Retribution: A Lew Fonesca Novel (Lew Fonesca Novels) (6 page)

I don’t know why but I held up my copy of
Fool’s Love
for the camera.

Nothing happened. I stepped back and noted that the camera lens didn’t follow me. I got in the car, turned around, and parked where I could watch the gate. The Gulf was behind me. I turned off the engine, opened the windows, and listened to the surf. A few gulls drifted by, most of them made their squawking sound. A few said, “It’s me.”

I opened
Fool’s Love
and began to read:

By the time Sherry Stephens hit State Highway 71 at Weaver’s Texaco station, she had become Laura Or-dette. She shifted her full duffel bag, the green one her brother George had given her when he got back from Korea, into her left hand.

Laura Ordette didn’t look back. Laura Ordette was not the kind of woman to look back. Sherry Stephens would probably be crying now walking along the roadside of Martin’s Lagoon Street, probably be looking back, thinking about what she was leaving. Sherry Stephens would be thinking about the small room she shared with her sister. Sherry Stephens would be thinking about her sister and her mother. Her mother was at work now answering calls at Rowlinson’s Real Estate. Sherry’s mother had a good telephone voice, deep and friendly. Those who actually met Grace Stephens were often surprised to see a small, serious woman in no-nonsense suits. Sherry’s father? Was he worth thinking about? Not by Laura Ordette. He was a red-faced, red-necked slab of beef who drove trucks across six states. Sherry would be worrying about missing school. Not Laura Ordette. Sherry was fifteen. Laura was eighteen and had three hundred dollars in her pocket. Sherry had saved it working after school at Pine’s Drug Store. Well, she had worked for most
of it. About half she had taken from the cigar box in the bottom drawer of her father’s dresser.

A car passed going in her direction. It stopped. “Want a ride?” the man asked. He was as old as her father. He smiled like he meant it but she knew he didn’t. He might be harmless. He might be hoping. Sherry would have said “no” and kept walking without looking at him. Laura looked, appraisingly, sighed, and said, “What kind of car is that?”

“Buick.”

“I don’t ride in Buicks,” Laura said. “My parents died in one.”

The old guy drove on mumbling something.

Laura Ordette knew many things besides the fact that the duffel bag was heavy. She knew that all adults were liars. She knew that most kids were liars. She knew Reverend Scools, the pastor at her church, was a liar and stupid. The only people who didn’t lie, who didn’t have to, were the smart ones with money and power. They didn’t have to lie though maybe they did it for fun. She knew that she would grow old and die. She knew that when she died she was not going to go to heaven or hell. You just died. That was it. The rest was shit. She knew that men and boys who were old enough looked at her thinking what it would be like to have her tits pressed against their naked chests, their tongues in her mouth, their wang tall and hard inside her. Yucch. Laura Ordette was above that. If people were all animals, and that’s what she believed, the ones who were worth breathing were the ones who stayed above being breeding animals distracting themselves while they waited to get old and die.

Laura Ordette was going to New York. She knew the bus schedule. She had called to be sure there would be a seat. Laura Ordette was going to New York, the daughter of a wealthy Concord family who disdained their money and pleas and walked out to make it on her own. She would become a writer, a Broadway ticket seller, a greeter at some big art gallery on Fifth Avenue. She would go for that job in her one good
dress, all made-up, tell them how she was going to New York University at night, and get the job. She was going to get her own room. She was going to meet rich, smart people, see a real play, speak in a voice nothing like that of Sherry whose name she was already forgetting as she had forgotten what her father had done to her, what her mother had said. No, not her father. That Sherry’s father, that weak, whining Sherry’s father and mother. Laura Ordette’s parents were upstanding, supportive, there for her if she wanted to go back.

When she hit State 70 she put the duffel bag down. It had D. Stephens stenciled on it in black. Laura would get rid of it when she got to her home in New York. About two blocks down she could see the sign for the bus station. She lifted the duffel bag again and waited till the traffic let her cross.

She was happy. She was on her way. Then why was she crying?

Two hours had passed and I was almost finished with the book. I stopped after the scene in which Laura dumps the fully clothed drunken high school English teacher into his bath of cold water.

No one had come in or out of the Lonsberg fort. I headed for the nearest pay phone. That took me all the way back to a gas station on the Trail. I called the Texas Bar and Grille on Second Street. Big Ed Fairing answered the phone.

“Ed, is Ames there?”

“He’s here. I’ll call him.”

I heard Ed bellow for Ames above the late-afternoon beer and burger crowd.

“He’s coming,” said Ed. “You know they’re creeping up on me, Fonesca?”

“Who?”

“Developers,” he said. “This used to be a perfectly respectable run-down street with some character. Now, art galleries, Swedish tearooms, antique shops. They’re creeping up. The upscaling of downtown is taking away its character.
We’ll be looking like St. Armand’s Circle in two years. People have no sense of history. You know what they’re putting in next door? I mean, right next door where the cigar store was?”

“A tanning salon?” I guessed.

“No, Vietnamese fingernail place,” he said. “That’ll bring in a lot of business. Here’s Ames.”

“McKinney,” Ames said in his deep and slightly raspy western Sam Elliott drawl.

Ames is tall, white-haired, grizzled, lean, brown, and almost seventy-five years old. Ames was not supposed to bear arms. It was a right he had lost after using an ancient Remington Model 1895 revolver to kill his expartner in a duel on the beach in the park at the far south end of Lido Key. Ames had hired me to find his expartner who had run away with all the money in the bank and everything he could sell from the company he and Ames owned, a company worth forty million dollars. Ames was ruined. The bank took the company. Ames with a few thousand dollars in his pocket had tracked the partner for more than a year on buses from Arizona to St. Louis and then to Sarasota. I had found the partner. I tried to stop the two old men from dueling. I failed but I was there when it happened and testified that the expartner had fired first. Ames got off with a few minor felony counts and two months in jail. He now believed that he owed me. He never got any money back but he felt that I had helped him regain his self-respect.

Ames had a job at the Texas Bar and Grille, a room in back, and a motor scooter. He also had access to Ed Fairing’s considerable collection of old rifles and handguns that Ames kept in perfect working order.

Ames considered me his responsibility. He was probably also the closest thing I had to a friend.

“Ames, Adele is missing,” I said.

“Run off?”

Ames was with me all through the ordeal with Adele and her parents. Ames had gotten along particularly well with Adele’s mother Beryl. When Beryl died, Ames rode shotgun at my side, literally, when we got Adele back from her life on the North Trail. When Ames looked at Adele with
disapproval, Adele’s inventive foul language disappeared. There was something about the old man that made people want to earn his respect.

“I don’t know,” I said. “You know the Burger King on 301, near the Ringling School?”

“Know it,” he said.

“Kid works there named Mickey. Don’t know his last name. Must be about twenty. See if you can track him down, find out where he lives. Adele might be with him.”

“If I find her?” he asked.

“Leave a message on my machine,” I said. “You ever hear of a writer named Conrad Lonsberg?”

“I have.”

“He lives out on Casey Key. He might know something about Adele. I’m waiting for him.”

“Want help?”

Which meant, do you want me to come down there with a shotgun, break down the door, and threaten the noted man of letters.

“Not yet,” I said. “You read any of his books?”

“Liked
Plugged Nickels”
said Ames. “Didn’t read the poetry. The first one,
Fool’s
… something.”

“
Fool’s Lover
,” I said.

“Fool’s Love,”
he said. “Couldn’t get through it. Too much feeling sorry for everybody.”

“It’s considered a classic,” I said.

“Not by me,” Ames said.

“Can’t say I’m looking forward to finishing it,” I said.

“Put it away. Try
Plugged Nickels
if you have to read him. I’ll call you.”

I hung up, got back into the Cutlass, and drove over the bridge. It was almost dark when I parked across from Lonsberg’s gate. Across the Gulf of Mexico I could see the sun balanced big and yellow-red on the horizon line. A white heron flew in from the water and landed about a dozen feet from the car. It strutted, long-necked, gracefully, and then stood as still as a pink lawn flamingo. I was watching the sun beaming off the heron till the bird decided to look at me and fly back out over the water. I watched the sunset. A few seconds after it was down I heard the gate open.

It was on some kind of automatic device like a garage door. A battered blue Ford pickup rumbled out and the gates closed behind it. I had my lights off though it was dark enough to use them. I followed whoever was in the Ford down the road, off the Key, and over the bridge toward the mainland.

I stayed far enough behind that I hoped he wouldn’t see me but close enough that I wouldn’t lose him. He wasn’t going fast. Since the windows of the pickup were tinted, I couldn’t see who was driving but at least it was a human from the Lonsberg enclave. It was a start.

The pickup went north and turned into the mall just before Sarasota Square and parked near the Publix. I parked in the next aisle.

A lean, average-sized man with white hair, gray chinos, and a black short-sleeved polo shirt got out. The shirt wasn’t tucked in. I knew Lonsberg was about seventy. This man walked like a man twenty years younger and in a hurry. I followed. He got a cart at Publix. So did I. I followed him around and got a few decent looks. The face was sun-darkened, lined, good teeth that looked real, a serious look. He selected grits, eggs, cheese, a wide variety of vegetables, meat, chicken, fresh grouper, and a big jar of Vita herring in sour cream. He added six gallons of bottled water and six half gallons of Diet Dr Pepper before deciding he had all he needed or wanted. His eyes met no one’s and no one seemed to take note of him.

I got behind him in line with my four cans of albacore tuna.

While he emptied his cart, he looked back at me for an instant and in that instant he knew I recognized him. He turned his eyes back to his unpacking, his back to me.

While the clerk was putting his groceries in plastic bags, I paid for my tuna and followed him out to his pickup.

“Conrad Lonsberg,” I said.

He said nothing, just piled his bags in the back of his pickup truck.

“Adele Hanford,” I said as he opened the door of his pickup and started to get in. He stopped, turned his head, and looked at me. He knew how to stare someone down.
He had obviously had a lot of experience. We were a good match. I had a lifetime of patience and since he didn’t close the door and drive away I was sure this contact was not over.

“You’re Fonesca. Adele’s description was nearly perfect,” Lonsberg said, one hand on the trailer railing. “I thought she was engaging in a little creative hyperbole. Where is she?” he asked, his voice now low. I thought he was trying to keep himself in control, battling something. Rage, disappointment?

“That was my question,” I said. “I’m looking for her.”

“Why?”

“It looks like she ran away from her foster home,” I said. “Her foster mother is a friend. Adele is … I’m sort of responsible for her.”

“Flo Zink,” said Lonsberg, now tapping his left hand on the truck’s door. He kept looking at me and then made a decision. “Adele says you’re a private investigator.”

“I’m a process server.”

“What do you do not for a living?” he asked.

“Brood, watch old movies, think too much about the past,” I said.

He nodded in understanding. A fat woman with a full shopping cart wheeled noisily past us giving us both a glance. Lonsberg pressed his lips together, thought, looked away and then back at me.

“Follow me,” Lonsberg said, getting into his pickup and closing the door.

I got into the Cutlass and followed him out of the parking lot and down the Trail. Seven minutes later I pulled behind him at his gate. He leaned out of his open window and waved for me to get out of my car. I did. The passenger side door of his pickup opened. I got in next to him. He looked at me, pushed a button on the dashboard, and watched as the gate swung open. We drove in. He pushed the button again and the gate closed behind us.

I don’t know what I expected to see, probably one of the three-story ultra-modern white concrete designer houses with wide windows, decks, and normative palm trees.

We drove toward the only house on the three- or fouracre
property, a reasonably modest one-story wooden building with a covered porch hovering over a trio of white wicker chairs and a wicker table. The house wasn’t small, but it wouldn’t go for more than one hundred eighty-five thousand in the current market in any other location. The grounds were green, the road we went down unpaved and narrow. To our left, however, was the Gulf of Mexico. The view and the expanse of beachfront would put the property in the two-million-dollar range. Along Lonsberg’s beach, birds strolled and waves rolled in. There were four plastic beach chairs not far from the shoreline facing the water. A sand pile about three feet high was in the process of giving itself up to the tide.

Lonsberg parked in front of the house and got out.

“Don’t worry about Jefferson,” he said as I got out too.

“Jefferson?”