“What are Borgs?” Susan asked.
“Borgs are like zombies in Star Trek,” Michael explained.
“I don’t like Star Trek,” she said to me. “My father was big. Mom thinks Michael looks like him and is going to be big. He’s already pretty big.”
“I think Borgs don’t eat because they’re mostly machines,” he concluded. “It’s a good question.”
“I don’t like mashed potatoes when they get cold,” Susan said.
“We can microwave them,” Michael said, looking at me. “Mind if I ask you a question? I’m not trying to offend you or anything.”
“Ask,” I said.
“Are you making moves on my mother?”
“Michael,” Susan shouted.
“It’s okay,” I said. “No, I’m not. I won’t lie to you. If I keep seeing her, I probably will, but now we’re friends. I lost my wife about four years ago. Car accident. I haven’t … you understand?”
He said he did and took a bite of the chicken leg as the door in the living room opened and Sally stepped in, a black canvas bag in one hand and a briefcase in the other.
“Sorry,” she said.
She came to the table, kissed Susan on the cheek and Michael on top of his head, and then she looked at the table.
“Looks great. I’m hungry.”
“He got you roasted,” Susan said.
Sally sat and said,
“Then what are we waiting for.”
We ate. We talked. Mostly about nothing much. Kids feeling me out. Me playing. Sally listening, watching. I was having a good time. I didn’t forget what was outside and what was deep inside me, but I enjoyed myself.
“Easy cleanup,” Sally said when we were clearly finished.
Susan got a white plastic garbage bag while I consolidated what was left of the chicken into one bucket to go into the refrigerator.
There wasn’t much privacy in the apartment, but there was a small balcony with three chairs and a telescope. Sally and I went out while Michael and Susan watched television.
I told her everything.
“Sometimes … there are people I’d seriously consider shooting if I could. Dwight Handford is one, right at the top of the list. There’s a real possibility that Adele will actually be sent back to him and I might not be able to do anything about it. I know what he’s done to her and will keep doing. The courts know what he did to his niece. I’ve never hit one of my kids. I’ve never hit anyone. I’ve never held a gun. The Dwight Handfords of this world make me think about going to one of the many gun shops in this town.”
“And Pirannes?” I asked.
“I’ve got a little list,” she said.
“Of society’s offenders who may well be underground,” I said.
“Gilbert and Sullivan,” she said. “I did The Mikado in high school. Played one of the three little girls.”
“And I may have a foster home for Adele,” I said, “providing my candidate passes whatever tests you give.”
“I don’t give them, but others do.”
“Her name is Florence Zink. She’s rich. She’s tough. She drinks. She swears, but she’s a good woman. Like to meet her?”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
“I can’t leave the kids. Tomorrow. Give me a number. I’ll have someone call her.”
“And,” I said getting up, “I’ll go talk to her. Who looks at the stars?”
“We all do,” she said, touching the gray telescope fixed on an eye-level tripod. “I do it when the kids go to bed. Reminds me of how little we are.”
“You want to be reminded?”
“Makes me feel better to think that what happens on earth isn’t all that important. Makes me feel that I should concentrate on what I’ve got and enjoy it. And then I take my eye away from the lens and go back to the Adeles and Dwight Handfords. I’ve got paperwork.”
Michael and Susan were watching a sitcom I didn’t recognize. Sally walked me to the door.
“How did the Baby Ruth candy bar get its name?” I asked.
“Easy,” said Susan. “The fat baseball player who hit all the home runs and drank beer before Mark McGwire.”
Michael slumped, arms folded, and didn’t bother to answer.
“No,” I said. “Grover Cleveland got married after he became President of the United States. His wife had a baby named Ruth. It was a big thing. There were Baby Ruth dolls and a Baby Ruth candy bar.”
“I’ll tell Maggie and Shayna tomorrow,” Susan said. “You know a lot of stuff.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Stuff.”
Sally left the front door barely ajar behind us when we stepped out.
“You’re a good man, Lewis,” she said, kissing me with sincerity but no passion as she held my hands in hers.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow about Adele.”
I started toward the stairs.
“Michael’s going to an overnight basketball weekend and Susan’s staying at her friend Maggie’s on Saturday,” she said.
“Saturday,” I repeated.
13
THE HARD PART wasn’t convincing Flo to consider being a foster parent. The hard part was dealing with a Flo Zink I had never seen before, a Flo Zink, complete with big-buckled denim skirt and bespangled blouse, who seemed to be on the verge of tears.
“They won’t let me, Lew,” she said.
“I’ve got a friend in the right place,” I said.
Flo had poured me a beer without asking. I drank it. I had no idea what the glass with clear liquid and squares of ice in front of her contained. We were sitting in her living room listening to Johnny Cash.
“I don’t know if I can cut this stuff out,” she said, holding up her glass.
“Cutting back might be a start. Flo, I’m not handing you a present. I’m giving you one great big problem kid.”
“I liked Beryl,” she said.
“I did too.”
“Well, if I can get her, bring her on. I’m old but I’m good at taming tough ones. Want a snack?”
“I’ve got to go.”
Flo walked me to the door. The drink wasn’t in her hand.
“I’d love to get a bead on the forehead of Beryl’s husband–what’s his name?”
“Dwight Handford,” I said.
“If he’d come when Beryl left, as Hank Williams is my witness, I’d have killed him and Beryl would be alive.”
“Lot of people feel that way about Dwight,” I said. “Good night, Flo.”
It was late now, after eleven. I wondered if the blue Buick was out there in the dark waiting. I didn’t see it, but I hoped he was out there and hadn’t gone home for the night or gone wherever it was he slept. I would sleep better knowing he was watching my back.
I didn’t want to think. I wanted to wash, shave, put on some shorts, put a chair under my door, watch the tape of The Mad Miss Manton I’d bought at a garage sale for three dollars. I wanted to ease the nagging throb just below my ribs where Dwight had hit me.
There were no ghosts nor any of the living waiting in my office. I didn’t feel haunted by Beryl Tree. She would know I was on her side and that there was no point in my going out on the road in search of Dwight Handford tonight. I needed rest. I needed someone with a weapon to go with me. I needed to think of a really good threat or a really good lie to frighten Handford off. None came to mind.
I was lying back on my three pillows when the phone rang. I hit the pause button and went into the office.
“Fonesca,” I said.
“Where is she?”
I recognized the voice.
“Dwight, I’ve got some advice. The police are looking for you. John Pirannes is looking for you and tomorrow I’m going to be looking for you. I’ve got something to tell you.”
“Say it now,” he said.
“No. Worry about it overnight. You’re a smart man. Running would be better than satisfying your curiosity.”
“Where is Adele?�
�� he demanded.
“Have a good night,” I said, hung up and disconnected the phone.
I was back in bed and pushing the pause button again. Barbara Stanwyck started moving in black-and-white as the window in my office exploded.
I went to the floor, rolled over and crawled to the window. I counted five and looked out from the darkness of my room. A pickup truck with a tow winch was backing out of the DQ parking lot.
No one but me lived in the office building. The DQ was closed. Traffic was light on 301. I waited in the window for ten minutes. No sirens. No police. No one had heard the shots or, if they had, no one had reported them.
I was reasonably sure he wouldn’t be back tonight. He knew I would probably call the police and he wanted to be far away with some kind of alibi. But there was also the chance that he would think it over, figure that he had nothing much to lose with two murders behind him in the past two days and come back not just to scare me off, but to stand outside my window and blow holes in me.
Dwight Handford was a piece of work.
I grabbed my things, got dressed fast and went into the night. There was a rumble somewhere in the west but it wasn’t raining. I went to the Geo, got in and went back to the Best Western, making sure I wasn’t being followed by a pickup truck. I didn’t see one. I didn’t see anything behind me. My blue angel had missed another chance to save me.
I checked in, went to my room, showered, shampooed and climbed into bed after I checked the thermostat and found that the room temperature was seventy. I was hot, hot the way I had been until a few months ago whenever I drove a car. I turned the room temperature down to sixty.
Then I lay in bed, in the dark listening to the cold air rushing in and doing nothing to cool me.
I had a dream about rain and endless bowls of soup with tiny people splashing around in the soup and crying for help as they drowned. There were soup spoons in each bowl. They could have climbed out on the handles of the spoons or at least clung to them to keep from drowning, but they thrashed around and cried for help in tiny voices, hundreds of tiny voices, hundreds of bowls of soup, white chowder, red tomato, clear broth, green cream of broccoli.
When I woke up, I was hungry and I was certain of something. The dream had told me this, though it had nothing that clearly suggested what I was thinking. I got out of bed and stood for a minute. The room was cold, but I wasn’t.
I made a call to the Texas Bar and Grill. Ed Fairing wouldn’t be there this early. The only one who might answer was Ames. He did after twenty rings.
“I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes,” I said. “Bring your hog leg.”
“Fine,” he said.
I hung up, shaved, dressed and went to the car.
The sky was black with the threat of heavy hot Florida rain. I picked Ames up in front of the Texas. He was wearing his slicker. This time it was more than possible he would need it. I was sure the shotgun was under the yellow coat. I was positive when he climbed in the car and put it across his knees. Then I told him where we were going and why. He nodded. I drove.
And that’s where I began this story. The dead man in the house in Palmetto was Dwight Handford. There was enough left of him to make the identification certain. I didn’t know how many times he had been shot and I didn’t care, probably six or seven. It had happened up close and very personal, a handgun.
Now, with the rain still coming down dark and dangerous, I drove back, this time down the Trail, down 41. I knew who the people in the soup were now. Their tiny faces had been clear but I had blocked them out. They were the faces of people I knew, one of whom had driven out to Palmetto and shot Dwight Handford dead.
Dwight’s house hadn’t been all that hard to find. What I had done others could have done in the same way or a different one. My blue angel could have done it, could have been waiting somewhere when Dwight shot out my window the night before, could have followed him home. My angel had been thrashing in pea soup. Then there was Pirannes, who had been cursing in a chilled peach fruit soup. And, though I didn’t remember seeing them, there must have been Sally and certainly the rigid old man at my side, Ames McKinney, and Flo. There were probably two or three others I hadn’t thought of yet and others I’d never heard of.
On the one hand, I didn’t really want to find the truth, but, on the other, I had to know. I couldn’t walk away. I might not turn the killer in, but I had to know.
“Ames, did you come out here last night on your scooter and kill Handford?”
“No,” he said, looking straight ahead.
“But you’re glad he’s dead?”
“I am.”
“So am I,” I said.
I dropped Ames back at the Texas and told him we hadn’t been to Palmetto, hadn’t found the body.
He nodded, took out his key and went into the door of the grill. I went back to my office. There was no reason to stay away any longer. John Pirannes might still be a bit upset with me, but there was nothing much I could do to him. He was a prime candidate for Dwight’s murder, he or Manny or someone he paid a few dollars to.
In spite of the overhang that ran along the concrete outside my door, the wind had been strong enough to tear down the drapes inside the broken window. The floor was slick and wet with blown-in rain. Blood, rain. When this was all over, I’d seriously consider finding another place to live, if I had enough money and energy for it. But then again, these two rooms were beginning to feel like home.
It was only nine. People were getting to work. Some had been there a while. I was hungry. The DQ wasn’t open and I was soaked through and didn’t feel like changing and going back out into the rain.
I did take off my wet clothes, throw them in the general direction of a far corner and put on dry ones.
Then I called the office of Tycinker, Oliver and Schwartz. Harvey was in.
“Harvey, I’m glad you’re there.”
“I’ve been here since seven. I’m trying to track the bastard who put a real killer virus on-line. It’s called Buga-Buga-Boo.”
“I thought you couldn’t track the source of an Internet virus,” I said. “You told me that.”
“Well, I may be the first. I’m close. When I track him, I’m going to shut him down.”
“Great,” I said. “How about the search you were doing for me?”
“Finished it last night,” he said.
I could hear the clack of computer keys as his fingers reached into cyberspace to hunt the virus planter.
“And?”
He gave me the information. I wrote down what I needed of it. It wasn’t much, but Harvey loved to describe the chase. I didn’t disappoint him by cutting him off.
“Thanks, Harvey,” I said.
“I’m shredding the hard copy of what I just told you,” he said.
“Fine.”
“And tell your friends, don’t download Buga-Buga-Boo.”
“I’ll tell them,” I said.
We hung up. I needed time to think, not conscious thinking, but deep down, almost the dream state. I had a feeling that I’d probably fail because I wanted and didn’t want to know who had killed Handford. Maybe I could convince myself that it was Pirannes since it probably was.
I had another case, another client. I looked at the number of Caroline Wilkerson and punched the buttons. Six rings, the machine.
“It’s Lewis Fonesca,” I said. “I’ve got to talk to you about Melanie. If you—”
She picked up.
“Yes?” she said, panting.
“Sorry to wake you,” I said.
“I’ve been up for hours,” she said. “And, at the moment, I am on my StairMaster. What’s this about?”
“Geoffrey Green thinks you have something to tell me that will help me find Melanie.”
“Geoffrey Green is a quack,” she said. “A charming quack, as quacks should be. I have nothing to tell you. I wish I did. Carl and Melanie belong together. Without her … don’t know what will happen to him.”
“I have something to tell you,” I said.
“What?”
“In person. I guarantee you’ll be interested.”
She gave me her address and told me to come over in half an hour. She had a doctor’s appointment, a facial and shopping to do. I told her I’d be right there.
I hung up. I already knew her address and phone number, but it didn’t hurt for her to be cooperative. I found an old crumpled London Fog coat, back in my small closet. My wife had given it to me. Not a birthday or holiday gift. Just something she thought I needed.
I went out, down the stairs with the rain waterfalling off the roof and from the sky. Rolls of thunder, flashes of lightning. It would have been nice just to sit and watch and listen.
The Geo was at the rear of the lot, as close to the stairs as I could get. I had left the doors unlocked so I didn’t get too wet when I climbed in. There was just enough time for a quick breakfast. I had the feeling that the advances I had been given by Beryl Tree and Carl Sebastian were almost gone. I didn’t want to check.
I found a space right in front of Gwen’s Diner a minute away from the DQ. I ran in. There weren’t many customers. The go-to-work rush was long over. Old Tim from Steubenville was at the counter, in the same seat he had been in the last time I was here. There was no Corky Spence, the trucker who had thought I had served him with papers. I sat next to Tim, who looked up from the magazine and coffee in front of him.
“Process server,” he said, pointing a finger and smiling.
Gwen Two said, “Eggs, bacon, hash browns, coffee?”
“Right,” I said.
She brought coffee immediately.
“Reading something interesting here,” Tim said. “About the Sargasso Sea. Hundreds of miles of floating sea plants in the middle of the Atlantic.”
He pointed east toward the Atlantic.
“Filled with little animals, weird fish, big worms, turtles.”
“That a fact?”
“A fact,” Tim said. “People used to be afraid centuries back, thought they’d get tangled in the plant life, but it’s thin stuff. Off of Bermuda out there. Animals, plants. They die. Drop down thousands of feet. Animals down there eat it. Food chain.”
“Just like on land,” I said.
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