hers-and let the ghost of Catherine begin to fade a little, but just a little.
“Mr. Montieth, when would it be possible for you to come back with Thurgood?”
“Please remember to call him Marshall. During the day he is supposedly in school. In the evenings I work. He comes home to my sister Mae’s apartment after school. I do get Wednesdays off.”
“Wednesday after school?”
“Yes,” he said. “Time?”
“Four-thirty,” said Sally, reaching over to write in her desktop calendar.
“We will be here,” he said rising.
He was tall, six-four or six-five, and when he passed me I expected a look of disapproval at my intrusion. He smiled in understanding, assuming What? A fellow parent with a troubled child? A homeless creature in a baseball cap, some scratches on his face?
“I’ve got a client coming in ten minutes, Lewis,” she said.
I stepped forward but I didn’t sit. She looked up at me.
“What is it?”
“Ronnie Gerall,” I said. “When he supposedly transferred from San Antonio to Pine View, you vouched for him, signed papers of guardianship, found him a family to live with.”
“Yes,” she said. “Lewis, please sit.”
Her full, round face was smooth, just a little pink, and definitely pretty. She was tired. Sally was tired much of the time.
I sat.
“What’s your question?” she asked with a smile that made it clear that she did not expect me to ask if she would run away with me to Genoa.
“Two questions to start,” I said. “How did Ronnie Gerall get in touch with you? How old was he when he entered Pine View School for the Gifted?”
Sally blew out a puff of air as she leaned back in her chair and looked up at the white drop ceiling.
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