Bright Futures

12

I was holding two pair, jacks and fours, in a five-card stud game. That was the only game being played in the card room of Corkle’s house. The old doctor with the slight tremor was the only one left in the hand with me. The pot stood at four hundred dollars and change. The doctor had a pair of sevens showing. He could have had three of them or, since one of his cards showing was a king, he could have had a higher two pair.

On my left was Corkle, clad in a green Detroit Lions sweatshirt. Next to him was a bulky man who had been introduced as Kaufmann. “You know who he is,” Corkle had said in his initial introduction when I had sat at the table three hours earlier. I didn’t know who Kaufmann was, but about an hour into the game Corkle asked him something about a union meeting. On his left, across from me, was a kid, college age. Corkle introduced him as Keith Thirlane. Keith Thirlane looked like an athlete, a very nervous athlete trying to look calm. He was tall, blond, and wearing black slacks and a black polo. The last player at the table was “Period Waysock from out of town.” Period was about sixty, bald, and slowdown fat. He did everything from betting to going to the snack table with the deliberation of a large dinosaur.

I pushed in another hundred dollars and looked at the steel clock on the wall. It was almost one in the morning.

Ames and I had pooled our money. I had cashed the check from Alana Legerman. We came up with the requisite four thousand, with another thousand borrowed from Flo Zink. We had a slight cushion. Then I had called Laurence Arthur Wainwright, who was one of the poker players Corkle had mentioned and the only one whose name I recognized. Wainwright was a state representative, a lawyer who owned pieces of banks, mortgage houses, property, and businesses worth who knows how much. Wainwright made the local news a lot, partly because he did a lot of donations to charities and looked good in a tuxedo at society dinners. Wainwright, also known as LAW or Law by the Herald-Tribune, was in constant trouble for his business practices, which were often barely legal.

On the phone, I told Wainwright that I had some documents he had been looking for. There are almost always documents a person like Wainwright is looking for.

“What documents?” he had asked.

Ames had gone through past newspaper articles mentioning Wainwright and come up with a list of four prime names. The best bet seemed to be Adam Bulagarest, a former Wainwright business associate who had moved out of Florida before the law could catch up with him.

“Does the name Bulagarest ring a bell?” I asked.

“Is this extortion?”

“I hope so,” I said.

“How did you get these documents?”

“They’re originals taken from papers in possession of Mr. Bulagarest. You can have them for a nominal fee. We will provide you with a signed and notarized guarantee that there are no copies.”

There was no chance Wainwright could check on my tale with Bulagarest. In researching the poker players, Dixie had discovered Bulagarest was serving time in a Thai jail for child molestation.

“How do I get these documents?” Wainwright asked with a tone of clear skepticism.

“Come tonight to the Ramada Inn at Disney World. Register as F. W. Murnau. We’ll meet you at the bar at midnight.”

“To Orlando tonight? What’s the hurry?”

“My associates and I are not comfortable in Florida. Bring one hundred thousand dollars in cash. If you don’t come, we have another buyer.”

“I don’t…” Wainwright said, but I hung up.

People like Wainwright always had piles of cash handy in case the real law was about to knock at their door.

I waited an hour and then called Corkle to ask when there might be an opening at his poker table.

“You have four thousand dollars?”

“Yes.”

“You’re in luck. One of our regulars can’t make it.”

Two hours into the game, I was ahead about three hundred dollars. After three hours I was ahead by almost eleven hundred dollars. It wasn’t that I was a particularly good player. They, including Corkle, were all incredibly bad, but I was learning that in a five-handed game, the odds of one of the bad players getting lucky was fairly high. Besides, I had to remember that I wasn’t there to win, just to keep the players busy.

From time to time, when they were out of a hand, the others at the table either ambled to the snack table in the corner for a plate of nuts and a beer or to the toilet just off the room toward the front door.

I didn’t meet the first raise on the next hand and moved toward the small restroom. It was a minute or two after one. Law Wainwright was sitting in a hotel room at Disney World with one hundred thousand dollars or a pistol with a silencer in his lap. I didn’t care which.

I looked back. The players were bantering, betting, acting like their favorite television poker pros. I moved past the restroom, turned a corner and went to the hall beyond to the front. I opened it quietly. Ames, flashlight in hand, stepped in. I closed the door and pointed to a door across the hallway. He nodded to show that he understood and showed me the Perfect Pocket Pager, one of the gifts Corkle had given us. I had an identical one in my pocket. Both Ames’s and my pager were set on vibrate. Each pager had originally been offered not for $29.95 or even $19.95, but for $9.95 with free shipping if you ordered now, but the “now” had been a dozen years ago and, until we had tested them, we didn’t know that they would work.

On the way back to the poker table, I reached in and flushed the toilet. The same hand was still being played, but only Corkle, who never sat out a hand, was still in it against Waysock from out of town. The pot, a small mountain of crisp green, looked big.

Corkle won the hand with a pair of fours. Both men had been bluffing.

I was worried about Ames. He wasn’t carrying a gun. I didn’t want a shoot-out and Ames was not the kind of man to give up without a fight. Ames and I were partners now. I was, I guess, senior partner. I know he felt responsible for me and to me. I felt the same.

Ames was going through Corkle’s office in search of the evidence Corkle had mentioned-evidence that might tell us who had killed Blue Berrigan and Philip Horvecki. Or maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe it was just another invention proceeding from Corkle’s heat-oppressed brain.

I was having trouble concentrating on the game.

“Two hundred more,” Keith the Kid said.

He hadn’t been doing badly. At least not in the game. He was a little over even. He winced in periodic pain or regret and gulped down diet ginger ale.

We were down to three players in the hand. I saw the bet and, for one of the few times during the game, Corkle folded. When the next cards were dealt to Keith and me by Kaufmann, Corkle got up and headed for the restroom. I watched him walk past it. I pressed the durable and easy-to-clean replaceable white glow-in-the-dark button on the pager in my pocket.

“Your bet, Lewie,” said Kaufmann.

“What’s the bet?” I asked.

“Three hundred,” said Kaufmann. “Keep your eyes on the prize.”

Period Waysock from Out of Town had waddled to the snack table.

I was holding two fours down and a third four showing on the table with one card to go, a set of three in a five-card-nothing wild game. The Kid could have had three sevens, eights, or jacks or just a pair of each. He wasn’t betting like a player with a set. I reluctantly folded, got up from the table and hurried after Corkle.

I caught up with Corkle in the foyer where he was pacing and talking on a cordless phone in front of the front door.

“No, D. Elliot Corkle is not sorry that he woke you. There are more important things than sleep. I did not make my money by sleeping. I made it by staying awake. You can sleep later.”

He looked around at the three closed doors and the elevator and kept pacing as he listened.

“Not everyone who goes to jail gets raped,” he said. “D. Elliot Corkle will put up the bail in the morning. Watch him all the time. Do not let him run away… All right. Let me know.”

Corkle pushed a button on his phone and I ducked into the bathroom and closed the door. I heard him walk past, come out, pushed the button on the pager twice and watched while Ames stepped out of Corkle’s office. He headed for the front door holding up an eight-by-eleven brown envelope for me to see. Then he went through the front door and closed it as I turned to return to the game.

Keith the Kid was standing across the foyer looking at me. He didn’t say anything, but he did give me a look of slight perplexity.

“Stretching my legs,” I said. “Bad knee.”

“What’d you have?” he asked. “That last hand.”

“Queen high,” I said.

“No,” he said. “Not the way you bet.”

“I figured from the way you were betting that you had a set. The odds were against me.”

“You gave me the hand,” he said. “I don’t want anyone feeling sorry for me.”

“I don’t,” I said. “I didn’t.”

He touched his cheek nervously.

“I thought I could make back some of the money I lost here last time,” he said. “My father was a regular in this stupid game. He’s not well enough to play again. Heart. I took his place. I don’t want to lose, but I don’t want any gifts either. Besides the ones Corkle gives out in boxes as we leave.”

“Kaufmann won’t play a hand unless he’s holding an initial pair,” I said. “Period bluffs half the time, no pattern. Corkle never folds unless he’s beaten on the table.”

“And me?”

“You shouldn’t be playing poker.”

“You?”

“I don’t like to gamble,” I said.

“Then…”

“Hey, you two,” Corkle called. “Clock is moving and a quorum and your money are needed.”

I moved past Keith and took my place at the table. Keith came behind me and sat.

“Question,” Period Waysock From Out of Town said. “You wearing that Cubs cap for luck or because you’re going bald.”

“Yes, in that order,” I said.

“Let’s play some poker,” Corkle said, and we did.

At two in the morning, the last hand was played, the cash was pocketed and the lies about winning and losing were told. I estimated that Ames and I had come out about five hundred dollars ahead.

On the way out, Corkle handed each of us a small box about the length of a pen.

“See Forever Pocket Telescope with built-in sky map,” he said. “Specially designed lenses. You can clearly see the mountains of the moon or the party your neighbors are having a mile away, providing trees or buildings aren’t in the way.”

We thanked him. I was the last one at the door. Corkle stopped me with a hand on my arm and said in a low voice, “D. Elliot Corkle knows what you did here.”

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 amp; 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.

“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.