Denial

15

Dixie Cruise lived in a two-room apartment in a slightly run-down twelve-flat apartment building on Ringling Boulevard a block from the main post office.

I had called the office of Tycinker, Oliver and Schwartz, but not about their client Nancy Root, not exactly. I wanted to reach Harvey, who had a windowless office in the rear of the law firm next to the washroom. Harvey was the firm’s open secret, a computer hacker who, except for a slight problem, could easily be making as much money as Donald Trump was paying whoever was still standing at the end of a season of The Apprentice.

Harvey was an alcoholic. He would stop for weeks, months, and then disappear. The firm tolerated his crashes from the wagon, encouraged him to seek help through AA or a therapist, but Harvey resisted.

I knew someone would be at the law office even though it was Saturday morning. In fact, Saturday mornings were busy with clients who had full-time jobs during the week.

Oliver’s administrative assistant-who back in the days long past would have been called a secretary-said Harvey was not in, was not expected, could not be reached at home, might never come back or might show up Monday morning.

I went to my second choice, Dixie Cruise. She was home.

Dixie worked at a coffee bar on Main Street. She was slim, trim, with very black hair in a short style. She was no more than twenty-five, pretty face and wore big round glasses.

Dixie had the down-home Florida accent of any Bobby Joe or Billy Bob. Dixie was also a computer whiz second only to Harvey. She had the added advantage of always being sober.

Harvey’s services were free, part of my retainer agreement with the law firm. I had to pay Dixie but her rates were low, very low, fifty dollars an hour, minimum of one hour.

When I knocked at her door, Dixie opened it, a grilled cheese sandwich in one hand. She looked at me, Ames and Darrell. I introduced them.

“I’m finishing my brunch,” she said. “Come in.”

We went into her tiny, neat living room/dining room/bedroom then into a slightly smaller room devoted to two computers with supporting gray metal boxes, stacks and speakers.

“Got to pick up my mom and dad at the Tampa airport at noon,” she said, sitting in front of a computer and pushing a button. The computer hummed.

“This shouldn’t take long,” I said.

She adjusted her glasses, took a bite of her grilled cheese sandwich, placed the sandwich on a paper plate next to the computer and began letting her fingers dance above the keyboard without touching the keys.

“Name?” she asked.

Darrell and Ames stood watching.

“John Wellington Welles,” I said.

“You’re kidding me, right?” she said, turning to look at me.

“No.”

“John Wellington Welles is a character in a Gilbert and Sullivan show, The Sorcerer. My mom was in it when I was a kid. She took me to every darn rehearsal for a month.”

“It’s his name,” I said.

“I’m gonna get me a lot of Gilbert and Sullivan hits. Can you narrow it down some?”

“He’s a philosophy professor at MCC,” I said.

“Got it,” Dixie said and started her journey on the Internet highway after inserting a CD in a slit in the computer.

The CD began to play. A woman began belting out a song.

“The Pointers,” said Darrell.

Dixie paused to look at the boy with a smile.

“My mom plays this stuff all the time,” said Darrell.

“Your mom has good taste,” Dixie said, turning back to the screen.

Dixie’s fingers moved in time to “Fire.” The images on the screen kept flashing by as she clicked, pointed, clicked, scrolled. One screen showed a man who might be a much younger version of Welles. I didn’t have time to read any of the words near it or on the other pages.

“Bank, bank, bank,” Dixie sang in place of the words on the CD. “Can’t hide from the Heart of Dixie.”

We watched. Dixie took snatches of the grilled cheese sandwich. Three, four, seven, ten minutes. “Fire” became “Automatic.”

Finally, she pushed a button, sat back with her hands behind her head and waited while one of three printers on the table to the right of the computer began to make noises.

“Laser life,” she said.

“Most cool,” said Darrell.

“You know the Net?” she asked.

“Know what it is,” said Darrell.

“Want to come over sometime, I’ll teach you stuff,” she said.

The printer hummed.

Darrell looked at me.

“Ask your mother,” I said.

Dixie reached over and handed me three sheets that had spewed out of the printer.

“Want bank records, debt report, medical history?”

“Maybe,” I said, reading the sheets she had handed me.

As I finished each one, I handed it to Ames to read.

I learned that John Wellington Welles was fifty-two years old, born in Canton, Ohio, to Clark Welles and Joyce Welles, both deceased, both high school teachers, he of math, she of English. John Wellington Welles, who had no siblings, had a BS degree in sociology from Syracuse, an MA in linguistics from Cornell and a PhD in philosophy from Columbia. He had taught at Northeastern University in Boston for fourteen years, left a tenured full professorship to move to Sarasota to work at MCC, lower pay, lower prestige and no tenure.

He had a long list of publications, including a book called Introduction to Ethics, articles in journals, though the latest one had been published six years earlier. Six years earlier, Welles’s wife had died, cancer. They had one daughter who was now nineteen.

I had his current address, in Bradenton, the make of his car, a Taurus, and even how many payments he had left on it, six. He was paying $234 a month. His house was fully paid for and evaluated at $149,000, which did not put him in the high range of homeowners. Two arrests, both within the last six years, both for assault, neither of which had led to a conviction.

“Assault,” Ames said.

“Can you find out about these assault arrests?” I asked Dixie.

She nodded, took her hands from behind her head and began the search. Darrell moved close, looking over her shoulder, mouth slightly open. The rapidly changing light and colors did a light show across his face.

It took about five minutes.

“Both arrests in Boston,” she said. “I’m not printing this stuff out and I’m getting it off my hard drive as soon as I’m done.”

“Why?” asked Darrell.

“Because,” Dixie whispered, “it is not legal.”

Darrell grinned at both Ames and me. I leaned over to read about Welles’s arrests. No alcohol involved. No weapons involved. One incident happened in a department store a day before Christmas. Welles attacked a man named Walter Syckle, broke his nose. Syckle dropped charges. No reason given for the assault. The second arrest was similar. Welles punched a twenty-year-old man in line at a supermarket. Released. Charges dropped. No reason given for the assault.

“Has a temper,” said Ames.

“Looks that way,” I said.

That was all I could get from Dixie. I gave her six twenty-dollar bills. I’d charge it to Nancy Root. Dixie folded the bills, slipped them into her shirt pocket and said, “Thanks,” and then, to Darrell, “I meant it about coming back here. Bring your mother.”

“She won’t be trusting you. She’ll say you must want something and she got nothing to give.”

“Bring her,” said Dixie. “I’ll grill cheese sandwiches and we’ll surf for all kinds of good stuff.”

Ames, Darrell and I left and went to the car.

“You wondering what I’m wondering?” I asked Ames.

“Yes.”

“Why did he leave a tenured job at a university for an untenured one at a community college?”

“Maybe pushed out,” he said.

“Or maybe he was running away,” I said.

“People do it,” he said. “Something happens. They run.”

He meant me.

“Want to go to Welles’s house?” Ames said.

“What’d he do?” asked Darrell from the backseat.

“Something he seems to feel very sorry about,” I said. “We’ll get him away from the house, at the talk.”

Ames nodded.

I drove back to the DQ five minutes away, and got Darrell and myself medium chocolate cherry Blizzards and a Dilly Bar for Ames. We sat at one of the metal tables in front of the DQ the sky rumbling and dark but the rain not yet falling.

“Never had one of these,” Darrell said, working on his Blizzard. “It’s good.”

I’m not sure what I was going to say. My eyes were following the cars flowing by; my thoughts were following not much of anything.

A big truck with RED RIVER CITRUS written on its side over the picture of an orange rumbled by and jerked over a bump.

A blob of my Blizzard fell in my lap. The truck was gone. Another blob fell but I moved my legs in time. I looked at the cup in my hand. It had a small round hole on one side and another one on the other side.

“I think someone just shot at me,” I said.

“Shit,” said Darrell. “You’re dripping.”

“Yes,” I said.

Ames was up, right hand under his slicker as he looked up and down the street. There were three people in the DQ line. No one was walking down the street.

“You all right?” he asked, not looking at me.

“Yes,” I said.

“Someone really shot at you?” asked Darrell.

I put the Blizzard down. The dripping had slowed. The holes were now above the drink line.

“Welles,” Ames said.

“I don’t think so,” I answered.

I tried to stand but my legs wouldn’t move.

“Sure you’re all right?” Ames repeated.

I wasn’t all right. I was numb. It didn’t seem real. Reality is noise, a car skidding toward me, a punch or a doctor telling someone he has a year to live. This had been noiseless.

“You callin’ the cops?” Darrell asked.

“No. Let’s go,” I said.

“Where?” asked Darrell, excited.

“To see some very old people,” I said.

“Shit, that’s no fun.”

“One of them has a pet alligator.”

“One of those baby things?” asked Darrell.

“A big one,” said Ames.

“Name’s Jerry Lee,” I said.

“Could have hit the boy,” Ames said in a husky whisper, following me to the car.

“Yes.”

Ames went silent as we got in and closed the doors. I looked at him. His face was rigid, the muscles of his jaw twitching slightly.

“Yes,” I said.

“I get my barrels on him, I’m pulling,” he said.

“Maybe we can come up with an alternative,” I said.

Ames just shook his head once. It was a definite no. Ames rode at my side with the shotgun in his lap and his eyes scanning the faces of the people in every car that passed us.

At the stoplight at Hillview we pulled up next to a big, yellow Lincoln with a tiny bespectacled woman driver with curly white hair. She turned her head toward us and found herself looking into the eyes of Ames McKinney. She turned her eyes forward again, watching the traffic light.

When we got to the Seaside, Ames motioned for us to stay in the car. He got out, shotgun under his slicker, and looked around before motioning us to get out.

“Where’s the gator?” asked Darrell, looking around.

“Behind the building,” I said.

“We gonna look at it?”

“Maybe,” I said, leading the way through the glass doors of the Seaside, which slid open automatically.

The office doors to our right were closed for the weekend. We made our way to the nursing station, where a tiny black woman in a blue nursing smock was dispensing medicine to an ancient old man with a large freckled bald head. The man took some pills on his tongue, accepted a small plastic cup of water from the nurse and washed down the medicine with a quick gulp.

The man looked at the three of us, blinked and said, “Is there a carnival in town?”

“John,” the little nurse admonished, taking back the plastic cup.

“Well, I mean it,” John said. “Look at them. I worked a carnival summers when I was a kid. We had a couple of Negro midgets.”

“I ain’t no midget,” said Darrell.

“You ain’t?” John said, looking astonished. “You fooled me. This other fella, though,” he went on, pointing a bony arthritic finger at Ames, “definitely runs a shooting gallery.”

“John,” the nurse warned wearily.

“He’s carrying a gun right under that yellow raincoat,” John said.

“John likes his little jokes,” said the nurse, who looked beyond tired.

“I like a good bowel movement too from time to time,” he said. “I don’t ask much.”

With that John turned his back and shuffled down the hall.

“Can I help you?” the nurse said, turning to us. She was black, thin, in her mid-forties and obviously tired.

I read the name tag on her uniform. It said EMMIE.

“You’re the night nurse,” I said.

“Most nights,” she said.

“You were here the night Dorothy Cgnozic reported that someone had been murdered.”

“I was,” she said. “My first night on the job, people checking out, woman tells me she saw a murder. Crazy night. Who are you?”

“Friends of Dorothy’s,” I said.

“Sometime I’d like to hear the story of how that friendship began, but not today. I’m on my second straight shift. Can you believe two nurses came down with some kind of flu? I’ve been on almost fourteen hours.”

“Sorry,” I said.

She shrugged and said, “Time and a half. I’m not complaining, not with two-year-old twins to raise, just tired.”

“Dorothy told you she just saw someone murdered?” I asked.

“Yes, she thought it was a woman. I looked in the room. No body, nobody missing. Checked the log, day-shift releases, and night maintenance man. I think maybe Dorothy had a bad dream.”

“The room where Dorothy said she saw the murder,” I said. “Where does the window open to?”

“Back of the building,” said Emmie. “Nothing but dark, woods, snakes and a crazy half-blind gator with a bad temper.”

Darrell looked at me. He was smiling. The existence of the promised gator had been validated.

“We’ve got a patient who keeps feeding the damned thing. One day that Stevie Wonder gator is going to take her arm off.”

“Jerry Lee,” Ames corrected.

“Who?” she asked.

“Gator’s name,” Ames said.

“Whatever,” she said with a sigh. “You want to see Dorothy?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Know where her room is?”

I told her we did and she moved behind the desk to sit heavily in the wooden chair and close her eyes.

Dorothy was fully dressed and sitting in the small upholstered and faded salmon-colored chair next to her bed. She was watching something on television but turned it off with her remote when she saw us.

“Mr. Fonesca and Mr. McKinney,” she said with a smile. “And the young man?”

“Darrell Caton,” he said, not sure whether he should offer his hand, starting to hold it out, then changing his mind and pulling it back to his side.

“You found the murderer?” she asked.

“No, not yet.”

“You find out who got killed?”

“No, but I think I’m getting close. Has anyone tried to get you to stop me from talking about the murder?”

“No one’s asked me to stop, nobody but the nurses and some of them just look at me like I’m a dotty old coot keeping herself busy with a harmless delusion.”

“Want to take us to Rose Teffler’s room?” I asked.

“That’s not where the murder happened,” Dorothy said.

“But on the same side of the building a few doors down from her room?”

“Suppose so,” said Dorothy. “Waste of time. I already asked her if she heard or saw anything.”

“Still-” I started and she interrupted with, “Okay. Let’s go.”

We walked down the hall, a bizarre quartet, probably looking like a spoof of the walk down the corridor at the beginning of Law amp; Order. We went to the right, though the most direct way would have been back past the nursing station.

It took us about five minutes to get to Rose Teffler’s door. Dorothy moved slowly with her walker. A sprig of some dried flowers hung on the door. Their color was almost gone.

I knocked. No answer from inside, though Ames did cock his head as if he had heard something move behind the door. Then the door opened.

Rose Teffler was tiny, no more than four foot six. She squinted at us with suspicion and Dorothy said that we had some questions.

“What about?” the old woman said.

“The night Mrs. Cgnozic saw someone a few doors down being attacked,” I said. “If someone committed murder and took the body out during the night, they would have to go past your window.”

“What time?”

“After eleven at night,” I said.

“I’m not up at that time,” she said. “Always get nine hours of sleep.”

“You get up to feed Jerry Lee,” said Ames.

Rose Teffler looked at Ames with fear.

“They don’t care about the gator, Rose,” Dorothy said. “Everybody knows you feed the gator.”

“They do?”

“They do,” Dorothy repeated. “These people don’t care about your feeding Jerry Lee.”

“I do,” said Darrell.

“The night-” I started, but Rose Teffler was already saying, “Yes. I thought Jerry Lee had gotten whoever it was. Lots of noise. Heard Jerry Lee out there thrashing around. I was about to feed him. Someone screamed or something. By the time I got to the window and opened it, all I could see was someone or something slouching away next to the building. Looked like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

“Charles Laughton,” I said.

“Lon Chaney,” Rose corrected.

“Right,” I said. “Sorry.”

“Maybe it was Charles Laughton,” said Rose. “You won’t tell about Jerry Lee.”

“No one left to tell except Trent. No one tells him anything,” said Dorothy, but Rose wasn’t listening.

We left and walked Dorothy back to her room, promising her that we’d get back to her soon.

“I know what I saw,” she said, sitting in the chair next to her bed. “Wait.”

She reached back to the bedside table to her right. She opened the drawer and came out with a box of Girl Scout Thin Mints. She handed the box to Darrell.

“Thanks,” he said.

Darrell, Ames and I moved out of the room. Behind us Dorothy clicked on the television remote and the long-dead people on a laugh track I’d grown up with found something very funny.

We passed the nursing station. Emmie was now drinking a cup of coffee. She nodded at us.

“Get anywhere with Dorothy?” she asked.

I told her we had and we went down the corridor and through the sliding glass doors. At the end of the building we turned left where Ames and I had been two nights ago.

The grass, shrubs and trees were thick, and through them you could see patches of the small marsh beyond.

“We gonna find the gator?” asked Darrell.

“Not if we’re lucky,” I said.

Ames had his shotgun out. The windows of the rooms of the residents in this wing of the Seaside were to our left. The ground was soggy.

I kept my eyes on the ground.

“What’re you looking for?” asked Darrell.

“Something that doesn’t belong here,” I said.

We were under Rose Teffler’s window now.

“Like this?” asked Darrell, reaching down to pick up something.

He turned to show us a slipper, dark blue. He handed it to me. I handed it to Ames.

“Hasn’t been here more than a week, maybe,” Ames said.

Ames and I were thinking of the same possibility. Someone could have taken the dead body out through the window and carried it past here. The slipper could have fallen off the body.

“Gator could have come thinking he was going to be fed,” I said.

“Maybe he was,” said Ames.

“You mean that old gator ate someone?” said Darrell gleefully.

“Let’s keep looking,” I said.

We did. No blood. No body parts. No second slipper. No evidence. We did manage to draw the attention of an old, nearly blind gator named Jerry Lee, who came slithering out, head raised through the thick reedy grass.

“There he is,” shouted Darrell.

Ames had his shotgun out. He was aiming it toward the slow-moving animal. Ames’s hands were steady.

“You gonna shoot him?” asked Darrell.

“If I have to,” said Ames, gun cradled firmly against his shoulder.

I pushed Darrell behind me. Ames was between us and Jerry Lee, who looked as if he might be smelling us out instead of looking at us. He slithered forward a few feet.

Something flew from behind me. A box of Girl Scout Thin Mints hit the alligator in the snout.

“Got him,” said Darrell.

“You got him mad is all,” said Ames.

Jerry Lee was coming faster now. The window behind us opened. Jerry Lee was a dozen yards away now and coming toward us.

Something else flew from behind me, but this time it wasn’t a box of cookies. It looked like a chicken leg and thigh. Jerry Lee opened his mouth and took it in.

“He shouldn’t eat during the day,” said Rose Teffler. “I saved that from lunch. Was going to give it to him tonight, but now…”

Jerry Lee chomped. We hurried back around the building to the parking lot. I was carrying the soggy slipper.

Darrell was beaming with delight as we got in the car.

“Where we goin’ now, hold up a bank or something?”

“We’re going to a lecture,” I said.