Denial

12

A car screeched out of the DQ lot in front of me and headed right at me. One car behind. One car in front. Me in the middle trying to find space to cross the street to the other side. I was trapped ten feet off the curb. The car with the tinted windows swerved back toward the sidewalk. I stood on the white line. The right fender of the car coming toward me grazed the right fender of the car behind me, which was back on the sidewalk. I heard a headlight pop.

I made it across the street and looked back over my shoulder. The car with the tinted windows that had tried to run me down was skidding across the street and into the northbound lane. It roared on, glass from the broken headlight tinkling behind. The other car that had come out of the DQ lot was turning down the narrow street just past Gwen’s.

People were streaming out of Gwen’s, including Gwen, who shouted across the street, “Lew, you all right?”

I nodded.

“Damnedest thing I ever saw,” said a black guy with a sandwich in his hand. “Looked like they were trying to squash you right between them.”

“Melanie’s calling the cops,” Gwen said. “You better come back in and wait.”

I shook my head no, crossed the street and moved toward the DQ. I couldn’t talk. Not fear. Memories.

When I got inside my office, I went to the desk, sat with a reminder of the taste of recent meat loaf. My knee was throbbing slightly. My shoulder ached. My hands were trembling.

My phone started to ring. I stared at it for five rings and picked it up, expecting Taurus the Philosopher.

“Yes,” I said.

“Not here,” said Ames.

“What’s not where?”

“Parking lot at the college,” he said. “Seven Tauruses. None with fender damage.”

“I know,” I said.

“You know?”

“He just tried to kill me,” I said.

“You’d best call the police,” said Ames. “I’ll be right there.”

“I don’t think I have to call them. They’ll be here in a few minutes.”

And they were, less than twenty minutes after Ames hung up.

When the knock came at the door, I was staring at the painting on my wall of the dark jungle. I was having trouble seeing the spot of color. I counted on that one small spot. I hoped it hadn’t vanished.

“Come in,” I called.

Etienne Viviase entered, back in detective garb, sport jacket, loose tie. He didn’t say anything, just sat in the chair on the other side of the desk and shook his head. I watched him fold his arms and turn his eyes toward me.

Finally, with a sigh and a blowing out of air, he said, “Well?”

“Not very,” I answered.

“Well, what happened?”

“Someone tried to kill me,” I said. “Maybe it was an accident. A drunken driver.”

“Came right up on the sidewalk and didn’t stop?” he said. “Witnesses say whoever it was would have rolled right over you if another car hadn’t sideswiped him.”

“If they say so,” I said. “I was busy.”

“Didn’t catch a license number? Part of one?”

I shook my head no.

“I don’t want to be here,” he said.

I knew how that felt.

“For some reason, the department has decided that you and I have a relationship. Your name comes up, it lands on my desk.”

In a way, we did have a relationship.

“My day is not brightened and my burden not lightened by my encounters with you,” he said.

“I’m sorry.”

“Your apology will be taken into consideration. About a week ago a kid gets run down and killed. You start looking for the driver. About half an hour ago someone tries to run you down. It does not strike me as a coincidence. Enlighten me, Fonesca.”

“I’ll have some information for you soon,” I said.

“If you’re alive to give it to me.”

“Did you ever have one of those feelings that you knew something, heard something, saw something that would clear up a crime, but you can’t quite remember what it is?”

“I’ve been a cop for a quarter of a century,” he said. “I have the feeling at least twice a week.”

“I need a little more time,” I said. “If-”

The phone was ringing.

“Why don’t you get an answering machine?” Viviase asked.

“Had one for a while,” I said. “Didn’t like it.”

The truth was that I dreaded seeing that light blinking, knowing there were one, two, three, five messages waiting for me, telling me something I didn’t want to hear, asking me to do something I didn’t want to do, like calling back. It was easier to just pick up the ringing phone, not have time to think about who or what it might be.

I picked up the ringing phone.

“Will you stop now?” the man on the other end said, his voice quivering.

“No,” I said. “But we can talk.”

Viviase looked at me.

“You owe me,” the man said.

“You tried to kill me,” I said.

“You don’t understand. I saved your life.”

“Who is that?” Viviase said, standing.

I put the phone against my chest and said, “The man who killed Kyle McClory.”

Viviase started to reach out for the phone, changed his mind and nodded for me to go on. I put the phone to my ear and said, “You saved my life?”

“I was in the parking lot outside your office waiting for you,” the man said. “I think I was going to talk to you. I saw you coming, saw the car behind you bump up on the sidewalk. I cut him off.”

“Why?”

“I can’t explain,” he said. “I mean, I can explain but if I do… I saved your life. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

“I didn’t ask you to save my life,” I said.

“It doesn’t mean anything that I saved you?”

“It means something,” I said. “I just don’t know what it means.”

I looked at Viviase, who wanted to know what was going on.

“Santayana was wrong,” the man on the phone said softly.

“At the Alamo?”

Viviase was more than puzzled now.

“George Santayana,” the man said. “To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight to the blood.”

“He was wrong?”

“The blood forgets but the soul remembers.”

He hung up.

“What the hell was that?”

“He’s sorry he killed Kyle McClory,” I said.

“I’m glad to hear that,” Viviase said. “Who is he?”

“Not sure,” I said, “but he wants to be found. He didn’t try to kill me a little while ago. He saved my life.”

“He wants to kill you, but he saved your life?”

“He doesn’t want to kill me. He thinks he might have to.”

“Why?”

“He’s afraid.”

“Damn right,” said Viviase.

“Not for himself,” I said.

“He told you that?”

“No,” I said. “I heard it in his voice.”

Viviase put his hand to his forehead and said, “You know you’re a little nuts, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s what keeps me sane. Can I buy you a Dilly Bar?”

“You can,” he said, “but you may not. I can have your process server’s license revoked. You know that?”

“Will you?”

“No,” he said. “I’ve got to go. There are people out there who want to be helped.”

He got up, went to the door, turned back as if he was going to say something, changed his mind and left.

When Ames knocked at the door about twenty minutes later, I told him to come in. He did and moved to the window air conditioner and turned it on.

“You’re sweating,” he said.

I touched my forehead. He was right. Ames stood in front of the desk, his hands folded.

“Want me to go back to the college tomorrow?” he asked.

“We’ll find him tomorrow.”

“Sure about that?”

“You know who George Santayana was?”

“Philosopher.”

“Our man is probably a philosophy professor or maybe classics or English. His Taurus definitely has a dented fender now, right side. He has white hair, a white beard, tall.”

Ames nodded. We would go to the departmental offices at the college, ask the right questions, find the man who both wanted to be found and didn’t want to be found, who was willing to kill me but didn’t want to, who was in anguish I fully understood.

“Why don’t we go now?” he asked. “Just stop by the Texas and I’ll get a dogleg.”

I wanted to tell him that I didn’t plan on moving for hours, maybe not till the next morning, and only then because I had been seduced by responsibility.

Someone had tried to run me down. No doubt about it. But if it wasn’t the philosopher on the phone, who was it?

The phone rang again. I stared at it and for a few seconds wondered if it was really ringing or I was just imagining it. It rang five times. Ames looked at me and then at the phone.

“Gonna answer it?” he asked.

I picked it up and said, “Yes.”

I really meant no, no to almost anything.

“Mr. Fonesca, I’ve been trying to call you for hours.”

“I’ve been busy,” I told Nancy Root.

“What have you found?”

Her voice was steady, strong, clear, but with an underlying effort.

What had I found? That the world is without form and void, that nothing is predictable, that the just and the unjust, good and bad, suffer or survive at about the same rate. That my mother’s God, if he was out there, had played a major game with us. He had built in an impulse, no, a drive, to survive, even when common sense told us that survival was, ultimately, impossible and painful. From her voice, from what had happened to her, I had the feeling that Nancy Root would understand, but I didn’t say any of this.

“It’s only been a few hours. I told you I should have some answers for you soon,” I said.

“The man who killed my son is insane,” she said.

“It might be a woman,” I said.

“No, he called me.”

Ames leaned against the wall near the door, watching me.

“What did he say?”

“That he was sorry,” she said. “He was crying. I couldn’t understand all of it. He told me to make you stop looking. He… pleaded with me. He was so pathetic.”

“You’ve changed your mind about wanting him dead?”

She ignored my question and went on. “He said he had to see me. That I’d understand if he could just talk to me. Then he hung up in the middle of a sentence. I had the feeling that he wasn’t just feeling frightened, sorry for himself, that there was something else at stake.”

“My question,” I reminded her.

“Yes,” she said. “I still want him dead. Nothing he can say would bring Kyle back and you did tell me that he had intentionally run down my son.”

“That’s what the witness says.”

“Then-”

I heard a voice behind her. She said something I couldn’t make out and then came back on the phone.

“There’s someone at the security desk who says he has to see me,” she said. “Corrine says he’s a big man with a white beard. It might be

…?”

“It might be,” I said. “How good is the person on security right now?”

“Ron? He’s a retired policeman. He’s at least seventy and-”

“Tell him to have the man wait. Tell him you’ll see him in a little while. Tell him you’re in the middle of a show.”

“I am,” she said. “It’s Friday. Matinee. Intermission. I have to go back on in a few minutes.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” I said. “Do you have a gun?”

“No,” she said.

“Don’t do anything,” I said.

“Are you worrying about his hurting me or my hurting him?”

“Both,” I said.

She hung up.

“We rolling?” asked Ames.

“We’re rolling,” I said.