Vengeance

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “Right after New Year’s.”

  “This year?”

  I ate while I talked. Tim the welder was listening, waiting for some violence he could talk about with his friends over an open campfire.

  “I only served papers on two people in January,” I said. “Both women.”

  That was true.

  “I could swear …” Corky Flynn said, examining me closely.

  “Ever make a mistake before, Corky?” I asked.

  He sighed.

  “Too many times. I married three of ’em. That’s why I work a double-hour day. Got to pay them off. Used to drive trucks, big rigs, but my back … never mind. Sorry. I’ll pay for your breakfast.”

  “I accept,” I said.

  He got up and pulled two tens out of the pocket of his jeans. He dropped the bills on the counter, patted my back and said, “Sorry. Been having a bad week.”

  “You happen to know a driver named Dwight?” I asked, looking up at Corky Flynn.

  “Driver of what?”

  “Delivery or tow truck, don’t know.”

  “Dwight, Dwight. Yeah, Dwight, don’t know his last name. Don’t want to. He’s trouble. Mean. Works out of a station somewhere off Cattlemen or McIntosh. Triple-A jobs I think. Has a chip of steel on his shoulder, looking for trouble. Mean son of a bitch. He comes to me with that attitude and I’ll knock that steel chip into his neck. My advice, stay away from him.”

  “Can’t. Know how I can find him?”

  “You know what I know. See you around.”

  I held up a hand to acknowledge his departure.

  “Thought he was going to hit you,” said Tim with a touch of disappointment in his voice.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “You would have shot him, put him away with a kick to his balls or a karate chop,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “Corky Flynn would have beat the hell out of me. Corky left enough to cover your breakfast too. Be my guest.”

  Tim smiled. His teeth were false and white but his smile was real. I touched his shoulder and went out into the morning sun. The high school was about two blocks away, across 301, past the McDonald’s, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune office, a motel, a fried-chicken franchise and a discount eyeglass shop.

  I drove the Metro to the school parking lot, took a space for visitors and left the windows open. Maybe it would help the pine tree get rid of that smell of stale tobacco.

  Kids were heading toward the old red-brick three-story building and the newer one-story blocks behind it.

  The girls were dressed in the latest costume they thought would make them look sexy and the boys were looking at the latest costume that made them look cool. Grunge was back in for both groups. I preferred preppy. Most of the book-toting kids, who looked too young to be in high school, walked in zombie-like steps, eyes hooded from lack of sleep, talking in hoarse voices. I wondered what it would be like to teach a classroom of the teens I was walking through, especially a class in the morning. I’d rather face Corky Flynn in a dark doorway.

  A girl with nothing pierced, at least nothing on her face or tongue, and looking more awake than her peers, directed me to the office of Mr. Kwan, the associate principal and disciplinary officer. He was in one of the older one-story buildings.

  There were four green plastic and aluminum chairs to the right of the door. In front of the chairs was a desk behind which sat a pretty, thin, black woman talking on the phone. Behind her were other desks, file cabinets and a pair of women bustling with papers. To the left were two windowed offices with doors closed. In the first office, a heavyset, gray-haired woman was leaning forward over a desk pointing a yellow pencil at a sullen-looking, overly made-up girl with blue hair. The girl’s arms were folded over her flat chest. She didn’t like what she was hearing. She didn’t like the heavyset woman. I wondered what she did like.

  In the second office, an Asian man of no particular age stood next to a desk. His arms were folded like those of the girl in the next room. The man, who I assumed was Mr. Kwan, was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt, a solid blue tie, tan slacks and a lot of muscle. He was talking to a fat boy, who met Kwan’s eyes. The fat boy had a definitely dense look. He was either stupid, or suffering—or enjoying—the aftereffects of some drug. I’d seen that look.

  The black woman hung up the phone. Before I could speak, she held up a hand with long, red-painted fingernails, indicating to me that I should hold my complaint, thought or request.

  She picked up the phone again and said,

  “Yes, Mrs. Stanley. I know. But Mr. Kwan says it’s important that you see him today … . I understand, but if you can just get away from work for half an hour … . Yes, William is in trouble again. Yes, it is very serious … . Noon? Fine.”

  The woman looked up at me and hung up the phone.

  “Yes?”

  “I’d like to see Mr. Kwan,” I said.

  “About … ?”

  “Adele Tree, or she might be using her father’s name, Handford.”

  “You are …?”

  “A friend of Adele’s mother,” I said, looking over my glasses.

  “Well …”

  The phone rang. She reached for it and pointed to the lineup of plastic and aluminum chairs. I sat next to a kid in overalls who had slouched so far down that he seemed to be in serious danger of slipping onto the floor and into oblivion. The boy was young, black and bored.

  “What’re you in for?” I asked.

  He looked up at me.

  “Who’re you?”

  “I’m nobody. Who are you? Are you nobody too?”

  “What ya talking about?”

  “Just talking,” I said, looking down the line at three other waiting students in the seats next to us. Two girls were whispering. The third kid was big. He was white. He had short hair. A tattoo showed dark through his white T-shirt. He seemed to be sleeping.

  “You know a girl named Adele Tree or Handford?”

  “Maybe. You a cop? You don’t look like a cop.”

  “No, a friend of her mother. What do you know about Adele?”

  “Nothin’.”

  He looked at the busy secretary.

  “Nothing? What would five bucks do for your memory?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “I don’t know what I don’t know. But I’ll tell ya somethin’. I only know one Adele. She’s not as dumb as she makes out. She plays dumb to get close to the football players, basketball players, like that.”

  “Adele?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “How do you know she’s not dumb?” I asked.

  He looked over at the woman behind the desk, who was still on the phone. She had a pencil and was taking notes as she nodded. She pointed the pencil at the kid I was talking to and made a motion with it. He sat up. Pencils seemed to be the weapon of choice in this office.

  “She was in my math class,” the kid said, still looking at the woman behind the desk. “In there only maybe, let’s see, a week, two weeks. This is advanced math, man. Honors. I don’t know how she got in, but she tested in or some such and she was hard to figure. Too much makeup. You know, like a whore, but she was smart. Nothing Mr. W. could throw at her she couldn’t come back with. I mean just like that. Same in English.”

  “You said ‘was,’ not ‘is.’”

  “Haven’t seen her for three or four weeks.”

  “You’re an honor student?”

  “Yeah, surprised?”

  “Yeah,” I answered.

  “‘Cause of …”

  “What are you in trouble for?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “My mother wanted to talk to me,” he said, nodding at the black woman behind the desk. “She’s workin’ on a scholarship for me to Howard.”

  “Howard?”

  “Damn straight. I wanna be a city planner. I wanna come back here with one of those real sharp suits in six, seven years and tell them to rip this
whole fuckin’ city down, startin’ with Newtown, and start a new one.”

  The door to Kwan’s office opened and the fat boy slouched out, a yellow card in his hand. Maybe Kwan had given him a penalty for kicking someone in the face in a soccer game.

  Kwan looked at the woman behind the desk, who was still on the phone. She pointed her pencil at the two girls and the big sleeping kid and then at me. Kwan nodded and moved in front of me.

  “Good morning, Ty,” he said to the kid waiting to change the world.

  “Morning,” answered Ty.

  “You are?”

  “Lewis Fonesca. Friend of Adele Handford’s mother, Beryl, family friend.”

  “Come on,” said Kwan, heading for his office and looking at his watch.

  We went in the office. He closed the door and looked through the window into the bustling morning staff and waiting students.

  “Not much privacy,” I said.

  “Not supposed to be,” said Kwan, motioning to a chair in front of his desk.

  The chair was the brother of the ones in which the kids outside the office sat waiting. Kwan sank back in a slightly more comfortable chair behind his desk. The office was tiny. The desktop was empty except for a neat file of manila folders, a full but not overflowing wooden in-box and an out-box with one sheet of paper in it. A pile of yellow penalty cards rested in the middle of the desk. Through the window to the outside, Kwan had a pretty good view of the white wall of the building next door.

  “Adele Handford,” I said. “A student here. Pretty. Blond. Smart. Gets in trouble easily. I’ve heard her called Easy Adele. Her mother is looking for her.”

  “You her … ?”

  “I’m a family friend,” I said.

  “We have almost two thousand students here, Mr … .”

  “Fonesca, Lewis Fonesca.”

  “I know you from somewhere,” he said, studying my face.

  “Gwen’s Diner,” I said. “I eat there sometimes, early, like you.”

  A look of recognition came into his eyes and he nodded with some satisfaction after having scratched the itch of recognition.

  “I think I know the girl. Can’t tell you much about her,” he said. “Off the top, she’s a smart kid. She was sent to me two or three times because she talked back to a teacher and she was caught with a boy in the storage room behind the gym. I’m probably not authorized to tell you that much but I think the girl might be in trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  Kwan bit his lower lip and looked at the building next door. He made a decision, turned his head, pulled a pen out of his pants pocket and wrote something on the back of one of the yellow cards. I was getting a penalty. He handed the card to me. I looked at it:

  “Sally Porovsky, Children’s Services of Sarasota.”

  “You have an address for Adele?”

  “I have an address, but it wouldn’t do you any good. I drove by it on the way home one night. It’s a golf shop. I stopped and asked for her father. Of course they had never heard of him.”

  “But she’s living with her father somewhere?”

  “She was. Somewhere.”

  “And?”

  “You have the name of someone who can give you answers. I talked to the father once. I had asked the girl to have him call me when she got her first disciplinary referral. He was calm. He was polite. He said he couldn’t come in because he had to work. He told me his daughter knew how to take care of herself.”

  “That’s it?”

  Kwan looked at the office window, leaned forward and said softly,

  “Between you and me, there was something about the guy that scared the hell out of me.”

  Children’s Services of Sarasota was in Building C of a three-story office building in a complex of red office buildings on Fruitville Road just off of Tuttle. Building A, according to the board, housed an accountant, a physical therapist, two psychologists, an accountant and a dermatologist. Building B was home to a dentist, a podiatrist, a gynecologist, a hair-removal office and a hypnotist.

  Inside the small lobby was a receptionist stuffing envelopes. He was probably about thirty, lean, clean, wearing glasses and a tieless blue shirt, obviously gay and not trying to hide it.

  “Sally Porovsky,” I said.

  “Nice to meet you, Sally. I’m Mary Ellen,” he answered with a smile, continuing to stuff envelopes.

  I looked down at him, saying nothing. He kept stuffing, stopped and looked up at me.

  “It was just a joke,” he said.

  “I got it.”

  “You’re going to report me to Sorensen, aren’t you?” he said. “I can’t keep my mouth shut.”

  “I’m not going to report you to Sorensen, Mary Ellen. I just want to see Sally Porovsky.”

  “My name isn’t really … Oh, my name is John Detchon.”

  “Mine is Lew Fonesca. Can you … ?”

  “Oh, sure. Up the elevator. Second floor. Straight ahead. Her name’s on her cubicle. You’re lucky she’s in. They’re usually out on the road, house visits, school visits, court. You know?”

  “I don’t, John,” I said, moving to the open elevator.

  “You’re sure you’re not going to tell Sorenson?”

  “Joke stays between us girls,” I said.

  “You’re straight, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s all right. You’re not my type.”

  The doors closed and I rose slowly up to the second floor. The elevator smelled of mold. When the doors opened I found myself facing a door marked CHILDREN’S SERVICES OF SARASOTA. I went through and found myself looking down a lane of ten cubicles, each surrounded on three sides by glass. Beyond the cubicles were offices with nameplates. There were no windows facing in. Four-foot-high piles of cardboard boxes lined the faded pink walls. Inside the cubicles, the small desks with computers on each were covered with papers, manila folders, green files and coffee cups. There were people at only two of the cubicles. Sally Porovsky’s Dilbert niche was easy to spot. It had her name on the glass.

  Her back was to me as I approached. Her eyes were fixed on the computer screen and she kept adjusting her glasses and talking to herself.

  “Sally Porovsky?” I asked.

  She let out a gasp and did a small bounce in her chair. Then she turned and said. “You scared the hell out of me.”

  “Sorry.”

  She was about my age, maybe forty, maybe a little younger. She was solid, ample and pretty with clear skin, short, wavy dark hair and a voice that could give Lauren Bacall’s a run for the roses. She was wearing a black skirt and jacket over a white blouse. A string of heavy, colorful beads hung around her neck.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “I hope so,” I said. “My name is Fonesca, Lew Fonesca. I’m a friend of Beryl Tree. I’m representing her. She’s looking for her daughter, Adele Tree, but she’s using the name—”

  “Oh Lord,” said Sally Porovsky, swiveling to face me. “Adele’s mother is dead. At least the Adele I know.”

  I shook my head.

  “Alive and reasonably well and worried. She’s at the Best Western on Forty-one.”

  “And you can prove that?” she asked. “Prove she’s the mother of the girl we have an open case on?”

  “I can bring her mother here, complete with identification and tears.”

  Sally thought for a moment, bit her lower lip, glanced at the computer screen and said, “Bring her.”

  “I’ve got a one o’clock appointment,” I said. “I can have her here by three.”

  “Make it four,” she said. “I’ve got to finish a report now and then go out on a home visit. How did you find me?”

  “Mr. Kwan at Sarasota High.”

  She nodded.

  “Bring Mrs …”

  “Tree.”

  “Tree, at four-thirty and we’ll talk,” she said. “I’m afraid I have to get back to my report now. I’m about two months behind on paperwo
rk. So, if you’ll excuse me.”

  “Two minutes more,” I said. “You can time me. It might be a lot less, depending on your answer to one question.”

  “I can’t talk about Adele until I’m reassured—”

  “Not about Adele,” I said. “About you.”

  “About me?”

  She took off her glasses and squinted at me.

  “Are you married?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “Are you married?”

  “My husband’s dead, but I don’t see—”

  “I’m forty-two years old. I live in Sarasota and work as a process server and finder of lost people. My wife died in a car crash in Chicago a little over three years ago. She was a lawyer. I did research and served papers for the district attorney’s office. I have an undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois in political science. When my wife died, I quit my job, got in my car and drove as far as it would take me. It died in Sarasota. I have no children. We were going to but … I’m healthy, work out almost every morning and I bicycle a lot. My background is Italian, but I’m not Catholic. I’m not much of anything, but my mother and sister are Episcopalian. That’s less than two minutes.”

  “Why are you telling this to me, Mr. Fonesca?”

  “You think I’m crazy,” I said.

  “That depends on the answer to my question,” she said.

  “I want to know if you’d go to dinner with me tonight, tomorrow, night, any night.”

  “You do this a lot?”

  “I’ve never done anything like this before,” I said.

  “Never?”

  “I swear,” I said. “I’m not completely sure why I’m doing it now. Say no and that’s it, back to business. I’ve got references who will swear under oath that I don’t do things like this.”

  She looked up at me for what seemed like a very long time.

  “You seem harmless, but … we can talk about it after you bring Adele’s mother to see me,” she said. “I really have work to do.”

  I wanted to keep listening to her voice and looking at her. I thought she was probably right if she thought I had gone crazy. Maybe my session with Ann Horowitz had pushed me over the top.

  She swiveled around to face her computer again and I headed for the elevator.

  “All done?” asked John Detchon, who was still stuffing envelopes.