Retribution lf-2

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

“Twenty dollars a day,” I said with a sigh. “If I don’t find Vera Lynn in five days, I give it up and you promise to give it up. Deal?”

  Marvin went stone still.

  “Give me forty in advance for two days,” I said. “Most it can cost you is a hundred. I’ll need the album and the letter.”

  He nodded and smiled.

  “That’s business,” he said, holding out his hand. We shook and he dipped into the paper bag to pull out four tens. He handed them to me. “All’s you got to do is find her, tell me where she is. I’ll do the rest. It’s important.”

  “I’m closing up for an early lunch, Mr. F.,” called Billy, closing the newspaper. “Meeting some people at Longhorn. Place’s like a morgue this morning anyway.”

  I assumed both Marvin and I were prime contributors to the funereal atmosphere.

  I closed the album, tucked it under my arm, went to the bar, and handed Billy one of the four tens Marvin had put in my hand. Billy nodded and Marvin followed me into the street.

  Traffic was moving slowly, but there was a lot of it. I wanted to cross the street, go to my room, and watch The Shadow, but I knew I’d be looking at Marvin Uliaks’s album.

  “Anything else you can tell me about her?” I asked.

  “All in the book,” he said, tapping the album. “All the answers I got. Like the Bible. Got the answers. You just have to figure out what they mean. I never could, not in the album, not in the Bible, not in any book pretty much even when I was a kid. But you know how to find me. Right now I’m going to Lupe’s Resale to do some work unless you want me to come with you.”

  “Go to Lupe’s,” I said. “I’ll find you if I need you.”

  He stood on the sidewalk while I waited for a break in traffic and jogged across the street, past the DQ, through the parking lot, and up the stairs to my office. When I turned around, Marvin was standing where I had left him looking up at me. I motioned for him to go to Lupe’s. I pointed in the right direction. He shook his head in understanding and walked to his right while I entered my office.

  Home. The day was cool. A little over seventy degrees. Typical winter in Sarasota. I didn’t need the air-conditioning, which was good because I don’t have any. The ancient air conditioner that came with the office had given out. Ames McKinney had kept it alive for more than a year. We had buried the window unit in the Dumpster at the DQ with Dave’s permission.

  I opened the windows, pulled the chains on the Venetian blinds, flipped on the fluorescent light, and listened to it crackle as I sat down at my desk with Marvin’s album in front of me.

  There wasn’t much in the office to distract me. There was a single chair across the desk. A wastepaper basket with a Tampa Bucs logo under the desk and facing me on the wall was a poster, the only decoration in the room, an original Mildred Pierce. Joan Crawford looked across at me feeling my pain and Mildred’s. Tomorrow was Friday. I’d watch my tape of the movie tomorrow night in the next room where I had my cot, television, and VCR. Tonight I was watching The Shadow.

  The beer and Marvin’s appearance had taken a little of the sting from my cheek. Not enough, just a little.

  Except for a possible call from a lawyer with papers to serve and dinner that night with Sally Porovsky and her kids at the Bangkok, Marvin Uliaks’s album was the only obligation on my schedule for the week. It was more than I would have wanted, except for Sally and the Bangkok, but I had taken the forty from Marvin. I touched the cover of the album and glanced at my answering machine.

  I got the answering machine from a pawnshop on Main Street. It was so old it would probably be worth taking to the Antiques Road Show in another few years. But it worked. I didn’t want to talk to people, not to old friends and acquaintances in Chicago, not to my own relatives, certainly not to the Friends of the Firefighters or someone claiming they could save me money on my phone bills. So, I never answered my phone, even when I was in my office or my room. If I was there and I was willing to talk to the person who started to leave a message, I would pick up. My answering machine message to callers was eloquent in its simplicity: “Lew Fonesca. Leave a message.”

  I put a tentative finger on my cheek where Bubbles had slapped me. My cheek didn’t appreciate the touch. There were two messages on the machine.

  Message one: “This is Richard Tycinker’s assistant Janine. Mr. Tycinker has an order for appearance at a deposition for you to serve, maybe two if I get the paperwork and court date set this afternoon.”

  Message two: “Lew? Flo here. Give me a call. Adele’s… It’s about Adde.”

  Tycinker could wait. I didn’t like the way Flo sounded.

  I had known Flo Zink for about three years. She was loud, vulgar, sixty-eight years old, in love with country and western music, and very rich. Flo lived in a big house on the coast with a great view of Sarasota Bay. When her husband Gus had died two years earlier, Flo, who had developed a friendship with gin decades earlier, made it a love affair. Adele Hanford was an orphan who had been through more hell in her sixteen years of life than most families would experience in five generations.

  Adele had run away from her mother to join her father in Sarasota. Her father had not only sexually abused her but turned her over to a cheap pimp on the North Trail who had in turn sold her to a middle-time slug named John Pirannes. Adele was an orphan because her father had murdered her mother who had tried to protect Adele. Adele had shot Pirannes and her father was killed by… but that story’s over. With the help of family therapist and friend Sally Porovsky, I had managed to have Adele taken in by Flo as a foster child. Adele had gone straight. Adele was doing well at Sarasota High School, even won a few prizes for poetry and stories, one of which was published in Sarasota City Tempo magazine. Adele’s story was about an abused girl who runs away from her family and finds salvation and respect as a waitress. I liked the story. I didn’t like the message from Flo. Flo had given up her love affair with alcohol for the chance to take in Adele. I didn’t know with certainty how tempting the memory of the comfort of gin might be and Flo’s voice was a toss-up between tipsy and distraught. Adele wasn’t easy. Before I called Flo, I opened Marvin Uliaks’s album.

  Marvin’s album contained eighty photographs and a few postcards and newspaper clippings. Under each photograph Marvin had neatly printed in pencil the name of the person or persons or things in the photographs. No dates. I went through photographs of parents, aunts, uncles, people I supposed were friends, pictures of people clipped from magazines and newspapers including Mario Van Peebles, Al Unser, Bette Midler, Lionel Hampton, the Marlboro Man, Lainie Kazan, Bruce Cabot, and Douglas MacArthur. There were a few dozen of Marvin as he aged from golden childhood to gradual nearly blank homeliness. In each photograph, Marvin was smiling or grinning. He looked better smiling. There were also six photographs of Vera Lynn. In the most recent one she looked about eighteen, a pretty girl in a white Sunday dress with a big white bow in her short blond hair. Marvin’s little sister would be in her mid-forties now.

  I read the one letter in the album, the one Marvin had shown me. It didn’t help much. It was postmarked Dayton, Ohio. It was in pencil, short, written simply in block letters for a slow-witted brother or by a slow-minded sister.

  DEAR MARVIN,

  CHARLES AND I ARE MARRIED. WE ARE GOING TO MOVE. FORGIVE ME. I’LL WRITE AGAIN.

  YOUR SISTER, VERA LYNN

  Vera Lynn’s printing was clear. Finding her might be easy or impossible. If I ran into emptiness, I could simply give Marvin his album back. I wouldn’t insult him by trying to return the forty dollars.

  I decided to call Richard Tycinker’s office first. I got his secretary Janine who told me the papers were ready for me to pick up for delivery.

  “Bubbles Dreemer slapped me in the face when I slapped her with the papers,” I said.

  “Part of the job, Lewis,” she said.

  Janine was black, in her late thirties, raising two kids alone and managing to look like a model. Sympathy was not part of he
r job description.

  “I was telling you so you could make a note in her file for the next person who served her papers,” I explained.

  “If it happens,” she said, “it will probably be you.”

  “I’ll deliver it in a hockey mask,” I said.

  “Summons delivered by Michael Myers,” said Janine.

  “Might stun her long enough for me to get away.”

  “Might,” she agreed. “It would work on me.”

  “Is Harvey in?” I asked.

  Harvey was the official file coordinator for the firm of Tycinker, Oliver and Schwartz. His real job was unofficial computer hacker. Schwartz had offered me a retainer. I had turned down the retainer and agreed to a flat fee for each legal paper I delivered to the unwilling and often unsuspecting. Instead of the retainer, I got the use of Harvey’s talents when I needed them. Harvey had once been a successful businessman in love with alcohol, computers, and a series of three wives, all of whom eventually left him alone with his computers and the bottle. Lately he had cut out the alcohol and was spending more time on the computer, Diet Pepsi, and women. There was enough unravaged in the forty-nine-year-old Harvey to attract some very attractive women.

  Harvey had a very well equipped room down a corridor near the washrooms where the lawyers and secretaries could drop by and check on whether Harvey was drinking Diet Pepsi or something stronger.

  Some of what Harvey did bordered on the illegal. The firm knew it, counted on it and the signed document by Harvey that he would never engage in any illegal activity on the Internet.

  Janine connected me with Harvey, who answered, “Yes?”

  “It’s Lew,” I said. “Got your pen?”

  “Always.”

  “Vera Lynn Uliaks. Born, I think, in Ocala. Lived there till about 1970, somewhere in there. Moved to Dayton, Ohio, maybe. Probably got married there. Don’t know to who, someone named Charlie. Brother here in town, Marvin Uliaks.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” I said.

  “Are we in a hurry? I’ve got a few company projects.”

  “No big hurry,” I said.

  “Should have it for you by tomorrow,” said Harvey. “You want to call me?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Having a bad day, Lew?” he asked.

  “They’re all bad days,” I said.

  “I’ve been there,” Harvey answered. “Back to work.”

  He hung up. So did I.

  Flo Zink was next on my short list. The phone rang once. Actually, it was only half a ring when she picked it up.

  “Lew?” she asked.

  There was a lot in that question. Panic with a dash of fear and maybe, just maybe, a shot of Jack Daniel’s.

  “How are you, Flo?”

  “How am I? How am I? How the fuck do I sound?”

  “Charming,” I said.

  “How fast can you get here?” she asked.

  “On my bike? Half an hour.”

  “Rent a car. I’ll pay.”

  “Flo, what…?”

  “Adele’s gone. I’m not going to spill my soul on this goddamn telephone. Get here.”

  She hung up. I checked my watch. I had an appointment with Ann Horowitz in two hours. I don’t have a shower. I don’t have a sink or a toilet. I usually shower after my morning workout at the YMCA downtown, which is a ten-minute walk from my place. But there is a building rest-room outside my office and four doors down. It is not on the top ten list of facilities in Sarasota County, but it had a mirror and I had an electric razor, the same one my father had used for ten years before he died and my mother gave it to me in a box of his things. It worked well enough to get me through the day.

  The thin guy in the mirror looked at me and shook his head as we shaved. I normally didn’t take a good or even passing look at the man in the mirror. His cheek was Bubbles Dreemer pink. I didn’t like meeting his sad spaniel look. I washed, brushed my teeth, combed back my remaining hair, and felt no more ready to meet the world than I had when I got up that morning.

  The EZ Economy Car Rental Agency was six doors down on my side of 301. It had once been a Texaco gas station. The two guys who owned and ran the place were Alan and the older Fred. They looked like rotund cousins. They thought they had a sense of humor.

  “Ah, Mr. Lewis Fonesca. How can we be of service to you today?” asked the older, pink-cheeked Fred.

  Fred had a paper cup of coffee in his hand. Alan was nowhere in sight.

  “Where’s Alan?” I asked.

  “Home. Got Le Grippe, the flu, the bug.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Hey, he’s home losing weight, watching Judge Judy, drinking green tea, and chewing on Advil. He should be happy. How can I make you happy?”

  “What’ve you got?”

  “Personality,” said Fred who stood up from his desk and saluted me with his coffee. He was wearing navy slacks and a short-sleeved pullover with “EZ Economy” embossed in white on the single pocket. “And coffee. It’s bad but it’s strong. Put three packets of Equal in it and it’s tolerable.”

  ’Tempting,” I said, “but I’m thinking more of a deal on something small and cheap.”

  Fred took a sip of coffee and nodded to indicate he knew just what I wanted. I knew he did. He just wanted to bicker for a while.

  “Got a ‘99 GEO, tracker, runs smooth, fifteen thousand plus miles. How long you need it?”

  “I don’t know. A day, maybe two.”

  “One hundred a day, everything covered including insurance. Is that a bargain or is that a bargain?”

  “That’s a bargain,” I agreed. “Give me a better one.”

  Fred shrugged and drank some coffee. He looked deeply into the cup, maybe reading the grounds and my future.

  “How cheap we going here? You got a homeless client or something?”

  “Something,” I agreed.

  “The ‘88 Cutlass, the white one with ninety-four thousand miles. Looks good. Runs. I’ll sell it to you for five hundred.”

  “I’ll rent it for twenty-five a day,” I said.

  “You’re no fun today, Fonesca,” he said, going to the wall and taking a set of keys off one of the little hooks.

  “I didn’t know I was fun any day,” I said as he looked at me and tossed the keys.

  He was about to come back with something Fred clever but the telephone was ringing.

  “Car’s where it always is. I think it has some gas. I’ll keep a tab. Quick question.”

  The phone kept ringing.

  “Okay.”

  “Who gave you that cheek?”

  “Woman named Roberta Dreemer,” I said.

  “Bubbles,” said Fred. “She’s living hell.”

  “I’ve got the mark of the devil,” I said, thinking it was true in more ways than one.

  Fred picked up the phone and waved good-bye to me.

  “Glaucoma?” he said to whoever was on the other end of the phone.

  I didn’t stay to hear the rest. I headed for the white Cutlass.

  2

  It wasnt far to Flo’s place. I took Fruitville to the Trail, then down to Siesta Drive, made a right, crossed Osprey, and then took a left into Flo Zink’s driveway just before the bridge to Siesta Key. I would have preferred to keep going to the beach and just sit on a bench watching the gulls and pelicans.

  There was a small black Toyota in the circular driveway. The white minivan wasn’t there. Flo had lost her license twice in Florida for DUI violations. She hadn’t hurt anyone, but that wasn’t the point and she knew it. Flo had her license back but seldom drove even when ice-clear sober and when she did drive it was the white minivan.

  The door was opened before I had a chance to knock.

  Flo stood there, denim skirt, blue and red checkerboard shirt, and a glass in her hand. Her hair was white, cut short, and looking frizzy. Flo reminded me of Thelma Ritter, even looked a little like the actress. I told her that once. Her answer had been, “
Gus always said I looked like Greer Garson.”

  Behind Flo I could hear her stereo blasting from the speakers throughout the house. All she played was country and western music, most of it from decades ago. She liked Roy Acuff, Roy Rogers, and The Sons of the Pioneers. Patsy Cline was, however, her favorite and it was Patsy in the background wailing, “If you loved me half as much as I love you…”

  “Let’s get it out of the way before you come in,” she said. “I’ve been drinking. I plan to stop again when you find Adele and bring her home.”

  “Can I come in?”

  She stepped back and lifted her arm. I stepped in.

  Patsy sang, “… you wouldn’t do half the things you do.”

  “Can we turn the music down?”

  “Why not?” Flo said, leading me into the large living room and heading for the stereo against the wall. She turned a knob and Patsy faded into the background.

  “Adele worked this out,” she said. “Set up this Internet music thing, found a radio station in Fort Worth that plays my music, and figured out how to pipe it through the stereo. Adele is smart.”

  Flo took a drink and pressed her lips together.

  Flo’s home, a large sprawling one-story building with no exterior beauty but a great view of Sarasota Bay, was decorated in early Clint Eastwood. The furniture was ranch western and lots of Stickney. There were Navajo rugs on the wood floors and Hopi blankets on the sofas and chairs. Aside from the rugs and blankets, Flo’s house was dark wood and simple furniture. On the table in the center of the room between a sofa and two chairs sat a genuine Remington of a cowboy on a rearing horse. A stag head with massive antlers looked down at us from one wall.

  I sat in one of the chairs. Flo sat on the sofa, one arm draped over the back, the other holding the drink that she looked at from time to time to be sure it existed.

  “You want a drink?” she asked.

  “I’ve already had a beer this morning,” I said.

  Her eyebrows went up.

  “Careful there, sad eyes,” she said. “Beer can lead to all sorts of things. Let’s get to it. Adele’s gone, took the van. She’s… what happened to your face?”