Denial

17

The house was about two blocks south of the Manatee River, old, small, wood frame, painted white. The paint was old, streaked with dark stains. The roof was covered with decaying brown leaves from the tall oak whose branches hung over it. The lawn was dappled with clumps of moist leaves, which matched the ones on the roof.

The house had a tiny porch with a wooden railing and just enough room for a pair of lawn chairs. The surrounding houses were similar but there was no consistent design on the block and there were no people in sight.

We heard a machine, maybe a lawn mower or chain saw, echo in the distance when we stepped out of the car. The neighborhood smelled moist and musty. I was parked directly behind the car that must have been John Wellington Welles’s, the Taurus that had killed Kyle McClory. No, the car hadn’t killed him. The driver had.

Ames and I walked up the narrow, cracked concrete walk. The street looked weekend peaceful until the door opened and Welles stepped out. He was no longer wearing his jacket and tie. His shoulders sagged and the gun in his hand pointed in our direction.

We stopped. No one spoke.

“There are so goddamn many things I could have done,” Welles finally said, looking at the gun in his hand. “I could have planned it all better. I could have planned it. No, I couldn’t. I didn’t. In the poker game of life, emotion will almost always push common sense out of the way and take over.”

The gun in his hand lowered slightly.

“Who said that?” I asked, inching forward.

“I did,” he said. “My insurance… now that’s another tale. If I shoot myself, there’s no money to take care of Jane.”

“Jane?” I asked.

I knew Ames was reaching slowly, very slowly for the shotgun under his slicker.

“I should have simply stepped on the gas on the way back here and slammed into a wall,” Welles said, shaking his head. “But what if I lived? It’s a dilemma. I’m not sure what happens with the insurance if you shoot me.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“You don’t? No, of course you don’t.”

The door was open behind him, but not the screen door. Welles turned and called, “Janie.”

Someone stirred in the darkness beyond the screen and then appeared slowly, warily. Welles pocketed the gun as a woman who seemed familiar stepped out and looked at us. She wore a blue dress with a bright yellow-and-red flower print. She smiled.

“My daughter, Janie,” Welles said, putting his arm around the girl. She smiled more broadly.

Her face was familiar because it was the same open, round face of all people with Down’s syndrome. She had seemed familiar to Arnoldo Robles because he had seen others with that face on television.

“Hello,” she said to Ames and me, still smiling.

“Hello,” I said. So did Ames.

“Can I go watch the rest of the movie?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Welles, kissing her on top of her head.

She gave him a big hug and went back inside, disappearing in the darkness.

“Janie’s nineteen,” Wells said. “Already old for someone with Down’s. Her mother died of cancer. There’s been no one to take care of her but me since. You understand why I didn’t want you to find me? Why I was willing to kill you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“But I couldn’t do it.”

“You shoot at me at the Dairy Queen?” I asked.

“Shoot at you? No. When?”

“Why’d you kill the boy?” Ames asked.

Welles rubbed his eyes with a thumb and a finger and then blinked.

“We were coming out of a movie at the Hollywood 20. Janie likes movies, movies that don’t show people getting hurt. We were walking to the car, talking. I told her we would stop for ice cream. She was happy. Then it happened.”

He went silent again and sighed.

“You know the parking garage behind the 20?”

“Yes,” I said.

“They were on the roof,” he said. “They spit, both of them, spit on Janie’s head. At first I thought it was from a bird. Then I heard them laughing. Janie was bewildered, trying to clean her head and face with the back of her hand. Then she started to cry. You can’t imagine what it’s like to hear that confused crying. I looked up, saw their faces. People flowed past us trying to ignore my crying baby, my violated baby. I took her quickly to the car, sat her in the backseat, handed her some napkins, told her to sit and relax, that I would be right back.”

Welles’s shoulders sagged and he sat heavily in one of the lawn chairs on the small porch. The chair creaked. Ames took a step forward. Welles managed to get the gun from his pocket and aim it in our direction.

“No, not yet,” he said. “You’ve got to hear it all. I ran up the steps of the garage. I heard one of them above me on the fourth level shout, ‘The crazy bastard is coming up here.’ I wanted to get my hands on them, strangle them, make them weep like Janie, throw them off the roof, spit in their faces. When I got to the roof, they were about fifty feet away near the down ramp. One of them, the one I… he laughed at me. I ran. They were much faster than me. They ran down the ramp shouting taunts.”

Welles was tapping the barrel of the gun against the aluminum arm of the chair. He was remembering, shaking his head.

“I kept running, almost lost them in the crowd of people waiting in line at the 20 for the next shows. I shoved through people. People cursed me. I didn’t hear the words. Then I saw them and they saw me, and they began to run again, run down Main toward downtown. Do you have any idea of how I was feeling?”

“Yes,” I said.

The thought of this happening to my Catherine, my dead Catherine.

“Yes,” I repeated. “I do.”

“I went back to the car,” Welles went on, speaking faster now. “Janie wasn’t crying now. She was just huddled against the door, her head against one open palm. I sped out of the parking lot and started looking for them. They saw me and I saw fear and it drove me. I wanted to frighten them. I wanted them to wet their pants, to fall on their knees and beg for forgiveness. I wanted them to apologize and weep at Janie’s feet and tell her she was beautiful and should never cry. But that didn’t happen.”

He stopped again. Now he was tapping the barrel of the gun gently against the right side of his head.

“I found the one boy on Fruitville,” he went on. “He saw me and crossed. I moved into the far lane, cutting off a car that must have barely missed me. The boy ran down the street. I was right behind him now. I could see he was growing tired of running. Oh God, I wanted to frighten him, grab him by the hair. I had a cold, half-full cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee in one of the holders on the dash. I wanted to get in front of him, throw coffee in his face. I wanted him to wet his pants. I wanted to see fear, terror, but that didn’t happen.”

He looked at us, trembling.

“He stepped in front of the car,” I said.

Welles nodded yes and said, “He walked right down the middle of the street. I was moving slowly, only a car length away when he turned and held up his middle finger. He gave me the finger. He gave Janie the finger and made a face, a bug-eyed blank face, ridiculing my daughter. I stepped on the gas, hard. I think there was a screech. It might have been the tires or me or Janie or the boy. I hit him. He went down. I went right over him and stopped. I wanted to stand over him, tell him I hoped he suffered. He was dead. The cell phone was right next to his hand. I picked it up. I don’t know why. I got back in the car and kept going.”

There was more, but he had said almost all that he had to say.

“I told Janie that the boy was fine and that he was sorry and that he had said he thought she was beautiful. I took her to Friendly’s for a chocolate ice cream sundae. You understand?” he asked, looking first at me and then at Ames. “I’m not asking you to forgive me. It’s not your right.”

He let out a laugh, a single self-pitying laugh and added, “Can you believe that when I was a boy I wanted to be a priest? Exposure to logic disabused me of the calling. Sometimes I think God had a black suit and collar waiting for me and when I didn’t claim it, he let me think I was safe for a while, then gave me my wife and my poor baby, took my wife and moved those boys on the roof to-”

A car came roaring around the corner behind us.

“I made a call when I got home,” Welles said, calmly looking at the approaching car. “Maybe my saving your life counts for something. I’ve lost all sense of what I’ve studied most of my life, moral definition. Watch out for the woman who tried to run you down. I could see it in her eyes, in the few seconds before she scraped past me. She doesn’t have my curse of hesitation and guilt. If anyone shot at you, it was that woman. It wasn’t me.”

The car, which had come around the corner behind us, stopped. Ames kept his eyes on Welles, who looked beyond us at the person getting out of the car. I turned and saw Richard McClory, jaw tight, hurrying toward the path where Ames and I stood.

“You,” he shouted, pointing at Welles. “You called me?”

“Yes,” Welles said.

“You killed Kyle?”

“Yes,” Welles said again.

“Why, you bastard, why?” McClory shouted, moving past us, almost to the porch where Welles stood.

“You know who Jerzy Kosinski was?” asked Welles, aiming the gun at McClory.

Ames had his shotgun out now, ready.

McClory hesitated, confused, and said, “Who?”

“Polish writer,” said Welles. “Wrote Being There. In his suicide note, he wrote: ‘I am going to put myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual. Call the time Eternity.’”

He looked at me and said, “Don’t let Janie see me.”

With that Welles stood and lobbed the gun to McClory, who caught it in two hands, gripped it with his right and began firing, once, twice, three times. Welles staggered forward and tumbled over the railing onto the lawn.

Ames knocked the gun out of McClory’s hands with the butt of his shotgun and I ran forward, flung open the screen door and rushed inside. I found Janie Welles in a tiny room past the living room whose walls were lined with books. She was sitting in a worn brown chair that might have been leather. Her eyes were fixed on a tennis match. She was eating an apple.

“There was noise,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Is my dad crying again?” she asked, without taking her eyes from the screen.

“No,” I said.

“Good,” she said. “He hasn’t been happy since that boy spit on me. I told him it was okay, but he loves me.”

“Yes,” I said. “He loves you.”

It was too soon to use the past tense.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes. You sit right there.”

“And watch SpongeBob?”

“Yes,” I said.

I found the phone and dialed 911. Then I went back outside. Three people were coming out of a house across the street, but they weren’t about to get too close to the scene.

“He’s dead,” said Ames, kneeling at Welles’s body.

McClory was shaking as if he had Parkinson’s or was coming down from a week-long drunk. I looked at Ames’s shotgun.

“I called 911,” I said.

He got up, nodded and moved slowly past Welles’s body and around the house. While he was gone, I stood close enough to McClory to keep him from deciding to go for the gun that lay on the grass, the gun he had dropped, the gun with which he had just killed Welles.

“He’s dead,” McClory said flatly.

“He’s dead,” I confirmed.

“What time is it?” he asked.

I checked my watch and told him the time.

“I’ve got a patient I’m supposed to see at the hospital,” he said, dazed. “I’ve got to call, tell them I can’t make it.”

“They’ll understand,” I said.

“I really killed him,” he said, looking at Welles’s body.

“Yes,” I said.

“He gave me the gun,” McClory said. “Why?”

I was sure he would figure it out later. It wasn’t that hard.

Ames came back around the house minus the shotgun. I went back in the house and called Sally. I used her cell phone number and told her what had happened. I gave her the address.

“I’ve got a friend in Children’s Protection in Manatee County,” she said. “I’ll call her.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Lew? Are you all right?”

People were always asking me that question. The real answer was almost always no but I said, “Yes.”

I was sure Sally didn’t believe me.

“I’ll be right there,” she said.

Ames and I spent two hours with the Bradenton police, mostly talking to a detective named Charles St. Arthur, about forty, bulky, thick weight-lifter’s neck, blue eyes behind his glasses. I wondered if he was taking steroids. He wore a white shirt with the cuffs rolled back.

Ames’s explanation was simple. We came to see Welles on business. Before we got inside the house, McClory came, started shooting. He stuck to that. So did I except that I said the business we had come for was part of some queries I had been making on behalf of Nancy Root about her dead son. I said I had tracked down Welles, that he had called McClory, told him he had killed McClory’s son, threw the gun to McClory and McClory had killed him before we could talk.

The answer didn’t come close to pleasing Charles St. Arthur, but he had his shooter, two witnesses, and McClory’s lawyer on the way. Ames and I were just paperwork he wanted to keep brief.

“We found a copy of Welles’s will, insurance papers and a list of relatives in Nevada on the kitchen table,” St. Arthur said, rolling his pen in his thick fingers. “Almost as if he wanted us to find them. He say anything about this?”

“No,” I said.

“Know what it looks like to me?” St. Arthur said. “Our Professor Welles found a legal way to commit suicide and leave his daughter a pile of money.”

It looked that way to me too. I suggested that he might want to talk to a Detective Michael Ransom in Sarasota, that the death of Kyle McClory was his case. St. James said he would.

Ames shook his head.

Sally and her friend had taken charge of Jane Welles. I called Sally on her cell phone when St. Arthur let us go.

“How is she?” I asked.

“We’re keeping her busy,” said Sally. “We reached Welles’s cousin in Reno. She’s coming. Should be here tomorrow to handle the funeral arrangements. We’ll start the paperwork to get Jane placed in her custody. Lew, you want to come by the apartment tonight?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Maybe.”

“Basil’s roasted chicken,” she said.

“I’ll let you know. You might want to let Andrew Goines know what happened.”

“I’ll call his mother,” Sally said.

I drove Ames back to the Texas. We didn’t talk. We had nothing to say. I knew he would take his scooter the next day to retrieve his shotgun from wherever he had stowed it behind Welles’s house.

“Beer?” he asked, getting out of the car.

“No,” I said. “Not now. I might come back later.”

He looked at me for several beats and shook his head no to let me know that I wouldn’t be coming back, at least not that night.

I picked up two burgers and a large banana Blizzard at the DQ and went to my office, closing the door behind me, not turning on the lights. There was still light filtering through the blinds. I flicked on the air conditioner and sat at my desk. I had finished one burger when the phone rang. I considered not answering it. I considered it for sixteen rings.

It couldn’t be Welles. He was dead. I realized that I would miss his calls, at least for a while. I wasn’t sure why.

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

“This is Darrell’s mother.”

“Yes.”

“I want to thank you,” she said. “Darrell’s been talking about what-all you did. I know he’s making up more than half of it but whatever you did, he’s looking forward to doing more of it. And he said something about a Dixie and computers. Wants me to go with him to see her. She really mean it?”

“She means it,” I said.

“And you’re gonna keep seeing Darrell?”

“I like Darrell,” I said.

“Most don’t,” she said. “Next Saturday?”

“I’ll be waiting,” I said.

“Thank you again,” she said. “Wait. He wants to talk to you.”

I took another bite of burger and Darrell came on. “You catch that guy?”

“Yes.”

“And? What happened?”

“We’ll talk about it next Saturday,” I said.

“Old Ames, he shot him, right?”

“No. Next Saturday,” I said. “Stay out of trouble.”

I hung up before he could say more and the word came to me, the word I needed, the word that had been playing with me for almost two days. I was tired. I was more than tired. If I went to bed, dreams might come and I might lose the word.

“There was a farmer had a dog and Bingo was his name,” I said rather than sang. “ B-I-N-G-O. ”

I was pretty sure I knew who had died at the Seaside Assisted Living Facility. I was also pretty sure who the woman was who was trying to kill me.

I called Dixie’s phone number. She was home. I told her what I needed. She said she had a date with a SaraSox first baseman, but that she had about forty-five minutes and could probably find what I needed through the Internet in less than half an hour.

There were still a few things about it I needed to know. They would have to wait till tomorrow. I finished eating and sat in the near dark waiting for Dixie’s call. It took her less than half an hour.

I wrote the information she gave me in my notebook, thanked her and said I’d drop an envelope with a cash payment in the mail the next day.

I made another call, this one to the Seaside Assisted Living Facility, and asked one question.

When I got my answer, I hung up and unplugged the phone.

Ann Horowitz had said I kept the phone plugged in because even though I denied it, I wanted some connection with the outside world, the world of the living.

This night she was wrong.