Bright Futures: A Lew Fonesca Mystery (Lew Fonesca Novels) (18 page)

“Tell it,” I said.

“You should have brought more pizza.”

“That’s what you have to tell me?”

“Hell no. I had a visitor during the night in the hospital. I was asleep and drugged up. Room was dark. Machine was beep-beep-beeping, you know. Then I heard him.”

“Who?”

“A man, I think, or maybe a woman. He was across the room in the dark. He thought I was asleep. At least I think he thought I was asleep. He said something like, ‘I’m sorry. My fault. Silky sad
uncertain curtains.’ Shit like that. Creepy. Then he said he had to go but he’d be back. I could do without his coming back. So, I got up and . . .”

“Anything you could tell from his voice?” I asked. “Young? Old?”

“Like I said, couldn’t tell,” said Darrell. “No, wait. He had one of those English accents, like that actor.”

“Edgar Allen Poe,” said Ames.

“Edgar Allen Poe, the guy who wrote those scary movies?” asked Darrell.

“‘The silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain wrought its ghost upon the floor,’ ” said Ames.

“Yeah, creepy shit like that.”

“It’s from a poem by Poe, ‘The Raven,’ ” said Ames.

“I guess. You know him? This Poe guy?”

“He’s been dead for a hundred and fifty years,” I said.

I knew one person involved in all this that had what might pass for an English accent.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” said Darrell. “You should have bought more pizza. Next time just make it sausage.”

“Let’s get you back to the hospital.”

“Let’s order a pizza to go,” said Darrell. “Do that and I go back to the hospital.”

“Ames and Victor will get you the pizza and take you back to the hospital.”

Darrell looked decidedly unwell when they went through the door. I called Information and let them connect me with the number I wanted. The woman who answered had a pleasant voice and a British accent. She told me that Winston Churchill Graeme wasn’t home from school yet, but soon would be. She asked if I wanted to leave a message. I said no.

When I hung up I walked over to the wall where the Stig Dalstrom paintings were and looked for truth in black jungles
and mountains and the twisted limbs of trees. I focused on the lone spot of yellow in one of the paintings. It was a butterfly.

I folded the empty pizza box and carried it out with me. At the bottom of the steps I dropped the box into one of the three garbage cans and called Sally. With no preamble, I said, “We found Darrell.”

“Where?”

“My place. Ames and Victor are taking him back to the hospital.”

“I’ll call his mother.”

“Are you at work?”

“Yes.”

“What can you tell me about Winston Churchill Graeme?”

Twenty minutes later I was parked about half a block down and across the street from the Graeme home on Siesta Key. The house was in an ungated community called Willow Way. The house was a lot smaller than others in the community, but it wasn’t a mining shack.

Winn Graeme hadn’t called back to set up a time to talk. I wondered why.

I didn’t think Winn Graeme was home yet but, just to be sure, I called the house. I was wrong again. He answered the phone.

“This is Lew Fonesca,” I said.

“Yes?”

“I’m parked on your street, half a block West.”

“Why?”

“I’d like you to come out and talk.”

“You can come in.”

“I don’t think you want your mother to hear what we have to talk about.”

“I don’t . . .”

“Your visit to the hospital last night.”

It was one of those silences, and then, “I’ll be right out.”

There was no one on the street. A white compact car was parked in the driveway of the house from which Winn Graeme emerged. The house was at the top of a short incline with stone steps leading down to the narrow sidewalk. Trees and bushes swayed in the cool wind from off the Gulf.

Winn saw my car, adjusted his glasses, and headed toward me. He walked along the sidewalk, back straight, carrying a blue gym bag. He walked like a jock and looked like a jock.

He opened the passenger side door and leaned over to look at me before he decided to get in. The door squeaked. He placed the gym bag on the floor in front of him.

“I have soccer practice in half an hour,” he said, turning his head toward me. “Someone is picking me up.”

“We shouldn’t be long,” I said. “You have a car?”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s in the garage. Why?”

“Early this morning,” I said. “Say about two o’clock. Where were you?”

“Why?”

“Darrell Caton,” I said. “The hospital.”

Winn Graeme took off his glasses, cleaned them with his shirt and looked through the front window into a distance that offered no answers. Then he nodded, but I wasn’t sure whether he was answering my question or one he had asked himself.

“Is he going to be all right?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’re fragile creatures,” he said.

“You told him you were sorry. Sorry for what?”

“For not stopping what happened.”

“Greg shot Darrell, right?”

No answer from Winn, so I went on.

“He was aiming at me, but Darrell got in the way.”

Still no response.

“Okay, not Greg. You shot Darrell.”

Now he looked at me, and I at him. I saw a boy. I wondered what kind of man he was looking at.

“To scare you into stopping your investigation,” Winn said.

“First he hires me and then he tries to stop me,” I said.

He said nothing, just nodded, and then, after heaving a breath as if he were about to run a hundred-yard dash, he spoke.

“He found out something after he hired you, something that made him want you to stop. Firing you didn’t work. You found someone else to pay you. So he tried to frighten you into stopping. He hoped you would weigh your safety and possibly your life against the few dollars you were getting. He only made it worse.”

“He shot at me in the car with Augustine, and then he shot Darrell.”

“Who’s Augustine?”

“Cyclops.”

Winn looked out his window. A woman was walking a small white dog. She was wearing a business suit and carrying an empty poop bag. Winn seemed to find the woman and dog fascinating.

“Both times he shot at me he sent someone else to the hospital,” I said.

“Your life is charmed.”

“No, Greg’s a terrible shot.”

The god of irony was at it again.

“Blue Berrigan,” I said. No response, so I repeated, “Blue Berrigan.”

“The clown,” he said softly.

“He wasn’t a clown.”

“Greg didn’t do that.”

“Horvecki?”

“Greg didn’t do that. We weren’t unhappy about it, but he didn’t do that.”

“Did you?”

“No,” he said.

A yellow and black Mini Cooper turned the corner and came to a stop in front of the Graeme house.

“I’ve got to go,” he said. “I told you all this because I’m sorry that I didn’t do anything to stop Greg. He’s my friend. Whatever I’ve said here I’ll deny ever saying.”

“Why?” I said though I knew the answer.

“Why what?”

He had the door open now.

“Why is he your friend?”

“We need each other,” he said as he got out of the car. “Greg didn’t kill anybody.”

He closed the door, crossed the street and raised his hand in greeting to the boy who leaned out of the window of the Mini Cooper.

The boy in the car was Greg Legerman.

Greg looked back at me and ducked back through the window. Winn Graeme crawled in on the passenger side, and they drove off.

I could have confronted Greg Legerman, but sometimes it’s better to let the person you’re after worry for a while. I had learned that as an investigator with the state attorney’s office in Chicago. Patience was usually better than confrontation, especially with a nervous suspect, and they didn’t come any more nervous or suspicious than Greg Legerman. I wasn’t afraid of Greg’s not talking. I was afraid that he wouldn’t stop.

I did follow the little car down Midnight Pass and off the Key, but I kept going straight when they turned left on Tamiami Trail.

My cell phone rang. I considered throwing it out the window, but I answered it.

“Lewis, I have a death in the family,” said Ann Hurwitz.

“I’m sorry.”

“My cousin Leona was ninety-seven years old,” she said. “She’s been in a nursing home for a decade.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Lewis, you are one of the few people I know whose expression of sorrow over the death of a very old woman you don’t know I would believe. I must cancel our appointment tomorrow so I can attend the funeral in Memphis.”

“All right.”

“But I have an opening today,” Ann Hurwitz said.

“When?”

“Now.”

“I’m on the way.”

“You did your homework?”

My index cards were in the notebook in my back pocket.

“Yes.”

“Good. Decaf with cream and Equal. Today I feel like a chocolate biscotti.”

“With almonds?”

“Always with almonds,” she said and clicked off.

Fifteen minutes later I picked up a pair of coffees and three chocolate biscotti from Sarasota News and Books and crossed Main street. I was about to go through the door to Ann’s office on Gulfstream when he appeared, mumbling to himself.

He was black, about forty, wearing a shirt and pants too large and baggy for his lean frame. His bare feet flopped in his untied shoes. He looked down as he walked, pausing every few feet to scratch his head and engage himself in conversation.

I knew him. Everyone in this section of town near the Bay knew him, but few knew his story. I’d sat down with him once on the park bench he lived under. The bench was across the street from Ann’s office. It had a good view of the small boats moored on the bay and the ever-changing and almost always controversial works of art erected along the bay. He had been evicted from his bench in one of the recurrent efforts to clean up the city for
tourists. I didn’t know where he lived now, but it wasn’t far. Even the homeless have someplace they think of as home.

“Big tooth,” he said to himself as he came toward me.

“Big tooth,” I repeated.

The bag in my hand was hot and the biscotti must have been getting moist.

He pointed across the street toward the bay. There was a giant white tooth which was slowing the passing traffic.

He scratched his inner left thigh and said, “Dentist should buy it. Definitely.”

One of the charms of the man was that he never asked for money or anything else. He minded his own business and relied on luck, the discards of the upscale restaurants in the neighborhood and the kindness and guilt of others.

I reached into the bag and came up with a coffee and a biscotti. He took them with a nod of thanks.

“You, too?” he asked, tilting his head toward the nearby bench—not his former residence, but the one right outside Ann’s office.

“Can’t,” I said. “Appointment.”

“Old lady who talks to ghosts and crazy people?”

“Not ghosts,” I said.

“I’m not a crazy person,” he said.

“No,” I agreed.

“You a crazy person?”

“I don’t know.”

“You should maybe find out,” he said, moving toward the bench, his back to me now.

“I’m working on it,” I said and stepped through the door.

Ann’s very small reception area was empty except for three chairs, a neat pile of copies of psychology magazines, and a small Bose non–boom box playing generic classical music. The music was there to cover the voices of any clients who might be moved to occasional rage or panic, usually directed at a spouse, child,
sibling, boss or themselves. The music wasn’t necessary for me. My parents never raised their voices. I have never raised mine in anger, remorse, or despair. All the passion in our family came from my sister, and she more than compensated for it with Italian neighborhood showmanship.

Ann was, as always, seated in her armchair under the high narrow horizontal windows. I handed her the bag. She smelled it and carefully removed coffee and biscotti and placed them on the desk near her right hand.

“No coffee for you?” she asked, handing me a biscotti.

“No,” I said. “Caffeine turns me into a raging maniac.”

I took off my Cubs cap and placed it on my lap.

“Levity,” she said, removing the lid of her coffee and engaging in the biscotti-dipping ritual.

“I guess.”

“Small steps. Always small steps. Progress,” she said. “Biscotti are one of the tiny treasures of life. When one of my clients tells me he or she is contemplating suicide I remind them that, once dead, they will never again enjoy coffee and biscotti.”

“Does it work?”

“Only one has ever committed suicide, but I can’t claim that the biscotti approach has ever been the reason for this high level of success. Did your mother make biscotti?”

“No, she ate it. My father made
pignoli
. My uncle made biscotti.”

“
Pignoli
?”

“A kind of cookie with pine nuts.”

“My mother made mandel bread,” Ann said. “That’s like Jewish biscotti, made with cement, at least the way my mother made it.”

I looked at the clock on the wall over her head. Five minutes had passed.

“You want to know when we are going to start,” she said. “Well, we already started.”

“I asked Ames to be my partner.”

“Putting down roots,” she said, finishing her biscotti. She had eaten it in record time.

I handed her mine.

“You sure?” she asked. “I didn’t have time for lunch.”

“I’m sure about you having my biscotti. I’m not sure about asking Ames to be my partner.”

“Why?”

“He’ll expect me to stay around.”

“Yes.”

“Besides, I make just enough to live on.”

“Yes, but you asked him and he said yes.

“He said yes.”

“Sally’s leaving, moving North. Better job.”

Ann said nothing, just worked on her biscotti, brushing away stray crumbs from her white dress with dancing green leaves.

“Did you ask her to stay?” she said finally.

“No.”

“Do you want her to stay?”

“Yes.”

“Is there anything you could say or do that would make her stay?”