“It was personal,” I said.
“The other man,” Viviase insisted.
“Jack Pepper, a radio evangelist from Cortez,” I said.
“Mind telling me what they wanted, or did they just drop by to give you legal and spiritual counseling and a cup of tea?”
“They wanted me to find a way to get Dwight Torcelli free of the murder charge.”
“Dwight Torcelli?”
“Ronnie’s real name, but we can still call him Ronald. It’s his middle name. He’s twenty-seven years old today.”
“You can prove that?”
“Listen…” Torcelli started to say, but Viviase was in no mood to listen to him.
“You can prove it,” I said, and told him how to do it.
“No point in my telling you not to do anything dumb,” he said. “You’re going to do it anyway.”
When Viviase and his prisoner were gone and Darrell and Victor had finished their second breakfast, we all got into Victor’s car, Ames in front, Darrell and I in the rear.
“How come you’re not telling me to go home?” Darrell asked.
“Because,” I said, “you’d remind me that I’m responsible for you all day. You’d tell me that being with me when I’m working is the most important thing in your life.”
“I’m into girls now,” he said. “Don’t overestimate your charisma.” He hit each syllable in the word.
“I’m impressed.”
“You’re learning,” Darrell said as Victor drove to Siesta Key.
“I’m entering a new phase,” I said.
And I was pretty sure I was.
The Ocean Terrace Resort Hotel was on Siesta Beach. It had a swimming pool, but it was no resort. It was a one-story dirty green stucco line of thirty-five rooms and a slightly moldy-smelling carpet in the hallway. The Ocean Terrace lived on the spillover from the bigger, fancier, more up-to-date and upscale motels that called themselves resorts and sold postcards proclaiming that they were the place for Northerners, Canadians, Frenchmen, Germans, Norwegians, and Japanese to spend a week, or the whole winter. The Ocean Terrace offered nothing but its own existence.
The desk clerk, a woman with an unruly pile of papers in front of her and a head of equally unruly dyed red hair looked up at us as we entered the lobby. She was maybe in her fifties, clear-skinned, buxom, and looking as if she had suffered a few setbacks in the last ten minutes.
“What have we here, the road company of the Village People? A baseball player, a cowboy, a Chinese guy, and a black kid,” she said.
We didn’t answer her.
“Sorry. That was uncalled for,” she said. “We have no vacancies and you appear to have no luggage. Would you like a bottle of water?”
“Sure,” said Darrell.
“Rachel Olin,” I said.
The woman bent down out of sight and then came up with a bottle of water which she handed to Darrell, who said, “Thanks.”
“A guest,” I said. “Rachel Olin.”
“Checked out about an hour ago,” the woman said.
“She pay with a credit card?” I asked.
“Cash. Who are you?”
“Her husband is looking for her,” Ames said.
“He’s pining for her,” said Darrell.
She looked at Victor but he had nothing to add.
“Left with a man,” she said.
“She call him anything?” Ames asked.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“What did he look like?” I asked.
“Who are you?” she asked.
I produced my process server license card and handed it to her.
“You look different in that baseball cap,” she said, handing the card back. “These gentlemen are your backup?”
“Ames is my partner,” I said. “I look after Darrell on Saturdays.”
“And I killed his wife,” Victor said.
She turned her attention to Victor, who was definitely not smiling.
“The guy she went with was a little older than you maybe,” she said. “Good shape. Nice looking.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes,” she said. “He had a patch over his left eye.”
“Thought he left town,” Ames said from the front seat as Victor drove through Siesta Key Village, avoiding collision with shopping bag-laden tourists.
“So did I,” I said.
“Who?” asked Darrell.
“His name is Jeff Augustine,” I said.
“He kidnapped her?” asked Darrell.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Doesn’t look that way,” I said.
“He’s not the upchuck who shot me, is he?”
“Someone shot him, too,” Ames said.
“Fonesca, what is going on?” Darrell asked, turning in his seat to face me as fully as he could.
“I’m not sure,” I said.
“Can’t do no better than that?” he asked.
“Can’t do any better than that,” I said. “I’m not sure, but I’m getting some ideas.”
“Good ones?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where are we going?”
“To the home of D. Elliot Corkle,” said Ames.
“Why?”
“So he can give you a handy dandy super automatic CD sorter which normally sells for nineteen ninety-five,” I said.
“I don’t need a CD sorter,” Darrell said.
We were crossing the bridge off the Key.
“Don’t worry,” said Ames, “he’s got lots of things he likes to give away.”
Ames told Victor how to get to Corkle’s. When we hit the mainland, Victor turned north on Tamiami Trail.
“Victor,” I said. “Would you do me a favor?”
“Yes.”
“Stop telling people you killed my wife.”
“But I did.”
“You may want to hear it, but other people don’t.”
“You don’t want me to say it, I won’t.”
“I don’t want you to say it to anyone but me when you feel you have to.”
“I’ll remember,” he said.
There were no cars parked in front of Corkle’s or in his driveway, but that didn’t mean no one was home. If he had told me the truth, Corkle didn’t leave his house. Doctors, barbers, dentists, I’m sure, came to him. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had an operating room somewhere behind the walls.
The last time I was in Corkle’s home, Ames stole the Ronnie documents, and I won a few dollars playing poker. This was not a place I wanted to be.
“Ames, find a way in the back,” I said. “See if you can find her.”
Ames looked straight ahead. Victor looked at the steering wheel and Darrell said, “No way. You said he’ll give us something?”
“We’ll come up with something,” said Ames.
Ames stayed seated while I went up the path to the front door. A tiny lizard skittered in front of me. I pulled my foot back to keep from stepping on it. A flock of screaming gulls spun over the Gulf of Mexico about forty yards down the street to my right.
I took off my cap, put it in my back pocket and rang the bell. It didn’t take long, maybe forty seconds. Corkle opened the door.
“Ah, the thief in the baseball cap. Come in.”
He stepped back and looked over my shoulder at Victor’s parked car. Corkle was wearing blue slacks and an orange shirt with the words corkle’s radio to outer space. Under the lightning black letters was a picture of a plastic radio the size of a cigar box.
“You like the shirt?” he asked, leading me toward the office Ames had broken into. “On the way out, remind me and I’ll give you and your friends in the car one each.”
“Could you really hear outer space?” I asked as he opened the door to his office and let me pass.
“I’ll give you one. You try it. Let me know. Truth is, you can tune in outer space on any radio. You just won’t hear much of anything. But the CROS is perfect for AM and FM and has an alarm cloc
k that plays ‘So in Love With You Am I.’ Have a seat.”
I sat, not across from him at his desk but at a table in the corner near a window.
Corkle picked up a glass sphere about the size of a softball. He shook it gently and held it up so I could see the snow under the glass gently falling on…
“Rosebud,” he said. “This is an exact replica of the one in Citizen Kane.”
He handed it to me.
“See the sled?”
“Yes,” I said handing it back. “You sold them for nine ninety-five?”
“No, I didn’t sell them. I had this one made to remind me not to go looking for other people’s Rosebuds. Are you looking for someone’s Rosebud, Lewis Fonesca?”
“My own maybe,” I said.
He made a sound I took as a sign of sympathy or understanding. Then he put the glass ball gently atop a dark wood holder on the table and began rummaging through the drawers of his desk.
“I don’t stay in this house because of any phobia,” he said. “I just don’t find things out there very interesting anymore. You know what I mean.”
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t asking a question,” he said, bouncing from the chair and looking at his shelves for something else to play with. “I know the answer.”
“What’s the answer?” I asked.
“Catherine,” he said. “Am I right or am I right?”
“You’re right,” I said. “Now I’ve got a question.”
“Want a drink? You drink Diet Coke, right? Or how about lemonade?”
“Not now, thanks. The Kitchen Master Block Set.”
“A good seller, not great, but good. Sold seventy-four thousand in 1981.”
“There was a meat pounder in the set,” I said.
“Meat tenderizer,” he corrected.
“A big wooden mallet with ridges on the head.”
“Yes. You want one?”
“My sister has one.”
“Nice to know it’s still in service,” he said. “Sturdy. Made in the Philippines.”
“I think one of them was used to murder Blue Berrigan,” I said. “I saw the postmortem photographs. They left a dent in his skull like a fingerprint.”
“Could be a different manufacturer’s,” he said.
Corkle found what he was looking for in the deep file drawer in the desk. It was a jar full of what looked like pennies. He rolled the jar in his hands. The coins made the sound of falling rain as it turned.
“You give away a lot of Kitchen Master Block Sets here in Sarasota?”
“I give my Corkle Enterprises helpful house, car, and kitchen aids to anyone who comes in this house. I give them for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and birthdays.”
The rolling coins in the jar grew louder as he moved toward me.
“You’re a generous man,” I said.
“I like to think so.”
“You haven’t asked me about Ronnie Gerall.”
“I assume that you’ll tell me if you have anything to say that will help him.”
“His name isn’t Ronnie Gerall, but you already know that.”
“Do I?”
He was behind me now. I didn’t turn my head, just listened to the coins.
If I were ever to really believe in God, a primary reason would be the existence of irony in my life. There had to be some irony in the possibility of my getting killed with a jar full of pennies.
There is a mischief in me, even with the coins of death over my head. Death wish? Maybe. Ann Hurwitz thought so. Now she thinks I may be getting over it. If so, why did I then say, “Jeff Augustine.”
The coin rattling turned to the sound of a thunderstorm in the Amazon and then suddenly stopped.
“He didn’t leave town,” I said.
Corkle moved back to the wall, deposited the jar, and sat behind his desk.
“He convinced you he was going, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Good actor. C-plus real-life tough guy.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” Corkle said, “but I do know where your cowboy friend is.”
“Where?”
“Searching the rooms upstairs for Rachel Horvecki.”
He pushed a button under the desk and a section of the bookcase popped open to reveal a bank of eight full color television screens. They were all numbered. On number three Ames was talking to a young woman sitting on a bed.
“Why did you take her?”
“Protect her,” he said. “My daughter and grandson believe in Ronnie’s… What’s his real name?”
“Dwight Ronald Torcelli. He’s still Ronnie.”
“I don’t want her threatened to the point where he feels he can’t proclaim his innocence.”
“You think he’d do the noble thing?”
“No,” said Corkle, swiveling his leather chair so that it faced the window and presented me with the back of his head. He had a little monk’s bald pate you couldn’t see unless he was seated like this and leaning back.
“Don’t ask me why my daughter and grandson believe in him.”
“Their belief may be eroding.”
“I wouldn’t try to talk them out of it,” he said. “On the other hand, I wouldn’t say a word against…”
“Dwight Torcelli,” I said. “You let us steal those documents about Ronnie Gerall while we played poker the other night,” I said. “You dropped a hint about them and left them on your desk. You had a pretty good idea we would come the night I bought into your poker game.”
“Why would I do that?”
“To give us reasons to believe that he was guilty without handing us evidence.”
“You think I’m that devious?”
“You’re that devious,” I said.
He swiveled back to face me and looked up at the television monitors.
“Persuasive,” he said.
I looked at the monitors. Ames and the young woman were coming out of the bedroom. He led the way to some narrow steep stairs just off the kitchen. The young woman followed him.
“Augustine?” I asked.
“You think he killed Horvecki and Berrigan?”
“The thought had entered my mind.”
“Anything else?”
“Are you paying me to clear Torcelli or to find something against him?”
“Given his relationship with your friend Sally Pierogi…”
“Porovsky.”
“Porovsky,” he amended. “Given that, I think you might have an interest in proving Torcelli is not a nice person. There, they’ve left the house.”
I looked up at a screen in the lower left-hand monitor to see Ames and the young woman hurrying across the back lawn.
“You’re good at all this,” I said.
“Couldn’t have sold forty-eight thousand copies of the Guitar Master 12-Lesson Plan and almost twenty thousand guitars to go with it if I weren’t good at sizing up the potential customers.”
“What are you trying to sell me?” I asked.
“I’m buying,” he said.
“What?”
“The truth,” he said. “Not the big truth. Just a small one about who killed Horvecki. If it clears the dago weasel, so be it. You don’t believe me?”
“No. Police will be coming to talk to you about what they found in Torcelli’s apartment.”
“The meat tenderizer?”
“The meat tenderizer.”
“They’re waiting for you in your car,” he said.
He got up and so did I.
“You get your choice of items in the closet,” he said.
“Some other time,” I said, going to the office door.
“D. Elliot Corkle has irritated you,” he said following me. “The dago remark? I was just pulling your chain.” He reached up and pulled once on an invisible chain.
“I know,” I said.
He grinned and pointed a finger at me to show I had hit the mark.
“Answer four que
stions and we’re friends again,” I said.
“Ask.”
We crossed the foyer to the front door.
“You know a policeman named Essau Williams and an Evangelist named Jack Pepper?”
“D. Elliot Corkle knows who they are,” he said. “Wait a moment.”
He hurried to the closet off the front hall, opened it and disappeared for no more than a few seconds before coming out with a white cardboard box and handing it to me. Second question?”
“Have you given money to either one of them?” I asked as we went out onto the redbrick path.
“Nothing to Williams but I did volunteer to put up a suitable headstone of his choice for his mother when they die. Five thousand dollars to Pepper to help support his ministry.”
“In exchange for?”
“Nothing, but I did indicate to both of them that I appreciated their efforts to bring Philip Horvecki to justice.”
“Blue Berrigan?” I asked.
“Unfortunate. No, tragic. No, shocking. A terrible coincidence. If you see my daughter…”
“Yes?”
“Nothing,” he said. “She’ll come back here. She always does when her funds get down to the level of the gross national product of Poland. Another question.”
“Does Jeff Augustine play golf?”
“Why? Do you want him to join you on the links at the Ben Hogan Gulf Club? I don’t know if he plays golf. I do know that if he does it will be a bit difficult for him now with but one eye.”
He closed the door and I carried my prize to the car, where Rachel was sitting in the front passenger seat. I got in beside Ames and Darrell.
“Where are you taking me?” Rachel Gerall said.
“Wherever you want to go,” I said.
“To see Ronnie,” she said, her voice in twang from the center of the State of Florida.
She was frail and pale, red of hair and green of eyes. She should have been Irish. She had a pinched face and thin lips. She could have been cast as a tubercular resident of an Irish mining town a century ago. Either that or a hardcore drug user.
“Who are you people?” she said, half turning to look at me.
“People trying to help the police find whoever killed your father,” I said.
“I don’t trust you,” she said, giving me the evil eye.
“Trust him,” Darrell said. “He ain’t lying.”
“Ronnie’s in jail,” I said.
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