Retribution: A Lew Fonesca Novel (Lew Fonesca Novels) (21 page)

“It’s called paranoia,” I said.

“Bullshit,” Merrymen said, spitting blood on my office floor. I handed him a wad of tissues. He took them and applied them to his face.

“You’ve got a club in one hand and a target on your back,” said Ames, looking into Merrymen’s eyes. “Then you scream, ‘Here I am.’ That’s why people are after you.”

“You don’t understand,” Merrymen said.

“All I’ve got to say,” said Ames, turning his back on the ranting bloody man.

“The door’s over there,” I said.

“You people just don’t understand,” he shouted. “You don’t listen. You don’t… what’s the use. Mickey, if you come home, there’s a dog waiting to greet you.”

And with that Merrymen staggered out of the door. I looked out of my window and our eyes met. This was not a friendly departure.

“I have an appointment,” I said.

“I’ll take care of him,” said Ames. “You want him here when you get back?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I’ll get him one of those things you drink from the Dairy Queen and some ice for his face,” Ames said.

“I’ll be back soon. By the way, what made you arrive just in time for the rescue?”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the morning’s Sarasota
Herald-Tribune
. It was folded so that I could see the small article and the photograph at the bottom. The headline over the photograph read: “Murder Attempt on Motorist.” There was a picture of me inset in the small article. The picture was the same one I had taken for my process server’s license. I looked like a cockeyed smirking chimp, the very prey any sensible hunter looking for an easy target might take a shot at.

“Thought you might need help,” said Ames.

“You were right,” I said. “I’ll get back as soon as I can.”

Ann Horowitz was on the telephone when I arrived. She looked at me over the top of her glasses and motioned for me to close the door and take my usual seat. I did.

“Listen,” she told her caller, “my next client just came in. But I’ll give you advice. You called to sell me insurance
on dying people. It’s an interesting idea. I give you money and then wait till my person dies. I check the obituaries or wait for you to call saying, ‘Good news, Emily Jacobs just died.’ Sensible but an aura of morbidity that I find strange. My question is, ‘How do you feel about selling the death?’ … The word ‘fine’ came too suddenly to your lips as if you wanted to leap over some chasm and come out on the other side with a smile. What if I took my insurance out on your life? Don’t answer. You’ve been doing this how long? Six months. And you are making money as you promise I will. I have a question for you to consider, but I haven’t time now to hear your answer. The question is, what do you think is the meaning of your life? Answer it and then call yourself a liar and tell the liar to tell the truth. You have my number. If you want to make an appointment to see me to talk over your answer, call. My charge is one hundred dollars a session. Now, good-bye.”

She hung up the phone and settled back.

“No offering?” she asked, looking at my empty hands. “No biscotti, no scone, no rugelach, not even a donut?”

“I didn’t have time,” I said. “I was dealing with a lunatic in my office who was trying to kill me.”

“He didn’t succeed,” she said calmly. “I’ve got some raisins in the drawer.”

“No thanks.”

“We can drink my coffee,” she said.

“No thanks,” I said.

I had twice tried Ann’s coffee. It was thick, bitter, and I never saw her drink it.

“Why did this man want to kill you?” she asked.

“Because he’s crazy. He thinks everyone is trying to … he’s paranoid. Nuts. A loony. He beat up his son in my office.”

“Your clients sound almost as interesting as mine,” she said, opening a nearby drawer and pulling out a clear, small Ziploc bag of raisins that she opened and began to eat.

“We’ll compare notes sometime,” I said.

“Now is a good time,” Ann answered, looking up at her wall clock. “We still have forty-five minutes. So, I’ll start with a question. Why does a hermetic, depressed recluse
have any clients at all outside of those for whom he serves papers?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Common denominator,” she asked.

I’d heard that phrase before today. It had more than a hint of déjà vu.

“People come to me,” I said. “I don’t ask for them. I don’t want them.”

“But you don’t turn them down,” she said, nibbling a raisin. “Why? You’ve described some of your clients in past sessions. I see a common denominator. I may be wrong but it’s a place to start.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“They all remind you of the most important person in your life,” she said.

“Who?”

“You, Lewis Fonesca. They are all sad cases. People calling out for help with no one to turn to. A runaway wife, a wife whose husband is dying, a runaway girl, an old man who has been robbed by his partner. And you help them as you cannot help yourself.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“And then what do you do with them?” she asked.

“Do with them?”

“When you solve their problem. What do you do?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“You make the survivors part of a family you are rebuilding,” she said. “You lost your family and so you are rebuilding one and at the same time you reject it. You are an interesting case, Lewis.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“I didn’t say you were the most interesting case I ever had,” she said. “You know Joe Louis the boxer?”

“Of course.”

“I treated him once for a while,” she said. “Nice man. Paranoid like the man you had in your office. Thought everyone was trying to kill him, particularly the Mafia. He would never give up the idea. He had evidence, proof, a distortion of reality that bordered on the creativity of a Borges.
He was more interesting than you are, but you will do. So?”

“So?” I repeated.

“Did anything I just said do anything? How did it make you feel?”

“It made sense, I suppose.”

“It made sense,” she said in exasperation. “Of course it made sense, but did it feel right to you? Did you have an epiphany? A sudden jolt of understanding?”

“No.”

“Sense and feeling are not always in agreement,” she said. “You sure you don’t want some raisins?”

I accepted some raisins.

“When you feel it, it works. When it just makes sense, it doesn’t work. The truth must touch your soul.”

“I don’t believe in the soul,” I said.

“I remember you telling me that many times,” she said. “It doesn’t matter whether you believe it or you don’t. You can deny the sight of a mystic levitating, but he is still levitating. Your denial doesn’t change that.”

“Levitation is a trick,” I said. “Weak analogy.”

“Levitation is a trick until you learn to levitate.”

“Can you levitate?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “But I have touched and had touched the soul. I have an idea. Let’s not call it the soul. Let’s not call it anything. Your picture was in the newspaper today.”

“I know,” I said.

“I have an extra copy. Would you like it?”

“No, thanks.”

“Someone tried to kill you?”

“I think so.”

“Why?”

“Don’t you want to know ‘who’?”

“No, I’d prefer ‘why.’ It saves a step.”

“Because I’m coming too close.”

“To what?”

“Damned if I know,” I said.

“Interesting thing to say,” Ann said, fishing out the last of the raisins. “Why would this knowledge lead to your damnation?”

“I didn’t mean …”

“An automatic response from inside, a protective cliché, but one that bears meaning for you. You could have said, ‘I don’t know,’ or ‘beats me,’ or…”

“I’m lost,” I said.

“Yes, that is why you came to see me in the first place. Do you know what happened to Henry Hudson?”

“He designed a fat car back in the forties,” I said.

“We’re close to something,” she said with glee, throwing the empty bag in the nearby trash can. “You are dodging. I am throwing. Perhaps you’ll stop and I’ll hit something.”

“Henry Hudson,” I said.

“Hudson Bay. Hudson River,” she said. “Searched for the Northwest Passage. Got lost, frozen on the massive bay that bears his name. There was a mutiny. The crew was getting sick. The ice was closing in. Hudson was determined to go on. The crew sent Hudson, his son, and others adrift on the icy water and sailed for home. Hudson was never found. No one knows if he made land. There are Indian stories about white men who lived for years on the shore, of Indians they traded with, of remnants of bones or a shack. But never found.”

“Interesting. There’s a point here?”

“History always has a point,” she said. “Historians always make a point. Often they disagree with each other over the point. What is the point of Hudson’s story for you?”

“If you keep looking for something that isn’t there and you’re too stubborn to admit it, you might get yourself killed,” I said.

“Or, you might find the Northwest Passage. Samuel Hearne tried and failed.”

“Samuel Hearne?”

“Lewis and Clark tried later with more success,” she said.

“I’m looking for a truckload of novels and short stories,” I said. “Not the Northwest Passage.”

“Henry Hudson found the Hudson River and Hudson Bay,” she said. “Not unimportant discoveries. Maybe you should… what?”

“Look around at what I’ve found and guard myself from mutineers,” I said.

“Close enough,” she said. “Session’s over.”

She rose and so did I. I paid her twenty dollars in cash that I could afford this week.

“One last thing,” she said as I went to the door.

I stopped and looked back at her.

“Can you say her name?”

“Catherine,” I said immediately.

I stood amazed. I had nurtured, protected my dead wife’s name and memory, held it as my own not wanting to let go of my grief, feeling the simple utterance of her name would be a kind of sacrilege to the mourning I did not want to lose. I had spoken her name aloud only to Ann and to Sally.

“You know why you were just able to do that?” Ann asked.

“No.”

“Because we talked about life. Because you are slowly rejoining the living, building new friends, a family.”

“I’m not sure I want to,” I said.

“And that,” she said with an air of conclusion, “is what we must work on.”

She went back to her chair, picked up the phone, and gave me a small smile of encouragement as I went out the door.

When I got back to my office, Ames was standing against a wall, arms folded. Mickey was sitting in the folding chair holding a see-through bag of ice against his face.

The blood was off the wall and everything was in place. Ames had cleaned up. I would have been surprised if he hadn’t. There was no sign of the supposedly adult Merrymen.

“Got some calls,” Ames said.

The little red light on my answering machine was blinking and the counter showed three phone calls.

“Any sound important?”

He shook his head “yes.” I got my pad and Nation’s Bank click pen and pushed the
PLAY
button.

A man’s voice came on, young, serious.

“This is John Rubin at the
Herald-Tribune
. We just got a call from someone who wouldn’t leave a name. Caller said that Conrad Lonsberg had all of his manuscripts stolen and I should call you. Please call back.”

He left his number, repeating it twice. I wrote it on my pad.

The second voice was Flo’s, not quite sober but contrite and possibly coming out of it. In the background I could hear Frankie Laine singing the theme from
Rawhide
. I didn’t think it really qualified as country or western, but it wasn’t an issue I wanted to take up with Flo who said, “Lewis, Adele called again, said she was all right. Said she was sorry for what she was doing to me but she had to do it if she expected to have any respect for herself. Said she’d come back to me if she lived or didn’t get locked up by the cops. I think, overall, that’s not a bad sign, is it? I couldn’t get her to listen to me. If you want details, give me a call. You know where to find me since my wheels are gone.”

The third call was from Brad Lonsberg and he was calm, level-voiced, and mad as hell.

“Fonesca, I just got a call from the
Herald-Tribune
. A man named Rubin asked me if there was any truth to the story that my father’s manuscripts have been stolen. I did what I always do when I get calls from people who track me down trying to get to my father. I told him I had nothing to say. He said he was about to get confirmation on the story from you. I don’t use foul language. If I did, I’d be using it now. If you’re trying to gain fame and a little fortune from my father’s relationship to that girl, I’ll use whatever power I have in this town to have you … Let’s just say I would be very displeased if you are talking to the press. I don’t like publicity related to my father. It’s my rear end I’m trying to protect, not his just so you know this is personal. My guess is if this Rubin has called Laura, he got her number from you. There aren’t many people who know who or where she is. So, simply, shut up.”

There was a double beep and the tape rewound.

I looked at Mickey whose jaw was swollen and at Ames who stood in the same position he had been in.

“Who do I call first?” I asked Ames.

“Flo,” he said. “I’m thinking about paying her a visit. She might be up for a little company.”

I nodded and punched in the buttons for Flo’s number. She came on after two rings with an anxious “Yes.”

“Me, Lew. Ames is going to pay you a visit. You up for it?”

“Ames? Anytime.”

I put a thumb up for Ames. The melting ice in Mickey’s bag shifted with a tiny clack. Mickey groaned.

“Adele say anything else? I mean besides what you put on the machine?”

“One or two things. Just talk about going back to school if she could. Something about not looking for her. She was in a place no one would look. That’s it. What’s going on?”

“I’m working on it,” I said. “If someone from the
Herald-Tribune
calls you, and I don’t think they will, just hang up on them.”

“I always do,” she said.