Godsend

by Barry Knister

  He circled the drive. George Ivy hadn’t cared about his father. He had left him in the care of nurses and hired attendants. Until it was Chester Ivy’s time, All Hands on Deck had been good to the old man, just the way they were good to Dale Burlson’s mother-in-law and forty-two other old people. You deserve the Pursuit, Rivera thought. But you’d never get it.

  The 5 picture was different. He had earned it and it was his. Wherever he went, he would take it with him.

  Ivy was staring at him in the rearview. Rivera looked to the road. Deserving didn’t matter to such people—but you couldn’t let emotions get in the way. Kleinman said people failed all the time at business because of their feelings. This is big, Jimmy, listen carefully. Pay attention. The joke goes like this. I blew ninety percent of my money on booze, broads, and boats. The rest I wasted. Get it? If you understand the joke, you know what I mean. Booze, broads, and boats—all emotions. That’s ninety percent of the guy’s attitude. Don’t let it happen, Jimmy. Stay off the sauce, and keep it in your pants. And don’t drop any money on big-ticket items except real estate. Stick to business, keep your head on straight. Read me?

  “Your cousin got in under the wire—” Rivera glanced again at the mirror. Ivy was snapping on his seatbelt and sat back.

  “He’s older than you by four or five years,” Ivy said. “That put him here sometime in the early nineties. Starting in ’94, a section of the Immigration and Naturalization Act allowed illegals to stay here and become permanent residents. They applied and also paid a penalty. That’s what your cousin did, but then the law was changed in ’98. It required people to petition, or apply for labor certification. You had to file before January of ’98. You came the following year.”

  Ivy looked again in the mirror. “What is it, the fingerprint? You have to enter the database, otherwise, it’s no go.”

  Rivera said nothing. Ivy had gone to the INS website. He was almost quoting from it. “Yeah,” Ivy said, still looking in the rearview. “If you want Permanent Resident status, that requires an FBI fingerprint and background check. Something tells me you wouldn’t want that. You might be able to fake it as an asylee, and claim you’re from El Salvador or Colombia. Ten thousand of those come every year. But how could you prove you lived there? That might be tough, even for a hotshot like you.”

  They were now crossing the part of Donegal that hadn’t been developed.

  “No,” Ivy said, “what you are is a deportable alien. False documents, illegal entry. How did you get here?”

  Rivera looked at Ivy and back to the road. “That’s okay, hotshot. It doesn’t matter. But you did well, I have to say. Putting everything in your cousin’s name, but running the business yourself. You’re the smart one, but I would think—”

  Ivy was again looking out the side window. He had folded his arms and was nodding to himself, acting the professor. “—Yeah, I would think the good times for you people won’t roll much longer. It’s not you, it’s the Arabs. After 9/11, the INS is on the case, let me tell you. Troops in the airports, camo uniforms to make the point, packing lots of firepower. Shit, it looks like your part of the world around here now. I happen to think it’s time we took the country back.” Ivy nodded to himself. “Nothing personal, it’s our own fault. We’re getting soft, letting in too many. We got soft letting you do all the heavy lifting. We took the path of least resistance. Now it’s time to shape up.”

  You people. Rivera filled with hatred. They were all the same, every one of them. Like Burlson, every one of them was ready to play the Immigration card whenever it suited them.

  He turned onto Carnarvon Court, reached to the sun visor and pushed Sweeney’s remote. Ahead, the garage door was rolling up. He passed the drive, stopped, and put the van in reverse. He guided it inside and turned off the ignition. In the rearview, he saw Ivy again waiting for him to open the panel. Focus, Rivera thought. He pushed the button, got out and waited. Last night, Sweeney had not known anything. He had just been in the way, like a big manatee swimming into an outboard motor. This was different. This was like Burlson.

  The panel came to a stop, but Ivy stayed seated. He was looking down at the floor in front of him and now reached for something. He straightened, holding a book. He opened it and turned pages.

  “A client gave it to me,” Rivera said.

  Ivy turned another page, then looked out at him. After a moment, he set the book aside, undid his belt and slid out. “Which one?” he asked.

  “Which client gave me the book? I don’t remember.” Hilda Frieslander had given it to him. Rivera opened the door to the house.

  “He lives in Naples?”

  “I don’t remember. I have a lot of clients.”

  “Is he still alive?”

  Ivy studied him a second before stepping into the house. He followed as Rivera led him to the dining room. Rivera pointed at the picture. “The owner’s in Michigan,” he said. “He’s a client. I thought it was a good place to store it.”

  “So you could wait to see if I noticed it was gone,” Ivy said. “Right, I get it. You think because it never left Donegal, you’re covered.” Hands behind his back, Ivy bent close to examine the picture.

  “I don’t steal,” Rivera said. “I accept gifts.”

  “I know a little Spanish.” Ivy reached out and rubbed a place on the frame. “You’ve got a truckload of ‘gifts’ you want to get rid of. I didn’t get it all, but I know you’re unloading them.” He straightened. “Well, this isn’t one of your ‘gifts.’ This is a Jasper Johns lithograph my bitch wife thought it would be fun to help you steal. So you take it down and put it in the van.”

  Ivy stepped back as Rivera brought down the picture. Rivera carried it back along the hall, down into the garage.

  Ivy followed. “I’m going to check it out,” he said as Rivera leaned the picture against the van. “I’m interested in any ‘clients’ who died lately.”

  Rivera opened the twin rear doors and swung them wide.

  “‘I understand,’” Ivy said behind him. “That’s what you told my wife. Just what did you understand? I’m going to play that recording for the little helpers of the poor here in Naples. I’m going to tell them about the book I found. Is Jack Kevorkian your role model?”

  Rivera slid the picture face up into the cargo bay. “I used to work in nursing homes,” he said, and grasped the stone bookend moved earlier from under the front seat. “In Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton. I saw how doctors hid behind being thought of as healers.” He leaned back out. Looking to the street, he saw his van would block the view.

  “These doctors,” Ivy said. “What is it they were hiding from?”

  “Making hard decisions.”

  “Son of a bitch.” Ivy shook his head. His eyes were wide with fake amazement. “I’m right, aren’t I? You’re the local Kevorkian. You’re Naples’s Doctor Death, you killed—”

  “No, I didn’t.” Rivera held the statue against his hip. “Mr. Ivy had an accident. He was old and alone, and sick a long time. I did nothing wrong.”

  “A fucking handyman playing God—”

  “No.” Rivera shook his head. “I’m not God,” he said. “I just lend Him a hand. Someone needs to.”

  He felt calm. Superior to the rich, white fool in front of him, a man whose wife had made him into a…what was the word…cuckold. That was it, from Hilda Frieslander. A man with horns on his head isn’t a man any longer, she said. He’s a creature, a thing, a cuckold.

  “Did nothing wrong?”

  Ivy was staring, acting surprised and outraged. Acting the way he thought a son should act, a son who never came to visit, never called. But it was still important to show the spic handyman how angry he was.

  “Why would you see it?” Ivy said. “You know nothing and come from nothing. You hop the fence and start your own little business, serving the needs of your ‘clients.’”

  When bad things happened, Kleinman said you should see them as inevitable. As part of the bigger pictur
e. That’s what I’m doing, Rivera thought, gripping the statue. It felt right to him, like finding the missing piece to a puzzle.

  “Get in,” he said. “I’ll take you back. You can do what you want.”

  “That’s true, Jimbo. I can do what I want. Any fucking thing at all.”

  Ivy moved to the van. He bent to enter, and with all his strength Rivera struck at the base of Ivy’s skull. He dropped the bookend and caught the heavy slumping body. Quickly he spun Ivy and shoved him against the truck, ducked under the man, and came up in a fireman’s carry. He reentered the house and kicked shut the door.

  “Hi, there,” Noelle Harmon said. “I tried earlier, I left a message.”

  “I was out. Just a second.”

  Brenda set the cordless on the kitchen table. She snatched another tissue from the Kleenex box and blew her nose. She got another, then picked up the phone. “All right, I’m back.”

  “That happens a lot down here,” Noelle said. “Sinus problems. It’s the humidity and chlorine in the pools.”

  “What can I do for you, Noelle?” Eyes closed, Brenda had never wanted to talk less to anyone.

  “Well, we kind of got sidetracked Saturday, didn’t we?”

  “How’s your sister?”

  “False emergency, they didn’t keep her. She’s just supposed to take it easy.”

  “Good.”

  “Yeah. Now, I thought if you didn’t have a lot on tomorrow—”

  “Noelle, I can’t,” Brenda said. “Thanks, but no.”

  The realtor hesitated. “I hope everything’s all right.”

  “It’s personal,” Brenda told her. “I appreciate the time you gave me, but I won’t be here much longer.”

  “I see. I hope it’s nothing too serious.”

  “Oh,” Brenda said, pressing her eyes with the Kleenex, “just another speed bump.”

  “Boy, don’t I know about those,” Noelle said. “OK, then. You give me a jingle if and when.”

  “Wait.” Brenda shook her head to clear it. “James Rivera. Do you have any idea where he is?” The realtor again hesitated. “I’m trying to locate someone, and I think James could help. All I have is his cell number.”

  “It’s really hard to say,” Noelle said. “He’s got all these customers. Can you tell me who you’re looking for? It’s not that big a town, I might know him.”

  “His name’s Patrick Sweeney. He has a house here at Donegal.”

  “Sweeney, Sweeney… Nope, sorry. I know a Mike Sweeney in Fort Myers, but no Sweeney in Naples.”

  “I saw him last night,” Brenda said. “He didn’t say anything about leaving town, but he’s disappeared.”

  “Now that is weird,” Noelle said. “What’s it got to do with James?”

  “He was here last night. At a customer’s house just opposite Sweeney’s place. I thought James might have seen him out on the golf course.”

  “Huh, maybe so. The reason I sort of hesitated—well, I think I told you, James has no green card. He’s not legal. People who know him don’t want to give him any trouble. I think you can see why.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “The whole immigration thing’s such a hot button here in Florida. With someone like James, I just happen to think amnesty makes sense. Of course I keep that to myself. But if you think about how many losers there are out there, you don’t want to mess things up for one of the keepers. Card or no card.”

  Keepers. Brenda closed her eyes. “That’s true,” she said. “OK, Noelle. Thank you.”

  She cradled the phone and laid her head on the smooth, cool butcher block table. In the last few minutes, the kitchen had gone dark. The table was hard under her cheekbone, and it smelled of polyurethane. The sensation must be like the last moments for someone laying her head on the block in the Tower of London, or on the Place de la Concorde. Guilty as charged, she thought.

  A knock. “I’m out here,” Rayette called.

  It’s your fate, Brenda thought, and sat up. You will not be allowed to be alone, even though that’s what you are. In the dark, Rayette was waiting outside the cage, holding another plate. Brenda went out and opened the screened door.

  “Nice night,” Rayette said as she stepped in. “We’ll have fog later. It’s dreamy to see, coming in off the Gulf. I heard you crying. Most people don’t want to eat when that happens, but I always do. Like a pig.”

  “I drink milk,” Brenda said. “It’s some kind of regression therapy.”

  “This is carrot cake,” Rayette said. “It goes great with milk.”

  They went inside. As Brenda stepped back into the kitchen, Rayette paused in the living room. “No lights on,” she said. “That’s not a good sign.” Now she followed and set down the cake. Brenda got the milk and brought glasses to the table. Rayette poured. Brenda snapped on the overhead light, then brought plates and forks, paper napkins.

  They both sat. Rayette began cutting the cake. “Ninety seconds ago I wouldn’t have believed it,” Brenda said. “Now, I think this is just what I need.” She took up her fork.

  “It’s your friend, isn’t it? The man from Wisconsin.” Brenda nodded. “He’s refined,” Rayette said. “Not the frufru kind, but, you know. A gentleman.”

  “Yes, he is. But for this to work, we have to talk about something else.”

  “All right.”

  “I didn’t have cake. I had brats.”

  “Pardon? You mean bratwurst?”

  Brenda forked in cake and drank her milk. They ate to sounds of traffic in the distance. The swimming pool’s pump shut down outside.

  “I’m sorry,” Brenda said. “I have nothing to say.”

  “It’s all right. But I have to tell you, I don’t feel good about Pat Sweeney.”

  Neither did she. And yet Brenda was forking in carrot cake, certain she could eat the whole thing.

  “What we found there?” Rayette said. “The house all open, with his car still in the garage? I know the man, and it doesn’t fit.”

  “What the hell fits when you lose your whole family?”

  “Well, okay, that’s true. Maybe not much.”

  Brenda used her napkin, seeing him in the hat with tees and buttons, his fancy golfer’s shoes. “I saw enough to know he was a person of order,” she said. “The way he made his preparations.”

  “Like that was how he could finally do it,” Rayette said. “Like, once everything’s done, there’s just one more thing on his list.”

  Brenda put down her fork. “You’re right,” she said. “He didn’t kill himself. He couldn’t. He still had chores to take care of. But I think he’s dead.” She stood and wiped her mouth, reached down for the last of the cake on her plate and put it in her mouth. She took a long swallow of milk. “I have to go.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “I’d be grateful if you stay here. Just in case someone calls.”

  “Sure, but give me your cell number. Do you think he’ll come back? Your friend?”

  “That’s why I’d like you to stay.” Brenda finished her milk. “He has every reason to leave, but I hope he doesn’t.”

  ◆◆◆◆◆

  At Donegal Boulevard, she turned in the direction of Sweeney’s house. She would make one last check. He wasn’t there, but she needed to be sure. Why was that? Driving, she did not want to think about it, but knew why: to be sure Sweeney was gone.

  People out walking appeared in her headlights. Ground fog now hung heavy over the dark golf course. She remembered Charlie, the solid mass of him all at once standing above her at the Ivy house. Minutes later, when she told him the truth, the weight of his disappointment had settled in his face and on his shoulders. It had been something like fog, wrapping him in wordless evidence of what she meant to him.

  Say it, Brenda thought. You don’t want Sweeney dead. You just want him gone. You want him to disappear.

  He disappear—

  Ray had used that word on Saturday as they neared Immokalee. He’d
been talking about someone named Kleinman, an owner of nursing homes. Kleinman had made James Rivera his protégé, and that had made a Haitian employee jealous. He take a weed whacker and cut Quinto’s face, the scar you see. Pretty soon, the guy disappear.

  She turned at Sweeney’s street. At the far end, the street lamp revealed his open garage. A truck was parked inside, and Brenda’s heart sank. But the truck might mean Sweeney was all right. Now she wanted that. He too was a keeper, and she felt an obligation.

  She pulled up and walked quickly into the open garage to the house entrance. The door was still unlocked, and Brenda stepped inside. “Patrick?” She listened, feeling her heart thud, smelling stone or tile mingled with traces of Szechuan spices and hoisin sauce.

  “Patrick!”

  Relieved, conflicted, she stepped back down into the garage, closed the door and walked toward her car. You are not a bad person, she thought. You will call the police, you will answer their questions and take their looks. She opened her car door and faced the garage.

  Only now did she see that the space next to the van was empty—Sweeney’s own car was missing. Rayette had cupped the glass, shaken her head. Wherever he’d gone, Sweeney had come back with the truck’s owner. The two had then gone somewhere in Patrick’s Mazda.

  She walked back into the dark open garage and found the light switch. Fluorescent tubes buzzed as she turned and read the block lettering. Her heart stumbled. She yanked at the van’s side panel and waited as it slid open. Pine scent tumbled out.

  She looked out to the street. A halo of fog enveloped the streetlight. Hilda Frieslander, she thought. Chester Ivy. She looked back in the open van and saw a book on the far seat. Brenda reached across and ducked back out with it under the hum of fluorescent lights. She studied the cover photo, the thin, homegrown, slightly cracked-looking face that everyone from Michigan knew from dozens of news stories.