Midnight Pass: A Lew Fonesca Novel (Lew Fonesca Novels) (8 page)

“You’re sure he’s dead?” I asked.

“Yes. I covered his body with the blanket so the children wouldn’t see him when I woke them up.”

“I’ll go take a look. You go back to your kids and give me your room card.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I’m asking you,” I said. “I won’t take long. If the phone rings, it’ll be me. Answer it.”

She brushed her hair back with her long fingers and pulled the room card out. I took it and let her back into my room. The television was on. Kenny had switched to an old
Dick Van Dyke
rerun, the one where Rob goes off to a cabin to write a novel. The episode, as I recalled, was funny. Sydney was asleep and Kenneth Jr. wasn’t laughing.

I went down the fire stairs and made my way to the room on the seventh floor. I opened the door and wiped the door handle clean with my shirt. Then I kicked the door closed. The lights were on. There was a vague body shape under the blanket on the open hide-away bed.

I moved alongside the bed and pulled the blanket back. Andrew Stark lay there, bloody, eyes closed. His T-shirt had a picture of a grinning cartoon turkey on the front. The turkey was covered in blood. A knife was plunged deep into his chest. Stark was naked from the shirt down.

I didn’t touch anything else. I looked around the room and into the bedroom. There was a teddy bear and stuffed elephant lying back on a pink blanket. I went back into the room where Stark was lying, checked my watch, and started for the door.

The moan wasn’t loud, but it was clear and it came from the supposedly dead Andrew Stark. I went back to the body and knelt. Stark’s eyes opened and moved in the general direction of my face. I didn’t bother to tell him not to move.

I could have just called 911, but a few minutes probably wouldn’t make much difference. At least that’s what I told myself.

“You’ll be all right,” I assured him as I examined his wound.

He looked around the room as if he had no idea of where he was. He smelled of alcohol. There was plenty of blood.

“You’ll live,” I lied. “I’m going to try to stop some of this bleeding. Then I’ll call an ambulance.”

His right hand came up suddenly and gripped my wrist. For a dying man, he was damned strong. I tried to pull loose as he croaked, “Why?”

“You want to live?”

“Why?” he asked.

Since it was the same question I’ve asked myself a few thousand times since my wife was killed, I had no good answer for him, but I had the feeling that his “why” didn’t mean the same thing mine did.

His eyes began to roll. A very bad sign.

He whispered something I couldn’t hear, pain in his face…Then he closed his eyes and I leaned over to be sure he was still breathing. He was.

I picked up the phone, not worrying about fingerprints any longer, and dialed my own room. Janice answered before the second ring.

“Yes?” she said with a quivering voice.

“It’s me, Fonesca. Get down to your room fast. Leave the kids there.”

“What…?”

“He’s still alive.”

She didn’t answer and I had no time to talk to her now.

“Fast,” I said.

I hung up, checked my watch, sat on the bed, and said, “Stark, you still with me?”

His groan suggested that he was. I checked my watch. Almost a minute passed. If she didn’t show up fast, I’d have to call 911.

The knock was soft, but it was a knock. I let her in. She was a ghostly pale, beautiful vision of white and blood red. I closed the door and she walked over to Stark, who hadn’t moved.

“Andy?” she asked.

He groaned in response.

She turned to me and, voice and hands shaking, said, “I didn’t kill him.”

“You’ve got to call 911,” I said. “You’ve got to call now. Just tell them a man has tried to kill himself. Tell them where we are. Don’t answer any more questions.”

She shook her head no. I picked up the phone and handed it to her. I hit 9 for an outside line and then 911.

I could hear a voice on the other end because the phone wasn’t close to her ear, but I couldn’t make out the words.

She said exactly what I had told her to say and hung up.

“Good,” I said. “I think we’ve got at least five minutes, maybe more. I’m going to be back in my room with the kids. You understand?”

She nodded again, looking at the half-naked, bloody man on the bed. He made a series of short gasping sounds, managed to reach the handle of the knife with his right hand, and tried to pull it out before I could stop him. Then he stopped struggling and his hands flopped to his sides.

I checked for a pulse in his neck. There wasn’t any.

“You want to tell me what really happened here, or you want me to guess?” I asked. “Faster if you tell me.”

“He didn’t tell you?” she said, clasping her hands together to keep them from shaking.

“He didn’t say anything other than ‘Why?’” I said, determined to be out of there in three minutes. “You said he hit you. There’s not a mark on you. You said he tried to attack you and you fought him, but the kids didn’t wake up. And your robe is bloody and I don’t see a tear in it or a button missing. You stabbed him while you were wearing the robe. You stabbed him while he was lying in the bed. You stabbed him when he was asleep. You got up, put on your robe, and stabbed him.”

“You don’t understand,” she said, crying, her hands, white-knuckled, clasped in mock prayer.

“Maybe I do. Which kid?”

“Which…?”

“You woke up and saw something. Which of your children was he going to molest?”

“Sydney,” she said wearily. “The bathroom light was on and the door open a little, a night-light. He was sitting on Sydney’s side of the bed, his hand between her legs. She was asleep. Andy had been drinking while I was asleep. I could smell it across the room. He started to touch her. Before I could get up, he came back to bed. A few minutes later when he started to snore I got up and put on my robe. I took the knife and…the rest of what I told you was true.”

“Does Sydney know what Stark was trying to do to her?”

“No, I don’t think they even looked at the bed when we left the room,” she said. “They weren’t even really awake.”

I checked my watch. Florida police had been under fire for months over not responding to 911 calls quickly enough. Time was running out.

“You came out of the bathroom,” I said to Janice Severtson. “You could tell he was drunk, mumbling. Words you couldn’t understand. Saw him stab himself. You called 911 and remembered that you had seen me, an old friend of your husband’s, in the hotel. You called me, brought the children to my room, and came back here to wait for the ambulance and police. You understand?”

“I…,” she said, looking at Stark.

“He’s been talking about killing himself for running away with you, his partner and best friend’s wife. He’s been talking about regretting things he did in the past. He’s been drinking and he got depressed when he drank. You’ve got that?”

“I…”

“Mrs. Severtson,” I said, “if you want to keep your kids out of this, you better remember. You tell the truth about what happened and why, and you lose your kids. Television news will get it and make it all very ugly. Your picture, the children’s picture all over the place, maybe network. Good-bye kids. Good-bye husband. Probably jail time. So, can you remember what to say?”

“He killed himself,” she said. “But why can’t I just say he attacked me and I defended myself?”

“That’s what you told me, and it took me about two minutes to figure out you were lying,” I said.

Stark’s hand and fingerprints were on the knife handle. Even if a smart cop thought something was more than a little suspicious, he probably wouldn’t pursue it. Stark had a record. Stark, Janice, and her children weren’t rednecks in a cheap motel room. Class still has its privileges.

“I’m going,” I said. “They’ll be here any second. You’ll be all right.”

It wasn’t a question but she answered more strongly than I expected.

“I’ll be all right.”

I moved toward the door.

“Wait,” she said.

I turned toward her. She went into the bedroom and came back almost immediately. She handed me the teddy bear, the stuffed elephant, and the pink blanket. I went out and moved fast without running toward the stairwell. Below, out of sight, I could hear the sound of voices in the lobby. I ran up the one flight and came out close to the wall where I couldn’t be seen by anyone eight flights below. I made my way to my room, opened the door, and found Sydney asleep on the sofa next to her brother, who was nodding off as he watched the end of the
Dick Van Dyke
episode. In her sleep, Sydney took the elephant and the pink blanket and clutched them to her chest.

Kenny looked at me. I handed him the teddy bear.

“What happened?” he asked, eyes blinking heavily. “Where’s my mom?”

“Mr. Stark had an accident,” I said.

“I don’t like him anymore,” the boy said. “Sydney doesn’t like him anymore either. He smiles, buys us stuff, but he’s a fake. We told Mom. She wouldn’t listen.”

“She’s listening now,” I said. “What did you see tonight before your mom brought you to my room?”

Kenneth didn’t hesitate.

“Andy was sleeping on the bed,” the boy said. “All covered up.”

“You want to get some sleep, Kenneth?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Get into the bed in the other room,” I said.

“Sydney might get up and be scared.”

“I’ll put her next to you.”

That seemed acceptable to him. I picked up the girl, who clung to her blanket and elephant. She smelled clean. She smelled like a little girl. I followed Kenny into the bedroom, where he watched me put his sister down on the bed. Then he climbed into the bed, put his head on the pillow, and fell asleep almost instantly with one hand touching his sister’s arm.

It was just a question of how long it would take some cop to knock at the door to my room. My story would be simple, always best to keep it simple. Friend of Janice’s husband, taking a few days off to enjoy the Orlando glitz, ran into them in the elevator. Then she brought me the kids. I didn’t know Stark. I didn’t know what he was doing there. Janice would have to swallow the humiliation and tell them the truth on that one. The cops would probably just go through the motions. No need to do anything else.

I was halfway through a Diet Dr Pepper and an ancient rerun of a
Bob Newhart Show
when the knock came.

The two uniformed cops looked as if they had been awakened from a deep sleep. They were both young. The older of the two, who was about thirty, asked the questions. The other one took the notes.

They stayed long enough to get statements from Janice Severtson and me. They didn’t wake the kids. Janice told them she had seen Stark stab himself but the kids hadn’t even seen the body. She told them she had brought them up to me when Stark stabbed himself. She said she had quickly run back down and found him on the bed. She got the blood on herself, she told them, when she tried to help him.

She was a good liar. So am I. She agreed to stay in Orlando the next day to come in, answer a detective’s questions, and sign a statement. They said the kids should stay in Orlando in case a detective wanted to talk to them. Then the cops said I could do whatever I wanted.

I asked Janice if she was going to be all right, took her to my room after the police let her gather some clothes, gave her my door card, packed in about a minute, put on my cap, and moved to the door.

“You might want to shower,” I said, “and get some sleep on the sofa.”

She nodded.

“Thank you,” she said. “I don’t think they believed me.”

“They believed me,” I said. “Shower, sleep.”

“Yes,” she answered, drained, automatic.

“You be all right?”

“Yes.”

I left, stopping at the desk, where the night manager heard my story, looked serious and sympathetic, and said he would be happy to give me a room for the rest of the night.

I checked my watch. It was almost five-thirty in the morning. The sun would be up in less than an hour.

“I don’t feel like seeing Mickey Mouse anymore,” I said.

“I had enough the first week I was here with my niece,” he said. “How much bouncy and jolly can an adult take?”

“A lot less than a kid,” I said.

I drove for a while on I-4, got off at a Lakeland exit, had an Egg McMuffin and coffee, and headed for Sarasota.

TRAFFIC WAS WEEKDAY-MORNING
heavy on both I-4 and I-75. I was back in the DQ parking lot and climbing the concrete stairs to my office and home a little after nine-thirty.

I called Kenneth Severtson’s number. No answer. I was relieved. I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t want questions.

“Your wife and kids will probably be back tomorrow,” I told his machine. “They’re fine. Be nice. Stark’s dead. Killed himself. A long story. Your wife will tell you.”

There was one message on my answering machine. It was one of the secretaries in the law offices of Tycinker, Oliver, and Schwartz.

“Mr. Fonesca”—her voice came through flat and dry—“Mr. Tycinker asked me to remind you that he needs those papers served on Mickey Donophin before Saturday. If we do not hear from you, he will assume you are unable to do this and will contact the Freewell Agency.”

I called Tycinker, Oliver, and Schwartz. There was no one there, but there was an answering machine.

“This is Lewis Fonesca,” I told it. “Tell Mr. Tycinker I’ll have the papers in Mickey Donophin’s hands within twenty-four hours.”

I hung up, got my soap, a towel, toothbrush and toothpaste, and my electric razor and moved toward the rest room I shared with the other tenants and Digger, an otherwise homeless old man, who was standing in front of the mirror over the sink when I went through the door.

“Ah,” he said, looking at me in the mirror. “The little Italian.”

The rest room was almost always clean, which came as a stunning surprise to most visitors. A smiling, retarded man named Marvin Uliaks, for whom I had recently done a job, kept clean the rest room and most of the stores and storefront businesses on the three-block stretch of the seven short blocks of 301 between Main and the Tamiami intersection. He accepted whatever the business owners wanted to give him and smiled even when he was given only a quarter.

“How do I look?” Digger said, turning to me.

He looked like a disheveled mess of a human being who had put on a wrinkled gold tie that had nothing to do with his wrinkled blue-and-red striped shirt and sagging dark trousers.

“Dapper,” I said as he gave me room to get to the sink.

“Got a job interview,” he said over my shoulder, checking his tie in the mirror.

There was no hint of alcohol on his breath. There never was. Digger didn’t drink. He couldn’t afford to. He had told me when we first encountered each other by the urinal a few months ago that he neither drank nor took drugs.

“It’s my mind,” he had said. “Doesn’t function right. I lose days, weeks, get headaches, fall a lot.”

“Where’s the job interview?”

He moved out of the way so I could brush my teeth.

“Jorge and Yolanda’s,” he said, checking his own teeth over my shoulder and rubbing them with his finger.

I held up my tube of Colgate, and he held out a finger for me to drop some toothpaste on it.

“Obliged,” he said as I stepped out of the way after rinsing my mouth so he could work on his teeth.

Jorge and Yolanda’s was a second-floor ballroom-dance studio right across the street. I could see it from my office window.

Satisfied with his teeth, Digger rinsed with a handful of tap water and stepped back. I turned on my razor.

“Want to know what I’ll be doing?” he asked.

To the hum of my razor, I looked at him in the mirror and said, “Yes.”

“Dancing,” he said.

“Dancing?”

I stopped shaving.

“They have dances for their clients and prospective clients every Friday night,” he said. “They need extra men because they have more women than men. What’re you looking at me like that for? I’m a terrific dancer. Anything, you name it, waltz, tango, fox-trot, rumba, swing. You name it. I get fifteen bucks and all the appetizers I can eat every Friday night providing I don’t make a hog of myself.”

Digger used to be a pharmacist. He sometimes slept in a closet of one of the twenty-four-hour Walgreen’s. There was a seemingly infinite number of Walgreen’s and Eckerd drugstores in Sarasota, an even greater number of banks, and a supply of cardiologists, oncologists, and orthopedic surgeons that probably rivaled Manhattan’s.

I knew little about Digger’s past, didn’t want to know more.

“Sounds great,” I said, returning to my shaving. “Good luck.”

He looked at himself in the mirror again.

“Haven’t got a chance, have I?”

“Not a chance in the world,” I said, finishing my shave and checking my face for places I might have missed.

“What the hell. I said I was coming in, answered an ad in the paper. Said I was coming in. What the hell? It’s just across the street. What have I got to lose? You know?”

He started to loosen his tie.

“Got this tie at the Goodwill for a quarter,” he said. “Real silk, just this little stain where you can’t even really notice, but what the hell.”

“What time’s your appointment?” I asked, washing my face.

“Just said I should drop by some time after ten, but what the hell.”

“You’ve got time to shave, use a comb, get a pair of pants that fit, a white shirt, and a pair of socks and shoes at the Women’s Exchange.”

The Women’s Exchange consignment and resale shop was a few blocks down Oak Street.

“That’d cost,” he said, looking at me with eyes showing a lot of red and little white.

“How much?”

I dried my face.

“Ten, fifteen bucks,” he said.

I fished out a twenty and held it out. Digger took it.

“I gotta pay this back?” he asked.

“Get yourself something at the DQ if there’s anything left,” I said.

“Don’t worry,” Digger said, some of his confidence returning. “This isn’t a precedent.”

“I know,” I said. “Good luck.”

“Thanks. I tell you something? Now that the twenty is in my pocket?”

I nodded.

“You never smile.”

I nodded again.

“Some things are funny,” he said.

“Some things.”

“I mean, I’m not talking about a big smile like one of those yellow stickers. Just something besides doom and gloom.”

I imagined Lillian Gish in
Broken Blossoms
, pushing up the corners of her mouth into a pathetic smile when her brute father ordered her to smile.

“I’m working on it,” I said, towel folded around my soap and shaving gear. “Know any jokes?”

“Couple maybe, if I can remember them,” he said. “Never could remember jokes. Wait, I’ve got one.”

He told it. I took out my notebook and wrote it down. The list for Ann Horowitz was growing. I already had the start of a second-rate stand-up act.

Digger looked as if he had something more to say but couldn’t come up with it.

“Wish me luck,” he said, going out the rest-room door ahead of me.

“Luck,” I said, and headed back to my office.

There were three new messages on my answering machine. I didn’t play them back. I knew I had a dying politician to find and not much time to do it and some papers to serve for the law firm of Tycinker, Oliver, and Schwartz, but there were other things more important at the moment, like spending the day on my cot sleeping when I could, watching a video of
Panic in the Streets
or
A Stolen Life
. I was trying to cut back on my dosage of
Mildred Pierce.

I took off my pants and shirt, draped them on the wooden chair, and lay down after removing my shoes.

I didn’t have to sleep. Dreams came while I was awake. The dying Stark would be added to my sleeping nightmares. My waking dreams always came back to moments with my wife, little moments. A laugh shared across the table at the Bok Choy Restaurant, our buttery fingers meeting in a box of popcorn while we watched a movie I couldn’t remember. Her holding my face in her cool hands and looking into my eyes after we had an argument until I grinned and conceded her victory. Picking out the car in which she was killed.

There was an endless supply of pain. I savored every image, my depression fed on it. It wasn’t simply self-pity. There was some of that, but it was that deep sense of void, loss that I wanted to hold onto and lose at the same time.

I fell asleep before I could insert a videotape. I dreamed of nothing and was awakened by the ringing of the telephone. It was still light outside. I checked my watch. It was almost seven at night. The sun was going down. I went into the office and picked up the phone a ring before the machine kicked in to take the message.

“Fonesca,” I said.

“What happened?”

It was Kenneth Severtson asking a reasonable question.

“I left a message on your machine.”

I looked at the battered metal box I had picked up in a pawnshop on Main Street.

“So?” he asked anxiously.

I told him the story and ended with “They should be home soon. Your wife had to answer a few questions for the police.”

Long, long pause.

“He killed himself in front of Kenny and Sydney? She was in bed with him in front of Kenny and Sydney.”

“They were in another room. They’re young,” I said. “I don’t think the sex part sunk in.”

I didn’t believe that and I wasn’t sure he would either, but it was a lie he could pretend to hang onto if he really wanted it.

“I’m thinking about a divorce and asking for custody of the children,” he said.

“Talk to Sally.”

“I don’t know. I want things the way they were,” he said, thinking out loud.

“I know, but it won’t happen. You take her back, you take the pain. There are things harder to take. Talk to Sally.”

“If there’s ever anything I can do,” he said.

I thought of asking him if he knew any jokes, but decided to say, “Thanks, you owe me some money. You can send it to me or drop it off.”

“How much?”

“Three hundred,” I said. “I’ve got to go.”

I played the messages, erased Severtson’s and two from Dixie to call her. I dialed Dixie at home.

“It’s me, Lew,” I said before she could cough or say hello in her fake hoarse voice.

“Roberta Goulding had a brother and a sister,” she said. “Brother, seven years younger, Charles. Sister, six years younger, now Mrs. Antony Diedrich living with her husband in Fort Worth. He’s got a Toyota and a Buick dealership. Don’t know where the brother is.”

“Thanks, Dixie,” I said.

“That’s not why I called mainly,” she said. “Kevin Hoffmann, member of the board of just about everything in Sarasota, major contributor to the Ringling Museum, Asolo Theater, Sarasota Ballet, Sarasota Opera, Pine View School and Booker School Scholarship funds, Committee to Open Midnight Pass. Goes on and on.”

“He’s bought lots of friends.”

“One might conclude,” said Dixie. “Makes lots of money, like
lots
.”

“Like?”

“Taxes on income over the past six years show over a million and half a year, some years over two million,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said.

“You haven’t heard the best,” she said. “He’s going to have a birthday Sunday.”

“I’m happy for him,” I said.

“You might want to give him a present,” she said, and told me why.

When I hung up with Dixie, I called Roberta Trasker. She answered after three rings.

“It’s Lew Fonesca,” I said.

“You found William?”

“You know Kevin Hoffmann?”

The pause was long. I opened the phone book and searched the pages for Hoffmann’s number while I waited. He wasn’t listed.

“Yes,” she said. “Socially. He and his wife, Sharon, and William had business with him. Sharon left him about five or six years ago.”

“You said ‘William had’ business with Hoffmann.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I suppose I’m…”

“I understand. Mind if I call Hoffmann and ask him if he has some idea where your husband is?”

“No,” she said. “I gather you haven’t gotten very far in finding William.”

“One small step closer,” I said. “I’ll call you when I have more. You have his number, Hoffmann’s?”

When I hung up I looked over at the Dalstrom painting on the wall, the deep dark jungle and darker mountains, the single touch of color in the flower.

Then I dialed the number Roberta Trasker had given me. A man answered.

“Mr. Hoffmann?”

“Who’s calling?”

“Lew Fonesca,” I said. “Mrs. Trasker give me this number.”

“What do you want to speak to Mr. Hoffmann about?”

“William Trasker,” I said.

“What about Mr. Trasker?”

“He’s missing,” I said. “I want to ask Mr. Hoffmann a few questions that might help me find him.”

“You’re making this inquiry on behalf of Mrs. Trasker?”

“Yes.”

“You’re with the police?”

“I’m not against them,” I said.

I was tired. I wanted to go to a back booth at the Crisp Dollar Bill across the street, listen to the bartender’s tapes, eat a steak sandwich, drink an Amstel, get back in bed, and watch a videotape, something old, something black-and-white, something with William Powell.

“May I have a noncryptic answer?” the man said.

“I’m not a police officer.”

“One moment.”

The phone was placed down gently, and I looked at the painting on my wall while I waited. The jungle was inviting and I wanted to smell the orchid. I didn’t know if the orchid in the painting had a smell.

“Mr. Hoffmann is busy. If you leave a number, he’ll get back to you tomorrow.”

“Tell him I have a birthday present for him,” I said. “It can’t wait.”

The phone went down again and this time a different man’s voice, a higher voice, said, “This is Kevin Hoffmann. And you are?”

“Lew Fonesca.”

“You told Stanley that you have a birthday present for me.”

He sounded amused.

“Yes.”

“And you are looking for Bill Trasker?”

“Yes.”

“And you are representing…?”

“Someone who wants to find Trasker.”

“Come on over,” he said.

He gave me the address.

“I’ll be there in forty minutes.”

I called the
Herald-Tribune
office and got a young reporter named John Rubin who maybe owed me a favor.

“Midnight Pass,” I said.

“I’m on a deadline,” Rubin said. “Call me back tomorrow, early afternoon.”