Vengeance

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  I handed him my card and said, “If he comes back and survives, I’d appreciate your giving me a call.”

  “You a private detective?” he asked.

  “Process server,” I said.

  “You’ve got papers on Handford?”

  I smiled and held out my hand.

  “Fonesca,” I said.

  “Lopez,” he answered, taking my hand.

  Ames and I left. Dwight Handford Prescott, I thought, was developing a long pregame lineup of people who wanted him to disappear.

  I considered going back to my office, but I wasn’t sure what or who might be waiting for me there.

  Instead I went to the Texas Bar and Grill. It was late afternoon. There were only a few people having beers, maybe a bowl of chili here and there. The television over the bar faced toward the tables. There was a baseball game going on. It wasn’t baseball season. It looked like the rerun of a game between St. Louis and Chicago. People didn’t get tired of seeing Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa hitting home runs. It beat the news hands down.

  Ames disappeared behind the bar and headed for his room.

  Ed Fairing brought me a beer. I took it and moved to the telephone at the end of the bar. I called the DQ. Dave answered.

  “It’s me,” I said.

  “Lewis,” he said. “Business has been brisk. So have the inquiries about you and the visitors to your door. Some of the most recent visitors were the police. It’s a good day to be out on the water. There are times when I … forget it. And my suggestion is that you don’t come back here for a while. You know a guy with an Italian face, no offense, who looks like photographs of Tony Galento and drives a late-model Buick, blue?”

  “I know who you mean.”

  “He pulled in about half hour ago, bought a root-beer float then parked across the street in the acupuncture-and-dance-studio parking lot,” said Dave. “He finished the float and threw the container out the window. Then he sat there about twenty minutes and took off. I’m going to have to go there and pick up his mess. Can’t leave a Dairy Queen container littering a parking lot. And you wonder why I prefer the sea to land.”

  “He ask about me?”

  “No,” Dave said.

  “If he comes back and asks, tell him … nothing.”

  “That’s what I’ll tell him. Hold on. A lady with two kids is waiting for dinner.”

  He was gone about two minutes.

  Mark McGwire hit a home run. High-fives all around the field as he rounded third and headed for home with a big grin.

  “Back,” said Dave. “I’m thinking of selling out. Or maybe I’ll hire Dawn full-time and semi-retire. I’m beginning to think I don’t like many grown-up people. You are an exception. Don’t ask me why. Can I ask a question?”

  “Sure,” I said, taking a slow drink of beer.

  “Who was the litterer across the street?”

  “My guardian angel,” I said.

  “Angels come in a variety of sizes, shapes and colors these days,” he said. “Some can fit on the head of a pin. Others can tuck the universe in their ears, though why they would want to do it I don’t know. Old Testament is filled with angels, warrior angels.”

  “I’ve got to find a guy,” I said.

  “We talking about a bad guy?”

  “Very bad. Name’s John Pirannes. Ever hear of him?”

  “I have,” said Dave.

  “Know where he might be found or know anybody who knows where he might be found?”

  “I understand he has a place at the Beach Tides on Longboat.”

  “I have it on good authority that he has vacated the premises, at least for now.”

  A thin black guy in a threadbare sports jacket sat down next to me. He nodded in greeting. His name, the only one I knew, was Snickers. Snickers had a sweet tooth and connections. Snickers was reasonably adept at breaking and entering.

  “He has a boat docked at the Sunnyside Condos across Gulf of Mexico Drive and almost at the north tip of the Key,” said Dave. “I’ve seen him there. Big boat, can’t miss it. Sleeps who knows how many. Called the Fair Maiden.”

  “Keep it to yourself,” I said.

  “Lewis, it’s no big secret except from the cops,” he said. “Oh, I read that John Marshall article. I think I’ll pick up a biography of Marshall. I’ve got to go now. Customers.”

  “Thanks, Dave.”

  “Captain Pirannes is a good man to avoid,” he said. “Take care.”

  He hung up and so did I.

  “Snickers,” I said. “How’s it going?”

  “Fine. Hell, not so fine. You want to buy me a beer or three?”

  “Sure.”

  Snickers was bobbing up and down to some inner music. He looked up at the television screen.

  “Sosa’s the man,” he said.

  I motioned to Ed to set up a beer for Snickers, who, considering the candy he consumed, must have been blessed with perfect genes. His teeth were even and white.

  “He’s the man,” I said.

  “Hey, that’s right. You’re from Chicago. So, what’s been going with you?”

  “Well,” I said, getting halfway through my beer, “a tow-truck driver beat me up, a client was murdered in my office, I rescued a kid who had been sold to a pimp by her father, and I discovered a dead guy with a bullet in his head in an apartment on Longboat.”

  Ed placed the beer in front of Snickers, who looked at me to see why I thought this was funny. But I was paying, so he smiled and shook his head.

  “You know a pimp named Tilly?” I asked.

  Snickers put down his beer and nodded knowingly.

  After talking to Snickers and watching McGwire pop another home run, I dropped a five on the bar and left. Hell, it was going on Carl Sebastian’s bill.

  I considered flipping a coin or playing a game to determine which of the two not-very-bright moves I was going to make. I didn’t consider taking Ames with me. Ames looked a little like Jefferson on Rushmore, but there was a determination behind that face of stone that shouldn’t be there in a man who had access to guns and had killed another man.

  No, I was on my own. It was either that or forget the whole thing and go to the police. Detective Etienne Vivaise, otherwise known as Ed, seemed not the greater of two evils but the one unlikely to get me anywhere except in trouble.

  If the next five plates I saw were from Florida, I would head for Longboat and the Fair Maiden. If I spotted an out-of-state, I’d go to the address I had for Dwight Handford.

  Ann Horowitz asked me every other session or so if I was having feelings of self-destruction. I always told her I wasn’t and she answered,

  “Not consciously.”

  At the moment, I wanted to face Pirannes and Handford for what they had done to Adele and probably to Beryl. I wanted to know why creatures like this walked the earth. I wanted to argue with God and say, “I don’t know why you do what you do, but you’ll get no praise from me till you accept the guilt you should feel for what you’ve done.”

  I was finally feeling angry about something. I was feeling grimly determined about a whole lot of somethings.

  I counted license plates and found out where I was going–at least where I was going right now.

  11

  SUNNYSIDE CONDOMINIUMS WAS ON Gulf of Mexico Drive on the bay side of the key about five minutes north of the Beach Tides Resort, where Ames and I had rescued Adele and left a corpse.

  There was no gate and there were no guards. The Sunnyside apartments were protected only ,by a tall, tight hedge of flowering bushes. The parking lot was crushed shell and just a few steps to the right past the bushes. There were about a dozen cars parked on the lot. There was room for two dozen more.

  From Gulf of Mexico Drive, it was impossible to tell how big the Sunnyside was. Once I was inside and walking along the narrow concrete path that curled around the two-story buildings and past a trio of tennis courts, I realized that there were at least a dozen buildings.

  I had
no trouble finding the docked boats. I just veered toward the bay. I had no trouble finding the Fair Maiden. I just looked for the largest boat. I know nothing of boats. They were a passion of Dave’s. He turned boats into vessels of philosophical speculation as he mixed Blizzards and served burgers and fries. He told tales of the open sea that he felt brought him near a sense of a supreme power.

  When I was on a boat, I thought only of how soon the voyage, even an hour into Lake Michigan or on the bay, would be over. I longed for the land. I couldn’t live on a key. The possibility of being trapped on an island when a hurricane went wild filled me with dread. That didn’t, however, stop me from admiring the isolation that a boat promised.

  I thought of this as I moved out on the narrow wooden dock toward the Fair Maiden. It was a deep thought. The thought on the surface was images, images of the frightened runaway, images of Beryl Tree. There was right and wrong, and sometimes they were clear.

  I stopped at the end of the dock and looked at the clean broad deck in front of me. There was a tower with a steering wheel on my left. The tower was surrounded by glass or see-through plastic and a blue metal roof. There was also a closed door at the base of the tower on the deck. I guessed the length of the power boat at about fifty feet. My second guess was that it could probably take John Pirannes very far away very quickly.

  There was a table on the deck with two places set for lunch. A bottle of wine chilled in a silver cooler on the white-clothed table. Another bottle of Perrier water sat ready next to two thin-stemmed glasses.

  I stood, waited. Someone was below the deck. I could hear voices.

  I closed my eyes. A breeze.

  There is in some men a natural ability to kill. My grandfather, my father’s father, had told tales of the gangs in Rome, of the intimidation before the first war and the killing of Nazi sympathizers during and after the second war. He had already left the old country, but most of his family had stayed. They wrote. There were tales of cousins, uncles, distant bandits with the name Fonesca or DeFabrio or Tronzini who carried guns and knives in their belts and needed no reason beyond honor to use them.

  I was not born with the ability to kill. I had never developed it. Even standing in front of the Fair Maiden I didn’t want a gun. I realized when I heard the voice that I wasn’t sure what I wanted, but that I would know when I found it.

  “Can I help you?” came the voice.

  I opened my eyes. A man stood on the deck, legs apart. He had stepped out of an ad in one of the Vanity Fair magazines in my allergist’s office. He was wearing white slacks, white deck shoes and a black shirt with a little white anchor over his heart. His hair was white and blowing with the breeze. His legs were apart, his hands folded in front of him. I knew who he was.

  “Permission to come aboard,” I said, remembering The Caine Mutiny and trying to inject a hint of sarcasm into my request.

  Pirannes looked at me as if I were some kind of lunatic.

  “Manny,” Pirannes called calmly toward the door through which he had no doubt come.

  A man in a white sweat suit came on deck. He was a big man, sun-brown and unsmiling. He was dark haired, well shaven and definitely Hispanic. Manny stood in front of the door, hands behind his back. I wondered if he had something in those hidden hands.

  “I know you,” said Pirannes, running his tongue over his lower lip, trying to remember.

  “The Y,” I said. “I work out there most mornings. You show up with Manny. We’ve said hello a few times.”

  Pirannes smiled, a problem solved. He looked at Manny, who looked at me and said nothing.

  “I remember,” said Pirannes.

  His voice was mellow, his grammar nearly perfect. If he had a lisp, I didn’t hear it.

  “Can I come on board?” I asked again.

  “Why?”

  “To talk,” I said.

  “Talk about what? Who are you?”

  He was smiling amiably.

  “Adele Tree,” I said.

  The smile was gone.

  “Dwight Handford,” I went on.

  Manny took a step toward me.

  “Tony Spiltz.”

  Manny took another step toward me.

  “Tilly the Pimp.”

  Manny leaped onto the dock. There was nothing behind his back but thick, dark callused hands. He patted me down, even into my crotch and with a finger in my shoes. Then he turned and shook his head no to let Pirannes know I wasn’t armed.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Lew Fonesca,” I said.

  “What’s your business?”

  “I was hired by Beryl Tree to find her daughter.”

  “She’s dead,” said Pirannes.

  “I’m still working for her,” I said.

  “You know who I am. You know about Tony Spiltz and you come here like this? Are you a lunatic, Fonesca? Are you suicidal?”

  “Maybe both,” I said. “If Manny will move out of the way, I’ll come on board the Guida Merchant.”

  “Okay. We’ll play games for a few minutes. Come on. You have lunch?”

  “No,” I said as Manny stepped to the side, let me pass and step down on the deck in front of Pirannes.

  “You want something? I’m having shrimp in the shell, a fresh French baguette.”

  “Water,” I said.

  Pirannes motioned to table and I sat while Manny, on the dock, looked down at me and folded his hands in front of him. Then Pirannes pulled a small, flat cellular phone from his pocket, hit some buttons and looked at me as he said,

  “We’re going to have a late lunch. Come in an hour. No, make that an hour and a half. I’ll have Manny put a deck chair on the dock in case we have to take the Maiden out for a while. Wear your floppy hat. Bring your sunglasses. Sunscreen, and bring a book … Shrimp, tarragon chicken salad, sorbet … raspberry or lemon.”

  He pushed a button and put the phone back in his pocket. Then he sat across from me and poured us both a glass of mineral water.

  “Now,” he said. “What do you want?”

  “I’ve got Adele,” I said.

  He didn’t blink. He whipped out the phone again and hit a single button. He said nothing, and then hung up and looked at me.

  “Who answered my phone?” he asked, picking up his water.

  “Probably the police,” I said.

  “What’s going on, Lewis?”

  “John, I don’t want to play games,” I said.

  He leaned toward me and whispered, “Lewis, you don’t look like the kind of man who can threaten me.”

  “I’m a little crazy,” I said. “Remember the question you asked me? My therapist thinks I’m suicidal. A suicidal lunatic on a mission can be a dangerous thing no matter what he looks like.”

  “True,” he said, holding his glass of water up so the sun hit it.

  We watched the light hit the bubbles for a few seconds and I said,

  “You leave Adele alone. And you keep her name out of what went on in your apartment.”

  “What went on,” he repeated. “What are you talking about, Fonesca? What are the fucking police doing in my apartment? No, wait. She tried to kill herself.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Then … ?”

  “Spiltz,” I said.

  “Spiltz what?”

  “He’s dead. Big surprise, huh?”

  Pirannes sat back.

  “No,” he said. “Tony Spiltz had enemies but—”

  “And you don’t know he was killed in your apartment?”

  “No,” said Pirannes. “Give me a second here.”

  He sat thinking, looked at Manny, whose head moved ever so slightly, indicating, I think, that he hadn’t shot Spiltz.

  “Okay, Fonesca, here’s the way it is,” Pirannes said. “I know you’re not carrying a wire and I know who lives in every condo facing this dock. No one’s listening to us. I’m still taking a little chance, but you are definitely beginning to irk me.”

  “I’m sorry about
that, John.”

  He shrugged.

  “It happens in my business. I gave Dwight Handford, who is, by the way, a piece of diuretic mongrel shit, good money to get the girl. And don’t bother telling me you can’t buy and sell people. I do it. Lots of others do it. Now think about it. What’s her life like if she stays with Dwight or Tilly?”

  “What’s it like with you?”

  He laughed.

  “Her life with me can be goddamn good. Listen, I give her a great apartment she shares with a couple of other girls, maid service, great food. Clothes. Walk to the beach. No one hits her. I don’t let her have drugs or drink anything stronger than a little wine. I keep her in shape till she gets too old.”

  “Then you send her back to Tilly or Dwight,” I said.

  “You don’t get it, Fonesca. It’s not that simple. Life’s not that simple. Where have you been living, aboard the Enterprise? When Adele retires, which I hope is a long time away, she’ll have more money than you’ll ever have and I’ll get her a straight job, hostess at a restaurant, something like that, far away from here. I have connections. If she wants to go to school while she’s with me, that can be worked out. My clients are top-drawer people, high level. No one is going to hurt her. Whatever crap she’s already been through with Dwight and Tilly, this will be heaven. I’ve got a doctor who checks out the girls, takes care of them. I guarantee my girls are disease free, guarantee.”

  “You’re a saint, John,” I said.

  “You are a stupid wiseass,” he said, shaking his head. “So you keep her. Then what? She goes to a foster home? She’ll run away. She goes back to Dwight, which is a distinct possibility because if I can’t get to her, I bankroll good old Dwight and get him the best lawyer in the state. The judge will not only give her back to her loving dad, but he’ll probably get a Father of the Year award. And then he’ll give her back to me, with the same visiting privileges he has now. You want another scenario? Fine, you can adopt her. You don’t like me. You don’t like Dwight. You adopt her, keep her from running away. You prepared to be pop to Adele, Lewis?”

  “You killed Tony Spiltz,” I said.

  “How?”