Bright Futures

11

Ronnie Gerall agreed to see us when I sent him a message saying that I had something important to tell him. Ames stayed in the waiting area of juvenile detention with his book, and I took off my Cubs cap and followed the guard down a brightly lit corridor that smelled of Lysol and bleach.

Ronnie Gerall was waiting for me when the door to the visitors’ room was opened. Ronnie was getting special treatment because he was accused of murder-and murder of a prominent, if not much loved, citizen.

Ronnie, his hair freshly combed, looked good in orange and a sullen pout. He did not offer to shake my hand, and I wasn’t about to be rejected.

“I have a new client,” I said as I sat.

I got an impatient look at this news.

“A client who’s willing to pay for a new lawyer,” I said.

“Why would I want to replace the guy from the public defender’s office? He’s inexperienced, stupid, and has no confidence. I was thinking of representing myself. Who’s my benefactor?”

“A woman who thinks you’re innocent.”

He stiffened and I knew he would come up with the right name if I pushed him.

“I thought you were going to find out who killed Horvecki and set me free to enjoy the sunlight, baseball, and pizzas.”

“It’s always good to have well-paid backup,” I said.

“What do you want to tell me?” he asked.

“Do you know Blue Berrigan?”

“Blue Berrigan? The dolt who used to have the stupid kid show on television?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know him,” Gerall said.

“Someone murdered him yesterday.”

“I’m sorry, but I have problems of my own.”

“I’m pretty sure he was killed because he knew who killed Philip Horvecki.”

This got Gerall’s interest.

“Then nail him,” Gerall said. “You know what it’s like in here? You have any idea of what kind of people are in here, people I have to be nice to when I want to punch their few remaining teeth out?”

“I’m still trying to find Horvecki’s killer. But I need you to answer one question.”

“What?”

“Does Corkle or Greg know about you and Corkle’s daughter?”

“Know what?”

His fists were clenched and he started to rise from his chair. I sat still and looked at him. I was getting to know his moves. I met his eyes. The menace slipped away.

“No, they don’t know,” he said sitting. “But when this is over, they’ll be told.”

“Why?”

“Because Alana and I are going to get married,” he said.

It didn’t have to be said, and I didn’t say it, but the observation hung in the dusty room. Either Corkle or Greg might prefer to have Ronnie in prison than living as Corkle’s son-in-law and Greg’s stepfather.

“I know what you’re thinking. She’s old enough to be my mother, but you’ve seen her,” Ronnie went on as if he were announcing the new issue of a Salmon P. Chase postage stamp. “She loves me.”

“I’m happy for you both,” I said.

There was nothing else to say. Ronnie folded his arms and watched me head for the door.

Ames and I split a medium moussaka pizza-eggplant, cheese, sausage, and extra onion-at Honey Crust on Seventeenth Street. We were celebrating our partnership.

“Too many suspects,” he said, wiping his mouth with a napkin.

He was right.

“Who’s your pick?” I asked.

“Don’t know, but Corkle’s looking ripe for it.”

“His grandson, daughter, Pepper the Preacher, Williams the Cop, and Ronnie Gerall. Just because he’s in jail it doesn’t mean he’s innocent.”

“And maybe Gregory’s friend Winston,” said Ames.

“And half the students at Pine View.”

The next line should have been one reflecting incredulity that someone might murder over retaining a high school educational program. But both Ames and I knew that people had been murdered over a lot less. A few days earlier a Bradenton police officer had interrupted a ninety-dollar drug sale, and the buyer killed him. Two homeless men in Sarasota had fought, and one had died from a jagged Starbucks Frappuccino bottle to the throat. The fight had been over who had more teeth. Homeless Man Number One had more teeth, but Number Two said his were in better shape. Number Two pushed Number One into the concrete arch of a medical office building on Bahia Vista. Number One lost most of his remaining teeth and his life, blood and Frappuccino dribbling down his chest.

“What do we do now?” Ames asked.

“I’m going home to bed.”

“It’s three in the afternoon.”

“A good time to close my door, pull down the shade, take off my shoes and pants, and go to sleep.”

But such was not to be.

My cell phone sang “Help!”

The number of people who had my cell phone number, at least the ones I wanted to have it, was four: Ames, Flo, Adele, and Sally.

“Yes,” I said.

“Lew,” said Sally. “Darrell walked out of the hospital less than an hour ago.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“Bad,” she said. “He put on his clothes and walked out before he was discharged. He’s supposed to be at home resting.”

“You try his mother? Their apartment?”

“I called her. He isn’t at the apartment and he didn’t call her.”

“We’ll find him,” I said.

“Call me when you do, all right?”

“I’ll call you,” I said.

Sally hung up. So did I.

“Darrell?” asked Ames as he stood up with a box holding the last three slices of the pizza.

I nodded and put a twenty-dollar bill on the table. I was on my feet now and heading for the door. Nothing had to be said. Both Ames and I would have given twenty-to-one odds that we knew where Darrell was.

And we were right.

When I opened the door to my new home, Darrell Caton was sitting in the chair behind my desk. Victor Woo sat across from him. They had been talking. I tried to imagine what the two of them would have to say to each other. Then I saw the small photograph in front of Darrell. I knew what it was. I had seen it before, on a table in the booth of a bar in Urbana, Illinois. Victor had shown me the photograph of his smiling wife and two small, smiling children.

“Mind reader, Lewis Fonesca,” said Darrell. “Knew where to find me and knew I was hungry. What kind of pizza you bring me?”

“Moussaka with extra onion,” I said.

Ames placed the box on the desk. Darrell opened it and examined the pizza.

“What the f… hell is musical pizza? Beans?”

“Let’s get you back to the hospital,” said Ames.

“Hell no,” said Darrell, handing a slice of lukewarm pizza to Victor. “They’ve got diseases and all kinds of shit in there. Worst place to be when you’re sick. I read about it.”

“Let’s get you back,” Ames said again.

“Your mother’s worrying about you. Sally is worried about you,” I said.

“Think about it, Lewis Fonesca,” said Darrell. “Four people may be worrying about me. Four. You. Big Mac here. My mother and Ms. Porovsky. Him?” he added looking at Victor. “I don’t know what he’s thinking.”

“What about Flo and Adele?” I said.

“They know I escaped from Alcatraz?”

“No.”

“Then they can’t be worried, can they? Pizza’s good. What’s that yellow thing?”

“Eggplant,” I said.

“Woo,” Darrell said. “I’ll wrestle you for the last piece.”

Victor shook his head no. Darrell picked up the last slice of pizza. He tried to hide a wince as he brought it to his mouth. Darrell was fifteen. No father. His mother had kicked a crack habit two years earlier and was holding down a steady job at a dollar store.

“You’re going back to the hospital,” Ames said.

“Don’t make me run,” said Darrell chewing as he spoke. “You won’t catch me and running could kill me. Besides, if you do get me back in the hospital, I’ll just get up and leave again.”

“Why?” Victor asked.

We all looked at him.

“Why?” asked Darrell. “Because I’d rather die than be hooked up to machines waiting for Dr. Frankenstein and a bunch of little Frankensteins to come in and look at me.”

“Fifteen,” said Victor.

“Fifteen little Frankensteins?” asked Darrell.

“You are fifteen. You wouldn’t rather die.”

Victor looked at me. There were times after Catherine died that I wouldn’t have minded dying, but I never considered suicide as an option. There were times, I knew, that after he had killed Catherine, Victor had considered death as an option.

“Mr. Gloom and Mr. Doom,” said Darrell. “You didn’t answer your damn phone. I broke out because I have to tell you something, Lew Fonesca.”

“Tell it,” I said.

“You should have brought more pizza.”

“That’s what you have to tell me?”

“Hell no. I had a visitor during the night in the hospital. I was asleep and drugged up. Room was dark. Machine was beep-beep-beeping, you know. Then I heard him.”

“Who?”

“A man, I think, or maybe a woman. He was across the room in the dark. He thought I was asleep. At least I think he thought I was asleep. He said something like, ‘I’m sorry. My fault. Silky sad uncertain curtains.’ Shit like that. Creepy. Then he said he had to go but he’d be back. I could do without his coming back. So, I got up and

…”

“Anything you could tell from his voice?” I asked. “Young? Old?”

“Like I said, couldn’t tell,” said Darrell. “No, wait. He had one of those English accents, like that actor.”

“Edgar Allen Poe,” said Ames.

“Edgar Allen Poe, the guy who wrote those scary movies?” asked Darrell.

“‘The silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain wrought its ghost upon the floor,’ ” said Ames.

“Yeah, creepy shit like that.”

“It’s from a poem by Poe, ‘The Raven,’ ” said Ames.

“I guess. You know him? This Poe guy?”

“He’s been dead for a hundred and fifty years,” I said.

I knew one person involved in all this that had what might pass for an English accent.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” said Darrell. “You should have bought more pizza. Next time just make it sausage.”

“Let’s get you back to the hospital.”

“Let’s order a pizza to go,” said Darrell. “Do that and I go back to the hospital.”

“Ames and Victor will get you the pizza and take you back to the hospital.”

Darrell looked decidedly unwell when they went through the door. I called Information and let them connect me with the number I wanted. The woman who answered had a pleasant voice and a British accent. She told me that Winston Churchill Graeme wasn’t home from school yet, but soon would be. She asked if I wanted to leave a message. I said no.

When I hung up I walked over to the wall where the Stig Dalstrom paintings were and looked for truth in black jungles and mountains and the twisted limbs of trees. I focused on the lone spot of yellow in one of the paintings. It was a butterfly.

I folded the empty pizza box and carried it out with me. At the bottom of the steps I dropped the box into one of the three garbage cans and called Sally. With no preamble, I said, “We found Darrell.”

“Where?”

“My place. Ames and Victor are taking him back to the hospital.”

“I’ll call his mother.”

“Are you at work?”

“Yes.”

“What can you tell me about Winston Churchill Graeme?”

Twenty minutes later I was parked about half a block down and across the street from the Graeme home on Siesta Key. The house was in an ungated community called Willow Way. The house was a lot smaller than others in the community, but it wasn’t a mining shack.

Winn Graeme hadn’t called back to set up a time to talk. I wondered why.

I didn’t think Winn Graeme was home yet but, just to be sure, I called the house. I was wrong again. He answered the phone.

“This is Lew Fonesca,” I said.

“Yes?”

“I’m parked on your street, half a block West.”

“Why?”

“I’d like you to come out and talk.”

“You can come in.”

“I don’t think you want your mother to hear what we have to talk about.”

“I don’t…”

“Your visit to the hospital last night.”

It was one of those silences, and then, “I’ll be right out.”

There was no one on the street. A white compact car was parked in the driveway of the house from which Winn Graeme emerged. The house was at the top of a short incline with stone steps leading down to the narrow sidewalk. Trees and bushes swayed in the cool wind from off the Gulf.

Winn saw my car, adjusted his glasses, and headed toward me. He walked along the sidewalk, back straight, carrying a blue gym bag. He walked like a jock and looked like a jock.

He opened the passenger side door and leaned over to look at me before he decided to get in. The door squeaked. He placed the gym bag on the floor in front of him.

“I have soccer practice in half an hour,” he said, turning his head toward me. “Someone is picking me up.”

“We shouldn’t be long,” I said. “You have a car?”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s in the garage. Why?”

“Early this morning,” I said. “Say about two o’clock. Where were you?”

“Why?”

“Darrell Caton,” I said. “The hospital.”

Winn Graeme took off his glasses, cleaned them with his shirt and looked through the front window into a distance that offered no answers. Then he nodded, but I wasn’t sure whether he was answering my question or one he had asked himself.

“Is he going to be all right?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’re fragile creatures,” he said.

“You told him you were sorry. Sorry for what?”

“For not stopping what happened.”

“Greg shot Darrell, right?”

No answer from Winn, so I went on.

“He was aiming at me, but Darrell got in the way.”

Still no response.

“Okay, not Greg. You shot Darrell.”

Now he looked at me, and I at him. I saw a boy. I wondered what kind of man he was looking at.

“To scare you into stopping your investigation,” Winn said.

“First he hires me and then he tries to stop me,” I said.

He said nothing, just nodded, and then, after heaving a breath as if he were about to run a hundred-yard dash, he spoke.

“He found out something after he hired you, something that made him want you to stop. Firing you didn’t work. You found someone else to pay you. So he tried to frighten you into stopping. He hoped you would weigh your safety and possibly your life against the few dollars you were getting. He only made it worse.”

“He shot at me in the car with Augustine, and then he shot Darrell.”

“Who’s Augustine?”

“Cyclops.”

Winn looked out his window. A woman was walking a small white dog. She was wearing a business suit and carrying an empty poop bag. Winn seemed to find the woman and dog fascinating.

“Both times he shot at me he sent someone else to the hospital,” I said.

“Your life is charmed.”

“No, Greg’s a terrible shot.”

The god of irony was at it again.

“Blue Berrigan,” I said. No response, so I repeated, “Blue Berrigan.”

“The clown,” he said softly.

“He wasn’t a clown.”

“Greg didn’t do that.”

“Horvecki?”

“Greg didn’t do that. We weren’t unhappy about it, but he didn’t do that.”

“Did you?”

“No,” he said.

A yellow and black Mini Cooper turned the corner and came to a stop in front of the Graeme house.

“I’ve got to go,” he said. “I told you all this because I’m sorry that I didn’t do anything to stop Greg. He’s my friend. Whatever I’ve said here I’ll deny ever saying.”

“Why?” I said though I knew the answer.

“Why what?”

He had the door open now.

“Why is he your friend?”

“We need each other,” he said as he got out of the car. “Greg didn’t kill anybody.”

He closed the door, crossed the street and raised his hand in greeting to the boy who leaned out of the window of the Mini Cooper.

The boy in the car was Greg Legerman.

Greg looked back at me and ducked back through the window. Winn Graeme crawled in on the passenger side, and they drove off.

I could have confronted Greg Legerman, but sometimes it’s better to let the person you’re after worry for a while. I had learned that as an investigator with the state attorney’s office in Chicago. Patience was usually better than confrontation, especially with a nervous suspect, and they didn’t come any more nervous or suspicious than Greg Legerman. I wasn’t afraid of Greg’s not talking. I was afraid that he wouldn’t stop.

I did follow the little car down Midnight Pass and off the Key, but I kept going straight when they turned left on Tamiami Trail.

My cell phone rang. I considered throwing it out the window, but I answered it.

“Lewis, I have a death in the family,” said Ann Hurwitz.

“I’m sorry.”

“My cousin Leona was ninety-seven years old,” she said. “She’s been in a nursing home for a decade.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Lewis, you are one of the few people I know whose expression of sorrow over the death of a very old woman you don’t know I would believe. I must cancel our appointment tomorrow so I can attend the funeral in Memphis.”

“All right.”

“But I have an opening today,” Ann Hurwitz said.

“When?”

“Now.”

“I’m on the way.”

“You did your homework?”

My index cards were in the notebook in my back pocket.

“Yes.”

“Good. Decaf with cream and Equal. Today I feel like a chocolate biscotti.”

“With almonds?”

“Always with almonds,” she said and clicked off.

Fifteen minutes later I picked up a pair of coffees and three chocolate biscotti from Sarasota News and Books and crossed Main street. I was about to go through the door to Ann’s office on Gulfstream when he appeared, mumbling to himself.

He was black, about forty, wearing a shirt and pants too large and baggy for his lean frame. His bare feet flopped in his untied shoes. He looked down as he walked, pausing every few feet to scratch his head and engage himself in conversation.

I knew him. Everyone in this section of town near the Bay knew him, but few knew his story. I’d sat down with him once on the park bench he lived under. The bench was across the street from Ann’s office. It had a good view of the small boats moored on the bay and the ever-changing and almost always controversial works of art erected along the bay. He had been evicted from his bench in one of the recurrent efforts to clean up the city for tourists. I didn’t know where he lived now, but it wasn’t far. Even the homeless have someplace they think of as home.

“Big tooth,” he said to himself as he came toward me.

“Big tooth,” I repeated.

The bag in my hand was hot and the biscotti must have been getting moist.

He pointed across the street toward the bay. There was a giant white tooth which was slowing the passing traffic.

He scratched his inner left thigh and said, “Dentist should buy it. Definitely.”

One of the charms of the man was that he never asked for money or anything else. He minded his own business and relied on luck, the discards of the upscale restaurants in the neighborhood and the kindness and guilt of others.

I reached into the bag and came up with a coffee and a biscotti. He took them with a nod of thanks.

“You, too?” he asked, tilting his head toward the nearby bench-not his former residence, but the one right outside Ann’s office.

“Can’t,” I said. “Appointment.”

“Old lady who talks to ghosts and crazy people?”

“Not ghosts,” I said.

“I’m not a crazy person,” he said.

“No,” I agreed.

“You a crazy person?”

“I don’t know.”

“You should maybe find out,” he said, moving toward the bench, his back to me now.

“I’m working on it,” I said and stepped through the door.

Ann’s very small reception area was empty except for three chairs, a neat pile of copies of psychology magazines, and a small Bose non-boom box playing generic classical music. The music was there to cover the voices of any clients who might be moved to occasional rage or panic, usually directed at a spouse, child, sibling, boss or themselves. The music wasn’t necessary for me. My parents never raised their voices. I have never raised mine in anger, remorse, or despair. All the passion in our family came from my sister, and she more than compensated for it with Italian neighborhood showmanship.

Ann was, as always, seated in her armchair under the high narrow horizontal windows. I handed her the bag. She smelled it and carefully removed coffee and biscotti and placed them on the desk near her right hand.

“No coffee for you?” she asked, handing me a biscotti.

“No,” I said. “Caffeine turns me into a raging maniac.”

I took off my Cubs cap and placed it on my lap.

“Levity,” she said, removing the lid of her coffee and engaging in the biscotti-dipping ritual.

“I guess.”

“Small steps. Always small steps. Progress,” she said. “Biscotti are one of the tiny treasures of life. When one of my clients tells me he or she is contemplating suicide I remind them that, once dead, they will never again enjoy coffee and biscotti.”

“Does it work?”

“Only one has ever committed suicide, but I can’t claim that the biscotti approach has ever been the reason for this high level of success. Did your mother make biscotti?”

“No, she ate it. My father made pignoli. My uncle made biscotti.”

“ Pignoli?”

“A kind of cookie with pine nuts.”

“My mother made mandel bread,” Ann said. “That’s like Jewish biscotti, made with cement, at least the way my mother made it.”

I looked at the clock on the wall over her head. Five minutes had passed.

“You want to know when we are going to start,” she said. “Well, we already started.”

“I asked Ames to be my partner.”

“Putting down roots,” she said, finishing her biscotti. She had eaten it in record time.

I handed her mine.

“You sure?” she asked. “I didn’t have time for lunch.”

“I’m sure about you having my biscotti. I’m not sure about asking Ames to be my partner.”

“Why?”

“He’ll expect me to stay around.”

“Yes.”

“Besides, I make just enough to live on.”

“Yes, but you asked him and he said yes.

“He said yes.”

“Sally’s leaving, moving North. Better job.”

Ann said nothing, just worked on her biscotti, brushing away stray crumbs from her white dress with dancing green leaves.

“Did you ask her to stay?” she said finally.

“No.”

“Do you want her to stay?”

“Yes.”

“Is there anything you could say or do that would make her stay?”

“I think so. Maybe.”

“But you won’t say it.”

“I can’t. You want to hear the first lines I’ve collected?”

“Not this session,” she said.

The phone rang. She never turned off the phone during our sessions and I guess she didn’t turn it off during anyone else’s sessions either. She had too much curiosity to turn off her connection to anyone who wanted to confess or try to sell her something.

“Yes, I’ll take it,” she told the caller after listening for a few seconds.

She hung up.

“I’m going to give you a conundrum, an ethical dilemma, a moral puzzle,” she said. “With that call, I just paid to become beneficiary of a life insurance policy for a ninety-one-year-old man. He gets paid with my cash offer immediately. I double or triple my investment when he dies, providing he dies before I do and, given my age, while the odds are in my favor, I stand some chance of losing. I have six such policies. What do you think?”

“Do you meet these people?” I asked.

“Absolutely not,” she said, sitting back and folding her hands.

“Life insurance is gambling on beating or forestalling death,” I said.

“Precisely, Lewis. Still?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right.”

“No, it doesn’t, but why not? Does it challenge God or the gods who might decide to strike you down instead of the person from whose death you would profit?”

Her eyes were dancing. We were getting somewhere or going somewhere. She leaned forward.

“I lied, Lewis,” she said. “I didn’t buy life insurance for a dying man. I told my stockbroker to go ahead and buy pork belly futures. I’m betting on people who might profit from the slaughter of pigs.”

“That’s comforting.”

“Your opinion of me faltered for a moment,” she said.

“Yes.”

“But it’s all right if I profit from the death of pigs.”

“Yes,” I said.

“We bet against death every day,” she said. “But it is taboo to bet for death. We don’t want to make those gods angry even if they exist only in our minds.”

“Someone may be trying to kill me,” I said.

“This has happened before.”

“Yes.”

“You invite it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You gamble with your life.”

“I suppose,” I said.

“And the irony is that you keep winning.”

“I don’t want to die anymore,” I said.

“I know. But you haven’t decided what to do about staying alive.”

“I don’t want anyone else I know to die.”

“But they all will,” she said, looking over her shoulder at the clock on the wall.

“Some of them have.”

“Catherine,” she said.

“Yes.”

“The world is not perpetually sad in spite of the fact that the ones we love will all die,” Ann said.

“Yes it is,” I said.

“Time to stop. Next time, I hear your first lines.”

She clapped her hands and rose. Her fingers were thin and the backs of her hands freckled with age. The wedding ring she wore looked too large, as if it would fall off.

I got up and put my Cubs cap back on my head. We faced each other for a moment. She seemed to be trying to convey some question with the tilt of her head and a few seconds of silence. I felt the answer but had no words for it. I nodded to show that I had at least a glint of understanding. I got twenty dollars out of my wallet and handed it to her.

When I stepped out into the sun, the homeless man was still on the bench squinting out at the setting sun. He had finished his coffee and biscotti, and his arms were spread out, draped over the bench. He was at home. He scratched his belly. I sat beside him and looked at the boats bobbing in the water. He didn’t acknowledge my presence.

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

“Uh-huh.”

“What is it?”

“‘Kelsey Yarborough hated grits with salt but he ate them anyway because his mother told him it was good for him.’”

“What’s the book?” I said, writing the line on one of my cards. I had a neat little packet of them now.

“ Kelsey Plays the Blues.”

“Who wrote it?”

“Kelsey Yarborough.”

I looked at him, but he was too busy looking toward the sun. I thought I knew the answer to the unstated question, but I said nothing.

He helped me out by saying, “Me. I’m Kelsey Yarborough.” He pointed a thumb at his chest.

“You wrote a book?”

“Hell no,” he said. “I wrote the first line of a book. “The rest of the book’s in my head and it’s never gonna come out. I wrote the music for the first notes of a song. That ain’t never gonna come out either. You know why?”

“No.”

“Because,” he said, tilting his head up so he could catch the dwindling warmth of the setting sun. “Got no creative juice. Got no interest. Now I got a question for you, but I don’t want no answer. My time’s too precious to spend getting involved.”

“The question?”

“Who is in that car comin’ this way down the block. Been circling ever since you went into the doctor’s office.”

I looked down the street. There was a dark Buick of unknown age moving slowly in our direction. When it got close enough, I could see that its windows were tinted and dark.

The passenger side window facing us came down slightly and the car stopped about fifteen feet in front of us.

“Get down,” I said, going to the pavement prone and scurrying under the bench.

Kelsey didn’t move other than to look down at me. The two shots came in rapid succession. Both seemed to whiz precariously close to Kelsey.

Then the car sped away with a screech. I turned my head to catch the license plate number. I think it was one of the save-the-manatee plates, or tags, as they call them in Florida. It began with the letters C and X. The rest was obscured by dirt.

I slid out from under the bench, picked up my hat, dusted it, and then wiped away the worst of the garbage that covered the front of my shirt and jeans.

“That was for you,” he said. “Only reason anyone wanting to be shooting me is because I’m a black man and a homeless eyesore. More likely the message was for you.”

“It was,” I said, putting on my cap.

I left him sitting on the bench and moved down the street to my Saturn. There was a folded sheet of notebook paper, the kind with ragged edges and punched holes. I retrieved the note. It read:

What Part of Stop Don’t You Understand?

Would you understand a death march band?

Listen to the distant Orleans clarinet.

Turn away. There’s still time yet.

It was written in a cursive script you don’t often see anymore.

I had learned something in my session with Ann. I tried to figure it out as I drove, but I was distracted by the background voice on a talk radio station. The host, who had a New York accent, wanted callers to tell him what they thought about bombing Iran and sending troops if Iran continued to defy the United States and continued their race to build a nuclear weapon.

The car from which someone had shot at me was not the one Greg Legerman had driven to pick up Winn Graeme. The shots that had been fired at me a few minutes earlier had not come from a pellet gun, but from something with real bullets. Either Greg had another car and a more impressive gun, or this was a new shooter.

About seven or eight minutes later I was parked outside the Texas Bar and Grill on Second Street. I was calm with a this-isn’t-real calm. My hands didn’t tremble. I didn’t weep.

When I stepped through the door of the Texas, Big Ed was behind the bar. He nodded at me and adjusted his handlebar mustache. Guns of the old West hung on the walls, and the smell of beer and grilled half-pound burgers and onions perfumed the air. Around eight round wooden tables people, almost all men, were having a heavy snack before heading home for healthy dinners.

“Ames here?” I asked Big Ed.

“Back in his room,” Big Ed said, nodding over his left shoulder.

Ed was a New Englander who loved old Westerns and would have worshiped Lilly Langtree were she to return in ghostly form.

“You know Wild Bill Hickok wasn’t holding aces and eights when he died? Bartender made it up. No one knows what he had. Grown men still feel a little panic when they look down at the dead man’s hand in a game of poker.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said.

“You want a beer, a Big Ed Burger?”

“Beer and a Big Ed with cheese.”

Behind the bar there was a horizontal mirror with an elaborately carved wooden frame, painted gold.

“The same for Ames,” I said.

I looked at myself in the mirror and saw a short, balding Italian with a sad face wearing a Cubs baseball cap.

“He told me,” Big Ed said, adjusting the curl in his waxed handlebar mustache with both hands. “About partnering up with you.”

“You all right with that?” I asked.

“Ames has partnered up with you since he met you. I’d like him to put in some hours here, too, in exchange for his room, providing you don’t have too much work for him to do.”

“I don’t expect to overwhelm him with work.”

“Good,” said Big Ed after calling back to the tiny kitchen for two half-pound burgers.

He poured two mugs of beer from the tap and clunked them down in front of him.

“Work on your beer. I’ll go back and tell Ames that you’re here.”

When Ames came out, tall, hair shampooed and white, he was dressed in his usual freshly washed jeans and a loose-fitting long-sleeved white flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

We moved to a table next to two guys speaking in Spanish and sounding like they were having an argument half the time and telling each other jokes the other half.

“You play poker?” I asked Ames.

“I do.”

“How good are you at it?”

“Middling good,” he said. “But then most I’ve played think they’re middling good.”

“I’m less than middling bad,” I said. “Remember Corkle saying he had something on Ronnie Gerall?”

“I do.”

“We’re going to try to find it.”

We listened to the guys speaking Spanish and drank our beers until Big Ed motioned and Ames moved around the tables to pick up our burgers.

“You good enough in a seven-card stud game to help someone else win?” I asked.

“Depends on who’s watching and playing.”

We ate as we talked. More people, including the two Spanish speakers at the next table, left and a few others came in. Big Ed handled them all, nodding just right at each new customer as if he had known them all his life.

“Players are multimillionaires…”

“Corkle,” said Ames.

“Yes, and four others. They have a game every other week at Corkle’s house. Stakes are fifty and a hundred. You need four thousand to sit down.”

“I’ve got two thousand,” he said.

“I’ve got another two,” I said. “We’ll borrow a few thousand more from Flo in case we run out.”

“Not like you to be beholding.”

“Little by little, day by day, I’m trying to change,” I said.

“How’s it going?”

“Not too good,” I said, taking a bite of burger.

The grilled burger was handmade by Big Ed from extra-lean meat and cooked to greasy perfection by the kitchen cook. I was hungry. The slightly burnt beef reminded me of a taste from the past that I couldn’t quite place.

“How you gonna get in this game?”

“Kidnap one of the players,” I said.

Ames gave me a slight nod and worked at chewing the large bite of burger in his mouth.

“Only way?” he said.

“Only one I can think of,” I said. “You in?”

“We’re partners,” he said. “When we doing this?”

“Tonight,” I said. “It’s game night. Wednesday.”

“What’ll I be doing while you’re playing poker?”

“Searching through Corkle’s office.”

“Corkle carries a handgun,” Ames said.

“I know. I’ll be careful,” I said, pushing the now-empty plate away.

“I trust you,” he said.

“I know.”

“What time?”

“Midnight,” I said.

“You planning to win?”

“No,” I said. “Just to fold a lot, hang in as long as possible and not lose everything.”

“If they catch us?” Ames asked. “They’d have to own up to gambling for big stakes.”

“Yes, and it’ll be in the newspapers and on television,” I went on. “The fines won’t mean anything to them, but the fact that they’ll have to close down their game for good will mean something. And Corkle might have to leave the house and go downtown.”

The bar in the Texas was a small one. Not much space behind it and only six high, wooden swivel stools. At that moment a man and a woman were arguing at the bar and getting louder-loud enough for us to hear the drunken slur.

The couple were probably in their fifties and looked like they had spent their days behind desks taking and giving orders.

She slapped the man hard, a slap that stopped conversation and echoed around the room. The man was exhausting his vituperative vocabulary now, and quickly worked his way up toward a punch. Before he could throw it Big Ed reached over his arm and grabbed his wrist. That gave the woman an opening to attack again. This time she punched. The man slipped from the stool and fell flat on his back, his head thumping on the hardwood floor.

“You want to help Big Ed?” I asked.

“No,” said Ames. “He’s happy. Genteel barroom brawl.”

“See what the boys in the back room will have,” I said, watching the woman dropping to her knees on the floor and touching the fallen man’s cheek.

“Warren,” she whimpered, “I’m so, so, so, so sorry.”

The bar noise level in the room went back to prebrawl level. It was then that I noticed Ed Viviase, alone at a table near the window. He must have come in while the man and woman were doing battle.

When he saw that he had our attention, he got up and sat between me and Ames.

“See the fight?” I asked.

“Yeah. Over in one minute of the first round. You’re easy to find, Fonesca. You only go to five places regularly. I found you at the third one on my list.”

“A beer?” asked Big Ed.

“On the clock,” said Viviase.

We sat at a table, Viviase, Ames, and me. The detective watched as the woman helped the fallen man to his feet and then out the door, an arm draped over her shoulder.

“Love,” Viviase said with enough sarcasm so we wouldn’t think he was genuinely moved. “Always a bad call for a cop, couple fighting. They don’t want a man or woman of the law stepping between them. Sometimes a cop will get hurt more than the battlers. I once got a steak pounding mallet on the side of the head-you know the kind with the nubs?”

“Yes,” I said.

Viviase shook his head, remembering.

“She was a chef,” he said. “I was lucky she didn’t have something even more lethal in her hand, like whatever it was that killed Blue Berrigan. The chef and her husband were divorced a few months after I met and arrested them. Neither of them did time. I had headaches for more than a year.”

“Tough,” I said.

“There are tougher things,” Viviase said. “Like finding out your daughter went behind your back to involve a process server in a murder case.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Of course you are. People who commit crimes are always sorry when they get caught.”

“She didn’t hire me,” I said.

“I know. The hell with it. I’ll have a beer.

A beer ain’t drinking.”

It was Edmond O’Brien’s line from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, forever to be honored by alcoholics.

Ames rose to get the beer.

“I’ll get the tape back to you,” Viviase said.

“No hurry,” I said. “You ground her?”

“For what? Disappointing me?”

“Guess not.”

“You really think Gerall didn’t kill Horvecki?”

“Yes. And he couldn’t have killed Blue Berrigan. He was in jail.”

“Who says he killed Berrigan?” asked Viviase as Ames came back with three beers.

“The angel of common sense,” I said.

“Only thing holds the two murders together is you,” Viviase said, drinking the beer directly from the bottle. “And I’m reasonably confident that you didn’t kill either one of them, unless you’ve gone Jekyll and Hyde on me.”

“The Gerall boy’s a bad apple, but he didn’t kill anybody,” said Ames.

“Ames and I are partners now,” I explained.

“Partners in what?” asked Viviase, shaking his head. “Operating an illegal office of private investigation.”

“We find people,” I said.

“You find people who commit murder,” Viviase said.

“Sometimes,” I admitted.

“Ames have a process server’s license?”

“Not yet,” he said.

“Not never,” answered Viviase, after nearly finishing his bottle of beer. “He’s a convicted felon.”

“We’ll work on that,” I said. “He’s my partner either way.”

“You and Ames here bothered a Venice policeman, a detective.”

“We talked to Detective Williams,” I said.

“Mr. McKinney here fired a weapon at him after you practically accused him of murder.”

A bustle of businessmen and — women came through the door, laughing and making in-jokes that weren’t funny, but when you want to laugh any flotsam of intended wit will do.

“What does he want?”

“Nothing now, but for you to stay away from him.”

I knew why. If Ames and I were arrested, the story of his aunt and mother being raped would hit the media again.

Viviase finished his beer while Ames and I kept working on ours. He rolled the empty bottle between his hands. No genie emerged. Viviase got up.

“You find anything, let me know,” he said. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

He left.

Then Ames and I decided to do something stupid.