Bright Futures lf-6

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Greg looked at Ames as if Ames had not been paying attention.

  “My mother…”

  He was interrupted by Gwen’s daughter bringing breakfast for Darrell, Ames, and me, orange juice for Winn and coffee for whoever wanted it. Darrell, Ames, and I were all having the waffle special with eggs and three slices of bacon.

  “Go ahead,” said Greg. “We don’t mind if you eat.”

  He said the last part of this after the three of us had already begun to eat.

  “Okay,” came a shout above the voices and clattering plates and cups. “Listen up.”

  Two tables from us, a trucker in a blue baseball cap and a denim vest over his T-shirt was standing and waiting for attention. His beard was just beyond stubble and he looked more than serious.

  “My friend here says Elvis never ate here, that Gwen’s mother just put up that poster and the sign.”

  “That’s right,” said the friend, now standing.

  He was shorter than the other guy but in better shape, biceps like cement.

  “February 21, 1956, Elvis played the Florida Theater in Sarasota,” said Winn aloud. “He had breakfast here on the morning of February 22 and headed immediately for an appearance that night in Waycross, Georgia.”

  The breakfast crowd applauded.

  “The kid don’t know shit,” the muscled trucker said, with a special emphasis on the word “shit.”

  The restaurant went silent.

  Gwen’s other daughter, the one with two babies and another on the way, was behind the counter where I usually had breakfast.

  “You calling my family liars?” she said.

  “My grandfather was here when Elvis came in,” said Winn.

  “Bullshit,” said the trucker.

  “His grandfather’s still alive and almost ninety-five,” added Greg. “Reverend Graeme of the First Episcopalian Church of Christ the Redeemer would, I’m sure, be happy to come by and settle this.”

  People began to applaud and laugh. The defeated trucker mumbled a few obscenities and sat down as the first trucker raised a hand in historic triumph.

  “Your grandfather really in here when Elvis came in?” asked Darrell.

  “Don’t see how he could have been,” said Greg. “He was in Korea.”

  “Yes,” said Winn.

  “And,” added Greg, favoring his friend with another punch in the arm, “he’s dead and he wasn’t Reverend Graeme. He was Russell Graeme, co-owner of Graeme-Sydney Chrysler Motors in Sydney, Australia.”

  Greg was grinning.

  Darrell mumbled something to himself and went on eating. I was sitting next to him and heard, though no one else did.

  “Rich white kids,” Darrell had said.

  “That the truth about Ronnie?” asked Winn.

  “Truth,” I said.

  “Why do you want to find him?” asked Ames.

  “To talk to him about getting a new lawyer,” Greg said leaning forward. “My grandfather said he’ll pay to get the best available defense team in the nation. The plan was for us to set it up with Ronnie and you keep looking for whoever killed Horvecki. But he’s not Ronnie. I don’t understand.”

  “What about Berrigan?” asked Ames.

  “Berrigan?” asked Greg.

  Gwen’s daughter, the one who had waited on us, touched Winn’s shoulder and quietly said, “Your breakfasts are all on the house.”

  Then she moved away to the waving hand of a customer who wanted more coffee or his check.

  “Blue Berrigan,” I said.

  “What kind of name is that?” asked Greg.

  “Dead man’s,” said Ames.

  Winn Graeme’s eyes were closed for an instant. Then he removed his glasses, opened his eyes and put the glasses back on.

  “The singer?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Where? When did he…?” asked Greg.

  “Day ago,” said Ames. “Beaten in his car.”

  Darrell was giving his full attention to the conversation now.

  “Who is Blue Bennignan?” Darrell asked.

  “Berrigan,” Winn corrected. “I used to watch his show when I was a kid. My mother took me to see him when he was at the Opera House in Sydney when I was six.”

  “You going to cry?” Greg asked his friend in disbelief before looking around the table to see if anyone else found this particularly bizarre. No one seemed to.

  “I know a guy in a gang in Palmetto called Black Brain-banger,” said Darrell. “And there’s a whore up on the Trail goes by Red Alice because…”

  “Her hair’s red?” said Ames.

  “You know her?” asked Darrell.

  Ames took it and Darrell laughed.

  “Got you, old cowboy,” Darrell said.

  Ames gave a small shake of his head. No one joined the laughter.

  Darrell looked and me and said, “I’m just breaking it down and bringing it down Fonesca. Lightening it up, you know what I’m saying?”

  Unordered breakfasts for both Greg and Winn arrived, the same thing all of us had.

  “Anything Ronnie needs?” asked Greg.

  “His name is Dwight Torcelli,” Winn said.

  “The best criminal defense attorney in the United States would help,” I said.

  We ate for a while, and I thought in silence.

  Then Darrell whispered to me, “You don’t need more money? I do. Rich white boys probably have their pockets full of twenties. You take it, give it to me. I keep a little and give the rest to my mother.”

  I shook my head, but it didn’t stop him. He whispered to me as he finished his breakfast.

  “I took a bullet in the back for you, Fonesca,” he said.

  “Pellet,” I said. “Maybe you were the one being shot at.”

  “People from my part of town don’t use pellets and BBs after they’re five years old. They don’t shoot people with toys. Someone after me’d have a serious weapon.”

  “Because you’re so bad?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “I’m just saying.”

  “You didn’t tell people you got shot with a pellet gun.”

  “Hell no.”

  After we were finished with breakfast, Greg and Winn stood, and Greg said, “You’ll let me know?”

  “I’ll let you know,” I said, though at this point I wasn’t sure about what it was I would be letting him know about.

  “Sorry,” said Winn, though at this point I wasn’t completely sure what it was he was sorry about.

  When they left, Ames finished a second cup of coffee and said, “Smart boys.”

  I wasn’t sure how he meant it, and I wasn’t going to ask him to explain.

  We picked up carryout breakfasts for Victor and Torcelli. The same truckers we had seen earlier were in line behind us at the cash register.

  The one with muscles and, I could now see, fading tattoos on his arms, said to Ames, “Your grandkids cost me forty bucks.”

  I touched Ames’s arm in the hope that he wouldn’t respond, but he said, “Cost yourself forty dollars.”

  “Not the way I see it,” said the trucker.

  “Let it go, Ben,” said the trucker who had won the bet.

  “You let it go, Teek. Easy for you. You won. Way I see it, old bones here owes me.”

  It was our turn to pay now. I handed over cash for the carry-out to Gwen’s daughter at the register. She pushed it back to me.

  “Ames owes you shit,” said Darrell. “Right, Fonesca?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Mess with Ames, he’ll shoot your ass,” Darrell said. “Mess with Fonesca he’ll break your nose. Ames shot and killed a man and Fonesca just broke a fool’s nose.”

  “That a fact?” said Ben the trucker with the biceps.

  “Fact,” Darrell said.

  The trucker reached for Darrell. Ames put his arm in the way.

  “You want to take this outside,” said Ames. “I’ll accommodate.”

  I led our happy band out t
he door.

  “Parking lot,” said Ben.

  “I’m having no part,” said Teek.

  When we got to the parking lot next to the restaurant, Ames opened his jacket so Ben could see an old, but very large, well cleaned, and shining pistol tucked into his belt.

  “Bullshit,” said Ben, now glaring. He took a step toward Ames, who calmly removed the weapon from his belt and fired into the ground at the trucker’s feet.

  “Another step and you’ll be on your way to the emergency room,” said Ames.

  “He means it,” I said.

  Ben backed away three steps and raised a fist, but didn’t say anything.

  Teek took Ben’s arm and started to pull him away.

  “Crazy old fucker,” said Ben, looking over his shoulder as he wisely allowed himself to be escorted from the lot.

  I didn’t ask either trucker if they had a favorite first line from a book.

  “You did him, Ames,” said Darrell holding up his right hand for a high five, which Ames didn’t deliver.

  “Best we go now,” Ames said.

  “Best,” I agreed.

  15

  "I’m not an unreasonable man,” Horvecki said, professionally looking at the camera and away from the SNN interviewer.

  He was looking directly at me as I sat in my room with Ames, Darrell, Victor, and Ronnie watching the DVD Greg Legerman had given me.

  Horvecki had the raspy voice of a smoker and a haunted look. He was slightly frail and definitely on the verge of being old. He had a well-trimmed, close-cropped head of dyed black hair and the slightly blotched skin of a man who had spent too many hours outside without benefit of sunblock.

  “I pay taxes-a hell of a lot of taxes to this country, this state, and this county,” he said, looking back at the interviewer, a pretty young brunette who couldn’t have been more than twenty-two and who was definitely uncomfortable as she tried to control the interview. “So do thousands of other people who don’t have children in school, don’t have grandchildren in school. We pay to give a third-rate education to kids who aren’t even ours, and no one gives us a choice. Well, I’m fighting for that choice.”

  “But this is a matter of funding a much-needed program for gifted students,” the young woman tried.

  “So all students aren’t created equal?” he said. “Some get a better education. No one asked me what I thought about that. Did they ask you? Your parents? Did you go to Pine View?”

  “No,” the girl said protectively, “I went to Riverview.”

  “Education should be paid for by parents and anyone who wants to give money,” Horvecki said. “I don’t want to give money for the children of the people who should be paying.”

  “And Bright Futures?” she asked.

  “Same thing,” he said. “A big, phony boondoggle. Take lottery money and tax money and give it to smart kids instead of distributing it evenly among all the kids who want to go to college.”

  “That’s what you believe, that the money that-?”

  “I don’t think there should be any Bright Futures program or any Pine View School funded by my BLEEP money.”

  “So?” she asked.

  He turned again to face the camera and said, “Vote no on the funding referendum.”

  Cut to a silver-haired man behind a desk with sheets of paper in his hand.

  “Philip Horvecki,” he said. “Man on a mission with a gift for making political enemies and a record of convincing voters in the past fifteen years to vote for his self-named Self Interest Initiative Voters Alliance.”

  The television screen went gray with thin white fizzling lines.

  Darrell reached over, ejected the disk and turned off the television.

  “See,” said Torcelli. “That man was a monster.”

  “Your father-in-law,” said Ames. “Your wife’s father.”

  “Yes,” Torcelli said, touching the bandage on his nose to be sure it was still there.

  “So you went to see him because of your commitment to Bright Futures,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Nothing to do with your wanting to be his true son and heir?” said Ames.

  “A little, maybe, but does that negate what I was trying to do?”

  “A little, maybe,” Ames said.

  “I’m a con man, a fraud, an opportunist, a-”

  “Asshole,” said Darrell.

  “All right,” Torcelli conceded, “but if you came from the background I had-”

  “Wrong road to go down with me,” said Darrell. “I’ll take you home for the night, and we’ll tour my neighborhood. We’ll play Mr. Rogers. And check out Fonesca’s tale. His-”

  “Where is your wife?” I interrupted.

  Torcelli shook his head to show that none of us understood the weight of his life or the toll it had taken.

  “She’s not well,” he said.

  “Sorry to hear that. Where is she?” I asked again.

  He looked past us out the window at the slightly fluttering leaves of the tree outside.

  “Want to have Viviase ask the same question?” I said. “He might add a few questions about your friendship with his daughter.”

  “She’s a kid,” he said.

  “Your wife or Viviase’s daughter?”

  “My wife is staying at the Ocean Terrace Resort Hotel on Siesta Key,” he said. “Waiting for her father’s lawyer to tell us what she’s inherited.”

  “You told us you didn’t know where she was,” I said.

  “You said you wanted us to find her to give you an alibi,” Ames said.

  “I did. I did, but I wanted to protect her. I was confused and you were…” He put his head in his hands.

  “She’s registered under the name Olin. I’ll call her and tell her to talk to you.”

  “Don’t call,” said Ames.

  “You got anything to eat in the refrigerator?” asked Darrell.

  “You just had breakfast,” said Ames.

  “I’m still growing and I need food to keep me going. I was shot and almost dead. Remember that?”

  “You plan on letting us forget it some time?” asked Ames.

  “Hell no,” said Darrell.

  “Go look in the refrigerator,” I said. And he went off to do just that.

  “You believe me about what happened?” said Torcelli. “You believe I’m innocent?”

  “Greg Legerman thinks you’re innocent,” I said, “but then, he doesn’t know about you and his mother.”

  “Don’t tell him,” Torcelli pleaded.

  “You were using Alana Legerman as backup in case your wife didn’t get Horvecki’s money?” I said.

  “I wouldn’t put it like that,” he said, touching his bandaged nose again.

  “Course not,” said Ames.

  Darrell came back into the room with a bowl of Publix sugar-frosted wheat and milk.

  “What’d I miss?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” said Torcelli sullenly.

  Victor got up and left the room, brushing past Darrell who crunched away at the cereal.

  “The State of Florida is going to try to kill me when they find out I’m an adult, but my wife will get me a great lawyer and you’ll keep looking for whoever killed Horvecki, right?”

  “Your wife know you’re not really married?” Ames asked.

  “We’ll get married again,” he said.

  I thought of him with Sally, overworked Sally, caring Sally, Sally with a deep laugh and a soft smile when she looked at her children. I tried to conjure up the other side of Sally I’d glimpsed a few times, the Sally who had no compassion for the parents who took drugs or were religious lunatics or just plain lunatics. She was calm and determined with such people. She was relentless and willing to fight the courts and the law to see to it that they couldn’t destroy their children. She lost more often than she won, but she kept fighting. I thought about these two Sallys, and I tried not to imagine her with the man who sat across from me, the man whose no
se I had broken, the man who wanted Ames and me to save his life.

  Victor came back into the room. He had another bowl of cereal and milk. Less than an hour after breakfast Darrell and Victor were hungry. So was I.

  Someone was knocking outside the door in the other room.

  “I’ll get it,” said Ames, moving out and closing the door behind him.

  Then we heard a voice, a familiar voice. I got up and went out to meet our visitor.

  “He’s here, isn’t he?” said Ettiene Viviase.

  “He’s here,” I said.

  It wasn’t rage in his eyes exactly, but personal determination. The source, I was sure, was his daughter’s involvement with the man he still thought of as Ronnie Gerall.

  “Haul him out,” he said.

  “What’s happened?” I asked.

  “Just came from my third visit to his apartment,” he said. “This time I found something new, found it under a bookcase. I turned it over to the lab about ten minutes ago.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “The weapon that was used to kill Blue Berrigan.”

  Ames went in to get Torcelli who came out black-eyed and slightly bewildered. The confident and angry young man of a few days ago had been replaced by this pained creature with a swollen and bandaged nose and black and blue eyes.

  “What happened?” Viviase asked.

  “I hit him,” I said.

  “You?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s hope for you, Fonesca,” he said. Then he looked at Torcelli and said, “Back to a cell. We’ve got lots to talk about.”

  “Fonesca, tell…” Torcelli began, but he was no longer sure about who he might call for help.

  “I didn’t kill anyone,” Torcelli insisted as Viviase put handcuffs on him behind his back. “Fonesca, we’re both Italians, Catholics. I swear to Jesus. I swear on the life of the Pope. I didn’t kill Philip Horvecki.”

  “He’s Italian?” said Viviase.

  I didn’t bother to tell Torcelli that I wasn’t a Catholic and that some of my best enemies were Italian.

  Victor and Darrell came out of my room, bowls in hand, still eating their cereal.

  “You make an interesting quartet,” Viviase said. “One more thing. What did your two middle-of-the-night visitors want?”

  I didn’t answer, so he added, “We had a man watching last night. Thinks he recognized Essau Williams, a Venice police officer. Who was the other man?”