Midnight Pass

7

Kevin Hoffmann said nothing. He tapped his fingers on the wrapped box of chocolates, and I said, “Don’t you want to know what’s in it?”

“I’m not dead,” Hoffmann said.

“Then you must not be Kevin Hoffmann,” I said. “That confuses me. You’re using Kevin Hoffmann’s name and Social Security number. But the Kevin Hoffmann born with that number died in Modesto, California, twenty years ago yesterday at the age of fifteen, according to a county death certificate which I can have faxed or mailed to me. If you are Kevin Hoffmann, you’re thirty-five years old and much too young for senior softball. You’re breaking somebody’s rules.”

He considered me with eyes holding no fondness for humankind. But I’ll give him this: he didn’t try to lie.

“I’ve committed a minor misdemeanor,” he said evenly. “I’ve paid my taxes every year and legally took the name of Kevin Hoffmann two decades ago.”

“I don’t want to know who you were before that,” I said. “I don’t want to know what you were running from. I want to get Roberta Trasker, come back here with her and a doctor, and see her husband.”

“Now you’re threatening me,” he said as if he were enjoying our talk, which might in fact have been the case.

Hoffmann reached over and pushed the phone on the desk toward me.

“You know her number?” he asked.

I started to reach for my notebook but he lifted the receiver and hit seven buttons. He handed the phone to me.

“Yes,” Roberta Trasker said.

“Lew Fonesca. Your husband is at Kevin Hoffmann’s house. Hoffmann says your husband wants to stay here. According to a Dr. Obermeyer he shouldn’t be moved. I think it would be a good idea for you to get over here with a doctor or two of your own.”

“Bill is at Kevin’s house?” she repeated.

“Can you come with a doctor?”

“His, our internist is Gerald Kauffman,” she said. “I’m sure he’ll meet me there if he’s in town and I tell him it’s an emergency. His oncologist is, well, he has several, all in the same practice on Proctor.”

Hoffmann watched as I spoke and then reached for the phone. I handed it to him.

“Roberta,” he said. “Stanley was supposed to have called you about this. I wondered why you hadn’t called back or come over. I’m sorry. If you like, I’ll have Stanley come right over and pick you up.”

Hoffmann was smiling at me as he listened to Roberta Trasker. I heard his side of the conversation.

“You don’t have to, Roberta…Yes, that’s exactly what I’ll do…You know I will…Yes…Of course…Yes, you know you can believe me…I’ll keep you informed and let you know when Dr. Obermeyer says you can see William. Believe me, he is resting quite comfortably.”

He held the phone out for me. I took it.

“I believe him,” she said, her voice quivering, about to crack.

“You believe him?”

“Yes,” she said, having trouble getting the single word out. “Bill should stay there. He’s being well cared for.”

“I think your doctor-“

She hung up. I handed Hoffmann the phone. He hung it up and started to open the box of candy. I watched him.

“Some people can be threatened,” I said.

“Most. A Whitman sampler,” he said, holding the box open and reaching over with it to offer me first choice. “In your position, I would have brought Ghirardelli or at the least Frango mints. When’s your birthday?”

“September twenty-ninth,” I said, taking what looked like a chocolate-covered cherry.

“If you’re around in September, I’ll have a large box of assorted Ghirardelli chocolates delivered to you.”

“Aren’t you going to write the date?” I asked.

“I’ll remember,” he said, “if you are around.”

He put the top back on and handed the box to me.

“Give it to someone who likes carbohydrates and cheap chocolate,” he said.

I took the box.

“Good night, Mr. Fonesca, and don’t even consider returning here. You won’t be welcome.”

Stanley led me out through the house and down to the gate.

“Got a last name, Stanley?” I asked.

“LaPrince,” he said.

He put his hand in his pocket and the gate opened.

“Any suggestions about what I should do next?” I asked.

He thought for a beat and said, “Who brought the flaming imperial anger? Who has brought the army with drums and with kettle drums? Barbarous kings. A gracious spring, turned to blood-ravenous autumn.”

“Shakespeare?”

“Ezra Pound,” he said.

I got into the Nissan as the gate closed. Darkness had come. Darkness and wet heat. I started the engine and turned on the air conditioner. Stanley stood behind the closed gate, watching me as I drove away.

Roberta Trasker wasn’t my client. My client was the Reverend Fernando Wilkens. I went back to my office and called the number Wilkens had given me. It was a little after ten. I got his deep bass voice on the answering machine: “You have reached the home of Reverend Wilkens. Please leave a message. May the Lord grant you peace.”

After the tone I asked Wilkens to call me in the morning. Then I went across the street to the Crisp Dollar Bill, the box of chocolates under my arm.

There were seven people at the bar and people at two of the booths. Teresa Brewer was just finishing “Till I Waltz Again With You.” By the time I got to the back booth, Chet Baker was playing “You Don’t Know What Love Is” on the coronet and singing. He sounded as if he knew what he was singing about.

The bartender and owner Billy Hopsman’s taste in music had no bounds. He was a lean creature with hair a little too long, nose a little too large, taste in music a lot too broad. Regulars were used to stepping into cool air, comforting darkness, and anything from Maria Callas to Pat Boone or “The Pizzicato Polka.”

Billy called to me, asking what I wanted. I ordered a glass of the coldest beer he had and a steak sandwich with a side of potato salad.

“Coleslaw,” he called back. “Out of potato salad.”

I told him that was fine. I knew fries came with the sandwich. Maybe I’d talk to Ann about my diet again, ask her if she thought I was subtly and slowly eating myself to death on unhealthy food. If I were, so were millions of others. An epidemic. Maybe eating anything but fish and green vegetables should be declared a health hazard. Maybe I was babbling nonsense to myself.

I got the beer first. It was cold. I didn’t ask what kind it was. I gave Billy the box of chocolates and told him to pass it around.

“Birthday present,” I said.

“Your birthday?”

“No. I gave it to someone. He didn’t want it. I think he’s on some kind of diet and didn’t want to be tempted.”

“He should have taken it,” Billy said. “Just to be polite.”

“I think you’re right.”

“Well,” said Billy, picking out what looked like a peanut cluster. “His loss is your gain.”

“That’s the way I look at it. What do you know about Midnight Pass?” I asked Billy when he brought my steak sandwich with a pile of fries and a bowl of coleslaw.

“Jack shit,” he said. “You know who that is singing now?”

Chet Baker had finished. I heard a woman’s deep voice with strings behind her.

“Sarah Vaughn,” I said.

“Right, ‘Make Yourself Comfortable,’” he said, and strode back toward the bar where he offered the box of candy to a guy with a biker’s body, beard, and fisherman’s hat.

The biker, his mouth full of chocolate candy, said, “Hey, Billy, you settle this for us. Ace says that’s Ella Fitzgerald. I say it’s Peggy Lee.”

I didn’t hear Billy’s answer.

I worked at my sandwich. It was overdone but hot. Just the way I like it. The onions were undergrilled but hot. Just the way I like them. The coleslaw was too sweet, just the way I like it. A feel-good meal as a reward for a job badly done.

“Saw your car in the lot, the one you’re renting,” came the voice across the table.

Digger was sitting there in a white shirt, a wide red tie, and a blue jacket at least one size too large. His face was pink and clean-shaven. He didn’t look happy.

“Didn’t get the job?”

“I got it. You should have seen me. It all came back. Kept my back straight, led like George Raft, didn’t miss a beat, smiled like a waiter at a fancy restaurant. Even tested me on the bolero. I think maybe I was a professional dancer or something when I was younger. Can’t remember, but you should have seen me, Fonesca. I almost had them clapping their hands.”

“Then why don’t you look happy?” I said with a mouthful of steak sandwich.

“You don’t look happy either. But you never do. When you see that guy in the mirror, don’t you ever tell him something to pep him up?”

“So, you didn’t take the job.”

“I took it,” Digger said. “By God, I took it and I’ll be there on Friday and I will dance with old ladies and I will smile and I will drink unspiked punch and eat little sandwiches and collect my fifteen dollars for just showing up, an additional five if I do a good job. I’ve taken the first small step back to respectability and I don’t think I like it much.”

“Give it a chance,” I said.

“I will. But I don’t know if my brain can take it. You gonna eat all those fries?”

“Half of them.”

He reached over and took three at a time. I asked what he wanted to drink.

“A beer, like you.”

“I thought you didn’t drink?”

“A beer ain’t drinking,” Digger said, reaching for more fries.

I ordered him a beer and handed Billy a five-dollar bill when he brought it over.

“I’ve got three bucks left of the money you gave me this morning,” Digger said. “Mind if I spend it on a place to flop tonight?”

“No.”

“One more favor. Can I hang my jacket, shirt, tie, and the rest in your place? Want them clean for Friday.”

“Sure.”

“This morning as I recall you asked me for a joke. I think I told you one. You want to hear another?”

“No,” I said. “I’ve had enough fun for one day.”

The next day was even more fun. The phone woke me at six in the morning. I ignored it but couldn’t get back to sleep. I looked at the ceiling, mouth dry, trying to focus on nothing. That usually worked. It didn’t this time.

The phone rang again at six-twenty and at ten to seven. I got up. I was wearing a pair of faded black boxer shorts with a pattern of white airplanes. I knew I needed a shave. I always need a shave. Maybe I’d grow a beard. I remembered my grandfather Tony when he had a beard. He kept it trim, made him look wise, but he told me once that it was harder to keep it looking good than it was to shave.

“Fonesca, are you there?” Kenneth Severtson’s voice came frantically. “For God’s sake, pick up the phone if you’re there.”

I picked up the phone.

“I’m here,” I said.

“They’re holding Janice,” he said. “Just got a call from her. The kids are in some kind of place they keep children.”

“Where are you?”

“In my car, on the way to Orlando. What the hell happened?”

Paranoia is the patron saint of the guilty. I didn’t think anyone had the time or inclination to bug my phone but I wanted to take zero chances.

“Did you get the message I left you yesterday?”

“Yes,” he said impatiently. “Stark killed himself. Well, the Orlando police say they’re not sure. They’ve been badgering Janice. What the hell did she do?”

“Looks like she got herself involved with a violent alcoholic,” I said. “Your partner.”

“So now it’s my fault? Is that what you’re saying? You’re saying it’s my fault. The hell with it. I’m not forgiving her, not for what she’s done to my kids. I talked to my lawyer. I’m getting Ken and Sydney and bringing them back home and Janice can…I don’t know.”

“Stark killed himself,” I said.

“In front of my children?”

“No.”

“Janice was there?”

“Yes.”

I heard the sound of a horn and Kenneth Severtson cursed bluely and loud.

“That son of a bitch,” he said.

I didn’t know if he meant Stark or the other driver.

“Get her a lawyer,” I said. “You know any in Orlando?”

“Why should I…No…Yes, a group that does tax law.”

“Call them. Ask them for a criminal lawyer. See if someone can meet you. Has your wife been charged with anything?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t care.”

“You care,” I said.

“Okay, okay. I’ll call the lawyer,” he said. “What are you going to do?”

“Make a call, get back to Orlando, talk to the police.”

“And tell them what?”

“My story,” I said.

He gave me his cell-phone number. I wrote it on the pink Post-it pad on my desk and told him I’d call him back.

I called the Reverend Wilkens. This time I got an older-sounding woman. I told her I had to speak to Wilkens and who I was. He was on a few seconds later.

“Mr. Fonesca, you’ve found William?”

“I have and I haven’t. He’s at Kevin Hoffmann’s house, too sick to be moved according to Hoffmann and a doctor named Obermeyer. You know this Obermeyer?”

“No,” he said. “Do you believe Hoffmann? What does Trasker’s wife say about all this?”

“She says she believes Hoffmann.”

“Do you believe Hoffmann?”

“I don’t believe Hoffmann and I don’t believe her,” I said. “I’ve got to get to Orlando. I should be back by late in the afternoon. I’ll talk to her. I don’t know if she’ll cooperate.”

“My questions are simple,” Wilkens said. “Why is William Trasker in that house? Why isn’t he at home or in the hospital if he is ill? Is he too ill to come to the Friday-night meeting if he is, indeed, that ill? It does not have the odor of honest concern on the part of Mr. Hoffmann. Hoffmann wants Midnight Pass open.”

“I know. He told me,” I said. “He also not very tactfully told me that he’d break my head with a genuine Babe Ruth bat or have a man named Stanley shoot me if I didn’t stop bothering him.”

“Is it essential that you go to Orlando? We are running out of time.”

“It is essential,” I said. “I’ll call you when I have more.”

Three hours later I was back in Orlando and with a few questions found the detective who was handling Stark’s death. His name was Tenns, Sergeant Jacob Tenns. He came out to meet me in the waiting room at the station, where people sat with their heads in their hands, their briefcases on their laps, their eyes open and looking at nothing or their eyes shut and looking at too much.

Tenns was a throwback. Lean, dark slacks, suspenders, white shirt, and a tie. His glasses were perched on the end of his narrow nose. His hair was dark, combed straight back. He wore broad suspenders. He was trying out for a part in Inherit the Wind.

“You Fonesca?” he said approaching me.

“Yes.”

“You made a statement the other day about Andrew Stark’s death,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Officer who took your statement was given a reprimand,” Tenns said. “You should have been held as a material witness till a detective talked to you. Follow me.”

I did, through a wooden door, down a narrow corridor to a small room with a table surrounded by six chairs. There was a humming refrigerator on one side of the room and two vending machines on the other: one gave out Cokes and Sprite if you inserted seventy-five cents or a dollar bill, the other gave out candy if you put in a dollar or correct change. Along the wall facing us as we entered was a counter and sink with closed cupboards over it. A half-full Mr. Coffee pot sat in one corner of the counter with Styrofoam cups nestling inside each other.

“Coffee?” asked Tenns.

“Yes,” I said, sitting.

“Anything in it?”

“Sugar, milk,” I said.

He nodded, got me a cup of coffee and one for himself. He sat down and looked at me.

“Her story’s a crock of shit,” he said calmly.

“Janice Severtson’s?”

“No, Madonna’s autobiography,” he answered. “Mrs. Severtson says she went to you for help because she knew you from Sarasota.”

“That’s right. We both work out at the Y.”

“You do any other kind of working out with Janice Severtson?” he asked.

“What?”

“She was here with a man who wasn’t her husband,” Tenns said. “Coincidentally, you, a friend, happened to be here, too.”

“You’re saying maybe Janice Severtson and I…?”

“Stranger things have happened,” Tenns said, working on his coffee.

I tried mine. It wasn’t bad. Wasn’t good either.

“I had a case two years back,” Tenns said. “Little dwarf, half-black, half-who knows what the hell else, ugly as a possum. He and this full-size stripper were lovers, killed her husband. Little guy had to stand on a chair behind the husband to hit him with a bat.”

“What was her name?” I asked.

“Stripper? Elaine Boulenbar. Why?”

“Conversation,” I said. “I’m not a dwarf. I’m not rich. I’m not good-looking.”

“She could have hired you,” he said. “I checked. You’re a process server.”

“I thought that was considered honest work,” I said.

“It means you deal sometimes with some bad people,” Tenns said. “Sometimes it rubs off a little.”

“You deal with bad people more than I do,” I said.

“Which is why I’m going down this street.”

“Why would she hire me to kill a man she ran away with?”

“Don’t know. Conversation. Did she hire you?”

“No, I was here because her husband asked me to find her. I found her. She spotted me, remembered me from Sarasota. What I told the officer was the truth. I went back to Sarasota and told her husband. He’s here someplace trying to get his kids.”

“I know,” said Tenns, turning his cup in circles. “He’s in another room. We’re bringing the kids. You don’t have a private investigator’s license, Fonesca.”

“I don’t want one. Severtson came to me, asked me to help him find his wife and children. I said I would.”

“He pay you?”

“Yes. Where’s Mrs. Severtson?”

“Medical examiner says Stark stabbed himself downward, not straight in,” Tenns said, demonstrating the thrust with his right hand. “Odd. Awkward.”

“I didn’t know the man,” I said.

“Nothing else you want to tell me?”

“No.”

“I talked to the kids,” he said. “Girl was asleep. Boy can’t remember anything.”

“We’re not talking about murder here,” I said.

“Doesn’t look like we’ve got a case there, does it?” he said. “But she did run away with the kids, did shack up with a man with a record, probably screwed him in front of the kids. Husband wants to take the kids and leave her here. And…”

“And?”

“Why did Stark want to kill himself?” Tenns asked.

“Drunk, depressed, suddenly saddled with responsibility, guilty about running away with his partner’s wife. Maybe the ME can do some exploratory and find out he was dying of something.”

“Maybe,” Tenns said. “I checked. Stark was single. Wife divorced him twenty years ago and moved to San Diego. Business he was in with Severtson is booming. No confirmation so far that he was alcoholic. Some evidence from people the Sarasota police checked with that he wasn’t. Some evidence from the same people that Stark wasn’t the kind to feel guilty about running away with his partner’s wife. People he worked with say Janice Severtson wasn’t the first wife to spend a weekend with Andrew Stark. But with two kids along, it looks like Stark was in for a lot more than a weekend.”

“And what does Mrs. Severtson say?”

“Dialogue right out of one of the soaps my wife watches when she isn’t selling costume jewelry,” he said with a sigh. “Janice Severtson says she thought she loved Stark, but then again maybe she was just running away with him to get away from her husband.”

“You’ve been busy.”

“Very,” he said. “I’m faxing a report to the Sarasota sheriff’s office. I’m sending the Severtsons home. I’m telling them not to think about moving out of the state. I’m signing off on this as a probable suicide but I’m keeping the file open. My board’s full. I’ve got a bruised thigh. I couldn’t sleep last night and there’s a drooling drug dealer with an attitude in another room waiting to tell me lies. I’ll get back to Stark’s death when I get a chance, and I will get a chance.”

Tenns got up, scrunched his empty coffee cup, and threw it in the wastebasket near the Coke machine.

“I checked a little deeper on you, Fonesca,” he said, turning and looking at me over the tops of his glasses. “Lost your wife, went a little nuts, quit your job with the state attorney’s office, wound up in Sarasota.”

I sat. There was still some coffee in my cup. I was getting hungry.

“So anyway, your story checks out with hers. I’m letting her go.”

“I’d like to see her,” I said.

“Go back to the waiting room. She’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Sergeant, know any jokes?”

“Cop jokes,” he said. “Why?”

A few minutes after I was in the waiting room, looking at wanted posters, Janice Severtson came through a metal door. Her hair had been brushed but not well. Her makeup had been applied but not well. Her clothes had been put on but not neatly.

She spotted me and I got up as she moved quickly in front of me.

“They told me Kenneth took Sydney and Kenny,” she said. “Where are they?”

“Probably on the way back to Sarasota. You hungry?”

“I don’t know,” she said, running her fingers through her hair.

“Let’s get something to eat,” I said.

“I’ve got to get back to Sarasota,” she said. “Talk to Kenneth. Oh, those poor babies. What’ve I done to those poor babies?”

Everyone in the waiting room was listening to us. Most were looking. Some probably had tales a lot worse than Janice Severtson’s. I guided her out the door, down the steps, and to my car, which had about two minutes left on the meter.

We stopped at a nearby Shoney’s. She had a salad and a reasonably well-controlled cry. I had a chicken sandwich and a strong desire to be alone.

“You want me to talk to your husband?” I asked while we ate.

“Yes.”

“I will,” I said, reaching for a sagging fry.

I found a phone near the cash register and called Kenneth Severtson’s cell phone.

“You have the kids?”

“Yes, I’m on I-75 just passing exit 42. We’re going home. What about Janice?”

“You know the First Watch on Main Street?”

“Yes.”

“Can you be there at ten Saturday morning, without the kids?”

“I can get a sitter, but…Yes.”

“I want your wife with you.”

I thought I heard the voice of a small boy over the phone but the words weren’t clear. I hung up and went back to Janice. She had finished her salad and was shredding a napkin.

“I talked to him. I think you can go home, at least for now.”

I drove her back to her car where it was still parked at the hotel. I waited for her to get out of my car, but she just sat.

“I killed a man,” she said.

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t feel real.”

“I know.”

“My God, can you really just kill people and get away with it?” she said.

“Happens every day,” I said.

I told her to be at the First Watch Saturday. I watched her get into her car, start it, and pull out of the hotel lot. She held up a good-bye hand to me. I returned the gesture and headed for the highway.

When I got back to my office, it was a little before one. I thought about calling Dixie for more help but decided I wanted to do this one the old-fashioned way. If that didn’t work, there was always Dixie.

It took two phone calls and two lies and I had my answer, not as complete and detailed as Dixie would have given me but enough for me to do what I was going to do.

I can be fooled, but I’m not a fool.

I called Ames McKinney at the Texas Bar and Grill. I told him to bring a gun, something not conspicuous.