Midnight Pass

10

It was Thursday night, a little before nine. The rain had started again. It wasn’t much of a rain but it was enough to hide the moon and stars and give me a feeling of protective isolation from people.

Traffic going north on Tamiami Trail was light, but there was the usual cast of coastal Florida characters on the road. I passed the infirmed and ancient, weak of sight, hearing, and judgment, hunching forward to squint into the darkness, driving twenty miles under the speed limit, trying not to admit to themselves that they were afraid of driving. These senior drivers were a potential menace, but I understood their loneliness, their unwillingness to give up driving and lose even more of their contact with the world.

Then there were the grinning kids in late-model cars or pickup trucks. They took chances, cut people off, and were unaware that death was a reality. You might challenge death fifty, a hundred, two hundred times, but the one time you lost, the game was over. They didn’t consider losing. The game was everything.

There were families on their way back from somewhere or someone, one or two children sleeping in the backseat, mother and father in the front listening to the radio, just wanting to make it home and to bed for a few hours.

And then there was me.

I stopped at the video store a block from the DQ. They specialized in Spanish-language movies, but had a good collection of American movies from the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties, most of them second-generation copies.

Eduardo, overweight, sagging eyes, too-small button-down shirt, sat behind the counter at the back of the small store. He nodded when I walked in. Eduardo had been an almost promising middleweight in the late Seventies. Time had been no more kind to him than it had to me.

I didn’t think I would find what I was looking for, but I did. I almost missed it. It was one I hadn’t seen before called Forbidden Destiny. I recognized the title, knew who was in it. I found it in the bin of overused tapes for sale in a plain white box with the title printed in ink on the spine. I gave Eduardo three dollars.

“Rain,” Eduardo said, looking out the window. “Bad for business. I think I’ll just close up early and get a beer at the Crisp Dollar Bill. You want to come?”

“Tired,” I said. “Busy day.”

Eduardo understood tired. I don’t think he knew much about busy days. He nodded.

When I got to my office just before ten, I found a message on the machine from Sally. “Lew, call when you get this if it’s before ten.”

I called.

“Hello,” said Susan, Sally’s daughter. Susan was eleven and was convinced that every time the phone rang it was for her.

“It’s me, Lew,” I said.

“I’ll get her,” Susan said, and put down the phone.

I could hear the television playing. The voice sounded like George Clooney in serious mode.

“It’s Mr. Sunshine, Mom,” Susan called.

“Dork,” said Michael, who was going to be fifteen some time soon. “He can probably hear you.”

“Lew?”

“Mr. Sunshine himself,” I said.

“I have to talk to you about the Severtsons. I need to fill out a report and I want to quote you in it.”

“Ken Severtson wants custody of the kids,” I guessed. “And he wants a divorce.”

“Neither,” she said. “I talked to them a few hours ago. They’re going to stay together.”

“For the kids,” I said.

“It’s always for the kids,” she said. “Even when it’s the worst thing that can happen to the kids. Well, almost the worst thing.”

The light in my office came from a line of fluorescent overheads, two of which were out, one of which was flickering and pinging. I could see the painting, the Dalstrom painting of the black forest and the single colorful flower.

“You think the kids should be taken away from the Severtsons?” I asked.

“It doesn’t much matter what I think. There’s not a judge in the state who would take kids away from parents who aren’t criminal offenders, don’t take drugs, and don’t beat the kids. But a detective in Orlando faxed a report to the sheriff’s office here, and the sheriff’s office sent me a copy.”

“Which says?”

“Mother and children present at a suspicious death. Mother in bed with a man who wasn’t her husband. Family bears watching. We add that to the complaint about them from before and…I don’t know.”

“What?”

“Report on Stark,” she said. “Lost his wife. Had some trouble with the law when he was young, but he’s been a regular churchgoer for years. Upstanding businessman. Volunteer at the food bank.”

“And child molester?” I added.

“Nothing in his past and no proof but Janice Severtson’s word,” said Sally. “Neither child remembers ever being touched by Stark.”

“It would have happened. It was about to happen.”

“But it didn’t,” Sally said. “Can you do me a favor and write out your version of what you know happened, what she told you, how Kenny and Sydney behaved? I’ll attach it to my report and list you as a semiretired former member of the Office of State Attorney of Cook County, Illinois.”

“When do you need it?”

“Soon,” she said. “Tomorrow? The kids want to go to the movies Saturday. How about coming over here for dinner and you join us?”

Sally couldn’t help it. It was her mission. Saving children and reclusive process servers. She knew I didn’t like going to the movies. I preferred my cot, something old in black-and-white, and being alone. She had made progress with me. I had gone out to restaurants alone with Sally five times, and seven or eight times with her and kids. The kids liked The Bangkok. Susan liked getting a sugar high on Thai iced tea.

The rain started to come down harder. I could hear it beating on the concrete outside my door.

“Dinner is fine,” I said. “I’ll let you know about the movie.”

“I was just joking when I called you Mr. Sunshine,” Susan suddenly came on.

“I know,” I said. “You know any real jokes?”

“Sure. Blond jokes. Lots of them. Why?”

“I’m collecting them for a friend I have to see in the morning.”

Susan told me a joke. I jotted it down in my notebook and thanked her and then Sally came back on.

“Tomorrow,” she said. “Afternoon. I have to be in court in the morning. Another crack child is going to be given back to his mother who just got out of rehab.”

“And you’ll fight it.”

“And lose,” Sally said. “And then I’ll have the case back in a month or two or five and we’ll start the same cycle again. Listen to me. I’m starting to sound like you.”

“Did you hear the joke Susan just told me?” I asked.

“No.”

“Ask her to tell it to you. I think it will make you smile.”

“Did it make you smile, Lew?”

“No,” I admitted. “I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon sometime.”

When we hung up, I turned off the office light, went into my cubbyhole room, hit the light switch, and got undressed. I put on a fresh pair of underwear, turned on the VCR and the television, and popped Forbidden Destiny into the slot.

I watched George Nader and Ernest Borgnine plan a bank robbery before Claire Collins appeared, her hair swept back, a knowing smile on her face, a dark sweater and skirt, her mouth pouting, her eyes darting.

When it was over, I turned off the television with the remote and lay in the dark listening to the rain.

Tomorrow was a busy day. I hated busy days.

The rain had stopped by morning but the sky was still dark and the DQ parking lot wet with puddles where the concrete was indented. Cars kicked up splashes and small waves on 301. My watch told me it was eight o’clock.

The phone rang. I got to it before the answering machine kicked in.

“Fonesca,” I said.

“You know where the Seventeenth Street softball fields are?” Kevin Hoffmann asked, full of energy.

“I can find them,” I said.

“Go east down Seventeenth past Beneva,” he said. “You’ll see the sign on the right. Drive past the big enclosed field where people run their dogs, and park in the lot. You’ll see the fields. I’ll be at the first diamond on your right.”

“When?”

“If the rain doesn’t come back, we’ll start our first game in about half an hour.”

“I’ve got a ten o’clock appointment,” I said.

“It won’t take long,” he said.

“I can come to your house later,” I said.

“I think it’ll be better if you stay away from my house,” he said.

“And from William Trasker?”

“Healthier,” he said.

“For who?”

“Everyone involved. Get to the game as soon as you can.”

I hung up, checked my watch again. I had time.

I put on clean underwear and my jeans, picked up my clean towel and green plastic bag with my soap, razor, toothbrush and toothpaste, and went out on the landing. The air was heavy and wet and I didn’t want to deal with it.

The rest room was empty. Digger had moved up in the world, at least for now. The mirror could have been cleaner, but it was clean enough to show me the thin, hairy-chested bald man with sad, brown eyes.

“Good morning,” I said to myself.

The guy in the mirror didn’t think so. Besides, he needed a shave. Washed, clean-shaven, and toothbrushed, I left the rest room with the towel around my neck and my green plastic bag under my arm.

I had left the door unlocked.

Digger sat in the chair across my desk. He looked relatively clean and very nervous.

“The door was open,” he said.

I nodded.

“I came in,” he said. “Can we talk?”

“I’m going down to Gwen’s for breakfast,” I said, moving toward the back room. “I’ll buy you breakfast.”

“That’d be nice,” he said. “Very nice.”

I put on a shirt, white socks, and sneakers, and motioned for Digger to follow me. When we were on the landing, I locked the door.

“I’m scared,” Digger said as we went down the stairs. “I gotta dance tonight. I don’t think I can do it.”

“You can do it,” Knute Fonesca said evenly.

“No, it’s too late. Life waltzed right by me while I was two-stepping in the desert of despair for all these years,” Digger said.

“Colorful talk for a frightened dance instructor. Talk like that to the old ladies and you’ll have your salary doubled in a month.”

We crossed the DQ parking lot and turned right, staying as far away as possible from the curb where cars were spraying rainwater as they passed. We passed the workout club, antique shop, and a storefront for rent before we got to the diner.

Gwen’s Diner is a holdover from a few years before the day Elvis supposedly came in and bought two cheeseburgers and a Coke sometime in the Fifties. A poster of Elvis, guitar in hand, mouth open, arm reaching up in midsong, hung on the wall with a little index card Scotch-taped to it with Elvis’s autograph.

If you sat in the right place at the counter, you could see both Elvis and any collisions that might take place where 301 met the curve at Tamiami Trail.

People who had been coming here regularly for a decade or two called the place Gwen’s II. No one remembers the original Gwen’s, if there ever was one. The place was owned and run now by a woman named Sheila and her two daughters, one of whom, Jesse, was eighteen and about to graduate a year late at Sarasota High School a block away. She was a year late because she had taken time out to have her second baby. The other daughter, Jean, had graduated a year ago. They were all natural blonds and all able to deflect a sharp or heavy innuendo with the skill of a seasoned and well-armed gladiator.

Digger and I took a booth in the no-smoking section. The no-smoking section was four booths against one wall with smokers surrounding it.

Gwen’s was busy, and the three women were scurrying around but making it look easy, taking care of the counter-sitters and going from a table of roofers, to a single car salesman reading his newspaper, to three women who looked as if they were just going to or coming from the fitness center Digger and I had passed on our way here.

“Coffee?” asked Sheila, looking down at us.

All three women wore whatever they felt like wearing, which was generally tight jeans, when they weren’t pregnant, and various brightly colored T-shirts.

“Yes. Waffles and an egg over easy with bacon for me,” I said.

“Fueling up for the day, Fonesca?” she asked with a smile. “And you?”

She looked at Digger with a businesslike smile.

“The same,” he said, looking at me to be sure it was all right.

I nodded to Sheila, who scribbled on her pad.

“How are the kids?” I asked.

“You mean my girls or their little ones?” she asked.

“Everyone.”

“Dancing through life,” Sheila said, turned, and moved toward the kitchen.

“That’s it. That’s it. It’s the dancing,” Digger said, leaning toward me across the table. “I don’t trust my knees. I stopped dancing through life ten years ago and started to walk slow and for maybe the last two, three years I’ve been, to tell you the truth, crawling.”

Sheila came back with two mugs of coffee.

“Big Cheese Omelet up,” a woman’s voice came from the kitchen out of sight from where we sat.

Help arrived in the form of Tim from Steubenville, who moved from the counter and sat next to me, facing Digger. Tim lived in an assisted-living home a short walk away at the end of Brother Geenen Way. He spent as much time as he could at Gwen’s, reading the newspaper and telling those who’d listen that drugs, which he had never used, should be legalized, that there should be no income tax, that gays should do whatever they wanted including getting married, that anyone who wanted a gun and wasn’t insane should have one. Since there was very little left of Tim, who was eighty-nine years old, the regulars at Gwen’s tolerated him, a few even agreeing with him from time to time, which he appreciated, or argued with him, which he appreciated even more.

Tim had brought his coffee and newspaper with him. He looked at Digger.

“Seen you around,” Tim said.

Digger nodded.

“You’re looking better than I seen you before.”

Digger nodded again.

“Off the bottle?” Tim asked.

“I don’t drink,” a melancholy Digger said. “No drinking. No drugs. Haven’t smoked in twenty years or more.”

“Nothing to give up,” said Tim, nodding in sympathy.

Sheila looked over at me from the table of the three women and made a nod, which I took to mean that she would ease Tim back to the counter if I wanted him gone. I shook my head once to let her know Tim’s presence was all right with me. I preferred Tim talking to Digger than my talking to either one of them.

I tuned them out, hearing only voices, not words, until Sheila came with our platters and a flip-top pitcher of syrup.

“I never thought of it that way,” Digger was saying when I came back to earth.

“Well, what the hell you have to lose?” said Tim. “What the hell?”

Having accomplished his mission, Tim folded his newspaper, picked up his mug of coffee, and went back to his place at the counter, where he immediately engaged a burly trucker in animated conversation.

Digger dug into his food and finished long before I did, a determined look on his face. I was about halfway through when Digger said, “You mind if I get going? I’ve got stuff to do to get ready for work tonight.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Thanks for your help,” Digger said, getting up.

“Sure,” I said again, wondering for only a beat what Tim had said to him that had brought Digger back to the first small step of self-confidence.

I left a tip on the table and paid Jesse at the cash register with Elvis in midgyration a few feet to my right.

Less than fifteen minutes later I pulled onto the driveway at Seventeenth Street Park. I passed a big open field on my left, where about a dozen people and the same number of dogs were running and barking. The parking lot a little farther down on the left was almost full, but there were spaces open if I was willing to step into shallow puddles left by the rain.

I could see ball games going on beyond the mesh fence, and I went through an open gate and down a concrete path. Voices were traveling in the heavy air. The sound of an aluminum bat hitting a ball clanked clearly, followed by shouts of encouragement.

Hoffmann was waiting for me at the first field on my right. He was wearing jeans, a New York Yankees cap, softball shoes, and an orange T-shirt with “Double Tiger Productions” printed on the front. The men on the bench behind more meshed metal were wearing the same Double Tiger shirts.

“Glad you could make it,” Hoffmann said cheerfully. “I’m up this inning if we get a man on base.”

The men out in the field were wearing blue shirts. I couldn’t make out what was written on them. Both the men in the field and the ones on the bench ranged in age from not young to decidedly old.

“They know you’re only thirty-five?” I asked.

Hoffmann laughed. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t authentic either.

“Watch this next batter,” he said.

A heavyset man came off the bench, two bats in his large hands. He wore shorts, and both knees were reinforced with white elastic bands. He moved slowly, swinging the bats, handed one of the bats to a wiry man who had to be seventy, adjusted his glasses, and moved to the plate.

“That’s Alan Roberts,” Hoffmann said. “The Boomer. No knees. Has to hit it deep off the fence to make it to first. Then he gets a pinch runner.”

I watched. The pitcher was a lean man with a dirty white cap. He put his feet on the rubber, stepped off, and delivered the ball. The ball arced. Roberts swung and missed.

“Harder to hit a slow-pitch softball than a fast pitch,” he said. “Fast pitch, the ball comes straight at you. You swing even, make contact, and that’s it. Slow pitch, you have to hit up into the ball, time your swing perfectly, and supply your own power. It’s an art.”

There was supportive chatter on the field, encouraging the pitcher, whose name seemed to be Winston. There was also supportive chatter from the bench for Boomer, who took a couple of practice swings and cocked his bat back. Winston delivered. The arc was low. The ball was about to cross the plate chest-high when the batter swung. The ball sailed up and out about twenty feet in the air and rocketed toward the fence and over it. The bench cheered.

“That’s more than two hundred feet,” Hoffmann said happily as Boomer shuffled around the bases. “A lot of these guys played college ball, minor leagues, even a few made it to the majors. The hitting stays with you. The fielding, too. The body goes. Legs, back, arms.”

Boomer crossed the plate and accepted high fives from the bench and Hoffmann, who moved over to meet him and then came back to me.

“I’ll get up this inning,” Hoffmann said. “I’ll make this quick and straight, Fonesca. See that gym bag at the end of the bench, the red one with the white handles?”

“I see it.”

“I can get an envelope out of that right now,” he said. “Inside of the envelope is five thousand dollars. Cash. I’ll get it for you now. You take it and disappear till after the commission meeting.”

I didn’t answer. Another player, this one tiny and at least seventy, was at the plate.

“That’s Cal,” Hoffmann said. “He’s from Chicago, too. Big Cubs fan. You should meet him.”

Hoffmann wasn’t looking at me but he understood my silence.

“There are two envelopes in that bag,” he said. “Each with five thousand dollars. They could be in your pocket in ten seconds.”

I still didn’t answer.

“Okay,” said Hoffmann, looking at me now. “What if that ten thousand dollars is a payment to you for your services. I have a job for you in…what’s your favorite city?”

“Sarasota,” I said.

“New Orleans,” Hoffmann said, ignoring my answer. “You’ll like New Orleans. Go there till Saturday or Sunday and find someone for me.”

“Who?”

“The fill-in piano player at Preservation Hall,” he said. “The mime in front of the church in that square near the place where everyone goes for those puffy things covered in sugar. Find me the best antique dealer in the French Quarter.”

“Why?”

“Why? To get you the hell out of town, Fonesca. Can you use ten thousand dollars?”

“Yes, but I don’t need it.”

He sighed deeply and looked down at the ground. We were standing in wet red dirt. It would take me time to get my shoes clean.

“I’ve got a client,” I said. “I’ve got two clients.”

“Remember my man Stanley?” Hoffmann asked.

“Vividly,” I said.

“He has no temper at all. He reads a lot, works out a lot, practices with a wide range of firearms, and has been diagnosed by competent analysts both in prison and out as being violent and sociopathic.”

“Must get invited to a lot of parties,” I said as Cal from Chicago sent a blooper into short right field and moved surprisingly quickly to first base.

“He does what I tell him to do,” Hoffmann said, applauding Cal’s hit. “Sometimes he does things he thinks I want without telling me. Sometimes he…” Hoffmann’s voice trailed off. “Sometimes he makes terrible mistakes.”

I had the feeling that I was seeing the real Kevin Hoffmann for the first time. His face lost its tightness, his eyes closed, his head went down. I knew that look. It was grief. Real grief. But for who? William Trasker? Mrs. Trasker? And why had mention of Stanley triggered it?

“He’s very loyal,” Hoffmann said, lifting his head and opening his eyes, his smile returning, his false front restored. “You don’t want to deal with Stanley.”

“I don’t want any more literary lessons from him,” I said.

“You don’t want any kind of lessons from him,” Hoffmann said.

A bite of bitterness? Did I detect the hint of it in his voice? Whatever it was, it was gone when he said, “Take the envelopes, drive to New Orleans, come back Saturday or Sunday.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’ve got a dinner date for Saturday.”

“So, money doesn’t interest you?” Hoffmann said.

“Not very much.”

“Threats don’t bother you?”

“Not a lot.”

Hoffmann gave me a hard look.

“You need a good psychiatrist, Fonesca,” he said.

“I’ve got a psychologist,” I said. “I have an appointment with her in about twenty minutes.”

“Kevin,” someone called from the bench. “You’re up.”

Hoffmann reached for a bat leaning against the fence.

“You do know you’ve been threatened?” Hoffmann said. “I mean you have enough contact with reality to know that much?”

“Offered a bribe first and then threatened,” I said.

“I’m up,” he said, and bat in hand, jogged to the plate.

I watched him hit a ball foul, miss a pitch, and then hit another ball foul. Rules of the game. Foul ball with two strikes and you were out. Hoffmann threw his bat on the ground and looked at me with less than love in his heart for his fellow man.

I checked my watch. I had fifteen minutes.

I drove west on Seventeenth to Orange, went south, turned right on Main, and found a parking spot on Palm Avenue next to an art gallery. I stopped for two coffees and two biscotti from Sarasota News amp; Books, and I was in Ann Horowitz’s office a minute early.

While she finished her early-morning appointment, I worked on my coffee and read an article on what quasars are in an old Smithsonian magazine. She was only ten minutes late, but she always made it up by giving me an extra ten minutes at the end of our session, which in turn meant the next client, patient, or lunatic would be equally late or later.

The man who came out of Ann’s closed office door wore a suit. He was short, fat, and moving quickly out the door, avoiding my eyes.

“Come in, Lewis,” she called from inside her office.

I went in and closed the door behind me. I had finished my biscotto in the waiting room while reading the four-year-old Smithsonian. I placed the white paper bag with the coffee and her biscotto on her desk.

“Chocolate?”

“Almond,” I said.

She nodded her approval as I sat in the recliner across from her.

“You’re wearing new earrings,” I said.

“My husband made them from stones we found on the beach,” she said, touching one of the earrings. “Crafted for hundreds of thousands of years by the sea. The ocean can be a great artist.”

I drank some coffee and she nibbled on her biscotto and took out her coffee.

“The operative word is ‘can,’” she said, smelling the coffee. “The ocean also produces a near eternity of shapeless, colorless rocks and shells. Nature is not selective. It creates the neutral, the beautiful, and the ugly. It is up to humans to search for the beautiful.”

“You’ve cheered me already,” I said.

“I can see that. Jokes,” she said, taking a sip of coffee. “You have jokes for me?”

“Someone just threatened to kill me,” I said.

“New symptom?” she asked. “Paranoia?”

“No,” I said and explained.

“All the more reason you should have jokes,” she said.

I took out my notebook and flipped to the pages where I had written the jokes people had told me over the past three days.

“I don’t tell jokes well,” I said.

“Why does that not surprise me?” she said. “You tell. I’ll listen.”

“I want to die in my sleep like my grandfather did,” I read. “Not screaming and yelling like the other people in the car he was driving.”

“You find that funny?” Ann asked.

“You didn’t even smile,” I said.

“I’ve heard it before. You think it’s funny?”

“I…no.”

“Tell me another one.”

“I went home last night and discovered that someone had replaced everything I own with exact duplicates.”

“And what do you think about that one?”

“I like it.”

“But is it funny? Never mind. Tell me another.”

“A new patient got an emergency visit with a therapist,” I read. “The patient said, ‘Doctor, I’m depressed. I lost my wife. My children hate me. I hate myself. Sometimes I have suicidal thoughts.’ ‘Well,’ said the therapist, ‘the world’s greatest comedian, Santoro, is in town tonight for one performance. Get a ticket to see him.’ ‘But, Doctor,’ the patient said, ‘I am Santoro.’ You’ve heard that one, too?”

“Yes,” Ann said, working on her coffee. “You find it funny?”

“Sad,” I said.

“Have you noticed people tell you sad jokes?”

“I seem to have a gift. You want more jokes?”

She nodded her head to indicate that I should go on.

“Mrs. Quan Wong had a baby. The nurse brought the baby in for the Wongs to see and said, ‘The baby is fine,’ the nurse said. ‘But there’s something wrong. This can’t be your baby.’ ‘Why not?” asked Mr. Wong. ‘Because,’ said the nurse, ‘two Wongs don’t make a white.’”

“You like that one?” Ann said, wiping crumbs from her fingers.

“No,” I said.

“I don’t think I do either. You have more?”

“Four more,” I said.

“Do you think any of them are funny?”

“No,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter. Do you know why I told you to collect jokes?”

“To cheer me up,” I said.

She shook her head no vigorously, and said, “It was to get you to make contact with people, to ask them for something that might help you, to let you know that people are willing to respond to a request for a little help. The important question isn’t whether the jokes are funny, but whether the people who told them to you smiled when they told you. Did they smile?”

“I think so,” I said. “I don’t know about the ones I got over the phone.”

“Next assignment,” she said. “Memorize these jokes and the other ones you have and tell them to someone you care about.”

“I can’t tell jokes,” I said.

“Of course you can. You just did. You simply tell them badly. Memorize them and tell them to someone.”

“You want me to do a stand-up comedy act?”

“If you want to put it that way,” she said. “Before we get together again you present your act to someone.”

“Who?”

“To Catherine,” she said. “Not the baby. Your wife. Imagine her responses. Come back and tell me if she finds your jokes funny, if she smiles, makes faces, groans.”

“I can’t,” I said.

“You can do it,” she said soothingly. “You can do it.”

“I’ll try.”

“Don’t try, succeed. You know who was a great teller of jokes and stories? General Patton. Loved to tell jokes and funny stories. I think he was depressed, too. I’ve been told he sometimes had his jeep driver completely naked when he drove him around after a battle. He’d pretend not to notice and people were too embarrassed to look at the driver or say anything. Patton thought it was hilarious.”

“That reassures me,” I said. “But I don’t think the world’s ready to see me walking around naked.”

“Sarcasm,” she said. “A small step toward recovery. A step to one side of comedy. Let’s try something. You’ve told me all the wonderful things about your wife, her beauty, wit, kindness, idiosyncrasies. Tell me things you didn’t like about her.”

“There are none,” I said.

“She was a human being, not a goddess. It is not disloyal to remember her as a human being. Besides, it is easier to tell jokes to a human being than a goddess.”

I looked down at my cup of coffee, cocoa brown with two packets of artificial sweetener. I drank.

“Start small,” Ann prompted.

“She left cabinet doors open,” I said. “I always had to close them. I told her about it at first and then I just gave up and did it.”

“You liked doing it, closing the cabinet doors?”

“I didn’t mind. Sometimes it bothered me but usually…”

“You smiled and did it,” said Ann.

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m not sure I’d count that as a fault, but it’s a start.”

“She told me what to do when I drove, told me if I was going too fast or too slow, or not passing other drivers when I should or passing them when I shouldn’t.”

“That bothered you.”

“Yes.”

“Because you’re a good driver?”

“Yes.”

“Progress. More.”

“She was always telling me to stand up straight, sit up straight. We’d be out somewhere and she’d come up behind me and press her hand into my lower back to remind me to straighten up.”

“She press you hard? Did it hurt?”

“No, it wasn’t that she was wrong. I guess I didn’t like the criticism.”

“Keep going.”

“She was almost always late when we had somewhere to go. She’d tell me she would be ready in five minutes and it was always fifteen or even twenty and we’d have to drive like hell to get where we were going on time.”

“And she would be telling you how to drive during all this?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you want to cry?” Ann asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Because you feel disloyal to her memory?”

“Because I miss her faults,” I said.

“So cry?”

“I can’t.”

“I’m pushing too hard,” Ann said. “You want a Diet Coke? I’m still thirsty. I’ve got some in the refrigerator.”

“Sure,” I said.

While she left the office to get the Cokes, I tried to imagine Catherine reacting to the joke about the Wongs. I tried to see her face. She would groan and then she would smile supportively. Or maybe she wouldn’t.

Ann came back with the two Diet Cokes, sat down, and said, “So, in the time we have left, do I tell you what I’ve learned about recently discovered innovations in surgery that were employed by the South during the Civil War or why Serbians are so good at preparing Middle Eastern food, or do you tell me what you’ve been doing for the past three days?”

I opted for the last three days. I had already told her about Hoffmann and Stanley and Roberta Trasker, so I told her about Digger and the boy named Darrell Caton and his mother in Sally’s office. I told her about Dr. Obermeyer. I told her about Ames’s little gun. And I told her about the Severtsons.

“And this is all true?” she asked with great interest. “You’re not creating any of it?”

“I don’t know how to create it,” I said. “And why would I make it up?”

“To please your therapist,” she said. “People do it all the time. I suggest something and the patient, wanting to please me, agrees even if they don’t believe it. Don’t try to please me. It gets in the way.”

“I didn’t make any of this up,” I said.

“For a man who is trying to hide from the world, you seem to have been drawn very deeply into it.”

“Not by choice,” I said.

“You could have said no. No, I won’t look for the woman and her two children. No, I won’t try to find the county commissioner. So, why did you say yes?”

“I don’t know. You want me to think about it?”

“Yes, but not consciously. The dead woman,” Ann said. “The actress. You want to know who killed her.”

“Of course.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Closure,” I said.

She said nothing, just looked at me till I said, “The closure I can’t find with my wife’s death. You think the reason I take on these searches for people, why I’m a process server is to find people responsible for things they know or have done wrong? You think I do it because I don’t know who killed…”

“Catherine,” Ann supplied. “And do you know who killed Mrs. Trasker?” she asked.

“I think so.”

“But?”

“Nothing’s ever simple about death. Nothing’s ever simple about murder.”

“We are once again out of time.”

I got up and handed her a twenty-dollar bill. She placed it on her desk and rose.

“Remember, tell the jokes to Catherine.”

I nodded. I wasn’t sure I could do it.

The sky was threatening but no rain was falling. The homeless, shirtless black man who slept in the park right across the street, with traffic whizzing by on Tamiami Trail, was sitting on the green metal bench on the corner, his arm spread out along the back of the bench. He was talking to himself. I couldn’t make out what he was saying.

“Hi,” I said.

He nodded back.

“Want a cup of coffee?” I said.

He nodded back again. I didn’t have to tell him to wait. I went back to Sarasota News amp; Books, got him a coffee and a bran muffin, and went back to the bench.

He took the coffee cup in one hand and the muffin in another.

“You want to hear some jokes?” I asked.