Vengeance

7

Beryl Tree could be in any one of five dozen motels in Sarasota, not to mention more in Bradenton. It would take too long to find her that way. No, the best way to find Beryl was to find Dwight or Adele or both.

I had called Carl Sebastian and told him I had some news.

“Yes?” he said eagerly. “Where is she?”

“I’d like to come by and see you,” I said.

“Sure, of course, but I have a dinner meeting tonight. Let’s see… It’s almost four. Can you be at the bar in Marina Jack in half an hour?”

“Half an hour,” I said.

He hung up and I got dressed. I wasn’t sure of how I should dress for my date with Sally Porovsky, but considering what I had in mind, I settled for clean blue slacks, a light blue button-down shirt and a red knit tie. Then I headed for Marina Jack’s.

It took me a little over five minutes to drive to the parking lot, find a space between a blue Mercedes and a digesting pelican, and head down the pier. The docks jutting off to the right and left of the pier were reasonably full of small to medium pleasure boats that bobbed with the tide. Gulls swooped, cackled and searched for food. A few pelicans sat on the dock or on empty boats, wings tucked into their chests, scanning the water without moving their heads.

A pelican circled above, saw something and dived awkwardly with a plop into the water just beyond a white boat with the name Dead Souls painted on its stern. Someone, I think it was Dave, told me that pelicans keep their eyes open when they dive and the eyes of the bird aren’t protected. Eventually, if they live long enough, pelicans go blind.

In front of me, in the circle in front of the restaurant, valets were parking cars, moving around cars that were already parked to wherever cars could be parked. I walked up the steps behind a man, woman and teenage girl. The girl walked the sullen walk of a teen who found neither her parents nor her prospects interesting. The walk said that she planned to keep letting her parents know that she did not plan to enliven dinner with her wit. I read a lot into the walk and when I moved past them while the father checked in at the reservation podium, I got a look at the girl’s face and knew I was right. The girl was just about the age of Adele Tree. I wondered where Adele was and who she might be having dinner with.

I wondered how the couple in front of me would react if the sullen girl was missing the next morning. Anguish, yes. Confusion, yes. Denial, yes. And guilt, always guilt. You can tell yourself it wasn’t your fault. A thousand shrinks with a thousand mandolins could tell you it wasn’t your fault. But it was. You can always think of something you should have done, could have done.

Carl Sebastian blustered and bragged, but a gargoyle called guilt rode on his shoulders, head back, laughing and showing sharp teeth. A small taunting demon of guilt hid within the purse of Beryl Tree, peeping out to whisper of things that could have been done and weren’t. I knew the demon and the gargoyle. We weren’t friends, but I knew them.

The place was noisy. The bar was to my right and beyond it was the dining room and beyond the dining room was the bay and a view of Lido Key about a half mile or so away.

Carl Sebastian was at a table in the bar. He sat alone, a drink in his hand, his eyes on me as I approached. I sat.

“What do you have?” he said.

I felt like saying “a sense of humor” or “a desire for civilized interaction,” but I didn’t.

He was dressed in a perfect-fitting white jacket, a black shirt and a white tie and, from what I could see, a perfectly creased pair of white slacks. There was even a black handkerchief in his pocket.

I looked at him and smiled. I think it was a smile.

“You’re in pain,” he said. “Your chest-”

“Nothing to do with your situation,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” said Sebastian, starting to put a hand up to check the wave in his white hair and then changing his mind. “I’ve just been

… don’t know. I can’t work. I can’t… would you like a drink? I’m just having Bloody Mary mix with a slice of lemon. They don’t have V8 tonight.”

“I’ll have the same,” I said.

Carl Sebastian looked up over my shoulder, made a slight gesture with his left hand and a waiter appeared. Sebastian ordered my drink and another for himself.

“She’s probably still in the area,” I said.

“Good,” he said.

“She’s not using her credit cards or checking account.

Of course she could have used her cash to open another account under another name, but I don’t see the point. Mr. Sebastian, I don’t think your wife wants to be found. Not right now. She’s not running, but she doesn’t want to be found. I have some reasonable evidence that she plans to stay around for a while. I think she may come back on her own, call you or get to you through a friend. That’s what they usually do.”

He shook his head no.

I sat listening to the noise and looking to my right at the sun on the water.

“I don’t want to think about who she might be with,” he said. “What she might be doing. I can’t sleep. I can’t work. Find Melanie for me.”

I shrugged and looked at the Bloody Mary mix with a twist of lemon the waiter had placed in front of me.

“All right,” I said. “She rented a car. I may be able to track it down, find it, find her through it. There are other leads.”

“The good Dr. Green,” he said with as much sarcasm as he could muster.

“Maybe,” I said. “You still think he might be with your wife?”

“Yes,” he said emphatically, looking into my eyes.

“He says he’s gay,” I said.

“I know,” said Sebastian. “He’s lying.”

“Pretending to be a homosexual?” I asked after taking a drink.

“Why not? He gets the homosexual trade. He gets women who feel comfortable with a homosexual who wouldn’t be with a-”

“Straight guy, like you and me?” I said.

“You’re mocking me, Fonesca,” he said.

“Sorry.”

“Shall I continue or do you want to smirk for a few seconds?”

“I don’t smirk.”

“Geoffrey Green gets women who feel comfortable with him and then seduces them. Maybe they think they’re rescuing him from his choice or nature.”

“And maybe he’s gay,” I said.

“Or maybe he is whatever the client wants him to be,” said Sebastian. “I think he knows where Melanie is. I want her found. I’m sure I can straighten this out if she’ll just talk to me face to face.”

“I’ll keep looking,” I said.

He sat back and said, “Good.”

I finished my drink, got up and said I had to leave. He looked at his watch and said he had to leave too. He dropped a twenty on the table and we made our way through cigar smoke and hoarse laughter and down the stairs and through the doors to the outside. Sebastian nodded to one of the young valets, who blinked and went looking for the right car.

“Find her for me, Fonesca,” he said, putting a hand gently on my shoulder.

I nodded and started down the pier toward the parking lot. There were more gulls now but the pelicans were gone.

Sally Porovsky’s apartment was in one of those two-story complexes in blocks of six or seven buildings. There was plenty of parking, the grass was green and the bushes and trees, including some stunted palms, were taken care of. This was not where the retired wealthy spent their golden years.

The apartment was easy to find. The buildings were clearly marked with large gold address numbers, which were easy to read by the complex’s night lights. When I got to the door, I could hear voices inside, including one male voice I recognized: Harrison Ford. I pushed the button and waited. From inside, a boy shouted.

“Door. It must be Kevin Costner for you, Mom.”

“Michael,” said Sally, “how about a gesture of goodwill?”

A few seconds later, the door opened and I was facing a lanky teen in a blue T-shirt, million-times-washed jeans and bare feet. His hair was long and he had an earring in his left ear. He was still into acne, but it was minimal. He said nothing.

“I’m Lew Fonesca,” I said, holding out my hand.

He shook and stood looking at me, holding the door.

“Can I come in?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said, moving to a sofa against a wall and plopping into it. His feet went up on a low coffee table and his eyes turned to the television set, where Harrison Ford was scrambling along a rooftop.

I was standing in a small, neat living room with a bright comfortable sofa, an armchair, a dark wooden coffee table, a line of Georgia O’Keeffe flowers on the walls. The floor was gray carpet. I guessed the floors in all the apartments were management-gray carpet. The room and the dining room beyond it were clean and uncluttered.

I pushed the door closed behind me and said,

“Frantic.”

“Yeah,” Michael said.

“What’s your favorite Harrison Ford movie?”

He looked up at me and said, “You care?”

“I think so. I’m killing awkward time till your mother comes to save me, but it’ll be easier for both of us if we find something reasonably interesting to talk about. My favorite is Witness.”

Mike nodded and looked back at the television set. Harrison Ford almost fell.

“I like the first Indiana Jones too,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Mike.

“I’ve got tapes of both of them,” I said.

“We don’t have much room for tapes,” said Mike. “But we do have the VCR.”

“You can borrow my. tapes,” I said.

“That depends on if you go on another date with my mother.”

“No, not really, but maybe. I live over by the DQ on Three-o-one.”

“I go there all the time,” he said, looking at me. “You eat there?”

“Every day,” I said.

“No shit. Oh shit, I told Mom I wouldn’t say ‘shit’ or…”

“I don’t give a shit,” I said.

He looked at my blank face and smiled.

Sally came hurrying out of a door across the room. She was putting in an earring.

“Sorry,” she said. “Just got home. Home visit… I told you. You met Mike.”

“Yes,” I said.

“You said casual. I’m casual,” she said.

She was wearing a loose-fitting dress with a belt, flats and the silver earrings. She’d done something to fluff her hair and she’d put on more makeup than she wore the day before. She looked alive. She looked great.

“I’m ready,” she said.

Mike was transfixed by the television. He wiggled his toes.

“I’m ready,” I said.

I was lying. I had the feeling she was too.

“One more thing,” she said. She turned and called, “Susan.”

A second door opened and a girl about nine came out. She was wearing cutoff jeans, a green blouse and sneakers. She was dark, pretty, with long dark wavy hair. She was definitely her mother’s daughter.

“Susan, this is Mr. Fonesca,” Sally said.

“Fonesca,” she said. “Are there Italian Jews?”

“Yes,” I said, “but I’m not one of them.”

“I told you,” Mike said without looking up.

“Nice to meet you, Susan, Mike,” I said.

“Have you got the X-Files movie?” asked Mike.

“No,” I said as Sally guided me toward the door.

Mike shrugged.

“Can I stay up till ten?” Susan asked sweetly.

“Nine. In bed, lights out. School tomorrow. You’ve heard this story every night for years.”

“But tonight is different,” she said, glancing at me.

“Nine. Mike?”

“Nine,” he said. “What time will you be home?”

“Not late,” said Sally.

“You look like that actor who plays the bad guy,” said Susan to me. “You know the one.”

“Stanley Tucci,” said Mike without looking back at me. “He does funny stuff too.”

“Is that his name?” Susan asked. “Two cheese?”

“Nine o’clock,” said Sally, ushering me out the door and pushing it closed behind us.

“Well?” she asked.

“Well?”

“That was test one.”

“I think I like them,” I said. “You think I look like Stanley Tucci?”

“A little,” Sally said, walking next to me as I guided her toward my Geo. “Where are we going?”

“I know a good pizza place,” I said. “Then I’ve got some questions for you and I thought we might go looking for Adele Tree.”

“Sounds like fun,” said Sally.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was trying to make a joke.”

“No, you weren’t,” she said. “And I’d like to find Adele. You like anchovies on your pizza?”

“I love anchovies on anything,” I said.

“You just passed test number two.”

There were a few things wrong with Honey Crust Pizza. The place was small, crowded, with booths on both sides and tables with red-and-white tablecloths down the middle. The place was smoker friendly, but the smells from the open kitchen behind the counter at the rear overrode the tobacco. The waitresses were friendly, efficient and fast, and the pizza matched anything I had eaten back in Chicago. My mother was an Italian cook only because she was Italian. Her preference was for American staples: meat loaf, fried chicken, broiled fish and matzo-ball soup. There was no explanation for the matzo-ball soup, but my father, sister and I didn’t need one. We liked it.

All this I told Sally, who was a professional listener. She paid attention, appeared interested and knew when to ask questions. She was as good as I was, in a different way. Sally was animated, friendly, willing to talk herself. I am the quiet, sympathetic type. My basic affect was “I’m sorry for your trouble. I’m listening. I wish there was more I could do.” Compared to my father, I was a blabbermouth. My father’s usual evening conversation was “You all right. Kid’s all right.” My mother usually said “Yes.” Sometimes, at dinner, she told about family slights, tragedies, inadvertent moments of comedy. My father ate, nodded and said nothing. He patted me on the head at least twice each night till I left the house and went out on my own. He always kissed my sister twice on the top of her head; once when he came home, the second time when she went to bed.

When we went to bed, he always said, “Good dreams. If you have a bad one, wake yourself up and try again.” My mother claimed that was an old Italian saying. He always said it in English. Both my mother and father spoke Italian, though they had been born in the United States.

All this, too, I told Sally as we shared our large onion-and-double-anchovy pizza.

Sally had come to Sarasota a dozen years ago with her husband, whose name was Martin, Martin Herschel Porovsky. He liked to be called Jack because he admired John Kennedy. Sally had been born Sally Feld-man. They had come to Sarasota because Jack, an engineer, was transferred by his company to the research lab in Sarasota to work on government military projects. Jack had died in an accident at work. Sally had never been given a straight answer about what had happened. She had been given a $125,000 death benefit and collected another $150,000 in life insurance. The money was in a mutual fund for the education of her children. Sally never touched it. She worked, lived carefully and spent as much time as she could with her mother in Dayton, Ohio. She hadn’t dated in the five years since Jack died.

All this she said over coffee and a split order of can-noli.

“Why did you say yes?” I asked.

“To you, about tonight?”

I nodded. Like my father. Sally sighed and examined her coffee for an answer.

“You seemed safe. I meet a lot of people, good, bad, sad, troubled. I usually read them well. Maybe intuition. Maybe intuition is just experience. You looked sad, safe, troubled. No threat.”

“Some people,” I said, “think I look a little like Richard Gere. Those people are now safely locked away.”

She smiled.

“Some people say I’ve got a sardonic sense of humor,” I said. “I’m trotting it out in the hope of impressing you. I haven’t been out with a woman, I mean like this, since my wife died.”

“We’re quite a pair,” she said. “You said we were going to look for Adele. Unless my intuition has failed me this time, I don’t think we’re here having pizza and telling our life stories because you want to get information out of me.”

“No,” I said. “What I’m going to ask you I could have asked you in your office or over the phone. Your answers would have been the same.”

“Ask,” she said, brushing her hair back in a way that reminded me of my wife.

I went silent.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Time travel. I’m back. What’s Adele’s story? And Dwight?”

“Not much. She was delinquent at school. She was also selling herself at night on the North Trail. Court called in her father. She was living with him. Court ordered us to take on the case. Dwight Handford, who calls himself Prescott, is living proof of the many mistakes made by God or Darwin. Adele is a smart kid, a decent kid. She said she would go to school, stay off the Trail. She said she wanted to stay with her father. He said he wanted her.”

“But…?”

“No hard evidence,” she said. “Just hints and the fact that our Dwight spent time in prison for child molesting. I think Adele’s afraid of him. I think Adele also wants to be with him and doesn’t at the same time. I think, maybe, he knew she was hustling. She… it’s not easy. I think Dwight has been molesting Adele sexually. I think he did it when she was a kid and started up again when she came looking for him in Sarasota. She wants to please her daddy.”

“And the court said she could stay with her father,” I said.

“That’s it. No one knew there was a mother. Courts send kids home if there’s any way to do it. Doesn’t matter what the parent or parents have done in the past, doesn’t matter that a significant number of kids returned to abusive parents are abused again, some of them wind up dead.”

“Now there’s Beryl,” I said.

“Now there’s Beryl, but no matter what a court says, Adele is smart, street wise and able to run back to her father.”

“It’s worth a try,” I said.

“It’s worth a try,” she agreed.

“So,” she said. “I’ll give you Dwight’s address-the real one, not the one he gave the school-and we’ll move the evening on to the North Trail, because if you find Adele you want me to be there.”

“You’ve got it.”

“You know how to show a girl a good time on the first date,” she said.

“Richard Gere,” I said.

“Stanley Tucci,” she said.

“So I’ve been told.”

The dividing line between Bradenton and Sarasota is just north of the airport, New College and the Asolo Center for the Performing Arts on North Tamiami Trail. Sarasota is a Culture town, capital “C” in Culture. There’s an art museum, five Equity theaters, including one that only does musicals, a massive concert hall, a ballet company, and an opera company.

There wasn’t much that could be considered big-C culture near the first phone booth outside the Warm Breeze Motel across from the Harcourt Inn. We checked the booth. The number was wrong. Sally went into the Warm Breeze to ask some questions.

While I waited outside, a prostitute took me for a Mister Right.

“Want some company?” she asked.

She was a washed-out brunette with sad eyes, rough skin and almost no breasts.

“No thanks, but I’d like to know if you recognize this girl.”

I took out my wallet and handed Adele’s photograph to the hooker, who didn’t look much older than the girl she was looking at.

“Nice-looking kid,” she said flatly and handed back the picture. “You a cop? I thought I knew all the cops in town. New?”

“I’m not a cop,” I said. “I’m just trying to find a missing girl for her mother and ask her some questions.”

“Thought you were a cop. Lots of cops last week or so.”

“Why?”

“Why am I telling you this? You want conversation? Ten bucks.”

I put Adele’s photograph back in my wallet and removed a ten-dollar bill. She took it.

“A john got killed at the Yellow Sun, across the street there. Cops marched all the girls in, asked questions, found nothing.”

Traffic whizzed by. A car slowed down. A dirty-blond kid with a big round face stuck his head out of the window and in a redneck voice called,

“That the best you can do, man? You are really sorry.”

And the car sped up.

The girl clenched her teeth, took a breath, and tried to jump back in the game.

“That worth another five?” she said.

I shook my head no.

“Hard times,” the girl said, stuffing the ten in a pocket in her dress. “Her name’s Suzanne, at least on the Trail. Worked from the Linger Longer.”

She nodded over her shoulder. Across Tamiami Trail and two motels down was a tired neon sign with a flashing arrow pointing the way to the Linger Longer Motel.

“And?” I asked.

“Then she was gone,” the girl said with a shrug.

“Who was working her?”

The girl shrugged again and looked across the busy street at nothing.

“That wasn’t worth ten dollars,” I said.

“All you’re gettin’,” she said. “Hard times, remember.”

Sally came out of the Warm Breeze Motel. The girl saw her coming, turned around and tried to look as if she wasn’t in a hurry.

“Anything in there?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “You get anything from Jean Ann?”

“You know her?” I said, watching the girl move away between motel neon lights and in between shadows.

“Yes. Not one of mine. Belongs to Medino Guttierez. I’ll tell him she’s out here again.”

“Adele is calling herself Suzanne. She works out of the Linger Longer Motel. Hasn’t been seen for a few days.”

We drove across the street to the Linger Longer. There was a phone booth in front of it. The number was the one from which Adele had called her mother.

“Game plan,” I said, looking over at Sally. “I go in alone. You stay here. If she spots you through a window, she may run. When I have her located, I’ll come for you.”

“And what do you do when you find her?” she asked.

“I talk,” I said. “And you?”

“Not much more,” she said. “I can have her brought in for being on the street. She’s underage. I can keep it off her record. I’ve got friends in low places. She’s better off in juvenile detention than out here and maybe-”

“Then that’s the plan,” I said, opening the door.

“Be careful, Lew,” she said, touching my arm.

I nodded, gave what passed for a reassuring smile and got out.

The glass door on the Linger Longer Motel office said American Express, MasterCard, Visa, Discover were welcome and that German, Spanish, French and Canadian were spoken inside. It also said the clerk kept no cash. I pushed the door open. There was no lounge, no chair and not much room to linger. A coffeepot sat half full with white foam cups next to it. Behind the low counter, a kid sat reading a book. He put the book down and said, “Can I help you?”

“Why not Italian?” I asked.

“Pardon?”

“Sign on the door says German, French, Spanish. Why not Italian?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they don’t get Italian tourists.”

“You speak German, French, Spanish?”

“A little.”

He took off his big glasses and stood up with a polite smile.

I took out my wallet and the photograph of Adele and handed it to him. He put his glasses back on.

“Suzanne,” he said. “Stayed here…oh, a couple of months back. Why? What’d she do?”

“Her mother’s looking for her.”

He cocked his head to one side and looked at the photograph again before handing it back to me.

“You’re not a cop. If you’re Children’s Services or a private investigator, I’d like to see some ID.”

“I’m not with Children’s Services and I’m not a private investigator. I’m a process server.”

I flipped open my wallet so he could see my card and photograph in living color. I couldn’t believe the forlorn creature with half-closed eyes in the photograph was me. The kid behind the counter seemed to have no trouble believing it.

“You have papers on Suzanne?”

“No,” I said. “Her mother’s looking for her. I’m a friend.”

The kid thought for a while, thumped his right hand softly on the counter, sighed deeply and said,

“I think she’s in Port Charlotte, one of those clubs,” he said. “She’s a chanteuse.”

“You get a lot of one-named chanteuses staying here.”

“A surprisingly large number,” he said. “Last year when I started here we had a surprisingly large number of one-named massage therapists.”

“You like Suzanne,” I said.

He considered the statement and said,

“Yeah, I like her. I’m a student over at New College. This job pays well and I get to read, do my homework and once in a while practice a little of my Spanish, German or French with tourists who don’t know what kind of motel they’ve wandered into.”

This time the pause was very long. He looked out the window at the passing traffic.

“Would five bucks help you think of something else that would help me find her?”

“No,” he said, looking at me and pushing his glasses back up his nose. “She worked for Tilly. Room Five in the corner. He’s in there now. If he asks you how you found him, tell him you tracked down a girl named Elspeth, tall bleached blonde, short hair, big lips, average breasts. Elspeth ducked on Tilly three weeks ago and headed back to San Antonio.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“I don’t think I’ve done you a favor. My advice is get some help before you talk to Tilly. I hope you find Suzanne. She reminds me of a beautiful crippled bird my sister and I took in when I was a kid. The bird needed help but it kept biting us.”

I went back out into the neon night and motioned to Sally to stay in the car. Room 5 was across the cement parking area toward the corner of the L-shaped motel. There were two cars parked: one a little blue Fiat, in front of Room 5.

“Who?” came a voice from inside the room when I knocked.

“Seymour,” I said.

“Seymour? Seymour what?”

“Just Seymour,” I said. “One name. Like a chanteuse.”

An eye peered through the tiny, thick-glass peephole.

“You a cop?”

“Everyone asks me that,” I said. “I’m not a cop. I just have a couple of questions to ask you and I’ll drive away.”

“Questions about what?”

“Suzanne. Her mother’s looking for her.”

“So am I,” he said, opening the door.

“Tilly?” I asked.

“Come in, man,” he said.

I went in and he closed the door. He was a lean, handsome black man about six foot and wearing a pair of clean jeans and a neatly ironed button-down long-sleeved white shirt. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five.

I looked around. The room was motel tacky. It didn’t look like home.

“I don’t live here,” he said, reading my mind. “Why are you looking for Suzanne?”

“Her mother’s in town. Wants to take her daughter home.”

“Home? Mother. She’s got no mother. Mother’s dead.”

“And you were kind enough to take her in.”

“Hey, she’s old enough to-”

“She’s fourteen,” I said. “Just barely. You want to talk to me or the Children’s Services caseworker sitting in my car?”

“Just a second.”

He pulled the drapes back enough to peek through and see Sally in the Metro parked across from him in the lot.

“Her mother’s looking for her,” I said.

“So am I.”

I let that pass.

“You want a drink?” he asked. “Don’t drink myself, but I keep a fridge for guest and visitors.”

“No thanks,” I said.

“Suit yourself,” he said and went to the small brown refrigerator in the corner of the room. He pulled out a can of Mountain Dew and went to sit on a worn-out, rust-colored, two-seat sofa. I remained standing.

“Suzanne ran out on you,” I said.

He laughed and took a sip of Mountain Dew.

“They don’t run out on me,” he said. “Once in a while I might ask a young lady to leave, but they don’t want to go. I take a fair split and I never raise a hand.”

“Elspeth,” I said. “She ran away. You raised a hand to her, Tilly.”

“She say that? I threw her out. She had a bad attitude, as her heading you to me proves. You know what I’m saying? Elspeth. Godawful name, but she wouldn’t let me give her another.”

“Suzanne,” I said.

“Good kid. A little too sad in the eyes. A lot too smart, but a good worker and she didn’t complain. That’s all I’m giving without a fee.”

“You worth a fee?” I asked.

He gave me a toast and a smile with his Mountain Dew.

I took out my wallet. I’d find a way to bill Carl Sebastian for the girl I had given the ten to on the street and the twenty I handed Tilly.

Tilly shook his head. Twenty wasn’t enough. I gave him another ten. He took it, frowned. I shook my head. The thirty would have to do.

“I think she was turning her share over to a guy,” he said.

“You think?”

“Okay, I know. Older guy. Good-looking if you’re into that redneck type. Suzanne is.”

“He came here?” I asked.

“Once,” Tilly said, readjusting himself.

“He have a name?”

Tilly shrugged.

“Dwight something. I didn’t catch another name, you know?”

“I think so,” I said.

Tilly rolled up his right sleeve. A deep red gash was starting to form a scar.

“Dwight?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

I pulled up my shirt and showed him the bruise on my stomach. It had grown bigger and was turning an interesting array of colors, mostly purple and yellow.

“Dwight?” he asked.

“Dwight,” I said.

Tilly touched the can of Mountain Dew to his forehead and closed his eyes.

“I’ll give old Dwight this,” he said. “He’s not a nigger-hating redneck. Just your all-out motherfuckin’ son of a bitch.”

Someone opened the door with a key. A heavily madeup young woman who might have been Hispanic with a touch of Asian stepped in. She was wearing or almost wearing a short, tight black dress. She smiled at me and looked at Tilly to confirm that I was a customer. Tilly still hadn’t opened his eyes.

“Go get me a cup of coffee, Francine,” he said. “Make it a big cup. And you have one too. Drink it before you come back. Put a lot of cream in mine. You know.”

The smile disappeared from Francine’s very red lips and she eased out of the room and closed the door.

“What the hell,” Tilly said, opening his eyes and sitting up with his arms spread over the back of the sofa. “I’ll tell you something if you give me your word that you won’t tell where you got it.”

“Why would you take my word?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t, man,” he said with exasperation. “I think it would be just fine if you found that girl and took her home to her mama. I think it would piss off Dwight and maybe a couple more people who I’d like to see pissed off. You follow?”

“Blindly,” I said.

“Mr. John Pirannes,” Tilly said with contempt. “Big operator out of the Beach Tides Resort on Longboat. Services tourists, mostly rich old white guys. Picked out Suzanne after she was here for a week or so. Came to me with Dwight backing him up, you know. Just like in the movies. Real tough like. Mr. John Pirannes makes me an offer to take over Suzanne. Piece-of shit offer. I figure Dwight is looking for bigger bucks.”

“And you…?”

“Took my hit from Dwight and accepted the offer,” said Tilly.

“People-selling’s a tough job,” I said.

“You’re telling me. No shit. Hey, I just gave you free, key information. Don’t stand there trying to give out free trips to Guilt City. I’m not taking the offer. There’s always a catch.”

He was right. Tilly emptied the can of Mountain Dew and placed it on the small white table in front of him. I had to give him credit. He didn’t crush the can.

He shot it toward the wastebasket next to the refrigerator.

“That it?” I asked.

“That’s fucking it,” he said, clicking on the television set behind me with a little black remote.

“Thanks.”

“I’m doing you no favors. Getting that girl away from Mr. John Pirannes won’t be a run to the 7-Eleven, if you know what I mean. I hope you know where to find a small army. Now if you’ll just move out. You’re blocking the screen.”

“Last question,” I said.

He hit the mute button and the voice of a vaguely familiar woman stopped in midsentence behind me.

“What do you think the best Italian restaurant in town is?”

“Say what?”

“The best-”

“I heard you. Are you nuts, man?”

“Italian.”

“Bacci,” he said. “Across from Barnes and Noble. Go on Wednesday and order the osso buco special. Now take your act somewhere else and don’t come back. We’re not talking again.”

I walked to the door and the woman’s voice came back on. I glanced at the television screen just before I left. Mary Tyler Moore was trying to explain something to Ed Asner.

Francine was just inside the motel office when I passed. She was smoking and doing what she was told to do, having a cup of coffee. I pointed back to the room to show that it was all hers. The kid behind the counter looked my way and I nodded to show that everything had gone well with Tilly. He was safe. Adele wasn’t.

I had left the key in the car. Sally had turned it on and was listening to All Things Considered, where a serious discussion was going on about the renewed interest in banjo music.

“And so?” she said.

“Ice cream?”

“Gelato,” she said. “Classico. You know it?”

I did. Ten minutes later I was having a regular-size orange chocolate and she was having a regular half coconut, half chocolate almond.

“You ever hear of a man named John Pirannes?”

“I’ve heard. Even met him once. Name came up at the edges of a few of my cases and the middle of one. No one would say much but he’s made the newspaper a few times. Pirannes,” she said, trying to decide whether the spoon should go for the coconut or chocolate almond and deciding on the coconut, “likes to wear white, combs his white hair straight back, has nicely capped teeth and a decent vocabulary. He has slight lisp. Word is that he has all his money tied up in cash. Been here about five years. Very, very high-class call girl operation. Reputation for angry public outbursts, usually with one of his girls. According to some police officers who know, he travels with an ever-changing backup man.”

“You know a lot about Mr. Pirannes,” I said.

I had finished my orange chocolate and was considering another, but I exercised restraint.

“Looked him up,” she said. “Asked questions. Went to the library. His name kept coming up in my cases, other people’s cases, always about young girls he had hurt. The police never got one of the girls to tell who hurt them, but some of those hurts were deep.”

“I know him,” I said.

“You do?”

“Couldn’t be two men in Sarasota with that description. He works out early mornings at the Y. I see him there. Even said hello a few times. There’s always someone with beef waiting for him and watching television in the lounge. Pirannes is a man of few words.”

“But he reads a lot,” she said. “Classics mostly.”

“You know a librarian.”

“I know the clerk at Barnes and Noble,” she said. “A former client. I think Pirannes once had another name. I think he took up reading when he was in a place where there wasn’t much to do. I think John Pirannes did something very bad and got caught.”

“You know or you think?”

“A little of both,” she said.

She touched my hand. I liked it.

“I’ve got to get home. Early meeting with a case manager. Lew, Pirannes has Adele, right?”

“Looks that way,” I said.

“There’s more?”

I took a half dozen beats before I answered.

“Her father dealt her to him.”

Sally’s head went down. She bit her lower lip and then lifted her head. Her eyes were moist. But there was anger too.

“The world would be a better place if people like Dwight Handford weren’t in it,” she said.

I didn’t disagree.

“But not only are they in it selling their daughters, molesting their daughters and beating their wives, the courts give them… I’ve got to get home. Here.”

She reached for a napkin, took a pen out of her purse, gave it a click and wrote something. She handed it to me.

“It’s in Palmetto,” she said. “I think that’s where he lives. The Sarasota address he gave was to get Adele into Sarasota High.”

“Thoughtful father,” I said, folding the napkin and putting it carefully in my pocket.

I drove her home. We didn’t say much on the way.

“You feeling… awkward?” she asked when we were about half a mile from her apartment complex.

“Yes,” I said.

“Me too. We’re not used to this.”

“I never was,” I said.

“Okay,” she said, turning toward me. “We say good night at the door. We shake hands. We agree to see each other again. Okay with you?”

“Truth? I’m relieved.”

She put her hand on my shoulder and smiled.

When we got to the front door of her apartment, we shook hands, a warm, friendly shake that lasted long enough to show that she was definitely friendly.

“Next time,” she said. “Let’s try Chinese or Thai and a movie. No business.”

“Saturday?” I said.

“Why not?” she answered with a smile. “Six-thirty. A movie. Something funny. I need something funny.”

She smiled. Tired smile, but real.

“I’ll say one thing for you, Fonesca. You know how to show a girl a good time.”

It was a little past eleven when I got back to the DQ parking lot. The DQ was closed. Traffic was slow on 301 and I got out of the car touching my tender but slightly better stomach. I thought about what Dwight Handford had done to his daughter and almost wished that he would come out of the shadows by the stairs. I went to the trunk, found the Geo’s tire iron under the mat and closed the trunk. My tire iron upstairs was bigger but this was lighter.

I wondered what Ann Horowitz would say about tire irons as my weapon of choice. I had too much respect for her to think she would give me the old phallic response. It might be true, but we were beyond that.

Dwight did not appear out of the shadows. I went up to the dim-lit concrete balcony that led to my home, my office, the place where I wanted to feel reasonably safe and somewhat comfortably alone.

Something had happened to me in the last few days. I decided to call Ann Horowitz and hope she had time for an emergency visit. I had the twenty dollars.

Feelings were dancing in my mind and chest. Adele, Beryl, Sally and Dwight. And there was something about Melanie Sebastian. Something off. Something wrong. I was feeling it, but… My door was closed. Ames McKinney had fixed it. The lights were out. Tire iron dangling by my side, I turned the handle. The door was open. I stepped in, ready, and flicked on the light. Ames had put everything back in order.

Beryl Tree was sitting on the folding chair in front of my desk. Her hands were clasped together. Her head was back. She was looking up at the ceiling at nothing. Her face was red with blood.

I checked my second room. No one was there. I went to Beryl, touched a large vein in her neck. Beryl Tree was dead.