Bright Futures: A Lew Fonesca Mystery (Lew Fonesca Novels) (21 page)

I didn’t answer.

“You did some losing on purpose,” he said. “You’re a good player. You’re setting us up for next time.”

I didn’t tell him that I was sure I had come out ahead and not behind.

“Well,” he went on. “I don’t think that opportunity will be afforded to you. You’re a decent enough guy, but not a good fit here.”

I agreed with him.

“One more thing,” he said. “My daughter has bailed out Ronnie Gerall.”

He looked for a reaction from me. I gave him none.

“She stands to lose a quarter of a million if he skips,” said Corkle. “I’ll be grateful with a cash bonus of four thousand dollars if he doesn’t skip.”

He didn’t tell me why Alana Legerman would bail Ronnie out, but I could see from his face that we were both thinking the same thing.

I took my See Forever Pocket Telescope with sky map and went out the door.

Ames, leaning over so he couldn’t be seen from the door, was in the backseat of the Saturn. He didn’t sit up until we hit Tamiami Trail.

“What’d you find?” I asked, looking at him in the rearview mirror.

“Our chief suspect has a lot of explaining to do,” he said.

Victor wasn’t around when we got to my place.

Ames waited for me to sit behind my desk, and then produced the envelope he had taken from Corkle’s office. He opened it and placed the first two sheets next to each other in front of me.

They were birth certificates. The one on my left was Ronald Gerall’s. It said that he was born in Palo Alto, California, on December 18, 1990. The birth certificate on the right gave his date of birth as December 18, 1978. If the certificate on the right was correct, Ronnie Gerall was 29 years old.

“I’m betting that one,” Ames said pointing at the certificate on my right, “is the right one and the other one’s the fake.”

“We’ll find out,” I said. “You know what this means?”

“Gerall started high school here when he was twenty-five or twenty-six years old,” said Ames.

He reached back into the envelope and came out with two more pieces of paper. He handed them to me and I discovered that our Ronnie had graduated from Templeton High School in Redwood City, California, and California State University in Hayward, California.

“Best for last,” Ames said, pulling one more sheet of paper out of the envelope.

It was a marriage certificate, issued a year ago in the State of California to Ronald Owen Gerall and Rachel Beck Horvecki. Ronnie was married to Horvecki’s missing daughter.

We had more questions now. Why had Ronnie Gerall posed as a high school student? Where was his wife? What was
Corkle planning to do with the documents that were now on my desk?

It was three in the morning. We said good night and Ames said he would be back “an hour or two past daybreak.” I told him nine in the morning would be fine.

I handed the papers back to Ames and said, “You keep them. If Corkle finds that they’re gone, he might think I’m a logical suspect.”

Ames nodded and put the documents back in the envelope.

When Ames left I went to my room and closed the door. The night-light, a small lamp with an iron base and a glass bowl over the bulb, was on. I had been leaving it on more and more when night came. I put on my black Venice Beach workout shorts and went back through my office to the cramped bathroom. I showered, shaved, shampooed my minor outcropping of hair; I did not sing. Catherine used to say I had a good voice. Singing in the shower had been almost mandatory—old standards from the 1940s had been my favorites and Catherine’s. “Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree,” “To Each His Own,” “Johnny Got a Zero,” “Wing and a Prayer.” I had not sung or considered it after Catherine died. When I turned off the shower, I heard someone moving around in the office.

I got out, dried my body quickly, put on my Venice shorts and stepped into the office while drying my hair.

Victor Woo was sitting on his sleeping bag on the floor in the corner. He had placed the blanket so that he could look up at the Stig Dalstrom paintings on the wall. He glanced over at me. He looked exhausted.

“I called my wife,” he said.

I draped the towel over my shoulder.

“What did you say?”

“I didn’t. I couldn’t. But she knew it was me. She said I should come home, that she’s been getting my checks, that the children miss me. She didn’t say that she missed me.”

“Go home Victor,” I said.

“Can’t.”

“I forgive you. Catherine forgives you. I don’t think Cook County forgives you, but that’s between you and the Cook County state attorney’s office, and I don’t plan to give them any information.”

It was pretty much what I had been saying to him for more than two months. I didn’t expect it to work this time.

“Forgive yourself,” I tried. “Hungry?”

“No.”

“You can do me a favor,” I said. “In the morning, go to Starbucks or Borders, plug your computer into the Internet, and find some information for me.”

“Yes.”

“You might have to do some illegal things to get what I want. I want whatever you can find about a Ronald Gerall, probably born somewhere in California.”

It was busywork. Dixie would get me whatever I needed in the morning.

“Yes,” he said.

“You want me to turn the light out?”

“Yes.”

“Good night.”

I went into my room, placed the towel on the back of my chair, put on my extra-large gray T-shirt with the faded full-color image of Ernie Banks on the front.

I turned the night light to its lowest setting and got on the bed. I stayed on top of the covers, lay on my back, and clutched the extra pillow.

The room was bigger than my last one in the office building behind the Dairy Queen. I looked up at the angled ceiling.

I like small spaces when I sleep. This room wasn’t large, but it was bigger than I liked. I would have slept in a closet were there
one large enough to sleep in. I cannot sleep outdoors. I can’t look up at the vastness of the sky without beginning to feel lost, like I’m about to be swept into the universe. This room was tolerable, but it would take some getting used to.

I lay without moving, looking upward, growing too tired to move, going over whether Ronnie Gerall had killed his father-in-law and why, and wondering if he had killed his wife and Blue Berrigan.

Thoughts of Sally Porovsky came and went like insistent faces of forgotten movie actors whose names just managed to stay out of reach.

Sometimes when I fall asleep, an idea comes, and I feel energized.

Usually, if I don’t write down the idea, I’ll lose it with the dawn. I did get an idea, then, or rather, a question. Why were all the Corkles paying me to save Ronnie?

His family would be better protected by having Ronnie locked away until he was too old to appreciate a handy dandy Corkle Electrostatic CD, LP, and DVD cleaner. I didn’t write down my idea, but this time I remembered it. When I sat up in the morning, I heard my dark curtains open, saw bright morning light, and looked up at Greg Legerman and Winston Churchill Graeme.

“He’s out,” said Greg, handing me a steaming Starbucks coffee.

“Who?”

“Ronnie. Who did you think I was talking about, Charlie Manson?”

“What time is it?”

“Almost nine,” said Greg.

“I know Ronnie’s out,” I said. “Who let you in?”

“The Chinese guy,” said Greg.

“He’s Japanese,” Winn Graeme said.

“He’s Chinese,” I said.

Greg took the only chair in the room and pulled it over to my bedside.

“You want your money back?” I said. “Fine.”

“No, you need it. You live in near squalor.”

“Greg,” Winn warned.

Greg Legerman’s response to the warning was to reach up and punch the other boy in the arm. Winn took it and looked at me.

“How long have you known old Ronnie?” I asked.

Greg thought about it, but Winn answered.

“He transferred to Pine View after his sophomore year. Came from Texas, San Antonio.”

“He have a girlfriend?”

“Lots. He had a fake ID,” said Greg. “Went out to bars, picked up women. Said he wasn’t into high school girls. Why?”

“He ever mention Rachel Horvecki?”

“Horvecki’s daughter? No,” said Greg. “I don’t remember. Why?”

“Have any idea where he might be now?”

I got up and went to the closet for a clean pair of jeans and a blue short-sleeved Polo pullover.

“No,” said Winn.

“Any idea where your mother is?”

“My mother?”

“Your mother.”

“No. Home. Shopping. Buying. I don’t know. I don’t keep track of her. Why do you want to know where my mother is?”

“Just a few questions I need to ask her.”

“My mother?”

“Your mother.”

“I said no. Have you found out who killed Horvecki yet?”

“No, but I will.”

Greg had clasped his hands together and was tapping his clenched fist against his chin.

“You need more money?”

“More time,” I said. “Now, it would be nice if you left.”

“Sorry,” said Winn.

He adjusted his glasses and reached over to urge his friend out of the chair.

“I’ve got more questions,” said Greg.

“I can’t give you answers now,” I said. “Ronnie’s out on bail.”

Greg reluctantly rose from the chair, nodded a few times as he looked at me, then turned and, after a light punch to Winn’s arm, went through the door. Winn Graeme hesitated, looked at me and whispered, “Nickel Plate Club.”

Then he was gone. I stood listening while they opened the outer door and moved into the day.

I put on my Cubs cap and stepped into my outer room. Victor was sitting on the floor on his sleeping bag, a cardboard cup of coffee in his hand, looking up at one of the Stig Dalstroms on the wall.

A cup of coffee sat on my desk alongside a paper bag which contained a Chick-Fil-A breakfast chicken sandwich. I sat and began working on my breakfast. I put the coffee in my hand next to the one on my desk.

“I looked,” he said.

“At . . .”

“Internet. Ronald Owen Gerall.”

The door opened, and Ames came in bearing a Styrofoam cup of coffee. He nodded at Victor and handed the coffee to me. I put it alongside the others.

“I just had a visit from Winn and Greg,” I said working on one of the coffees. “They think we haven’t made any progress. Progress is overrated. Victor has some information for us about Ronnie.”

“He is married,” said Victor. “To Rachel Horvecki.”

“That a fact?” Ames said, looking at me for an explanation for why we were listening to something we already knew.

“Ronald Owen Gerall spent a year in a California Youth Facility when he was sixteen. Assault.”

That was new information.

“There’s a little more,” said Victor, showing more signs of life than I had ever seen in him before. “Because he was under-age when he came to Sarasota and he claimed to have no living relatives, he needed someone to vouch for him, help him find a place to live, and accept responsibility.”

“Who?”

“Sally Porovsky.”

While Ames, riding shotgun, went off with Victor to try to find Ronnie Gerall, I went to Sally’s office at Children and Family Services to do the same thing. I could have called to find out if she was in or off to see a client, but I didn’t want to hear her say that she was too busy to see me. Besides, I don’t like telephones. I don’t like the silences when someone expects me to speak and I have nothing to say or nothing I want to say. I use them when I must, which seemed to be a lot more of the time.

I parked the Saturn in the lot off of Fruitville and Tuttle where Children and Families had its office. Then I picked up my ringing phone and opened it. It was Dixie.

“Your Ronnie Gerall problem just got a little more complicated.”

“How?” I asked.

“Ronnie Gerall is dead.”

“When?”

“Six years ago in San Antonio,” Dixie said. “Which means . . .”

“Ronnie Gerall is not Ronnie Gerall. He stole a dead boy’s identity.”

“Looks that way,” she said. “But there’s more. I tried a search of the back issues of the San Antonio newspaper for a period a year before your Ronnie got here. I tried a match of the photograph of him in the Pine View yearbook.”

“And?”

“Bingo, Bango, Bongo. Newspaper told me his name is Dwight Ronald Torcelli. He fled an indictment for felony assault. Then I did a search for Dwight Ronald Torcelli. He’s twenty-six years old. His birthday’s tomorrow. He’ll be twenty-seven. Maybe you should buy him a cake or give him some Harry & David chocolate cherries.”

“Is that a hint?”

“Hell yes. I love those things. Want me to keep looking?”

“Try Rachel Horvecki or Rachel Gerall,” I said.

“They may have a license and a minister’s approval, but they are definitely not married.”

“I wonder if she knows that.”

“Good luck investigating, Columbo.”

We hung up, and I looked at the entrance to Building C of a complex of bored three-story office buildings that couldn’t decide whether to go with the dirt-stained brick on the bottom half or the streaked once-white wooden slats on top. Building C was on the parking lot between A and D. There was a neatly-printed sign plunged into the dirt and grass in front of the space where I parked. The sign said there was an office suite available and that it was ideal for a professional business.

The offices were almost all occupied by dentists, urologists, and investment counselors who promised free lunches at Long-horn for those who wanted to attend an equally free workshop on what to do with their money. A four-man cardiology practice had recently moved out and into a building they had financed on Tuttle, about a mile away.

Cardiologists, cataract surgeons, specialists in all diseases that plagued the old and perplexed the young are abundant in Sarasota, almost as abundant as banks.

John Gutcheon was seated at the downstairs reception desk making a clicking sound with his tongue as he wrote on a yellow pad.

John was in his mid-thirties, blond, thin, and very openly gay. His sharp tongue protected him from those who might dare to attack his life choice, although he had told me once, quite clearly, that it was not a choice and it was not an echo. His homosexuality was a reality he had recognized when he was a child. There were those who accepted him and those who did not. And he had come to terms with that after many a disappointment.