Bright Futures

4

The emergency room triage nurse, a wiry thin woman with wiry thin straw-colored hair, looked up at me and said, “You’re back, Mr. …”

“Fonesca.”

“Are you…?”

“I’m fine. I’m here about Darrell Caton. He was brought in here by ambulance a few minutes ago.”

“What’s your relationship to him?”

“I’m his big brother,” I said. “It’s complicated.”

She looked from me to Ames to Victor and said, “He’s being ta k en care of by a doctor. His mother is on the way. Just have a seat.”

We had a seat.

That was when Victor told his story.

“I took your bicycle from under the stairs,” he said.

“Okay.”

“I went after the shooter, who I saw running from behind the house across the street. He was carrying a rifle.”

“What were you planning to do?” asked Ames.

“I don’t know.”

In a seat across from us, a drunk cradled a limp arm with his good arm like a baby. He snorted in half sleep.

“You chased him,” I said, getting Victor back on track.

“He ran down Laurel. When I turned the corner onto the street

…”

“Laurel,” I said.

Victor knew almost nothing about Sarasota geography. He had spent most of his time in town squatting in my two former rooms.

“What’d he look like?” Ames asked.

“I don’t know, it was starting to get dark. He was a block away. He opened a car door, threw the rifle inside, climbed in, and started to drive away when I was about forty yards from him.”

“He got away,” said Ames with a touch of disapproval.

“He drove west. I followed him. I don’t know where we went. North, I think, then west again. He ran a light on Oxbay…”

“Osprey,” said Ames.

Victor nodded.

“Ran a light and then went way over the speed limit. I would have caught him on Fruit Street.”

“Fruitville,” I said.

“He went right through without stopping, almost hit a couple,” said Victor. “I stopped.”

“Why?” asked Ames.

I knew. Victor had killed my wife in a hit-and-run accident. He didn’t want to be the cause of another hit-and-run.

“You get a license plate number?” I asked.

The drunk across from us snorted louder than he had the first time. He was definitely asleep when he grunted, “Can there be any doubt in the mind of the jurors?”

Then he slumped over on his left side.

“No,” said Victor. “I think it was a dark-colored Nissan. Late model. As he crossed Fruitville, he went under a streetlight. I’m sure he gave me the finger.”

“When we find him,” said Ames evenly, “I shoot him.”

“Ames…” I began.

“He shot the boy,” said Ames. “Could have killed him if Victor here didn’t keep him from tumbling down the stairs.”

“He was aiming for me.”

“More’s the reason,” said Ames.

“No,” said Victor. “No killing.”

“I’ll not kill him,” said Ames. “I’ll just give him some sense of what it feels like to get shot in the eye or the back.”

“No,” said Victor.

The drunk roused himself, blinked his eyes, rubbed his chin, and tried unsuccessfully to flatten his bushy hair. Then he looked at us and said with a cough, “You’re just puttin’ on an act for me, right? I like the story, but it lacks romance. You know what I’m talkin’ about?”

That was when Darrell’s mother came through the emergency room doors, looked around, saw us, and moved in front of me. She was a dry, tired brown stick of a woman who had touches of good looks left over from only a few years earlier.

“You were supposed to look after him,” she said.

“Yes,” I agreed.

“You got him shot.”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

She stood, looked around the waiting room, and saw the drunk, who either bowed in his seat or was about to fall over again.

“I want to be angry at you, but I can’t do it. You’re a crazy man, but a good one,” she said. “Darrell thinks you… I’ve got to go see him.”

She turned and hurried to the desk where the wiry triage nurse came around and led her through the double doors to the treatment area.

“I’m sorry I didn’t catch the shooter,” said Victor.

“You probably saved Darrell’s life,” I said. “A fall down those stairs might have killed him. I’ll settle for that.”

“I am the click-clack man who never made it to Oz. I am the bold deceiver who winks to those who understand, who winks only to himself in the mirror, a store window, the dark screen of a computer. I am the truth, which is a lie. I’m looking down at everyone from a spot reserved for me in the asshole of a serial killer with the blood of children in the webbing between his fingers.”

He had called about ten minutes after Victor, Ames, and I got back to my new rooms, which would always smell like decaying wood. He didn’t announce himself, just began talking with a muffled, high-pitched Latino accent that was more Billy Crystal than Ricardo Montalban.

“You’re the click-clack man,” I said. “You almost killed a 14-year-old. I’ve got that much.”

“Stop looking. Visualize yourself in dark glasses looking only straight ahead,” he said.

“I’d fall.”

Ames was reaching for the phone in my hand. He was not to be denied. Victor sat against the wall on his open bedroll.

“Someone here wants to say hello,” I managed as Ames took the phone from my hand and put it to his ear.

Ames looked very calm. I’d learned that Ames always looked calm when he was angry-dangerous and determined. I knew, given enough time, that Ames would find the shooter as Ames had found his former partner when he came to Sarasota. He had found him on the Lido Key Beach. There had been a shoot-out. The partner, a plaster pillar of the community who had cheated Ames out of a small fortune, had not survived the volley.

“Where did you get blunt-force. 22 bullets?” asked Ames.

“What?” the caller said.

“The ones you used to shoot out that man’s eye, and to shoot the boy. We can trace them.”

“No, you can’t,” said the caller.

“Here,” said Ames handing me back the phone and moving back to lean against the wall with his arms folded.

“My friend is angry,” I told the caller.

His voice betrayed a quiver and went a little higher when he said, “I didn’t intend to kill him or even shoot him.”

“You wanted to shoot me?”

“Yes. And I will if you don’t stop.”

“Stop what?”

“You know.”

Ann Hurwitz would say I should stop fighting my emergence from depression over my wife’s bloody death against the grille of the car Victor Woo had driven down Lake Shore Drive. It had happened as Catherine was crossing at the light. I think we were going to have steak for dinner. Or was it chili?

“Fonesca?” said the caller. “You listening?”

“Not really. Why are you calling?”

“Stop looking,” he repeated with some frustration.

“Or you’ll try to shoot me again with a pellet gun?”

“I have a real rifle,” he said.

“Having it and using it are different things,” I said, looking at Victor, who was gently bouncing his head against the wall as he sat.

“I don’t want to kill you,” he said.

“Then don’t.”

“But you might make me.”

“Then do. You want to tell me now what I’m supposed to stop doing?”

“Whatever you’re doing,” he said.

“I’m talking to a frightened person on the telephone,” I said.

“Looking for the person who killed Horvecki,” he said.

Ames was looking at me. I met his eyes.

“You killed him?”

“Yes, I did. The police have the wrong person in jail. Ronnie didn’t do it. They have to let him out. You’ve got to stop looking.”

“This doesn’t make much sense,” I tried. “Ronnie didn’t do it, but you don’t want me to look for who did.”

The pause was long. I could hear breathing.

“What can I do to convince you?”

“Stop shooting at me, that would make a nice start,” I said.

“Lewis,” Ames said firmly.

“What’s your favorite movie?” I asked.

“What?”

“Your favorite movie. Mine’s The Third Man, or Mildred Pierce, or The List of Adrian Messenger, or On the Waterfront, or The Seven Samurai, or Once Upon A Time in America, or Comanche Station…”

“You’re crazy,” he said.

“Deeply neurotic,” I corrected. “You have a favorite movie?”

“ Gone With The Wind.”

“And?”

“ Wuthering Heights. From Here to Eternity.”

“You didn’t kill Horvecki,” I interrupted.

“I did.”

“Let’s meet for coffee.”

“I don’t drink coffee,” he said. “I hate the stuff.”

“Tea?”

“Tastes like water someone pissed in.”

“A cheeseburger.”

“You’ll arrest me. That other guy, the old one. He’ll shoot me or break my face.”

“I’ll persuade him not to. And I’m not a cop, I can’t arrest you,” I said.

“Citizen’s arrest.”

“You have something to tell me, don’t you?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“You almost killed that boy on the steps.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll let you know about meeting you.”

He hung up.

“He didn’t do it,” said Ames.

The phone rang again. I pushed the button and put it to my ear. The phone was a gift to keep me in touch with the world. I did not wish to keep in touch with the world.

“Philip Horvecki was a murderer,” came the voice of the person who had just hung up. “He deserved to die.”

The connection clicked, and the line went dead. I pushed the button and handed the phone to Ames, who wanted no more to do with it than I did. Ames handed it to Victor, who put it in his pocket.

“The shots at you were pellets and that business about blunt-force. 22 bullets was a small pile of cow chips,” said Ames.

“I know,” I said.

The next call came that night, from Sally Porovsky.

“Lewis,” she said wearily.

“Sally,” I said.

“Darrell’s mother doesn’t want him to see you again,” she said.

“He’s all right?”

“Whatever it was he was shot with didn’t go very deep,” she said.

I had been going with Sally for about two years. We didn’t see each other much because she was a child services worker who regularly put in ten-hour days and spent whatever hours she had left with her two children. I was at the fringe of her schedule, which I understood. It was fine with me.

We had never slept together, though we had come close a few times. I had to admit that it was less and less out of a commitment to the memory of Catherine and more an unwillingness on my part to take the symbolic and real action.

I wanted to hold onto the belief that at any moment I could simply fill my duffle bag, get on a Greyhound bus, and head somewhere, anywhere, where no one expected anything of me and I could nurture my depression. I was increasingly aware that my belief that I could do that was becoming an illusion. Ames, Flo, Adele, Darrell, and Sally-I knew I could not easily ride away from them. I’d need a major blow to let me escape.

“Darrell’s fine,” she said. “He’s weirdly proud that he took a bullet-”

“Pellet,” I corrected.

“… that he took a pellet meant for you,” she said.

“I don’t like Ronnie Gerall,” I said.

“He takes some getting used to.”

“You know him?” I asked.

“I handled his transition when he came from San Antonio to Sarasota.”

There was something in her voice, an unfamiliar impatience or something I couldn’t quite grasp.

“His friends are paying me to prove he didn’t kill Philip Horvecki,” I said.

“I’ve got to go.”

“Meet me tomorrow?”

“We’ll see. Call me in the morning,” she said. “We can set a time when I can come and see your new…”

“Lodgings,” I said.

“I’ll talk to Darrell’s mother,” she said. “I’ll make her love you again.”

“You can do that?”

“No,” she said. “I can’t.”

“Thanks.”

“Take care of yourself, Lewis Fonesca.”

“Yes,” I said. “And you too, Sally Porovsky.”

I had not been doing a good job of taking care of myself since Catherine had been struck and killed by the man sitting on the floor, against the wall. Ann Hurwitz said progress was being made.

The last time she had told me that, I suggested that maybe we needed either another hundred thousand troops in Iraq or a small team of psychologists to speed my progress.

“We’ll talk in the morning,” Sally said.

She didn’t seem to want to end the call.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“Okay,” I said.

What I really wanted to say was, “I’ll see you if I’m alive. I’ll see you if I don’t run away. I’ll see you if I don’t curl into a ball on the floor next to Victor, hugging my knees.”

I turned off the phone and looked at Victor.

Ames walked in from the other room and said, “Beer, Dunkin’ Donuts, or ice cream?”

Victor shrugged. He didn’t care.

“Make it doughnuts,” I said.

Ames left, and I picked up the phone.

I called the number Greg Legerman had given me. A woman answered after three rings. I said I wanted to talk to Greg. She politely said she would get him. About thirty seconds later he came on the phone with a wary, “Yes?”

“Do your Cheech Marin for me again,” I said. “It’s bad, but probably a little funny for anyone who has a sense of humor.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You called me,” I said. “Told me to stop looking for whoever killed Horvecki. Meet me at the Waffle Shop at eight tomorrow morning.”

Silence.

“You’re at a loss for words?” I said.

“I didn’t call you,” he finally said.

“I think I’ll just give your money back and continue to try to locate a reasonably sane world.”

“Tomorrow at eight. Waffle Shop on 301,” he said. “I’ll be there.”

I made one more call, to Dixie Cruise, and told her what I needed and what I would pay.

“I’ll work on it tonight,” she said. “Call me after ten tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” I repeated and turned off the phone.

Dixie was a waitress. She had just moved to the Appleby’s on Fruitville near I-75. Dixie was pert, energetic, in her thirties, and working online toward a business degree from the University of South Florida. Dixie was also a first-rate computer hacker with a small apartment in a 1920s apartment building on Ring-ling Boulevard.

When Ames returned, Victor took one plain, Ames had a double chocolate, and I had a strawberry iced. We ate, drank decaf coffee, and said nothing for the rest of the evening.

There was nothing to say.