Bright Futures: A Lew Fonesca Mystery (Lew Fonesca Novels) (22 page)

“Still wearing that thing,” he said, looking up at me and shaking his head. “Lewis, when will you learn the difference between an outrageous fashion statement and bad taste.”

“I like the Cubs,” I said.

“And I like sea bass but I don’t wear it on my head. There are other ways of expressing your bad taste,” he said.

“My wife gave me this cap,” I said.

“And my cousin Robert wanted to give me an introduction to a predatory friend at a gay bar,” he said. “I made the mistake of accepting that introduction. You could at least clean that abomination on your head.”

“I’ll do that,” I said.

“Lewis, ’tis better to be cleanly bald than tastelessly chapeaued.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“No, you won’t, but I feel as compelled as a priestly exorcist to remind you.”

“Sally in?” I asked.

“All in,” he said folding his hands on the desk.

“How is your writing coming?”

“You remembered,” he said with mock joy. “Well, thank you for asking. My writing career is at a halt while several online and one honest-to-God publisher decide whether it’s worth continuing.”

“Ronnie Gerall,” I said.

He looked up. I had struck home.

“He . . . I can’t discuss clients,” he said, measuring his words careful. “Lawsuits. Things like that. You know.”

“You’ve talked to me about lots of clients.”

“Have I? Shouldn’t have. She’s in. I assume you didn’t come to see me.”

“You have a favorite first line of a novel?” I asked.

He pulled open a drawer of his desk and came up with a thin paperback with ragged pages. He opened the book and read: “ ‘Where’s Papa going with that ax? said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.’ ”

“Stephen King?” I guessed.

He held up the book to show me its cover.
Charlotte’s Web
, by E. B. White. Then he said, “Where’s Lewis going with that ax?”

“No ax,” I said.

“Liar,” said Gutcheon.

“No,” I said.

“Always a pleasure to talk to you,” he said as I headed for the elevator.

The elevator rocked to the hum of a weary motor. I wasn’t fully certain what I was doing here or what I expected when I talked to Sally. I had a lead. I was following it. At least that’s what I told myself.

The elevator door opened slowly to a Wall Street stage, only the people in front of me in two lines of cubicles were dealing in human misery, not stocks and bonds and millions of dollars. It was a busy day for the caseworkers at Children and Families. There was no shortage of abuse, anger, and neglect.

A few of the dozen cubicles were empty, but most were occupied by a caseworker and at least one client. Almost all the clients were black. Sometimes the client was a tired parent or two. Some were sullen or indifferent, others were frightened. Some were children. The mornings were generally for taking in clients at the office. The afternoons and evenings were for home
visits throughout the county. Sometimes the day was interrupted by a court appearance. Sometimes it was interrupted by something personal—personal to the life of the harried caseworker, something like Lew Fonesca.

Sally’s back was to me. In the chair next to her desk sat an erect black man in a dark suit and red tie. In the man’s lap was a neatly folded lightweight coat. He was about fifty and lean, with graying temples. He looked at me through rimless glasses. He reminded me of a sociology professor I had at the University of Illinois, a professor who, when he looked at me, seemed to be in wonder that such a mirthless silent specimen should have made it to his small classroom.

I stood silently while Sally went over a form in front of her. When she spoke, she had to raise her voice above the hubbub of voices around her.

“He’s in school now?” she asked.

I stood back, knowing that she would eventually turn and see me, or her client would gaze at me again and catch her eye.

“Yes, he is. At least he is supposed to be.”

His voice was deep, even.

“Thurgood is a good student?” Sally said, looking up from the form.

“When he goes to school, and if you should meet him, he will not answer to the name ‘Thurgood.’ His middle name is Marshall. Thurgood Marshall Montieth.”

“He is,” said Sally, “twelve years old.”

“Soon to be thirteen,” said Montieth. “And, if I may, I will encapsulate the data you have in front of you in the hope of speeding the process so I can get back to work. My name is Marcus Montieth. I’m forty-seven years of age. I am a salesman and floor manager at Joseph Bank clothing store in the Sarasota Mall. My wife is dead. Thurgood is my only child. He is a truant, a problem. He has run away four times. I do not beat him. I do not slap him. I do not deprive him of food. I do not try to instill in him a fear of
God because I do not believe in a god or gods. My health is good, though there is a history of heart attack in my family.”

“Thurgood is an only child?” asked Sally.

“And for that I would thank God were I to believe in one. May I ask you two questions?”

“Yes,” said Sally.

“What can be done for my son, and why is that man hovering over our conversation?”

Sally turned enough in her desk chair to look over her right shoulder at me.

“Lewis, could you . . .” she began.

Something in the way I looked told her this was not one of my usual visits. Usually, I called before I came. Usually, I waited downstairs and listened to John Gutcheon while I waited for her to be free. Usually, there was no sense of urgency in my appearance. Usually, I did not hover near her cubicle.

“I’ll be with you in a few minutes,” she said.

I thought it unlikely she would ever be with me. I had let Sally Porovsky move into my life—no, to be fair, I had moved into hers—and let the ghost of Catherine begin to fade a little, but just a little.

“Mr. Montieth, when would it be possible for you to come back with Thurgood?”

“Please remember to call him Marshall. During the day he is supposedly in school. In the evenings I work. He comes home to my sister Mae’s apartment after school. I do get Wednesdays off.”

“Wednesday after school?”

“Yes,” he said. “Time?”

“Four-thirty,” said Sally, reaching over to write in her desktop calendar.

“We will be here,” he said rising.

He was tall, six-four or six-five, and when he passed me I expected a look of disapproval at my intrusion. He smiled in understanding, assuming
What? A fellow parent with a troubled
child? A homeless creature in a baseball cap, some scratches on his face?

“I’ve got a client coming in ten minutes, Lewis,” she said.

I stepped forward but I didn’t sit. She looked up at me.

“What is it?”

“Ronnie Gerall,” I said. “When he supposedly transferred from San Antonio to Pine View, you vouched for him, signed papers of guardianship, found him a family to live with.”

“Yes,” she said. “Lewis, please sit.”

Her full, round face was smooth, just a little pink, and definitely pretty. She was tired. Sally was tired much of the time.

I sat.

“What’s your question?” she asked with a smile that made it clear that she did not expect me to ask if she would run away with me to Genoa.

“Two questions to start,” I said. “How did Ronnie Gerall get in touch with you? How old was he when he entered Pine View School for the Gifted?”

Sally blew out a puff of air as she leaned back in her chair and looked up at the white drop ceiling.

“A letter and records came from Ronnie’s caseworker in San Antonio addressed to me. The caseworker said Ronnie’s parents had recently been killed in a small plane crash and that Ronnie had no other relatives, though his father had once had a brother in Sarasota. There was a possibility that other relatives might be found. The records showed that Ronnie was sixteen when he arrived here.

“I called the number I’d been given,” she said. “A woman answered, gave her name, said she was Ronnie’s caseworker and had heard of me through an attorney who had moved to San Antonio a few weeks earlier. She didn’t have his name, but could get it if I needed it.”

“You were conned,” I said.

“I know.”

“Ronnie Gerall was twenty-five when he came here,” I said.

“Almost twenty-six,” she said.

“His real name is Dwight Torcelli. When did you find out?”

“Two years later,” she said. “Just before I met you. How did you find out?”

“Dixie.”

Sally shook her head. She looked more tired than I had ever seen her.

“I was suspicious,” she said. “Dwight Torcelli is a very good-looking, charming, smart, fast-talking young man. With my experience, you might think I wouldn’t fall for things like this, but he took me in and made it clear that he was interested in me as someone other than a caseworker.”

“And?” I said, knowing, almost welcoming yet another blow.

“I let him get close, not so close that we . . . but close. By that time I knew he wasn’t a teenager. I should have turned him in, but he was persuasive, claimed he had never finished high school, that he wanted to go to college and . . .”

“Yes?” I said.

“By that time he was in his senior year. We saw each other once in a while, but we never . . .”

“I believe you.”

“Don’t,” she said closing her eyes. “There were two times, both in the last year. I . . . I’m forty-three years old, two young children, a job that never stops, sad stories around me all day and here was a young man who reminded me of a very white-toothed young James Dean.”

“That’s why you’re moving?” I said. “Because Torcelli is here?”

“That and the other things we talked about.”

We were silent for a while, looking at each other.

“You think he killed Horvecki?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Why would he?”

“He’s married to Rachel Horvecki. She inherits her father’s money.”

Sally looked over the top of her cubicle at the ceiling.

“If Ronnie left Sarasota, would you stay?” I asked.

“Probably not. I broke the rules, Lew,” she said, turning in her chair and putting a hand on my arm. “I’m sorry.”

The phone rang. Sally picked it up and said, “All right.”

When she hung up, she said, “My next appointment’s here.”

I stood.

“You know where I might find him?”

She pulled over the note pad on her desk, paused to look at the framed photograph of her two kids, and jotted something down. Then she tore it from the pad and handed it to me.

“I’m really very good at what I do here,” she said.

“I know.”

“I’m sorry. Lew . . .”

“Yes.”

“Get the son of a bitch.”

I nodded, said nothing and left the cubicle. It was the first time I had heard her utter any epithet more harsh than “damn.” I didn’t want to run into Sally’s next client or clients getting off the elevator. I didn’t want to imagine what it would be like for Sally after our conversation. I took the stairs.

John Gutcheon looked up at me with sympathy. He knew.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Everybody seemed to be sorry, including me. I wondered how Gutcheon had found out about Dwight Torcelli and Sally, but I guessed that he had seen it in Dwight’s triumph and Sally’s guilt. He saw a lot going by as he sat behind that reception desk. Sometimes one learns more by sitting and watching than running and listening.

I
CALLED AMES.

“We’ve been parked outside Gerall’s apartment,” said Ames. “Nothing yet.”

“That’s not where he is,” I said.

I told him where I was going and asked him to get there soon, and armed.

“You sound like someone hit you with an andiron.”

“Yes,” I said. “I know. I’ve got some things you should know. I’ll tell you when I see you.”

“Saturn needs more work,” Ames said. “Best do it in the morning.”

“Right,” I said, and hung up.

Saturn, Mars, Jupiter, and the Earth all needed more work. The Universe needed more work. I tried to concentrate on a new metallic banging under the dashboard. It sounded like an angry elf had had enough of this rust of metal and motion. Up Tamiami Trail into Bradenton and a turn at Forty-seventh. I parked at the address Sally had written for me. Gerall’s car was there. So
was a perfectly polished, sporty-looking new Mazda with all the bells and whistles one could buy, enjoy, and show off. I probably wasn’t too late. He could have run away on foot. Unlikely. He could have taken a cab. Possible. Someone could have picked him up and taken him to another refuge. I sat and waited for Ames to arrive.

The apartment building was small, two stories, brick, in need of a serious blasting to reveal whatever color was under the dirty earth and etched-in dripping patterns from the building’s old drains. The weight of leaves, brush, twigs, and tree branches gave the illusion of a sagging middle to the roof. A sign, as abused as the building, said that choice studio apartments were available in the Ponce De Leon Arms. The dried-up tiny fountain near the take-it-or-leave-it sign let tenants know they had not come to the right place if they were planning to live forever. What the building and the sign did say, without words, was, “If you’re low on the pole and looking for what you can get by on, this is as good a place as any.”

Victor pulled his car in behind mine and remained behind the wheel, while Ames got out wearing his weathered yellow duster.

“I’ll go in first. You stand outside his door,” I said.

Ames nodded in understanding. We crunched over a layer of dead and dying yellow, orange, and black leaves dropped by two massive native oak trees. The entryway door of the building was open. The small foyer, tiled in cracked, ancient squares, had nothing to offer but a bank of twelve mailboxes, one of which hung open, and a collection of flyers and giveaway newspapers promising two slices of flavorless pizza for the price of one. The apartment marked gerall was number seven.

We went through the inner door, also open, and down the narrow, carpeted corridor to apartment seven. Someone inside was talking. I could have strained to pick up some of the conversation. The voices belonged to a man and a woman.