Bright Futures

9

Half an hour later I was seated behind my desk, looking across the room at the Stig Dalstrom paintings on the wall. They were the only art I owned-four small paintings given to me by Flo Zink. They were of dark jungles and mountains at night with just a small touch of color, a single bird or flower, the distant moon.

Outside, Ames was working on the Saturn. He knew guns, machines, trucks, and automobiles, but it would take a lot of knowing to make the Saturn live again.

I half hoped he would fail. I felt uncomfortable owning anything larger than a DVD player.

My cell phone was on the otherwise empty desktop in front of me. I was waiting. On the way home I had told Ames that it would probably take an hour or less for the police to arrive, so he had better do as much as he could on the car before men in blue appeared bearing guns in the usually quiet street.

The old woman former juggler in an orange robe would describe us to the police. That would be enough.

“A tall old man wearing a coat in the heat and a not-too-tall, sad-looking fella wearing a Cubs baseball cap,” Ames had said as we drove.

“Driving in a noisy old car,” I added.

“Won’t be hard,” he said.

It was at that point that I called Detective Ettiene Viviase to tell him about the body in the jeep across from Bee Ridge Park. It was better to have a cop I knew around.

Viviase arrived thirty-five minutes into my longing for the comfort of dark jungles. It was just enough time for him to take a look at Berrigan’s body, leave someone to take over the crime scene and get back to Ames and me.

I heard the footsteps on the wooden stairs and watched the door open. Ames was at Viviase’s side.

Once, I had heard Viviase referred to as “Big Ed.” He wasn’t particularly big, maybe a little under six feet tall and weighing in at a little over two hundred and twenty pounds. He was wearing his usual uniform, a rumpled sports jacket, dark slacks, a tie with no personality and a weary look on his face.

“Got a little more to do on the car,” said Ames. “Need a few parts. Should get it working within reason.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Viviase, stepping into the room and closing the door behind him. “Now tell me a story. Nonfiction preferred.”

“Mind if I wash up my hands?” asked Ames.

“Please do,” said Viviase moving to the desk and facing me across it.

Ames walked slowly through the bathroom door and closed it behind him. Then I heard the water start to flow.

“We didn’t kill him,” I said.

“I know that,” said Viviase. “If you had, you probably wouldn’t have walked up to his door asking for him after you crushed his skull.”

“I definitely wouldn’t have,” I said.

“Talk,” he said.

“Berrigan found me at the Crisp Dollar Bill,” I said. “He said he wanted my help. He was nervous. When Ames showed up, Berrigan went to the bathroom and out the window. You can check with Billy the bartender and the customers who were there. When Berrigan went through the bathroom window, we followed him. He was frightened. I thought maybe we could help. I ran outside and saw him pull away in the jeep. There was someone in the car with him. I couldn’t make out who. My car-”

“Your car?”

“I bought it this morning.”

“The Saturn McKinney was working on?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a gem.”

“Thanks. It moves at its own pace.”

“Two questions,” said Viviase. “First, what did Berrigan say he wanted?”

“He didn’t have time to tell me.”

“Thin, Fonesca. Very thin. Third question: Why did you leave the scene of a murder?”

“Because we didn’t want to get involved.”

“Then why did you call me?”

“I changed my mind.”

“Civic duty, right?”

“I knew you’d find us.”

Ames emerged from the bathroom and joined us.

“I’ll talk to McKinney now,” said Viviase. “Let’s see if he remembers it the way you do.”

Ames did. We had gone over the story as we clunked our way home. Ames got it down perfectly. He told it tersely.

“This have anything to do with the Horvecki murder you’ve been asking about?”

“Don’t know,” I said, and I didn’t, though it was more than likely that the two were related.

“Since I’m here, would you like to tell me how you got involved in the Horvecki business?”

I didn’t want to tell him for many reasons, not the least of which was that I had been recommended for the job by Viviase’s own daughter, Elisabeth, but I had to tell him something.

“Two kids just came to me. Friends of Gerall.”

“Why you?”

I shrugged and said, “Ask them.”

“I will,” he said. “Fix your car. Stop trying to get the Gerall kid off. Lighten up this room. I’ll get back to you. You listening?”

“Yes,” I said.

“But you won’t back off, will you?”

“No.”

“All right, give me the names of the two kids,” he said. “And don’t tell me it’s confidential. You’re not even a private investigator.”

I gave him Greg and Winn’s names. He wrote them down and said, “They visited Gerall in juvie,” Viviase said putting the notebook away. “I knew who they were.”

“Just trapping the coyote,” said Ames.

“Very colorful,” Viviase said.

“Anything new on the Horvecki daughter?” I asked.

“Nothing I plan to share.”

Which, I concluded, meant that he had nothing more than what Dixie had given me and probably a lot less.

Viviase left.

Seconds after he was gone, the door to my bedroom opened and Victor Woo came out with a girl. She was no more than fifteen, dark, cute, still holding onto a little baby fat. She wore faded jeans and a white tucked-in short-sleeved blouse with a flower stitched over her left breast.

“Is my father gone?” she asked, standing back in case Viviase decided to return. His footsteps had clacked down the stairs and, unless he had taken off his shoes and tip-toed back up, he was gone, at least for now.

“He’s gone,” I said. “How did you find me?”

“Your name is in my father’s address book. I went to where you were supposed to be, but there was no building.”

Victor moved to the floor in the corner. Elisabeth Viviase glanced at him.

“I asked a sad fat man in the car rental place. He told me where you live. Why is that man sitting on the floor in the corner?”

She sat in one of the two chairs on the other side of my desk.

“Penance,” I said, sitting.

“For what?”

“Ask him.”

She turned to Victor and said, “Why are you doing penance?”

“Murder,” he said softly.

With a veteran policeman as a father, the possibility of murder in close proximity was not confined to CSI on television.

“Why here?” she asked. “Why do penance here?”

“I killed his wife,” Victor said flatly.

Elisabeth turned back to me, tried to figure out if this was some comic routine with her as the butt of the joke. Whatever she saw in my face, she decided to change the subject.

“Ronnie didn’t kill Horvecki.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he was with me,” she said.

“When?”

“A week ago on Saturday,” she said.

“What time?”

“From seven till midnight.”

She sat with back straight and false sincerity masking her face.

“The murder took place after midnight,” I said.

“Well, I may have left Ronnie’s at one or later.”

“I was just testing you,” I said. “Horvecki was actually killed no later than noon.”

“Well,” she said, sliding back as far as she could go. “Now that I think of it, I was with Ronnie from seven to midnight on the day before the murder. On the day of the murder, I was with him as early as eleven in the morning, maybe earl… You’re testing me again.”

She looked away.

She returned to the self-certain statement of “Ronnie didn’t do it.”

“You didn’t go to the police with your alibi for Gerall,” I said.

“You kidding? My father would find out in five minutes. I wanted to tell you so you could find the real killer without telling my father about, you know, my coming here.”

Victor suddenly stood, and asked, “Would you like a Coke?” The move reminded me of James Coburn when he tilted his hat back and suddenly stood erect, ready for a showdown with his knife against a gun.

“Diet Coke,” she said.

Victor looked at me.

“Nothing for me,” I said.

Victor left. Elisabeth and I listened to his footsteps on the stairs.

“Gerall’s your boyfriend?”

“I wish,” she said eyes looking upward.

“You told Greg Legerman and Winn Graeme about me.”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me about them.”

“Greg is kind of electric-cute, super-smart, dancing around, adjusting his glasses, a walking public service ad for hyperactives anonymous.”

“He get in a lot of fights?”

“No. He just talks, makes people nervous. Winn is his only friend. He takes a lot from Greg.”

“But they stay friends?” I asked.

“Go figure,” she said.

“Greg talks. What does he talk about?”

“You think I pay that much attention to Long-winded Legerman?”

“I think you pay attention to a lot of things.”

She gave me a questioning look.

“That’s a compliment,” I said.

The quizzical look was replaced by a minimally appreciative smile.

The door opened. Victor and Ames entered together. Victor moved to my desk with an offering of Diet Coke for Elisabeth who said, “Thank you.”

“It’s warm,” he said.

I knew a twelve-pack of Diet Coke was in the back of his car.

“That’s okay,” she said.

She popped the tab and drank from the can.

Victor went back to his bedroll and Ames leaned against the wall.

“Anything else you can tell me?” I asked.

“About what?” she said, looking over her shoulder at Ames and Victor.

“Greg, Winn, Ronnie, Horvecki. A man named Blue Berrigan.”

“Blue Berrigan? I can tell you about him. I have his three CDs. Haven’t listened to them in a long time. I was a big fan. I’ve still got my Blue Bunny night slippers, but if you tell anyone, I’ll come back here and claim you raped me.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” I said.

She took a big gulp from her Diet Coke.

“Hot Coke is gross. Am I through?” she asked, placing the can on the desk.

“How’d you get here?”

“Walked from school. I can catch a bus home.”

“Victor can drive you home.”

She looked at Victor who had returned to his place in the corner.

“No, thanks,” she said, looking at the man who had called himself a murderer.

“Ames can give you a lift on the back of his scooter.”

I looked at Ames. He had a strong avuncular feeling for children.

“Has he murdered anyone?” she asked.

“Not recently,” I said.

“I’ll take the scooter.”

“Do you know the first line of a book, any book?”

“ ‘The event on which this fiction is founded has been supposed, by Dr. Darwin, and some of the physiological writers of German, as not of impossible occurrence.’ ”

I asked her to repeat it slowly. She did, while I wrote on a pad from my desk drawer.

“The book?” I asked.

“ Frankenstein, ” said Victor.

“That’s right,” said Elisabeth. “We had to memorize a paragraph from a novel on our reading list. I picked Frankenstein.”

“Because it’s scary?” I tried.

“Because it was written by a woman,” she said.

“You want to be a writer?”

“I want to be an FBI agent,” she answered. “But don’t-”

“Tell your father.”

“He’s not ready for it,” she said. “And I might change my mind.”

I got up to show I had nothing more to ask or say. She stood and headed for Ames and the door. She paused at the door and said, “You won’t tell my-”

“I won’t tell,” I said.

Ames and the girl left. I was making some assumptions. I assumed the timing was such that my investigation of the Horvecki killing, the bullet through the window of Augustine’s car, the shooting of Darrell Caton, and the murder of Blue Berrigan were all tied together. What if I were wrong? I had two suspects I hadn’t yet spoken to, Essau Williams, the cop in Venice, and Jack Pepper in Cortez Village-two people whose names were in files in a cabinet in the mobile home of an ex-Cincinnati cop named Pertwee. Both had sworn to make Philip Horvecki pay for what he had been accused of, the rape of Essau’s mother and aunt when they were young girls and the attempted rape and beating of Pepper, whom Horvecki had tried to sodomize. Pepper lived north, just outside of Cortez Village, and Williams south, in Venice.

When night came, I lay in bed silently for I don’t know how many minutes listening to traffic on 301, thinking of something I could say or do to induce Sally to stay.

I had nothing to offer. Armed with addresses that I had gotten from Pertwee’s files, I got up just before six in the morning and asked Victor, who was cross-legged on his bedroll reading a book, to tell Ames I was going to Cortez Village and that I’d be back in a few hours.

There are no hills in Florida south of Ocala unless we’re talking about man-made ones. Construction is constantly going on in Sarasota-streets torn up and widened, new streetlights, hotels, mansions, developments, high-rise apartments, new malls. From time to time a pile of dirt resembling a fifteen-foot hill will rise and occasionally a dazzled teen or preteen will climb up and be knocked down or even buried in a small dust-raising avalanche. The flat landscape of Sarasota County is paled over with nonnative palm trees and trees that thrive on enough water to drown most other fauna and with tall, sometimes fat condominium buildings that present a view of heavily trafficked roads and other condos.

I passed a mess of construction heading north on Tamiami Trail. Wooden yellow-and-black traffic horses and dingy red cones created a minor maze that slowed vehicles and made ancient drivers, pregnant mothers, and slightly drunken men mad with the challenge.

It took me almost an hour to make the trip to Cortez Village. Ames had installed a third-hand junkyard radio in the car. It worked just fine, so I was accompanied by the soothing voice of a man with a Southern accent. The voice wasn’t strident; he was confident and sounded as if he were smiling as he spoke. I had been told when I called Jack Pepper’s phone number that he was at the studio doing his show. The woman told me the address of the station’s studio and number on the dial where WTLW could be found. I found it and listened as I drove.

“You know, friends,” the man said, “the Jewish people are holy. They are the people chosen by God to redeem the land of Israel, the sacred land of our Lord Jesus Christ. We must support the Jewish people in their quest to survive against heathen hordes. Palestine does not belong to the Arab. Palestine comes from the Biblical word Philistine. The Philistines were neither Arab nor Semite. The Emperor Hadrian designated the land as Palestine. The Arabs can’t even say the word. They call it ‘Palethtine.’ ”

He almost sounded as if he were crying.

“We can’t let the Jewish people be pushed into the sea. We cannot let the land of Israel once again go into the hands of those who would make of it an unholy land. If there need be another Crusade, we must march in it armed with truth.”

And a lot of heavy firepower, I thought. Pepper was just getting warmed up.

“There will come a time,” he said, “when our Savior returns and those who have believed in him will be saved and shall sit in the house of the Lord and bask in the warmth of Christ.”

And what about the Jews? I thought, but Jack Pepper let it hang in the air.

Cortez Village, on the Gulf of Mexico, still has a few small fishing companies and some independent fishermen making a living pretty much as fishermen have been doing there for more than a century. The air was salty with the smell of fish.

The radio station was a little hard to find. It was about thirty yards down a narrow dirt street, at the rear of a small frame church on a white pebble-and-stone parking lot. Four cars were parked in the lot. A four-foot sign indicated that I was indeed not only in the parking lot of the Every Faith Evangelical Church but, that, if I followed the arrow pointing toward the rear of the church, I’d find radio station WTLW, THE LORD’S WORD.

There was a seven-foot-high mesh steel fence with three strands of barbed wire surrounding the lot. Inside the fence there was a patch of crushed white stone and shell about the size of my office. About twenty yards beyond the enclosure was a three-story steel radio tower.

On the patch of grass on my side of the fence was the door with a freshly painted white cross about the size of an ATM machine. Next to the cross was a gate with a button and a speaker just above it. I pushed the button. The clear but speaker resonant voice of a woman said, “Who is it?”

“Lew Fonesca. I’m here to see Jack Pepper.”

“Reverend Pepper,” she reprimanded.

“Reverend Pepper,” I said.

“Why?”

“Philip Horvecki,” I said.

Long pause. Long, long pause.

“Why?”

This time it was a man’s voice, the same voice I had just been listening to on the radio.

“Detective Viviase of the Sarasota Police suggested I talk to you,” I lied.

Another long pause.

“I do not wish to testify,” he said.

“Ronnie Gerall may not have done it,” I said.

I could hear the man and woman talking, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. One of them must have put a hand over the microphone. I could tell that the woman sounded insistent and Pepper sounded resigned.

“Come in,” said Pepper. “Close the gate behind you.”

Something clicked and I pushed the gate open.

The door at the end of the path was painted a bright red. It looked as if a new coat of paint had been applied minutes earlier. The station’s call letters were painted in black in the middle of the door with a foot-high brown cross under them.

“Come in,” came the man’s voice.

I opened the door.

“Take off the hat please,” the man said. “This station is part of the House of the Lord.”

I took off my Cubs cap, stuffed it in my back pocket, stepped in, and closed the door behind me.

The room was about the size of a handball court. There were three desks with chairs lined up side by side on the left, and on the right stood a narrow table with spindly black metal legs. The table was covered in plastic that was meant to look like wood, but it looked like plastic. On the table there sat a computer and printer and boxes of eight-by-ten flyers I couldn’t read from where I stood. There were eight folding chairs leaning against the wall. Beyond all this, through a large rectangular window, I could see a studio barely big enough for two people. In fact, two people were in there. One had a guitar. One was a man. One was a woman. They were obviously singing. They were smiling. I couldn’t hear them.

I looked over at an ample woman of no more than fifty whose dark hair was a study for one of those “before” pictures on early morning television.

“Speak,” she said.

I looked at the man behind the second desk. He was gaunt and had red hair and an almost baby-like face. He could have been any age.

“You’re Reverend Pepper?”

“I am,” he said. “And you are?”

“An investigator hired to see if Ronnie Gerall killed Philip Horvecki. Want to go someplace more private?”

“Whatever you have to say to me can be said in front of Lilly.”

“Philip Horvecki,” I said. “He was not a good man.”

Lilly closed her eyes and nodded her head.

“He wasn’t punished for what he did to you,” I said.

“It was my word against his. The police said that wasn’t enough,” Pepper replied.

“He wasn’t punished,” I said.

“Yes he was, but not by the law. His punishment was delayed, but the Lord was not in a hurry.”

Lilly was slowly nodding her head to the rhythm of Pepper’s voice and the eyes of Jack Pepper vibrated back and forth.

“Where were you Saturday night?”

“What time?”

“Evening, at about ten.”

“In my home, my aunt’s home where I live. She looks after me. Lilly was there too.”

“I was,” Lilly said.

“Lilly came to dinner and to talk about a tour I have been planning. I’m sorry. I have to get back in the studio. Gilbert and Jenny are almost finished with their song.”

“And today, about eleven in the morning?” I asked.

“Another crime?”

I said nothing.

“I was here, doing the morning call-in show,” he said.

Before I could question Lilly, the theory I had been putting together about recorded shows and lying alibis seemed to come apart. Maybe I had just seen Laura too many times.

Jack Pepper rose with the help of two aluminum forearm crutches. He leaned forward as he slowly came out from behind the desk.

He looked up at me with what may have been a touch of pain and said, “MS. Multiple Sclerosis. The Lord has chosen to touch me with this affliction. Would you like the name and number of my doctor to see if I’m telling the truth?”

“No,” I said.

“Fonesca? Italian. You are a Catholic?” he asked.

Lilly was shaking her head yes. She was either answering for me or at the brilliance of Jack Pepper’s observation.

“No,” I said.

“Lapsed?”

“No. I’m a lapsed Episcopalian.”

“We are all one in Christ,” he said.

“Except for the Jews and a long list of others.”

“They are welcome to join the faith and be embraced as brothers and sisters and be saved,” he said.

“Amen,” said Lilly softly.

“You believe that in spite of what God has let happen to you?”

“Because of what God has let happen to me.”

“Philip Horvecki sodomized you,” I said gently.

“No,” he said with a smile. “He tried and failed. The Lord did not choose to let it happen.”

I shut up and watched him make his painful way toward the door to the studio in which I could see that the two singers had wrapped up. Then he stopped and looked back at me.

“The Lord has allowed something bad to happen to you, too,” he said. “You are filled with grief and sorrow.”

That could have been said of just about everyone I knew or had ever known. But, it hit me. He opened the door to the studio a few seconds after the red light over the door had gone off.

“You have a favorite first line of a book?” I asked.

“Genesis one,” he said.

“Something else.”

He paused and said, “ ‘Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.’ ”

“What’s that from?” I asked taking out my index cards and pen.

“ Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” he said.

He entered, and the studio door closed behind him.

Never underestimate the ability of a human being to surprise.

“There are many roads to enlightenment and belief,” Lilly said.

If there were that many roads, why wasn’t I on one of them? I looked at her. She was beaming, her eyes fixed on the studio door.

“All are welcome to this church,” she said.

“Then why the barbed-wire fence?” I asked.

“There are people on this earth who have been put here to challenge, vex, and destroy to keep us from spreading the faith.”

“Vandals,” I said.

“Minions of the devil,” she said.

I thought I might save a little time, so I simply asked, “You didn’t happen to kill Philip Horvecki and Blue Berrigan?”

“I don’t know any Blue Berrigan and I don’t believe in killing.”

“You happen to have a favorite first line from a book?”

“ ‘It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed,’ ” she said. “ Fahrenheit 451.”

With that, I went to the door.

“Feel free to come back,” Lilly said.

I had no intention of doing so. When I got back into the car and turned on the radio, I was greeted by the voice of the Reverend Jack Pepper:

“… a special prayer for the soul of Lewis Fonseca, one of our Lord’s lost children.”

“Fonesca,” I said softly. “Not Fonseca.”

I turned off the radio and drove amid the sound of silence.