Bright Futures

7

"Seven weeks,” Ann Hurwitz said, dunking one of the two biscotti I had brought her into the cappuccino I had also brought to her office. A bribe.

“Seven weeks,” I said.

“How do you feel about it?”

“Helpless. Relieved. I’m thinking of buying a cheap car and leaving.”

“Again.”

“Again,” I said. “This time maybe I’ll go west till I hit the Pacific Coast somewhere.”

“And you’ll look out toward Japan but see nothing but water.”

“Maybe it will be clean.”

“Pollution is everywhere.”

“Sally’s leaving me. Someone is trying to kill me or at least frighten me. I have a new client I don’t like and another client who lied to me and may be a child molester.”

“Lied about what?”

“I don’t know, but I know he lied. Lies are heavy, dark, deep behind too much sincerity. And there are people depending on me, Ames, Flo, Adele. And Victor.”

“Your house guest from Chicago.”

“Yes. And I don’t like my new rooms. Too big. I like things, and places, small.”

“Cubicles,” she said, leaning forward to ensnare the moist end of a biscotti with her teeth. “What else are small places?”

“Boxes, caskets, car trunks, jail cells, monks’ cells, closets.”

“You can hide in all of them,” she said. “You can even die in them. All both protect and threaten.”

“I guess. You’re supposed to tell me that people can’t run from their problems, that nothing is solved by running away.”

“No,” said Ann. “You got these biscotti at News and Books?”

“Yes. I always do.”

“They taste different. Very good. Sometimes things are solved by running away.”

“I should run away?”

“If you feel that you must,” Ann said, wiping her chocolate-tipped fingers with a napkin and then discarding it in her almost empty wastebasket. “I would miss you. You would miss Ames, Flo, Adele, and the baby.”

“Her name is Catherine,” I said.

“I know. I wanted you to say it.”

“Because she was named for my wife, and it ties me to Sarasota.”

“It ties you to people,” she said. “You’re not going to run away.”

“I suppose not.”

I leaned forward, my head between my legs.

“Are you all right? Are you going to be sick?”

“No,” I said. “I’m trying to find a box to hide in.”

“Have you been having nightmares again?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

My head still down, I said, “I’m in New York City, at a hotel. I look out the window, across the street, at another hotel. On the seventh floor of that hotel, there’s an open window. A child, about two, is about to climb out the window. It’s New York during the day. The distance and the city noise let me know it would do no good to yell.”

“So what do you do?”

“Nothing. I stand there, looking, hoping, praying. I can’t move away. I can’t close my eyes. I’m crying, muttering.”

“Muttering what?”

“Oh, no. God, no. Jesus, no.”

“Does the child fall?”

“The child looks over at me and smiles over the chasm, the canyon of buildings and streets. I try to wave her back, but she just smiles and waves back at me. I push my hands forward. I’m afraid to scream or make a frightened and frightening face for fear she will fall.”

“She?”

“Did I say she?”

“Yes.”

“So what do you think?”

“The child is Catherine or the baby we never had. She is about to die and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“What does the child look like?”

“Dark curly hair. Wide eyes, brown eyes. Even at this distance I know they are brown.”

“And,” said Ann, “Catherine’s hair was curly?”

“No.”

“Not even as a child?”

“No,” I said.

“And her eyes were wide and brown?”

“No, her eyes were blue.”

“Who is the baby?”

“Me,” I said. “She looks just like my baby pictures.”

“Breakthrough,” Ann said, sitting up in her well-padded swivel chair.

“But why is it a girl?” I asked.

“We save that for another time, to give you something to think about between now and then. Time for one more quick dream.”

Knowing I would stare into the eyes of that baby who was me, looking for answers, I said, “Thalidomide man.”

“Thalidomide man?”

“You know. About fifty years ago in Chicago a lot of women who were given thalidomide and had deformed babies, withered arms or legs or both. In my dream I see a man with a deformed right hand advancing toward me in slow motion. He’s smiling and holding out his hand to shake my hand. I don’t want to shake his three-fingered stump of a hand, but I extend mine to him. I always wake up then, and almost always it’s 4:13 in the morning.”

“How did you know about thalidomide?” Ann asked.

“I’m not sure. I think my mother and father talked about it, or I ran across it in a newspaper or magazine.”

Ann looked puzzled, as if there were something she was trying to recall.

“Lewis, think.”

I thought. Nothing came.

“The man with the withered right arm?” she prompted.

Nothing.

“The boy whose parents abandoned him.”

I remembered. “I forgot.”

“You never forget anything,” said Ann.

“That’s what Sally said.”

“The boy?”

“His name was David Bryce O’Brien. I met him when I was investigating a homicide for the Cook County State Attorney’s Office. You know this.”

“Tell me again,” she said. “I’m ancient and often forget what I move from one room to the next for.”

“His father was a suspect.”

“And?”

“His father was the murderer. He killed his dry cleaner. Then he killed his wife and son.”

“David Bryce O’Brien.”

“Then he killed himself.”

“And what did he do to the body of his son?”

“No,” I said.

Ann went silent. So did I. A waiting game. I could get up and leave, but I didn’t. Then I said, “He cut off his son’s withered arm and left a note saying, ‘I’m sorry.’ It’s the most common suicide note in the world.”

“Biblical,” she said.

“Biblical?”

“If my right hand offends…,” she said.

“It wasn’t his right hand.”

“How old was David Bryce O’Brien?”

“Almost two years old.”

“About the same age as the child in the window in New York?”

“Yes.”

“That feels true?”

“Yes. You want me to think about it?”

“Yes, but not consciously. Let it go. When the time comes to talk about it, you will. You forgot to bring me something, Lewis.”

I looked at the empty white bag that had held coffee and biscotti. The pungent smell of coffee and pastry hung lazily. She shook her head.

“I have a joke.”

“Good, but you were supposed to bring something else. You were supposed to bring me the first line of a book. Do you have one?”

“ ‘And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.’ ”

“And that is the first line of what?” Ann asked.

“It’s the last line of the Old Testament. The only line I remember.”

“Come back next time with first lines,” she said. “Who told you the joke?”

“A man with one eye I met outside your office the last time I was here.”

“The joke,” she said.

“Actually, he gave me five of them.”

I took out my index cards.

“One will be enough.”

“Treat each day as if it’s your last. One day you’ll be right.”

“That’s a joke?”

“Yes.”

“You think it’s funny?”

“No.”

“Next time, first lines,” she said.

Augustine was waiting for me outside of Ann’s office again, but this was a very different Augustine from the one who was there the last time I emerged into sun and heavy, moist air.

“Need a ride?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I put your bike in my trunk. I’ll buy you a new lock.”

“Thanks,” I said.

He walked us slowly to the corner and made a right turn onto Main. He was silent. So was I. I was trying not to think about what Ann and I had talked about, but I was doing a bad job.

“How is your eye?” I asked.

His hand reached up to be sure the patch was still there.

“Hurts,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I was.

“Corkle fired me.”

“What for?”

“Failure to get rid of you.”

We hit the first corner and I was tempted to invite him across the street to News and Books, but I had had enough darkness for one day.

“Get rid of me? He just hired me.”

“He wants to scare you away from the job. He’s nuts. I’m glad I’m no longer in his employ. He gave me a check for five thousand dollars and an instant electric machine that both cores and peels apples, pears, and even peaches and plums.”

“How will you get it on a plane?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why does he want to scare me away?”

“Don’t know. Ask him.”

“And you’re telling me this because…?” I asked.

“I like you,” he said. “And I don’t like loose ends.”

His car, a gray two-door Mazda rental, was parked halfway up the block. Parking space downtown was always at a premium. I didn’t consider telling him he was lucky. He had almost lost an eye. It could have been much worse.

“I think the kid shot at us,” he said when we were driving.

He was one of those people who instantly turns on music when you get into their car. It made intimate conversation difficult. The music was ’40s and ’50s pop. Rosemary Clooney was singing “Come On To My House.” She bounced.

“The kid?”

“Corkle’s grandson, Gregory Legerman.”

“Why?”

“Because Corkle thinks the kid killed Philip Horvecki.”

“And then hired me to find himself?”

“Go figure,” he said, making a turn on Orange and heading south. “We’re talking about crazy people here.”

“Corkle’s daughter, too?”

“Why not?”

We drove silently for a few minutes, and then he said, “I’m not supposed to drive till I get another driving test. Hell, I can drive better with one eye than all these old farts with two.”

“Someday you may be an old fart,” I said.

“Great, an old fart with one eye.”

He went to Laurel and turned left. A minute later he parked in front of my new home, the one with rooms too big and visitors too many.

“I’m cashing Corkle’s check and heading for the Tampa airport,” he said. “I’ll work in commercials if I’m lucky, dinner theater, wherever a one-eyed character actor is wanted. Who knows? This…,” he said, pointing to his patched eye, “may be the opening of new career opportunities.”

“Who knows?”

“We both do,” he said with a smile as bitter as orange peel.

I got out of the car.

“Watch yourself, Cub fan,” he said.

I touched the brim of my cap in a gesture of good-bye. He tore down the street with a drag racer’s abandon. The tires weren’t his. The car wasn’t his. It was too bad the Dairy Queen two blocks down was closed and torn down. He could have had a Blizzard to ease the rush hour trip to Tampa.

“Let’s go,” Ames said when I went through the door.

He was standing to my left, near the wall. Victor, in his Chicago Bulls sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, was seated on the floor, his bedroll wrapped neatly in the corner. Ames was wearing black corduroy pants, a red-dominated, plaid shirt, and boots.

“Where this time?” I asked.

“To see a man,” said Ames. “Brought you this.”

He held up a wooden plank about the size of a rolled up newspaper. Burned into its dark, grainy surface were the words LEWIS FONESCA.

“So people will know you’re here,” said Ames. “I can mount it outside somewhere.”

“I don’t want any more people to know I’m here,” I said.

“Suit yourself,” he said, placing the plank faceup on my desk. “Let’s go. Victor’ll drive us.”

In response, Victor Woo got up from the floor.

“Where are we going and why?” I asked.

“I found a man who knows all about Philip Horvecki.”

Victor chauffeured. Ames and I sat in back. Ames gave Victor directions. They weren’t easy. We drove up I-75 to the University Parkway exit and headed east. Ames gave clipped driving directions like, “Next right,” and Victor drove without speaking.

“Fella came into the Texas a few hours ago,” said Ames. “Heard him talking. Sheriff’s Deputy. Talking about the murder. Told another fella that the detectives should ask Pertwee about it. I asked him who this Pertwee was. He told me.”

Ames went silent. Long speeches were not his medium.

After telling Victor to go down a narrow dirt road, Ames went on.

“Seems Pertwee knows a lot about old crimes in the county,” said Ames.

Silence again, except for the bumping tires and the rat-tat of pebbles against the undercarriage of the car.

“How do you know where to-” I started.

“Came out here on my scooter when the deputy gave me directions,” Ames interrupted.

We had gone almost twenty miles from my apartment. On a scooter, going over this road, one would have to be very determined.

“Look out on the right over ahead. Hardly see it, but there’s a low wooden fence and an open gate.”

Victor turned into a rutted path even narrower than the dirt road. Ahead of us about fifty yards was a mobile home with a small addition. It was a house of aluminum waiting for a hurricane to wash it away.

The closer we got the better it looked. The place was recently painted white. A small, umbrella-covered metal table with three wrought iron chairs sat in front of the mobile home’s door.

Victor parked. We got out as a man lumbered through the door and held the sides of the doorway to keep from slipping on the two steps to the ground. He was short, with a sagging belly. He wore jeans with suspenders over a blue striped polo shirt that was sucked into the folds of his neck. He was about sixty years old.

He looked at the three of us with amusement.

“A visit from a formidable trio,” he said. “A cowboy, a chink, and a gingerbread man. What brings you, and would you like a beer?”

We all said no. Pertwee shrugged and said, “So be it. What brings you here?”

“Deputy I met said you know a lot about Philip Horvecki,” said Ames.

“That I do,” said Pertwee. “And who did you say you were?”

“My name is Lewis Fonesca and I-”

“Lewis Fonesca,” he said. “Formerly an investigator in the state attorney’s office in Cook County, Illinois. You came here four years back after your wife was killed in a hit-and-run on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. The driver of the red convertible that killed her was an Asian man who has yet to be found by the police.”

“This is the man,” I said, nodding toward Victor.

Pertwee bent forward and looked up at Victor. Not much could happen that would surprise him.

“And this is Ames McKinney,” I went on.

“Four years ago, beach at Lido,” said Pertwee. “You shot your ex-partner. Fonesca was there. You did a little time. I sit out here, keep track. Retired detective, Cincinnati Police. Come on in.”

We followed the wobbling Pertwee into his house. The living room was larger than I had expected. It had the musty but not unpleasant odor of dried leaves. Family portraits hung on the walls, and the sofa and matching chair were each covered with a bright blue knitted blanket. Beyond the living room and down a step into the one-room addition to the home was an office lined with file drawers. A computer with a large screen sat next to a printer and a fax machine. There was a duplicate of the sofa in the other room complete with knitted blanket, only this blanket was brown.

“Wife’s in town at a photography class at Selby Gardens,” Pertwee said. “Won’t be back for a long while. She’ll have a portfolio full of photographs of flowers and trees when she walks through the door.”

He nodded toward the wall over the sofa. Color photographs were mounted one after another, all around the room. All the photographs were of flowers or bright fish in a pond.

Pertwee sat in front of the computer and pressed the power button. While the machine was firing up, he rose and waddled to a file cabinet, opened it, rummaged in a lower drawer, and came up with a manila file folder.

“Cold cases,” he explained as the image of a red flower appeared on his computer screen. “Sheriff’s office lets me see what I can find. Won’t find stuff like this on the Internet.”

“Horvecki was involved in a cold case?” I asked.

Victor had sat on the sofa. Ames stood at my side looking at the screen. Pertwee’s face was red with the reflected color of the flower before him.

“Two cold cases,” said Pertwee, opening the file folder and placing it on the table next to him. “First case was back in 1968. Young Horvecki was but a stripling. “Two fourteen-and sixteen-year-old black girls were raped and beaten. They were found wandering the byways. Both girls identified Horvecki as the attacker. Both later changed their minds. Case still open. Both girls are grandmas now. One’s a great grandma. One has a son who is not fond of Mr. Horvecki and has been known to speak ill of the now deceased. Son’s name is Williams, Essau Williams. Detective in the Venice Police Department. Detective Williams has been given disciplinary warnings because Horvecki claimed Williams has been stalking him for years.”

“And the other case?” I asked.

Pertwee said, “Ah” and flipped pages until he found what he was looking for.

“Here ’tis, 1988, same year Cynthia and I arrived in the State of Florida and purchased this little bit of heaven. Costs almost as much to get an Internet hookup and dish TV as it cost to buy Buddenbrooks.”

“Buddenbrooks?” I asked.

“The abode in which we sit, away from civilization in a field of rattlesnakes, raccoons, and seldom-seen rodents of unusual size and appetite. I can shoot them at my ease from one of those chairs under the umbrella. My principal physical exercise.”

“Sounds like fun,” Ames said.

“Yes, ’tis. However, all in all, I’d rather be back in Cincinnati. Cynthia, however, longed for Paradise, and we wound up here. I’m not complaining.”

“The second case in your files,” I reminded him.

He turned the page of the stapled sheets in the folder and said, “One Jack Pepper, sophomore at Riverview High School. Attacked from behind while crossing an orange grove on his way home from school. Assailant told him to pull down his pants or die. Assailant proceeded to attempt anal intercourse. Failed. Boy stepped out of his pants and drawers and ran. Pepper turned and saw the attacker coming after him. Pepper ran faster, covered himself with a damp, dirty newspaper and entered a gas station. Pepper identified Horvecki but Horvecki had the best lawyers money can buy and some friends in the right places. That was nineteen years ago. Jack Pepper is now thirty-six years old and living in relative tranquility in Cortez Village. Thrice Jack Pepper confronted our Mr. Horvecki in public places, broke his nose and cheekbone with a well-placed and probably knuckle-hurting punch, and kicked him into unconsciousness. Attempted murder, but…”

“Horvecki did not press charges,” I said.

“He did not. No other incident involving the two of them in the last nineteen years.”

“You have Pepper’s address?” I asked.

“That I have. I’ll give you both his and Essau Williams’s address,” said Pertwee. “And I shall print some possibly pertinent information for you.”

“Cost?” asked Ames.

“Close those two cold cases and find out who killed Horvecki,” said Pertwee. “These cases of open files challenge and mock me. The fewer there are, the lighter my burden, even though I know others will come to fill the drawers.”

We started back to the car, and Pertwee called out, “A sweet fella like Horvecki probably had lots of people who didn’t much care for him besides Williams and Pepper.”

We kept walking. One of the people who didn’t like Horvecki was Ronnie Gerall, sitting in juvenile lockup for killing a man everyone seemed to hate.

Cell phones are wondrous things. They keep people connected regardless of where they are. Going to be late for an appointment? Call. Have an accident on the road and need AAA? Call. Lapse into drunkenness at the side of the road and need AA? Call. Supposed to meet someone and they don’t show up? Call. Cell phones are wondrous things. They take photographs and videos, tell you the temperature and baseball scores, let you order pickup at Appleby’s, tell you what time it is and where you are if you get lost, and play music you like.

People can find you no matter where you are.

The problem is that I don’t want to be connected, don’t want to order braised chicken to be picked up at Appleby’s, don’t want to take photographs or videos, and am in no hurry to get baseball scores.

But the machines give us no choice.

The young don’t have wristwatches.

Phone booths are dying out.

Good-bye to all that.

Still, I had a cell phone in my pocket, a birthday present from Flo Zink. Adele had programmed in a ringtone version of “Help!” that was now playing.

“L.F., unless her body is enriching a wood or bog, Rachel Horvecki is not dead. And she is still not leaving her footprint on the sands of time. I can tell you stuff about her. Got time to hear?”

“Yes.”

“She is twenty-seven years old, went to Sarasota Christian High School where she was on the yearbook committee, Spanish Club, Poetry Club, Chess Club, Drama Club, cross-country team; did three years at Manatee Community College, where she was on no club, went to a small school called Plain River College in a small town in West Texas. Her major was English Lit. No extracurricular interests or clubs. Plain River College registrar records show she dropped out. Reason stated: Getting Married. Sarasota Memorial Hospital records show she had an appendectomy when she was seventeen and came into the ER once, when she was fourteen, for a broken arm and bruised ribs. Hospital reported possible abuse, but Rachel insisted she had fallen down some stairs. Want me to keep looking?”

“Yes. See if you can find out who, if anyone, she married.”

“Will do.”

We hung up. I called Winn Graeme’s cell phone and told him I wanted to talk to him without Greg at his side pummeling him. He had something to do at school but would call me when he could get away.

I called the home of D. Elliot Corkle and left a message when he didn’t pick up. Since he said he never left the house, I wondered where he was. Maybe he was taking a shower or a swim or just didn’t feel like being connected to someone beyond his front door. I gave my number to the machine and said, “Please call me soon. What’s the ‘D’ in your name for?”

I called Sally. She answered. I said nothing.

“Lew?”

Cell phone. Caller ID. She knew who was calling.

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I hoped that words would come when I heard your voice, but they’re not coming.”

“We can talk later,” she said. “I’m with a client now.”

“How is Darrell?”

“Better, much better. I’ll call you later. Promise.”

She ended the call, and I tried to think of other people to call. I wanted to wear out the charge in my phone so it would go silent, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

I was tempted to launch into baseball metaphors.

Victor drove me to the Fruitville Library, where I got my bike out of his trunk.

“I can come back for you,” said Victor.

“No, thanks,” I said.

Ames said nothing, just looked at me and nodded. I nodded back. They drove off. The sun was high, the air filled with moist heaviness and the smell of watermelons from a truck vending them on Fruitville, just beyond the parking lot.

I chained my bike to a lamppost and went inside.

The cool air struck and chilled for an instant.

Two minutes later I had an oversize book of World War II airplanes open on my lap. I didn’t want to look at it. I wasn’t interested. It was a prop to keep a vigilant librarian from making a citizen’s arrest for vagrancy.

No more than five maybe six, minutes later, Blue Berrigan sat down across from me.

Stuart M. Kaminsky

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