Bright Futures lf-6

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Long pause. Long, long pause.

  “Why?”

  This time it was a man’s voice, the same voice I had just been listening to on the radio.

  “Detective Viviase of the Sarasota Police suggested I talk to you,” I lied.

  Another long pause.

  “I do not wish to testify,” he said.

  “Ronnie Gerall may not have done it,” I said.

  I could hear the man and woman talking, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. One of them must have put a hand over the microphone. I could tell that the woman sounded insistent and Pepper sounded resigned.

  “Come in,” said Pepper. “Close the gate behind you.”

  Something clicked and I pushed the gate open.

  The door at the end of the path was painted a bright red. It looked as if a new coat of paint had been applied minutes earlier. The station’s call letters were painted in black in the middle of the door with a foot-high brown cross under them.

  “Come in,” came the man’s voice.

  I opened the door.

  “Take off the hat please,” the man said. “This station is part of the House of the Lord.”

  I took off my Cubs cap, stuffed it in my back pocket, stepped in, and closed the door behind me.

  The room was about the size of a handball court. There were three desks with chairs lined up side by side on the left, and on the right stood a narrow table with spindly black metal legs. The table was covered in plastic that was meant to look like wood, but it looked like plastic. On the table there sat a computer and printer and boxes of eight-by-ten flyers I couldn’t read from where I stood. There were eight folding chairs leaning against the wall. Beyond all this, through a large rectangular window, I could see a studio barely big enough for two people. In fact, two people were in there. One had a guitar. One was a man. One was a woman. They were obviously singing. They were smiling. I couldn’t hear them.

  I looked over at an ample woman of no more than fifty whose dark hair was a study for one of those “before” pictures on early morning television.

  “Speak,” she said.

  I looked at the man behind the second desk. He was gaunt and had red hair and an almost baby-like face. He could have been any age.

  “You’re Reverend Pepper?”

  “I am,” he said. “And you are?”

  “An investigator hired to see if Ronnie Gerall killed Philip Horvecki. Want to go someplace more private?”

  “Whatever you have to say to me can be said in front of Lilly.”

  “Philip Horvecki,” I said. “He was not a good man.”

  Lilly closed her eyes and nodded her head.

  “He wasn’t punished for what he did to you,” I said.

  “It was my word against his. The police said that wasn’t enough,” Pepper replied.

  “He wasn’t punished,” I said.

  “Yes he was, but not by the law. His punishment was delayed, but the Lord was not in a hurry.”

  Lilly was slowly nodding her head to the rhythm of Pepper’s voice and the eyes of Jack Pepper vibrated back and forth.

  “Where were you Saturday night?”

  “What time?”

  “Evening, at about ten.”

  “In my home, my aunt’s home where I live. She looks after me. Lilly was there too.”

  “I was,” Lilly said.

  “Lilly came to dinner and to talk about a tour I have been planning. I’m sorry. I have to get back in the studio. Gilbert and Jenny are almost finished with their song.”

  “And today, about eleven in the morning?” I asked.

  “Another crime?”

  I said nothing.

  “I was here, doing the morning call-in show,” he said.

  Before I could question Lilly, the theory I had been putting together about recorded shows and lying alibis seemed to come apart. Maybe I had just seen Laura too many times.

  Jack Pepper rose with the help of two aluminum forearm crutches. He leaned forward as he slowly came out from behind the desk.

  He looked up at me with what may have been a touch of pain and said, “MS. Multiple Sclerosis. The Lord has chosen to touch me with this affliction. Would you like the name and number of my doctor to see if I’m telling the truth?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Fonesca? Italian. You are a Catholic?” he asked.

  Lilly was shaking her head yes. She was either answering for me or at the brilliance of Jack Pepper’s observation.

  “No,” I said.

  “Lapsed?”

  “No. I’m a lapsed Episcopalian.”

  “We are all one in Christ,” he said.

  “Except for the Jews and a long list of others.”

  “They are welcome to join the faith and be embraced as brothers and sisters and be saved,” he said.

  “Amen,” said Lilly softly.

  “You believe that in spite of what God has let happen to you?”

  “Because of what God has let happen to me.”

  “Philip Horvecki sodomized you,” I said gently.

  “No,” he said with a smile. “He tried and failed. The Lord did not choose to let it happen.”

  I shut up and watched him make his painful way toward the door to the studio in which I could see that the two singers had wrapped up. Then he stopped and looked back at me.

  “The Lord has allowed something bad to happen to you, too,” he said. “You are filled with grief and sorrow.”

  That could have been said of just about everyone I knew or had ever known. But, it hit me. He opened the door to the studio a few seconds after the red light over the door had gone off.

  “You have a favorite first line of a book?” I asked.

  “Genesis one,” he said.

  “Something else.”

  He paused and said, “ ‘Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.’ ”

  “What’s that from?” I asked taking out my index cards and pen.

  “ Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” he said.

  He entered, and the studio door closed behind him.

  Never underestimate the ability of a human being to surprise.

  “There are many roads to enlightenment and belief,” Lilly said.

  If there were that many roads, why wasn’t I on one of them? I looked at her. She was beaming, her eyes fixed on the studio door.

  “All are welcome to this church,” she said.

  “Then why the barbed-wire fence?” I asked.

  “There are people on this earth who have been put here to challenge, vex, and destroy to keep us from spreading the faith.”

  “Vandals,” I said.

  “Minions of the devil,” she said.

  I thought I might save a little time, so I simply asked, “You didn’t happen to kill Philip Horvecki and Blue Berrigan?”

  “I don’t know any Blue Berrigan and I don’t believe in killing.”

  “You happen to have a favorite first line from a book?”

  “ ‘It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed,’ ” she said. “ Fahrenheit 451.”

  With that, I went to the door.

  “Feel free to come back,” Lilly said.

  I had no intention of doing so. When I got back into the car and turned on the radio, I was greeted by the voice of the Reverend Jack Pepper:

  “… a special prayer for the soul of Lewis Fonseca, one of our Lord’s lost children.”

  “Fonesca,” I said softly. “Not Fonseca.”

  I turned off the radio and drove amid the sound of silence.

  10

  Essau Williams was in the Venice telephone directory. I sat in the Saturn and punched in the number I had written on one of my index cards.

  The phone rang three times before a man answered with a sleepy, “Williams.”

  “Fonesca,” I said. “I’m from Sarasota. I’d like to talk to you about Philip Horvecki.”
>
  “He’s dead.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m not sorry.”

  “I’m not surprised. Can I talk to you?”

  “Who are you?” he asked sounding a little more awake. “A reporter?”

  “No, a friend of the family.”

  “Whose family?”

  “Ronnie Gerall.”

  “You want me to contribute to his defense fund? Put me down for an anonymous fifty dollars. No, make that a hundred dollars. Any killer of Horvecki is a friend of mine. And since you’re calling me, I think you know why I’m being generous.”

  “Can we meet?” I asked. “I’d like to gather information about Horvecki that might help justify what Gerall did.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m in Venice,” I said.

  “Come over.”

  He gave me directions and we hung up without good-byes.

  Essau Williams’s house was not near the beach. It was in Trugate West, a development about three miles south of the hospital. What it was west of, I have no idea. His was a small ranch-style house, one of hundreds built in the 1950s to house the middle-class migrants who didn’t have enough money to buy near the beach. They did have a little more money than the retirees who moved just outside of what was then the city limits into the mobile homes lying on tiny patches of grass that most of them tried to make homey with flowers and bright paint.

  The green grass, really the weeds that passed for grass in Florida, was mowed short. The two trees, one a small palm, the other a tangelo, grew on opposite sides of the narrow concrete path that led to the front door.

  I knocked. Essau Williams opened. He wasn’t big, he was huge. He wore a pair of blue shorts and a gray T-shirt with the name ESSAU in red block letters across his chest and the number 8 under it. He had a yellow towel draped around his neck, and sweat was thick on his forehead, cheeks, and arms. He was all muscle and probably could have made a career with his body if he had a face to match. Essau Williams, light brown with a brooding brow, looked a little like my cousin Carmine, who was not the beauty of our family. Williams had the additional drawback of a raised horizontal white scar across his forehead.

  “Go around back,” he said and closed the door.

  I walked through the grass to the back of the house where Williams was placing two tall glasses of what looked like lemonade on a wooden picnic table.

  “Have a seat,” he said.

  I sat. It was hard to tell how big the yard was. It was dense with fruit trees, succulent bushes, flowers, and vines. The picnic table was on a round redbrick island that left no room for anything but the table.

  “Nice,” I said, looking around.

  On a mat a few yards from the table was a plastic-covered bench. A series of bars and weights were lined up evenly next to the bench.

  “Thanks. If you go that way, down the path… See it?”

  “Yes.”

  The lemonade was cold with thin slices of lemon and clinking cubes.

  “There’s a fountain over there with a small waterfall. You should be able to hear it.”

  “I hear it,” I said.

  “Okay, maybe I can save us some time.” He took a deep drink of lemonade and looked in the general direction of the running water. “Philip Horvecki raped my mother and aunt when they were kids and got away with it. Eight years ago Philip Horvecki came to my mother and my aunt’s home, threatened them, and left them crying. He warned them not to tell anyone or he would come back and kill them.”

  I nodded. There was nothing else to do. He went on.

  “My mother was sixty-four, my aunt sixty-six. I was on the force in Westin, Massachusetts. They didn’t tell me what had happened till I came down for Thanksgiving. That was three months after the attack. I went to the sheriff’s office and demanded that Horvecki be arrested. My mom and aunt filed criminal complaints. Only the word of my mom and aunt against Horvecki, who had the best lawyers money could buy. They tore at the reports, said they were filed by two sexually frustrated, old black women who changed their minds about selling the house for what he called ‘a fair price.’ He also said they were angry because he wouldn’t accept their advances. His lawyers brought up medical histories, family history. We didn’t have a chance.”

  “So…”

  “Didn’t even go to trial,” he said, shaking his head. “He walked. Then I moved here, took a job with the Venice police and began watching everything Horvecki did or said. My mother and aunt moved back north. They’ve both been in therapy. They’re recluses. They seldom go out, and they’ve got guns and know how to use them. They think Horvecki’s going to make good on his promise to kill them.”

  “Didn’t you feel like doing more than watching him?”

  He was nodding now, considering. Then he leaned forward toward me.

  “I wanted to kill him. I told him I would. I told him I’d pick my own time. I wanted to turn him into a pile of frightened jelly.”

  “Did it work?”

  “No,” he said. “After a while, he didn’t believe me. The fact, which I’ll deny, is that I had a date set, the anniversary of what he did to my mom and aunt, to beat the bastard to death. Three weeks from today. I’m glad someone beat me to it.”

  “Horvecki was rich,” I said.

  “Very. Worth about sixty or seventy million. Real estate. He made at least two million of that from my aunt and mother’s house and property.”

  “You know who gets his money?”

  “His daughter I guess. Who cares? My mother and my aunt are lost. You know what it’s like to lose someone you love? You know what it’s like to become obsessed with punishing him?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He looked at me long and hard over the rim of his lemonade and then said, “Maybe you do. When you see him dead in a funeral home, the feeling of vindication doesn’t come. You just feel flat, empty.”

  “I know,” I said. “Did you kill Horvecki?”

  “What?”

  “Did you kill Philip Horvecki?”

  “No. I told you. I thought you were trying to find information that would justify what Gerall did, not come up with another suspect. Who do you work for?”

  “Ronnie Gerall. I told you. He says he didn’t do it.”

  “Surprise. A killer denies his crime. If you find out someone else did it, I’ll give that hundred dollars to his defense. Now I think you better leave.”

  He stood up, but I didn’t.

  “I think there’s something you’re not telling me,” I said.

  His fists were clenched now. The scar across his forehead distended and turned a clean snow white.

  “Get out,” he said, kicking the bench.

  “You’ve got a temper,” I said. “How angry are you?”

  “You want to find out?”

  He was around the table now standing over me. I didn’t want to find out.

  “You lose your temper easily,” I said.

  “Maybe.”

  He had me by the front of my shirt, now, and pulled me to my feet.

  “You are about to have an accident,” he said. “A bad one.”

  “Don’t think so,” came a familiar voice from the corner of the house.

  Ames stood there with a pistol in his hand.

  “Best put him down and back away,” Ames said.

  “You have a license for that weapon?” asked Williams.

  “No, but if I shoot you dead, legality of the weapon won’t mean much, will it?”

  He still had my collar and was squeezing more tightly. I gagged.

  “You won’t shoot,” Williams said.

  “He will,” I gagged. “He’s done it before.”

  Williams lifted me farther. I felt myself passing out. Ames fired. He was a good shot, a very good shot. The bullet skidded between Williams’s feet leaving a scratch in the bricks. Williams let me drop. I tumbled backward, fell over the bench, and landed on my back.

  “You all right, Lewis?” he a
sked.

  I had trouble answering. My back was a flash of pain, and my throat wouldn’t allow words to come out. I made a sound like “Mmmm,” which in the universal language of the beating victims of the world could mean no or yes.

  Williams stood still, looking at Ames.

  “One question,” I rasped, getting to my knees.

  “I didn’t kill Horvecki,” said Williams.

  “Not my question,” I said, making it to my feet. “Have you got a favorite first line from a book?”

  Williams turned to look at me. “No,” he said.

  I staggered to Ames’s side, and he said, “Let’s get my scooter in your trunk and get out of here.”

  I didn’t argue. Ames kept his weapon trained on Williams, who was now ignoring us and sitting on the bench again. He had poured himself another large lemonade.

  On the way home, Ames explained how he had found me. He knew the names of the two suspects I was out looking for. The files Pertwee had given me were on my desk. He used the same telephone directory I had and made his way to the house in Venice.

  “He kill Horvecki?” Ames asked as I drove.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “The other fella, Pepper?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Where do we go now?”

  “You have a favorite first line from a book?”

  “Yes.”

  Ames is the best read person I have ever known. His room across from the kitchen and near the rear door of the Texas Bar and Grill was jammed with books neatly arranged on wall-to-ceiling shelves Ames had built. He always carried a book in his pocket or in the compartment of his scooter. The last book I saw him reading was Dead Souls.

  “What is it?”

  Ames was silent for a moment. He looked down at the barrel of the shotgun between his legs and said, “People don’t read much anymore.”

  Then Ames said, “In a village of La Mancha the name of which I have no desire to recall, there lived not so long ago one of those gentlemen who always have a cane in the rack, an ancient buckler, a skinny nag, and a greyhound for the chase.”

  “Which one of us is Quixote and which one is Sancho Panza?” I asked.

  He looked straight ahead and said, “Let’s find us more windmills.”

  We were making good time going north on Tamiami. We were both quiet while I thought about what to do next. Then I spoke. I didn’t think about what I was saying. There were consequences, but there was the promise of windmills.