I was on my way to Orlando armed with three photographs and wearing a Cubs cap. I listened to a talk-show guy who badgered his callers, made crude jokes, and kept saying he was just using common sense while he got the history of Israel, Iraq, France, and the United States almost completely wrong. I chewed on egg rolls and kept to a few miles over the speed limit.
There was construction on I-4 from the Tampa interchange to Orlando. I-4 is four lanes, two lanes in each direction, and it always seems there are as many trucks as cars. Still, it only took me a little over two hours to get to International Drive, a street of glitz, restaurants, hotels, a water slide, plenty of places that sell T-shirts and souvenirs, and a Ripley’s Believe It or Not house built at an odd angle, as if it had just been dropped from outer space.
The hotel wasn’t full, but all they had for me was a room at almost two hundred a night. I didn’t have a credit card, but I had taken all my cash with me. I paid a day in advance and got a receipt I could show Kenneth Severtson. The young woman behind the desk did a great job of ignoring the fact that my luggage was a single blue carry-on.
When I got to my room, I threw my cap on the table, took the John Lutz novel I was reading out of the carry-on, and went down to the atrium lobby, where I used the house phone to connect me to Andrew Stark’s room. No answer. I asked for his room number. The young woman on the phone said they weren’t permitted to give out room numbers.
I went down to the lobby. There were plenty of wroughtiron seats at tables and tastefully upholstered chairs scattered around the area. I found a chair in the atrium facing the door to the hotel and sat with my paperback open in my lap.
Little kids ran screaming in their swimsuits heading for the pool. Families went by speaking German, French, and something I couldn’t place.
Stark, Janice Severtson, and the kids came in a little after nine-thirty. Stark was carrying the little girl, Sydney, who was sleeping. Kenneth Jr. was walking slowly with a less-than-happy look on his face. His mother was definitely a beauty, but there was something less than ecstasy in her face. She was carrying a colorful shopping bag with a picture of Shrek on the side.
Stark was a good-looking if slightly beefy-looking man with wavy salt-and-pepper hair. He was at least twenty years older than Janice Severtson.
There wasn’t too much I could do to be inconspicuous. I don’t have the kind of face people remember in any case. It’s a blessing in my work and in my private life.
I managed to get on the elevator with the four of them and smiled.
“Floor?” I asked pleasantly.
“Seven,” Janice Severtson said, closing her eyes.
I hit the “seven” and “eight” buttons.
When we passed the third floor, she opened her eyes and looked at me.
“I know you,” she said.
Stark turned to face me. He was wearing black jeans and a black shirt with buttons and sleeves that came down to his elbows. He was also wearing muscles and a scowl. His face was sun-browned. His brown eyes were firmly focused on me.
“I don’t…,” I began.
“Sarasota YMCA,” she said. “Downtown. You work out there.”
So much for my keenly developed internal storehouse of names and faces. How could I not remember someone who looked like Janice Severtson? How could she remember me?
“I do,” I said with a grin. “Every morning before I go to work. I’m the men’s wear department manager at Old Navy in Gulf Gate. Brought my wife and kids here, for our annual week of torture.”
“I know what you mean,” she said.
“Who’s that?” the little boy asked, looking up at me.
“A friend of your mother’s,” said Stark with more than a touch of suspicion.
“You a friend of my daddy’s, too?” the boy asked.
“No,” I said, holding out my hand to Stark. “Pleased to meet you.”
“He’s not my daddy,” the boy said.
“He’s your grandfather?”
Stark’s jaw was tight now. I ignored him and looked down at the little boy, who was shaking his head no.
“He’s Andy,” the boy said.
“I think we’ve bothered the man enough,” said Janice Severtson.
The elevator stopped at seven and they shuffled wearily out.
“Nice to meet you,” I called as the doors closed.
When the doors opened on the eighth floor a few seconds later, I got out quickly and moved to a spot on the atrium landing not far from my room where I could see them moving slowly toward their room.
After they went in, I stayed at the railing for another hour, pretending my novel was a sketchbook when anyone went by, keeping an eye on the door to the room I was watching on the seventh floor. I even drew a crude stick figure and a tree on the inside cover of the novel at one point. My watch hit eleven, and I went to my room and set the alarm clock for five in the morning. I shaved, showered, shampooed, brushed my teeth, and watched a Harold Lloyd silent comedy on Turner Classic Movies. Harold wound up running around an abandoned ship being chased by a murderer and a monkey in a sailor suit. The movie was short. I went to sleep. Everything was going just fine.
By seven in the morning, I was eating the free Continental buffet breakfast at a two-person table. When I finished, I slowly drank cup after cup of coffee with USA Today in front of me. A little before nine, Andrew Stark, Janice Severtson, and the kids came down. The kids were bouncing and arguing. The adults were just arguing. I couldn’t hear them, but it looked as if the brief honeymoon was in trouble.
I followed them out after they breakfasted. The rest of the day was moppet heaven for the kids and nightmare alley for me. They went on and saw everything at the Disney-MGM Studios theme park while I watched from a discreet distance. I don’t know what I was watching for. Possibly signs of intimacy in front of the children. A stolen passionate kiss and a little groping while the kids were in the Muppet Vision show, or maybe I was hoping for a chance to catch Janice Severtson alone.
We watched the Beauty and the Beast show, the Hunchback show, the Honey I Shrunk the Kids show, the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular, and had lunch at Disney’s Toy Story Pizza Planet Arcade. By the time we hit Voyage of the Little Mermaid, I was strongly considering calling Kenneth Severtson and telling him that I was on my way back to Sarasota.
They went on The Great Movie Ride and ended the day with The Making of Tarzan. I wished Stark would carry me or better yet, that Janice Severtson would carry me.
They stopped for dinner at a seafood restaurant. I didn’t eat. The chance of being spotted was too great and I didn’t put much faith in talking my way out of an accidental encounter with, “Well, we meet again. Small world after all.”
I wasn’t hungry.
When they went back to their suite, I followed and stood outside the door, trying to listen through the curtained window without giving the impression to anyone that I was a peeping tom. There was an alcove with doors to more rooms and a stairwell ten feet away. If I heard anyone open the door inside the room, I could get to the alcove and up the stairs before I was spotted.
The rooms were set back from the railing, so I couldn’t be seen from the atrium floor. I made sure no one was watching me from a floor above and put my ear to the window. I couldn’t make out words inside the room but the voices were hard and angry.
I went back to my room. I hadn’t been able to get Janice Severtson alone. Stark had stuck too close to her. I would call Severtson in the morning, give him his wife’s room number, advise him to pass it on immediately to his lawyer, and head back home. I’d alert Sally before I called Severtson in case she wanted to contact him and try to talk him into being reasonable when he heard from me. I couldn’t spend any more time in Orlando. I had a missing commissioner and two days to find him.
I took a hot shower, got into my boxer shorts, and turned on the television. I was going to look for a movie, but the channel guide told me there was a Cubs game on WGN.
It was the fifth
inning. Kerry Wood was pitching. The Cubs were up, three to nothing. The announcer said Moises Alou had hit a home run with two men on to give the Cubs the lead.
I tried to lose myself in the game. I almost succeeded. The Cubs were ahead, five to nothing, going into the ninth. They were playing at home. The Pirates were batting. Wood was going for a complete game shutout.
I tried not to think about the little girl in Stark’s arms, of the little boy who had asked me questions about his mother and father, about Adele and the baby, Sally and her children, Darrell Caton, who had looked at me with contempt in Sally’s office.
The Cubs helped. They almost blew the game. Wood got wild, gave up two walks and a double. Score was five to two. Reliever came in. I didn’t recognize his name. He had just come up from Triple A. He walked the first man. The next batter hit into a double play, but the runner on second scored after a bad throw to the plate by the first baseman, Mueller. Five to three. The next man up got on with a broken-bat single to right. The tying run was on base.
Two outs. The batter hit one deep and high. It kept traveling toward the vines in right field. Sammy backed up to the wall, eyes on the ball. He timed the little leap and pulled the ball down for the final out.
In baseball, sometimes things went right.
In baseball, there was always a clear end, a final score.
I turned the lights out and got in bed. I was asleep in seconds.
Someone was knocking at my door. I sat up dizzy and looked at the clock with the glowing red numbers. It was a little after three in the morning. The knock came again. I got off the bed and went out of the bedroom to the door.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“Janice Severtson.”
I opened the door and flipped on the lights. The children were both in pajamas and robes, crying. Janice Severtson needed a comb and a good dry cleaner. Her white robe was splotched with blood.
“Can we come in?” she asked. “Please.”
I stepped back and the weeping trio came in. I closed the door and turned to watch them sit on the small sofa. Janice Severtson was trying to comfort them, kissing the tops of their heads, hugging her children.
“How did you find me?” I asked. “And why?”
“I called the desk after I recognized you earlier,” she said. “I said I didn’t remember your name but that we knew each other from Sarasota. I described you. They found someone who remembered checking you in.”
“I hope the description was kind,” I said, putting my jeans on over the orange boxer shorts I had been sleeping in.
She didn’t answer that one. I pulled my shirt on over my head.
“I called some friends I can trust in Sarasota,” she went on, looking at the dark television screen and hugging her sobbing children. “Found someone who knew you. My husband sent you, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Can I trust you?” she asked, continuing to soothe her children. “I have no one else to turn to.”
“You can trust me. But I’m not sure why you should believe you can.”
“No choice,” she said with a shrug. “I want you to take Sydney and Kenny back to their father.”
Both children said, “no,” but Janice wasn’t listening.
“At three in the morning?” I asked.
She sat the children on the little sofa against the wall and told them she would be back in a second. Kenneth Jr. turned his head into his mother’s shoulder. The little girl looked down and bit her lip. Then Janice motioned for me to follow her into the bedroom, where she closed the door.
“I just killed Andrew Stark,” she said. “I’ve got to go back to the room and call the police. Take my children home. Please. My husband is a good father. I don’t want them involved.”
“Let’s go to your room and have a look before we call the police.”
I slipped my bare feet into my unlaced sneakers and opened the door.
Janice Severtson hugged both her children and told them she would be gone for just a minute. They weren’t crying anymore. They looked as if they were nearly asleep.
“Can we watch television?” Kenny asked.
“Sure,” I said, handing him the remote.
He clicked it on. A voice in Spanish rattled excitedly about a soccer match going between guys in green uniforms and guys in yellow ones.
“They play soccer in Mexico in the middle of the night?” he asked.
“It’s a tape,” I said.
He nodded knowingly, eyes blinking as he changed the station and watched a crocodile slither into a pond of water.
“Be right back,” Janice Severtson said, following me through the door after I checked my pocket to be sure I had my room card.
Even at three in the morning, the atrium wasn’t empty. Five men were seated eight stories down talking softly. A crew of cleaning people was sweeping and scrubbing. Janice Severtson looked down across the open space at the closed door of her room a floor below.
“What happened?” I asked quietly.
She wiped her eyes with her sleeve, took a deep breath.
“He tried to rape me,” she said. “He hit me, pulled my hair. He’d gotten up during the night. He was drunk. There was a knife on the table. His knife along with his wallet and keys. I told him to stop. He didn’t. I told him he’d wake the children, that they would see us. I begged him. He grabbed my wrist and laughed. We were standing there, just…I twisted my arm and pulled free and then I brought the knife down. He looked surprised. The children slept through it all. Thank God, the children slept through it. Andrew, he lay there with the knife in his chest. I didn’t know what…You know the rest. I’ll go back and call the police. You take care of my children, please.”
“You’re sure he’s dead?” I asked.
“Yes. I covered his body with the blanket so the children wouldn’t see him when I woke them up.”
“I’ll go take a look. You go back to your kids and give me your room card.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because I’m asking you,” I said. “I won’t take long. If the phone rings, it’ll be me. Answer it.”
She brushed her hair back with her long fingers and pulled the room card out. I took it and let her back into my room. The television was on. Kenny had switched to an old Dick Van Dyke rerun, the one where Rob goes off to a cabin to write a novel. The episode, as I recalled, was funny. Sydney was asleep and Kenneth Jr. wasn’t laughing.
I went down the fire stairs and made my way to the room on the seventh floor. I opened the door and wiped the door handle clean with my shirt. Then I kicked the door closed. The lights were on. There was a vague body shape under the blanket on the open hide-away bed.
I moved alongside the bed and pulled the blanket back. Andrew Stark lay there, bloody, eyes closed. His T-shirt had a picture of a grinning cartoon turkey on the front. The turkey was covered in blood. A knife was plunged deep into his chest. Stark was naked from the shirt down.
I didn’t touch anything else. I looked around the room and into the bedroom. There was a teddy bear and stuffed elephant lying back on a pink blanket. I went back into the room where Stark was lying, checked my watch, and started for the door.
The moan wasn’t loud, but it was clear and it came from the supposedly dead Andrew Stark. I went back to the body and knelt. Stark’s eyes opened and moved in the general direction of my face. I didn’t bother to tell him not to move.
I could have just called 911, but a few minutes probably wouldn’t make much difference. At least that’s what I told myself.
“You’ll be all right,” I assured him as I examined his wound.
He looked around the room as if he had no idea of where he was. He smelled of alcohol. There was plenty of blood.
“You’ll live,” I lied. “I’m going to try to stop some of this bleeding. Then I’ll call an ambulance.”
His right hand came up suddenly and gripped my wrist. For a dying man, he was damned strong. I tried to pull
loose as he croaked, “Why?”
“You want to live?”
“Why?” he asked.
Since it was the same question I’ve asked myself a few thousand times since my wife was killed, I had no good answer for him, but I had the feeling that his “why” didn’t mean the same thing mine did.
His eyes began to roll. A very bad sign.
He whispered something I couldn’t hear, pain in his face…Then he closed his eyes and I leaned over to be sure he was still breathing. He was.
I picked up the phone, not worrying about fingerprints any longer, and dialed my own room. Janice answered before the second ring.
“Yes?” she said with a quivering voice.
“It’s me, Fonesca. Get down to your room fast. Leave the kids there.”
“What…?”
“He’s still alive.”
She didn’t answer and I had no time to talk to her now.
“Fast,” I said.
I hung up, checked my watch, sat on the bed, and said, “Stark, you still with me?”
His groan suggested that he was. I checked my watch. Almost a minute passed. If she didn’t show up fast, I’d have to call 911.
The knock was soft, but it was a knock. I let her in. She was a ghostly pale, beautiful vision of white and blood red. I closed the door and she walked over to Stark, who hadn’t moved.
“Andy?” she asked.
He groaned in response.
She turned to me and, voice and hands shaking, said, “I didn’t kill him.”
“You’ve got to call 911,” I said. “You’ve got to call now. Just tell them a man has tried to kill himself. Tell them where we are. Don’t answer any more questions.”
She shook her head no. I picked up the phone and handed it to her. I hit 9 for an outside line and then 911.
I could hear a voice on the other end because the phone wasn’t close to her ear, but I couldn’t make out the words.
She said exactly what I had told her to say and hung up.
“Good,” I said. “I think we’ve got at least five minutes, maybe more. I’m going to be back in my room with the kids. You understand?”
She nodded again, looking at the half-naked, bloody man on the bed. He made a series of short gasping sounds, managed to reach the handle of the knife with his right hand, and tried to pull it out before I could stop him. Then he stopped struggling and his hands flopped to his sides.
Midnight Pass: A Lew Fonesca Novel (Lew Fonesca Novels) Page 7
