Midnight Pass

12

The laundromat was on Bahia Vista just east of Tamiami Trail. I got my load in, inserted detergent and quarters, and went to Leon’s kosher deli a few doors down for a kosher corned-beef and chopped-liver sandwich. I got a Diet Coke from the machine in the Laundromat and sat listening to the washers and dryers while I ate and thought.

There were other customers, running washers and dryers, folding clothes and putting them in baskets, talking to each other, reading old magazines, telling their kids to “stay away from there,” or simply watching the circular windows beyond which shirts, underwear, pants, and socks spun in a kaleidoscope of ever-changing patterns. I was one of the dryer watchers.

I ate and thought.

A thin, tired-looking woman in a sacklike navy blue dress with little yellow flowers was at the machines next to mine. She had a little girl with her, about five, who looked like a miniature version of her mother. The little girl was clutching something that looked like a one-eyed green monster.

The mother took her load of laundry out of a once-white laundry bag with a few small tears in it, threw the laundry in the washing machine, and added the bag. She poured some All into the machine and then fished into her pocket. She came up with a handful of quarters and counted them carefully.

The little girl was looking at my sandwich now.

The mother saw her looking at my sandwich and told the kid she shouldn’t stare at people.

My sandwich had been cut in half. I had half a sandwich left.

“Does she like corned beef and chopped liver?” I asked the mother, who looked at me while she fed quarters into the machine.

“She’s never had ‘em,” the woman said. “I don’t think I have either.”

“Can I give her half a sandwich? I can’t finish mine.”

The woman looked at her daughter and then at me, trying to decide if I was trying to pick her up, was a pervert, or might even be among those few who wanted nothing more than to be nice to a hungry kid.

I guess I looked harmless.

“I suppose,” the woman said, pushing the coins in and starting the machine.

I handed the half sandwich and a napkin to the little girl, who shifted the one-eyed monster under her arm. The monster’s large single eye lit up.

“What do you say, baby?” the woman asked.

“Thank you, mister,” the girl said.

I didn’t want conversation, but the haggard woman seemed to feel that she now owed me at least a few words.

“I see you in here before?” she asked, dropping onto an uncomfortable plastic chair.

“Maybe,” I said.

She closed her eyes.

“Want to hear some jokes?” I asked.

“You a comedian?” she asked with suspicion. “Like over at McCurdy’s, the comedy place?”

“I’m working on an act,” I said.

The first joke went flat but she smiled politely. She gave a bigger smile with the second and a real laugh, albeit a small one, with the third. She was shaking her head and smiling when I told the fourth joke, and I decided to stop while I was ahead.

“You have a funny way of telling a joke,” she said. “Like it’s not a joke.”

I wasn’t sure whether or not it was a compliment so I said nothing. The little girl was working slowly on the sandwich and my clothes were still washing.

“My name’s Dreamer,” she said, holding out her right hand. “Francie Dreamer.”

“Any relation to Bubbles?” I asked.

“You know Bubbles?” she asked. “She’s my mom.”

“My name’s Fonesca. Your mother punched me in the face about five months ago when I tried to serve some papers on her. I’m a process server.”

“The divorce?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, as my washing machine stopped spinning. “How is she?”

“Still in the mobile home,” said Francie. “She’s better off. You did her a favor.”

I wasn’t sure how, but I nodded.

“Small town,” she said, as I tugged my clothes out of the washer and chucked them in the dryer.

“Sometimes,” I said.

I had moved my clothes from the washer to the dryer and was just closing the door when the circular window exploded, spraying me with glass. I had a vision of Shaquille O’Neal hanging on the rim and shattering the backboard.

I turned to Francie, who was looking at me with wide open eyes. Her little girl stood startled, mouth partly open, cheek stuffed with sandwich.

“On the floor,” I shouted, as I grabbed Francie and the girl and pushed them down as the second shot came and screeched over the top of the Formica table above me.

People were screaming now, screaming, running, diving. I could have used Ames. I lay there on top of Francie and her little girl. No more shots. Lots of crying and screaming.

I got up slowly and found myself facing an Asian woman with her hands to her cheeks.

“Did you see the shooter?” I asked.

Her mouth was wide open and she nodded yes.

“Where?” I asked.

She pointed toward the back door of Laundromat.

Something filled me, something I hadn’t felt in a long time, so long that I wasn’t sure I recognized it at first. I moved toward the rear of the Laundromat toward the partially open rear door. I was angry. I was shaking. It hadn’t been like this when I was shot at Midnight Pass, but this time the shooter had come close to hitting the woman called Francie and maybe even the little girl.

There was no one in the alleyway behind the Laundromat. There was a parking lot about half full of cars. At the rear of the parking lot was The Melting Pot, a fondue restaurant. There were no people around. I ran a few feet toward my right, where there was a driveway to Bahia Vista, and then I realized that I was chasing someone with a gun who wanted to kill me and that I had no gun of my own.

I went back into the Laundromat.

“I called the police,” a lumpy man with thick white hair called out.

“What did he look like?” I asked the Asian woman.

She shook her head, shocked.

“A man, right?”

She shook her head yes.

“You’d recognize him again if you saw him?”

“No,” she said. “I just saw the long metal part and a head behind it with some kind of hat. Then I-”

“He was white?”

She shook her head yes.

Francie was sitting on the floor with the little girl on her lap. The kid was still clutching her monster and eating her sandwich.

“You all right?” I asked.

“Yes,” Francie said. “How many people did he…?”

“No one,” I said. “He was only after me.”

“Why does he want to kill you?” she asked.

“It’s a long story,” I said, looking at the little girl and asking, “What’s your name?”

“Alaska,” she said. “Alaska Dreamer.”

The girl took another bite of sandwich.

“Pretty name,” I said.

“My mom’s name. Dreamer. My grandmom’s too. Not my dad’s. He’s in Carserated.”

Francie put an arm around her daughter, who smiled up at her, cheeks full of corned beef and chopped liver.

A police siren outside, coming fast. I looked at my laundry and decided to just forget it. My maternal grandmother would have said it was cursed. It had been with me both times I’d been shot at today. It was covered in shards of glass and the promise of a bad memory.

Some people had fled the Laundromat. One solitary man had gone back to smoking his cigar and waiting for his load to dry.

Then there were two uniformed policemen with rifles in their hands at front of the Laundromat and another two at the back.

“Hands, showing, up,” called one of the cops at the front door.

We showed our hands.

“Doesn’t look like a hostage situation,” the cop who had shouted said to his partner. “Anyone hurt?”

There was a mixed chorus of no’s.

The cops came in slowly, carefully looking for places a raging maniac might hide.

Alaska was almost finished with the sandwich now, but she didn’t stop eating. Her eyes moved between the two pairs of armed cops.

“Don’t be afraid,” Francie said softly to the girl.

“It’s like television,” Alaska said.

“Yes,” her mother said. “It’s like television.”

About ten minutes later I was seated in the office of Detective Etienne Viviase.

“We know one of two things about this guy,” Viviase said. “Either he can’t shoot worth a shit or he’s trying to scare you out of Sarasota County.”

“Looks that way,” I said.

“Hoffmann?”

“He tried to bribe me twice to get me to stop trying to get Trasker out of his house.”

“He’s trying to kill you because of Trasker?”

“Maybe.”

“And he killed Roberta Trasker to keep her from helping you get her husband out of his house?”

“Him or his man Stanley.”

“Just to get the Pass open?”

“Big money involved, remember?” I said.

“Big enough to murder? Doesn’t sound like Hoffmann. You might want to get out of town for a while.”

“If it’s Hoffmann, I’ll be safe when the vote is over tonight,” I said.

“Any suggestions?” he asked, sitting back.

“Doc Obermeyer. But you’ll have to get to him fast. Tomorrow will be too late. The vote will be over.”

“There’s one other way we can go,” Viviase said. “Roberta Trasker’s dead, but if we can find William Trasker’s next of kin and get him or her to-”

“Power of attorney,” I said.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Viviase said with a sigh.

“Can I go now?”

“With God,” he said. “You do that statement about your talk with Obermeyer?”

I went into my pocket and came up with a folded trio of lined yellow sheets of paper. I handed the packet to Viviase, who took it with a look of resignation. He opened the folded sheets and looked at them.

“At least I can read your writing,” he said. “I’ll have it typed up for you to sign. Wait outside.”

I got up and went into the hallway. Viviase moved past me with my report. There was a low wooden bench. I sat as far from the other person on the bench as I could.

It was somewhere over ninety degrees outside and about eighty inside the hall. The man at the end of the bench was wearing a heavy winter coat. He was smiling, a kind of goofy, pleased smile. He looked a little like my Uncle Benny when he was fifty: dark, too much hair, not enough chin, but plenty of nose.

I looked at the wall. There was a photograph of a policeman in dress uniform. The photograph was old. I fixed my eyes on it.

“It’s my birthday,” the guy at the other end of the bench said.

“Congratulations,” I answered, still looking at the cop in the picture.

“Had a big birthday lunch at the Cuban place farther down on Main.”

I nodded.

“I’ve had a birthday lunch at a different foreign restaurant every year for the last five years,” he said with an air of accomplishment. “Greek, Italian, Jewish, Chinese. This year was Cuban.”

“Yeah?” I said, feeling I had to say something.

“Yeah. I go alone. My family’s back in Holland, Michigan,” he said. “I used to fix clocks there. Holland, Michigan. They have a big tulip festival in Holland every year.”

“I’ve heard,” I said.

“I’m a witness,” he said. “Murder. Man got shot in the Cuban restaurant two booths away from me. I was eating my refried beans. There was just me and these two guys and one shot the other one and got up and walked out.”

I looked at him, trying to decide if he had seen a murder or had simply wandered into police headquarters, plopped on the bench, and started telling a story to the first person who would listen to him. I didn’t say anything.

“Didn’t get a good look,” he said. “Guy just goes bloughy with the gun. Bloughy, you know. Twice. Gets up and goes. But I heard the other guy, the guy he shot, say his name. That’s why I’m sitting here. I’m trying to remember the name. I’m good with faces, not with names.”

He had slid toward me on the bench. I was already sitting on the end.

“Carnahan,” he said.

“Nice to meet you,” I said, without giving my name.

“No, I think the name of the guy was Carnahan. That’s it. Carnahan. Or maybe it was Wisnant.”

“I can see how you’d get the two confused,” I said.

“No, it was something more like Pergamont,” he said. “That’s why I’m sitting here, trying to remember. They should have asked me what the guy looked like, the killer. I’m good with faces. Just saw him for a second, but that’s enough. I used to fix watches.”

“You said.”

“Moncreiff,” said the man.

“The name of the shooter?”

“No, my name. Simon Moncreiff.”

He held out his hand. I took it.

“You told the police that you only saw the shooter for a second.”

“Less than a second,” he said, hands deep in his pockets, thinking. “You think it would help if I went through the alphabet?”

“Can’t hurt,” I said. “Give you something to do.”

“It won’t work,” he said. “Terrible with names. Good with faces, people.”

“What did the guy look like?” I asked, looking down the hall for Viviase.

“The dead guy?”

“The killer.”

“Five-foot-seven or seven and a half, one hundred and sixty or sixty-five pounds, blue suit with a dark stain that looked like the State of Tennessee on the left lapel. Light skin with a little blue mole on his neck, right side. Green eyes. Good teeth except for a lower one on the right. Chipped. Looks a little like a volcano with the top missing. Good wristwatch. Rolex, about five years old. On his right wrist. Means he’s left-handed, which was the hand he had the gun in. Ring, real gold on his wedding finger, initials J.G. etched on it. Little scar, hardly see it, just under his right nostril, right here.”

He pointed under his nose.

“Shoes?”

“Armani, black,” he said.

“You tell this to the police?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “They asked me what I saw of the shooter and I said I just saw him for a part of a second maybe. Than they got all interested in my hearing his name.”

Viviase was coming back now. He handed the statement and a pen to me and looked at Moncreiff while I signed.

“Come up with a name yet?” he asked.

“Might have been Kooperman,” the man in the overcoat tried. “Or Salter.”

I handed the statement back to Viviase and said, “You might want to ask Mr. Moncreiff what the killer looked like,” I said.

“I didn’t get a very good look,” Moncreiff said.

I got up.

“Ask him,” I repeated, and started toward the stairway.

Behind me I could hear Viviase ask patiently, “What did the killer look like?”

I started down the stairs and heard Moncreiff begin with, “Five-foot-seven or seven and a half…”

I went back to my office. There was a call waiting from Harvey the Hacker. One of the things he told me almost certainly ended Viviase’s plan to get Trasker legally out of Hoffmann’s house. The other thing he told me confirmed what I had pretty much figured out about who had been taking shots at me.

I called Ames at the Texas Bar and Grill and told him about the Laundromat.

“Can you ride shotgun for me for a few days?” I asked.

“No problem,” he said. “Be right over.”

“I’ll pick you up.”

Ames was waiting outside when I got there. The sky was still overcast, but it wasn’t raining and he didn’t need his slicker for anything other than covering his shotgun.

He climbed in and sat back. I had brushed off the front seat as much as I could, but I’d still have to answer to Fred and Alan. Ames didn’t ask where we were going, which was just as well because it was probable we were headed for the two places Detective Etienne Viviase most wanted me to stay away from.

Stop number one was less than five minutes away, the office of Dr. Obermeyer. This time there were two patients waiting in the reception room, an ancient, little, bent-over woman who tilted her head upward and glared at an equally old man directly across from her, who met her glare for glare.

Neither of them looked up at us when we entered.

Carla the receptionist, hair eater, however, did. Her glare was even better than the old couple.

“I’m calling the police,” she said.

“First give Dr. Obermeyer a name,” I said. “I don’t think he’ll want the police coming to talk about it and I don’t think he’ll be happy with you if you call the police before you give him the name.”

She hesitated.

“I’m sorry if I got you in trouble the last time I was here,” I said. “You’ve got your job and you were just trying your best to do it.”

She picked up the phone and pushed a button.

“That man with the baseball hat is back,” she said. “With another man. He says I should give you a name.”

She looked up at me.

“Dutcher,” I said.

“Dutcher,” she said into the telephone. “Yes.”

She hung up.

“He’ll be with you in a minute,” she said.

I sat. Ames stood. It was less awkward to stand when you had a shotgun in your jacket. We watched the old couple glare at each other across the room for just about a minute. Then the door to Obermeyer’s office opened and a well-dressed, slender woman came out. She was probably in her late forties. She was certainly not happy.

“The tests results will be back in three days,” Obermeyer said, gently touching the woman’s shoulder. “I’ll call you immediately. I don’t think there’s anything to be concerned about. We just want to be careful.”

The woman glanced at Ames and me as she went out the door, and Obermeyer said, “Mr. and Mrs. Spoznik, I’ll be with you in just a moment.”

The glaring couple gave him no sign that he had penetrated their concentration.

Obermeyer nodded at Ames and me and we followed him into his office. He moved behind his desk, a barrier from patients and intruders like me. Ames sat in one chair, right leg not quite bent, and I sat in the other.

“You mentioned a name,” Obermeyer said.

“Dutcher,” I said. “You know it, don’t you?”

“I’m not sure,” he said.

“Kevin Hoffmann’s real name is Dutcher, Alvin York Dutcher,” I said.

“So?” he asked.

“He had a sister, Claire Dutcher,” I said.

“Interesting,” he said. “But-”

“Fraud, murder,” I said. “And you’re a party to it.”

“Wait,” Obermeyer said, quickly standing. “I had nothing to do with any fraud, any murder.”

“William Trasker’s not too sick to me moved, is he?” I asked.

“In my opinion…” Obermeyer began, reverting to his role as confident physician.

“It’s all going to come apart in the next few days,” I said. “You’ll go down with it.”

Obermeyer sat down again.

“William Trasker is a very sick man,” he said. “I’ve kept him comfortable and sedated. He is dying.”

“But if he wasn’t sedated,” I said, “could he get up, walk, talk?”

“How long has he got, Doc?” Ames asked.

Obermeyer looked at Ames with surprise.

“That’s difficult to determine,” the doctor said. “As I told Mr. Fonesca, probably a few days.”

“If a group of cancer experts looked at him,” I said, “what would they say?”

Obermeyer sunk back.

“I don’t know,” he said with a sigh.

“He can function, move, make decisions?” I asked.

Obermeyer nodded and said, “I told you, he is heavily sedated.”

“And you’ll tell that to the police?”

“No,” he said. “I’ll tell the police that I think that Mr. Trasker is in no condition to make decisions for himself, that it should be left to his next of kin, whoever has power of attorney.”

“And we both know who that is,” I said.

Obermeyer said nothing. I got up. So did Ames.

“There’s a small town in North Dakota,” Obermeyer said, almost to himself. “No more than six thousand people in the entire county. That’s where I came from. They need a doctor. I think I’ll go back there. It’s simply not worth all this.”

He looked up at me as if he needed my permission.

“Sounds like a good idea,” I said. “And I won’t try to stop you if…”

“If what?” Obermeyer said hopefully.

“Is there anything I can give Trasker that would bring him back, anything fast?”

“You want him conscious and functioning?”

“I want him conscious and functioning.”

“Yes,” he said. “I’ve got samples.”

He got up and we followed him through a door to an examining room with a locked glass cabinet. He opened the cabinet with a key on the ring in his pocket and took out an amber pill bottle.

“Take the bottle,” he said. “Three of these with water will work. But no more than three.”

“How fast?” I asked.

“Imagine forty cups of coffee in one gulp,” he said.

Ames and I left him standing next to his examining table. In the outer office we passed the glaring couple. They seemed to be going for the Guinness World Records.

The clouds had thinned out now. I turned on 930 on the radio and listened to Neil Bortz while I drove down the trail. Fifteen minutes later we were at the gate to Kevin Hoffmann’s estate.

We got out and I pushed the button on the stone wall. No one answered. I pushed the button again. This time Stanley came out of the house, adjusted his glasses, and walked down the path to face us through the fence.

“Fonesca,” he said. “I’ve made some calls about you. There are people who think you’re not very interested in living.”

“LaPrince,” I said. “There are people in Louisiana who remember you.”

He paused and shook his head.

“You sure you want to go that way?” he asked, looking at Ames with amusement.

“Tell Hoffmann we’re here,” I said.

“Suit yourself,” Stanley said with a shrug, and went back to the house, leaving the door open behind him. There was a click and the gate opened.

Ames and I went up the cobbled path and through the door. Kevin Hoffmann stood just inside the door. There were no lights on. He stood in a patch of sun that came from a window on his right.

He was wearing white designer jeans, a black silk shirt, and a two-day growth of gray stubble. He did not look good. He was in no mood for New York Yankees attire.

“Dutcher,” I said.

Stanley stood back to Hoffmann’s left, facing Ames, who stood facing Stanley. Stanley’s right hand was in his pocket. The pocket looked heavy.

“That is the name I was born with,” Hoffmann said. “How does that change things?”

“Alvin York Dutcher,” I said.

“My parents were very patriotic,” he said. “My father loved this country, loved Lindbergh, Sergeant York, Franklin Roosevelt, Enos Slaughter, and anything about baseball. Are you here to accept my offer?”

Kevin Hoffmann was smiling, but the smile had the hint of a twitch and his words a touch of nervous amusement.

“Your sister love baseball too?”

The smile was gone now.

“My sister’s dead,” he said.

“I know. She was shot two days ago. Claire Elizabeth Dutcher, who changed her name to Claire Collins when she became an actress, who changed her name to Roberta Trasker when she married the man lying upstairs.”

“Yes,” said Hoffmann. “Bill is my brother-in-law. And I have power of attorney. Which, according to my lawyer, means that since he is unable to make decisions on his own because of his illness, I can make all decisions for him.”

“Your sister leave a will?” I asked.

“A…I’m sure she…You think I killed Claire for Bill’s money?”

“It’s a possibility,” I said.

“Bill and Claire have children, grandchildren,” he said. “It’s none of your business but I loved my sister.”

“Who died before I could convince her to get her husband out of here so he could vote on the Midnight Pass issue, which will make you even richer than you are.”

“Time to leave, Fonesca,” he said, taking a step forward.

“Going to make quite a story on television and in the newspapers,” I said. “Ann Rule might even come back here and write a book about this.”

“Stanley,” he said, and Stanley stepped forward.

Stanley and Ames were a few feet apart now, an amused smile on Stanley’s lips, nothing showing on Ames’s face.

“Let’s go,” I said.

Hoffmann turned and walked back into the shadows. Stanley opened the door for us and the three of us marched quietly down the paved driveway while the gate swung open.

Ames and I stepped out.

“‘The meanest thrives the most, where dignity, true personal dignity, abideth not,’” Stanley said through the bars of the gate. He was smiling. “‘A light and cruel world, cut off from all the natural inlets of just sentiment, from lowly sympathy, and chastening truth, where good and evil never have that name.’ Wordsworth.”

He turned and started back toward the house.

“That’s a pair of crazy men,” Ames said.

“Or something like it,” I said, getting in the car.

Ames got in the passenger seat and buckled up.

“So, what do we do?”

“We find a way to get William Trasker out of there before the commission meeting tonight,” I said, shifting into drive and stepping on the gas.