Bright Futures: A Lew Fonesca Mystery (Lew Fonesca Novels) (6 page)

There were three small windows in the big room and one in each of the other two rooms. Ames had already moved the air conditioner from my last place overlooking the defunct DQ to a window in the big room. It was already clear that the air conditioner wouldn’t be able to adequately cool one room let alone two or three. There was more space than I needed.

As Augustine had said, my boxes and furniture had been moved. My meager furniture looked sad and frightened in these rooms.

The first thing Victor Woo had done was put up my Stig Dalstrom prints, including a recent painting Flo had given to me as a house warming present. Victor had pinned the Dalstroms to the wall in about the same places they had been in my former space.

“Philip Horvecki,” I repeated into the cell phone which I now reluctantly owned.

The phone was another house warming present. It was from Adele, who was just about to become a freshman at New College in Sarasota. She could have gotten into dozens of colleges, but she wanted to continue to live with her baby, Catherine, in Flo’s house. No dorm experience for Adele, but she wouldn’t regret it. Adele’s father had sold her to a pimp when she was fourteen. Getting her away from Dad and pimp had had its complications, but when Flo took her in, Adele blossomed, turned her life around, became an A student in high school, and was now going to college. There had been one major speed bump in the path. Adele had gotten pregnant by an older man who was now doing time in prison for murder. Adele had named the baby Catherine in honor of my dead wife.

“Horvecki. Did he have a criminal record?” I asked.

“I’ll check,” said Viviase. “The county might have something. If that doesn’t work, I’ve got another place you can look.”

I had walked back out to get better reception.

Victor Woo had followed me out and sat next to me on the
top step. The Serita sisters, friends of Flo, lived in the bottom two floors of the brightly painted white and green wooden house. They owned the building, so I’d be paying rent to them, the same rent I had been paying behind the DQ.

From my seat on the top step, I could look past the freshly painted house across the street and into a yard where the edge of a screen-enclosed pool was visible. I stared at the water of the pool flecked with light from the setting sun and decided that I needed a shower.

“Check with Sergeant Yoder in the Sheriff’s Office,” added Viviase.

“Thanks,” I said.

The sun seemed to be dropping quickly now. I heard something below.

“Fonesca, you are one hard dog to find.”

It was Darrell Caton, which usually meant it must be Saturday, but I knew it wasn’t Saturday. Darrell was the fourteen-year-old that Sally Porovsky had conned me into being a big brother for. She was a county children and family services social worker I had been seeing socially and seeking in ways I didn’t understand.

Darrell was lean and black, wearing baggy jeans and a T-shirt that had something printed on the front. I couldn’t make out the word from twenty-two steps up.

“It’s not Saturday,” I called.

“I know that,” said Viviase on the phone. “You losing it, Fonesca?”

“Darrell just showed up,” I said.

“It’s not Saturday,” said Viviase, who knew of my weekly commitment to Darrell.

“I know,” I said.

Darrell had grown in the time he had been trailing me once a week. He looked forward to being with me because, as he said, “Man, something’s always happening with you. Guns, dead people, and shit. You are an education, Fonesca.”

I did not want to be an education, but I had grown used to seeing Darrell.

Darrell started up the steps. Victor started to move over so Darrell could sit.

“One more question,” I said into the phone.

“Yeah.”

“Why are you helping me?”

The pause was long. He was considering telling me something.

“He may not be guilty, and it’s not really my case, but if you’re looking into it . . .”

Darrell was almost in front of me now. He had bounded up the steps. He wasn’t panting. I remember once, when I was fourteen, lying in my bed and praying to God to let me live through Saturday because I had a soccer game on Saturday. We lost the game to Lane Tech, and I missed an easy goal. God did let me live, but it didn’t look as if he were about to do the same for Darrell.

I could now clearly see what was printed on the front of Darrell’s T-shirt. It read, in black block letters, “Pope John Paul II Girl’s Volleyball Team Kicks Ass.”

There was a crack in the air, a sudden sharp pinging sound from somewhere on the side of the house with the pool. Darrell lifted his head toward the sky as if he were startled by the sudden appearance of a UFO. Then he arched his back, groped over his left shoulder blade as if he had a sudden itch.

He was about to tumble backward down the stairs.

I dropped the phone and reached for him. His right hand almost touched mine and he bent over backward. Victor Woo was up, behind Darrell now, stopping his fall, setting him gently on the small landing in front of my door. Victor was holding the rickety handrail and taking the steps two at a time.

I knelt next to Darrell and groped for the phone.

“Fonesca, what the hell is going on?” asked Viviase.

“Someone shot Darrell. Send an ambulance.”

Victor hit the ground running like a sprinter. If he was lucky, he would catch up with the shooter. If he wasn’t lucky, he would catch up with the shooter. Victor was armed with nothing.

“I’m on the way,” Viviase said and ended the connection.

Darrell was groaning. A good sign.

“What the fuck, Fonesca? Oh. I like the action, but I don’t want to be the victim. You know what I’m saying?”

I rolled him gently onto his side.

“This isn’t for real,” he whimpered. “Why’d anyone want to shoot me?”

“I think they were trying to shoot me,” I said. “You got in the way.”

“I took a bullet for you?”

“Yes, but I’m guessing it was a pellet, not a bullet.”

“Hurts like a bullet.”

“You’ve been shot before?”

“Hell no,” he said and then gasped. “Life’s funnier than shit. You know what I’m saying? My mother’s going to be all over your ass, Fonesca. Jesus, it hurts. Am I going to die?”

“Yes, but so am I. You’re not going to die for a while.”

“You know how to make Christmas come early, don’t you Fonesca?”

“Ambulance is on the way,” I said.

“You ever been shot at, Fonesca?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“A few times.”

“Last time?”

“This morning.” An actor took that pellet in the eye.

There was no doubt where the pellet had entered Darrell, just below the left shoulder blade. The hole was small, the T-shirt was definitely ruined. There was blood dripping from the wound, but it didn’t look as if anything vital had been hit.

Police headquarters was, at maximum, a five-minute drive from where Darrell lay bleeding. Viviase made it in three, and somewhere in the distance an ambulance siren cut through the twilight.

T
HE EMERGENCY ROOM TRIAGE NURSE
, a wiry thin woman with wiry thin straw-colored hair, looked up at me and said, “You’re back, Mr. . . .”

“Fonesca.”

“Are you . . . ?”

“I’m fine. I’m here about Darrell Caton. He was brought in here by ambulance a few minutes ago.”

“What’s your relationship to him?”

“I’m his big brother,” I said. “It’s complicated.”

She looked from me to Ames to Victor and said, “He’s being ta k en care of by a doctor. His mother is on the way. Just have a seat.”

We had a seat.

That was when Victor told his story.

“I took your bicycle from under the stairs,” he said.

“Okay.”

“I went after the shooter, who I saw running from behind the house across the street. He was carrying a rifle.”

“What were you planning to do?” asked Ames.

“I don’t know.”

In a seat across from us, a drunk cradled a limp arm with his good arm like a baby. He snorted in half sleep.

“You chased him,” I said, getting Victor back on track.

“He ran down Laurel. When I turned the corner onto the street . . .”

“Laurel,” I said.

Victor knew almost nothing about Sarasota geography. He had spent most of his time in town squatting in my two former rooms.

“What’d he look like?” Ames asked.

“I don’t know, it was starting to get dark. He was a block away. He opened a car door, threw the rifle inside, climbed in, and started to drive away when I was about forty yards from him.”

“He got away,” said Ames with a touch of disapproval.

“He drove west. I followed him. I don’t know where we went. North, I think, then west again. He ran a light on Oxbay . . .”

“Osprey,” said Ames.

Victor nodded.

“Ran a light and then went way over the speed limit. I would have caught him on Fruit Street.”

“Fruitville,” I said.

“He went right through without stopping, almost hit a couple,” said Victor. “I stopped.”

“Why?” asked Ames.

I knew. Victor had killed my wife in a hit-and-run accident. He didn’t want to be the cause of another hit-and-run.

“You get a license plate number?” I asked.

The drunk across from us snorted louder than he had the first time. He was definitely asleep when he grunted, “Can there be any doubt in the mind of the jurors?”

Then he slumped over on his left side.

“No,” said Victor. “I think it was a dark-colored Nissan. Late model. As he crossed Fruitville, he went under a streetlight. I’m sure he gave me the finger.”

“When we find him,” said Ames evenly, “I shoot him.”

“Ames . . .” I began.

“He shot the boy,” said Ames. “Could have killed him if Victor here didn’t keep him from tumbling down the stairs.”

“He was aiming for me.”

“More’s the reason,” said Ames.

“No,” said Victor. “No killing.”

“I’ll not kill him,” said Ames. “I’ll just give him some sense of what it feels like to get shot in the eye or the back.”

“No,” said Victor.

The drunk roused himself, blinked his eyes, rubbed his chin, and tried unsuccessfully to flatten his bushy hair. Then he looked at us and said with a cough, “You’re just puttin’ on an act for me, right? I like the story, but it lacks romance. You know what I’m talkin’ about?”

That was when Darrell’s mother came through the emergency room doors, looked around, saw us, and moved in front of me. She was a dry, tired brown stick of a woman who had touches of good looks left over from only a few years earlier.

“You were supposed to look after him,” she said.

“Yes,” I agreed.

“You got him shot.”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

She stood, looked around the waiting room, and saw the drunk, who either bowed in his seat or was about to fall over again.

“I want to be angry at you, but I can’t do it. You’re a crazy man, but a good one,” she said. “Darrell thinks you . . . I’ve got to go see him.”

She turned and hurried to the desk where the wiry triage
nurse came around and led her through the double doors to the treatment area.

“I’m sorry I didn’t catch the shooter,” said Victor.

“You probably saved Darrell’s life,” I said. “A fall down those stairs might have killed him. I’ll settle for that.”

“I am the click-clack man who never made it to Oz. I am the bold deceiver who winks to those who understand, who winks only to himself in the mirror, a store window, the dark screen of a computer. I am the truth, which is a lie. I’m looking down at everyone from a spot reserved for me in the asshole of a serial killer with the blood of children in the webbing between his fingers.”

He had called about ten minutes after Victor, Ames, and I got back to my new rooms, which would always smell like decaying wood. He didn’t announce himself, just began talking with a muffled, high-pitched Latino accent that was more Billy Crystal than Ricardo Montalban.

“You’re the click-clack man,” I said. “You almost killed a 14-year-old. I’ve got that much.”

“Stop looking. Visualize yourself in dark glasses looking only straight ahead,” he said.

“I’d fall.”

Ames was reaching for the phone in my hand. He was not to be denied. Victor sat against the wall on his open bedroll.

“Someone here wants to say hello,” I managed as Ames took the phone from my hand and put it to his ear.

Ames looked very calm. I’d learned that Ames always looked calm when he was angry—dangerous and determined. I knew, given enough time, that Ames would find the shooter as Ames had found his former partner when he came to Sarasota. He had found him on the Lido Key Beach. There had been a shoot-out. The partner, a plaster pillar of the community who had cheated Ames out of a small fortune, had not survived the volley.

“Where did you get blunt-force .22 bullets?” asked Ames.

“What?” the caller said.

“The ones you used to shoot out that man’s eye, and to shoot the boy. We can trace them.”

“No, you can’t,” said the caller.

“Here,” said Ames handing me back the phone and moving back to lean against the wall with his arms folded.

“My friend is angry,” I told the caller.

His voice betrayed a quiver and went a little higher when he said, “I didn’t intend to kill him or even shoot him.”

“You wanted to shoot me?”

“Yes. And I will if you don’t stop.”

“Stop what?”

“You know.”

Ann Hurwitz would say I should stop fighting my emergence from depression over my wife’s bloody death against the grille of the car Victor Woo had driven down Lake Shore Drive. It had happened as Catherine was crossing at the light. I think we were going to have steak for dinner. Or was it chili?

“Fonesca?” said the caller. “You listening?”

“Not really. Why are you calling?”

“Stop looking,” he repeated with some frustration.

“Or you’ll try to shoot me again with a pellet gun?”

“I have a real rifle,” he said.