Denial

8

Someone was knocking at my door. I opened my eyes. The sun was casting bands of dusty light through the slats of my blinds. More knocking. Not hard. Not insistent, but not giving up either. I reached for my watch, almost got it before it fell off the chair next to my bed. Then I almost fell out of the bed reaching for the watch.

It was a few minutes after eight.

I got up and stood for a few seconds, swaying slightly, blinking, wanting the knocking to stop so I could fold myself back onto my cot.

The knocking didn’t stop. In need of a shave, clad in my blue boxer underwear with the little white circles and an extra-large gray Grinnell College T-shirt that I picked up at the Women’s Exchange for fifty cents, I was as ready as I wanted to be for visitors.

When I opened the door, the sun greeted me just over the acupuncture center across Washington Street. A cool breeze and the sight of a man wearing a Tampa Bay Bucs sweatshirt dappled with stains from coffee and liquids unknown also greeted me.

“Digger,” I said.

“Little Italian,” he said, with a smile showing white, inexpensive but serviceable false teeth.

Digger, until a few months ago, had been homeless. Well, not homeless if you were willing to consider the rest room five doors down a home. Digger, bush of pepper gray hair and nose tilted slightly to the right, was a thinker. Once, when I was shaving in the rest room, he had said, “Why do women complain when men leave the toilet seat up? Why shouldn’t men complain when women leave the toilet seat down?”

We stood looking at each other for a few seconds, Digger with his hands behind his back, rocking slightly, me with my hands at my sides, waiting.

“Job’s gone,” he said, looking over his left shoulder.

I knew what he was looking at, the second-floor dance studio across the street where he had been working as an instructor. Digger had dug deeply into his memory of different times to call up what he called “the Spirit of Terpsichore.” The studio had closed a few days ago. No notice. Just gone, cleaned out, empty.

“You want to come in?” I asked.

“I bear no gifts,” he said.

“I expect none,” I said, stepping back.

He came in and I closed the door.

“Lewis,” he said, facing me. “I am optimistic.”

“I’m happy to hear that,” I said.

“Wrong word,” he said. “You are not happy. I have never seen you happy. I have seen you relieved.”

“I’m relieved to hear that you are optimistic,” I said.

Digger looked at the chair in front of my desk. I motioned for him to sit. He did. I went into the back room, changed into my yellow boxers with the little gray sharks, put on my jeans and a clean short-sleeved white button-down shirt, white socks and white sneakers. Then I went back into the office, Cubs hat in hand, where Digger was examining the sheet of names and addresses from the Seaside I had scribbled.

He looked up as I sat behind the desk and said, “I’m optimistic. My room rent is paid for two weeks. I have prospects, ideas.”

“That’s good,” I said.

“I thought you should be the first one I told because you were the one who lifted me from the chill confines of the WC and the depths of ignominy to the dignity of steady work and eating regular.”

Digger was smiling. With people who look like Digger, the conclusion to jump to was that he had spent the night cuddling with a bottle of inexpensive but well-advertised wine or some drug not of choice but of last resort. Neither was true. Digger neither drank nor used drugs. His troubles were deeper than that, rooted, as he put it, in faulty genes, ill-fated life choices, a series of concussions and a god or gods who enjoyed experimenting on him. I knew those gods.

“Ideas,” he said, looking down at my list and then back up at me. “I’ve thought of starting a church, the First Presbyterian Church of the Tupperware. Sell religion and plastic containers that you put things in and pop the tops. On top of each lid will be an inscription: jesus saves; so should you.”

I nodded. Digger leaned forward.

“How about this? A line of candy. Simple chocolates maybe made in the shape of offensive things. I’d call it Good-Tasting Chocolate in Bad Taste. You know. Swastikas. Klansmen. That one would be white chocolate, which you know is not really chocolate at all.”

“I didn’t know,” I said.

“What do you think?”

“I think you need a job and a loan,” I said.

Digger stopped smiling.

“I paid you back last time,” he said.

“That you did.”

“Well, I’ve started finding some dignity. Now I guess I’d better find another job to keep the search going.”

I shifted my weight, took out my wallet, removed three twenties and handed them to Digger. I noticed that his hands were clean and his face freshly shaved. He took the money and touched his cheeks.

“Spic and span and speaking Spanish,” he said. “Ready to take on the world again.”

“Good,” I said.

“Any ideas?”

“Can you cook?”

“Continental, Mexican, Italian, Thai, Chinese, French,” he said, counting each one off on his fingers.

“Short order,” I said. “Griddle cakes, eggs, bacon, sausages.”

“With the best of them, whoever they might be,” he said.

“Gwen’s looking for an early-morning short-order cook,” I said.

Gwen’s was just down the street, a clean, bright survivor of the 1950s, not a kitsch and cool fifties diner, but the real thing. There was even an autographed poster of Elvis on the wall near the cash register. Elvis had dropped in for breakfast in 1957 when Gwen was a little girl and her parents had owned the place. Now, Gwen and her daughters ran the diner, kept the prices down and the food simple.

“I’m the man for the job,” Digger said. “Though I have to confess, I can’t really handle all that ethnic cuisine.”

“Confession accepted,” I said. “You know Gwen?”

“Of course,” he said.

“Let me know how it goes,” I said, getting up. He did the same.

“Can I buy you breakfast?” he asked.

“Get the job and you can make me breakfast tomorrow.”

“How do I look?” he asked.

“Got another shirt?”

He looked down at himself.

“Yes.”

“Clean?”

“Spotless,” he said.

“Put it on and go see Gwen. Tell her I sent you.”

“Here’s hoping,” he said, moving to the door.

I had long ago given up hoping and I didn’t think Digger had much left in him, but he hung on. I hung on. I was never really sure why. That’s one of the reasons I saw Ann Horowitz.

I got a clean towel from my closet, took my ziplock bag containing a disposable Bic razor, soap, toothbrush and toothpaste and made my way to the rest room along the railed concrete walkway outside my door.

The rest room was always clean, thanks to Marvin Uliaks, slow of wit, doer of odd jobs on the stretch of Washington Street between Ringling and Bahia Vista. He swept floors, cleaned toilets, washed windows and smiled at whatever cash was handed to him. I regularly gave him a dollar a week. It was worth it.

It was going to be a busy day. I did not want a busy day. I had my list from the Seaside. I had a dead boy whose mother was waiting for something that people called “closure.” Closure, the end of grief and the answer to why a tragedy burst through their door. I didn’t have hope and I suspected that closure, if I ever found it, would close nothing, just open new doors.

When I got back to my office, I sat down and made a list of people to see:

Richard McClory, the dead boy’s father

Yolanda Root, the dead boy’s half sister

Andrew Goines, the dead boy’s best friend

The four people who had been released from the Seaside Assisted Living Facility the night Dorothy Cgnozic had seen someone murdered

I wanted to go back to bed.

The phone rang.

“Fonesca?”

It was a woman. I recognized her voice. I closed my eyes, knowing what was coming.

“Yes.”

“Two today,” she said.

“My lucky day.”

The woman was Marie Knot. She was a lawyer. She was around fifty, black, no-nonsense face, thin and all business. I wanted to say no, but I couldn’t afford to lose her as a client. I was, according to the card with my picture on it in my wallet, a process server.

“I’ll pick them up in a little while,” I said.

“Need them served before five,” she said. “Shouldn’t be hard. I have addresses.”

She hung up. My going rate was seventy-five dollars for each person served, regardless of how long it took or how much abuse I had to deal with.

I made a few phone calls.

Andrew Goines was in school. When I told his mother that I was working for Nancy Root, she said I could talk to her son when he got home at four.

“I don’t really know Kyle’s mother,” she said. “Talked to her on the phone a few times. His father too. Kyle… Andrew could have been with him when it happened.”

The familiar sound of a computer printer clacked on her end.

“I work at home,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to get back online with a client.”

“I’ll come by at four,” I said.

“Mr…?”

“Fonesca,” I said.

“Hope you don’t mind, but I am going to call Nancy Root to verify that you’re working for her.”

“You want her number?”

“No, I’ve got it,” she said. “Got to run.”

She hung up.

I found the phone number of Elliott Maxwell Root in Bradenton. Sally had said Yolanda had been living with her grandparents. I called. The voice that answered was young, female.

“Yolanda Root?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

Careful, slow, wary.

“My name is Lew Fonesca. Your mother hired me to try to find out who killed your brother.”

“What difference does it make?” she said. “He’s dead. We’re all dead or will be sooner or later.”

“Can I talk to you about Kyle?”

“Go ahead,” she said. “I’m waiting for a ride. When he comes, I say good-bye, private eye.”

“I’m not a private detective,” I said. “I just find people.”

“Interesting,” she said, making it clear that she didn’t find it interesting at all.

“Can we talk in person?”

“Sure.”

“When?”

“I’m between jobs, sort of,” she said. “I clerk a few hours at my grandfather’s hardware store on DeSoto near Fifty-seventh. I’ll be there between one and three.”

“I’ll be there,” I said.

I started to hang up but she said, “Wait.”

“I’m here.”

“What the fuck. Yeah, I’d like to know who killed Kyle. They could have stopped, called the police, given him first aid, something, instead of running away.”

“Any idea who might want to hurt Kyle?”

“Hurt? It was some drunk or some blind old lady or something,” she said. “Hit-and-run. Police said.”

“We’ll talk at your grandfather’s,” I said.

“Hey, if you-”

I hung up.

Richard McClory said I could meet him in half an hour at his office on Orange.

I folded my list, tucked it in my back pocket, put on my Cubs cap, locked the door, went through the drive-thru at McDonald’s half a block away where 301 joins Tamiami Trail. I ate my Big Mac and drank my Diet Coke while I drove to Marie Knot’s office in the complex at the corner of Bee Ridge and Sawyer.

I didn’t see Marie, just told the temp at the desk that I was Lew Fonesca. The girl was young, maybe eighteen or nineteen, round face, peach skin, long dark hair. She handed me an eight-by-ten envelope with my name on it and I was out the door checking my watch.

When I pulled into the parking lot of the McClory Oncology Center, I opened the envelope, scanned the two summonses to figure out where they had to be delivered and what they were for. Both were less than fifteen minutes away and neither suggested that the person I’d be delivering it to was particularly dangerous, but one never knows.

I put them back in the envelope, left the envelope on the seat and entered the oncology center in what my watch and the clock on the wall over the television set in the waiting room told me was within a minute of the half hour McClory had given me.

There were four people in the waiting room. Three were men over sixty. One was a woman who couldn’t have been more than forty. They all were staring at the television. A woman on CNN was telling them that people were dying in a place thousands of miles away, in a town whose name they couldn’t pronounce.

“Sign in,” said the woman behind the counter on the right with a smile. She wasn’t much younger than the quartet watching CNN.

“I’m not a patient,” I said. “I have an appointment with Dr. McClory.”

She looked at me, never losing her smile. I didn’t look like serious business.

“My name is Fonesca,” I said. “Just tell him I’m here.”

She picked up the phone and held it to her ear as she pressed a button, paused and said, “A Mr. Fonseca to see Dr. McClory.”

“Fonesca,” I said.

She nodded at me but she didn’t make the correction.

“Yes,” she said into the phone.

She hung up, looked at me and said, “Through that door, office all the way straight back.”

I went through the door. A muscular man with a well-trimmed beard wearing green lab pants and shirt came out of a room on my right.

“Changing room is through that door,” he said.

“Not a patient,” I said.”I have an appointment with Dr. McClory.”

He pointed down the corridor and ducked back into the room he had popped out of. The door to Richard McClory’s office was open. It was big, with a tan leather sofa against the wall, two tan leather chairs in front of the desk, a swivel chair with matching tan leather behind the large well-polished dark wood desk. The desk was completely clear except for a large black-and-white framed photograph of four men at a small table playing cards. The men, who seemed to be in their sixties or older, sat on folding chairs. One had his hand to his chin as if he were considering his next move. The wall behind McClory’s desk was covered in framed degrees, awards and certificates. The one window right across from the door looked out on a parking lot.

“Fonesca?” came the voice behind me.

I turned. He was tall, looked as if he could pass for John Kerry’s brother or cousin. He was wearing a white lab coat and a look that suggested it had been a while since he had a full night of sleep.

He held his hand out toward one of the chairs. I sat and he moved behind his desk, leaned forward and folded his hands.

“Nancy hired you,” he said.

“Yes.”

He looked out the window. An SUV went over a speed bump with a rattle.

“Has anyone close to you died unexpectedly?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

He looked away from the window at me. It wasn’t the answer he expected. There was a flash of something, maybe anger in his eyes. How dare my tragedy be compared with his?

“Kyle was my only son,” he said.

I wasn’t going to play. I wasn’t going to say, “Catherine was my only wife.” These were different tragedies, different pains for two different people.

“I know,” I said.

“You do this for a living?” he asked. “Exploit people’s grief, promise them justice?”

“No,” I said.

“No?” he repeated with sarcasm.

“No.” I got up and said, “Sorry.”

I was on my way out, almost at the door, when he said, “Wait. Close the door. Sit down.”

I closed the door and went back to the chair.

“I’m sorry,” he said, pushing his hair back with the palm of his large right hand. “I deal with death, the death of near strangers, every day. We save some, save a lot, but some come too late. The families, the wives, parents, children, must feel what I’m feeling.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Now I’m one of them and I think about the crap I say to them and know that if someone tries to give me that about losing Kyle… I’m sorry. I’m tired. I haven’t slept in almost three days.”

“I know a good therapist,” I said.

“Don’t believe in it,” he said. “You know you’re the first person I’ve discussed Kyle’s death with? Everyone just looks at me sympathetically or tells me how sorry they are, but they don’t talk to me and I don’t want them to. God, I’m rambling.”

“It’s all right,” I said.

“I suppose. It doesn’t matter.”

He put his head in his hands for an instant, sighed deeply, looked up and said, “You want to know why I’m a good radiologist?”

I nodded.

“I’ve been through what about half of my patients have been through. I’ve had prostate cancer. Radiation. Seed implants. I tell them, I’m living proof that you can survive. It’s the survivors of those who don’t make it that I can’t deal with. You know the side effects of radiation and seed implants?”

“No,” I said.

“Well, the one on the table now is the inability to produce sperm,” he said. “I can’t have any more children, Mr. Fonesca. I’m forty-two years old and Kyle will be the only child I will ever have.”

He stared at me, either waiting for a response or seeing through me.

It should have been clear five minutes earlier, but I was sure now. Dr. Richard McClory was self-prescribing to deal with his pain and it looked as if he might be using more than the minimum recommended dose of whatever it was.

“Ask your questions, Mr. Fonesca,” he said, leaning back, eyes closed.

“You were supposed to pick up your son after the movie,” I said.

“Yes. Kyle and Andrew.”

“Both?”

“Yes.”

“And when they didn’t show up?”

“I called Kyle’s cell phone.”

“Cell phone?”

“Yes,” he said wearily. “There was no answer.”

“So you…?”

“Parked in the lot. Looked around. Went inside the lobby. Went back to the car.”

“You were worried?”

“I was, God help me, angry. I blamed Andrew Goines. I thought he had convinced Kyle to forget about me and go off and do something stupid. I was going to tell Kyle he couldn’t see Andrew again, not when he was staying with me.”

“And then?”

“I waited in the car, cell phone on the dashboard. Called Andrew Goines, asked about Kyle. Waited for an hour, gave up and drove home. When the phone rang, I thought it was Kyle with a lame apology asking me to pick him up or telling me he was staying at Andrew’s. It was the police.”

He opened his mouth and sucked in air. His eyes were red.

“Did Kyle ever run away, stay out all night, do things that-”

“Never, nothing. He wasn’t perfect. We weren’t buddies. But we weren’t enemies either. He was straight. No drugs. No drinking. One of the perks of being a physician is you know such things. It also helps when you go through your kid’s drawers and pockets.”

We sat silently for a few seconds. He looked at his hands. I looked at him.

“Do what you can,” he finally said without looking up. “If you need more money for, I don’t know, people who might help…”

“Your ex-wife’s paying me,” I said.

“If you find out anything,” he said now, looking up, “you let me know.”

“I will.”

“Have you ever felt that you could kill someone?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“My job is to save lives,” he said. “For the dozens, maybe hundreds I’ve saved, I think I deserve to take one, the life of the person who murdered my son. Well?”

“I don’t think it’s in you, Doctor,” I said.

“You don’t know me,” he said with a touch of anger.

“I could be wrong,” I said.

There was nothing more to say except to ask for the number of the cell phone Kyle had been carrying. He pulled a flap-top silver cell phone from a pocket, pushed a couple of buttons and gave me the number. I wrote it in my notebook.

A knock at the door.

McClory said, “Come in.”

A woman in nurse’s whites, probably mid-forties, strong features and eyes that looked at McClory with sympathy.

“Mr. Saxborne is here,” she said.

“Thank you,” said McClory.

She closed the door slowly, eyes on the doctor.

“Raymond Wallace Saxborne is going to die soon,” he said, getting up. “Raymond Wallace Saxborne is almost eighty. Fonesca, between you and me and whatever God is not out there, I am going to have a hard time giving my bedside best to Mr. Saxborne. Kyle was fourteen.”

He walked around the desk, past me and out of the office without a word or a glance in my direction.