“As you can see, the apartment comes furnished,” said Showalter, walking to the bathroom. “Including towels. But if the tenant has his or her own furniture, we can clear everything out.”
Lew moved to the desk and opened the middle drawer. The only thing in it was an unframed and folded university degree.
“Okay if I take this?” Lew asked, holding up the degree.
“I don’t-” Showalter began.
“Owen Keen,” Lew cut in. “The man who might be interested in renting. His name is Owen Keen.”
“Owen Keen,” Showalter said, writing the name in his notebook. “I’ll give him a call. Mentic Pharmaceuticals, you said?”
“Yes, can I take the painting too?” Lew asked, tucking the folded sheet of paper carefully into his pocket.
Showalter looked at the dark noir canyon on the wall. “Sure,” he said, moving to the window. “You want to give Mr. Keen a call and tell him?”
“I will,” said Lew, moving to the painting and taking it from the wall.
“Is that valuable?” asked Showalter, glancing back at Lew. “If it is…”
“In money? No. I don’t think so.”
“I’ll be damned,” Showalter said, now looking down at the street. “He’s back.”
Lew, framed painting tucked under his arm, was at Showalter’s side. There were plenty of spaces on the street. The gray Kia SUV was pulling into one of them directly across the street.
“Changed his mind,” said Showalter with disappointment.
Victor Lee, lean, shoulders slightly slumped, got out of the car, adjusted his glasses and started across the street.
“No,” said Lew. “He forgot to take something with him. He’s coming back for it.”
“What?” asked Showalter.
“This,” said Lew, holding up the painting. “All right if I give it to him?”
“He can have it,” Showalter said.
Victor Lee looked up at the apartment window. He stopped. He saw two figures, sun glinting, hiding their faces. His head dropped. He turned and moved back to the SUV. Lew moved quickly past Showalter. As Lew went through the door, Showalter called, “Call Keen, right away, okay?”
9
Man said it was urgent,” said Ames.
He was sitting at Lew’s desk, blinds open, sun dancing in dust, sending a yellow band across the floor. Outside beyond the Dairy Queen lot, a sports car whoomed up a few gears and shot away.
“How each of us sees urgency is a matter of perspective,” Ann Horowitz said. “What is urgent to this man may not be to Lewis.”
She was in her office on Bay Street, a patient sat in the closet-sized waiting room beyond her wooden door. Ann was purposely keeping the patient, Stephen Mullex, waiting beyond his appointed time. Mullex should complain about his hour being cut short. She wanted him to complain, to assert himself. If he didn’t complain, she would make that the issue of the session.
“Yes, ma’am,” Ames said evenly.
“One man might well say he has an emergency, and mean it and sound like it, screaming, crying, when his car won’t start and he will be late for a tuna match.”
“Tuna?”
“Tennis,” Ann corrected herself, wondering what, if anything, her slip might mean. Age? The ghost of Freud?
“Another man might call the police from his home and calmly announce that his family was being murdered by two men with axes downstairs and add that there was no hurry because everyone was dead.”
“Were they?” asked Ames.
“Hypothetical,” Ann answered. “How would you react?”
“Find a gun, knife, chair, lamp and go down after the guys with axes,” he said. “By the time the police got there, they’d all be dead.”
“Unless he killed his family,” said Ann.
“Yes, ma’am. That’s possible. If Lewis calls you, would you please have him call me at the Texas Bar and Grille. I left a message on his sister’s phone, but he hasn’t called back.”
“I do have another number,” she said.
Ames said nothing, waited.
“He asked me not to give it out. It’s his brother-in-law’s cell phone.”
“Ma’am.”
She looked at the digital clock on her desk. The numbers were large. The time was ten minutes after the hour. Stephen Mullex had been kept waiting long enough. Ann gave Ames the number of the phone in Franco Massaccio’s tow truck.
“I can be disbarred for betraying this confidence,” she said.
“You’re not a lawyer. You’re a psychologist.”
“Then getting disbarred won’t hurt my career, will it?”
“No ma’am, it won’t.”
“I was making a joke, Mr. McKinney.”
“So was I,” said Ames. “Thanks for the number.”
“Have Lewis call me.”
She hung up. So did Ames. He dialed the number Ann Horowitz had given him, got an answering machine and said: “Lewis, it’s Ames. Call me at your office.”
Ames McKinney had a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in civil engineering. He had, less than a decade ago, been rich. He had written a book published by the University of New Mexico Press, Some Things a Man Can’t Walk Around: Individual Responsibility in Nineteenth-Century America. The book had been well-reviewed in journals and even a few newspapers in New Mexico, Texas and Colorado. It had even been nominated for a Chino best nonfiction award. He had never mentioned the book to Lew or anyone else. When Ames’s partner had taken all the money in their business and hid in Sarasota, Ames had come here, found him and the two had shot it out on South Lido Beach. The partner died. Ames had spent minimal time in jail because he had a witness, Lewis Fonesca. He owed his sad little Italian friend, but beyond that Ames liked him.
Ames called the Texas Bar amp; Grille and told Big Ed that he’d be coming back late. The collection of old guns on the wall, the choice of twelve different beers, the thick all-meat nearly raw burgers the size of a pie plate and Ed were the prime attractions of the Texas Bar amp; Grille. Ed, who grew up in New England, had decided one day to sell his chain-link business, part his hair down the middle, grow a handlebar mustache, buy a shinny vest and go West to become a saloon keeper. He got as far as Sarasota. He was red-faced and happy.
“Do what you gotta,” said Ed.
Ed was also fond of saying, “There are some things a man just can’t walk around,” “Suit yourself,” “I said I’d do it and that I full intend to do,” “I’m a peaceable man so let’s not have any trouble here.” He had always avoided “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.” There are some cliches a man’s just gotta walk around.
Two hours later, after finishing the paperback copy of a Larry McMurtry novel, Ames picked up the phone and dialed the number Earl Borg had given him.
Pappas sat on the sofa listening to a CD of Dionysious Savopoulos’s Garden of the Fool. The singer was one of his favorites, had been since he first heard his voice on on a Greek radio station almost forty years ago in Philadelphia. Philadelphia was home, had been home. It was where the good memories were, at least many good memories plus the ghosts of many friends and enemies. Philadelphia, in Greek, means “City of Brotherly Love.” Savopoulos had been a kind of Greek combination of Frank Zappa and Bob Dylan with strong traditional Greek influences.
Pappas wanted to squeeze the coffee cup, but if he did, it would break. One of the reasons for using the delicate cups was that they were so delicate. They reminded him that he should have a soft touch. Sometimes, however, he forgot.
Loose ends. Holes. Sticky fingers. Weak sons. Weak knees. Mother is always right. Like Hell. If mothers were like Bernice, they were wrong at least half the time and when they were wrong, they were wrong big time. I mean, I’m telling you, big, big time. But a mother is a mother. This one could kill and bake and loved her family.
Enough. Tomorrow he would personally take care of Posnitki. Their relationship was far too dangerous for Pappas and his family. The dead Posno would take to darkness behind the wall of death whatever information he had on Pappas. Posno would also take with him responsibility for all he had done in Pappas’s name. He would even take with him responsibility for crimes he didn’t commit. The door would be open.