Retribution lf-2

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “Let me buy you a drink,” I said.

  “Just a Pepsi will do,” said Marvin, sitting up with dignity. “You got any sisters, Mr. Fonesca?”

  “No,” I said, trying to get Billy’s attention behind the bar.

  “Too bad,” said Marvin softly. “Too bad.”

  I hardly heard him. The air was full of music.

  14

  When I got back to my place, the answering machine told me I had three messages. I couldn’t listen to them. I went into my room, took off my clothes, put on clean underwear, and went to bed. I fell asleep, waking in the morning from a nightmare I couldn’t fully remember though I knew it had something to do with a huge inflated white balloon chasing me on a beach. The ringing of my phone woke me from the dream as something punctured the balloon. The balloon was still screaming as the phone rang.

  The answering machine kicked in and I could hear Adele’s voice. I got up quickly but was too late. She had hung up after a very short message.

  I fast-forwarded past the three messages before it and heard Adele’s voice say, “Lew, I read the paper yesterday morning. Meet me at Spanish Point at noon.”

  My watch said it was a little after eight and the sun coming through the window confirmed the fact. I turned to the window and saw Digger’s face pressed against it. Being pressed against the glass actually improved his battered features. He was squinting in, looking toward me, leaving fingerprints on the window. I scratched my head and still in my underwear opened the door.

  “Is this a bad time?” he said.

  “It’s a bad day,” I said, heading back to my answering machine.

  “I brought you somethin’,” he said, reaching into his pocket.

  It was a white plastic cup.

  “Waitress at Gwen’s said you take your coffee with cream and sugar,” Digger said, holding out his offering.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I’m working now,” Digger said.

  He was, in fact, slightly better dressed than usual. His pants were ancient jeans showing a lot of white and his solid blue short-sleeved shirt was wrinkled. Over the pocket of the shirt stitched in white was “Bobby Jones Golf.”

  “You’re a caddy?” I asked, taking the lid off the coffee.

  “No, no,” he said, stepping in and closing the door. “Manpower. I signed up. I go to this place over on Fruitville and they send you out on day jobs, loading trucks, packing stuff up in boxes, digging holes. Six bucks an hour. Worked yesterday. They pay right when you come back from a job. Minimum wage, which is all I need.”

  “Congratulations and welcome to paradise,” I said, toasting him with my warm coffee.

  “Yeah,” he said, what looked like a thoughtful smile on his face.

  “You should share the news with your friends.”

  “I have,” said Digger. “My friend who sleeps under the bench in Bayfront Park and you. You’re my only friends. I ain’t crabbing about that. It’s all I can handle. Had too many friends before I hit the skids, the bottle, and the bottom.”

  “I’ve got to get to work, Digger,” I said.

  “Had to give them my name at Manpower,” he said pensively. “For a second there I couldn’t remember. Been Digger so long. But you should know in case I forget. Name’s Ben, Benjamin Kanujian, but don’t call me that. Call me Digger. I’m goin’ to Manpower now.”

  “Thanks for the coffee,” I said.

  “What’re friends for?” he said as he closed the door behind him.

  I thought it was a good question. I thought about my balloon dream as I listened to my answering machine. There had been that television series, The Prisoner, where a big white balloon rolled around keeping people from escaping from an island. That show had given me nightmares when I was a kid. And there was Vera Lynn in her white dress punctured by a bullet from her husband’s gun. Maybe I was missing something. I’d check it out with Ann Horowitz if I remembered.

  Two of the messages were from Adele, one saying that she had read the article, the other saying that she’d call, which she had this morning. The final message informed me that if I didn’t pick up and serve the papers on Bubbles Dreemer this morning, someone else would be found to do it.

  I shaved, washed and dressed, and made a phone call.

  I was lucky, Clark Dorsey didn’t answer the phone, but maybe it wasn’t luck, maybe his wife always answered.

  “Mrs. Dorsey, this is Lew Fonesca,” I said.

  “You found them, Charles and Vera Lynn?” she asked almost in a whisper.

  “I found them,” I said.

  “Clark is working on the new room,” she said. “I can get him.”

  “No,” I said. “You can tell him or not tell him. It’s up to you. Vera Lynn is dead and Charles doesn’t want to be found.”

  “Vera Lynn is dead,” she repeated flatly. “How?”

  “An accident,” I said. “But you were right.”

  “I was right? About what?”

  “You put those notes on my door telling me to stop looking for Vera Lynn, didn’t you?”

  There was silence.

  “I’ll tear them up,” I said.

  “I put them on your door,” she said, her voice so low that I could barely hear her. “After Sarah’s death and… I just didn’t want anyone else hurt. I didn’t want my husband to go through any more.”

  “You don’t have to tell him,” I said.

  “I probably won’t,” she said. “Thank you.”

  She hung up. She had been right. If Ames and I hadn’t gone to Vanaloosa, Vera Lynn would be alive. She wouldn’t be in my dreams. She and Charles Dorsey would probably have lived on entombed in that house torturing and supporting each other till she died of obesity or he went crazy.

  I picked up a copy of yesterday’s Herald-Tribune at Gwen’s and read Rubin’s front-page by lined story as I ate the breakfast special, two eggs, two slices of bacon, grits, and coffee for two dollars. Brad Lonsberg had, according to the story that included separate photographs of Brad and Conrad Lonsberg, turned himself in to the police and confessed to two murders. Brad had given no reason for his actions. I doubted he ever would. The photograph of Conrad Lonsberg was recent. The writer had been snapped as he loaded a bag of groceries into his pickup truck. Conrad Lonsberg was looking directly at the camera with clear exasperation.

  There would be many more pictures of Conrad Lonsberg now. He could run or hide but he was surely a hot news item again. People, US, Time, Newsweek, the wire services, and the television networks probably had a twenty-four-hour vigil outside his gate.

  I finished my breakfast and headed for the trailer park. What I had for Bubbles was a summons for a court appearance. I needed her signature. I did not need a knee in the groin or a fist in my face.

  Maybe Bubbles had been part of my dream. Chased by a giant white bubble. I drove into the trailer park across from the Pines Nursing Home, parked in front of Bubbles’s trailer, and procrastinated by taking out my notebook and writing what I could remember of my dream and what connections I had made. It didn’t take long. I took the court appearance order and my clipboard with the statement requiring her signature clipped to it. I had two black ballpoint pens in my shirt pocket. I approached the trailer looking at the small dingy windows. There was no sign of life.

  I knocked and stepped back hoping I could outrun her to my car. I had left the engine running and the door open.

  I was about to knock again when she opened the door wide.

  “Roberta Dreemer, I’ve been instructed to give you this summons and to ask for your signature to confirm that you’ve received it.”

  She was wearing a faded red T-shirt and a green skirt that didn’t match. I readied myself for an attack. I got tears.

  “Give it to me,” she said, snatching the summons and the board.

  I handed her the pen. She cried. She signed and returned the pen and clipboard to me. Then she looked at the paper in her hand.

  “I don’t deserve this
,” she said, still crying. “Believe me, I don’t deserve this.”

  “I believe you,” I said, stepping back.

  “You know a good lawyer?” she asked.

  “Depends on what you can afford to pay?”

  “I can pay with shit,” she said. “Look at this place. You think I’ve got any money.”

  “If you want me to, I’ll ask around,” I said.

  “I’d appreciate that,” she said sincerely, trying to hold back her tears now.

  “That’s okay,” I said.

  I left her standing in the doorway looking at the papers I had given her. I drove away slowly reminding myself of what I often forgot. You never really know what to expect from people.

  I drove down Tamiami Trail to Osprey passing Sarasota Square on the way and arrived at Spanish Point at noon on the dot.

  I had never been to this particularly historic site before but I knew a little about it from Dave at the DQ who took his boat down here frequently and liked to know about what he was seeing and where he was stopping. He was a walking encyclopedia of Florida coastal history.

  More than four thousand years ago, people lived on Spanish Point. There is a burial mound and two middens or shell mounds that contain evidence of the lives of these people. These ancient Floridians fished, hunted, made shell, bone, and wooden tools, fished with nets, cooked their food, and buried their dead. The place was named Spanish Point just after the Civil War by its first white settlers, the Webb family, thousands of years after its original inhabitants were long gone. The Webbs heard about the supposedly beautiful spot from a Spanish trader they met in Key West. The family farmed at Spanish Point for forty years and are buried there.

  I parked looking for the white minivan. There was none. I paid my seven-dollar entry fee.

  The Point was eventually purchased by the widow of Potter Palmer. In fact, I knew that she and the Palmers had purchased much of the Sarasota area in the early part of the twentieth century. Berthe Matilde Honore Palmer-I got most of this part from the flyer a young woman handed me when I paid the entry fee-built an estate on the Point. In 1980 the Potter family turned the Point over to the Gulf Coast Heritage Association, Inc. That too was in the flyer.

  There are more than thirty acres at Spanish Point with jungle walks, a sunken garden, and lots of other things. I skipped the jungle walk and headed for the water in search of Adele. Adele loved the beach. She could lose herself in daydreams when she looked out at the Gulf waters.

  It was a hot day. Few tourists. The beach was empty except for me and two women. Waves from Little Sarasota Bay were coming in gently.

  Adele was seated cross-legged in the sand near the water’s edge throwing small shells into the water. Flo sat next to her wearing a big, broad-brimmed hat, sunglasses, and a blue dress with the image of a dolphin leaping between her breasts. Adele wore jeans, sandals, and a multicolored man’s shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

  Flo had watched my approach. Adele didn’t look up till I was next to them. She was a beautiful girl and while she was gaining weight from the pregnancy, she had lost the last of her baby fat. Her face was unblemished. Her blond hair brushed back, cut short. She was smiling.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi,” Adele answered.

  “How are you doing, Flo?”

  “Clean and sober and, goddammit, signed up for AA.”

  She definitely sounded sober.

  Flo was smiling too. They both looked as if they were having a good time. That made two out of three.

  “The bastard’s manuscripts are in the minivan, what’s left of them,” Adele said, still cross-legged and looking back into the bay. “I parked the van in the lot at Pine View School.”

  Pine View was the public school for the gifted in Sarasota County. It was no more than five minutes from where we sat.

  “Here,” Adele said, reaching into her pocket, fishing out the keys to the van, and flipping them to me. I caught them.

  “Good catch,” she said.

  “I used to play Little League,” I said. “Good field. Couldn’t hit. I was small so I got walked a lot.”

  “I’m keeping the baby,” Adele said, turning her head back to the water and folding her arms on her knees.

  “That’s fine, but…” I began as Flo jumped in.

  “Sally’s going to help me legally adopt Adele. She’ll become Adele Zink. When the baby’s born, Adele’s going back to school. I’ll hire someone to help and I’ll take care of the baby.”

  “I want to just get rid of the past,” Adele said. “Throw it in the ocean, starting with my father’s name. I could have gone back to my mother’s last name, Tree, but I want to be a different person. I don’t want Lonsberg, Hanford, or Tree tying me and my baby to the past.”

  “Like the girl in Fool’s Love,” I said.

  “I suppose,” she agreed. “How can someone who can get inside a person’s head so perfectly be such an asshole?”

  “Conrad Lonsberg?”

  “Who else?” Adele said.

  “How did you get here?” I said. ‘To the Point?”

  “I drove,” Flo said, still smiling.

  Flo’s license was suspended and Adele had none. I hoped they would make it back to Flo’s carefully and wondered who was going to drive.

  “Be careful going back home,” I said.

  “I’ve got a daughter and grandchild to protect,” said Flo. “Can you beat that, Lew? I’m gonna be a goddamn mother and grandmother just like that. I wish Gus had lived to see it.”

  I knew what I was going to do: drive to Pine View, leave the Taurus, and drive the minivan to Lonsberg’s. I’d get past whatever reporters and cameras happened to be there, say nothing, and hope I could get Lonsberg to open his gate so I could drive in. I didn’t want to talk to Lonsberg though I wouldn’t have minded seeing Jefferson. Maybe he would have another shell for me.

  After a day or two I would call Laura. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to talk to a Lonsberg again in my life, but she deserved something from me. I wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe a chance to thank me. Maybe a chance to say I had ruined her life.

  “We’ve picked out a name for the baby,” said Flo. “Adele suggested Gus if it’s a boy but I don’t think that’s a good name.”

  “No offense,” said Adele, “but I’m not too taken with the name Lewis.”

  “I’ve gone through phases about it myself,” I said.

  “So we came up with Ames,” said Flo.

  “I want to be there when you tell Ames you’re naming a baby after him,” I said.

  “You’ll be there, but we’re going to wait and see if it is a boy,” said Flo.

  “We asked Sally if she had any ideas for girls’ names,” said Adele. She turned and looked up at me. “She came up with a good one, thought you’d like it.”

  “And?” I asked.

  “Catherine,” Adele said.

  I sat next to Adele. I couldn’t stand. Catherine was my wife’s name. Sally and Ann Horowitz were the only ones I had mentioned it to.

  “You all right?” Adele asked, putting her hand on my shoulder.

  I turned my face to the water so she couldn’t see it.

  “If you don’t like the name Catherine…” Adele began.

  “No,” I said, holding back a threatened rush of confusion, gratitude, and tears. “It’s perfect.”

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