Retribution lf-2

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “Know it,” he said.

  “Kid works there named Mickey. Don’t know his last name. Must be about twenty. See if you can track him down, find out where he lives. Adele might be with him.”

  “If I find her?” he asked.

  “Leave a message on my machine,” I said. “You ever hear of a writer named Conrad Lonsberg?”

  “I have.”

  “He lives out on Casey Key. He might know something about Adele. I’m waiting for him.”

  “Want help?”

  Which meant, do you want me to come down there with a shotgun, break down the door, and threaten the noted man of letters.

  “Not yet,” I said. “You read any of his books?”

  “Liked Plugged Nickels” said Ames. “Didn’t read the poetry. The first one, Fool’s… something.”

  “ Fool’s Lover,” I said.

  “Fool’s Love,” he said. “Couldn’t get through it. Too much feeling sorry for everybody.”

  “It’s considered a classic,” I said.

  “Not by me,” Ames said.

  “Can’t say I’m looking forward to finishing it,” I said.

  “Put it away. Try Plugged Nickels if you have to read him. I’ll call you.”

  I hung up, got back into the Cutlass, and drove over the bridge. It was almost dark when I parked across from Lonsberg’s gate. Across the Gulf of Mexico I could see the sun balanced big and yellow-red on the horizon line. A white heron flew in from the water and landed about a dozen feet from the car. It strutted, long-necked, gracefully, and then stood as still as a pink lawn flamingo. I was watching the sun beaming off the heron till the bird decided to look at me and fly back out over the water. I watched the sunset. A few seconds after it was down I heard the gate open.

  It was on some kind of automatic device like a garage door. A battered blue Ford pickup rumbled out and the gates closed behind it. I had my lights off though it was dark enough to use them. I followed whoever was in the Ford down the road, off the Key, and over the bridge toward the mainland.

  I stayed far enough behind that I hoped he wouldn’t see me but close enough that I wouldn’t lose him. He wasn’t going fast. Since the windows of the pickup were tinted, I couldn’t see who was driving but at least it was a human from the Lonsberg enclave. It was a start.

  The pickup went north and turned into the mall just before Sarasota Square and parked near the Publix. I parked in the next aisle.

  A lean, average-sized man with white hair, gray chinos, and a black short-sleeved polo shirt got out. The shirt wasn’t tucked in. I knew Lonsberg was about seventy. This man walked like a man twenty years younger and in a hurry. I followed. He got a cart at Publix. So did I. I followed him around and got a few decent looks. The face was sun-darkened, lined, good teeth that looked real, a serious look. He selected grits, eggs, cheese, a wide variety of vegetables, meat, chicken, fresh grouper, and a big jar of Vita herring in sour cream. He added six gallons of bottled water and six half gallons of Diet Dr Pepper before deciding he had all he needed or wanted. His eyes met no one’s and no one seemed to take note of him.

  I got behind him in line with my four cans of albacore tuna.

  While he emptied his cart, he looked back at me for an instant and in that instant he knew I recognized him. He turned his eyes back to his unpacking, his back to me.

  While the clerk was putting his groceries in plastic bags, I paid for my tuna and followed him out to his pickup.

  “Conrad Lonsberg,” I said.

  He said nothing, just piled his bags in the back of his pickup truck.

  “Adele Hanford,” I said as he opened the door of his pickup and started to get in. He stopped, turned his head, and looked at me. He knew how to stare someone down. He had obviously had a lot of experience. We were a good match. I had a lifetime of patience and since he didn’t close the door and drive away I was sure this contact was not over.

  “You’re Fonesca. Adele’s description was nearly perfect,” Lonsberg said, one hand on the trailer railing. “I thought she was engaging in a little creative hyperbole. Where is she?” he asked, his voice now low. I thought he was trying to keep himself in control, battling something. Rage, disappointment?

  “That was my question,” I said. “I’m looking for her.”

  “Why?”

  “It looks like she ran away from her foster home,” I said. “Her foster mother is a friend. Adele is… I’m sort of responsible for her.”

  “Flo Zink,” said Lonsberg, now tapping his left hand on the truck’s door. He kept looking at me and then made a decision. “Adele says you’re a private investigator.”

  “I’m a process server.”

  “What do you do not for a living?” he asked.

  “Brood, watch old movies, think too much about the past,” I said.

  He nodded in understanding. A fat woman with a full shopping cart wheeled noisily past us giving us both a glance. Lonsberg pressed his lips together, thought, looked away and then back at me.

  “Follow me,” Lonsberg said, getting into his pickup and closing the door.

  I got into the Cutlass and followed him out of the parking lot and down the Trail. Seven minutes later I pulled behind him at his gate. He leaned out of his open window and waved for me to get out of my car. I did. The passenger side door of his pickup opened. I got in next to him. He looked at me, pushed a button on the dashboard, and watched as the gate swung open. We drove in. He pushed the button again and the gate closed behind us.

  I don’t know what I expected to see, probably one of the three-story ultra-modern white concrete designer houses with wide windows, decks, and normative palm trees.

  We drove toward the only house on the three- or fouracre property, a reasonably modest one-story wooden building with a covered porch hovering over a trio of white wicker chairs and a wicker table. The house wasn’t small, but it wouldn’t go for more than one hundred eighty-five thousand in the current market in any other location. The grounds were green, the road we went down unpaved and narrow. To our left, however, was the Gulf of Mexico. The view and the expanse of beachfront would put the property in the two-million-dollar range. Along Lonsberg’s beach, birds strolled and waves rolled in. There were four plastic beach chairs not far from the shoreline facing the water. A sand pile about three feet high was in the process of giving itself up to the tide.

  Lonsberg parked in front of the house and got out.

  “Don’t worry about Jefferson,” he said as I got out too.

  “Jefferson?”

  At that moment I learned who Jefferson was. A gigantic dog of a dozen breeds looking like a hairy version of the Baskerville hound bounded around the house heading toward us. No, amend that. He was heading for me and barking. Jefferson knew how to bark.

  “No,” Lonsberg commanded gently.

  The dog hesitated, put his head down, and kept moving toward me, slowly now, growling.

  “Here,” Lonsberg called a little louder. The dog ran to him. Lonsberg put out his hand and the dog gave it a sloppy lick. Lonsberg patted the dog’s head. Jefferson closed his eyes in ecstasy.

  “He won’t bother you,” Lonsberg said, moving to the back of the pickup and handing me a bag of groceries.

  Lonsberg picked up the other bag and headed onto the low porch. Jefferson still seemed particularly interested in me. He stood there watching as we entered and followed us inside after Lonsberg opened the door. I felt the big dog nudge past me.

  Jefferson might not bother me but he was a significant distraction.

  I followed Lonsberg through the hallway, past a room to our left filled with books and bookshelves, a sofa, and two very old overstuffed chairs, one with a matching hassock. The sofa and chairs were a set. They looked as if they had been bought by someone’s great-grandmother who had recovered them a century ago with blue and red flowers against a background of what might have once been yellow but was now a worn-out off-white.

  A glimpse of another room on
the right as we moved to the sound of Jefferson’s claws ticking against the wooden floor revealed an office with a desk, more bookcases, a row of file cabinets. The desk was clear except for a computer and a printer.

  A few doors were closed. The kitchen was as big as the two rooms in which I lived and worked, which means it was an average-sized room with a wooden table in the middle surrounded by four chairs. Lonsberg put his bag on the table. So did I. Jefferson moved quickly to sniff at both bags. I could now see that Jefferson had jowls and large teeth. I had known Jeffersons in the past. He was a drooler.

  “Have a seat,” Lonsberg said, putting his groceries into cabinets and the refrigerator.

  I sat waiting. Jefferson decided to sit next to me and regard my face with his head tilted to one side.

  “Do the police know you’re looking for Adele?” he asked, stacking his cans in a cupboard.

  “No.”

  He shook his head as if that were solid and solemn good news. Then he turned, wiped his hands on his pants, and sat across from me.

  “What do you see, Fonesca?” he asked.

  “See?”

  “Me, what do you see?”

  “A man, lean, healthy-looking, good head of hair, serious, judging whether or not he’s going to tell me something.”

  “What do you know about me?” he asked.

  “Famous writer, haven’t published much. Man who likes his privacy.”

  “Have you read anything of mine?”

  “Fool’s Love, long time ago. I’m rereading it,” I said.

  Jefferson moved close to me and rested his head on my lap.

  “What do you think of it? The book?” Lonsberg asked, hands folded on the table.

  “It’s a classic, great book,” I said.

  “What do you think of it?” he repeated.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “So far, it’s not my kind of book. Maybe when I really get into it…”

  “It was a fluke,” Lonsberg said. “I was a kid who thought he could write. It was short, easy. I expected nothing to happen, except that I’d keep working in my father’s drugstore in Rochester, marry Evelyn Steuben, have children, go to pharmacy school. The book happened to hit the right agent and the right publisher at the right time. Teenage girl rebels, sets off on her own, learns the truth about people, the good, the bad, grows up fast, gets swept up in the anti-Vietnam business, moves in with a cello player old enough to be her grandfather. Controversy on that one. Publicity. Big success. Fonesca, the book is second-rate. Too short. Too easy with answers. It’s smart-ass wit and a few good observations.”

  “I think it’s better than that,” I said.

  “So does most of the world,” he said. “I don’t.”

  I wondered why this famous recluse was giving me the thirty-second biography and interview he wouldn’t have given to The New York Times or Time. I thought I knew.

  “Adele,” I reminded him.

  “Adele,” he said, turning his head toward the wall to his right. There was an eight-by-ten framed black-and-white photograph on his kitchen wall. Four people were lined up against a background of trees. The man was a young Lonsberg.

  “My wife, Evelyn,” he said, looking at the photograph. “My two kids, Laura and Brad. Both grown. Both with kids.”

  “Where are they?” I asked.

  “Evelyn? She died more than twenty years ago. Laura and Brad live here, not in the house. Laura is in Venice. Martin’s in Sarasota.”

  Jefferson drooled on my leg. I patted his head.

  “Adele,” I reminded him again.

  “What about you?” he asked. “Your story?”

  “My story?” I asked. “Why?”

  “Your story,” he repeated.

  “Adele,” I said again.

  He looked at me and nodded.

  “Your story first,” he said.

  I told him about my wife’s death, a little about my family, less about what I did, a mention of my depression.

  “What do you take for the depression?” he asked.

  “Nothing, I see a psychologist.”

  “I take Chinese herbs,” he said. “Acupuncture.

  “They work on my blood pressure, my liver problems, but they can’t penetrate, get inside whatever it really is that we call ‘soul.’”

  “Adele,” I said.

  “Come on,” he said, getting up. I eased myself away from Jefferson and followed Lonsberg through a door. Jefferson followed. At the end of a short hall was a door, a particularly thick wooden door. Lonsberg opened it with a key and we stepped in.

  It was a strange sight. Inside the room was a huge vault, the kind you might see in a bank. This vault door was open. I followed Lonsberg in.

  “What do you see?” he asked.

  “Empty shelves,” I said. “Except for that box.”

  The wooden box sat closed about chest high in the middle of one of the dark metal shelves.

  ’Two days ago they weren’t empty,” he said. “They were filled with manuscripts, neatly bound, carefully placed in folders, everything I’ve written over the past thirty-five years.”

  It had been rumored that Lonsberg had written a few books since he went into hiding from the world, but these empty shelves represented more than a few books.

  “Someone stole them?” I asked.

  “Adele,” he said.

  “Why? How?”

  “She knew about the vault,” he said, surveying the empty shelves. “I showed it to her, let her read a few things.”

  “You didn’t call the police?”

  “I’m a recluse,” Lonsberg said. “You know that. I started out just wanting to be away from the reporters, the fans, the scholars, and then it became a minor literary myth. I began to live it. It grew. The more I tried to protect my privacy, the more I was sought out by the determined. And the more reclusive I became. Now I like it that way. No, amend that. I’ve grown comfortable in my relative isolation. There’ve been rumors for years about my ‘secret’ writing. I was stupid enough in the last interview I gave I don’t know how many years ago to a small magazine, stupid enough to say that I still write. I don’t want the police. I don’t want to be in newspapers and tabloids. I don’t want television crews parked at my gate. I dread stepping into a courtroom, a press of reporters, a gaggle of fans.”

  “A press of reporters,” I said. “A gaggle of fans. Like a pride of lions?”

  “A literary critic has finally entered my house,” he said flatly.

  “No, I’m a man trying to find a missing girl. You think Adele took everything?”

  “Yes, and I want it all back,” Lonsberg said. “No questions asked. No charges filed. I’m told the manuscripts are worth millions of dollars. Be worth more when I die. Those books and stories are my legacy to my children and grandchildren.”

  “Why didn’t you just have some of them published while you’re alive?”

  He looked at me intently.

  “I write because I must,” he said. “I don’t want to be misunderstood by a world that will laud, speculate, read my stories and contort them into their stories, turn my work into movies or television miniseries. It happens to them all. If it can happen to Tolstoy, Melville, Dickens who are perfectly clear, it can and will happen to a minor quirk in the history of literature named Lonsberg. Let it happen when I’m dead. I write them to stay sane, to trap my demons on paper. I’ve got some money that still comes in from my books, but I’m not rich. And every year the fewer and fewer things written about my work have grown more obtuse and stupid. People should read novels and short stories instead of reading books about novels and short stories.”

  Jefferson was sniffing at the shelves. Lonsberg and I watched. And then Lonsberg spoke again.

  “You know Adele,” he said. “You’re a process server. You know how to find people and you know how to keep quiet. Find her. Return my manuscripts. I’ll give you five thousand dollars if you get my work ba
ck. Quietly.”

  “And Adele…?” I asked.

  “No questions,” he said. “I get my manuscripts back and press no charges.”

  “I’ve got questions,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “Why would she do this?” I said, looking around at the empty shelves in the vault.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  I had a feeling he did, but there are right and wrong times and ways to deal with lies. It takes a feel for the person who is lying to me. I can call someone a liar, which results in grief, almost always mine. Or I can wait till I find the truth myself or the right time to ask the question again. I usually wait.

  “Holding them for ransom?” I asked.

  “No,” he said.

  “Why?”

  Lonsberg moved to the wooden box, took it down, and brought it to me.

  “Open it,” he said.

  I took the box and opened it. It was filled with cash. Fifties, twenties, hundreds, tens, fives.

  “Forty-six thousand four hundred in that box. Adele knew it was there. There are other places in the house with a lot more money. I don’t use banks. Adele knew where it all was. There’s not a dollar missing.”

  He looked at me and took the box back.

  “Makes no sense, does it?” he said.

  “So she took them to hurt you,” I pushed, knowing I could push only a little further, but I decided the moment was right. He looked just a bit bewildered by the emptiness of the vault. “Did you and Adele ever?”

  “Sex?” he asked. “No. Would I have liked to? Yes, I’m old but I’m not dead. I also know what statutory rape is. I never touched her, never even kissed her. I have a grandson older than Adele. I turn seventy in two weeks. Letting my ancient libido go at the risk of losing Adele’s talent would have been stupid. Do you think I’m stupid?”

  “You’re not stupid. Then…?” I asked.

  “You’ll have to ask her,” he said. “Well?”

  “One short story,” I said.

  “What?”

  “If I find her,” I said, “and you get your manuscripts back, you give me one short story, any one.”

  “No. I’ll give you the five thousand dollars,” he said.

  “One short story,” I answered. “Full rights.”