I called Sally. She answered. I said nothing.
“Lew?”
Cell phone. Caller ID. She knew who was calling.
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I hoped that words would come when I heard your voice, but they’re not coming.”
“We can talk later,” she said. “I’m with a client now.”
“How is Darrell?”
“Better, much better. I’ll call you later. Promise.”
She ended the call, and I tried to think of other people to call. I wanted to wear out the charge in my phone so it would go silent, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
I was tempted to launch into baseball metaphors.
Victor drove me to the Fruitville Library, where I got my bike out of his trunk.
“I can come back for you,” said Victor.
“No, thanks,” I said.
Ames said nothing, just looked at me and nodded. I nodded back. They drove off. The sun was high, the air filled with moist heaviness and the smell of watermelons from a truck vending them on Fruitville, just beyond the parking lot.
I chained my bike to a lamppost and went inside.
The cool air struck and chilled for an instant.
Two minutes later I had an oversize book of World War II airplanes open on my lap. I didn’t want to look at it. I wasn’t interested. It was a prop to keep a vigilant librarian from making a citizen’s arrest for vagrancy.
No more than five maybe six, minutes later, Blue Berrigan sat down across from me.
Stuart M. Kaminsky
Bright Futures: A Lew Fonesca Mystery (Lew Fonesca Novels)
8
You just happened to see me hiding here behind the fiction,” I whispered.
He was wearing a pair of dark corduroy slacks and a short-sleeved green and white striped polo shirt.
“I… I followed you.”
“From where?”
“You’re going to get angry,” he said. “It can’t be helped. We’re talking about my life here.”
He looked over his shoulder and out the window and gently bit his lower lip.
“You’re talking,” I said. “I’m listening.”
“I put an electronic tracer under the rear fender of your bicycle,” he said. “I removed it before I came in. They’re really cheap now. You can get them online.”
He held up both hands in a gesture designed to stop me from rising in indignation. I didn’t rise. I wasn’t indignant.
“I was afraid you didn’t believe me when we talked in the park.”
“I didn’t,” I said.
“I do lie a lot. People always say you should tell kids the truth; you shouldn’t lie to them. But there are truths you want to keep from children. There are truths they are better off without. What are you reading?”
A thin woman with wild hair came down the aisle perpendicular to us carrying a load of books she wouldn’t be able to read in a generation. The books at the top and in the middle of the pile threatened to fall. Blue Berrigan was silent until the woman rounded the corner, went up the next aisle, pulled out two more books, and balanced them on top of her heap. Then she went out of sight.
“I’m looking at pictures of old airplanes,” I said.
“Good.”
I wasn’t sure why he might think that was good.
“You’re not being blackmailed,” I said.
“No.”
“Then…”
“I’m being paid to distract you,” he said with a great sigh.
“From what?”
“Whatever you’re working on.”
“Who’s paying you?”
“A man who called me, said he knew my work, knew I was down on my luck. I’m supposed to keep bothering you, sending you on wild grouse hunts, tell you someone tried to kill me. Improvise.”
“How much is he paying you?”
“Five thousand dollars in advance. I’ve got it back in my room.”
“But you’ve decided…”
“The guy sounds nuts, is what I’m saying. I’m keeping the money, packing up, and moving west. I’m only renting a room here. He’s got someone keeping an eye on me. I’ll have to lose whoever it is.”
I was tempted to say I’d join him in his getaway, but it wasn’t temptation enough.
“Don’t go yet,” I said.
“Don’t go?”
“He calls you?”
“Yes.”
“Tell him you have me looking for grouse.”
“Ah, I see,” he said.
“What’s a grouse?” I asked.
Neither of us knew for certain.
“Let’s leave separately,” I said. “He might have followed you. I’ll get back to you.”
He got up without certainty and said, “I’m really very good with kids. I just, you know, got lost.”
“I know,” I said.
“You don’t live near here.”
“No. I come here when I want to be alone, where no one can find me unless they plant tracking devices on my bicycle. You want to give me a ride home?”
“No, can’t,” he said standing quickly. “I’ve got to go.”
He strode away quickly. I waited about ten seconds and then followed him to the glass doors at the entrance to the library. I stayed against a wall inside, watching him find his car in the lot and leave. It was a well-used Jeep of uncertain vintage. I got the first three letters of his tag before he turned left. That’s when whoever was in the backseat sat up. I couldn’t see who it was.
“Embarrassing, demeaning, humiliating, abasing,” Darrell said. “It brings me down. Know what I mean?”
He was out of intensive care and propped up on a couple of pillows. There was an IV in his right arm and a look of exasperation on his face. He was out of danger, but not out of flaunt.
“Almost killed by a BB in my back,” he said with a single shake of his head. “How do I explain that? How do I strut that? ‘Hey man, I got shot.’ ‘Yeah, with what?’ ‘A BB gun.’ ”
“It almost killed you,” I said.
“That makes no difference on my street. Take that back. Shot with a BB gun? That’s below a misdemeanor on my street.”
“Sorry. Maybe you’ll be lucky next time and get shot with a machine gun.”
“Not funny. I was lucky. Bad lucky,” said Darrell. “Hey, do me a favor and get the shooter. Then let old Ames shotgun blast him a second asshole.”
I nodded. He was still hooked up to the machine with the green screen that painted white mountains and valleys to the sound of a low beep-beep-beep.
“I’ll find him,” I said. “You want my hat?”
“Your Cubs hat? I’m touched, Fonesca. I know what that hat means to you but a, it’s your sweat in there, and b, I’m not a Cubs fan.”
I nodded again.
“My mom still mad at you?”
“Sort of.”
“Ms. Porovsky?”
Sally was more than Darrell’s caseworker. She was someone who cared. Sally knew she couldn’t save the children of the world one abuse at a time, but she couldn’t help trying.
“She’s fine,” I said.
“You?”
“I’m fine.”
“Why don’t you look fine? I don’t look fine,” said Darrell.
“Nurse says you can go home in a few days,” I said.
“From almost dead to back to school in three or four days,” he said.
“It happens.”
“But not much,” he said. “Old Chinese Victor saved my butt from going down the stairs.”
He made a tumbling motion with his free hand.
“I decided something,” he said, licking his lips.
I poured him water from a pitcher into a plastic cup on a table near his bed. He took it and, with my help, drank.
“Don’t laugh. Don’t even smile, and don’t tell anyone, not even my mom.”
“I won’t.”
“I know,” said Darrell. “I’m going to try out for the play at Booker.”
Booker High, I knew, had a big annual musical production. I’d been told by Sally and Flo that they were very nearly professional.