Bright Futures

16

He’s too smart for that, the little bastard,” Detective Ettiene Viviase said.

He was seated behind his desk at police headquarters on Main Street. Ames and I were across from him, in wooden chairs that needed a complete overhaul and serious superglue to forestall their inevitable collapse.

Victor and Darrell were at Cold Stone ice cream store, across the street and half a block away.

Viviase was talking about Dwight Torcelli.

His door was open. Voices carried and echoed from the hallway beyond, where the arrested and abused sat after they got past the first line of questioning and into the presence of a detective.

“The weapon we found in Torcelli’s apartment is a now-bloody wooden meat pounder.”

“Tenderizer,” I said.

Viviase was working on a plastic cup of coffee of unknown vintage.

“The girl makes little in the way of sense.”

“Some things she said make sense,” I said.

“What?”

“Berrigan.”

“Says her father knew Berrigan, used him as a greeter at a weekend sale at his Toyota dealership in Bradenton.”

“He owned a Toyota dealership?” I said.

“Now she owns it and if luck or you turn up something to keep Torcelli from going to jail, the Horvecki estate will be his too. And weirdest goddamn thing is that they both really seem to like each other. She said she’d remarry him.”

I said nothing. I didn’t want to open the door to Alana Legerman and possibly to Sally and possibly to who knows how many others.

“Treats her like a nine-year-old,” said Viviase, finishing his coffee and looking into the cup to see if he had missed something.

“She says Berrigan killed her father,” I said.

“Convenient,” Viviase said, looking into his empty cup for some answers.

He dropped the cup into the garbage can behind his desk.

“Williams and Pepper,” I said.

“You make them sound like a law firm, a men’s clothing store, or a mail-order Christmas catalog.”

Someone screamed down the hall, not close, but loud enough. I couldn’t tell if it was a cackle, a laugh, or an expression of pain.

“Williams and Pepper both have solid alibis for the times of death of both the Horvecki and Berrigan murders.”

“They weren’t each other’s alibis, were they?”

“I’m in a good mood, Fonesca. Truly. I don’t look it, but I’m in a good mood. My daughter, I’ve discovered, has not been fooling around with our heartthrob prisoner.”

“That’s good.”

“No,” he said. “She’s been fooling around with a high school senior. She assures me and her mother that ‘fooling around’ is all that she’s been doing, whereas if she were fooling around with Ronnie the words would take on a whole new meaning. So, I’m in a good mood. I’m waiting for a DNA report on Horvecki and the blood on the meat pounder.”

“You checking Berrigan’s DNA too?”

“We are.”

“I think the blood on the tenderizer is Berrigan’s, not Horvecki’s.”

“Why would our boy want to kill Berrigan?”

“Maybe he wouldn’t, but somebody else might and then hide the murder weapon where it was sure to be found in Torcelli’s apartment.

“Life is complicated,” I said.

“Life is uncooperative.”

“Yes.”

“Can I talk to him?”

“He doesn’t want to see you. He’s only talking to his wife and his lawyer-the lawyer courtesy of your very own D. Elliot Corkle and his daughter, the same daughter who put up the charming Ronnie’s bail.”

The first words Ames uttered since we entered Viviase’s office were, “We’d best go.”

“Fine,” said Viviase, turning to me. “Let me know if you and your sidekick find more of Ronnie’s or Torcelli’s wives or girlfriends kicking around.”

His eyes didn’t meet mine but I sensed something and that something was the name of Sally Porovsky.

Rachel didn’t want a ride. She asked the receptionist at the jail to call her a cab so she could be taken to the nearest hotel, which happened to be the Ritz-Carlton on Tamiami Trail just outside of downtown. The Ritz-Carlton was about a three minute ride from the jail. She told Ames, who was waiting for her, that her husband had reminded her she was rich and could now stay anywhere she liked and didn’t even need to pick up the clothes she had left at her father’s house.

“How did she seem to you?” I asked.

“Something on her mind wherever her mind was,” Ames said as he, Victor, Darrell, and I walked over to the pizza shop next to the Hollywood 20 Movie Theaters on Main Street.

“So,” said Darrell, “who killed those two guys and who shot at me and you, Fonesca?”

“I’m not sure,” I said.

“But you think?” said Darrell.

“Yeah,” I said.

Victor said nothing. Victor was extending his silence. He was waiting for something, something for me to say or do, or something he had to decide to do, or something that came down from heaven or up from hell.

“Movie?” asked Darrell as we all shared a large sausage pizza.

“Next week,” I said.

“When’s the last time you went to a movie, Fonesca?” Darrell asked.

It had been June 6, 2003. Catherine and I went to see Seabiscuit at the Hillside Theater. We both liked it. We usually liked the same movies. Since then the only movies I had seen were on videotape or television, almost all made before 1955, almost all in black and white.

“I don’t remember,” I said.

“We’re right next door to the fucking place,” Darrell said. “They’ve got Saw 8 or 9 or something. And you Ames McKinney, what was the last time you went to a movie in a real, honest-to-god theater?”

“Can’t say I remember,” Ames said. “Maybe forty, fifty years ago.”

“I need some help here,” said Darrell. “Victor, you, when? Or don’t they have movies in China?”

“I’ve never been to China,” said Victor. “I went to this movie the night before last.”

“That settles the issue,” said Darrell. “The Chinese guy who’s not from China and me are going to see Saw.”

“No,” said Victor. “I won’t see movies in which women or children are killed.”

“Fonesca, I’m pleading with you,” said Darrell.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll go.”

“I guess I will, too,” said Ames.

“Depends,” Victor said.

We spent two hours in darkness watching beautiful women with too much make up saying they were witches and trying to kill bearded guys who looked like Vikings by sending monkey-faced creatures riding on short but fast rhinos with short fire-spitting spears in their hands. Darrell drank a seemingly gallon-sized Coke and a giant popcorn.

When we got out, it was dark.

“Help that near-crazy lady,” Darrell said as we let him off outside the apartment building on Martin Luther King in which he lived with his mother.

I didn’t answer. Neither did Ames. We drove off with Victor.

“Someone beat Horvecki to death,” Ames said. “Someone killed Blue Berrigan almost in front of our eyes. Why? Who?”

“And someone shot Darrell in the back and put a pellet through the window of Jeffrey Augustine’s car,” I said. “Who? Why?”

Victor parked in the narrow driveway next to the house. We all got out.

“You’ve got some ideas,” said Ames.

“An idea,” I said.

“Partners, right?”

“Right,” I said.

“Ideas?”

I told him. He rolled his scooter out from under the stairs and drove back to his room at the back of the Texas Bar and Grill.

Victor took a shower and then settled into his sleeping bag in the corner of the office. I got into my black Venice beach shorts and my X Files black T-shirt and spent about an hour in bed, just looking up at the ceiling. I considered calling Sally. I didn’t. Sleep snuck up on me, as it usually does just when I’m convinced insomnia will have me waiting for the sun to rise.

No wandering preachers or wayward policemen woke me. No new great ideas came to me in dreams. I remembered no dreams. I woke up three minutes after six in the morning. My X Files shirt was soaked with sweat, though the room felt cold. I got up, dressed in clean jeans and a plain blue T-shirt, and picked up the Memphis Reds gym bag I had purchased for two dollars at The Women’s Exchange.

In the outer office, Victor was tossing on his sleeping bag. Half of him was on the bag. The other half was on the floor. I made it out the door without waking him and went down the stairs to retrieve my bicycle from the shed under the stairs.

The morning was cool, maybe in the seventies. The sky was clear and traffic on 301 was lighter than usual. The YMCA was on Main Street in the Mall next to the Hollywood 20 Movie Theaters.

I saw a few people I knew as I did my curls with fifteen-pound weights. It felt better after I got them done and began my second set. Then I did crunches, bends, and heartbreakers until my shoulders began to ache.

After I finished my workout, I showered, put on my clothes, and stepped out onto Main Street where someone took a shot at me.

I stood on the sidewalk for a few seconds, not quite registering what had happened. A trio of teens passed me laughing, noticing nothing. An elderly woman with a walker slowly crossed the street, looking forward and moving slowly. Nothing seemed unusual until the second shot fell short, pinging off the hood of a shiny new red Honda Accord a few feet away from where I was standing. I could see the small dent in the car showing silver metal under the red paint. With the second shot I held up my gym bag and bent at the knees. Something thudded into the bag I held in front of my face. I ducked for cover alongside the Honda, hoping the shots were coming from the other side of the street and not from either side of me.

I sat on the sidewalk, my back to the car, my Cubs cap about to fall in my lap. A couple in their fifties came down the sidewalk. They tried not to look at me.

“Down,” I said. “Get down.”

I motioned with my hand. They ignored me, probably considering me an early-morning drunk. They walked on. No more shots.

After a few minutes I hadn’t been killed, so I stood up carefully and looked around. There were places to hide, doorways to consider, rooftops, corners to duck around. I looked at the front of my gym bag. A pellet was lodged in the fabric. I pulled it out, pocketed it, and went to get my bicycle from where it was chained around a lamppost. There was a Dillard’s bag dangling from the handlebars. I looked inside and found a folded handwritten note.

Should you survive, think no ill of me.

Folly is as folly always does.

Folly is and never was completely free.

Stop or hear again the bullet’s buzz and it will be as if Fonesca never was.

“High school kid,” said Ames, looking down at the poem that lay flat on my desk. “Maybe a girl.”

“Real men don’t write poetry?” I asked.

“They might write it, but they don’t show it to anybody.”

“Why write a poem?” I said. “Why not just a note saying, ‘Stop trying to help Ronnie Gerall or I’ll shoot at you again and next time I won’t miss.’ ”

“Guns are easy to get,” Ames said. “Why shoot at you with a pellet gun, especially after having been less than gentle, beating two men to death?”

“Maybe,” said Victor who stood looking out the window at nothing.

Ames and I both looked at him.

“Maybe,” Victor continued, “the person shooting at you is not the killer of Horvecki and Berrigan.”

With my Bank of America pen, we made a list of everyone we could think of who would know I was trying to find a suspect other than the former Ronnie Gerall. The list was long.

“Where do we start?” Ames asked.

I told him and he said, “Dangerous out there for you.” “Whoever is shooting at me,” I said, “is a rotten shot. Plus, he won’t shoot at me again till he knows I haven’t dropped the case.”

“She,” said Ames.

“Right,” I said. “He or she.”

“Let’s do it,” said Ames and we went out the door and down to my car.

Victor sat in the back, Ames next to me. I turned the key and the Saturn powered on with something approaching a purr.

“Worked on it early this morning, before church,” Ames said.

“Sounds great,” I said.

“It’ll do,” he said.

I didn’t ask Ames what church he belonged to, though I knew he would tell me. I didn’t ask Ames if he had a weapon under his well-worn tan suede jacket, though I knew there was one there.

We got to the church in Cortez just before noon. Services were over, but the Reverend Jack Pepper was delivering a pensive message on station WTLW.

“Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord,” came Pepper’s voice over the radio as we sat listening to the man in the small studio in the building just beyond the tall metal mesh gate. “But we are the vessels of the Lord, the instruments of the Lord. What if the Lord calls upon us to seek his vengeance?”

He paused for a few seconds to let his listeners consider what he had just said. I imagined a 1930s farm couple, Dad in his overalls, Mom wiping her hands on her apron, son on the floor looking up at an old Atwater Kent radio as if it might suddenly turn into a television set. I wondered how many people actually listened to Jack Pepper.

“Ponder this further,” Pepper said. “How will we know when it is the Lord commanding us? We have free will for the Lord has given it to us along with many of the blessings of life including the bounty of the seas right in our own waters-fish, shrimp, crab, scallops, lobster. When are we really hearing the Lord? I’ll answer this after these messages from the good Christian business in our own neighborhood.”

I got out of the car after telling Victor to get behind the wheel and Ames to stand by the gate and be ready. I wanted to talk to Jack Pepper alone.

As Ames and I walked to the gate, I could hear Victor behind us, listening to Jack Pepper urging his good listeners to buy their bait and tackle at Smitty’s Bait and Tackle.

I pushed the button next to the gate. Pepper, complete in suit and tie, came out, told the dog to go sit “over there,” and let me in.

“You find something that will help Gerall?” he asked opening the gate to let me in.

“Maybe,” I said. “I’ve got a few questions.”

“I’ve got to get back on the air,” he said, motioning for me to follow him. I did.

There was no one but Pepper and me in the reception room, and through the glass window I saw no one in the studio. Pepper opened the studio door, hurried in and sat just as the commercial ended. The speaker connected to the studio crackled with age, but it worked. Pepper put on his earphones, hit a switch and said, “You are waiting for an answer to the question I posed before the break, and I’ll give it to you. You’ll know that it is the voice of the Lord because your heart is cleansed and you follow the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus. The wayward will hear the voice of the Devil; the good will hear the voice of the Lord.”

He said he would take calls if anyone wished to ask questions or give testimony. He gave the number and repeated it.

The phone rang.

“A call,” Pepper said hopefully. He picked up the phone in the studio and said, “Jesus and I are listening to you.”

At 1 p.m. Jack Pepper signed off, saying, “WTLW will return to the air tomorrow morning at ten. Join us if you can and trust in the Lord.”

Back in the reception area, Jack Pepper said, “We’ve got Dr Pepper, Mr. Pibb, canned iced tea, and all kinds of Coke in the refrigerator.”

I declined. He moved behind the receptionist and manager’s desk and came up with a can of Coke, which he opened, drank from, and said, “Parched.”

“Which of you was at Horvecki’s house the night he was murdered?”

He swished some Coke around in his mouth wondering if he should lie.

“Rachel Horvecki and Ronnie Gerrall both say they saw a pickup truck in front of Horvecki’s house that night,” I went on. “There was a man in it. You or Williams?”

“And if I say neither?”

“Then you’d be lying and Ronnie would be one step closer to death row.”

“I think the Lord sent you,” he said softly. “It was me. We’d been watching Horvecki’s house whenever we could, waiting for him to commit a new abomination. A man cannot help being the creature the Lord created, but he can do battle with his nature.”

“You saw and did what?”

He took another drink, let out an “aah,” and said, “A few minutes after midnight I hear voices inside the house, voices filled with hate. And then a thudding sound. Ronnie comes down the street just about then and goes in the house. Man in a watch cap climbs out the window at the side of the house and goes running down the street. Ronnie comes outside like a flash, looks around, and goes back inside.”

“How loud were the noises and voices inside the house before Ronnie showed up?” I asked.

“Loud enough,” he said. “Police came just about then, went in, and you know the rest.”

“How long between the time Ronnie came out to look around and the time the police arrived?”

“Less than a minute,” he said. “No noise. Police there almost instantly, which could mean-”

“Whoever called 911 did it before Ronnie got there,” I said.

“The murderer called 911?” asked Pepper.

“Where was Williams that night?” I asked.

“I’m not my brother’s keeper,” he said.

“Did either Ronnie or Rachel see you in front of the house?”

“Probably,” he said. “I wasn’t hiding. I wanted Horvecki to know I was there watching. The police will want a statement from me, won’t they?”

“They will,” I said.

“There is a restraining order against Essau and me. I prayed it wouldn’t be necessary for me to come forward,” he said. “I prayed that the real killer would step forth or be exposed before I had to speak out, but it looks as if the Lord has chosen me to speak the truth. It will be in the newspapers won’t it?”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

He clasped his hands, closed his eyes, and dropped his head in prayer.

I left the building.

The dog got up, looked at me, and growled deeply. I wouldn’t make it to the gate if she didn’t want me to, and she didn’t look as if she wanted me to. I looked at the door. Pepper did not come out.

“Steady on, girl,” Ames called.

The big dog took slow, stalking steps in my direction. Pepper still did not appear. The dog rocked back, ready to pounce, when Ames’s voice boomed with authority.

“I said steady on.”

The dog looked at him as he took another step toward me. Ames came out with a small gun, which slipped out of his sleeve and into his hand.

I hadn’t moved, but the dog had. She was a few steps from me, now, and growling again. Ames fired into the air and the dog scampered off to a far corner. Then Pepper appeared in the doorway of the building. He looked at me and Ames and then at the dog.

“You shot her,” he said.

“No,” I said. “She’s just frightened.”

“So are we all,” said Pepper. “So are we all.”