Vengeance

2

“Tell me something important and ask me a question.”

Ann Horowitz, Ph. D., sat forward in her upright chair to reach for her white foam cup of coffee and the chocolate biscotti I had brought her from Sarasota News and Books a block away.

Ann was almost eighty. A small woman with a tolerant smile, she was given to bright dresses. Her hair was gray, straight and short enough to show off her colorful bright yellow and red stone earrings.

Her office was small, neat, a desk on one side, another desk across from it and three chairs, blue and comfortable. There were two windows to let in light but they were high on the wall. From where I sat I could see blue skies and white clouds and in the past I had seen an occassional gull.

Ann had retired to Sarasota with her husband, Melvin, a sculptor, ten years ago. She had left her writing and her practice as an analyst and devoted herself to her son and his two young children, who lived in town. She also devoted herself to a passion for history. She had grown bored after five years and opened a small office practice.

Every time I came to see her she handed me a magazine or a book and told me about a fascinating chapter or article on how the Seminoles had won the war against the United States or how a small town of immigrant Mayans in Texas was thriving economically because they had retained the knowledge and the lessons of their history.

“I have enough money to pay you what I owe you for today and last session,” I said.

“Good. Pay after we talk. You’ve told me something. Now the question.”

“You know a psychiatrist named Geoffrey Green?”

She nodded her head as she chewed a reasonable piece of biscotti.

“I’ve met him a few times. Have a few of his former patients.”

“What can you tell me about him?”

“That is a second question and is part of your hour,” she said, “in spite of the coffee-and-biscotti bribe.”

I held out my hands to show that I accepted her condition.

“He’s good. He’s expensive. He is young. But then, to me almost everyone is young.”

“Even in Sarasota?”

“Less so here, but the world is vast. My favorite opening of a book is Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s something like ‘The universe is very, very big.’ I am amused by understatement.”

“He mess around with his female patients?”

She paused mid-drink and put down her cup. She folded her hands in her lap and gave me her full attention.

“You have reason to believe he does?” she asked.

“Maybe,” I said.

“Well, I will answer you enigmatically. You may be half right.”

“I don’t understand.”

“When you do, let me know. I can say no more. Subject is dropped. Now, to you.”

“You don’t want to talk about some lost tribe in the wilds of Indonesia?”

“I do not. What are you doing for fun?”

“Watching movies, videotapes.”

“And?”

“Working, eating, trying not to think, dreaming.”

“You have a good dream for me, Lewis?”

“Maybe.”

“Every time you come to see me you have a dream the night before. Tell me.”

She reached for the coffee.

“Worms in my ear,” I said.

“In your ear?”

“You sure you want to hear this while you’re eating?”

“I could make you violently ill with stories I have heard and continue to eat,” she said, working on the remaining crumbs of biscotti.

“White worm, right ear. My wife is in the dream. I feel something funny, a tickle in my ear. She says there’s a worm crawling into my ear. I panic, tell her to get it out. She tries. I feel her fingernails gently going for the worm. She says she is having trouble getting a grip on it. It’s crawling deeper. I tell her to get a tweezer, fast. She runs into the bathroom, comes back with a tweezer, probes for the worm. I feel the metal, cold, touching the inside of my ear, jabbing. She is having trouble. Finally, she lets out a sound. I know she has it. She does, but she has to struggle. It comes apart. She digs it out of my ear in pieces while I keep asking ‘Is it out? Is it out?’ When she says it is, I run into the bathroom, turn on the shower, brush away real and imagined worms.”

“You are nude? You don’t have to take off your clothes?”

“Nude.”

“Your wife. She is also nude?”

“Yes, no, I’m not sure. Now she’s wearing something flimsy, white.”

“And you were in bed with her when you discovered this worm?”

“I… yes.”

“You see where this is going?”

She finished her coffee, shook the cup to be sure she hadn’t missed a drop or two and placed the cup on her desk next to the photographs of her grandchildren.

“Yeah, at least part of the way.”

“Tell me.”

“Sex,” I said.

“When is the last time you had sex? I mean with a woman or a man other than yourself?”

The phone rang. She was like an answering machine. She couldn’t bring herself to turn it off or let it ring. I had asked her once to put on her answering machine when we talked. She had gone into a brief explanation about how she could do it, but in doing so she would wonder who was calling and not give sufficient attention to our session. In addition, she worried about her husband. Melvin had a bad heart. So I sat quietly, welcoming the opportunity to think not about my next answer but the possible ones after that.

“I’m sorry. I can’t talk now. I’ll call you tomorrow morning… You have my diagnosis. I am not changing it… I am being reasonable. Good-bye.”

She hung up and said to herself and me, “HMOs.” Then to me, “So, last sex?”

“The night before my wife died.”

“With your wife?”

“Certainly, with my wife. We’ve been through this.”

“Why aren’t you angry with me? You should be at least a little angry,” she said. “I was angrier at the HMO clerk than you are at me for suggesting you might have had sex with someone other than your wife the night before she died.”

The chair I was sitting in was a recliner. I reclined and clasped my fingers together on my stomach.

“I don’t get angry anymore,” I said.

“Nothing makes you angry?”

“I don’t know. I think I’m looking for something to make me angry and I don’t want to find it. Does that make sense?”

“Perfect sense. Next question: Why do you always say ‘my wife’ instead of using her name? You have never spoken her name to me. You want to answer or you want to spend a week thinking about it?”

“It hurts.”

“To say her name?”

“Yes.”

“Pain sometimes just sits there waiting. If you confront it, perhaps it will get smaller. Do you want that pain to grow smaller?”

“I don’t know. No, I don’t want it to get smaller. I want it right there where I can find it.”

“And feel sorry for yourself?”

“Yes, there’s a great comfort in feeling sorry for myself.”

“When you’re ready, you’ll be able to say her name. It will hurt, but it will feel right.”

“I don’t want it to feel right.”

“We’ll see.”

“Her mother was overweight. Nice face, but overweight. I…”

“Yes?”

“Nothing.”

“Your wife was a lawyer.”

“Yes. I don’t want to talk about my wife today.”

She leaned forward, pursed her lips, raised her eyebrows and said, “Then we’ll put that aside for now. You are working? You plan to pay me so I assume you are working. What are you working on? Besides your dreams.”

“A runaway wife. A runaway girl.”

“This is one person or two? A runaway girl who is also a wife?”

I leaned farther back in the recliner and looked up at the ceiling.

“Two people.”

“And you are engaged, interested in finding them. It’s more than a job, a way to make money?”

“I don’t know.”

“Your wife ran away,” she said.

I remained calm and said,

“She died.”

“And you never had children.”

“You know that.”

“Are you angry yet?”

“Not even close.”

I didn’t look, but I was aware of her rising.

“Enough for today. Go look for your missing females. We’ll talk about them next week. A missing wife. A missing daughter. And that dream. One thing I think it might be telling you is to stop punishing yourself. You know the Italian ice shop on Seventeenth Street?”

It was my turn to sit up. The recliner slid back and I felt slightly dizzy as I opened my eyes.

“I know it.”

“Stop there. I recommend the banana chocolate. Melvin likes watermelon. Be good to yourself, Lewis.”

Ann Horowitz is a good six inches shorter than I am, and I’m touching the lower edge of average. I took out my wallet and handed her two twenty-dollar bills. I had first met her when I served papers on her to appear in court to testify in a case involving one of her patients. She had taken the papers at her door, dropped them on the table inside her apartment and invited me in. No one had ever invited me into their home after I served them papers.

She was fascinated by process serving, wanted to know all about it, told me that serving papers for appearances before tribunals went back to biblical times. I was a member of a historically important profession. That wasn’t the way I saw it. For me it was anywhere from twenty-five to fifty dollars for a few hours of work.

Ann Horowitz had said she saw pain in my eyes and asked if I wanted to talk about it. I said I didn’t and she asked, “How long can a person enjoy their pain?”

“Till they die, if they’re lucky.”

She gave me her card and said that she wanted to talk to me even if I didn’t want to talk to her. She planned to do more research on my honorable profession and fill me with history if not pride. She also said that she would charge me only ten dollars for each session. After our first session, I gave her twenty dollars and that became the fixed rate for our meetings. There had been a few times when I was behind on my payments, but I always caught up. I learned from a lawyer whose daughter was seeing Ann Horowitz that he was paying her an even one hundred per session, most of which was covered by his expensive health-care plan.

She handed me a copy of an article from Smithsonian magazine about John Marshall, the first chief justice of the Supreme Court.

“Jefferson hated him,” she said. “America was formed as much or more by Marshall than Washington or Jefferson. Great man. Read it. Tell me what you think. No hurry.”

There was a couple sitting in the outer office when I left holding my article. They looked embarrassed and familiar. The woman looked down, pretending to read a recent office copy of People. The man smiled and adjusted his glasses.

Ann told them to go into her office. Before she followed them, she whispered to me, “Someday you will be able to say her name and we can really begin.”

“I thought we began months ago,” I said.

“No, I’ve just been softening you up.”

She followed the couple through the office door and closed it behind her.

The wife’s voice came through to the reception room. I couldn’t make out the words, didn’t want to, but there was immediate pain, immediate anger.

I went in search of someone who might know how to find Adele Tree. I had someone in mind. My bicycle was locked to a No Parking sign. I had made up my mind. I had to rent a car. Carl Sebastian had to pay for it.

The EZ Economy Car Rental Agency was six doors north of Dave’s Dairy Queen on 301. EZ was located in a former gas station. There were cars parked in front, cars behind the lot. The bigger rental agencies were out at the airport. EZ claimed that they offered lower rates by being in a low-rent neighborhood and catering to those who wanted anything from a banged-up semi-wreck with 80,000 miles on it to a new Jaguar with a few thousand miles on it.

I had rented from EZ before when I had a job that required it. I preferred the bicycle.

The two men in rumpled suits inside the office of EZ were leaning back against the desk, arms folded, waiting for the phone to ring or me to walk in.

“The detective,” said the younger one with a smile that seemed sincere. He was no more than thirty and quickly growing as round as his older partner.

“Process server,” I corrected.

We had gone through this routine the last four or five times I had rented a car. It seemed to amuse both of the men.

“What can we do ya for?” said the older man.

They had introduced themselves when I first met them. One was Alan. The other was Fred. I couldn’t remember which was which.

“Compact.”

“We’ve got a Corolla,” said the young one.

“A Geo Prizm,” said the older one.

“Same difference,” said the younger.

The older man chuckled.

“How long?” asked the young one.

“What’s the weekly rate now?” I asked.

“For you?” asked the older man. “A hundred and eight-five plus insurance. The usual. You get it gas full. You return it gas full.”

“What have you got for a hundred and forty including insurance?”

“An Amish three-wheel bicycle,” said the young one.

They both laughed. The older one turned red and started to choke. The younger one patted him on the back till he returned to semi-normal.

“Oh God,” said the older one, wiping away tears.

“Geo Metro,” said the young one. “It’s clean. It’s this year. It’s white. It’s small and it runs. You just have to play the radio a little loud if you want to hear it. Air conditioner is great. We’ll throw in an air freshener, a green one shaped like a pine tree.”

“Will I need it?” I asked.

Alan and Fred shrugged.

“One thirty, and we’re losing money,” the older said.

“We like you,” said the younger one.

“You’re a regular. You send us business.”

This amused the hell out of the younger one.

“I’ll take it,” I said.

“You want to give him the keys and papers, Fred?” asked the young one.

I had them now. Fred was the older one. He had stopped crying.

I not only had their names straight, I also had a car that smelled as if a heavy smoker had lived in it. The car also had thirty-four thousand miles on it. I could have probably negotiated a deal to buy it from them for about three weeks’ worth of rental fees, but I didn’t want a car. I tore open the plastic bag, took out the pine tree, set it on the dashboard, turned on the air-conditioning and opened the windows.

I drove the half-block to the DQ parking lot, which was less than half full-not bad for late afternoon. There was a line and people were seated at the two umbrella-covered tables, eating and laughing. At least the three teenaged boys at one table were laughing. A pair of thin women in their fifties wearing thin sweaters, which they didn’t need, sat at the other table eating silently.

I was suddenly hungry, very hungry. I got in line, ordered two burgers and a Coke from Dave and gave him the article on John Marshall. He thanked me and said he would read it as soon as he had a break.

The teens were laughing louder and throwing bread from their burgers at each other. One of the boys heaved a chunk of sandwich. It sailed into the back of one of the two women.

“Sorry,” said the kid who had thrown the burger. He was grinning.

The thin woman didn’t turn.

“Give me a second, Lew,” Dave said when I got to the window.

He moved back into the DQ, past the sink and out the side door, throwing his white apron on a table as the door closed. He appeared in front of the table where the teens were still hurling food. At first they didn’t see him. The boys were big. Football types.

“Pick up what you threw and give the lady a real good apology,” Dave said. “Then leave and don’t come back for at least a week. And if you come back, come back docile. You know what that means?”

All three boys stood up. Dave didn’t back down.

The boys were no longer laughing.

“We didn’t mean nothing,” the biggest boy said.

There was defiance in his chunky face.

Another boy stepped in front of his friend and put a hand on his chest.

“We’re sorry,” said the second boy with some sincerity. “We was just celebrating. My friend Jason here, he just found out that he doesn’t have HIV. Just got the report from the hospital. He was sure he-”

“None of this guy’s business,” said Jason.

“Let’s just go, Jace,” said the mediator, looking at the third boy, who nodded in agreement.

“Clean up first and apologize,” said Dave.

“No way,” said Jason, looking my way to be sure it would be three against one if it came to throwing punches.

“Any of you know a girl named Adele Tree?” I asked.

“No,” said the mediator. The answer was wary. Something about the name had hit home.

“How about Adele Handford?”

All three of them turned toward me. The name Adele had hit home. They looked at each other. The thin women got up and left, carrying what remained of their meal.

“Her friend Ellen. I almost got the HIV from Ellen,” said Jason.

“Easy Adele,” said the mediator. “Must be talkin’ about Easy Adele.”

“Where can I find her?”

They looked at each other again.

“I’ll clean up the mess you made. It’s too late for the apology.”

“They’ll clean it up,” Dave said. “It’s their mess, Lew.”

I shrugged.

“Then how about I give you each five bucks.”

“Why not?” said the mediator, moving between Dave and Jason and heading for me.

I pulled out my wallet and give him five singles. I would charge the payoff to Carl Sebastian. There was no point in asking them about Melanie Sebastian. She was in a different league.

“Sarasota High,” said the kid, who was blond and reasonably good-looking except for some much-needed dental work.

“She goes to Sarasota High School?”

“She did,” he said. “I haven’t seen her around the last three, four weeks, somethin’, you know?”

“Not enough,” I said, though it was a start.

“That’s what I know. You guys know what happened to Easy Adele?” he asked.

Jason smirked. The third kid said, “She said she was living with her father. I don’t know where. She was whorin’ on North Trail. I seen her. By the motels, you know?”

“I know,” I said.

The kid in front of me backed away and Dave repeated calmly,

“Pick up your mess.”

Jason was the last to bend over and start the job.

After the three had driven off, taking time to screech the brakes and throw Dave and me the finger, I got a fish sandwich, a burger and a cherry Blizzard. There was no one waiting in line behind me. A couple with a small girl had disappeared when Dave came out of the DQ.

“They’re not bad,” he said. “Just stupid. I don’t like that kind of stupid.”

Dave got my sandwiches and cherry Blizzard and started to read the article.

I went across the parking lot and up the stairs to my laundry basket-sized two rooms with a view of 301 from each.

I turned on the lights, looked at the whirling air conditioner and sat down at the desk in the outer office to check the Sarasota and Bradenton phone book for Dwight Handford. There was nothing. I didn’t expect there would be. I tried Dwight Tree. Nothing.

While I worked on my dinner and watched the ice cream melt in my float, I called the Best Western and asked for Beryl Tree’s room, 204. She answered on the second ring.

“Yes,” she said.

I could hear a television in the background. I thought I recognized the Hollywood Squares music.

“Lew Fonesca,” I said.

“Yes?”

“I haven’t found her yet but I have a lead. It looks like you might be right. I think she was is or was staying with her father.”

“Oh.”

“She did go to a high school here, at least for a while. I’ll go over there in the morning. They may not want to give me any information so I might have to get you to talk to them.”

“I’ll be here all day,” she said. “I’ll just get something to eat and bring it back to the room.”

“I’ll call tomorrow,” I said. “Good night.”

I took off my clothes, touched the stubble on my face, put on my YMCA shorts and a University of Illinois T-shirt and moved into my back room. I had what was left of my food and my Blizzard. I had the folder on Melanie Sebastian and I had a tape of Charade I’d bought two days before for two dollars at Vic’s Pawn Shop on Main Street.

While I watched Cary Grant searching for Carson Dyle, I started a folder on Adele Tree. So far there wasn’t much in it, a photograph and the few notes I was now writing. I had a feeling the folder would grow.

I was working. Two cases. Lots of questions. My grandfather, my mother’s father, played the mandolin. He used to say that the mandolin held the answers. He never made it clear what the questions were. I liked listening to him play old Italian folk songs, songs he made up, even an Elvis tune. He particularly liked “Love Me Tender.” He lost himself in the mandolin. Closed his eyes and listened to the answers.

“It all ties together,” he would say, eyes closed, mind who knows where.

I heard the mandolin in my head. It asked questions. I had two clients who had lost someone close to them. Carl Sebastian, who had chosen me on a chance recommendation, had lost his wife. I had lost my wife. Maybe I could find his. Beryl Tree had lost a daughter. My wife hadn’t lived long enough to have a daughter. So, I had lost a daughter or son.

Fonesca, I told myself, you can be a morbid son-of-a-bitch. Think of something you like, something that makes you happy, or at least content. Think of movies with William Powell and Cary Grant and Jean Arthur. Think of an order of ribs from Luny’s back on Division Street in Chicago. Think of mountains with white caps. You like mountains with white caps.

Think of getting back to work and finding people. Worry about finding yourself later.