5 Highball Exit (8 page)

CHAPTER 18

After we’d put a block between us and the Vachess brothers, I said, “Now what?”

Aunt Kay started digging in her bag. She came out with an envelope, squinted at it, and then handed it to me. “This is the address where Holly lived before she moved to the Jade Towers.”

I glanced at it and handed it back. “Newtown, a different world from where she ended up, that’s for sure.” I hit US
301
and headed north. “She’s been gone from this address for ages. We’re not likely to find anything.”

She gave me a look. I was guessing it said, “Since I’m paying for your time, and paying well, shut up and drive.” Apparently chauffeurs aren’t allowed to have opinions.

In Sarasota, well, in all Florida, the price of real estate is dependent upon how close to the water you are. Holly’s old apartment on Adler Street was far from the water and from the Jade Towers in price and safety. In the northeast corner of Sarasota, almost to Bradenton, the Newtown area hadn’t gone upscale yet as had everything else with a Sarasota address.

In this part of town there was still a bar on every corner, adult video stores and strip clubs. By day, it was acceptable. After dark it was what it had always been, a place to move quickly, preferably at a run, to avoid encounters with fellow members of the human race.

I parked right in front of the address and studied the horseshoeshaped complex. An abandoned couch, lying on its back with the cushions falling off, clogged the narrow courtyard. Trash piled up against the buildings and was tangled in the dying bushes flanking the steps to the central hall of each unit. With buckling concrete and broken windows, the whole thing was all just passing time until the next urban renewal project.

I had a good look around for danger. An old man sat nodding on a broken-down kitchen chair in the shade of the building across the street, but other than that nothing moved in the heat.

“Why don’t you wait here until I see if there’s anyone who remembers Holly.”

A high-riding car cruised by, taking a good look at us. Even though all the windows were up, the music of rap throbbed from the muscle machine. The old man across the street didn’t even lift his chin off his chest.

Aunt Kay fanned her face gently with her little Chinese fan and looked out the window.

I said, “There won’t be an elevator, just three flights of stairs.” She sighed. “All right, but don’t give up too easily.” She opened herpurse and took out a photograph. “It’s the last one I have of Holly.” In this picture Holly was in her brunette days. It hardly lookedlike the Holly I remembered, but then maybe this was the real Holly and the one I thought I knew was the false one. Certainly the Holly working for an escort service wasn’t the Holly I’d met. I turned the print over and read the name of the photographer on the back.

Watching me, Aunt Kay said. “I already called them while I was waiting for you to show up. They took that picture three years ago and no one remembers Holly.”

“I’ll leave the motor running so you’ll have air.”

“I’ve lived in Florida all my life; a little heat isn’t going to bother me.” Her window slid down. “No sense in polluting the air and wasting gas.”

“These conditions are dangerous.” Aunt Kay looked like just about anything could kill her. “We’re going to break another record today.”

“I’ll be all right.” She pulled her cropped slacks up over her swollen knees and sat there with her hands planted on her thighs, Buddha-like and immovable.

I lowered my window for her. “There’s more water in the back if you need it.”

There was no security system in the building and no super either. There wasn’t even central air in this crumbling structure, so all the apartments had air conditioners hanging from their windows at the front of the building.

The front door was wedged open to catch any breeze, but even so the hall was stifling and breathless, filled with the odor of stale cooking and garbage. I was boiling in my own sweat by the time I reached the third floor and knocked at Holly’s former apartment. No one answered. I knocked at the neighbor’s across the hall. Nothing.

Now this was annoying.

I knocked at the other two doors on the third floor. If anyone was home they weren’t interested in a visitor.

I went down to the second floor and started there, working my way down the hall and coming up with two annoyed people who didn’t know Holly and weren’t interested in knowing me either.

On the first floor, the sounds of a couple arguing had me tapping lightly on the door. The door swung violently open and a man, barefoot and wearing only boxers, glared at me. “What?”

I showed him the picture of Holly and asked, “Do you remember this woman? She lived in apartment
302
.”

“No,” he said. The door slammed shut.

No one else was home on that floor and I arrived back at the street dripping with perspiration and totally pissed off. Aunt Kay was going to insist I come back at night, when people were home from work, and do it all over again. That was not my idea of a fun evening. More than that, this was no neighborhood to be in after dark.

An aged Honda, the trunk covered in Jesus fish, pulled in beside the sidewalk and died. A pretty young woman wearing a white halter dress got out of the car. She smiled over the roof of the Honda at me. Her smile showed impossibly gleaming white teeth.

At last, someone genuinely glad to see me. I gave a little wave and said, “Hi.”

“Back at you.” She opened the back door and dragged out a huge shiny vinyl bag covered in buckles. When she slammed the door shut she was already moving.

I intercepted her. “I’m looking for Holly Mitchell.” I pointed to the middle building. “She lives in
302
; well, she did a bit ago. Do you know her?” I waved the photograph in front of her.

She slung the bag over her left shoulder and frowned at the picture. “No, but then I just moved in and it isn’t exactly the kind of place where you know your neighbors.” She walked around me and hit the sidewalk moving fast.

“Wait,” I called to the already retreating bare shoulders.

She swung to face me, walking backwards away from me in her high-heeled sandals.

I followed her. “Is there anyone in the building who might know about Holly?”

She hesitated and frowned. “Yeah, the witch who lives on the main floor, she thinks she owns the building. Sunny her name is, a bartender at the Flamingo two blocks over.” She pointed to her left. “It’s a horrible place, but then so is Sunny.” She was moving again.

“Would she be there now?”

She considered it and said. “I don’t know. I don’t have anything to do with Sunny. Bartenders aren’t the kind of people you want to know, are they?” She gave a jaunty little wave and spun on her toes before jogging for the front door.

That girl knew how to survive in neighborhoods like this.

CHAPTER 19

With flyers and dead leaves piled up in the small alcove at the door, the Flamingo bar looked abandoned. There was a big sign on the glass that said the Flamingo would be going out of business come Saturday.
FOR SALE
signs already covered the building but there weren’t going to be any takers. The only thing that was going to happen to this property was a bulldozer and another high-rise and, given the economy, that would be years away.

Another sign said that the Flamingo offered happy hour from eleven in the morning until closing time. You can’t get happier than that.

At the door of the Flamingo a drink-ruined and urine-soaked man held out his hand to Aunt Kay. “Can you spare some change?”

I stepped in between him and Aunt Kay. “No.” The volume of my voice left him in no doubt about of my feelings.

We stepped into a dark interior that smelled of unwashed bodies, stale beer and every tub of grease that had been eaten in the place. The three drinkers, strung out along the bar, looked up as the door opened and then went back to staring into their glasses. The flickering fluorescent went unnoticed, the buzzing noise just one more small annoyance in lives made up of a long list of such things.

The décor was put together from garage sales on the wrong side of town and featured lots of dark faux wood and plastic. The whole place should have been taken back to the dumpster it came from, though I sort of coveted the flashing pink flamingo over the bar.

The bartender matched the decoration, worn out, cheap and plastic. Her straw-blonde hair was a reminder of a fright wig from Halloween and her deep smoker’s bark almost drowned out the hurtdog-wailing that was passing for music. She leaned on the bar with both tattooed arms locked in front of her. This unfortunate pose exposed the parts of her speckled breasts that her one-size-too-small top wasn’t already showing off. A smiling sun was tattooed on her left breast. It didn’t improve the picture.

For a brief moment, I wondered if I was looking at my future. I fought down that gruesome thought, not sure if I wanted to live with the answer. There was one ray of sunlight. At least no one could see my tattoo, not even me.

Aunt Kay didn’t know about bars, didn’t know you should wait for a second at the door to feel out trouble before you make your move. Unaware that you need to get the vibe of the place and carefully pick out who you choose to drink beside, she rumbled right over to the bar and planted herself in front of the tender.

The bartender looked at Aunt Kay as though she might be peddling bibles. “Whadda you want?” Tips probably weren’t a big part of her income.

Aunt Kay set her big old purse on the bar. “Are you Sunny?”

The tender looked to me and then back to Aunt Kay before she gave a quick nod.

“Well, I just want a word, dear.”

Before Sunny could say she wasn’t a visitor’s guide, I added, “We’ll have two sodas.” Sunny gave me a searing look. For a heartbeat I thought she was going to point us in the direction of the door, but instead she shoved two glasses into a pan of ice and shot some soda at them. She frowned as she dropped the glass in front of me. There was something about me that turned her right off, but then, I have that affect on a lot of people.

Aunt Kay gave the bartender one of those sweet smiles that made you want to sit down for warm cookies and cold milk. She picked up the glass Sunny thumped down on the bar with a grateful “Thank you,” like she’d been handed a treasure.

I edged the glass towards me and stared down at the brownish liquid.

“Oh, this is just what I need.” Aunt Kay held the sweating glass of soda up to her cheek. “It’s so hot out there.”

Hadn’t Aunt Kay noticed that it was barely cooler in here? Maybe she was making nice, something I’ve yet to learn. Whatever it was, Aunt Kay was going to get a lot further with Sunny than I ever could. “I hope you can help me with a little problem,” Aunt Kay said.

Sunny’s mouth twitched, chewing on the words to drive us out the door, but there’s something about Aunt Kay that makes people behave better than they normally would.

Aunt Kay set down her soda. “You see, dear, my niece, a sweet girl, died last night.”

Aunt Kay had Sunny’s attention now. She pulled Holly’s picture out of her purse and slid it across the bar. “I want to know why Holly died and I want to know what happened to her little girl.”

Sunny looked down at the picture. She might be tough but it hit her. Emotion rippled across her face and she sucked her lips in between her teeth. Sunny hadn’t known Holly was dead.

“How?” Sunny asked.

Like all great storytellers, Aunt Kay took her time now that she had her audience’s attention. Using the bar, she pulled herself up onto a wooden stool and settled her behind on the seat that was undersized for her.

Sunny was experienced in listening to thousands of stories, most of which she didn’t want to hear. She waited, without asking any questions and not showing all that much interest now she had herself under control.

“That’s better,” Aunt Kay said, as she propped her short legs up on the top rung of the stool and got comfortable. She drank deeply from her glass.

Sunny blinked. “How did Holly die?”

“Suicide.” Sunny jerked back as if she’d been hit. “Oh, shit.”

“That’s why I need your help.”

“Holly wouldn’t kill herself.” Sunny’s angry and outraged reply was loud enough to have the drinkers down the bar looking up and taking some interest before they went back to their glasses.

Sunny looked to me as if I might want to explain things.

I shrugged and Sunny turned back to Aunt Kay, who said, “I need to understand what happened to her. I know so little about this last little bit of her life. I’m finding it hard to accept her death.”

Sunny looked at me again. “Holly wouldn’t kill herself.” It was as if she was challenging me.

“She left a note,” I said. “The police are pretty sure it was suicide but they’ll do an autopsy.”

Aunt Kay cut in. “I had to identify her body. So distressing.” Her shoulders rounded and she seemed to shrink into herself. I wanted to hug her.

Sunny picked up Aunt Kay’s half-empty glass, added ice and more soda and set it gently back in front of her. This time she even brought a little paper napkin to put the glass on.

Aunt Kay smiled. “Thank you, dear. Can you tell me anything about Holly? Do you know where her baby is?”

Sunny shook her head. “I haven’t seen Holly in months. People move on; you know how it is.”

“Yes, but I know Holly.” Aunt Kay took a sip of her soda. “She was the kind of girl who kept in touch. Sometimes her idle chatter could be annoying, making you wish she’d forget she knew you.”

The corner of Sunny’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “I’m sure she called you,” Aunt Kay said softly.

I wondered why Aunt Kay was so sure of this but Sunny gave an embarrassed shrug. “Well, yeah, she’d call in the middle of some program I was trying to watch and talk about the new nail polish she’d just bought or some person she’d met, tell me the whole life story of someone I didn’t know. She was a hard person to discourage.”

She looked around. “Maybe I didn’t try too hard. She was always so damn cheerful and a lot more interesting than the people that I normally listen to.”

Aunt Kay laughed. “That’s my Holly all right.” But just as quickly her smile disappeared. “If that was true, why would she kill herself? What had changed? Was she depressed?”

“Like I said, I haven’t talked to her in months. Before that, she’d breeze in here and chat away like a bloody bird. Didn’t matter who was here, she’d chat to them all.” Sunny almost smiled. “It was like someone blew out a wall and let the fresh air in.”

She glanced down the bar at the three men and then took a deep breath. “I can’t tell you a lot, but what do you want to know?”

“Did you know Angel?”

“Yeah,” and now Sunny’s face relaxed into her first real smile, the one that revealed where she got her name. “She was beautiful. Delicate, you know, with perfect little rosebud lips. Her face never looked, well . . . it was like a perfect little doll’s. She was . . .” her voice faltered and stopped. Someone called her name from the end of the bar. Relief flooded her face. “I have to take care of these guys,” she said and left.

“Do you think she can help us?” Aunt Kay whispered.

“Maybe.” I didn’t add, “If she wants to.” My guess was that Sunny was not into helping anyone. That gets burned out of you pretty fast behind a bar, and you start to play dumb and stay neutral. I’ve got a friend who calls it “being Switzerland,” not getting involved. It’s the only way to survive.

When Sunny came down the bar to join us again, sympathy and sentimentality had been flushed down the sink with the last of the booze in the dirty glasses. “All I can tell you is Angel was born just after Christmas. Couple of months later Holly was gone. She stopped coming around.”

Aunt Kay smiled. “It’s a busy time with a new baby. So much to do. Of course she wouldn’t bring a baby in here, would she? No offense, but it isn’t the sort of place babies would be welcome.”

Sunny picked up my untouched glass and set it in a plastic pan with the other dirty glasses.

“Do you have a car?” Aunt Kay asked. Sunny’s yes was reluctant. “Did Holly?”

“On what she made? No.”

“She was working as a beautician, right?”

“Yeah, right up until the week before Angel was born. I told her all the fumes, nail polish and stuff, wasn’t good for the baby but she didn’t listen.”

Aunt Kay’s voice was soft and gentle. “I don’t suppose she had a choice, did she?”

Sunny frowned. “No, no choice. That’s the problem with being poor, no choices.”

“And she would have had so many appointments before and after having the baby. It’s so difficult with public transit and taxis are expensive—it would be so nice to be picked up and dropped off.”

Sunny scowled.

“You drove her places, didn’t you?”

Poor Sunny, she so didn’t want to be caught in the role of Good Samaritan. “Yeah, sometimes.”

“Every woman needs someone there for them when they have a baby. It’s just too hard to do alone.” Aunt Kay reached out and patted Sunny’s hand. “Thank you for taking care of Holly.”

Sunny took her time pulling her hand away.

“She was a good kid,” Sunny said. “Just not too bright, you know?” Again the frown. “No, that’s not right. She was bright enough. She just didn’t have common sense, just didn’t know what end was up if you know what I mean. And she didn’t seem to learn from her mistakes.”

“Few of us do,” Aunt Kay said. “Did you ever meet the father?”

“She didn’t introduce me but I saw him coming and going, worea uniform.”

“What kind of a uniform?”

“A cop, he was a cop.”

“Ah, yes,” Aunt Kay said with a nod. “Was there only the one man in Holly’s life?”

“She wasn’t that kind of girl,” Sunny was angry again. “She loved him, said she had since they were kids, but the bastard took off as soon as he knocked her up. Never saw him again after Holly started to show. I tell you, I ever see that guy again, cop or no, I see him on the street, I’m going to run him down.”

“If it’s any conciliation, he didn’t know about the baby. That’s not why he stopped seeing her.” Aunt Kay finished her drink and set it down on the sodden and tattered napkin. “The problem is no one seems to know where the baby is now. For my own peace of mind I have to know where Angel is, know that she’s safe.”

Sunny frowned and crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t know anything more about Angel.”

Sunny wasn’t going to win any prizes for lying.

“How long did Holly stay in your apartment building after Angel was born?” I asked.

Sunny gave it some thought. “Holly and I spent Christmas Day together. It was only a couple of weeks before Angel was born. I nuked two frozen turkey dinners and we watched those stupid Christmas shows on
TV
. No more than six weeks. Her money ran out. She couldn’t work and look after the baby. She told me she was going to move in with family.”

Beside me Aunt Kay made a funny strangling sound. I reached out and put an arm around her shoulders and asked, “Did Holly mention any names?”

“Naw, just said she would be in touch. She called once.” Sunny hesitated. “She sounded a bit strange, like she was pretending she was fine but she wasn’t. I didn’t push for details. Guess I should have.” She sighed and then admitted, “I didn’t want to know.”

“That is true of all of us,” I told her. “We all have our own lives and don’t want to worry about anyone else’s.”

Sunny nodded and turned away, heading for the other end of the bar although no one down there was ordering drinks.

“I don’t think we’re going to get anything more from Sunny,” Aunt Kay said.

I watched Sunny without replying. Aunt Kay said, “I think we might as well go.”

“We’ll stay a little longer.”

When Sunny came back she pointed at me and said, “Holly had a picture of you and her on the beach.”

“I don’t remember it.”