Zo was smiling now.
“The cost of further information is your forgetting to deliver your papers till the end of the week.”
“What papers?” I said.
“Just me,” said Zo. “But I wouldn’t call the relationship friendly. We shmoozled.”
“Shmoozled?”
“Talked.”
“About?”
“Who knows? We have a deal?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“He told me about people he had cheated out of property. He didn’t think it was cheating. He went after old people, mostly.”
“Old people who might want to kill him?”
“Old people who have sons or daughters who might be mad enough to do some killing. Phil the Pill had a restraining order against two such offspring who threatened to kill him.”
“You know their names?”
“No,” he said. “I’ve been dreaming about my wife. Bad dreams.”
I moved toward the door.
“Ever meet Horvecki’s daughter?” I asked.
“Once,” he said. “She stopped by the bowling alley and just sat there watching. Skinny thing. Big scared eyes. I didn’t talk to her. Horvecki didn’t even introduce her, just said, ‘My daughter,’ once when he saw me looking.”
“How did he say it?”
“Say what? ‘My daughter’? I don’t know. Almost as if he were apologizing or something.”
I had no response, so he continued as I opened the door.
“I’ve been thinking about killing Vezquez, but there are too many damned Vesquezes out there and too much killing.”
“The phone book probably has a couple of columns of Vezquezes,” I said.
“I don’t mean people named… forget it. Leave me with my thoughts of Roberto Clemente.”
I offered to help him clean up the mess, but Zo just looked at it and said, “I’ll take care of it.”
“Can I…?”
“No one can,” he said.
I left him. I had another appointment, maybe another client.
I sat on my bike and called Dixie Cruise at the coffee bar on Main Street where she served espresso and kept the Internet-connected patrons happy and their electronics running. Dixie was slim and trim, with very black hair in a short style. Dixie lived in a two-room apartment in a slightly run-down twelve-flat apartment building on Ringling Boulevard, a block from the main post office. The apartment was almost laboratory clean, neat, and filled with computers and electronic gear.
“Working on it, Mr. L.F.,” Dixie said in her down-home Florida accent. “Lady knows her stuff. Horvecki’s daughter Rachel seems to have migrated to an alternate universe. Since her father’s murder, she hasn’t used a credit card, written a check, flown on an airplane, booked a room at a motel or hotel, or rented a car, at least not in her own name. She’s running on cash and another name. Every Sarasota business, from dry cleaners to Red Lobster, has no record of her having been there.”
“Keep looking,” I said.
“You keep paying in cash, I keep looking. I’ve got bills to pay and things to buy for my wedding.”
“You’re getting married?”
“Didn’t I tell you?”
“No.”
“Wedding’ll be in June. First Baptist. Reception after at Cafe Bacci. You and the cowboy are invited. You’ll get an invitation.”
“New address,” I said, and gave her the address.
“My beau’s name is Dan Rosenfeld. He’s an airplane mechanic at Dolphin.”
“Congratulations,” I said.
“Thanks. I’ll keep looking for her. Today, I check on unidentified bodies found from North Carolina to Key West.”
6
I would have forgotten about the appointment if I hadn’t written it on one of the three-by-five index cards I carried in my back pocket. The call had come in early the day before. With everything going on, I had almost forgotten about it. The index cards got dog-eared quickly from my sitting on them, but I wrote my notes to myself in clear block letters and had no trouble reading them.
At the age of forty-three, I was having trouble remembering simple things like why I was going to the refrigerator or what I was planning to do when I opened the medicine cabinet in my bathroom.
The card read:
Bee Ridge Park softball field. 11 a.m.
Monday. Ferris Berrigan
The bike ride to Bee Ridge Park was long. It was made longer by my expecting that someone might pull alongside me, roll down a window, and take a few shots, or that someone would run me into oncoming traffic on Beneva Road. It would be fitting, to die the same way Catherine had, but I wasn’t really ready for that. Progress, Ann would say. I no longer welcomed accidental death.
Traffic wasn’t too heavy, but a pickup truck did pass by when I crossed Bee Ridge, and the passenger did throw something out the window in my general direction. The sight of a somewhat lean man in a Chicago Cubs cap riding a bicycle seemed to bring out the redneck in some people. Actually, this was better than the panic that the sight of me brought to ancient drivers who often came near losing control and running me down.
I made it to Bee Ridge Park just before 11 a.m. I was familiar with the place. There were two softball fields. No one was playing on or standing by the nearest field, the one next to Wilkinson Road. But on the more distant field, a group of men were playing ball. As I rode across the parking lot and down the narrow road that marked the west side of the park, I heard the cool aluminum-on-ball clack followed by the shouting of men.
“Take two, Hugo!”
“Take three! What do you mean, two?”
“Dick is coaching at first.”
“He took second easy, you dumb cluck.”
“Grow up, John.”
I parked my bike in a bike rack next to the field. I could see now that the players were all wearing uniforms, white ones with the words “Roberts Realty” on one and “Dunkin’ Donuts” on the other. All the players were men who looked like they were in their sixties or seventies or eighties.
A few of the players glanced in my direction. There was a lone spectator, a man in a black cloth on a dark wood folding director’s chair. Next to him there was an identical chair. I moved toward the man in the chair. He was sitting forward with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. The pose of a bad boy who has been caught.
The man in the chair was even leaner than I am and a little older, maybe fifty. He wore brown slacks and a matching short-sleeve pullover shirt with what looked like a guitar etched on the lone pocket over his heart.
He sat back, waiting, and removed his glasses. He was clean shaven and nervous.
The empty chair next to him had “ Blue ” written on it in fading white paint.
I sat and looked at the game. Hugo scored.
“What’s the score?” I asked.
“The score?”
“What inning is it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t really understand baseball.”
“This is softball,” I said.
“That ball doesn’t look soft.”
“It isn’t,” I said.
Another ball was hit with that pleasant bat-kissing-ball sound.
“You know who I am, don’t you?”
“Ferris Berrigan?”
“Yes, but who else?” he asked.
“Who else are you?”
“Do you have any children?”
“No.”
“Still,” he said. “You should know who I am.”
“You’re the man who wants me to find out who is blackmailing him,” I said.
“Something like that. You know what he said he would do?”
“No,” I said.
“He’d go to the newspapers and television with a lie. You sure you don’t know who I am?”
“No. Did you lose your memory?”
He looked puzzled and reassessed whatever positive feelings he had drawn from a first impression of me.
“No, I did not lose my memory. Someone wants to take it from me.”
My fond wish at that moment was that whoever the good guys were out on the field full of battling voices and hoarse calls would win and go home.
“Okay, who are you and who is trying to take your memory?”
“Actually, it’s all my memories they wish to take. You are positive you don’t know who I am?”