Midnight Pass: A Lew Fonesca Novel (Lew Fonesca Novels)

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Wilkens nodded and got out from behind the pulpit. He stood before us now and looked at Ames, me, and at a stained-glass Christ on a stained-glass cross.

  “I’ve got a small, well-educated, and sometimes angry group of parishioners who want to change these windows,” he said. “They don’t want a white savior. They claim that Christ was not white but a Jew, a dark Semite, a very dark Semite, certainly not the golden-tressed young man with the well-trimmed beard and sad eyes whose image surrounds us.”

  He had a point to make. I had time to listen.

  “And they are probably right and I probably agree, but to change the probably fictional image of the Savior would be seen as an alienating challenge to other Christians, both white and black.”

  “So you can live with it,” I said.

  “Are you a Christian, Mr. Fonesca? I believe you told me you were raised as an Episcopalian.”

  “I was. I’m not anything now.”

  I was going to add that I wasn’t planning on changing until God appeared before me or sent an emissary with a convincing explanation for what had happened to my wife and my life.

  “You’re a man in torment,” Wilkens said. “Bringing William Trasker to the commission table to do something decent will ease your torment, if only a little.”

  I said nothing.

  “And you?” he asked Ames.

  “Methodist till I die,” said Ames. “And I don’t care what color you make the good Lord out of pieces of glass. He is what he is.”

  “I’ve got to get to the cemetery,” Wilkens said.

  Wilkens touched my shoulder and Ames’s as he passed us and left the church, closing the doors behind him. I hadn’t told him that what I planned to do was illegal. I didn’t think he’d want to know. I wondered what he thought someone should do when the law and God didn’t agree.

  Ames and I stood alone in the church.

  “Methodist pie,” he said, looking around the room. “Think I’ll go to church Sunday.”

  I drove Ames back to the Texas Bar and Grill and told him what I wanted him to do.

  “What I need is someone who knows how to get into a house, a big house with walls and a couple of men inside who have guns.”

  I didn’t have to tell Ames which house.

  He said he would see what he could do, told me to take care of myself, and got out of the car. When he opened the door, I smelled grilling beef and onions. I was hungry.

  I went into the Texas, had the grande bowl of Ed’s Authentic Juarez Chili with crackers and a beer, felt a little better, and went back into the daylight after Ames, who had joined me for both the chili and beer, said, “Sure you don’t want me to stay with you?”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said.

  “Watch your track and your back and don’t go back home till we get this taken care of.”

  “I won’t,” I said. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

  Mickey’s Collectibles was about half a mile south of Clark on Macintosh in a mall of five stores. One of the stores sold plumbing supplies “wholesale to the public.” A second store dealt in Sperdoni Herbal Products, which, according to the signs in the window, “strengthened the immune system” and provided good carbohydrates instead of evil ones.

  Mickey’s was in the middle. On the other side of him was a store for rent and the last store was the Welcome Auto Insurance Agency.

  There were five cars parked in front of the shops. One was directly in front of Mickey’s. I pulled in, got out, and paused to look at Mickey’s window.

  It was cluttered but neat. Star Wars figures, cups and glasses with pictures of Tweety, Minnie Mouse, the Cisco Kid and Pancho, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and John Wayne were lined up neatly next to each other. Comic books were neatly overlapped like an open hand of cards, just enough so you could make out enough of the covers to know what they were: Famous Funnies, Daredevil, Submariner, Sad Sack, Justice League of America.

  I went in. Shelves on both sides filled with cereal boxes, X-Men figures, tin lunch boxes, and a whole shelf of Betty Boop items—Betty Boop at a piano with her dog on top, Betty Boop sitting on a Coke machine, a fully gowned Betty Boop in a black-and-white dress with a white corsage inside a box marked “Collectable Fashion Doll.”

  A chunky man in his late twenties or early thirties sat on a stool behind the glass counter. His hair needed combing. He wore a blue T-shirt with the Superman insignia in the middle.

  “Can I help you?” he asked. “Looking for anything special?”

  “Nice place,” I said.

  He gave a tiny shake of his head.

  “Nice place, maybe. Bad location. I don’t have the money to advertise and I’m not downtown on Main Street or in some big mall where I’d get walk-in trade. And I’m not near a school where kids could drop in.”

  “Why not move?” I asked.

  A shrug this time.

  “Can’t afford to,” he said. “Can’t stay. Can’t move. I’ve got a few good customers, but not enough and I don’t have the cash to buy much at the flea markets. Vicious circle.”

  “Cycle,” I corrected. “Vicious cycle.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You interested in early television? I’ve got a Howdy Doody puppet in perfect shape, in the box, 1950. I’d let it go for two hundred.”

  “I’m not a Howdy Doody guy,” I said. “You Michael Donophin?”

  “Mickey,” he said warily. “Legal name is Mickey.”

  I took the folded papers out of my pocket and handed them to him. He took them without a word and placed them on the counter next to a tiny figure of Emmett Kelly sitting on a white ball with a gold star.

  “Used to have a lot of circus stuff,” he said, ignoring the papers I had served. “Still have some. Mostly got it from old circus performers who still live around here. My big day was just about a year ago when a lady, no more than this big…”

  He put his hand out about three feet above the floor to show me how small she had been.

  “This lady, real old,” he said, brightening just a bit at the memory, “bought all the circus stuff I had. Everything. Three thousand dollars even, no bargaining. Asked her if she’d been in the circus. Said she had but she didn’t want to talk about it. I put everything in boxes real careful and got it in her car. Never heard from her again.”

  “Why the papers?”

  “Foreclosure,” he said. “I’m fighting it. I’m gonna lose. The Donophins always lose. The Donophins always come back. Don’t know anyone who might want to buy me out fast and cheap do you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “That’s okay. I guess I shouldn’t fight it. I guess I should just pack everything up, put it in my father’s garage, and get a job at Winn-Dixie. That’s where my father works.”

  There was a large round bowl of assorted buttons, mostly political, on the counter. I touched a red, white, and blue one with a young Teddy Kennedy’s photograph on it with the words “Kennedy for President” in black letters.

  “You might try the Internet,” I said. “Get a Web site. Sell out of your father’s garage. There’s even something called eBay.”

  “Maybe,” Mickey said with no great interest. “I like talking to people. It’s not just the selling. It’s the talking about, you know?”

  “Yes.”

  “Say, you like old music? I mean like really old? I’ve got old seventy-eights, some of them one-sided, good condition, even got an old Victrola I could let go cheap. Works fine. I’ve got Paul Whiteman, Eddie Condon, Bing Crosby, Tony Martin, Sophie Tucker. Couple of hundred maybe. Want to take a look?”

  “I’m trying to get away from the past,” I said.

  “And I’m trying to keep it alive,” he said, looking around his shop. “You know all this stuff is important to people. The way I see it there’re two different histories. There’s the one we learn in school, the Magna Carta, the Crusades, the Civil War, George Washington, you know?”

  “I know,” I said.

  “I
was never good at that stuff. But there’s another history, more important,” Mickey said, excited now. “There’s the history of each of our own lives, filled with little stuff that stays with us, you know? Like watching Leave It to Beaver with your older brother. Remember when the Beaver got stuck in that giant coffee cup?”

  I did remember, but I didn’t have to tell Mickey. He didn’t really need an answer.

  “That’s our lives. That’s Nostalgia with a big ‘N,’” he said. “Comic books, movies, television, Mickey Mantle, Frankie Avalon, mom baking fish every Friday night, and my Uncle Walt always coming over for it wearing a tie.”

  “Nostalgia,” I said.

  “The history of each of our lives,” said Mickey.

  “You’re a philosopher, Mickey,” I said

  “Take a button. On the house,” he said, nodding at the bowl between us.

  I went through the buttons and found one I wanted. Then I bought more items Mickey Donophin was happy to show me.

  I left Mickey carrying a large, full paper bag and headed for Flo’s house. It was after four.

  Adele answered the door, baby in her arms, smile on her face. Adele had lost all of her baby fat but not the memory of what she had been through. Adele was tough. Mother murdered by her father. Father who molested her and sold her to a pimp, also murdered, betrayed and made pregnant by a man she trusted. And there was Adele, pretty, blond, baby in her arms, smiling.

  “Lew,” she said. “Come in.”

  I followed her inside and closed the door.

  “Just finished feeding Catherine,” she said, holding up the baby named for my wife. “Want to hold her?”

  It was less a question than an order. I put down the bag I had brought in and she handed me the baby.

  “Diet Dr Pepper all right?” Adele asked.

  “Sure,” I said, moving into the living room with the baby in my arms.

  Catherine looked up at my face, eyes wide, scanning, tiny wrinkled fingers fidgeting.

  “Burp her,” Adele called from the kitchen.

  I put the baby on my shoulder and patted her back. Flo had shown me how to do it. It took three pats before I heard the small burp and felt a minute twinge of triumph.

  “Flo’s out,” Adele said. “Got her license back, thanks to you. She’s shopping.”

  She put a coaster and a glass of Diet Dr Pepper with ice on the coffee table in front of me. Then she took the baby.

  “School?” I asked.

  “Easy,” she said, holding the baby to her chest and crossing her legs on the sofa.

  I sometimes found it hard to remember that Adele was only sixteen.

  “Got something,” I said, getting the bag I had brought in and placing it next to my bubbling glass of Dr Pepper.

  I fished into the bag and came up with a rattle. It was purple and white plastic. I handed it to Adele, who looked at the picture on it and said, “Who’s Clarabelle?”

  “A clown,” I said. “From an old television show for kids.”

  “Weird looking, isn’t she?”

  “Clarabelle was a man,” I said.

  “That is weird.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Sometimes I like weird,” she said, placing the handle of the rattle in Catherine’s right hand. Small pink fingers clutched it tightly and accidentally shook it. The little pellets inside gently clacked. Catherine’s eyes turned toward the rattle.

  “Something for you too,” I said, going back into the bag.

  I handed her the foot-long cylinder. She turned it over in her hand and read the words on the side next to the picture of the rocket ship.

  “Tom, Corbett, Space Cadet?” she asked.

  “Another old television show. It’s a kaleidoscope.”

  “I gotta say you come up with some weird stuff.”

  She held the kaleidoscope up toward the window, closed one eye, and looked into the small round circle. She twisted it a few times and put it down with a smile.

  “I like it,” she said. “You are a strange man, Lewis Fonesca. You get something for Flo, too?”

  I went back into my bag and came up with a 331⁄3 album cover. I showed the cover to her. It was black-and-white with the photograph of a plain-looking man playing a guitar. The only words on it were “Hank Williams.”

  “Hank Williams?” Adele said.

  Catherine shook the rattle again.

  “Flo will understand. The record’s in perfect condition. I’ve got to go.”

  “Coming back later? Flo’s bringing back barbecue from that shack she knows on Martin Luther King.”

  “Not tonight,” I said. “I’ve got to rescue a man from a castle.”

  “Just another day’s work,” she said.

  “Another day,” I said.

  “Take care of yourself, Lewis,” she said, getting up as I did and moving close to kiss my cheek. “Notice anything?”

  “What?”

  “My language,” she said. “Flo and I have cleaned up together. Take care of yourself.”

  She smiled and looked at Catherine, who was trying to focus on the rattle.

  “How are things really going?” I asked.

  “Hard,” she said. “I don’t really fit in. It’s not the baby. I’m just not a kid like the rest of them. I pretend. I get along and everyone knows about Catherine and they’re cool with it. See, I can even say words like ‘cool’ when I remember. But I don’t have any real friends but you and Flo. I’m not complaining. That’s fine with me, but it’s not easy. You understand?”

  “What about that boy you were seeing? The one who worked at Burger King?”

  “He graduated,” she said. “He’s at the University of Florida. He calls me when he’s back here, but Lew, he’s still a boy. Maybe things will be different when I go to college, but that’s two years away.”

  “Where are you thinking of going?”

  “Lewis,” she said. “I’ve got a baby. The University of North Carolina isn’t going to let me go to classes with a two-year-old. Flo said she’d come with us wherever we went if I wanted her or she’d pay for a nanny.”

  “You don’t have to think about it for a while,” I said.

  “I do,” Adele said, touching the baby’s cheek. “You see, for fifteen years I didn’t have a future. Now that I’ve got one, I want to think about it.”

  And I, I thought, had a future for almost forty years and now had only a past and a present.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said.

  “Kids to help, bad guys to catch?” she asked.

  “Something like that,” I said.

  “Say, how about you come over Sunday,” she said. “We’ll grill stuff. Bring Ames, your friend Sally, and her kids. Flo’ll love it.”

  “I’ll get back to you,” I said.

  I had vaguely planned, if I lived to Sunday, to sleep it away. It had been almost two days since I had slept, and Sundays were the hardest days for me. They held more memories than other days.

  I was back at the Texas Bar and Grill twenty minutes later.

  The Texas was busy. The buffalo and steer heads on the wall looked content. Johnny Cash sang out that he was walking the line and keeping his eyes wide open, and Ames was talking to someone on the telephone at the bar.

  “Your lucky day, Lewis,” said Ames, as he put the phone down but didn’t hang it up. “Got a fella on the phone, Snickers. Got a sweet tooth. Says he broke into the Hoffmann place two years back, doesn’t want to talk about it. But he says he’ll get you in and out if the price is right.”

  I put my hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and asked Ames, “How much should I offer him?”

  “Snickers owes Ed,” Ames said, looking at Ed Fairing, who was leaning over a table across the room and laughing along with two customers. “A couple of hundred if you can get it,” said Ames. “But he’ll take less. He owes Ed.”

  “Two hundred,” I told Ames.

  Ames picked up the phone and said, “Man I was telling you about s
ays two hundred.”

  Pause. Ames covered the mouthpiece and said, “Two hundred and twelve and the bar bill.”

  “Two hundred and twelve?”

  “Doesn’t want it to seem like he comes cheap on the first offer.”

  “How big is his bar bill?”

  Ames asked and put the phone aside again.

  “Forty-six dollars and change.”

  “Deal,” I said.

  Ames relayed my message and handed me the phone.

  “Snickers?”

  “It is.”

  “Meet us across the street from Hoffmann’s gate at nine tonight. Don’t be late. Cash comes half when you get there, half when we get out.”

  “Fair,” Snickers said. “That’s fair. Okay if I pick up a few things when we’re inside?”

  “No,” I said.

  “See you at nine,” Snickers said, and hung up.

  I called Reverend Fernando Wilkens’s office and spoke to three people before he came on.

  “Yes?” he said hopefully.

  “If things go right,” I said. “I’ll have Trasker at that meeting by ten or a little after. Stall.”

  “Won’t be that hard unless the others know the way Trasker plans to vote. They want him there, too.”

  “I can have someone call and say Trasker is being held up by a flat tire,” I said.

  “Not necessary. Just bring him, Fonesca.”

  “I’m pumping as fast as I can,” I said. “One more thing. If this works, I’ll need more money for someone who’s helping me.”

  “How much?”

  “Two hundred and fifty-eight dollars.”

  “Done,” Wilkens said.

  I had Wilkens call the mayor, one-third of the solid three. He patched me in so I could hear the conversation.

  The mayor was a woman. She was all business and thought that Democrats were a little lower than University of Florida alumni. The mayor was a proud grad of Florida State University. Only the people in Florida and those who followed college football knew that there was a difference.

  “Beatrice?” Wilkens said, sounding remarkably sober. “This is Fernando. Just got a call from Bill Trasker. He told me to call you and say he’s on his way, but he’ll be very late for the meeting. He said to tell you he knows the vote is important and he’ll be there if he has to hijack an eighteen-wheeler.”