“I believe you. Looks like you could use a hug.” Isaac walked to her and held out his short arms, a wide smile spreading across his face. Courtney leaned down, and he hugged her. At three and a half feet, Isaac Solminski had a line-of-sight most people didn’t possess. He could read people, could see into situations, spot trouble, and avoid it if possible. After twenty years on the road, he had no illusions about anything. But he did have faith and hope.
He had befriended Courtney Burke when she started working at the carnival three months earlier. Isaac believed Courtney was a special young woman who would never fit in as a carny. She was put on this earth for something else. He could feel it in his heart. And he could see farther than most men twice his height. Tonight he didn’t like what he saw. He said, “My precious Courtney. I’m surprised you came back.”
“Where am I gonna go? I need the work. I need to feel I’m getting closer to what I came for, too. Besides, if I run again, the cops will think I’m running from all this. I’m innocent.”
“Come with me. I’ll make us some tea. There’s something I want to tell you.”
She nodded and followed the little man as he stepped over a garden hose and waddled around pitched tents, campers, and motorhomes, many covered with grime and years’ worth of travel dents and dings in the body paint. Diesels hummed. Air conditions rattled. Courtney could see the blue lights from a TV screen flickering through the dirty window of a trailer. The night air carried the odor of diesel fumes.
Isaac climbed the two wooden steps to his small camper, opened the door and turned on the lights. Courtney had been in the small camper once before. It was a morning he’d made her breakfast after a drunken carny had slapped her across the mouth because she refused to go to McDonald’s with him for breakfast.
“Have a seat at the table. I’ll heat the water. Are you hungry?”
“Not really.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.” He sliced a wedge of carrot cake, placed it on a paper plate, and set it in front of her on the table. “With this cake, you’ll get your veggies, too.”
Courtney smiled and used a plastic fork to take a bite. “It’s so good. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Isaac placed tea bags in two steaming cups and sat across from Courtney. He pushed a cup near her plate. “Courtney, you don’t belong here. Find something else.”
“I don’t have anywhere else to go. I needed the work. And I haven’t finished what I set out to do.”
“What if you don’t find him?”
“I’ll find him. If not here, some other carnival, fair, or circus.”
“You’ve been working this circuit for three months. The season’s usually six to eight months. Where are you going to go after that?”
“I guess I’ll find work at some other carnival.”
“It’s a rough life, kiddo. You get in this game and it changes you. Since I’ve come to know you, I don’t believe you’re put on this earth to work the carny circuit. Some people come here ‘cause they’re running from something. Others are running to something. It’s a human train, a vagabond life, picking up and moving on like migrant workers comin’ to a new field to pick the marks, empty their pockets after they cash their Friday paychecks. That’s not you, not who you are.”
“Why do you stay, Isaac?”
“Look at me. I’m three and a half feet tall. Where am I gonna earn a living? But you don’t have to. You have your whole life ahead of you. This guy you’re looking for, why’s it so important to find him?”
“Because he took something from a person I love very much, my grandmother.”
“What if you don’t find him?”
“I can go to my grave knowing I tried.”
“You’re a little young to talk about end-of-life scenarios. You once told me the man you’re hunting for is a hypnotist, someone who can get others to do stuff.”
“Yeah, he’s good at it, too. Scary good.”
“At any one time in the summer, there are more than two hundred carnivals touring the states. I’ve worked a bunch of ‘em. Seen some excellent hypnotists, some not so great, and a few that used magic and hypnotism for no good. Saw it more years and years ago, back when little people like me were called freaks. Back in the days of touring with the bearded lady, the three-headed cow, and a whole bunch of people and critters that looked like long-distance ancestors who were rejects from Noah’s ark.”
“You’re not a freak. You’re a sweet and caring man.”
Isaac nodded and looked at her, his olive-green eyes filled with compassion. “Courtney, what you don’t know is that Lonnie was a dealer for Tony Bandini and his older brother Carlos.”
“What?”
“He moved meth, pills, coke. Somewhere between Boston, Buffalo, and here in Florida, the accounting didn’t jibe. I’d heard that Lonnie was into the Bandini brothers for five grand. Carlos Bandini runs five carnivals. He’s here from time to time. Neither he nor Tony offer many repayment plans.”
“Did Tony Bandini or his brother kill Lonnie?”
“I doubt it. But Tony would just as soon take him out as not. Probably ordered it done. Cops won’t trace it back to him unless they can find the actual hit man. The Bandinis have a network of roustabouts. It sends a message to other dealers — the house gets paid first. Tony Bandini doesn’t care if you take the fall, he probably planned it that way.”
Courtney pushed the plate away, her eyes burning. “I gotta go.”
“Go where?”
“Bandini’s office. I need to—”
“Listen to me, Courtney. Play it cool. You walk in there and you’ll walk into a hornet’s nest. You don’t know this guy. He’s about as dangerous as they come.”
She stood. “I’ve seen a lot of dangerous people in my life. I’ll start by asking him if I still work here. I guess we’ll see where it goes from there. Can I borrow your phone for a minute?”
“Yes, but stay away from Bandini’s office tonight. Promise me?”
“I can’t make a promise that I know I won’t keep.”
He shook his head and handed her his phone. “Are you calling your grandmother?”
“Yes, and then I’m calling the man who picked me up on the side of the road at night. If he’s not there … if anything happens to me, if for some reason I vanish, I want you to ask him a question for me. His name is Sean O’Brien.”
12
I was getting ready to lock Jupiter and head back to my cabin on the river when Dave Collins leaned in through the open sliding glass doors from the cockpit to the salon. “Sean, is your phone working?”
“Last I checked.”
“Knowing you, that could have been a month ago.”
I lifted my phone off the bar in the salon. “I’d set it to vibrate. Looks like there are three missed calls, and two voice messages. One’s from Nick’s phone and one from a number I don’t recognize.”
Dave shook his head of thick silver-white hair and stepped inside. “Nick’s been trying to reach you. He’s at the Tiki Bar. Said he overheard, and I’m quoting here — two shit-faced carny types talking about the killing at the county fair. He said one guy, a fella who’d partaken in a wee bit more Miller beer than he should have, was telling the other guy that the word on the street, so to speak, is the death of the worker was a contract killing.”
“Are these two men still there?”
“I don’t know. Nick called me after trying your phone for the last half hour or so.”
I said nothing, the only sound coming from halyards clanking against a sailboat mast in the warm night breeze.