Lonesome Point (19 page)

“Oh, shit.” Tessa jerked the wheel to the left, sweeping past a blare of horns and oncoming traffic and up the ramp to 1-95.

Leo looked shocked. “Now, that was unnecessary.”

“Shut up.” She rolled her window down and increased the speed. “I think I have some names. If it’s a boy, Dominic. If it’s a girl, Jolene.”

“You’re thinking of names at a time …
Dominic
? You’re kidding, right? Dominic?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

Herman said, “Dominic is a nice name.”

Leo said, “Huh?” He looked back at the old man and then at Tessa and started to smile.

“I love you,” she said. “And I want us to be safe. Should I ask you to promise you’ll come back safe?”

“I promise I’ll do my best. Promise you won’t worry?”

“Can’t promise that.”

He nodded, looked out the window. “I’ll call Herman’s nephew in New Jersey as soon as we’re on the road. Soon as he comes for
Herman, I’ll call you. Don’t forget your cell phone, and just be ready.”

“And after that?”

He chewed the inside of his cheek. “After that, Miami will be where we
used
to live.” He squeezed her hand, she squeezed back. “Go faster, Tess, the road is all yours.”

H
OW IS THAT POSSIBLE?” Patrick sat down in the leather chair of his home office, holding the phone to his ear. “He walked out of the hospital and disappeared into the ether, is that what you’re telling me?” He rocked back and forth, finger-raked his hair, and listened. He said, “Jesus Christ. I have no idea what my brother thinks he’s doing … I really don’t.” He stood up, looked out the window at Biscayne Bay and listened to Oscar’s bad news.

When he put the phone down and turned around, Celina was standing in the doorway. He didn’t know how long she’d been there. “Celina …”

“I came to ask would you like a cup of tea.”

He arranged some papers on his desk, slipped them into an envelope. “That would be nice, actually.”

She nodded. Staring at him.

He said, “Celina?” but she was already walking away.

In the kitchen he stood at the island while she poured water from the kettle into two cups with tea bags, set out the sugar bowl, a container of Half & Half. He watched her stir, the clink of spoon against cup sounding amplified.

She took a sip. “I like having you home. Just talking to you here, middle of the week like this, the kids at school. No interruptions, so we can have a decent conversation.”

“I know what you mean.”

“You’re hardly here enough to enjoy your home,” she said, gesturing at the granite counters, the glass-front cabinets with wine rack. “You haven’t made shrimp scampi in the longest. It’s you who wanted that professional stove over there. Know something? We haven’t sat down, just us two, and enjoyed a meal and a bottle of wine, just talk, in an eternity.” She canted her head. “Can I tell you something else?”

“You’ve already started.”

“We’re growing apart. No. I mean it. We have this,” and she tossed a hand to the floor-to-ceiling window views of the bay, “but we’re losing each other.”

“I know what you’re saying, I know. Celina, listen, this campaign, it’s been much more difficult than I expected.”

“Will you stop?” She folded her arms. “Patrick, do you think I know you?”

He nodded and looked down at his cup.

“Of course I do. So don’t tell me it’s the campaign and think I’ll just accept that. Something’s been troubling you, something besides your campaign. I don’t know what it is but I want you to tell me. Do you hear me, Patrick?”

He tilted his head toward his office. “You thought you overheard something when I was on the phone?”

“I’ve known you for fifteen years, Patrick. I can see the truth all over your face. Remember those tough days after you started your own firm? Who knew right away there was something wrong?
I
did. Just like I know there’s something wrong now. Only now you’re not alone in this. And I will not—do you
hear?—I will
not
stand for me and the kids going down this road blindly with you. I’m not putting up with your evasions.”

He studied her, sipped his tea. “You won’t let this go, will you?” Trying to sound dismissive but at the same time admiring her toughness.

“As long as we’re in this house together, you bet I won’t. If whatever is happening here ends up hurting me or the kids, I will pack your bags and leave them by the door and my lawyer’ll be calling you faster than you can say alimony. Or you can speak to me now and let me help you.”

Patrick looked at her for a long time before he plodded over to the breakfast nook with his tea. He looked out the window, nodding to himself. “Okay, Celina. You want to know, so here it is.”

She sat down across from him.

“It’s Leo,” he said. “He’s causing me some grief. He took this man, a guy we’ve been looking for, involved with the campaign, out of the hospital, the psych ward there, and we’ve lost track of them.”

Celina raised her chin, closed her eyes briefly. “Wait.” She moved her cup out of the way and reached across the table, taking his hand. “Begin from the beginning, my love.”

LEO WHEELED the Camry into a Chevron station just off 1-75 in Sarasota. Herman was wearing an old ball cap Leo had pulled from the overnight bag in the backseat, and Leo was sporting a bandage on his chin that Tessa had plastered on when they’d dropped her off at the apartment. That had been three hours ago. The morning had turned hot and bright and for the first
time since they fled the hospital, Leo allowed himself to feel optimistic. Just a little.

He bought two cups of coffee, cheap scissors and even cheaper sunglasses, and ten bucks’ worth of gas out of habit. He passed a cup to Herman, slouched in the backseat, and pumped gas, eye-balling the area, especially the pay phone that a young migrant worker was using. A small truck was parked nearby waiting on him, two guys in the cab and a mountain of cantaloupes in the back. After a few minutes, the young migrant hung up, got in the truck, reversed, turned around, and drove past the pumps and children in shorts milling around an RV with Ohio plates.

After sipping his coffee, taking a couple of minutes for safety’s sake, Leo handed Herman the sunglasses. “Do it now. Quick.”

Herman opened the back door, reached out a shoeless foot. “Why don’t we use that cell phone you have, the one from the hospital?”

“Call me paranoid, but do you want to risk them tracing you? Go, Herman.”

He looked like a vagrant shuffling over to the pay phone with bare feet, tugging up beltless pants, cap jammed over his head, and rocking those ridiculous shades.

Leo got back into the car and drank his coffee. Smoked his first cigarette of the morning, musing on events—what he’d done and how this day might come back to hurt him, even though the reason he’d acted in the first place was to stop past events from hurting him.

Herman returned to the backseat, looking almost cheery. “Esteban says he will come this afternoon. He will fly to Tampa, from Tampa he will rent a car, you know? To pick me up.”

“You told him to buy a map?”

“Sí, sí.”
The old man clasped his hands.

Leo started the car. “Wait a minute. He said what time?”

“In the late afternoon, must be. His plane arrives at noon.”

“Yes, but we need a time. So that when he comes we’ll know it’s his car at the gate.”

“You want me to call him again?”

Leo gave the parking lot the once-over, saw cars pulling up at the pumps, truckers and pasty-legged tourists streaming in and out of the store, the place getting busy. “On second thought, forget about it. Too many eyes, making me kinda nervous.”

They pulled out and headed north on 1-75 again. Leo made damn sure he glued the needle to the speed limit. They passed the last exit to Sarasota and then Bradenton, open stretches of land on both sides, now and again the glimpse of a low ranch house behind a fence in the middle of nowhere that made Leo feel lonely.

Miles and miles of monotonous highway. Herman fell asleep, woke up, dozed off again. Leo smoked a cigarette, put the radio on. Daydreamed.

Near the exit to Parrish, Herman woke up and in the rearview, Leo noticed Herman studying him, like he was seeing him for the first time. “You are going to be a father. Congratulations. I wish I had children, but I never met the right woman. You want a boy or a girl?”

“I’ve been thinking about that, and I want to say it doesn’t matter either way, just for the child to be healthy, but I’d be fooling myself. I want a little girl.”

“Why? You are a man. A man should want a boy, a son, no?”

Leo considered the question, staring at the road. “This man
wants a girl, that’s all I know.” He came around a curve, leaning into it, and said, “Because maybe men are no good. Most of the men I know are simply no damn good. No insult to you, but it’s true. And all the women in my life are like saints compared.” Check that. Sometimes he didn’t know what to feel about his mother.

“Any one, boy or girl,” Herman said, “makes you a lucky man. You must believe that.”

They lapsed into a comfortable silence for a few miles. Then Herman commented on the weather, wondering what it would be like in New Jersey, if it was snowing. The weather was always a fallback conversation topic, wasn’t it? But Leo wanted to talk about something that had been pressing him for the last fifty-odd miles. With his exit in sight—Sun City Center, Exit 240 —he finally asked the question: “Herman, why are they looking for you?”

No sound from the backseat.

“You don’t have to tell me, of course. But seeing as how I’m the one bringing you all this way …”

“I get votes. For candidates. Just a job I do. For people like your brother. For this, now, they want to kill me.”

Leo shook out another cigarette from the pack on the seat. Held the cigarette between his lips and stared at Herman in the rearview. “No one’s going to kill you, Herman. I promise you that. This shit is going to end today. You believe that?”

“I
want
to believe it.”

Leo lit the cigarette, looked at himself in the mirror, squinting in the smoke. Thought he looked real cool, began to
feel
cool. “That’s right,” he said. “Damn straight.”

T
HE LITTLE LADY BEHIND THE DESK at the apartment office said, “Yes, dear, they’re gone. Sorry to tell you. Tessa came in here and paid the rent, said she was coming back before the end of the month for the rest of her stuff. That car was loaded with clothes and boxes and whatnot, and that dog they have? Barking in the cage like a crazy person. I felt sorry for Tessa, she looked so frazzled. Don’t know where her boyfriend was. What’s his name again?”

“Leo,” Celina said. Knowing the lady was testing her, giving her the up- and-down, Celina standing there in her silk blouse and conservative black skirt and low heels, smiling back at her.

The lady peered over her reading glasses. “And you are … her sister, you said? You don’t look anything like her.”

“No, I’m Leo’s sister-in-law. So she didn’t say where she was going? No forwarding address?” Celina’s hands rested on the handle of the gift basket she’d put on the desk. “I mean, it would be a pity if she didn’t get this.”

“Well, as I said, I’ll give it to her when she comes back.”

“The only thing is, what if she comes back late at night, when the office is closed, you know? It’s not like it’s priceless what’s in here, but it would mean a lot to her. Just some baby washcloths, bath towels, Balmex for diaper rash. And champagne to celebrate because a little bit of alcohol is great for let-down if you’re
breast-feeding, and I happen to know Tessa
so
wants to breastfeed. No chance at all I can leave it in the apartment? I’ll be really quick.”

“Sorry, dear. I can’t do that.”

Celina put on a pout. “That’s too bad. But maybe I can leave a note, slide it under her door? That’s allowed, isn’t it?”

Five minutes later, Celina was standing in front of the apartment door, her most bendable credit card in her hand. She knocked on the door firmly, just to be sure. Nothing. She knocked again, to be absolutely sure, the sound echoing down the empty hallway. She slid the card into the crack between the door and the frame as far as it could go, tilted the card toward her until it was almost touching the doorknob, pushing it again until it slid in some more. She bent the card the opposite way, forcing the lock to pop back, and quick as that, she opened the door and stepped in.

“Honey, I’m home,” she said and closed the door, holding her breath, listening for sounds.

The apartment smelled of dog. Boxes were stacked up near the sofa. A half-empty cup of milky coffee sat on a side table next to a plate of crumbs. She moved into the kitchen—no notes on the fridge. She glided through the living room, looking for mail. There, in a pile in a basket on the floor. She flipped through the envelopes, nothing but junk mail and utility bills. The bedroom was a disaster, sheets tangled, clothes strewn across the bed. And more boxes. She opened them: clothes and women’s shoes. She rummaged through drawers of clothes: nothing valuable there. Under the bed she found a shoe box with a Zip-loc bag of marijuana seeds and stems.

In the walk-in closet, behind long dresses hanging from the rack, she found a heavy wooden filing cabinet. She opened it, and smiled.

It took her about two minutes of rifling through old IRS forms before she struck gold. An ordinary manila folder with neat handwriting across the front:
Wimauma house paperwork.
There were a bunch of envelopes inside. The second one gave her what she wanted. A page in it read:
Hillsborough County Notice of Ad Valorem Taxes and Non– Ad Valorem Assessments.
Under that was Tessa’s name and a Wimauma address.

Celina fanned herself with the envelope, smiling—she couldn’t help it. She looked around the room, a room in somebody else’s home, and felt so deliciously wicked it made her horny.

L
EO AWOKE FROM A DREAM and for a few seconds didn’t know where he was or whether it was morning or evening. He was lying on the tattered cushions of a pine sofa. Bare yellow walls. A low-ceilinged living room. Breeze whistling through tears in the window screen, puffing through a screen door. Two empty cans of Chef Boyardee ravioli on a table in the living room.