Bright Futures: A Lew Fonesca Mystery (Lew Fonesca Novels)

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “Blue Berrigan,” I said.

  “Are you those paparazzi people?”

  “No,” I said. “We’re fans.”

  Ames gently pushed the door open and stepped in. I followed and closed the door.

  “Don’t, for Jesus’ sake, sing me one of his songs, especially that one about the rabbits.”

  “We won’t,” I said. “We just …”

  “Mr. Nelson Berrigan isn’t here and he doesn’t give autographs or signed photographs to fans who seek him out. You’ll have to wait till his next public appearance. Besides, he’s not home.”

  “His car is parked outside,” I said.

  She looked at Ames with suspicion, took a sip of her brew, and leaned between us to look at the Jeep at the curb.”

  “He’s still not here. No way he could get to his room without getting past me, no fucking way. Pardon my French.”

  “Could he have gone around the back?” I tried.

  “Yes, but there’s no way to get upstairs back there. Doesn’t the old guy talk?”

  She wheezed mightily and fished an inhaler out of the pocket of her robe. A wad of tissues came with it and drifted to the floor. She caught them deftly without losing a drop of whatever she was drinking.

  “Used to be a juggler,” she said, putting the tissue wad back in her pocket and taking a deep puff of the inhaler. “Long time ago. I suppose that’s how Nelson got the show business bug. His father was a tombstone carver.”

  “He’s your son?” I asked.

  “He is definitely not my son. He lived next door to us when he was a kid. Now I definitely want you the hell out of here. Goodbye.”

  She closed the door. We turned and walked to the curb. I looked through the window of the jeep. Nelson Blue Berrigan was slumped over on the floor, legs beneath the steering wheel, head and torso on the floor near the passenger door. He was not taking a nap. The deep reddish black oozing wound on the back of his head felt like death, but I made sure by opening the door and reaching over to see if there was a pulse. There wasn’t.

  We had been inside the house for no more than two minutes.

  Maybe we should have gone back and told the old woman he was dead.

  Maybe we should have called 911.

  Maybe we should have looked for clues.

  Maybe we should have looked for the killer. He couldn’t have been more than a few minutes away, but a minute or two was enough if he had a car parked very close by.

  I slid into the backseat and looked at the floor. There were splatters of blood. On top of one of the splatters were two little pieces of plastic, one white, one red. I knew what they were, but I needed to get the answer to a question before I could decide what to do.

  “We’ve got to go back inside the house,” I said. “Keep her busy.

  Ames and I went back to the door. The old woman in the orange robe opened it a crack and said, “What the hell you want now?”

  “I’ve got to call 911,” I said. “Berrigan is in his car. I think he’s dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “Where were you the last half hour?” Ames asked as I slipped by her and went to Berrigan’s room.

  “Me? I didn’t kill him.”

  I didn’t call 911 right away. First, I looked around. I didn’t see what I was looking for. I tried the closet. It wasn’t there. When I was satisfied, I called 911 and then went to get Ames.

  The old woman was saying, “… a quiet man.”

  “Sorry ma’am,” Ames said. “Can we get you anything?”

  “You call the police?” she asked seeing me.

  “Yes. I have one more question.”

  “Question?”

  I asked her. The answer confirmed what I found, or failed to find, in Berrigan’s room.

  Ames and I moved to the door.

  “You’re not staying till the police get here?” the old woman asked.

  “Can’t,” Ames said gently. “Police will be here in a minute.”

  She seemed bewildered as we opened the door. She looked out at Berrigan’s jeep, pulled a pair of glasses from her pocket and put them on, saying, “You sure he’s in there? I don’t see him.”

  “He’s there,” I said.

  We got in the Saturn and drove away, not quietly, but definitely away.

  9

  *

  HALF AN HOUR LATER I was seated behind my desk, looking across the room at the Stig Dalstrom paintings on the wall. They were the only art I owned—four small paintings given to me by Flo Zink. They were of dark jungles and mountains at night with just a small touch of color, a single bird or flower, the distant moon.

  Outside, Ames was working on the Saturn. He knew guns, machines, trucks, and automobiles, but it would take a lot of knowing to make the Saturn live again.

  I half hoped he would fail. I felt uncomfortable owning anything larger than a DVD player.

  My cell phone was on the otherwise empty desktop in front of me. I was waiting. On the way home I had told Ames that it would probably take an hour or less for the police to arrive, so he had better do as much as he could on the car before men in blue appeared bearing guns in the usually quiet street.

  The old woman former juggler in an orange robe would describe us to the police. That would be enough.

  “A tall old man wearing a coat in the heat and a not-too-tall, sad-looking fella wearing a Cubs baseball cap,” Ames had said as we drove.

  “Driving in a noisy old car,” I added.

  “Won’t be hard,” he said.

  It was at that point that I called Detective Ettiene Viviase to tell him about the body in the jeep across from Bee Ridge Park. It was better to have a cop I knew around.

  Viviase arrived thirty-five minutes into my longing for the comfort of dark jungles. It was just enough time for him to take a look at Berrigan’s body, leave someone to take over the crime scene and get back to Ames and me.

  I heard the footsteps on the wooden stairs and watched the door open. Ames was at Viviase’s side.

  Once, I had heard Viviase referred to as “Big Ed.” He wasn’t particularly big, maybe a little under six feet tall and weighing in at a little over two hundred and twenty pounds. He was wearing his usual uniform, a rumpled sports jacket, dark slacks, a tie with no personality and a weary look on his face.

  “Got a little more to do on the car,” said Ames. “Need a few parts. Should get it working within reason.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” said Viviase, stepping into the room and closing the door behind him. “Now tell me a story. Nonfiction preferred.”

  “Mind if I wash up my hands?” asked Ames.

  “Please do,” said Viviase moving to the desk and facing me across it.

  Ames walked slowly through the bathroom door and closed it behind him. Then I heard the water start to flow.

  “We didn’t kill him,” I said.

  “I know that,” said Viviase. “If you had, you probably wouldn’t have walked up to his door asking for him after you crushed his skull.”

  “I definitely wouldn’t have,” I said.

  “Talk,” he said.

  “Berrigan found me at the Crisp Dollar Bill,” I said. “He said he wanted my help. He was nervous. When Ames showed up, Berrigan went to the bathroom and out the window. You can check with Billy the bartender and the customers who were there. When Berrigan went through the bathroom window, we followed him. He was frightened. I thought maybe we could help. I ran outside and saw him pull away in the jeep. There was someone in the car with him. I couldn’t make out who. My car—”

  “Your car?”

  “I bought it this morning.”

  “The Saturn McKinney was working on?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a gem.”

  “Thanks. It moves at its own pace.”

  “Two questions,” said Viviase. “First, what did Berrigan say he wanted?”

  “He didn’t have time to tell me.”

  “Thin, Fonesca. Very thin. T
hird question: Why did you leave the scene of a murder?”

  “Because we didn’t want to get involved.”

  “Then why did you call me?”

  “I changed my mind.”

  “Civic duty, right?”

  “I knew you’d find us.”

  Ames emerged from the bathroom and joined us.

  “I’ll talk to McKinney now,” said Viviase. “Let’s see if he remembers it the way you do.”

  Ames did. We had gone over the story as we clunked our way home. Ames got it down perfectly. He told it tersely.

  “This have anything to do with the Horvecki murder you’ve been asking about?”

  “Don’t know,” I said, and I didn’t, though it was more than likely that the two were related.

  “Since I’m here, would you like to tell me how you got involved in the Horvecki business?”

  I didn’t want to tell him for many reasons, not the least of which was that I had been recommended for the job by Viviase’s own daughter, Elisabeth, but I had to tell him something.

  “Two kids just came to me. Friends of Gerall.”

  “Why you?”

  I shrugged and said, “Ask them.”

  “I will,” he said. “Fix your car. Stop trying to get the Gerall kid off. Lighten up this room. I’ll get back to you. You listening?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “But you won’t back off, will you?”

  “No.”

  “All right, give me the names of the two kids,” he said. “And don’t tell me it’s confidential. You’re not even a private investigator.”

  I gave him Greg and Winn’s names. He wrote them down and said, “They visited Gerall in juvie,” Viviase said putting the notebook away. “I knew who they were.”

  “Just trapping the coyote,” said Ames.

  “Very colorful,” Viviase said.

  “Anything new on the Horvecki daughter?” I asked.

  “Nothing I plan to share.”

  Which, I concluded, meant that he had nothing more than what Dixie had given me and probably a lot less.

  Viviase left.

  Seconds after he was gone, the door to my bedroom opened and Victor Woo came out with a girl. She was no more than fifteen, dark, cute, still holding onto a little baby fat. She wore faded jeans and a white tucked-in short-sleeved blouse with a flower stitched over her left breast.

  “Is my father gone?” she asked, standing back in case Viviase decided to return. His footsteps had clacked down the stairs and, unless he had taken off his shoes and tip-toed back up, he was gone, at least for now.

  “He’s gone,” I said. “How did you find me?”

  “Your name is in my father’s address book. I went to where you were supposed to be, but there was no building.”

  Victor moved to the floor in the corner. Elisabeth Viviase glanced at him.

  “I asked a sad fat man in the car rental place. He told me where you live. Why is that man sitting on the floor in the corner?”

  She sat in one of the two chairs on the other side of my desk.

  “Penance,” I said, sitting.

  “For what?”

  “Ask him.”

  She turned to Victor and said, “Why are you doing penance?”

  “Murder,” he said softly.

  With a veteran policeman as a father, the possibility of murder in close proximity was not confined to CSI on television.

  “Why here?” she asked. “Why do penance here?”

  “I killed his wife,” Victor said flatly.

  Elisabeth turned back to me, tried to figure out if this was some comic routine with her as the butt of the joke. Whatever she saw in my face, she decided to change the subject.

  “Ronnie didn’t kill Horvecki.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because he was with me,” she said.

  “When?”

  “A week ago on Saturday,” she said.

  “What time?”

  “From seven till midnight.”

  She sat with back straight and false sincerity masking her face.

  “The murder took place after midnight,” I said.

  “Well, I may have left Ronnie’s at one or later.”

  “I was just testing you,” I said. “Horvecki was actually killed no later than noon.”

  “Well,” she said, sliding back as far as she could go. “Now that I think of it, I was with Ronnie from seven to midnight on the day before the murder. On the day of the murder, I was with him as early as eleven in the morning, maybe earl … You’re testing me again.”

  She looked away.

  She returned to the self-certain statement of “Ronnie didn’t do it.”

  “You didn’t go to the police with your alibi for Gerall,” I said.

  “You kidding? My father would find out in five minutes. I wanted to tell you so you could find the real killer without telling my father about, you know, my coming here.”

  Victor suddenly stood, and asked, “Would you like a Coke?” The move reminded me of James Coburn when he tilted his hat back and suddenly stood erect, ready for a showdown with his knife against a gun.

  “Diet Coke,” she said.

  Victor looked at me.

  “Nothing for me,” I said.

  Victor left. Elisabeth and I listened to his footsteps on the stairs.

  “Gerall’s your boyfriend?”

  “I wish,” she said eyes looking upward.

  “You told Greg Legerman and Winn Graeme about me.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell me about them.”

  “Greg is kind of electric-cute, super-smart, dancing around, adjusting his glasses, a walking public service ad for hyperactives anonymous.”

  “He get in a lot of fights?”

  “No. He just talks, makes people nervous. Winn is his only friend. He takes a lot from Greg.”

  “But they stay friends?” I asked.

  “Go figure,” she said.

  “Greg talks. What does he talk about?”

  “You think I pay that much attention to Long-winded Legerman?”

  “I think you pay attention to a lot of things.”

  She gave me a questioning look.

  “That’s a compliment,” I said.

  The quizzical look was replaced by a minimally appreciative smile.

  The door opened. Victor and Ames entered together. Victor moved to my desk with an offering of Diet Coke for Elisabeth who said, “Thank you.”

  “It’s warm,” he said.

  I knew a twelve-pack of Diet Coke was in the back of his car.

  “That’s okay,” she said.

  She popped the tab and drank from the can.

  Victor went back to his bedroll and Ames leaned against the wall.

  “Anything else you can tell me?” I asked.

  “About what?” she said, looking over her shoulder at Ames and Victor.

  “Greg, Winn, Ronnie, Horvecki. A man named Blue Berrigan.”

  “Blue Berrigan? I can tell you about him. I have his three CDs. Haven’t listened to them in a long time. I was a big fan. I’ve still got my Blue Bunny night slippers, but if you tell anyone, I’ll come back here and claim you raped me.”

  “I won’t tell anyone,” I said.

  She took a big gulp from her Diet Coke.

  “Hot Coke is gross. Am I through?” she asked, placing the can on the desk.

  “How’d you get here?”

  “Walked from school. I can catch a bus home.”

  “Victor can drive you home.”

  She looked at Victor who had returned to his place in the corner.

  “No, thanks,” she said, looking at the man who had called himself a murderer.

  “Ames can give you a lift on the back of his scooter.”

  I looked at Ames. He had a strong avuncular feeling for children.

  “Has he murdered anyone?” she asked.

  “Not recently,” I said.

  “I’ll take t
he scooter.”

  “Do you know the first line of a book, any book?”

  “ ‘The event on which this fiction is founded has been supposed, by Dr. Darwin, and some of the physiological writers of German, as not of impossible occurrence.’ ”

  I asked her to repeat it slowly. She did, while I wrote on a pad from my desk drawer.

  “The book?” I asked.

  “Frankenstein,” said Victor.

  “That’s right,” said Elisabeth. “We had to memorize a paragraph from a novel on our reading list. I picked Frankenstein.”

  “Because it’s scary?” I tried.

  “Because it was written by a woman,” she said.

  “You want to be a writer?”

  “I want to be an FBI agent,” she answered. “But don’t—”

  “Tell your father.”

  “He’s not ready for it,” she said. “And I might change my mind.”

  I got up to show I had nothing more to ask or say. She stood and headed for Ames and the door. She paused at the door and said, “You won’t tell my—”

  “I won’t tell,” I said.

  Ames and the girl left. I was making some assumptions. I assumed the timing was such that my investigation of the Horvecki killing, the bullet through the window of Augustine’s car, the shooting of Darrell Caton, and the murder of Blue Berrigan were all tied together. What if I were wrong? I had two suspects I hadn’t yet spoken to, Essau Williams, the cop in Venice, and Jack Pepper in Cortez Village—two people whose names were in files in a cabinet in the mobile home of an ex-Cincinnati cop named Pertwee. Both had sworn to make Philip Horvecki pay for what he had been accused of, the rape of Essau’s mother and aunt when they were young girls and the attempted rape and beating of Pepper, whom Horvecki had tried to sodomize. Pepper lived north, just outside of Cortez Village, and Williams south, in Venice.

  When night came, I lay in bed silently for I don’t know how many minutes listening to traffic on 301, thinking of something I could say or do to induce Sally to stay.

  I had nothing to offer. Armed with addresses that I had gotten from Pertwee’s files, I got up just before six in the morning and asked Victor, who was cross-legged on his bedroll reading a book, to tell Ames I was going to Cortez Village and that I’d be back in a few hours.

  There are no hills in Florida south of Ocala unless we’re talking about man-made ones. Construction is constantly going on in Sarasota—streets torn up and widened, new streetlights, hotels, mansions, developments, high-rise apartments, new malls. From time to time a pile of dirt resembling a fifteen-foot hill will rise and occasionally a dazzled teen or preteen will climb up and be knocked down or even buried in a small dust-raising avalanche. The flat landscape of Sarasota County is paled over with nonnative palm trees and trees that thrive on enough water to drown most other fauna and with tall, sometimes fat condominium buildings that present a view of heavily trafficked roads and other condos.