Greg Legerman showed up. He was alone. I couldn’t tell if he was any more nervous than he always was, but he was sufficiently nervous to make the patrons uncomfortable. He wore jeans and a short-sleeved buttoned shirt with a collar. The shirt was green with yellow lines. He sat on the open stool to my right.
The old man leaned forward to get a better look at Greg and said, “Young man, you think people have souls?”
“Good question,” said Greg, avoiding my eyes.
I thought serving this permanently wired kid coffee would not improve the coming conversation, but I was too late. Gwen’s daughter, the one with two kids, including a teenage boy who sometimes worked in the shop after school, put a mug of hot liquid in front of Greg and said, “Decaf. Breakfast?”
“Waffles,” Greg said.
She nodded and moved off. You ordered waffles here. You got waffles, butter, maple syrup. You didn’t get built-in blueberries or bananas or bacon bits. You didn’t get wheat or bran waffles. You got the old-fashioned kind. Just the way Elvis had eaten them half a century ago.
“I can explain,” Greg said.
“I’m sure you can,” I said.
“I was just joking,” he said. “I do things like that for no reason. I get excited…”
“Carrots are bullshit and so are you,” I said. “How did you know someone had shot at me?”
“Everybody knew,” he said.
“Everybody? The King of Jordan knew? Brad Pitt knew?”
“Oh come on,” he said. “I mean…”
“First you hire me to help Ronnie Gerall. Then you call me to warn me off. You think he did it.”
“No, it’s just that I… it’s too dangerous.”
“For who?”
“I gave you five hundred dollars to find the real killer. I’ll give you five hundred dollars to stop looking.”
He reached into his pocket and came up with a roll of bills wrapped in a thick rubber band, which he placed in front of me. I pushed it back and added to it the money he had given me the day before.
“My teeth need fixing,” the old man said. “If neither one of you want that money…”
Greg Legerman and I ignored him and looked at the money.
“Leave it there,” said Gwen’s daughter as she placed the plate of waffles in front of Greg, “and it’ll be the biggest tip anyone ever left here.”
“What about Elvis?” I asked.
“His tip is legendary,” she said moving on.
“Someone shot at me in a car and probably blinded the man with me,” I said. “Then someone shot a pellet into the back of a fourteen-year-old I’m responsible for. He could have died if he tumbled down my steps. It seems pretty likely that someone was trying to shoot me. I’m getting interested in finding out who killed Philip Horvecki.”
“Why’d they shoot at you?” asked the old man.
“To scare me off.”
“Please stop,” Greg said. “You could get killed.”
“My therapist says I’m suicidal, only I’d never kill myself. I wouldn’t, however, object to someone else doing it for me.”
“Why are you suicidal?” asked the old man with interest.
“Because my wife was murdered and the killer was never arrested.”
“Then go look for him, Cubs,” said Tim.
“I know where he is.”
“Where?”
“Sleeping on the floor of the place I’m living in.”
“You are a strange duck, Cubs. Kid, you think people have souls?” he asked again.
This ignited Greg. “No definitive evidence,” he said. “Though research at universities in France, Germany, England, and the United States, including Princeton, is inconclusive, there seems to be evidence that electrical impulses…”
“Greg,” I interrupted.
“He’s just getting started,” said the old man.
“I know. Who are you trying to protect?”
Greg shook his head no.
“Winn doesn’t know what you did, does he?”
Greg shook his head again.
“No. You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“You don’t even like Ronnie,” he said. “No one does.”
“He hasn’t been arrested because people don’t like him. He has been arrested for killing Philip Horvecki.”
“Lots of people wanted to kill Horvecki,” Greg said, looking at his waffle.
“Put the butter and syrup on ’em kid,” said the old man, “and whale away while they’re still hot.”
There was an early morning breakfast hubbub in the Waffle Shop. All the stools and all the tables were full. Men in suits laughed at each other’s jokes. Men in work clothes talked softly and tended to concentrate on eating. The smell of waffles wafted, and Gwen’s daughters bustled. I put enough on the counter to cover my coffee and a tip and said, “I have work to do.”
“Please,” said Greg. “Take the money. Stop looking.”
He looked as if he were about to cry.
“Don’t be a dumb shit, Fonesca. Take the money.”
Greg nodded. I moved toward the door as the old man sidled over to sit next to Greg.
I didn’t listen to find out if they were talking about the existence of the human soul, teeth in need of repair, or Elvis. I did have work to do.
No one shot at me as I stepped out of the Waffle Shop. So far, it was a good day.
I had the papers in the back pocket of my jeans. They stood up, scratched my lower back, and reminded me it was time for them to be served.
My bicycle, which Ames had named “Steadfast,” was locked in a storage bin under my twenty-two stairs. I had a key. That made two keys in my pocket. One for my front door and one for the locker. Two keys too many.
I rolled Steadfast into the street, adjusted my Cubs cap, pedaled to Laurel, and then made a right toward Pineapple. On Pineapple I turned left, went through downtown, and walked Steadfast across Fruitville Avenue when the light turned green. From there it was three minutes to the house I was looking for.
It was, as all the houses in the neighborhood were, a small one-story cement-block building with long-dead orange siding. The slightly slanted roof was almost completely covered with leaves and pine cones from a big tree which looked as if its roots went right under the house. Grass, or what passes for it in Southern Florida, still fought a losing battle to live in the stony rubble of the front yard. A severely rusted pickup truck of unknown vintage stood next to the house.
I walked up the narrow and cracked concrete path to the door. The day was already hot. I didn’t mind. The heat didn’t bother me. I didn’t sweat. Even the coldest mornings of winter in Chicago hadn’t affected me very much. When I was fifteen I had a mild case of frostbite from being out too long in subzero weather. I hadn’t felt cold, but even now I get occasional tingling at the top of my ears.
I looked for a bell button. There was one. There was a badly rusted small door knocker. I decided against using it lest it fall off. I knocked.
“Coming,” the high, almost child’s voice inside called.
The door opened.
Below me, head only about thigh high, stood a small black man of no clear age in jeans, a blue T-shirt, and a Cubs cap, though a more expensive one than mine.
“Zo Hirsch?”
“That’s right.”
I handed him the folded order for him to appear at a divorce settlement hearing in the office of my lawyer client. I never deliver court orders or summonses in an envelope. I was supposed to deliver papers, and that I did.
“Shit. Shit. Shit.”
He muttered, looked at the papers I had just handed him, and shook his head.
“Do I look like I can pay six hundred dollars a month?”
“No,” I said.
“Want a beer?” he asked.
“No, thanks.”
“Dr Pepper, Mountain Dew, Diet Pepsi?”