Retribution lf-2

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  The Digger was sitting at one of the canopied metal tables in front of the DQ eating his Thai food and drinking what I assumed was a large root beer. I nodded to him and he nodded back as I stopped at the open window of the DQ. Dave was there. Dave, leather-worn by the sun, the face of an adventurer. He reminded me of Sterling Hayden.

  “What do you have ready I can eat while I walk?” I asked.

  Dave looked back.

  “Double burger with cheese,” he said.

  “I’ll take it.”

  “You got it.”

  I paid and said, “How’s the sailing?”

  “I’m thinking of taking her around the world,” he said. “Sell this place and go. A year. Maybe more. You can come. I mean it. You don’t talk much. You’re a good listener. I could teach you enough so you could help and I’d supply provisions.”

  “I get seasick,” I said, accepting the double burger and handing him two dollar bills.

  “You’d get over it,” Dave said.

  “Can you play tapes on your ship?”

  “Songs?”

  “Videos,” I said. “If I go, Joan Crawford goes.”

  “Fonesca, you’re saying no to a dream here.”

  “It’s your dream, Dave.”

  “Think about it,” he said.

  There were customers behind me, a pair of old women.

  “I will,” I said, knowing I wouldn’t as I stepped away and headed for Detective Ed Viviase.

  6

  The door to Viviase’s office was open. His name was Etienne. No one called him Etienne, not, according to him, even his wife. He was Ed. That’s what it said on the small plaque on his desk: “Detective Ed Viviase.”

  The last time I had been in the office, there were scaffolds against two walls that were going to be painted the same shade of detective brown as the other two. This time there was no scaffolding, just a large office with very little furniture, three metal desks, a couple of chairs, and a line of file cabinets. Each desk held a computer and stacks of papers and reports threatening to tumble or already tumbled.

  Viviase was the only detective in the room. I guess he had seniority. He was closest to the window in the room.

  “Lewis,” he said, shaking his head as he looked up at me from behind his desk over the glasses perched on the end of his ample nose.

  It was getting to be our regular routine.

  Viviase was a little under six feet tall, a little over fifty years old, and a little over two hundred twenty pounds. His hair was short, dark, and his face was that of a man filled with sympathy, the smooth pink face of a man whose genes were good and who probably didn’t drink. He was wearing a rumpled sports jacket and a red tie. He looked like a policeman, a cup of coffee in front of him, an already tired look on his face though it was a little before ten in the morning.

  I knew he had a wife, kids, worries about his older daughter’s tuition and bills at the University of Florida, and an inability to resist carbohydrate intake. Ergo, the oversized chocolate-filled croissant on a napkin next to his coffee cup.

  “Have a seat,” he said. “We’ll play a game.”

  I sat across from him. He held up his cup, wanting to know if I’d like some coffee. I had drunk some of the coffee from the machine down the hall once before. The pain had been bearable.

  “Okay,” said Viviase, “let’s play.” He took a long drink of coffee making a face that suggested he was ingesting prison-made whiskey. “I describe two men. You tell me if they resemble anyone you know.”

  I nodded.

  “One man is short, on the thin side, balding, looks like his pet turtle just got mashed on McIntosh Road. With him is a tall old man, denim, flannel, maybe even cowboy boots. Old man stands tall, looks like a cowboy.”

  I shrugged.

  “You want to use a life line? Call a friend who might have an idea?” he asked.

  “It sounds like me and Ames,” I said.

  “That your final answer?”

  “Sounds like me and Ames.”

  “Then,” he said, looking at his coffee and donut and settling on a bite of donut, “that would place the two of you at the home of a man who was murdered last night. Man’s name was Corsello, Bernard Corsello, sixty-nine, retired shoe salesman from Utica.”

  “Someone said Ames and I killed this Corsello?”

  “No,” Viviase said with a shake of his head and a cheek full of croissant. “Three kids driving by Corsello’s house said they saw two men go up to Corsello’s door. They were on bikes. The kids, not the men. When they drove past the house about five minutes later, they saw two white men fitting yours and Ames McKinney’s description getting into a white car, an old white car with a blue top. You renting a car, Lewis?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Happen to be white with a blue top?”

  “Yes.”

  He swiveled his chair, took off his glasses, and looked out the window. His back to me now he said, “Corsello was shot, bam, once, right through the stomach, tore a hole in his heart. Bullet dug its way through his back into the hallway wall. Shaeffer hasn’t had much time but he thinks it’s a nine-millimeter from a Glock. Nice gun, the Glock. Costs a lot but you get your money’s worth. Lightweight, easy to shoot, no kickback, almost indestructible. Know anyone with a gun like that?”

  “No,” I said.

  “If your friend Ames were to carry a weapon, what would you guess it would be?” Viviase swiveled back to face me and adjusted his glasses. His right hand reached for the donut and then clasped his left instead. He began tapping his thumbs together.

  “Ames isn’t allowed to carry a gun,” I said.

  “I know. I said ‘if,’” Viviase reminded me.

  “Something old, heavy, noisy, reliable,” I said.

  Viviase shook his head.

  “What did you find in Corsello’s house?” he asked.

  “I wasn’t at Corsello’s house,” I said. “It was another tall cowboy and short Italian.”

  He unclenched his hands and downed more coffee.

  “Maybe this will help,” he said. “We know you didn’t kill Corsello, at least not the time the kids saw you. He’d been dead for hours. But you were in there with the body for at least five minutes.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Lewie, don’t make me bring those kids in here for a lineup,” he said. “Waste my time, your time. And I don’t like one of the kids. Smart mouth. X-rated mouth. Seen too many movies with that black guy, what’s his name, Martin Lawrence.”

  “We knocked,” I said. “The door was open.”

  “Progress,” Viviase said with a very false smile, reaching for his coffee. “Go on.”

  “We went in, found him dead. Got out and I called nine-one-one.”

  “Didn’t leave your name,” Viviase said. “Tape sounds like someone doing a bad imitation of Rex Harrison.”

  “James Mason,” I said.

  “You left the scene of a crime, a homicide.”

  “I panicked. I called the police,” I said.

  Viviase was shaking his head now. When he stopped, he adjusted his glasses and said, “Why were you there? What were you looking for in his house? What did you find?”

  Viviase was well acquainted with Adele, former child prostitute, abused daughter, suspect in a murder. He knew Adele lived with Flo now. He knew a lot but he wasn’t going to get anything more from me.

  “He called me,” I lied. Lying is no problem for me. I have a good memory. It takes a good memory to be a successful liar.

  “Why?” Viviase asked, sitting back with his hands behind his head in an I-know-you’re-lying pose.

  “Don’t know, just asked me to come over about six.”

  “When did he call?”

  “Morning,” I said to give myself as much room as possible to be sure he hadn’t died before my created phone call. “Early morning.”

  “Why would he ask a depressed process server to come to his house?” Viviase asked.
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  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Why did you agree to see him?”

  “He said it was important.”

  “What did you find in those five or ten minutes you and McKinney were alone in the house?”

  “We weren’t in there four or five or ten minutes,” I said. “Maybe two minutes to be sure he was dead and another minute to be sure the killer or someone else wasn’t still in the house.”

  “Michael Merrymen,” he said. “Recognize the name?”

  “Ames and I went to see him yesterday,” I said. “What does he have to do…”

  “He’s the dead man’s son-in-law,” explained Viviase. “See this file?”

  He held up a green folder about two inches thick with papers creeping out. “Michael Merrymen is a lunatic. He has sued and been sued by some of the best and worst people in Sarasota. He has threatened bodily harm, frightened children, and is suspected of destroying the lawns, automobiles, vegetation, and small animals of neighbors. So, question three. Why did you go see Merrymen? He says you did. You and Ames and that Ames almost killed his dog with a baseball bat.”

  “You said the man’s crazy,” I said.

  “Crazy, not blind. The dog’s almost dead.”

  “Why does Merrymen say we were there?” I asked innocently.

  “To spy on him for his neighbors. He claims you represented yourselves as police officers.”

  It was getting deep now. I almost considered asking for a cup of coffee, but I wasn’t that desperate yet.

  “We were looking for Merrymen’s son,” I said.

  Viviase slapped the desk with both hands. The coffee cup, croissant remnant, and piles of paper jumped.

  “Progress. Fill in.”

  “Merrymen made no sense. He didn’t know where his son was.”

  “Why were you looking for his son?”

  “I think he can help me track down someone I have papers to serve on.”

  “Who?”

  “Can’t divulge,” I said.

  “How does contempt sound to you?”

  “Like a word I’ve heard a lot.”

  “So, you get a call from the dead guy in the morning…”

  “He was alive when he called,” I corrected.

  “I stand corrected. You get a call to come to his house at six. Doesn’t say why. Then you go to Michael Merry-men’s house to look for his son Mickey. No Mickey. So, in a coincidence that rivals walking into your dear departed wife on a small street corner in Budapest, you go to the house of the grandfather of the very Mickey Merrymen you’re looking for.”

  “A man in Hint, Michigan, got killed by frozen human waste that fell from an airplane last week,” I said. “He was a hard hat at a construction site. Took the hat off for an instant to wipe his brow and…”

  “Very enlightening,” Viviase said. “Let’s say the kid you’re looking for, Mickey Merrymen, lived most of the time in his grandfather’s house. Let’s say maybe he has inherited some of his father’s tendency toward out-of-control lunacy. Let’s say he shot his grandfather, took his money, whatever there was of it, and ran. Let’s say the kid you’re looking for is our prime suspect.”

  “I’m not after him,” I said. “I’m after someone he knows.”

  “What do we call that? A non sequitur? An abrupt change in subject? Who are you looking for and do you know where Mickey Merrymen is?”

  “I don’t know where Mickey Merrymen is,” I said. “Who I’m looking for has nothing to do with Corsello’s murder.”

  With the palms of his hands, Viviase rubbed his hair and looked down in thought. Then he straightened up and brushed his hair back with his fingers.

  “When I find out who you’re looking for, who’s connected to Mickey Merrymen,” he said calmly, “we’ll have another talk. One with higher stakes.”

  “You going to talk to Ames?” I asked.

  “What good would it do,” he said. “That old man would tell us his name and not say another word. That’s what he did the last time. I expect he would do the same again. You can go.”

  He tossed the end of his croissant into his mouth and washed it down with coffee.

  “I hope I’ve helped,” I said.

  “Not in the least,” he answered pleasantly. “Lewis, you can leave now.”

  I left.

  When I got back to my office, I called Harvey the human computer.

  “Got a little something for you, Lewis,” he said. I could hear him clacking away at his computer while we spoke. “On April 12, 1975, in the town of Arcadia, Florida, a young woman named Sarah Taylor fell to her death from the window of the city building. Witnesses in the office were Sheriff Charles Dorsey and a Miss Vera Lynn Uliaks. You getting this, Lewis?”

  “Yes?”

  “The mourning period was all of two weeks before he quit his job and moved away. Vera Lynn packed up and left the same day. Someone found out the ex-sheriff and Vera Lynn were married in Ohio. A small item on the subject appeared in the newspaper.”

  “Story on Sarah Taylor’s fall?”

  “Listed as accident. That’s all I can get. And I can’t track down a Charles or Vera Lynn Dorsey, not in Ohio, not anywhere. I’ll keep on it. But I can tell you where to find Clark Dorsey, Charlie’s brother.”

  “Where?”

  “Retired,” Harvey said. “Former fireman in Arcadia. Lives in Osprey, right off Old Venice Road. Open your white pages. He’s listed.”

  “Thanks, Harve.”

  “Let me know how it comes out,” he said. “Holy piss. I’ve just broken into the Pentagon files.”

  “I thought you already did that,” I said.

  “But they keep changing passwords and access codes. Gets harder all the time.”

  “Have a good day, Harve,” I said.

  “It already is,” he said.

  I pulled out the sheet Lonsberg had given me with the phone numbers and addresses of his son and daughter. Osprey is on the way to Venice, no more than half an hour away, and Venice another ten minutes.

  With the neatly folded threat that had been posted on my door tucked into my shirt pocket, I called Ames McKinney and asked him what his day was like.

  “Cleaning and contemplation,” he said.

  I told him the police might be talking to him about our discovery of Corsello’s body and told him what I had said. Then I asked him if he wanted to take a ride to Osprey and Venice.

  “Armed?”

  “Lightly,” I said.

  “When?”

  “Pick you up in ten minutes.”

  “Can you make it an hour?” he said. “I’m working on the grill.”

  I agreed and walked over to Gwen’s Diner. It was a little early for lunch but I was hungry. Gwen’s is a holdover from a few years before the day Elvis supposedly came in in the 1950s. I looked over at Elvis. He was still smiling. There were two booths open. I went to the counter. If you looked out the window from any seat in Gwen’s, you could watch the collisions where 301 met the curve at Tamiami Trail.

  There was a nonsmoking section in Gwen’s, not a real one, just a couple of tables set aside. People in the neighborhood called the place Gwen’s II. The original Gwen, if she ever existed, was now long gone. The place was run by a woman named Sheila and her two teenage daughters, one of whom was about to graduate from Sarasota High School a block away, the other was seventeen and working on her second baby. Jesse, the younger one, short, blond, round with child, came up to me when I sat at the counter next to Tim from Steubenville. Tim was a regular, close to ninety. He lived in an assisted living home a short walk away at the end of Brother Geenen Way. He spent as much time as he could at Gwen’s reading the newspaper, shaking his head, and trying to get people engaged in conversation over anything from the price of gasoline to the latest school shooting.

  There was very little left of Tim from Steubenville. Blue veins undulated over the thin bones in his hands as he turned pages of the Herald-Tribune and shook his head.

>   “Fonesca,” he said as Jesse poured me a coffee and waited.

  “Fried egg sandwich,” I said. “White toast.”

  “Tomato and onion?” she asked.

  “Tomato, I’m working today.”

  “Fonesca,” Tim from Steubenville repeated, tapping my arm.

  It was a little after eleven. The place was empty except for me, Tim, and four guys who looked like air-conditioning repairmen in a booth drinking coffee and eating pie.

  “Tim,” I said.

  “You see about this guy in Nebraska,” he said, poking a finger at an article in the newspaper awkwardly folded. “Someone stuck a rattler in his mailbox.”

  “Did it bite him?” I asked.

  “No, scared the shit out of him though,” Tim said thoughtfully. “How’d you like to get up some morning, walk out to your mailbox expecting your pension check or AAA card, and find a rattlesnake.”

  “I don’t have a mailbox,” I said. “Just a slot in the door.”

  “Not the point, Fonesca.”

  He shook his head at my density and sipped at his sixth or seventh cup of coffee.

  “Point is,” he said. “You can be going along, minding your own business, thinking about some old song by Perry Como or Peggy Lee or what you might have for lunch, and bango-bamo, you got a snake hanging on your goddamn nose. Anything can happen. That’s the truth of the news, what it really tells you. People don’t understand. We don’t have to know when there’s a train derailed in Pakistan or a drug dealer gets knocked off in Colombia. Who needs to know that?”

  I could think of some people but I just nodded at Jesse as she placed a mug of coffee in front of me.

  “Point is that the newspapers are telling us that anything can happen, anytime. Careful doesn’t take care of half of that. The newspaper is like the goddamn Bible. The Bible says God can do whatever He damn well pleases without giving a reason or making sense. We have to learn to take whatever comes and like it. Arguing with God is like arguing with the news. Same lesson.”

  “I agree,” I said. ‘Tim, you’re a philosopher.”