Denial

4

The plaque on his desk read: DETECTIVE ED VIVIASE. His real name was Etienne Viviase, but even his wife called him Ed. He was a little under six feet tall, a little over fifty years old, and a little over two hundred and twenty pounds. Hair short, dark. Face smooth, pink. He was wearing a dark rumpled sports jacket with a tie the color of Moby Dick.

He was seated behind his desk, one of three in the office. The other two were, at the moment, unoccupied, though the closest had a tall pile of reports that was doomed to topple.

“You called?” he said, mug of coffee in one hand, a scone with raisins or chocolate chips in the other.

I looked at the chair across from him and he nodded to let me know it was all right to sit.

“Scone?” he asked. “Coffee?”

“No thanks,” I said.

“Am I going to enjoy this conversation?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

He looked at his wristwatch, which resulted in crumbs falling in his lap, which resulted in his brushing away the crumbs, which resulted in him spilling some coffee, which missed his pants leg by inches.

“Five minutes,” he said.

“Kyle McClory,” I said.

Viviase smiled, but not much, shook his head, but not much, and said, “Not my case.”

“Who should I talk to?”

“Me,” he said. “I don’t think anyone here, especially Mike Ransom, whose case it is, will talk to you.”

“His mother asked me to look into it,” I said.

“You’re not a detective,” he said. “You are a process server.”

“She asked me. Private citizen.”

“Is she paying you, private citizen?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Why don’t you branch out into skip tracing?” he asked, taking a bite of scone and examining it to see how much he had left.

“I have enough work. Too much.”

“Well, I told you. Mike Ransom’s working on the Kyle McClory case,” he said. “The father’s a big-time radiologist. The mother’s a local celebrity. She’s got a lawyer with a little clout.”

“Tycinker,” I said.

“We’re working on it.”

“Can’t hurt if I ask some questions,” I said.

“It could hurt, but then again it might help,” he said. “What do you want from me?”

“What do you know? I mean, what do you know that I can have? I understand there was a witness.”

“Hold on,” Viviase said, finishing his scone and putting his coffee mug gently on the desk.

He walked over to the file cabinets, opened one in the middle, pulled out a file and came back to his desk. He sat, wiped his fingers and turned on his computer after checking something in the file, which now lay open in front of him.

The computer hummed. He entered something and sat back to wait.

“How’s the kid?” he asked.

“Adele?”

“Yeah, and the baby.”

“Both fine.”

He was about to speak again, but I could see something popping up on the screen. Viviase reached into his pocket, pulled out his glasses, put them on and looked at the words in front of him.

“Looks like…,” he said, reading what was in front of him and then checking the open file. “After ten, guy walking past the park saw it.”

“Guy?”

“His name is Arnoldo Robles,” said Viviase. “He works at a Mexican restaurant, El Tacito.”

I said nothing.

“You turn up anything on who killed the boy, you turn it over to me, right?” Viviase asked, leaning back.

“Right,” I said.

“Mr. Robles lives on Ninth,” Viviase said, scanning the file. “He was on his way home from work, walking up Gillespie past the park. Let’s see. Saw the kid running past him, thought maybe he was about to be mugged. Kid turns down Eighth. Robles hears a car behind him. Robles reaches Eighth. Car turns behind the kid, who’s in the middle of the street. Kid is running. Car’s lights hit him. Kid stops. Holds up his hand. Car nails him. Driver gets out to look at the body, then gets back in the car and drives off.”

“Why was the boy in the middle of the street?” I asked.

“To get to the other side. I don’t know.”

“What was he doing in a blue-collar Hispanic neighborhood at that hour?”

“Don’t know,” said Viviase.

“Anyone ask his friend Andrew…”

“Goines,” Viviase said, reading it from the file. “Yep. Mike asked him. Goines kid said he had no idea.”

“Robles see any other traffic, cars?”

“Doesn’t say,” said Viviase.

“How fast was the car going?” I asked.

“Doesn’t say, but Robles didn’t think he was speeding.”

Viviase gave me a long look, lips pursed, and removed his glasses.

“He ran the boy down,” I said.

“I didn’t say that. The report doesn’t say that. Right now it’s a hit-and-run. Something else turns up, we’ll look into it.”

He gave me a long quiet look. He wasn’t quite encouraging me, but he was a long way from telling me to mind my own business.

“Did Robles describe the car?”

“Let’s see… Sedan, probably late model, probably four doors.”

Viviase closed the file, reached over to put his computer to sleep and said, “Five minutes are up.”

“I think I’ll talk to Detective Ransom,” I said.

“Your funeral,” he said. “That’s his desk.”

Viviase pointed with a pencil at one of the other desks. “He’s probably at the hot dog cart outside. Late lunch.”

I went in search of Detective Michael Ransom.

The hot dog pushcart was on the sidewalk at the corner of Main and 301. You could see the Hollywood 20 theater across the street.

Two men, both big, both in their thirties, one with short dark hair, the other with even shorter blond hair, were standing by the cart with a hot dog in one hand and a Diet Coke in the other.

“Detective Ransom?” I asked.

The heavier, younger of the two men, the one with dark hair, looked at me, his cheek full of hot dog.

“Yeah,” he said.

“My name’s Lew Fonesca. I just talked to Detective Viviase.”

“So?”

“I’m a friend of Nancy Root’s. I used to work for the state attorney’s office in Chicago,” I said. “I’m sort of her family representative.”

Ransom took another bite of hot dog and a drink of Coke.

“I know who you are, Fonesca,” he said.

“You mind if I ask you a few questions?”

“Very much,” he said.

The other cop turned his back on us and went on eating.

“I’ll only take a minute. By the clock.”

“First, this is the only meal I’ve had today,” he said, showing me what was left of his hot dog. “Second, I’ve got a small stack of open felony cases sitting on my desk. The McClory death is in that stack. I’ll deal with it.”

“I’d just like-”

“Ed told me about you,” he said, taking a step toward me. “I am politely asking you to not interfere with my ongoing investigation.”

“But-”

“Now I’m firmly asking you,” he said, coming even closer.

“If-”

“Now I’m telling you,” he said, almost in my face.

I smelled onions and jalapeno.

“Tell Ms. Root I’m working on it Tell Dr. McClory I’m working on it. And tell yourself not to obstruct justice. Fonesca, I’m a tired man and I think I’ve got some kind of gastric problem. I’ve got an appointment with my doctor in the morning. This job can give a person a very bad stomach. Don’t make it worse. Now, if you want a kosher dog, I’ll pop for it, but you carry it away and don’t look back.”

I shook my head no, walked down the street, got into my rented Saturn, drove up 301 to Fruitville, turned left and then right at Gillespie Park. The sun was bright. Kids were playing in the park. I turned just past the tennis courts down Eighth. There were cars parked on both sides but enough room for vehicles going in both directions. Kyle could have stayed on the sidewalk but he didn’t. Was he just crossing the street? I drove slowly looking for blood, trying to determine exactly where the boy had been hit and killed. There was no blood, none that I could see.

I went to Washington Boulevard, turned right, went to Fruitville and then headed east just past Tuttle.

John Gutcheon sat at the reception desk on the first floor of the three-story Building C in the complex of identical buildings marked A through D.

Building C housed the offices of Children’s Services of Sarasota. Buildings A, B and D had a few empty offices but most were filled by dentists, urologists, a cardiology practice, investment advisors, jewelry and estate appraisers, young lawyers and a dealer in antique toys.

John was the receptionist, dispensing advice, directing calls, folding sheets and stuffing them into envelopes and warding off people who had come to the wrong place.

“You want to hear a dentist tale?” he asked when he saw me come through the door.

“Is it funny?”

“No,” John said, rolling his eyes. “It’s the truth. You want a joke, I’ll tell you one when I finish with the dentist business.”

John was thin, blond, about thirty and unmistakably and unapologetically gay. His sharp tongue was ever ready to cut off those who questioned his lifestyle by look or word.

“How did your art show go?” I asked.

The last time I had seen him Gutcheon had told me that two of his paintings were going to be shown at the Wardell Studio during the monthly art walk.

“No sale,” he said, holding up both hands with a shrug.

“Sorry,” I said.

“You didn’t see them,” he said. “Sally said she’d try to get you to go.”

“I’m-”

“Not a people person,” he completed. “Yes, that much is obvious. Can I tell you about the dentist thing?”

“Yes.”

“Building D,” he said. “John Gault, DDS. His real name isn’t John Gault but I call him that. You know, Ayn Rand?”

“Not intimately,” I said.

“Look who’s trying to display a sense of humor,” he said. “Anyway, you wouldn’t want to be intimate with Ayn Rand. Interesting writer but I hear she was a bitch.”

I nodded to show I was listening.

“Well, anyway,” he went on. “The dentist. Tooth gets chipped. One back here.” He curled up the right side of his mouth and pointed. “Got chipped. Piece came right off in that Chinese restaurant on Clark, the little one. Nice people. Something in the fortune cookie. Cookie says, ‘Your plans will soon change.’ I went to Dr. Gault the next day and he said I needed two crowns, eleven hundred dollars each. Mr. Lewis Fonesca, I do not have two thousand and two hundred dollars. He says I can pay it out for the next three centuries but I check with other people and my friend Pauly tells me to go to his dentist. You want the result?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, Pauly’s dentist looks at the X-rays, examines my teeth and says, ‘You don’t need two crowns. There’s nothing wrong with that second tooth.’ Furthermore, he says the chipped tooth doesn’t need a crown, just a filling. He fills it immediately, charges me sixty dollars.”

Gutcheon looked at me for a reaction.

“Interesting,” I said.

“It is, but I can see you are not one who is interested.” He sighed. “The worst part?”

“What?”

“I went to John Gault because he is gay. Betrayed by one of my own. You see the irony?”

“Yes.”

“But it’s not the irony you want to see,” he said.

“It’s Sally. Go up. Go up. You want a joke? You still collecting them?”

“Yes.”

“What do you give a man who has everything?”

“I don’t know.”

“Antibiotics.”

I took out my pad and wrote the joke.

“You didn’t even smile,” said Gutcheon.

“It’s humorous,” I said.

“George Carlin once said, ‘Don’t you find it a little unsettling that dentists call what they do ‘a practice’?”

“He said doctors,” I said, putting my notebook away.

“Well, I amended it to fit… never mind.”

The phone in front of him rang. He picked it up and I went into the open elevator.

Children’s Services took two floors. The second, where I got off, was big, open and filled with partitioned cubicles you could see over. The room was a dirge of voices, every once in a while a word or phrase coming through. Inside each three-sided cubicle was the work space of a caseworker who did his or her best to keep the few square feet from reverting to nature.

Sally’s cubicle was to the right. I passed a cubicle in which a short, thin young Hispanic caseworker named Amy Valdez was leaning toward the chair of an even thinner and maybe a lot older and haggard black woman.

Most of the narrow metal desks in the cubicles were covered with files and notes, and on the walls, almost as if it had been an assigned duty, were photographs of each caseworker’s family.

It reminded me of the places I used to get my haircuts, the mirrors where young women put photographs of their kids where you could see them. The haircutters wanted to kick the tips up. I never resisted. The last time I had been to one of those places had been more than four years earlier. I cut my own hair, what there was of it to cut.

The caseworkers, like Sally, put their photos up there to remind them that they had a life beyond the cubicles, the weeping mothers, the addicts, the teen prostitutes, abused babies, creatures who attacked and showed their teeth and were classified as human because there was no box to check for “other.”

Sally was alone on the phone, her back to me. In a frame on her desk was a photograph of her two children, Michael, fourteen, and Susan, eleven. Sally said they liked me, though they thought I was a little weird. I wasn’t sure I liked me but I agreed that I was a little weird.

“This is the third time, Sarah Ann,” Sally was saying.

Sally and I had been keeping company, nothing more than that, really, for almost three years. Sally was two years older than I, pretty, plump, dark short hair, perfect skin and a voice like Lauren Bacall.

She worked ten-hour days, half days most weekends, trying to save the threatened children of Sarasota County one by one. There were more losses than saves, but without the people in this office, there would have been no saves but the ones that chance happened to touch.

“I can’t keep coming there,” Sally said. “It’s almost twenty miles each way, but it’s not the distance. It’s the time. No excuses. Tomorrow. Sometime before noon. Sarah Ann, you be home. You have Jean home. We talk. I take her out and talk to her. You mess up this one and I turn it over.”

Sally paused, saw me, nodded, listened to whatever Sarah Ann was saying and then said, “Sarah Ann, tomorrow, before noon. There is nothing more to say. There are no more chances. Good-bye.”

Sally hung up.

“She won’t be there, will she?” I asked.

“You could tell?”

I shrugged.

“She might,” said Sally, swiveling around to face me, “but she won’t the next time or the time after that. This one will go to court. And given the judges on the bench, odds are exactly three to one the kid will go back to her mother.”

“Drugs?”

“And men. And… who knows?”

“I have an idea for an ad,” I said. “Television. You find real addicts, young ones, put the camera on them, black and white, and on the screen you put their ages, first names and the drugs they use. Off-camera voice just asks them questions, which they mess up, and the kids who see the ads know that they are watching people whose minds are-”

“You’ve given this some thought, huh, Lew?”

Then it hit me. I must have shown it.

“What’s wrong?”

“It wasn’t my idea,” I said. “It was… my wife’s. I’d forgotten until…”

“Have a seat,” Sally said, pulling the chrome-and-vinyl chair out of the corner.

I sat and took off my cap.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“For what? I’m getting off at seven. Kids want to go to Shaner’s for pizza.”

“Sure,” I said.

“You have a car?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Pick us up at the apartment at seven-twenty,” she said, smoothing the folds in her green skirt. “Or pick up the pizzas and we’ll have them at the apartment. Now, what can I do for you?”

“Kyle McClory,” I said. “Name mean anything?”

“You mean, is he in the system?”

“Yes.”

She turned, moved the mouse next to her computer, punched in the name, found a file and opened it.

“Not much,” she said. “In fact, not anything.”

“Try Andrew Goines,” I said.

She did.

“Nothing there either,” she said. “Anything else?”

“Try Kyle Root. His mother is Nancy Root.”

“The actress?”

“Yes.”

Sally did some more clacking of the keyboard and turned to me.

“No Kyle Root,” she said. “But there is a Yolanda Root. Let’s see. She… yes, her mother is Nancy Root. Yolanda has a long sheet. Drugs, men and boys, even attempted blackmail on a local businessman when she was thirteen. Went into his office, took off her clothes and demanded money. She picked the wrong guy. Gay. He called the police. Yolanda is, let’s see, eighteen now.”

“Where is she?”

“Last known address is her grandmother and grandfather, mother’s parents, in Bradenton. Grandfather owns a hardware store. You know I’m not supposed to be doing this.”

“I know,” I said.

“Could lose my job,” she said.

“I know.”

“You’re helping someone, right?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the worst that could happen? I’d wind up in an office or managing a fast food franchise. Regular hours and no bad dreams about the day.”

“And the kids would get all the free leftover junk food they could eat,” I added.

“That supposed to be a joke, Fonesca?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Good. Don’t forget about Saturday,” she said.

“Saturday?”

“Darrell Caton,” she said with a sigh.

Darrell was a fourteen-year-old Sally had conned me into seeing once a week. Big Brother plan. Darrell had no faith in the idea. Neither did I, but we had both agreed to start this week.

“I remembered,” I said.

“Sure you did. I’m busy, Lewis,” she said wearily. “See you tonight.”

She touched my hand, turned her back and picked up her phone.

John Gutcheon was on the phone when I got off the elevator. He waved at me with a stapler and I went into the afternoon.

I parked in the DQ parking lot and went up to my office, where the phone began ringing as soon as I opened the door.

“Lew Fonesca,” I said, picking it up.

“No more,” came a man’s voice, low, a little raspy.

“Let it end here,” he said.

“What?”

“What happened to the boy, Kyle McClory,” he said.

“You know.”

“Yes, yes,” he said so low that I could barely hear him. “You have to stop looking.”

There was no threat in his voice, just exhaustion.

“You did it?” I asked.

“Someone who doesn’t need any more pain, doesn’t deserve any more pain will suffer if you don’t let it just end here,” he said.

I took the phone and looked out the window as I said, “I can’t.”

Whoever it was had either been lucky and called the second I reached my door or he had watched me and called from a cell phone when he saw me get to the office. There were four cars in addition to my rental in the DQ lot. Across Washington three cars were parked, the sun bright on their windows, so I couldn’t see if anyone was inside.

“You don’t understand,” the man said. “I’ve got to stop you.”

“Why?”

“Seneca said, ‘The final hour when we cease to exist does not itself bring death; it merely of itself completes the death process.’ We reach death at that moment, but we have been a long time on the way.”

My eyes were still on the cars in the lot and on the street.

He hung up. One of the cars, a late-model compact, pulled out of the space on Washington and into traffic.

I went across the street to the Crisp Dollar Bill. The bar was dark and smelled of beer. The bar and the smell reminded me of Mac’s Tavern a block from our house in Chicago. My father used to send me there with a glass jar for Mac to fill with draft beer on Saturday nights. There was no music at Mac’s, just the silent black-and-white image on the ten-inch screen of the old DuMont television that sat on a shelf and the loud voices of the Irish and Italian neighborhood working men who came to complain, brag and declare the superiority of one nation over another, one baseball team over another. I was informed by my father that no Republicans were allowed in Mac’s.

In contrast to those memories, the expensive acoustical system of the Crisp Dollar Bill was playing Bernadette Peters singing “It’s Raining in My Heart.” Billy the bartender/owner’s taste was eclectic. So were his politics.

There were six people I could see in the booths and at the bar. Might have been others in the shadows. There was nothing really shady about the Crisp Dollar Bill. As far as I knew, no one had ever been shot there; though, back when the Chicago White Sox had spring training in the long-gone box behind the Crisp Dollar Bill, there had been lots of after-the-game fights over games in March that really didn’t matter when June came.

Billy came over with a Beck’s.

“Food?”

“No.”

“Two Sousa marches coming up next,” he said, moving back toward the bar.

I was in a corner booth in the back on the right facing the door. I nursed my beer knowing that as soon as Bernadette Peters’s last plaintive notes ended, the music would blare. It did. “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

“Oh shit,” someone at the bar said.

“Departure is always an option,” said Billy amiably.

I was halfway through the Beck’s, considering what to do next, when the door opened and Ames came in. He knew which booth I was in. He sat across from me.

“I think our Miss Dorothy is onto something,” he said.