Ames, tall, wearing a red flannel shirt in spite of the seventy-degree weather, was hoisting a fat green plastic garbage bag into a yawning Dumpster.
“Busy?” I asked.
He wiped his hands on his jeans and turned toward me.
“Last one,” he said, nodding at the Dumpster.
That’s all we said. Nothing more was needed. Ames was seventy-four now, lean, still over six-four, long white hair, a Gary Cooper face of suntanned leather.
Four years ago he had come to Sarasota to find his partner, Jim Holland, who had run away with every nickel he could steal from their company in Arizona, moved to Sarasota, changed his name and became a pillar of society, a hollow pillar made of plaster.
I had helped Ames find Holland. Ames wanted his money and some retribution. Holland wanted to keep everything and get rid of his old partner. I had arranged for them to come unarmed at nine at night to the beach in the park at the south end of Lido Key.
When Ames and I arrived, we crossed the road and walked around the parking lot chain. I didn’t know how often the police patrolled the park after closing, but it was hard to keep people out since the beach ran into the park on the Gulf side.
We listened to the surf, the gulls and the crunch of parking lot stones under our feet as I led the way past picnic tables and through a thin line of trees onto the narrow beach. Across the inlet, the lights from the houses looked friendly but far away.
We were early. Holland wasn’t there.
I moved to the shore with Ames and looked into the clear moonlit water. A ray about the size of a large kite glided just below the surface of the water no more than a dozen feet out
“Ames,” I said. “It’s beautiful here.”
“That’s a fact.”
“Being alive is not bad.”
“Depends. You’re talking to the wrong man.”
At that point, the right man came walking through the trees about thirty yards up the beach. A small white heron skittered away from him. Jim Holland walked erect, sure-footed in our direction, a little man with a mission, hands behind his back. Ames took four or five steps in his direction.
I stepped between them when they were about a dozen paces apart.
“Hold it,” I said. “I talk. You listen. You both agreed.”
They said nothing.
“Compromise,” I said.
“There’s no compromise about this,” said Ames.
“Told you that. He gives me my money back and I let him live.”
“Money is mine, my father’s,” said Holland. “I told you that. He gets out of town and I let him live.”
“Cash money,” said Ames, standing tall, a rush of warm wind bristling his hair.
The white heron had wandered back and stood a few paces behind Jim Holland in the moonlight.
“That’s it,” I said. “That’s it. We’re leaving now. I’m preparing a report and turning it over to the police in the morning. I’m also giving a copy to my lawyer.”
That part had been a lie. I had no lawyer.
“Can’t work like that,” said Holland.
“Can’t,” agreed Ames.
“I’m not a violent man,” said Holland. “I told you, but I see no options here. I’ve got a business, a wife, children and family honor.”
My stomach warned me even before Holland pulled a shotgun from behind his back.
There was nowhere to run and no one to call. I had a vision of a small shark in the water going for my dead eyes.
“This is crazy,” I said.
“No argument from me,” agreed Holland as he raised the shotgun and moved toward us.
Holland’s shotgun was about halfway up when Ames pulled what looked like a Buntline special from under his shirt behind his back and fired twice at the same time as Holland’s shotgun. I was still standing. So was Ames, but Holland went down on his back and flung his shotgun toward the bay. Birds and squirrels went chattering mad in the brush and trees.
Ames returned the long-barreled gun to his belt and turned to me.
“It’s done,” he said.
“You lied to me,” I said. “You said no gun.”
“So did Jim. If I didn’t lie, we’d be dead men.”
He was right and I suddenly needed a toilet. A car, maybe two, raced across the gravel in the parking lot beyond the trees and picnic tables. A pair of headlights cut through, bouncing toward us.
“Gun was my father’s. It ends fitting.”
Footsteps came crashing through the brush branches and a pair of flashlights found us.
“Put your hands up,” came a less-than-steady voice behind the light.
I put my hands up and so did Ames. The two policemen moved toward us past the dead man.
“On your knees,” said one of them. “Arms behind your back.”
I moved as fast as I could. Ames hadn’t budged.
“Can’t do that,” he said.
“Old-timer,” came the voice, drawing nearer, “I’m in no mood.”
“Don’t go on my knees,” said Ames. “For man nor God. I’ll take the consequences.”
And he did. When they took us in to the station back on Ringing Boulevard, Ames took full responsibility, told the police that I had come to patch up an old quarrel and that Holland had set us up. He told them I’d tried to stop the killing and that I had no idea that he had a gun or might use it.
It was not with charity and goodwill, but on the advice of a county attorney that they eventually let me go home after starting a file on me.
They kept Ames and I testified at the inquest. Ames was turned over for shooting Jim Holland.
I’d been the only witness. Ames was given a suspended sentence for having an unregistered firearm. He stayed in town, got a job as odd-job man at the Texas and assigned himself the task of being my guardian angel.
“We going somewhere?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Need a weapon?” he asked, following me back into the Texas.
“No,” I said.
“We’ll be back by one,” I said to Ed as we passed him.
“No hurry,” Ed said without looking up from his book. “Marie and Charlie’ll be here in a little while. I can hold down Fort Apache.”
Ames had a motor scooter in his room. He also had various small arms and a Remington M-10 twelve-gauge pump-action shotgun and a yellow slicker that covered it when necessary plus the use of any of the guns of the Old West display on the walls of the Texas. Ames kept them unloaded but all in firing condition.
We got into the Saturn.
“How’s Ed’s liver?” I asked as I started to drive.
“Swears by acupuncture and Chinese herbs,” said Ames. “Seems to work.”
“Willpower,” I said. “Man owns a bar and can’t drink.”
“Man does what a man has to do,” Ames said.
I would have glanced at him to see if he was joking, but I knew Ames well enough to know that he meant just what he said. I never asked Ames for a joke to tell Ann. I was sure he didn’t have any.
He didn’t ask where we were going, didn’t ask why I pulled off of Beneva and drove down the narrow paved road to the Seaside Assisted Living Facility. The Seaside was a good four miles from the Gulf of Mexico, but it did have a pond with ducks floating on the green water.
I parked in a space between two cars in an area marked RESIDENTS ONLY.
“We’re here to see a woman named Dorothy Cgnozic,” I said.
The nod from Ames was almost not there, but I knew what to look for. He didn’t ask me why we were going to see the woman or why I wanted him with me. If I wanted to tell him, that would be fine. If not, he wouldn’t burn with curiosity.
I told him.
“She thinks she saw a woman get murdered here last night,” I said.
He looked at me, gray eyes unblinking.
I had asked him to come because he was seventy-four, because people found him easy to talk to, to trust, especially the very young
and the very old. He understood.
I took off my Cubs cap. We went inside and found the nursing station down a carpeted corridor. I had been here before to serve papers. It was clean, well lit. There was a slight bustle of chatter behind the counter between a large woman in white with a chart in her hands and a smaller, heavier woman with red hair that looked natural. The red-haired woman was on the phone. The large woman was reading to her from the chart.
“December eighth,” the red-haired woman said. “Chart says that’s when the Flomax should stop.”
The person on the other end was talking. The redhead looked at the woman with the chart and rolled her eyes upward and then said, “It’s your signature… Will do.”
She hung up and looked at Ames and me.
An old woman, white-haired, wearing a light blue suit moved next to us at the desk. She leaned on a cane and looked straight ahead at the big nurse.
“We’re here to see Dorothy Cgnozic,” I said.
“You were here a few months ago,” said the large woman with the chart.
“I served some papers,” I said.
“And you’re going to serve papers on Dorothy?” she asked protectively.
“No. Just want to see her. She called me. My name is Lewis Fonesca. This is Ames McKinney.”
“Pleased,” said Ames.
If he had a ten-gallon hat, I’m sure he would have taken it off and said, “Ma’am.”
Ames is hard to resist. I’m not.
“May I ask what she wants to see you about?” asked the large woman.
I looked at the pin above her left breast. It said she was Gladys Sprague.
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, I’m asking.”
“My pills,” said the woman with the cane.
“Not for an hour, Lois,” said the large nurse patiently. “One of us will come to your room.”
“It’s lunchtime,” the woman with the cane said.
“When lunch is over, come back here or someone will come to your room,” said the redhead.
“You won’t forget?” said the woman with the cane.
“It’s all on the charts,” said Gladys the nurse with a smile. “We won’t forget.”
“My tissues,” said the woman with the cane.
“We understand,” said the large nurse.
The old woman started up the long corridor.
“Mr…” Gladys said.
“Fonesca. And this is Mr. McKinney.”
“Right. I’m guessing,” said Gladys with a sigh. “Dorothy told you she saw someone murdered here last night.”
“Yes,” I said.
“No one was murdered here last night,” said the redhead. “And no one died. We get about a death a month, sometimes more, but not yesterday and no murder.”
“I’d still like to see her,” I said.
“Sure,” said Gladys. “She almost never gets visitors. She goes to lunch in forty-five minutes. Her room number is one eleven. We like Dorothy. So does everyone else. She helps with the bingo numbers on Tuesday and Thursday, never complains. I don’t know what’s with this murder business. We have a social worker on call. Dorothy will get a visit from her later this afternoon.”
“Our residents sometimes…” the redhead started and then went on, “sometimes exercise their imaginations. They want attention, a sense that they are still a part of things.”
“It’s not necessarily an unhealthy sign,” said Gladys.
“Remember Carmine Forest?” asked the redhead.
Gladys shook her head and said to us, “Carmine, what was it, three, four years ago?”
“Three,” said the redhead.
“Carmine,” Gladys went on, “claimed vampires were stalking the halls at night, turning the residents into vampires.”
“Said he could prove it,” Gladys continued. “Said the residents were getting pale, losing blood. Even claimed he had seen fang marks on their necks.”
“Which closed almost immediately after they were bitten,” said the redhead. “He started painting crosses on the doors with Magic Marker.”
“Permanent black marker,” said the redhead.
“Got ugly,” said Gladys. “Mrs. Schwartz and Mr. Wallstein complained that it was an attack by anti-Semites. They called a rabbi. Carmine called a priest. Rabbi and priest got together and calmed things down.”
“Carmine demanded an exorcism,” said the redhead. “Priest said the Church didn’t recognize the existence of vampires.”
“Carmine wrote to the pope,” said Gladys. “No answer.”
“Then he sent in a letter of resignation from the Catholic Church and said he was going to become a Hindu because they believed in vampires and would send someone to deal with it.”
“Did they?” I asked.
“We’re still waiting,” said Gladys.
“Oh,” said the redhead, suddenly remembering. “What about Carla Martin?”
“One one one,” I said, starting to move away from the nursing station.
“One eleven, right,” said the redhead.
Ames and I went in search of Dorothy Cgnozic’s room while Gladys and the redhead recalled whatever Carla Martin’s delusion had been. We found the room at the end of a corridor and around a bend. The door was closed. I knocked.
“Come in,” came a woman’s voice.
I tried the door.
“It’s locked,” I said.
“Who are you?” came the voice.
“Lewis Fonesca. You called me this morning.”
Silence. Then the sound of something padding on the other side. The door opened.
Dorothy Cgnozic was not small. She was tiny, maybe a little over four feet high. She was wearing a bright yellow dress. Her short white hair was brushed back and she had a touch of makeup on her almost unlined face.
She looked at me and then up at Ames.
“Come in,” she said, looking past us down the corridor in both directions.
We entered and she closed and locked the door before turning into the room. We moved past a bathroom on our right and around her walker with the yellow tennis balls on the feet The room was big enough for a bed with a flowered quilt, a small refrigerator, a low chest of drawers with a twenty-four-inch Sony television on top of it and three chairs next to a window that looked out at the tops of trees about forty or fifty feet away.
“Sit,” she said.
We did.
“This is my friend Ames McKinney,” I said.
“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” Ames said.
“And you, Mr. McKinney,” she answered. “You may call me Dorothy.”
“Ames,” he said.
“If you-” I began.
“Would you like some chocolate-covered cherries?” she asked.
“One,” said Ames.
There was a low table piled with books, a Kleenex box and a pad of paper with a sheet on which I could see neatly handprinted names. She got a small candy box from the one-drawer table at her side, opened it and held it out to Ames, who took one. I declined.
“I don’t know which room it was,” she said, putting the candy box back and sliding the drawer closed. “I may have gotten it wrong. It was down the corridor in front of the nursing station, toward the end. The door was open. The room was dark but there was light from outside. A person was being strangled, definitely an old person in a robe. She was being strangled by someone big.”
“Man or woman?” I asked.
“Don’t know. Would either of you like a Diet Sprite?”
“No, thank you,” I said.
“Yes, please,” said Ames.
Dorothy Cgnozic smiled, rose and moved to the refrigerator. She moved slowly, hands a little out to her sides for balance, and came back with a can of Diet Sprite and a disposable plastic cup. Ames thanked her, opened the can and poured himself a drink.
“The nurses said no one died here last night,” I said. “Everyone’s accounted for. Maybe-”
“I am eighty-t
hree,” she said. “Six operations for bladder, hip and some things I’d rather not mention. My body’s going. My brain is fine. My eyesight is nearly perfect with my glasses on and I was wearing my glasses. I saw someone murdered. I told Emmie.”
“The night nurse?” I asked.
“Yes.”
She reached for the pad with the names and handed it to me.
“List of all the residents as of last Monday,” she said. “I’m trying to find out who is missing.”
“You think the nurses are lying?”
“Mistaken, confused,” she said. “People come and go speaking of Michelangelo.”
“Michelangelo?”
“Poetry, metaphor. T. S. Eliot. I’m not displaying signs of Alzheimer’s or dementia,” she said. “I saw what I saw.”
“Maybe the murdered person wasn’t a resident,” Ames said.
Dorothy and I looked at him.
“Maybe the murdered person was a visitor. Maybe staff.”
“In a robe?” asked Dorothy.
Ames took a deep gulp of Diet Sprite and said, “Dark. Light from behind. Maybe it was a coat, not a robe.”
“And maybe pigs can fly and geese can give milk,” she said. “I saw what I saw.”
I think Ames smiled.
“You think whoever did it might want to hurt you?” I asked. “Your door was locked.”
“If someone wants to murder an eighty-three-year-old woman in an assisted living facility,” she said, “it doesn’t take much effort, but …”
She reached down for a white cloth bag near the table holding the Kleenex and pulled it over to her. She reached into it, dug deep and came up with a formidable-looking hunting knife in a leather sheaf.
“I will not go gently,” she said. “My husband would turn away from me in heaven or hell when we met if I didn’t protect myself.”
“Cgnozic?” said Ames. “Any relation to Gregory Cgnozic?”
“My husband,” she said with obvious pride. “You know his work?”
“A fine poet,” Ames said. “Ran with Kerouac, Ginsberg. Heard him once in Butte. Sense of humor. A little like Ferlinghetti.”
“People don’t remember Gregory,” she said.
“More than you think.”
“Not many,” she said.
She reached back, lifted the box of Kleenex and pulled something from under it. The something was a check for two hundred dollars made out in my name. She had spelled my name correctly.
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