Bright Futures

10

Essau Williams was in the Venice telephone directory. I sat in the Saturn and punched in the number I had written on one of my index cards.

The phone rang three times before a man answered with a sleepy, “Williams.”

“Fonesca,” I said. “I’m from Sarasota. I’d like to talk to you about Philip Horvecki.”

“He’s dead.”

“I know.”

“I’m not sorry.”

“I’m not surprised. Can I talk to you?”

“Who are you?” he asked sounding a little more awake. “A reporter?”

“No, a friend of the family.”

“Whose family?”

“Ronnie Gerall.”

“You want me to contribute to his defense fund? Put me down for an anonymous fifty dollars. No, make that a hundred dollars. Any killer of Horvecki is a friend of mine. And since you’re calling me, I think you know why I’m being generous.”

“Can we meet?” I asked. “I’d like to gather information about Horvecki that might help justify what Gerall did.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in Venice,” I said.

“Come over.”

He gave me directions and we hung up without good-byes.

Essau Williams’s house was not near the beach. It was in Trugate West, a development about three miles south of the hospital. What it was west of, I have no idea. His was a small ranch-style house, one of hundreds built in the 1950s to house the middle-class migrants who didn’t have enough money to buy near the beach. They did have a little more money than the retirees who moved just outside of what was then the city limits into the mobile homes lying on tiny patches of grass that most of them tried to make homey with flowers and bright paint.

The green grass, really the weeds that passed for grass in Florida, was mowed short. The two trees, one a small palm, the other a tangelo, grew on opposite sides of the narrow concrete path that led to the front door.

I knocked. Essau Williams opened. He wasn’t big, he was huge. He wore a pair of blue shorts and a gray T-shirt with the name ESSAU in red block letters across his chest and the number 8 under it. He had a yellow towel draped around his neck, and sweat was thick on his forehead, cheeks, and arms. He was all muscle and probably could have made a career with his body if he had a face to match. Essau Williams, light brown with a brooding brow, looked a little like my cousin Carmine, who was not the beauty of our family. Williams had the additional drawback of a raised horizontal white scar across his forehead.

“Go around back,” he said and closed the door.

I walked through the grass to the back of the house where Williams was placing two tall glasses of what looked like lemonade on a wooden picnic table.

“Have a seat,” he said.

I sat. It was hard to tell how big the yard was. It was dense with fruit trees, succulent bushes, flowers, and vines. The picnic table was on a round redbrick island that left no room for anything but the table.

“Nice,” I said, looking around.

On a mat a few yards from the table was a plastic-covered bench. A series of bars and weights were lined up evenly next to the bench.

“Thanks. If you go that way, down the path… See it?”

“Yes.”

The lemonade was cold with thin slices of lemon and clinking cubes.

“There’s a fountain over there with a small waterfall. You should be able to hear it.”

“I hear it,” I said.

“Okay, maybe I can save us some time.” He took a deep drink of lemonade and looked in the general direction of the running water. “Philip Horvecki raped my mother and aunt when they were kids and got away with it. Eight years ago Philip Horvecki came to my mother and my aunt’s home, threatened them, and left them crying. He warned them not to tell anyone or he would come back and kill them.”

I nodded. There was nothing else to do. He went on.

“My mother was sixty-four, my aunt sixty-six. I was on the force in Westin, Massachusetts. They didn’t tell me what had happened till I came down for Thanksgiving. That was three months after the attack. I went to the sheriff’s office and demanded that Horvecki be arrested. My mom and aunt filed criminal complaints. Only the word of my mom and aunt against Horvecki, who had the best lawyers money could buy. They tore at the reports, said they were filed by two sexually frustrated, old black women who changed their minds about selling the house for what he called ‘a fair price.’ He also said they were angry because he wouldn’t accept their advances. His lawyers brought up medical histories, family history. We didn’t have a chance.”

“So…”

“Didn’t even go to trial,” he said, shaking his head. “He walked. Then I moved here, took a job with the Venice police and began watching everything Horvecki did or said. My mother and aunt moved back north. They’ve both been in therapy. They’re recluses. They seldom go out, and they’ve got guns and know how to use them. They think Horvecki’s going to make good on his promise to kill them.”

“Didn’t you feel like doing more than watching him?”

He was nodding now, considering. Then he leaned forward toward me.

“I wanted to kill him. I told him I would. I told him I’d pick my own time. I wanted to turn him into a pile of frightened jelly.”

“Did it work?”

“No,” he said. “After a while, he didn’t believe me. The fact, which I’ll deny, is that I had a date set, the anniversary of what he did to my mom and aunt, to beat the bastard to death. Three weeks from today. I’m glad someone beat me to it.”

“Horvecki was rich,” I said.

“Very. Worth about sixty or seventy million. Real estate. He made at least two million of that from my aunt and mother’s house and property.”

“You know who gets his money?”

“His daughter I guess. Who cares? My mother and my aunt are lost. You know what it’s like to lose someone you love? You know what it’s like to become obsessed with punishing him?”

“Yes,” I said.

He looked at me long and hard over the rim of his lemonade and then said, “Maybe you do. When you see him dead in a funeral home, the feeling of vindication doesn’t come. You just feel flat, empty.”

“I know,” I said. “Did you kill Horvecki?”

“What?”

“Did you kill Philip Horvecki?”

“No. I told you. I thought you were trying to find information that would justify what Gerall did, not come up with another suspect. Who do you work for?”

“Ronnie Gerall. I told you. He says he didn’t do it.”

“Surprise. A killer denies his crime. If you find out someone else did it, I’ll give that hundred dollars to his defense. Now I think you better leave.”

He stood up, but I didn’t.

“I think there’s something you’re not telling me,” I said.

His fists were clenched now. The scar across his forehead distended and turned a clean snow white.

“Get out,” he said, kicking the bench.

“You’ve got a temper,” I said. “How angry are you?”

“You want to find out?”

He was around the table now standing over me. I didn’t want to find out.

“You lose your temper easily,” I said.

“Maybe.”

He had me by the front of my shirt, now, and pulled me to my feet.

“You are about to have an accident,” he said. “A bad one.”

“Don’t think so,” came a familiar voice from the corner of the house.

Ames stood there with a pistol in his hand.

“Best put him down and back away,” Ames said.

“You have a license for that weapon?” asked Williams.

“No, but if I shoot you dead, legality of the weapon won’t mean much, will it?”

He still had my collar and was squeezing more tightly. I gagged.

“You won’t shoot,” Williams said.

“He will,” I gagged. “He’s done it before.”

Williams lifted me farther. I felt myself passing out. Ames fired. He was a good shot, a very good shot. The bullet skidded between Williams’s feet leaving a scratch in the bricks. Williams let me drop. I tumbled backward, fell over the bench, and landed on my back.

“You all right, Lewis?” he asked.

I had trouble answering. My back was a flash of pain, and my throat wouldn’t allow words to come out. I made a sound like “Mmmm,” which in the universal language of the beating victims of the world could mean no or yes.

Williams stood still, looking at Ames.

“One question,” I rasped, getting to my knees.

“I didn’t kill Horvecki,” said Williams.

“Not my question,” I said, making it to my feet. “Have you got a favorite first line from a book?”

Williams turned to look at me. “No,” he said.

I staggered to Ames’s side, and he said, “Let’s get my scooter in your trunk and get out of here.”

I didn’t argue. Ames kept his weapon trained on Williams, who was now ignoring us and sitting on the bench again. He had poured himself another large lemonade.

On the way home, Ames explained how he had found me. He knew the names of the two suspects I was out looking for. The files Pertwee had given me were on my desk. He used the same telephone directory I had and made his way to the house in Venice.

“He kill Horvecki?” Ames asked as I drove.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“The other fella, Pepper?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Where do we go now?”

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

“Yes.”

Ames is the best read person I have ever known. His room across from the kitchen and near the rear door of the Texas Bar and Grill was jammed with books neatly arranged on wall-to-ceiling shelves Ames had built. He always carried a book in his pocket or in the compartment of his scooter. The last book I saw him reading was Dead Souls.

“What is it?”

Ames was silent for a moment. He looked down at the barrel of the shotgun between his legs and said, “People don’t read much anymore.”

Then Ames said, “In a village of La Mancha the name of which I have no desire to recall, there lived not so long ago one of those gentlemen who always have a cane in the rack, an ancient buckler, a skinny nag, and a greyhound for the chase.”

“Which one of us is Quixote and which one is Sancho Panza?” I asked.

He looked straight ahead and said, “Let’s find us more windmills.”

We were making good time going north on Tamiami. We were both quiet while I thought about what to do next. Then I spoke. I didn’t think about what I was saying. There were consequences, but there was the promise of windmills.

“How are things at the Texas?”

“Fine,” he said.

“Think you might want to become my partner?”

“Already am.”

“Officially, I mean.”

“The pay would be bad, the hours all over the place, the job dangerous sometimes, no benefits?” said Ames.

“And those are the incentives,” I said.

“Sounds good to me,” said Ames.

“And there’s always a chance I’d get in this car one morning and just drive away for good.”

“Understood.”

“And your job at the Texas?”

“Could still do the cleaning up in exchange for my room. Big Ed’d be amenable.”

“Then it’s done?”

“Seems,” Ames said.

And it was done. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I knew something had happened, something I would have to talk to Ann Hurwitz about.

“Dunkin’ Donuts to celebrate?” I asked.

Ames had said enough. He nodded in agreement and we pulled into the parking lot of the Dunkin’ Donuts across from Sarasota Memorial Hospital.

Our partnership was confirmed over coffee and chocolate iced doughnuts.

“Someone’s been following us,” Ames said after wiping his mouth.

“Blue Porsche.”

“Yes.”

“She parked in the lot?” I said. “Yes.”

“Maybe we should bring her coffee and a muffin?”

“No need,” Ames said, looking past me. “She’s coming.”

There were three chairs at our small table, the only table at which anyone was sitting. The sound on the television set mounted on the wall was off. On the screen, a very pretty blonde with full red lips and perfect teeth was looking out at the world and talking seriously about something.

The woman from the blue Porsche sat between me and Ames.

“Can we get you a coffee and doughnuts or a muffin?” I asked.

“Coffee, black, that’s all,” she said.

She was Corkle’s daughter and the mother of my teenage babbling client, Greg Legerman. She was dark and beautiful, her make-up perfect, not a hair out of place. Her skirt was blue and her long-sleeved cashmere sweater white. A necklace of large Chinese green jade and small jet black beads was all the jewelry she needed.

For an instant, just an instant, I remembered Catherine on the night we went to a concert at Orchestra Hall in Chicago. The symphony played Grieg and Brahms, and I watched my wife smiling and held her hand.

“You all right?” Alana Legerman asked.

“Perfect,” I said.

I introduced her to Ames. He nodded in acknowledgment. She didn’t offer her hand. Ames rose and headed for the counter to get her coffee. She sat up straight, probably a payoff from yoga classes.

“You didn’t give my son back the money he paid you to find out who really killed Horvecki.”

“If he wants his money back-”

“He won’t take it,” she said.

“No, he won’t.”

“You’ll get my son killed.”

Ames was back. He placed the coffee in front of Alana Legerman.

“Who would want to hurt him?” I asked.

“Whoever killed Horvecki,” she said, looking at the steaming coffee but not picking it up.

“You don’t think Ronnie Gerall did it?”

She considered the question. She took a breath, picked up the coffee, and said, “Ronnie has a temper and caustic verbal bite, but he hasn’t the fire inside for the kind of brutal thing that was done to Horvecki.”

“You know Gerall well?” I asked.

“Well enough.”

I pictured the two of them together. She was twenty years older than he was, but she was a beauty, and he was a good-looking kid. Stranger things had happened.

“How did you meet him?”

“That’s not relevant,” she said, drinking some coffee.

A fat man sat two tables away with a small bag of doughnuts and a large coffee. He was wearing a suit and a very serious look on his face. I watched him attack the bag and come out with an orange-iced special.

I looked at Ames, who sat with his large hands folded on the table. He understood what I wanted. Neither of us spoke. It was her move.

“I’d like you to continue to look for whoever killed Philip Horvecki. You return whatever money my son and my father gave you, and I’ll give you double the amount in cash. In addition, you make it clear to everyone you come in contact with that you are working for me. I’ll do the same.”

She touched the corner of her mouth with a little finger to remove a fleck that wasn’t there.

“So, whoever killed Horvecki won’t have any reason to harm your father and your son?” I asked. “If the killer wants my investigation to stop, he’ll go after you.”

“Yes,” she said, “If that’s what it comes to. Whoever it is is already trying to kill you.”

I didn’t see how changing clients would make a difference to someone who might want to kill me because I was looking into Philip Horvecki’s murder, and I wasn’t sure how accepting her offer might make her father and son a lot safer than they were already.

“How about this?” I said. “I keep the money you, your father, and your son give me, and the killer has to do a lot of thinking before going after your family. What’s Greg’s father like?”

“As some of Greg’s friends might say, Greg’s father is, like, dead. Heart attack. The world did not grieve at his passing.”

“Nine hundred and thirty dollars,” I said.

“A nice round number,” she said, reaching into her oversized Louis Vuitton purse. “Will a check do?”

“Nicely,” I said. “Make it out to cash.”

She had a checkbook in front of her and a lean silver pen in her hand. When she finished writing the check, she tore it out of the book and handed it to me.

“Then there’s nothing more to say,” she said, getting up.

“You could thank my partner for the coffee.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Thank you.”

This time she held out her hand, and Ames took it. “Report to me when you have anything and try not to upset my father and Greg. Oh, and one last thing. When I said ‘everyone you come in contact with’-don’t tell them you are working for me.”

She gathered up her purse and moved quickly toward the door. The fat man in the suit paused in his chewing to admire Alana Legerman as she went into the sunlit morning.

“Pretty lady,” Ames said.

“Very pretty,” I agreed.

“What’s next?”

“We do just what she doesn’t want us to do. We talk to Greg and Corkle.”

Greg was still in school. I left a voice message asking him to call as soon as he could.

D. Elliot Corkle answered the phone. I asked if I could come over.

“Something happen to Gregory?”

“No.”

“Come on over.”

“Be there in half an hour.”

He hung up. On the way to his house we stopped at a Bank of America and cashed the check. I gave half the cash to Ames. Alana Legerman hadn’t followed us-we would have known. It’s hard to hide a neon blue Porsche being driven by a beautiful woman.

The Saturn still made some voodoo sounds. Ames said he would engage his magical skills and take care of the Saturn’s remaining problems the next day.

My cell phone rang.

“You weren’t going to call me, were you?” Sally asked.

What was it I heard? Disappointment? Simple weariness? A headache in progress?

“I don’t know.”

“Dinner Saturday. Just you and me. No kids. Walt’s. Six-thirty.”

“You want me to pick you up at home?”

“You have a car?”

“Bought it today.”

“Acquiring property.”

“It can be abandoned or given away,” I said. “It’s not worth much.”

“Or you can drive it into the sunset,” she said.

“Yes.”

Ames had put on his glasses and was reading a small blue book to let me know he was in no hurry for me to end the call.

“Pick me up at six-thirty,” she said.

“Six-thirty,” I repeated.

She hung up.

Ames took off his glasses and put the book back in his pocket. I drove. We were on our way to talk to an odd and possibly demented man with many millions of dollars.

Corkle answered the door. He was wearing a green polo shirt and navy pants with a welcoming smile.

“Can we come in?” I asked.

Corkle stepped back and wrung his hands just the way he did in his infomercials when he was about to offer “a sweet deal.” He may not have needed the money, but he couldn’t resist two customers.

“This is my partner, Ames McKinney.”

It was the first time I had said that. I felt a little like Oliver Hardy introducing himself in one of their movies-“I’m Mr. Hardy and this is my friend Mr. Laurel. Say hello Stanley.”-but Ames was no Stan Laurel.

Corkle stopped wringing his hands and reached out to shake. He looked delighted as Ames took his extended hand.

“Come in,” said Corkle. “The library. You remember the way Mr. Fon

… Fonesca.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Beer? Lemonade?”

“Lemonade?” Ames asked as I started toward the area with the yellow leather furniture.

“Yes, thanks,” I said.

“Three glasses,” said Corkle.

Ames and I sat on the uncomfortable leather sofa and waited. Corkle appeared in a few seconds with a tray on which rested a pitcher of iced lemonade and three glasses.

“Best lemonade in the world. Made with whole lemons from the tree right outside, seed and rind turned to a smooth pulp. More nutritious than the juice alone and it can be made in my D. Elliot Corkle Pulp-O-Matic in five seconds. Of course, you have to add sugar. I’ll give you a Pulp-O-Matic when you leave.”

All three of us drank. He was right. The lemonade was the best I had ever tasted.

“Blue Berrigan. Name mean anything to you?”

“No,” he said. “D. Elliot Corkle has never heard of him.”

“He was an entertainer,” Ames said. “Sang kids’ songs, had his own television show.”

“Didn’t know the man,” Corkle said, holding up his glass of lemonade to the sun to watch the tiny pieces of pulp swirl like the snowy flecks in a Christmas bubble.

“You knew Philip Horvecki,” I said. “You said…”

I paused to pull my index cards out of the day planner I kept in my pocket. I flipped through the cards and found the one I wanted.

“You said, ‘Horvecki is not a nice human being.’ ”

He sat back, folded his hands in his lap and looked up at the ceiling for about ten seconds before saying, “D. Elliot Corkle is considering lying to you. I could do it. I can sell almost anything, especially a lie.”

“But you won’t,” I said.

“I won’t. I knew Philip Horvecki. He had a three-acre lot at the fringe of downtown. He wanted me to buy it from him. I wanted to buy it, but not from him. D. Elliot Corkle did a background check. He was a weasel. I told him so. He didn’t like it.”

“You didn’t happen to kill him?” I asked.

“No.”

We all had more lemonade.

“Did you ever threaten to kill him?” I asked.

“No. Am I a suspect in Horvecki’s murder?”

“Ask the police that one,” I said.

“Then why are you still looking for someone else besides Gerall for the murder? Gerall is a smart-ass and a… a…”

“Weasel?” asked Ames.

“Weasel,” Corkle confirmed. “He bamboozled my grandson and my daughter. Neither has the good judgment of a John Deere tractor, which, by the way, is one of the finest pieces of machinery ever invented.

“You know what happened to Augustine?” he asked. He was looking directly at me, lips tight.

“I think he went back to acting,” I said.

“He’s a terrible actor. I used him on some of my infomercials because he looked tough and had muscles and D. Elliot Corkle wanted someone who could try to open The Mighty Miniature Prisoner of Zenda Safe, which can go with you wherever you go and is housed inside a candy or cigar box you could leave in plain sight.”

“I remember that,” said Ames.

“I’ll give you one when you leave,” said Corkle. “The Mighty Miniature Prisoner of Zenda Safe could not be opened unless you had a blow torch, but it had two defects. Want to guess what they were?”

“You advertised the safe on television,” I said. “People know what the safe looked like.”

“Several million people,” Corkle said, proudly pouring us all more lemonade. “Yes, it was hard for D. Elliot Corkle to come up with someplace the little safe could be hidden in the average house. And then, how was I to let them know where the safe should now be hidden? What’s the other problem with it?”

“The safe might be hard to open, but it can be carried away and opened somewhere else later,” said Ames.

“On the button,” said Corkle, closing one eye and pointing a finger at Ames. “Still sold enough to make a small profit on them.”

“I’ve got some questions,” I said.

“Shoot,” said Corkle.

“Do you know who killed Horvecki?”

“I believe in our justice system, in our police,” he said emphatically. “It’s the sacred duty of any citizen to help the police in any way that citizen can. People should not commit murder. Evidence should never be withheld.”

“Are you withholding evidence?” I asked.

“There are secrets inside the office of D. Elliot Corkle. Next question.”

“Secrets? Evidence?” I asked.

“Next question,” he said.

“No, that’ll do it,” I said. “Sorry about the intrusion. Thanks for your hospitality.”

At the front door, Corkle said, “Wait.”

We stood there until he returned with two boxes for me and two for Ames.

“You each get a Pulp-O-Matic and a Mighty Miniature Prisoner of Zenda Safe.”

“Heavy,” said Ames, holding a gift box in each arm. “You could beat a man’s head in with either one of these.”

“Wait,” Corkle said hurrying off, ducking into the closet and popping right back out with two more packages, both small. “The Perfect Pocket Pager.”

He stuck one in one of my pockets and did the same for Ames. We left the house and started down the path. It wasn’t until we hit the street that we heard the door close.

“Secrets,” Ames said. “Believe him?”

“Strongly suggests that he knows who did it or has a pretty good idea,” I said.

“Think he has something?”

“Maybe we can find out,” I said.

I had some trouble getting the trunk of the Saturn open, but when I did we placed our gifts inside, got in the car, and drove away from the Bay and from Corkle.

“Where to now?” asked Ames.

“Ronnie Gerall.”