“Fred,” she said. “That’s my big brother’s name. He was killed in Iraq by a bomb.”
The man in the black shirt removed his hand from the girl’s shoulder, began applauding and announced, “Then Fred it’ll be.”
The crowd stood and joined in with applause and a few whoops and hollers. Borg began making his way up the aisle. He paused when he saw the man in front of him looking at him. Lew was thin, short, balding, his face perpetually sad.
Borg was tall, broad with thick arms and wary. His fists were clenched.
The hog was led out of the ring with people shouting, “Take care now, Fred!” and “Good job, Fred!”
Lew reached into his back pocket, pulled out the trifolded papers with their blue cover sheet and handed them to Borg.
“She told you where I was,” Borg said.
Lew was silent.
“I didn’t think she knew,” Borg said, looking at the trifolded sheets in his hand.
The crowd buzzed past them, people looking at the big and little man whose faces were no more than a foot apart.
“How much do you get for giving me this?” he asked.
“Fifty an hour plus expenses,” Lew said, meeting his eyes.
“I’ll give you three thousand dollars to take this back and say you couldn’t find me.”
Lew shook his head no.
“Five thousand,” he said, holding the papers in front of Lew’s face. “Cash. Now.”
Lew couldn’t explain it to him. He didn’t need money. He made enough to keep living in the room behind his office in Sarasota. He had his memories, his depression, his integrity. None of them were for sale.
“What do you want?”
Lew had walked into this place somewhere in Dante’s Inferno. He wanted to get out. He wanted his dead wife back. He didn’t want to face his nightmares. And now he had a new nightmare of pit bulls, helpless hogs, the smell of blood, the stifling heat of the barn and the faces of the people. There was a sadness to what he had seen, but then Lew sensed some level of sadness, loneliness, loss in almost every face he saw.
“I said, ‘What do you want?’” Borg shouted.
“To go back to Sarasota.”
Borg punched him in the stomach. Lew winced as little as possible and didn’t double over. This had happened to him before. It was part of the risk of being a process server.
Almost everyone had left the barn, except for the twins, who were now standing behind Borg.
“Trouble?” asked one of them.
Borg grabbed Lew’s shoulders and slammed the back of his head against the wall. Lew didn’t react. Borg’s hands were shaking.
“No trouble,” said Borg, standing back.
He turned Lew around and shoved him over a row of chairs. One of the chairs magically folded, spun over and landed on Lew’s legs.
“You want us to-?” asked the twin in black.
“No,” said Borg, looking down at Lew.
Something changed. For an instant Borg looked exhausted. He was breathing hard.
“Help him up,” said Borg with a sigh, putting the papers in his pocket.
The twins moved forward, shoved the folding chair away and helped Lew up. Both twins smelled of tobacco and frightened animals. Lew threw up, not much. They had to back away to keep from getting it on them. Lew wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, managed to walk back to Borg and said, “You’ve been served. Two witnesses. I’ll need their names.”
“You’re not gettin’ our names,” the one in the black T-shirt said.
Lew smelled more strongly of vomit than the one in black did of animal blood and cigarettes. The twin backed away half a step.
One dog and wild boar wrangler was on Lew’s left, the other on his right. Borg was in front of him now, looking down.
“You weren’t here,” he said calmly. “And you’re never going to be here.”
Lew tilted his head to the right and spoke into his shirt pocket, “That’s enough Ames. You can take off.”
Borg grabbed and ripped the pocket, pushing Lew back. A thin small black metal box spun to the ground.
“What is it?” asked Red.
“A transmitter,” Lew said.
Borg leaned over and picked up the black metal box. Then he laughed.
“What’s funny?” asked the man in the black T-shirt.
Borg held up the box and looked at Lew.
“It’s an old transistor radio,” said Borg. “Hasn’t even got batteries.”
He handed the radio back to Lew and smiled.
“Hold onto that thing,” he said. “It’ll probably be worth fifty bucks when the Antiques Road Show comes back to Tampa. Now get out of here. I’ve got things to do.”
Lew turned to leave, crossing the ring, stepping on popcorn and into wet red patches of mud and blood.
“Wait,” Borg said behind him. “She’s put me through hell. Now she wants everything and… forget it.”
Lew started toward the exit again.
“Hold it.”
Lew stopped and turned around, sweat lined his baseball cap, trickled down his forehead, spotted his shirt. He was swaying slightly now, his stomach warning of more treachery.
Borg, a cowboy on each side of him, reached into his pocket and came out with a thick wallet. The twins stood, arms folded, watching. Borg pulled out a handful of bills and handed them to Lew. There was a hundred-dollar bill on top of the pile.
“No strings,” Borg said. “An apology and to cover damages.”
Lew, swaying like Fred the hog, looked into the man’s eyes, and handed the money back. Borg took it and said, “Some other time maybe.”
Lew nodded. Borg held out his hand. Lew took it. Borg’s hand had a slight tremor. The twins were confused.
“Fred the hog is a female,” said Lew.
“We tell the crowd our killer’s been castrated,” whispered Borg. “They don’t want to see Santana tear a female apart. At least most of them don’t.”
“Some do,” said the twin in the red T-shirt.
“Some do,” Borg agreed. “And more than some know Fred is a female and they either lie to themselves or with a wink share that truth with others who are doing the same thing. It’s part of the game.”
Lew nodded again and headed for the exit.
He had a bottle of water in the car he had rented for the day. The car had air-conditioning. Not all the cars he rented did. He wanted to get to the car and the air-conditioning before he passed out.
The next time he saw Earl Borg was more than three years later when Lew discovered… but that’s three years later.
1
Three Years and Two Months Later
Lew had come to Sarasota more than four years ago wanting no place to go, nothing to do, no people to be responsible for or to be responsible for him.
It didn’t happen. He wanted the dark cell of his existence behind the Dairy Queen on 301. Two small rooms overlooking the parking lot, hard to find. Almost none of his business came through the door. He had a Florida process server’s license and an arrangement with four law firms to serve papers. Not much money. But more than enough for him.
He wanted each day to be a dark blanket that no one pulled back to let in the light. That seldom happened. And today he was neatly and reluctantly putting aside his search for solitude.
Lew’s first stop that morning was the EZ Economy automobile rental down the street. Once there had been two men there. For a couple of years Lew thought they were father and son or two brothers. They weren’t.
They were a comedy team whose only appreciative audience was each other. Lew was one of their favorite targets as they drank coffee out of Styrofoam cups or stood with arms folded and negotiated.
The older of the two, Fred, had died a few months ago. Bad heart. Lew had never told him that he shared his name with a hog. Lew thought the company, which had never been a thriving business, would close. But it didn’t.
“Lewis Fonesca,” Alan, the bulky survivor of the duo, said from behind the desk, feet up, rubbing the sides of the cup. Coffee steamed between his hands. He watched it. “What can I do for you?”