Denial

11

Dawn came dull gray. Fog. I could have and would have stayed in bed another hour or two or three if the phone hadn’t been ringing.

I considered permanently disconnecting it but then there would be even more people coming to my door.

I looked at my watch. Eight-thirty. The phone kept ringing. It could be him, Taurus the Philosopher with more threats, pleas and warnings. I slowly took out my soap and shaving gear and put them in my gym bag. The phone kept ringing.

I pulled a clean gray pullover polo shirt over my head and went into the office.

“Fonesca,” I said, picking up the phone.

“Nancy Root,” she said. “When you called last night, I was in a show. Then, this morning I found out that my father called the police and said you were harassing Yola. I just got off the phone with him. I was furious. Please don’t let him stop you from finding whoever… I find it so damn hard to say it.”

“I won’t let it stop me,” I said. “You didn’t tell me you had a daughter.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think it was important.”

I didn’t say it, but I thought it. Not important that she had a daughter? Not important that I talk to her? Both?

When I didn’t say anything, she asked, “Was it?” Yolanda Root had told me about her brother’s and Andy Goines’s vandalism. I had used what she told me to get Andy Goines to open up. In the scheme of things, yes, it was important.

“I may have something for you in the next few days,” I said. “No promises.”

“You know who did it?”

“Give me a few more days.”

“But… yes, all right. Richard called me. He said you’d seen him.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

I wondered what she was sorry for. For going to see her ex-husband? For how he might have behaved?

“It’s okay. I’ll call you when I have something.”

“Can you meet us later?” she said. “Richard and me.”

“I’ve got-”

Someone took the phone from her and said, “Fonesca, how soon can you get to my office?”

It was Richard Tycinker.

“One-thirty,” I said.

“Good.” He hung up.

I took my list of names and forwarding addresses of those four escapees from Seaside, went down the stairs with my gym bag, picked up a coffee to go and an Egg McMuffin from McDonald’s and drove down Bahia Vista to the YMCA, where I did four miles on the treadmill, did the round of machines, nodded to a few of the regulars, who nodded back at me. We didn’t know one another’s names. I didn’t want to know their names.

When I finished, I showered, shaved, used the rollon deodorant, got dressed and went back out into the fog. I had coaxed and sweated myself back into a state resembling life.

I drove up Lockwood Ridge to University Parkway, turned right and found University Gardens, beflowered, gated and nowhere near a university.

The sheet on the seat next to me said Ellen Gallagher now lived here with her grandson and his wife, Ralph and Julie Church.

I told the guard at the gate, a woman of more than average weight and less than average height, that I was there to see the Churches.

“Sorry, no churches in University Gardens,” she said. “You must be looking for St. Thomas’s a few miles east.”

“No,” I said, “I mean Julie and Ralph Church.”

“Ah,” she said with a smile.

Her brown eyes met mine.

“I knew that,” she said. “Couldn’t resist. You can go nuts here alone and I’ve been on since five this morning.”

“It was a good joke,” I said.

“You’re not smiling.”

“I don’t smile.”

“Your name?”

I told her and she checked the list on her clipboard.

“Don’t see your name here. They expecting you, the Churches?”

“Tell them I’m from Seaside.”

“Check,” she said, moving back into the shack and picking up the phone. I couldn’t hear what she was saying but she was back out again in a few seconds.

“You know how to get there?” she asked.

I said I didn’t so she gave me directions to 4851 Tangerine Drive Circle. The gate went up and I passed Tangerine Drive, Tangerine Parkway, Tangerine Drive Street, Tangerine Drive Avenue and made a right turn onto Tangerine Drive Circle.

The house was small with a finely manicured lawn of something that resembled but wasn’t grass. There were no cars in the driveway so I pulled in and walked up the narrow brick path to the front door, which opened before I could push the button.

An old woman in a flowery dress and a necklace of colorful beads stood before me. Her hair was white, neatly frizzled, her skin unblemished but slightly wrinkled.

“Ellen Gallagher?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“You were at Seaside Assisted Living?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask why you left?”

“Who are you?”

“Miles Archer,” I said. “Assisted Living Quality of Care Office.”

She pursed her lips, thought for a moment and said, “Let’s see. The food is mediocre. The conversation inane. The staff patronizing. The lure of twice-a-week bingo resistible. The complaints of my fellow inmates repetitious. I doubt if I was much better but I didn’t have to listen to me. Reasons enough?”

“Why now? I mean, why did you pick that day to leave?”

“Because my grandson and his wife invited me, as my own children had not,” she said. “They just moved here from Buffalo. Want a sandwich? Some coffee? My grandson and his wife are at work.”

“No, thank you,” I said.

“Foggy,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I was a high school English teacher for more years than you’ve been on earth,” she said. “Now I have the run of the house, my own television with cable.”

“That’s great.”

“I told you that because I thought I was beginning to see the I-feel-sorry-for-the-old-lady look on your face.”

“No,” I said. “I always look like this.”

“Any more questions?”

“No,” I said.

“Then have a foggy day. I’ve got an Ann Rule book I want to get back to.”

She closed the door. I turned and took a few steps. The door opened behind me.

“Here,” she said. “Take this.”

She handed me a very large chocolate chip cookie and went back into the house, closing the door.

I ate the cookie as I drove east on University to 1-75 and then went south, getting off about ten minutes later at the first exit to Venice. The new address of Mark Anthony Katz, the second name on my list, was a low-rise apartment complex in Osprey, which was still under construction; piles of dirt dotted the landscape. There was no gate. There were no guards. There were plenty of trucks rumbling in and out.

Mark Anthony Katz’s name was on Apartment 4, Building 2, first floor. I knocked. The building smelled like fresh wood and concrete. I knocked again and was about to give up when the door opened.

A lean old man with a wisp of hair on his speckled head stood in front of me. He wore a long-sleeved orange cardigan buttoned to the neck and held on to a walker. Across the walker was a bumper sticker that read: I CAN’T REMEMBER SHIT!

“Mr. Katz?”

“No soliciting,” he said. “You see the signs?”

“I’m not selling anything,” I said.

“Not insurance?”

“No,” I said.

“Cemetery plots, subscriptions to Things to Do When You’re Nearing Death magazine?”

“No.”

“You don’t want me to sign some petition to save the manatees, whales, seals or sea grass?”

“No,” I said.

“I miss anything?” he asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“So what the hell do you want? And who the hell are you?”

“Archie Goodwin, Consumer Advocates for the Retired,” I said.

“Bullshit,” he said. “I watch Nero Wolfe on television. I can’t remember shit, but I do remember names.”

“My mother was a Wolfe fan,” I said. “Father’s name was George Goodwin.”

He regarded me with prune-faced distrust.

“I want to know why you left Seaside.”

“Why? You want to talk me into going to the Assisted Living Home for Retired Housepainters or to join Geriatrics Anonymous?”

“Can I come in?”

“No,” he said. “No offense. I just don’t want you knocking me down, stealing whatever I’ve got and leaving me to crawl to the phone.”

“Fine. Why did you leave Seaside?”

“Don’t need it. Drove me nuts. I don’t like people much. Winn-Dixie’s right over there.” He pointed. “I can take a taxi anywhere I want to go, including the movies at…”

“Sarasota Square,” I supplied.

“Right. I can’t remember shit.”

“I know.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s written on your walker.”

“It’s been a nice visit, Goodwin,” he said and closed the door.

I checked him off my list, got in the Saturn and headed toward escapee number three. Her address was on Orchid, the east side of 41 where the houses were smaller, the costs were lower and the lawns not all kept neat and trim.

Finding the house was easy. It was a one-story white frame that needed a coat of paint. I parked on the street. Next to the house was a weed-filled lot with a sign on a stick saying the lot was for sale.

The woman who opened the door was big, probably about fifty. She was built like an SUV and wearing a business suit. She looked like she was on the way out or had just come in.

“Yes?” she said.

“I’m looking for Vivian Pastor,” I said.

“Why?”

“Just have a few questions.”

“About?”

“Why she left Seaside,” I said. “I’m with the Florida Assisted Living and Nursing Home Board of Review. It’s routine. Is she here?”

“Yes.”

The woman blocked the door.

“Can I talk to her?”

“You can, but I don’t think you’ll get your answer from her,” she said. “I’ll tell you what you need to know, but it will have to be reasonably fast. I’ve got to get to work.”

“I’d like to talk to Ms. Pastor,” I said. “Actually, I have to. Board rules.”

She looked at her watch, sighed and said, “Come in. Vivian is my mother-in-law. I didn’t think they were taking proper care of her. I’m Alberta Pastor.”

She held out her hand. I took it. She had a grip that could crack walnuts.

“My name is Lew Fonesca.”

I followed her into the small dark living room filled with a 1950s padded couch and two matching chairs with indentations where people had plopped for decades. There wasn’t much light coming through the windows, whose curtains were closed, and the single standing lamp in the corner was vainly trying to hold back the darkness with a sixty-watt bulb.

“I promised my husband, David, God rest his soul, that I’d take care of his mother.”

She opened a door and we stepped into a small dining room with a round wooden table for four. At the table sat a very small old woman with bent shoulders and large glasses that made her eyes look enormous. She was wearing flannel pajamas with red and blue stripes against a white background. In her hand she held an advertising insert.

“Mother,” Alberta Pastor said. “This man wants to ask you a few questions about Seaside.”

“See what?” the old woman said, bewildered.

“The place I got you out of,” the younger woman said patiently. “Where you were living. Remember?”

“Haven’t I always lived here?” the old woman asked.

“No, Mother,” Alberta said.

“Ma’am,” I said. “Why did you leave Seaside?” The old woman looked at the younger woman in confusion.

“The place you were staying,” I tried.

“I don’t understand,” the old woman said with a smile.

“Dementia,” Alberta Pastor said to me. “It’s been getting worse. They said they could take care of her, but she belongs in a nursing home or here with me. I don’t break my promises. For David’s sake, I’ll keep her with me as long as I can. I’ve got a woman who comes in to look after her while I work. She should be here any minute. She’s late. Vivian used to watch game shows, read, but now…”

“I had breakfast,” the old woman said. “Didn’t I?”

“Yes, Mother,” Alberta said patiently.

“Am I hungry?”

“I don’t know. Are you?” Alberta asked.

“I don’t know,” answered the old woman. “See, what did I tell you?”

“About what?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” the old woman said with a laugh.

“Enough?” Alberta asked me.

“Yes,” I said.

The old woman went back to looking at the ads for toothpaste, Diet 7-Up and cans of Planters cashew halves.

Alberta Pastor led me back to the front door. “Anything else I can tell you?” she asked.

“Nothing I can think of,” I said. “Thanks.”

I was back in my car. Three checked off. All among the living. Only Gertrude Everhart remained. Her new address was the Pine-Norton Nursing Home on Tallavast just north of the Sarasota/Bradenton airport.

The Pine-Norton was sprawling, pink stucco, new and no trouble finding. I went through the automatic doors at the entrance and stepped out of the way for a young black nurse’s aide in a blue uniform pushing a shriveled old woman in a wheelchair. The woman’s head was leaning to the left as if her neck was no longer strong enough to support it. The door just to my right had the word OFFICE in black letters on a white plaque next to it. The door was open.

A woman, probably in her thirties, but she could have been younger, was staring at the computer screen in front of her, her nose a few inches from it. She was frowning.

I knocked and she looked up with a harried smile.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

She was pretty, nervous, with ash blonde hair that wouldn’t stay in place.

“Gertrude Everhart,” I said. “I’d like to see her.”

“You are…?”

“A concerned friend of the family,” I said.

The woman puckered her lips as if she had bitten into a lemon.

“Mrs. Everhart was admitted yesterday,” she said.

“Her choice?” I asked.

“Her… yes, she came voluntarily.”

She turned her chair around, faced a file cabinet, opened the third drawer from the bottom and pulled out a file. Then she turned back to me.

“Friend of the family?”

“Guardian angel,” I said.

“You know her son then.”

“Yes,” I said. “How is Gertrude?”

She tapped the file on her desk, made a decision, opened the file and scanned it quickly.

“Mrs. Everhart is suffering… no, I’m not supposed to use that word. I’ve only been here two weeks and, well, anyway, Mrs. Everhart, Gertrude, has a degenerative condition in her lower limbs. She is, as you probably know, confined to a wheelchair.”

I nodded.

“She is also, let me see… early stages of glaucoma, high blood pressure, recurrent bladder infections, emphysema… You want the whole list?”

She looked up.

“No,” I said. “Can I see her?”

“She just went out with Viola,” the young woman said, looking back at the computer screen.

“Old lady in the wheelchair?”

“Uh-huh. You know anything about computers?”

“They exist,” I said.

“About how they work?”

“In mysterious ways,” I said.

She looked up and said, “Thanks a lot.”

I left. Down the paved driveway lined with parked cars, Viola the nurse’s aide was slowly pushing Gertrude Everhart, which meant I had started with four and then there was none. Everyone in the Seaside on the night Dorothy Cgnozic said she saw a murder was accounted for.

No, I thought as I got back in the car, there was still the staff, but Dorothy had said she saw the nurse on overnight duty. I drove past Viola and Gertrude, turned on Tallavast and headed for 301 past the airport.

The problem was, I believed Dorothy Cgnozic. I just didn’t have a corpse.

The red-haired woman behind the desk at Seaside Assisted Living was filling in a report, pausing every few seconds to scratch her head with the back of the pen she was using. I hadn’t seen her before. She kept working without looking up and said, “Yes.”

“I’d like to see Dorothy Cgnozic,” I said.

“Relative?”

“Friend.”

“The residents are having lunch.”

“When will they be done?”

She looked at her watch.

“Ten minutes. You know her room?”

“Yes,” I said.

She looked at me.

“Maybe you should just wait here till she’s finished.”

“Sure.”

There were some wicker chairs in a little alcove next to the nursing station. A television set on a metal platform about six feet high was tuned to the game channel. I watched the young Alex Trebek get people to answer questions backward for a few minutes and listened to the redheaded woman mutter to herself.

I got up and moved back to the counter.

“Any of the staff quit or out sick?” I asked.

She scratched a nail just over her left eyebrow and said, “You looking for a job?”

“Definitely.”

“You want to fill out a form?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t bother,” she said. “There are no vacancies, no openings, nothing new coming up, nobody out sick. People like working here. The hours are terrible. You’re surrounded by the befuddled and dying. The central office in Orlando is always changing the rules. But the pay is good, very good. Anything else?”

“No.”

“They may be hiring at Beneva Park Club,” she said. “What can you do?”

“Try to learn from my mistakes,” I said.

She leaned back, stretched high, yawned and said, “A little levity is always welcome. Now if you’ll just…”

A trio of elderly women were coming toward me down the corridor to my left. One of them was talking nonstop, loud. The other two were listening, or not. One of the nontalking women was Dorothy Cgnozic, pushing her walker.

“The war, the war, the war,” the talking woman said, waving her arms. “The man talked about nothing but the war till the day he died. Same stories. Jeep driver for General George S. Patton. Chased through some forest by seven or eight Nazis with those funny helmets. What his buddy John Something said when mortar shells were falling on them. What Eli the Jew did with his bayonet knife to a German he jumped on in a fox pit.”

“Foxhole,” Dorothy corrected.

The talking woman didn’t care or didn’t hear.

“Drove me crazy, those stories. Told them to the kid who delivered the groceries, the mailman, the insurance man, the guy at the Texaco station who couldn’t even understand English.”

“Dorothy,” I said as they moved behind me.

She looked over and stopped.

“Mr. Fonesca.”

The red-haired woman behind the desk with the pen tapping on the form in front of her nodded to show that I was vindicated and not a mad intruder.

“He got his wars confused at the end,” the talking woman said as she and the other woman left Dorothy behind to talk to me. “Korea, Vietnam. Came up with the notion that he had been part of the invasion of Japan.”

I walked with Dorothy down the corridor behind the talking woman. When we were out of earshot of the redhead, Dorothy said, “Did you find out who I saw get murdered?”

“No,” I said. “The staff is all accounted for. The residents are all accounted for. The four people who left are all accounted for. No deaths.”

“It’s no go,” she said. “My husband used to say that. It’s no go the picture show. It’s no go the Roxy. You can watch with wonder when Merman sings, but don’t go getting too foxy.”

I didn’t get it.

“Variations on Louis McNiece,” she said.

“Ah.”

“He was a poet, like my husband. I saw what I saw. Someone was murdered. Find out who and prove I’m not halfway to dementia. Find out who and tell the police. Find out who and what and why and I’ll tell every nurse, social worker, physical therapist, visiting children pretending they’re doctors, administrators. You’re sure none of the people who were released is dead?”

I pulled the list out of my pocket as we walked and read, “Ellen Gallagher, living with her grandchildren.”

“Not a socializer.”

“Mark Anthony Katz. Lives on his own.”

“Proud, crotchety.”

“Vivian Pastor. With her daughter-in-law.”

“Big. Lives for bingo. Checks off the days. Good for four cards a night.”

“Gertrude Everhart is in a nursing home,” I concluded.

“Now there’s a poor woman whose mind is definitely going,” Dorothy said. “Sometimes I think that’s a blessing.”

She stopped walking and put her thin hand on my arm.

“Do not give up,” she said. “You need more money?”

“No,” I said. “I need more ideas.”

“Yes, you do,” came a voice behind us.

I turned to look at Ham Gentry, the pudgy pink man with the walker who had caught me and Ames in Amos Trent’s office. He shuffled his walker next to Dorothy’s. I had the sudden fantasy that they were about to race down the hallway.

“You have any?” I asked.

“Ideas? One. Ask more questions,” he said.

“I’ll do that.”

“I will too,” he said. He looked at Dorothy. “We both will. I believe in this woman.”

He was breathing heavily, definitely not ready for a walker race. He patted his chest and said, “Fish cakes. Taste all right, but don’t sit well. The sands of time are falling. Get moving. A man who believes in the Chicago Cubs,” he said, pointing to my cap, “cannot give up this easily.”

I nodded, said I’d be back in touch with Dorothy and watched the two of them move slowly down the carpeted corridor.

It took me less than ten minutes to get to Richard Tycinker’s office. The woman at the reception desk looked up at me, checked her watch and said, “They’re waiting for you in his office.”

I moved past her down the gray-carpeted corridor and knocked at Tycinker’s door. He told me to come in. I did and closed the door behind me. He was sitting behind his desk. Nancy Root, Richard McClory and Yolanda Root were there too, as far apart as they could be. McClory sat in one of the chairs across from Tycinker. Nancy Root sat on the black leather sofa. Yolanda Root sat in a matching black leather armchair against the wall.

“Nancy says you’re close to finding the man,” said Tycinker.

“I think so,” I said.

“Nancy, Dr. McClory and Yolanda would like to talk to you. I suggest you go into the conference room.”

I nodded. Tycinker got up from behind his desk, moved to the door I had just come through, opened it and waited for us to follow. We did. Nancy was first, then Yolanda, then McClory. I was next, with Tycinker last.

He motioned to his right. I knew where the conference room was.

“You’ll have complete privacy,” he said. “Take as long as you need. There’s coffee brewing and soft drinks and bottled water in the refrigerator.”

He opened the conference room door, waited till we were inside and then left, closing the door behind him.

I wasn’t sure who was in charge or what this was about. The table was freshly polished. The large windows looked out at a line of five evenly spaced palm trees. Yolanda went to the refrigerator, got a Pepsi and sat at the far end of the table popping the can. Nancy Root, looking strained, sat on one side of the table facing the window. McClory, needing a shave and looking as if he was hungover, sat across from his ex-wife with his back to the window. I sat at the end of the table across from Yolanda.

I took off my cap and placed it on the table, waiting for someone to tell me what we were doing here.

“Go ahead,” Nancy said, looking at her ex-husband.

“Look,” he said, not to me but to her.

“We agreed,” Nancy said.

Yolanda took a gulp of Pepsi and gave her former stepfather a look of open contempt and muttered, “Wimp.” McClory pretended not to hear.

“Kyle was my only child,” he said.

“He knows that,” said Yolanda. “And he was my only brother and Nancy’s only son. Jeez.”

Nancy suddenly stood up.

“You’re not going to do it, are you?” she asked, glaring at McClory.

“I’ll do it,” he said without enthusiasm.

Yolanda shook her head and pursed her lips. “Richard,” Nancy said firmly. “You and Yola wait outside.”

“Great,” said Yolanda sarcastically. “We’ve got so much to catch up on.”

“Look, Nancy…” McClory said.

She looked but said nothing.

McClory got up slowly, resigned, looked at me, brushed his hair back with his hand and came around the table. Yolanda across from me rocked and bit her lower lip, said, “Shit,” and got up. McClory and Yolanda left the room, closing the door behind them.

Nancy Root sat again and faced me. She was wearing a little too much makeup and a determined look that seemed more than a bit strained.

“Kyle is dead,” she said. “The man who did it is alive. I understand that if you find him and turn him over to the police, a number of things could happen.”

I wasn’t sure where this was going, but I nodded.

“He’ll get a lawyer,” she said. “Maybe plead innocent.”

“Maybe.”

“Will there be enough evidence to convict him?” she said.

“I think so,” I said.

“You think so, but you’re not sure.”

“He’ll be convicted,” I said.

“Of what?”

“The charge? That’s up to the prosecutor,” I said.

“I’ve been in enough courtroom dramas to know that murder in the first degree is unlikely,” she said, eyes holding mine.

“I-”

“He can say it was an accident, that he didn’t mean to run him down,” she said. “He can…”

She closed her eyes.

“He might plead guilty,” I said. “I think he’s feeling guilty.”

“But he’ll live,” she said. “He’ll be alive and Kyle is dead. He won’t get the death penalty.”

She was right. There was nothing for me to say and I knew now what was coming next and why she had told McClory and Yolanda to leave the room.

“I think we should stop here, Mrs. Root.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I want him dead. We want him dead. It’s not enough, but the thought of him being alive when Kyle is dead is too much to live with. You understand? Every day I’ll know Kyle is buried in that coffin and the man who ran him down is alive, waking up every morning, eating, showering, reading, working at something, watching television. That is unacceptable. Do you have any idea of how we feel?”

“Yes,” I said. I knew exactly how she felt.

“The horrible irony is that Kyle’s death and that man have brought the three of us together,” she said with a laugh that wasn’t a laugh. “If you call what you just witnessed being together.”

I said nothing.

“Well?” she said. “Do I have to be more specific?”

“No,” I said.

She wanted me to find the man who ran Kyle down and kill him.

“Good. You know what I want and I don’t have to say it. Richard will pay fifty thousand dollars, cash, nothing signed, no income to report.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“What about that old man, your friend?”

“Ames?”

“Mr. Tycinker tells me he killed a man a few years ago.”

“Ames isn’t a hit man,” I said. “And he can’t be bought.”

“Then,” she said with a sigh, “when you find him, let me know before you go to the police. One of us will… do it.”

“Makes me an accessory,” I said.

“I know about your wife. What would you do if you found him, the person who killed her?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Do you believe in God, Mr. Fonesca?” she asked.

“He asked me the same thing,” I said.

“He?”

“The man who killed Kyle.”

“You talked to him?”

“He calls me,” I said. “He’s falling apart. I don’t know.”

“Know what?”

“If I believe in God.”

“Do you believe in an afterlife? Any kind of an afterlife? Nirvana? Anything?”

“I don’t think about it,” I said. “I work hard at not thinking about it.”

“It takes a great deal out of you, doesn’t it, not to think?”

“Yes,” I said. “When I find him, I plan to turn him over to the police. You want to end my services?”

“If I said yes, you’d just stop looking?”

“No,” I said. “I’ll keep looking. I’ll find him.”

She slumped back.

“Am I fired?” I asked.

She waved a hand and looked out the window at the trees.

“No,” she said.

I wanted to give her some comfort, tell her that she would find some peace in simply knowing her son’s killer was found, was punished, was exposed. But I knew it wouldn’t work and if I tried it, it would be a lie.

“Do what you have to do,” she said.

I got up, took my cap and went to the door. In the corridor Yolanda was leaning against a wall, arms folded, looking at the floor. McClory was pacing. They both looked at me and knew that I had turned down Nancy Root’s offer.

McClory walked past me without meeting my eyes and headed down the hallway. Yolanda started to ease by me and into the conference room. She stopped, turned toward me, her face inches from mine.

“He’s a wimp. You’re a wimp. If I get the chance, I’m going to stab the guy who killed Kyle. I’m gonna stab him and keep stabbing him and hope that he begs for his life and cries while he dies.”

“It’s not so easy to murder someone,” I said.

“He did it,” she said.

“I don’t think it was easy for him,” I said.

“You don’t… you feel sorry for him?”

She seemed to be waiting for me to respond. I had no response.

“I’ll find him,” I said.

About ten minutes later, I parked back at the DQ and walked south on Washington to Gwen’s. There were no fish cakes on the menu but the chalk list on the blackboard on the wall a few feet from the Elvis poster said meat loaf was. One space was left at the counter. I sat next to a thin, young guy with a beard, long hair in a braid and a faraway look in his glazed eyes as he ate a burger. On the other side of me was a regular at Gwen’s, a guy with muscles in a white T-shirt with a stitched blue outline of a stationary bike over the pocket, the emblem of the gym down the street. He was drinking soup. No Tim from Steubenville.

“Digger show up this morning?” I asked Gwen when she came back with my meat loaf.

“Showed up, did just fine for the first day,” she said.

“You just missed him. He made the meat loaf.”

“Looks good,” I said.

“Enjoy,” she said, grabbing the almost full coffeepot from the burner behind her and heading around the counter to make the round of the tables.

Something, I thought, pouring ketchup on the plate in an open space between the meat loaf and french fries.

“Huh?” asked muscles.

I didn’t know I had said it out loud.

“Just something I’m trying to remember,” I said.

“You’re the guy who lives in the office behind the DQ.”

“Yeah.”

“You work out?”

“At the Y,” I said.

“I can get you a good price at Milt’s Gym,” he said. “Just a few feet from your place.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

“Good price,” he repeated. “Remember what you were trying to remember?”

“Not yet. Something someone said to me today.”

“Right training, right food, right herbs can get your memory kicking ass,” he said.

I could not come up with a concrete image of my memory, let alone an image of it or me kicking ass.

“It’ll come,” I said.

“Don’t bet your left arm on it,” said the blond guy with the beard through a mouth full of burger.

“I won’t,” I said.

“Not that I know what anyone would want a fucking left arm for,” he said. “I mean one that wasn’t his.”

“Maybe the same reason someone would want a pound of flesh.”

“Pound of flesh?”

That pretty much ended the luncheon repartee. We finished in silence. Muscles left first after going into the pocket of his T-shirt and coming out with a business card he handed to me. I put it in my pocket.

I finished next, looked at the check, nodded at the blond guy, who was staring at his plate, left a dollar tip and paid Gwen at the cash register.

“Pretty nice day,” she said, glancing out the window.

I nodded.

There was no one on the sidewalk. People didn’t stroll in Sarasota, but cars did flash by. I was about twenty feet from the DQ lot and almost next to Milt’s Gym when I heard it. It sounded like a car behind me coming up the sidewalk. I started to turn. It was a car coming toward me on the sidewalk.

Tinted windows. Small car, tires on the right side in the street, on the left almost scraping the wall. There was a break in oncoming traffic. I jumped to my right into the street in front of a blue pickup truck. The pickup driver swerved to his left, missing me by a few feet and almost colliding with an oncoming squat convertible. The car on my tail turned with me. Whoever it was did not seem concerned about who or what was coming or going. This was a person with a clear mission, to run me down.