Denial: A Lew Fonesca Mystery (Lew Fonesca Novels)

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “You have any?” I asked.

  “Ideas? One. Ask more questions,” he said.

  “I’ll do that.”

  “I will too,” he said. He looked at Dorothy. “We both will. I believe in this woman.”

  He was breathing heavily, definitely not ready for a walker race. He patted his chest and said, “Fish cakes. Taste all right, but don’t sit well. The sands of time are falling. Get moving. A man who believes in the Chicago Cubs,” he said, pointing to my cap, “cannot give up this easily.”

  I nodded, said I’d be back in touch with Dorothy and watched the two of them move slowly down the carpeted corridor.

  It took me less than ten minutes to get to Richard Tycinker’s office. The woman at the reception desk looked up at me, checked her watch and said, “They’re waiting for you in his office.”

  I moved past her down the gray-carpeted corridor and knocked at Tycinker’s door. He told me to come in. I did and closed the door behind me. He was sitting behind his desk. Nancy Root, Richard McClory and Yolanda Root were there too, as far apart as they could be. McClory sat in one of the chairs across from Tycinker. Nancy Root sat on the black leather sofa. Yolanda Root sat in a matching black leather armchair against the wall.

  “Nancy says you’re close to finding the man,” said Tycinker.

  “I think so,” I said.

  “Nancy, Dr. McClory and Yolanda would like to talk to you. I suggest you go into the conference room.”

  I nodded. Tycinker got up from behind his desk, moved to the door I had just come through, opened it and waited for us to follow. We did. Nancy was first, then Yolanda, then McClory. I was next, with Tycinker last.

  He motioned to his right. I knew where the conference room was.

  “You’ll have complete privacy,” he said. “Take as long as you need. There’s coffee brewing and soft drinks and bottled water in the refrigerator.”

  He opened the conference room door, waited till we were inside and then left, closing the door behind him.

  I wasn’t sure who was in charge or what this was about. The table was freshly polished. The large windows looked out at a line of five evenly spaced palm trees. Yolanda went to the refrigerator, got a Pepsi and sat at the far end of the table popping the can. Nancy Root, looking strained, sat on one side of the table facing the window. McClory, needing a shave and looking as if he was hungover, sat across from his ex-wife with his back to the window. I sat at the end of the table across from Yolanda.

  I took off my cap and placed it on the table, waiting for someone to tell me what we were doing here.

  “Go ahead,” Nancy said, looking at her ex-husband.

  “Look,” he said, not to me but to her.

  “We agreed,” Nancy said.

  Yolanda took a gulp of Pepsi and gave her former stepfather a look of open contempt and muttered, “Wimp.” McClory pretended not to hear.

  “Kyle was my only child,” he said.

  “He knows that,” said Yolanda. “And he was my only brother and Nancy’s only son. Jeez.”

  Nancy suddenly stood up.

  “You’re not going to do it, are you?” she asked, glaring at McClory.

  “I’ll do it,” he said without enthusiasm.

  Yolanda shook her head and pursed her lips. “Richard,” Nancy said firmly. “You and Yola wait outside.”

  “Great,” said Yolanda sarcastically. “We’ve got so much to catch up on.”

  “Look, Nancy …” McClory said.

  She looked but said nothing.

  McClory got up slowly, resigned, looked at me, brushed his hair back with his hand and came around the table. Yolanda across from me rocked and bit her lower lip, said, “Shit,” and got up. McClory and Yolanda left the room, closing the door behind them.

  Nancy Root sat again and faced me. She was wearing a little too much makeup and a determined look that seemed more than a bit strained.

  “Kyle is dead,” she said. “The man who did it is alive. I understand that if you find him and turn him over to the police, a number of things could happen.”

  I wasn’t sure where this was going, but I nodded.

  “He’ll get a lawyer,” she said. “Maybe plead innocent.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Will there be enough evidence to convict him?” she said.

  “I think so,” I said.

  “You think so, but you’re not sure.”

  “He’ll be convicted,” I said.

  “Of what?”

  “The charge? That’s up to the prosecutor,” I said.

  “I’ve been in enough courtroom dramas to know that murder in the first degree is unlikely,” she said, eyes holding mine.

  “I—”

  “He can say it was an accident, that he didn’t mean to run him down,” she said. “He can …”

  She closed her eyes.

  “He might plead guilty,” I said. “I think he’s feeling guilty.”

  “But he’ll live,” she said. “He’ll be alive and Kyle is dead. He won’t get the death penalty.”

  She was right. There was nothing for me to say and I knew now what was coming next and why she had told McClory and Yolanda to leave the room.

  “I think we should stop here, Mrs. Root.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I want him dead. We want him dead. It’s not enough, but the thought of him being alive when Kyle is dead is too much to live with. You understand? Every day I’ll know Kyle is buried in that coffin and the man who ran him down is alive, waking up every morning, eating, showering, reading, working at something, watching television. That is unacceptable. Do you have any idea of how we feel?”

  “Yes,” I said. I knew exactly how she felt.

  “The horrible irony is that Kyle’s death and that man have brought the three of us together,” she said with a laugh that wasn’t a laugh. “If you call what you just witnessed being together.”

  I said nothing.

  “Well?” she said. “Do I have to be more specific?”

  “No,” I said.

  She wanted me to find the man who ran Kyle down and kill him.

  “Good. You know what I want and I don’t have to say it. Richard will pay fifty thousand dollars, cash, nothing signed, no income to report.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “What about that old man, your friend?”

  “Ames?”

  “Mr. Tycinker tells me he killed a man a few years ago.”

  “Ames isn’t a hit man,” I said. “And he can’t be bought.”

  “Then,” she said with a sigh, “when you find him, let me know before you go to the police. One of us will … do it.”

  “Makes me an accessory,” I said.

  “I know about your wife. What would you do if you found him, the person who killed her?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Do you believe in God, Mr. Fonesca?” she asked.

  “He asked me the same thing,” I said.

  “He?”

  “The man who killed Kyle.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “He calls me,” I said. “He’s falling apart. I don’t know.”

  “Know what?”

  “If I believe in God.”

  “Do you believe in an afterlife? Any kind of an afterlife? Nirvana? Anything?”

  “I don’t think about it,” I said. “I work hard at not thinking about it.”

  “It takes a great deal out of you, doesn’t it, not to think?”

  “Yes,” I said. “When I find him, I plan to turn him over to the police. You want to end my services?”

  “If I said yes, you’d just stop looking?”

  “No,” I said. “I’ll keep looking. I’ll find him.”

  She slumped back.

  “Am I fired?” I asked.

  She waved a hand and looked out the window at the trees.

  “No,” she said.

  I wanted to give her some comfort, tell her that
she would find some peace in simply knowing her son’s killer was found, was punished, was exposed. But I knew it wouldn’t work and if I tried it, it would be a lie.

  “Do what you have to do,” she said.

  I got up, took my cap and went to the door. In the corridor Yolanda was leaning against a wall, arms folded, looking at the floor. McClory was pacing. They both looked at me and knew that I had turned down Nancy Root’s offer.

  McClory walked past me without meeting my eyes and headed down the hallway. Yolanda started to ease by me and into the conference room. She stopped, turned toward me, her face inches from mine.

  “He’s a wimp. You’re a wimp. If I get the chance, I’m going to stab the guy who killed Kyle. I’m gonna stab him and keep stabbing him and hope that he begs for his life and cries while he dies.”

  “It’s not so easy to murder someone,” I said.

  “He did it,” she said.

  “I don’t think it was easy for him,” I said.

  “You don’t … you feel sorry for him?”

  She seemed to be waiting for me to respond. I had no response.

  “I’ll find him,” I said.

  About ten minutes later, I parked back at the DQ and walked south on Washington to Gwen’s. There were no fish cakes on the menu but the chalk list on the blackboard on the wall a few feet from the Elvis poster said meat loaf was. One space was left at the counter. I sat next to a thin, young guy with a beard, long hair in a braid and a faraway look in his glazed eyes as he ate a burger. On the other side of me was a regular at Gwen’s, a guy with muscles in a white T-shirt with a stitched blue outline of a stationary bike over the pocket, the emblem of the gym down the street. He was drinking soup. No Tim from Steubenville.

  “Digger show up this morning?” I asked Gwen when she came back with my meat loaf.

  “Showed up, did just fine for the first day,” she said.

  “You just missed him. He made the meat loaf.”

  “Looks good,” I said.

  “Enjoy,” she said, grabbing the almost full coffeepot from the burner behind her and heading around the counter to make the round of the tables.

  Something, I thought, pouring ketchup on the plate in an open space between the meat loaf and french fries.

  “Huh?” asked muscles.

  I didn’t know I had said it out loud.

  “Just something I’m trying to remember,” I said.

  “You’re the guy who lives in the office behind the DQ.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You work out?”

  “At the Y,” I said.

  “I can get you a good price at Milt’s Gym,” he said. “Just a few feet from your place.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  “Good price,” he repeated. “Remember what you were trying to remember?”

  “Not yet. Something someone said to me today.”

  “Right training, right food, right herbs can get your memory kicking ass,” he said.

  I could not come up with a concrete image of my memory, let alone an image of it or me kicking ass.

  “It’ll come,” I said.

  “Don’t bet your left arm on it,” said the blond guy with the beard through a mouth full of burger.

  “I won’t,” I said.

  “Not that I know what anyone would want a fucking left arm for,” he said. “I mean one that wasn’t his.”

  “Maybe the same reason someone would want a pound of flesh.”

  “Pound of flesh?”

  That pretty much ended the luncheon repartee. We finished in silence. Muscles left first after going into the pocket of his T-shirt and coming out with a business card he handed to me. I put it in my pocket.

  I finished next, looked at the check, nodded at the blond guy, who was staring at his plate, left a dollar tip and paid Gwen at the cash register.

  “Pretty nice day,” she said, glancing out the window.

  I nodded.

  There was no one on the sidewalk. People didn’t stroll in Sarasota, but cars did flash by. I was about twenty feet from the DQ lot and almost next to Milt’s Gym when I heard it. It sounded like a car behind me coming up the sidewalk. I started to turn. It was a car coming toward me on the sidewalk.

  Tinted windows. Small car, tires on the right side in the street, on the left almost scraping the wall. There was a break in oncoming traffic. I jumped to my right into the street in front of a blue pickup truck. The pickup driver swerved to his left, missing me by a few feet and almost colliding with an oncoming squat convertible. The car on my tail turned with me. Whoever it was did not seem concerned about who or what was coming or going. This was a person with a clear mission, to run me down.

  12

  A CAR SCREECHED out of the DQ lot in front of me and headed right at me. One car behind. One car in front. Me in the middle trying to find space to cross the street to the other side. I was trapped ten feet off the curb. The car with the tinted windows swerved back toward the sidewalk. I stood on the white line. The right fender of the car coming toward me grazed the right fender of the car behind me, which was back on the sidewalk. I heard a headlight pop.

  I made it across the street and looked back over my shoulder. The car with the tinted windows that had tried to run me down was skidding across the street and into the northbound lane. It roared on, glass from the broken headlight tinkling behind. The other car that had come out of the DQ lot was turning down the narrow street just past Gwen’s.

  People were streaming out of Gwen’s, including Gwen, who shouted across the street, “Lew, you all right?”

  I nodded.

  “Damnedest thing I ever saw,” said a black guy with a sandwich in his hand. “Looked like they were trying to squash you right between them.”

  “Melanie’s calling the cops,” Gwen said. “You better come back in and wait.”

  I shook my head no, crossed the street and moved toward the DQ. I couldn’t talk. Not fear. Memories.

  When I got inside my office, I went to the desk, sat with a reminder of the taste of recent meat loaf. My knee was throbbing slightly. My shoulder ached. My hands were trembling.

  My phone started to ring. I stared at it for five rings and picked it up, expecting Taurus the Philosopher.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Not here,” said Ames.

  “What’s not where?”

  “Parking lot at the college,” he said. “Seven Tauruses. None with fender damage.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “You know?”

  “He just tried to kill me,” I said.

  “You’d best call the police,” said Ames. “I’ll be right there.”

  “I don’t think I have to call them. They’ll be here in a few minutes.”

  And they were, less than twenty minutes after Ames hung up.

  When the knock came at the door, I was staring at the painting on my wall of the dark jungle. I was having trouble seeing the spot of color. I counted on that one small spot. I hoped it hadn’t vanished.

  “Come in,” I called.

  Etienne Viviase entered, back in detective garb, sport jacket, loose tie. He didn’t say anything, just sat in the chair on the other side of the desk and shook his head. I watched him fold his arms and turn his eyes toward me.

  Finally, with a sigh and a blowing out of air, he said, “Well?”

  “Not very,” I answered.

  “Well, what happened?”

  “Someone tried to kill me,” I said. “Maybe it was an accident. A drunken driver.”

  “Came right up on the sidewalk and didn’t stop?” he said. “Witnesses say whoever it was would have rolled right over you if another car hadn’t sideswiped him.”

  “If they say so,” I said. “I was busy.”

  “Didn’t catch a license number? Part of one?”

  I shook my head no.

  “I don’t want to be here,” he said.

  I knew how that felt.

  “For
some reason, the department has decided that you and I have a relationship. Your name comes up, it lands on my desk.”

  In a way, we did have a relationship.

  “My day is not brightened and my burden not lightened by my encounters with you,” he said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Your apology will be taken into consideration. About a week ago a kid gets run down and killed. You start looking for the driver. About half an hour ago someone tries to run you down. It does not strike me as a coincidence. Enlighten me, Fonesca.”

  “I’ll have some information for you soon,” I said.

  “If you’re alive to give it to me.”

  “Did you ever have one of those feelings that you knew something, heard something, saw something that would clear up a crime, but you can’t quite remember what it is?”

  “I’ve been a cop for a quarter of a century,” he said. “I have the feeling at least twice a week.”

  “I need a little more time,” I said. “If—”

  The phone was ringing.

  “Why don’t you get an answering machine?” Viviase asked.

  “Had one for a while,” I said. “Didn’t like it.”

  The truth was that I dreaded seeing that light blinking, knowing there were one, two, three, five messages waiting for me, telling me something I didn’t want to hear, asking me to do something I didn’t want to do, like calling back. It was easier to just pick up the ringing phone, not have time to think about who or what it might be.

  I picked up the ringing phone.

  “Will you stop now?” the man on the other end said, his voice quivering.

  “No,” I said. “But we can talk.”

  Viviase looked at me.

  “You owe me,” the man said.

  “You tried to kill me,” I said.

  “You don’t understand. I saved your life.”

  “Who is that?” Viviase said, standing.

  I put the phone against my chest and said, “The man who killed Kyle McClory.”

  Viviase started to reach out for the phone, changed his mind and nodded for me to go on. I put the phone to my ear and said, “You saved my life?”

  “I was in the parking lot outside your office waiting for you,” the man said. “I think I was going to talk to you. I saw you coming, saw the car behind you bump up on the sidewalk. I cut him off.”

  “Why?”