The EZ Economy Car Rental Agency was six doors north of Dave’s Dairy Queen on 301. EZ was located in a former gas station. There were cars parked in front, cars behind the lot. The bigger rental agencies were out at the airport. EZ claimed that they offered lower rates by being in a low-rent neighborhood and catering to those who wanted anything from a banged-up semi-wreck with 80,000 miles on it to a new Jaguar with a few thousand miles on it.
I had rented from EZ before when I had a job that required it. I preferred the bicycle.
The two men in rumpled suits inside the office of EZ were leaning back against the desk, arms folded, waiting for the phone to ring or me to walk in.
“The detective,” said the younger one with a smile that seemed sincere. He was no more than thirty and quickly growing as round as his older partner.
“Process server,” I corrected.
We had gone through this routine the last four or five times I had rented a car. It seemed to amuse both of the men.
“What can we do ya for?” said the older man.
They had introduced themselves when I first met them. One was Alan. The other was Fred. I couldn’t remember which was which.
“Compact.”
“We’ve got a Corolla,” said the young one.
“A Geo Prizm,” said the older one.
“Same difference,” said the younger.
The older man chuckled.
“How long?” asked the young one.
“What’s the weekly rate now?” I asked.
“For you?” asked the older man. “A hundred and eight-five plus insurance. The usual. You get it gas full. You return it gas full.”
“What have you got for a hundred and forty including insurance?”
“An Amish three-wheel bicycle,” said the young one.
They both laughed. The older one turned red and started to choke. The younger one patted him on the back till he returned to semi-normal.
“Oh God,” said the older one, wiping away tears.
“Geo Metro,” said the young one. “It’s clean. It’s this year. It’s white. It’s small and it runs. You just have to play the radio a little loud if you want to hear it. Air conditioner is great. We’ll throw in an air freshener, a green one shaped like a pine tree.”
“Will I need it?” I asked.
Alan and Fred shrugged.
“One thirty, and we’re losing money,” the older said.
“We like you,” said the younger one.
“You’re a regular. You send us business.”
This amused the hell out of the younger one.
“I’ll take it,” I said.
“You want to give him the keys and papers, Fred?” asked the young one.
I had them now. Fred was the older one. He had stopped crying.
I not only had their names straight, I also had a car that smelled as if a heavy smoker had lived in it. The car also had thirty-four thousand miles on it. I could have probably negotiated a deal to buy it from them for about three weeks’ worth of rental fees, but I didn’t want a car. I tore open the plastic bag, took out the pine tree, set it on the dashboard, turned on the air-conditioning and opened the windows.
I drove the half-block to the DQ parking lot, which was less than half full-not bad for late afternoon. There was a line and people were seated at the two umbrella-covered tables, eating and laughing. At least the three teenaged boys at one table were laughing. A pair of thin women in their fifties wearing thin sweaters, which they didn’t need, sat at the other table eating silently.
I was suddenly hungry, very hungry. I got in line, ordered two burgers and a Coke from Dave and gave him the article on John Marshall. He thanked me and said he would read it as soon as he had a break.
The teens were laughing louder and throwing bread from their burgers at each other. One of the boys heaved a chunk of sandwich. It sailed into the back of one of the two women.
“Sorry,” said the kid who had thrown the burger. He was grinning.
The thin woman didn’t turn.
“Give me a second, Lew,” Dave said when I got to the window.
He moved back into the DQ, past the sink and out the side door, throwing his white apron on a table as the door closed. He appeared in front of the table where the teens were still hurling food. At first they didn’t see him. The boys were big. Football types.
“Pick up what you threw and give the lady a real good apology,” Dave said. “Then leave and don’t come back for at least a week. And if you come back, come back docile. You know what that means?”
All three boys stood up. Dave didn’t back down.
The boys were no longer laughing.
“We didn’t mean nothing,” the biggest boy said.
There was defiance in his chunky face.
Another boy stepped in front of his friend and put a hand on his chest.
“We’re sorry,” said the second boy with some sincerity. “We was just celebrating. My friend Jason here, he just found out that he doesn’t have HIV. Just got the report from the hospital. He was sure he-”
“None of this guy’s business,” said Jason.
“Let’s just go, Jace,” said the mediator, looking at the third boy, who nodded in agreement.
“Clean up first and apologize,” said Dave.
“No way,” said Jason, looking my way to be sure it would be three against one if it came to throwing punches.
“Any of you know a girl named Adele Tree?” I asked.
“No,” said the mediator. The answer was wary. Something about the name had hit home.
“How about Adele Handford?”
All three of them turned toward me. The name Adele had hit home. They looked at each other. The thin women got up and left, carrying what remained of their meal.
“Her friend Ellen. I almost got the HIV from Ellen,” said Jason.
“Easy Adele,” said the mediator. “Must be talkin’ about Easy Adele.”
“Where can I find her?”
They looked at each other again.
“I’ll clean up the mess you made. It’s too late for the apology.”
“They’ll clean it up,” Dave said. “It’s their mess, Lew.”
I shrugged.
“Then how about I give you each five bucks.”
“Why not?” said the mediator, moving between Dave and Jason and heading for me.
I pulled out my wallet and give him five singles. I would charge the payoff to Carl Sebastian. There was no point in asking them about Melanie Sebastian. She was in a different league.
“Sarasota High,” said the kid, who was blond and reasonably good-looking except for some much-needed dental work.
“She goes to Sarasota High School?”
“She did,” he said. “I haven’t seen her around the last three, four weeks, somethin’, you know?”
“Not enough,” I said, though it was a start.
“That’s what I know. You guys know what happened to Easy Adele?” he asked.
Jason smirked. The third kid said, “She said she was living with her father. I don’t know where. She was whorin’ on North Trail. I seen her. By the motels, you know?”
“I know,” I said.
The kid in front of me backed away and Dave repeated calmly,
“Pick up your mess.”
Jason was the last to bend over and start the job.
After the three had driven off, taking time to screech the brakes and throw Dave and me the finger, I got a fish sandwich, a burger and a cherry Blizzard. There was no one waiting in line behind me. A couple with a small girl had disappeared when Dave came out of the DQ.
“They’re not bad,” he said. “Just stupid. I don’t like that kind of stupid.”
Dave got my sandwiches and cherry Blizzard and started to read the article.
I went across the parking lot and up the stairs to my laundry basket-sized two rooms with a view of 301 from each.
I turned on the lights, looked at the w
hirling air conditioner and sat down at the desk in the outer office to check the Sarasota and Bradenton phone book for Dwight Handford. There was nothing. I didn’t expect there would be. I tried Dwight Tree. Nothing.
While I worked on my dinner and watched the ice cream melt in my float, I called the Best Western and asked for Beryl Tree’s room, 204. She answered on the second ring.
“Yes,” she said.
I could hear a television in the background. I thought I recognized the Hollywood Squares music.
“Lew Fonesca,” I said.
“Yes?”
“I haven’t found her yet but I have a lead. It looks like you might be right. I think she was is or was staying with her father.”
“Oh.”
“She did go to a high school here, at least for a while. I’ll go over there in the morning. They may not want to give me any information so I might have to get you to talk to them.”
“I’ll be here all day,” she said. “I’ll just get something to eat and bring it back to the room.”
“I’ll call tomorrow,” I said. “Good night.”
I took off my clothes, touched the stubble on my face, put on my YMCA shorts and a University of Illinois T-shirt and moved into my back room. I had what was left of my food and my Blizzard. I had the folder on Melanie Sebastian and I had a tape of Charade I’d bought two days before for two dollars at Vic’s Pawn Shop on Main Street.
While I watched Cary Grant searching for Carson Dyle, I started a folder on Adele Tree. So far there wasn’t much in it, a photograph and the few notes I was now writing. I had a feeling the folder would grow.
I was working. Two cases. Lots of questions. My grandfather, my mother’s father, played the mandolin. He used to say that the mandolin held the answers. He never made it clear what the questions were. I liked listening to him play old Italian folk songs, songs he made up, even an Elvis tune. He particularly liked “Love Me Tender.” He lost himself in the mandolin. Closed his eyes and listened to the answers.
“It all ties together,” he would say, eyes closed, mind who knows where.
I heard the mandolin in my head. It asked questions. I had two clients who had lost someone close to them. Carl Sebastian, who had chosen me on a chance recommendation, had lost his wife. I had lost my wife. Maybe I could find his. Beryl Tree had lost a daughter. My wife hadn’t lived long enough to have a daughter. So, I had lost a daughter or son.
Fonesca, I told myself, you can be a morbid son-of-a-bitch. Think of something you like, something that makes you happy, or at least content. Think of movies with William Powell and Cary Grant and Jean Arthur. Think of an order of ribs from Luny’s back on Division Street in Chicago. Think of mountains with white caps. You like mountains with white caps.
Think of getting back to work and finding people. Worry about finding yourself later.
3
Sarasota High School was within walking distance of my office-home. I took the car. There were places to go, people to see, things to do and concentrate on.
After I had shaved, washed myself and brushed my teeth in the second-floor rest room six doors down from my office, I put on clean tan slacks and a short-sleeved white shirt and one of my basic bland ties. I’ve got one brown, one blue and one gray with Mickey Mouse embroidered on it (a gift from a client with a sense of something he thought was humor) and a Salvador Dali tie with melting clocks and distant rocks. This morning I wore the basic brown. I wore my glasses. The only time I normally wore my glasses was when I was driving, but sometimes I wore them in the belief, mistaken or not, that they made me look more like a professional something.
Before I left, I called the office of Geoffrey Green, M.D., psychiatrist to the well-to-do. I wondered what a conversation between Green and Ann Horowitz would sound like.
The receptionist who answered was pleasantly sympathetic when I said I had a problem. She asked me who had referred me to Dr. Green and I said Melanie Sebastian. I told her I needed only a few minutes of his time.
“One moment, please,” she said.
I stood at my window waiting and watching the morning traffic on 301. Across the street was a bar called the Crisp Dollar Bill. It was in a sagging building and the once bright-red sign, according to Dave, had long ago faded to a sickly pink. Next to the bar was a small two-story building with a dance studio on the second floor. The studio had large glass windows. Once in a while I would stand on the balcony, maybe lean on the railing and watch people waltz.
South of the bar there was a consignment shop and a few other stores. Behind these businesses were the last vestiges of the wall of the old White Sox spring-training stadium.
The Sox had moved to Ed Smith Stadium on Twelfth Street before I broke down in Sarasota. In the summer, the Minor League Sarasota White Sox had played at Ed Smith and the town had boasted that Michael Jordan had briefly lived in town, a one-season drawing card. The Sox had moved out and the Cincinnati Reds had moved in. I still hadn’t gone to a baseball game.
“Mr. Fonesca?” the receptionist chimed.
“Yes.”
“Dr. Green can see you for a few minutes at one o’clock today. Can you make that?”
“Yes.”
“Come about ten minutes early to fill out some forms.”
“Okay. I’ll be there.”
I hung up. I’d let her hold on to the illusion that I was a potential patient until it got to the point where I might be billed. I couldn’t afford that bill. If I had a leg and one arm in the door, I knew how to squeeze my way in.
The DQ was dosed. Too early. I walked to Gwen’s Diner at the corner. Gwen had retired four years ago. Her daughter Sheila had taken over. Regulars started calling her Gwen Two. After a while they dropped the “Two.” Sheila had a teenage daughter who waited tables after school. Her name was Althea. I wondered if she would become Gwen Three. Maybe it would become a tradition, like the Phantom, the Ghost Who Walks. There would be a Gwen to replace the last Gwen until some developer like Carl Sebastian decided to have a giant step on Gwen’s Diner, sweep it away and build an office building or more high-cost and high-rise apartments.
The place was crowded with people who stopped by on the way to work and the marginal and long retired who had their daily ritual breakfast to be near people and be recognized.
I was becoming a more-or-less regular. I came when I had to get up early. If I got up late, I picked up something at Dave’s DQ. Gwen’s opened at five in the morning, before sunrise.
There was an opening at the counter between a guy who looked like a truck driver and an old man who looked like a gray stick.
Gwen, who wore a morning smile, an apron and a minimum of makeup on her pink round face, placed a white mug of coffee before me.
“Eggs scrambled soft, two strips and rye toast?”
I nodded. She nodded too and hurried off, coffee decanter in hand.
People at the five tables behind us talked softly, respecting the morning, slowly waking up.
“Seen you here before,” said the old man on my right.
I nodded and drank.
“You from the North?”
I nodded again. Drank some more coffee.
“New York?”
“Chicago.”
“I’m from Steubenville, near Cleveland. Dean Martin was from Steubenville. I knew some of his people.”
“That a fact?”
“Fact,” he said. “Been down here fifteen years. Thinking of going back but… nothing up there for me anymore. Wife died six years back. Know what I mean?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t feel like engaging in the art of conversation,” he said.
I smiled. It wasn’t much of a smile, but it was something.
“Sorry,” I said as Gwen who had been Sheila returned with my plate. “I’ve been here about three years. My wife died too.”
“Sorry to hear that,” he said. “She must have been young. Caroline was seventy-two, not so old anymore, with the medicines an
d all, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said, starting to eat.
“So, my name is Tim and you’re…?”
“Lew.”
“What do you do, Lew?”
I gave him a small shrug. What did I do? I got through each day. I watched movies. I took work when it came my way or I had to eat, drink and survive.
“I’m a process server.”
“That a fact?”
“No brag, just fact,” I said.
The eggs were fine, not quite raw. The bacon was crisp. I was feeling a little more human. The coffee was helping.
“Dangerous?” Tim asked.
He had swiveled toward me on the round blue counter seat.
“Not usually.”
“No offense, but I don’t think I’d be able to handle a job that made people mad at me.”
“The hours are good,” I said.
“I’m a welder,” said Tim. “I mean I was a welder. Don’t do it anymore. I liked it.”
“Corky Flynn,” came a voice from my left.
I glanced at the trucker type on my left. He was bulky, probably a few years younger than me. He was looking at me now, chewing something.
“Corky Flynn,” he repeated. “You remember? Wasn’t that fuckin long ago.”
I looked at him as I ate. The face and name didn’t ring a bell.
“You served papers on me. Divorce. You came to my garage, handed it to me right in front of Earl and Spence.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
I kept a folder with the names of every person I served papers to and the time I served the papers, and I made a note about where I had served the papers.
“Never served papers on you, Mr. Flynn,” I said.
“It wasn’t you?”
“Nope. Maybe someone who looks a little like me. Lots of people look like me. When was it?”
“Right after New Year’s.”
“This year?”
I ate while I talked. Tim the welder was listening, waiting for some violence he could talk about with his friends over an open campfire.
“I only served papers on two people in January,” I said. “Both women.”
That was true.
“I could swear…” Corky Flynn said, examining me closely.
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