Vengeance

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “That’s the word,” I said. “But where is he really?”

  “You’re smarter than you look.”

  “It helps in my business. Pirannes?”

  “Tell me and I go,” I said.

  “Just when I’m beginning to enjoy your company. He finds out I told you and I’m a dead man.”

  “That’s what you said the last time we talked about Pirannes. He won’t know.”

  “Word is he sent the boat out to make it look like he was waiting things out across the gulf. Cancun. He’s got business here. He leaves for three, four days and it all falls apart here. You know what I’m saying?”

  “I know,” I said.

  A waitress approached and asked if I was eating. I said no. She moved away.

  “I’m not supposed to know it,” Tilly said, leaning forward, “Nobody’s supposed to, but a lot of people do. Pirannes likes to hang out at a place he owns a piece of out on Proctor, gated, town houses, big houses. Place is called New Palm Manors. Pirannes uses the name Steele. Now you know. Now you go. Looking for that man is a bad idea. I told you once. He boils over real easy.”

  “I know,” I said. “He tried to kill me.”

  “And you’re going to look for him again?”

  “Yes.”

  Tilly shrugged and put his glasses back on.

  “Have a nice forever,” he said.

  He looked down at the newspaper. Our conversation was over.

  I drove south down the Trail past an endless line of malls small and large, gas stations, office supply stores and restaurants. Sarasota has lots of restaurants. People on vacation eat out. Retired people with money eat out. This is an eat-out town. There were no really good Chinese restaurants. I missed that. Chicago had more than a hundred first-class Chinese restaurants. My favorite Chinese restaurants in Chicago were in China Town. My wife and I had gone there at least once a month for dim sum.

  I drove warily, slowly, watching other drivers, waiting for one of them to cross the line coming at me and hit me head-on, or one of the ancient drivers to sideswipe me into another car.

  I turned on the radio. G. Gordon Liddy was answering a caller’s question about morality and loyalty. G. Gordon said he had gone to jail in the Watergate case because he refused to lie under oath. He praised Susan McDougal and said something about the importance of loyalty. You give your loyalty to someone and you don’t betray it even if the person you’ve given it to abandons you. At least it was something like that.

  I had given my loyalty to Beryl Tree. I hadn’t given it to Carl Sebastian, but I was still working for him. I owed him what I had promised to give. I’d promised to find Melanie. But right now I was trying to bring Beryl’s case to an end.

  I drove down Proctor, past walled-in and gated developments on both sides, across the bridge over I-75. The New Palms Manor was on the right. I drove up to the gate and waited. A woman in a gray uniform came out of the gatehouse. She wasn’t wearing a hat or jacket. She was slim, dark and serious. I considered asking her if she was Italian.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I’m here to see Mr. Steele. We have an appointment. My name is Dwight Handford. Is there a clubhouse, community house, here?”

  “Straight ahead to the right.”

  “Busy in there tonight?”

  “Wouldn’t know for sure, but it’s Friday night and there’s almost always people playing cards, talking, having drinks or parties.”

  “Good, will you tell Mr. Steele that I’ll be waiting for him in the clubhouse.”

  She nodded and went back into the gatehouse. I watched her pick up the phone, hit some buttons and start talking. She looked over at me once and then talked some more. She hung up and came out.

  “Mr. Steele will meet you in the clubhouse in a few minutes,” she said.

  She went back in the gatehouse, did something, and the gate went up.

  The clubhouse was easy to find and there were about thirty cars in front of it. I parked the Geo as far from the entrance as I could get.

  Immediately through the doors I found myself in a large room full of couches, tables and chairs. Most of the chairs and couches were full. A few dumps of people were standing. There was a small bar to the right, behind which stood a small bartender in a white shirt and a red vest. The people of the manor were dressed casually, in simple dresses, skirts and blouses, slacks and short-sleeved shirts. The people of the manor were generally not young.

  I found a vacant couch to the right of the door and sat.

  Pirannes came in alone five minutes later. He was wearing slacks, a shirt, a tie and a lightweight tan jacket. He was overdressed and he didn’t look happy. He found me and sat down at my side without looking at me.

  “You’re dead,” he said.

  “How did you know I wasn’t Dwight Handford?”

  “Handford’s dead,” he said. “I knew about it by noon. Besides, Angela described you.”

  “Angela, at the gate. Is she Italian?”

  “Her name’s Angela Conforti. And my name is Richard Steele and your name is mud. How did you find me? Who told you?”

  “Your secret is safe with me, but I’ve got to tell you, about a third of the criminal population of this community knows about Mr. Steele’s manor retreat.”

  “What the hell do you want, Fonesca?”

  I looked at him.

  “Did you kill Dwight Handford? Not that I care much. Just for my peace of mind. I can’t prove anything and it’s just between you and me. You can deny it later.”

  “You’re wearing a wire, carrying a tape recorder,” he said.

  “Get friendly. Check me out.”

  “Let’s go in one of the private rooms,” he said.

  “I might not walk out,” I said.

  “I’m not going to kill you here. I’m not an idiot.”

  I followed him through a lounge on the left, where people were playing cards at two tables. Beyond the lounge were two doors. We went through the one on the right. Pirannes turned on the lights, faced me and patted me down. He wasn’t gentle.

  The room was small, had tastefully wallpapered walls, sconces with teardrop lightbulbs, furniture with the look of something old and French.

  “I didn’t kill Handford,” he said. “And I didn’t kill Tony Spiltz. The kid lied about me being there. I’ll tell you something, Fonesca.”

  He was starting to get worked up. That was not a good sign.

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” he went on, pointing a finger at me. “I think Handford set me up. I think he came back to get the kid when I wasn’t there. I think he killed Tony. I think maybe she helped him. He told her the story about me being with her. I’ll tell you that if someone hadn’t killed Handford, I would have done it myself, personally. But I didn’t.”

  “Leave Adele alone,” I said.

  He laughed and shook his head. He even started to choke a little. I was being very funny.

  “I wouldn’t …” he managed to get out and then paused to regain his voice and some of his anger. “I wouldn’t take her back. I wouldn’t go near her. She might kill a customer. She might kill me. But I tell you what I do want, what would keep her safe.”

  “What?”

  “The money I paid for her,” he said.

  He ran his hand back over his hair and pulled himself completely together.

  “How much?”

  “She went cheap;” he said. “Eight thousand. Handford didn’t know what he could have gotten. I’ll take the eight thousand. I’ll be very nice. I won’t ask for any of the money I could have made on her.”

  “You’re a man of principle,” I said.

  “Sarcasm will get you killed,” he said.

  “I thought I was already a dead man.”

  “No. I like you. I’d offer you a job, but I don’t think you’d take it and I don’t think I could trust you. I get the eight thousand by tomorrow noon and you live and I leave the girl alone.”

  “What have we got going here
that tells me I should trust you?”

  “Simple,” he said. “I’ve got no reason to lie. If I wanted you dead, I’d have my man waiting outside the door follow you to your little white car. He’d kill you quietly, pack you in the trunk—”

  “I don’t think I’d fit. It’s a Metro.”

  “Shove you on the floor in the back,” he said. “Drive you out of here smiling at Angela, and leave you somewhere quiet and peaceful.”

  “How would he get back?”

  “You always think like that?” Pirannes asked with a smile.

  “Almost always. I can’t stop.”

  “Another car would be following him, pick him up, bring my man somewhere else. Any more questions? I advise you not to get me mad.”

  “Where do I deliver the eight thousand?”

  “Main post office. Noon on the button. Woman in a white dress. Blonde. Young. Pretty. Cash in an envelope. If there’s anything traceable, marked, you die. You want to die for eight thousand dollars?”

  “No,” I said.

  “You have eight thousand dollars?”

  “No, but I can get it.”

  “I don’t need eight thousand dollars, you understand. But I have to have it.”

  “The principle.”

  “The principle. You walk out of here now. You never come back. You never look for me again. You forget you ever met me.”

  “Met who?”

  He smiled and put his right hand on the side of my neck and patted not too gently.

  “Right question,” he said. “You’ve got three minutes to be back on Proctor Road.”

  I left. I didn’t see anyone outside the doors of the clubhouse, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. I was on Proctor Road heading home in less than two minutes.

  It was night. It wasn’t late. I drove to Flo’s. The lights were on. Her 1994 Jeep was probably in the garage.

  She opened the door a few seconds after I rang. She had a drink in her hand.

  “Lewis,” she said. “You here to check up on me?”

  “No, Flo.”

  “Smell this, taste it,” she said, holding the glass in front of my face.

  I took the glass, smelled it, tasted it.

  “Ginger ale,” I said.

  “Seven-goddamn-Up,” she answered. “Come in.”

  Flo was wearing a blue buttoned shirt and a denim skirt. A familiar voice was singing through the house.

  He was singing something about the rose of San Antoine.

  “Roy Rogers,” she said. “Underrated singer. Sons of the Pioneers backing him up. You’ve got news? You want a drink?”

  “No drink, thanks.”

  We sat in the kitchen. I had caught Flo in the middle of dinner. There was a plate on the table, knife and fork. Chicken, green beans.

  “Mind if I eat while we talk?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Hungry?”

  “No.”

  She ate.

  “Edna Stockbridge called me, said Adele had to stay put for a few days, said she had to clear the papers we worked on and get a judge to approve me. Said there wouldn’t be a problem. Hell, Lewis, I’m going to be a mother after all these years.”

  “She won’t—”

  “Be easy,” she finished for me. “Tell me something new.”

  “Eight thousand dollars,” I said. “I need eight thousand dollars cash.”

  She ate some chicken and said,

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow morning at the latest,” I said.

  “Big bills, little bills, what?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said.

  “I’ll get it after I finish eating unless you’re in a hurry.”

  “You want to know why I need it?”

  “If you want to tell me,” she said.

  “It’s about Adele,” I said. “We’re—you’re insuring her from her past.”

  “Eight thousand isn’t much to insure that.”

  She finished, threw her bones in the red kitchen garbage can, rinsed her plate, knife, fork and glass and put them in the dishwasher. Then she went to a drawer, opened it, took out a small screwdriver and motioned for me to follow her. We went across the living room to the opposite side of the house and down a hallway I’d never been in before. She led me into a little room with carpeting; two recliners and a television set. The lights were already on. Roy Rogers was loud and clear in here too. He was singing about a pony now.

  Flo went to the television set mounted on a dark wood table with rollers. She rolled the television out of the way and opened a little built-in cabinet. There were books in the cabinet. She handed them to me and told me to put them down. I put them on one of the recliners. Then she reached back and edged the back wall of the cabinet out with the screwdriver.

  We weren’t through. There was a black safe with a dial and white numbers.

  “I use my birthday backwards,” she said, turning the dial as she said, “Thirty-four, twenty-nine, nine.”

  The safe swung open. It was piled thick and tight with bills. She pulled out a stack on the left, counted off hundreds and handed them to me. She pocketed a pile of bills and put everything back the way it had been. When I handed her the last book and she had put it in place, Roy Rogers sang, “Yippie ti aye oh.”

  “Thanks, Flo,” I said.

  She waved off my thanks as she rolled the TV back into place.

  “Need an envelope for that?”

  “Yes.”

  She went to a table between the recliners, opened a drawer, pulled out an envelope and handed it to me.

  “My husband, Gus, and me used to practically live in this room,” she said. “Now I do. Watch TV, read, write letters, drink, listen to music. That was his chair. This is mine. I like this room. I like it being small.”

  “I like it too,” I said.

  I meant it.

  “I’m going to wait till Adele’s here before I redecorate the guest room down the hall, turn it into hers. She can do what she wants with it long as she keeps it clean.”

  “Don’t spoil her, Flo.”

  “I’ll work her. Don’t worry.”

  “And don’t let her know about the safe,” I said.

  “Lewis, you’ve known me two, three years. Am I a fool?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “Then don’t act is if I might be one. I know what the girl’s been through. She’s not coming to me out of a finishing school. She’s a tough orphan. I’m a tough widow. Good combination.”

  “Good combination,” I agreed.

  “You bet your ass it is,” she said, guiding me down the corridor to the door, holding on to my arm, screwdriver peeking out of her pocket, smile on her face.

  When I left, Roy Rogers was singing “Happy Trails.”

  With eight thousand dollars in my pocket and a murder weapon under the seat, I headed home. The blue Buick was right behind me. Well, not right behind me but not far enough back that I couldn’t see him.

  I hadn’t eaten with Tilly and I hadn’t eaten with Flo. Pirannes hadn’t offered me anything. The problem was that I wasn’t hungry. The DQ was doing burn-up business now. The parking lot was almost full. I retrieved the gun, dropped it in my pocket where it did not fit snugly and wouldn’t have even if it hadn’t been in a ziploc bag, and went to my office-home.

  The window was fixed and the broken air conditioner gone. Ames. Always Ames. I locked the door, put the chair in front of it, pulled the plug on my phone and went to bed with the gun and the envelope full of hundreds under the bed. There wasn’t a decent place to hide anything here and I didn’t want to part with gun or money.

  So I put them where even a retarded blind chimp could find them. Then I watched my tape of Mildred Pierce for the three or four hundredth time.

  When I woke up in the morning after dreaming of Ann Blyth coming to shoot me, I reached under the bed and found gun and money. I needed a shave. It was a little after seven in the morning. I was hungry. I staggered into
the office and plugged in the phone. It was ringing.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Lewis, your phone is broken or you were out all night.”

  “I unplugged it.”

  “It’s me, Harvey.”

  “I know,” I said, mouth and tongue dry.

  “Bingo,” he said.

  “Straight line or four corners?”

  “Melanie Sebastian,” he said. “Found her.”

  Which meant that Melanie Sebastian was ready to be found. There was no hurry. She would wait for me wherever it was. She had lived up to her word. She had let me find her just when she had promised.

  16

  THERE WAS A LOT to do that Saturday. It was too early for the DQ, and Gwen’s place was only open during the week. I drove through the McDonald’s where 301 and Tamiami Trail meet across from the office of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

  The blue Buick was behind me. It was hard for him to hide on a sleepy Saturday morning.

  I got a small black coffee and two Egg McMuffins. I ate the sandwiches as I drove, and when I parked in front of the offices of Tycinker, Oliver and Schwartz I drank my coffee. The street was almost deserted. A handful of cars were parked on the street, which on weekdays was full.

  When I finished my coffee, I went into the office building and up the elevator to the door, which was open. There was no receptionist on duty and I could hear no voices. I moved down the corridor past the desk of the chief secretary and to Harvey’s open office.

  “Lewis,” he said.

  Harvey was clean-shaven, his hair brushed. He was wearing an Oberlin sweatshirt and working at his computers with a mug of coffee or tea steaming next to him.

  “Harvey,” I said. “What have we got?”

  “The technology doesn’t exist to find the Buga-Buga-Boo virus origin. At least I haven’t found it yet. The information superhighway does not yet have speed traps.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “I haven’t given up yet. You want Melanie Sebastian. I have her. Credit card in her name used yesterday at the Barrington House in Holmes Beach, that’s on Anna Maria Island.”

  Harvey handed me the phone as he kept working. I looked up the Barrington House. It was a bed-and-breakfast. I called. A woman answered. I told her I was in from Baltimore and looking for a place for my wife and I to spend a quiet weekend at the end of the year. I said I’d like to come see the accommodations sometime this weekend. She gave me directions. I hung up, thanked Harvey and went back out past the empty offices.