Bright Futures: A Lew Fonesca Mystery (Lew Fonesca Novels) (31 page)

The chili was good, not too spicy. We drank Diet Cokes and talked.

Catherine in her high chair worked on crackers. I watched her. I was here for a few minutes of sanity.

I told Flo that Ames and I were now officially partners.

“That a fact?” she said.

“Fact,” Ames confirmed.

“How’s the new place working out?”

“Fine,” I said.

Ames ate his chili straight. I filled mine with crumbled crackers.

I had been aware for some time that if Ames indicated something beyond friendship in his relationship with Flo, she would be receptive. Flo was somewhere around sixty-five years old. Ames was over seventy. Flo had a built-in family to offer—herself, Adele, and the baby, plus the money her husband Gus had left her.

I didn’t think Ames was in the market, but the door was open.

Adele called. She was going to be late. Flo told her we were there. Adele said she was sorry.

Catherine was in Flo’s arms and George Jones was singing “He Stopped Loving Her Today” when we left. Ames went out first and looked around to be sure no one was about to shoot at me. There was no real cover around the houses in the area, which was almost without trees and bushes. The trees that did exist were, like the houses, only five or six years old.

“Next stop?” asked Ames, riding shotgun again as I drove.

“I’ve got dinner with Sally,” I said.

“Best be looking for whoever’s shooting at you.”

“I think I know.”

I told him. He nodded.

“So,” he said. “I keep an eye on the shooter.”

“Yes.”

We met at Miss Saigon just across 301 from the Greyhound bus station. The restaurant was in a small, downscale mall with mostly Hispanic businesses: a tienda, a travel agency, a beauty shop, a check-cashing service. One of the shops in the mall was, according to Ettiene Viviase, a legitimate business and a front for a neighborhood mom-and-pop numbers racket.

I arrived first, putting my Cubs cap in my pocket. I didn’t want it stolen through the broken window of my car. I wore a clean pair of tan wash-and-wear pants and a white shirt with a button-down collar. The cap didn’t really go with the dressed-up version of Lewis Fonesca.

I ordered Viet nam ese iced tea. Sally arrived ten minutes later, touched my shoulder as she passed, and sat across from me. Coming separately had been Sally’s idea.

“I don’t want any front door good-byes,” she had said.

“I understand,” I had said.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said.

“Not very.”

“Not very sorry or not very late?” she asked with a smile that could have used more enthusiasm.

She ordered an unsweetened iced tea.

When the waiter returned, I ordered noodles with short ribs. Sally ordered duck soup.

We ate in silence. The restaurant was small and busy, with mostly Viet nam ese customers. Vaguely Asian music was playing in the background. Voices were low.

“Did you . . . ?” she began, pausing with chopsticks raised. She stopped, question unanswered but understood.

“He’ll go away soon,” I said.

“Soon?”

“Maybe the next few days.”

“Far?”

“Far,” I said.

“How do you plan to persuade him?”

“You’ll know in a few days.”

I didn’t use chopsticks, though I could have. My wife had taught me how to use them. At first I had been a poor student, but I caught on. Now, I couldn’t bring myself to use them. It was something I did only with Catherine, a small thing but a fine silkscreen for memories.

“Lewis,” she said.

“Yes.”

“You drifted off somewhere.”

“Sorry,” I said. “With Ronnie gone, you won’t have to leave.”

“It was hard for me to come here tonight,” she said, looking down at the bowl in front of her. “Hard for me to face you. I can’t imagine seeing you day after day.”

“You won’t get any accusations from me,” I said.

“I know, but you don’t need any more pain from man or woman.”

“Don’t leave,” I said.

“That’s probably the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, but where do we go if I stay?”

“Where do you want to go?”

“You answered a question with a question,” she said. “I do that all the time with clients.”

“So?”

“You don’t even know how I look nude and we’ve never been to bed together,” she said. “Almost four years, Lewis.”

I tried to stop it, but the image of Sally and Dwight Torcelli in bed came to me. It would come back to me, too. I was sure.

“We can work on it,” I said.

“You, me, Ronnie, and Catherine in bed together,” she said. “You don’t forget anything, Lew. I’ll bet you even know the name of your grade school gym teacher and exactly how he looked.”

“She,” I said, remembering. “Shirley Ann Stoffey. Her husband was Jerry Stoffey, a staff writer for the
Chicago Tribune
. Mrs. Stoffey had a small purple birthmark above her left wrist. She had a Baltimore accent and a tarnished tin whistle she always wore around her neck.”

“You see? You can’t forget and you can’t bring yourself to lie about your memories. You never forget,” Sally said.

I didn’t say anything. I should have, but I couldn’t. This was the moment for sincere, simple eloquence, but it wasn’t in me. Sally was right.

She sighed deeply and said, “I’ll tell you what. The job in Vermont is open-ended and I could always come back here. I might even get a raise. The kids would be happy if we stayed. I’ll tell you what. In Vermont, a year from today, we meet and see . . . Lewis, I’m leaving, not just you but my own memories.”

“You can’t run away from memories,” I said. “I tried. They follow you.”

“I’ve made my decision,” she said.

“I understand.”

And I did. Sally usually had coffee after dinner. Not this time. I said I would pay. She let me. She gave me a quick kiss and left me sitting there.

I paid in cash and left a big tip. I don’t know how much fifteen or even twenty percent is. I don’t know how much nine times seven is. I had counted on Catherine to do that. I had counted on Sally to do it, too.

Sally was right, right about everything.

I got in my Saturn, put on my cap, and drove to the place
where I was reasonably sure of finding the evidence I needed to convince the police.

I parked a block away and walked back. At the window, I checked, double-checked, and checked again to be sure no one was inside. The next shot from the person who lived here would likely be up close and with a shotgun. The window wasn’t locked. I climbed in.

Less than ten minutes later, pocket flashlight in hand, I had found everything I needed. I left it all in place and left.

Tomorrow, it would be over.

It was about eleven at night when I climbed the long flight of stairs to my rooms. With Victor gone, I would be spending my first night alone here. I was looking forward to it. But first I had to deal with the visitor standing on the landing at the top of the stairs.

“Where have you been?” asked Greg Legerman. “No, wait. I take that back. It’s none of my business. What I should say is, How is the effort to save Ronnie going? That is my business.”

“It’ll be over tomorrow,” I said.

I opened the door, reached in to turn on the lights. He followed me inside. I closed the door and he moved to the chair behind my desk. I could have told him I didn’t want to talk. It would have been true, but I sat.

“Where’s Winn?” I asked.

“Home, I think. We don’t spend all our time together. Well, most, but not all. I’ve decided I’m going to Duke. So is Winn.”

I shifted my weight, took out my wallet and counted out cash, which I placed on the desk in front of Greg.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“What you paid me minus the time I spent working on your case.”

“Why?”

“Let’s say your mother and grandfather have paid me more than enough.”

“I don’t understand,” he said, looking at the money.

“You will tomorrow.”

“ ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps at a petty pace,’ ” he said. “That’s Shakespeare, sort of.”

“I know. Very poetic.”

He looked around the room wondering what to say or do next.

“Do you know the history of your semiprofession in the United States?”

“No.”

He got up, leaving the cash on the desk, and started to pace as he spoke.

“The first U.S. marshals were appointed by George Washington to serve subpoenas, summonses, writs, warrants, and other processes issued by the courts. They also arrested and handled all Federal prisoners.”

“I’m not a U.S. marshal. I’m a private contractor.”

“I know, I know. But you see the history, the connection. Our lives, our history, and the history of the entire country—the entire world—are connected by slender threads of seemingly random events.”

“Interesting,” I said. “Would you like a can of Coke?”

If he said yes I would have given him the caffeine-free variety. Greg Legerman needed no more stimulation.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I get carried away.”

“You have any idea who killed Blue Berrigan?”

“No, but I have to tell you something about him. Berrigan.”

“Tell.”

“I hired Blue Berrigan to lie to you, to tell you he had evidence that would clear Ronnie.”

“He tried.”

“He wanted more money from me. Said he’d tell the police I had killed Horvecki.”

“And you wouldn’t give it?”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t kill him. I don’t know who did, probably whoever killed Horvecki.”

“Maybe,” I said. “How did you know Berrigan?”

“He used to work for my grandfather on his infomercials and at his mall appearances. I’ve known him all my life. He always needed money. It was a bad idea.”

“Very bad.”

“I got him killed,” said Greg.

I didn’t say anything.

“What happened to the Chinese guy?” Greg asked. “His bedroll’s gone.”

“Went home. A place far away and exotic.”

“China?”

“Oswego, Illinois.”

“Cheng Ho, fifteenth century admiral, diplomat, explorer, son of a Muslim, descendent of Mongol kings, was the first real Chinese explorer extending his country’s influence throughout the regions bordering the Indian Ocean.”

“Greg,” I said, trying to slow him down as he paced, speaking so quickly that I missed some of the words.

“Fifteenth century,” he said. “Do you know how the Romans numbered the centuries before the Christian era?”

“Greg,” I said again as he paused in his pacing to glance at the dark Dalstrom paintings on my wall.

I thought he was going to shift from the Roman calendar to something about art, but he stayed with his history.

“Eleven months, a three-hundred-and-four-day year. But my question was a trick. Your answers to me have been tricks. The Romans didn’t number their years. When a new year came, they called it something like ‘The Year of the Counsels of Rome.’
They didn’t think of decades or centuries. Time meant something different to the Romans.”

“Greg, how did you get here?”

“I drove, of course.”

“How about staying here tonight?”

“Why?”

“Do I have to tell you?”

He went back to the chair, sat, played with the money, scratched his forehead and said, “No.”

“I’ll call your mother.”

“No,” he said. “Not necessary. She isn’t sitting up waiting for me.”

“Your grandfather?”

“No. I won’t be missed. I’m never missed. I am a trial and a tribulation to my family,” he said, finishing with a broad grin. “Don’t worry. I’ve brought some of my quiet-down tranquilizers. I’ll be fine.”

“Bathroom is over there. I’ll get my sleeping bag out of the closet.”

“I need a pillow.”

“I’ll get you one.”

“Thanks. I’ll take that Coke now.”

“Caffeine free,” I said.

“I’ll take it.”

I got it for him. He used it to wash down three pills he fished from a small plastic bottle.

“I’ll resist telling you about the developmental history of tranquilizers,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“You remind me of your grandfather,” I said.

“Is that an insult or a compliment?”

“Observation.”

“Others have said the same. I long to be away at the Duke campus, built and endowed by . . .”

I sat listening as he slowly talked himself down, drank two Cokes, used the bathroom twice, and finally, at a few minutes past midnight, took off his shoes. I got him a pillow. He took it and moved to what had been Victor’s corner.

I turned off the lights and got into bed. It would not be the first night I slept without a pillow. I’d have to put the purchase of a guest pillow on my mental list of things I needed.

There was no problem. I lay in darkness in my T-shirt and shorts and let the thoughts of both Catherines, of Sally, and of what I had to do in the morning come. They came and went, and I slept well. I slept dreamlessly.

Greg was gone when I got up a few minutes before eight the next morning. The sleeping bag was rolled up with the pillow plumped on top of it. The cash I had laid out was still on the desk and there was a scribbled note I could barely read:

I have the feeling that what you will do today will be something other than what I would like. Consider the cash payment for your putting up with me last night. Greg Legerman is not an easy town
.

I called Ames and told him I would pick him up in half an hour.

“Did you get any sleep?” I asked.

“Some.”

“Our shooter?”

“Didn’t move.”

“You have breakfast?”

“Not yet,” he said. “Okay if we eat here?”

“Sure.”

Half an hour later I was seated at a table in the Texas Bar and Grill and being served by Big Ed. We ate chili and eggs and didn’t say much.

“Thanks,” I said.

“For?”

“You fixed my car window last night,” I said. “Or was it the car window fairy?”

“Me. Took a few hours off when our shooter was tucked in.”

“You armed?”

Ames pulled his jacket open to reveal a small holstered gun.

“Leave it here,” I said. “We won’t need it where we’re going.”

I called Ettiene Viviase and he agreed to meet us at the jail just down the street when I told him what I wanted to do.