10
Essau Williams was in the Venice telephone directory. I sat in the Saturn and punched in the number I had written on one of my index cards.
The phone rang three times before a man answered with a sleepy, “Williams.”
“Fonesca,” I said. “I’m from Sarasota. I’d like to talk to you about Philip Horvecki.”
“He’s dead.”
“I know.”
“I’m not sorry.”
“I’m not surprised. Can I talk to you?”
“Who are you?” he asked sounding a little more awake. “A reporter?”
“No, a friend of the family.”
“Whose family?”
“Ronnie Gerall.”
“You want me to contribute to his defense fund? Put me down for an anonymous fifty dollars. No, make that a hundred dollars. Any killer of Horvecki is a friend of mine. And since you’re calling me, I think you know why I’m being generous.”
“Can we meet?” I asked. “I’d like to gather information about Horvecki that might help justify what Gerall did.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in Venice,” I said.
“Come over.”
He gave me directions and we hung up without good-byes.
Essau Williams’s house was not near the beach. It was in Trugate West, a development about three miles south of the hospital. What it was west of, I have no idea. His was a small ranch-style house, one of hundreds built in the 1950s to house the middle-class migrants who didn’t have enough money to buy near the beach. They did have a little more money than the retirees who moved just outside of what was then the city limits into the mobile homes lying on tiny patches of grass that most of them tried to make homey with flowers and bright paint.
The green grass, really the weeds that passed for grass in Florida, was mowed short. The two trees, one a small palm, the other a tangelo, grew on opposite sides of the narrow concrete path that led to the front door.
I knocked. Essau Williams opened. He wasn’t big, he was huge. He wore a pair of blue shorts and a gray T-shirt with the name ESSAU in red block letters across his chest and the number 8 under it. He had a yellow towel draped around his neck, and sweat was thick on his forehead, cheeks, and arms. He was all muscle and probably could have made a career with his body if he had a face to match. Essau Williams, light brown with a brooding brow, looked a little like my cousin Carmine, who was not the beauty of our family. Williams had the additional drawback of a raised horizontal white scar across his forehead.
“Go around back,” he said and closed the door.
I walked through the grass to the back of the house where Williams was placing two tall glasses of what looked like lemonade on a wooden picnic table.
“Have a seat,” he said.
I sat. It was hard to tell how big the yard was. It was dense with fruit trees, succulent bushes, flowers, and vines. The picnic table was on a round redbrick island that left no room for anything but the table.
“Nice,” I said, looking around.
On a mat a few yards from the table was a plastic-covered bench. A series of bars and weights were lined up evenly next to the bench.
“Thanks. If you go that way, down the path… See it?”
“Yes.”
The lemonade was cold with thin slices of lemon and clinking cubes.
“There’s a fountain over there with a small waterfall. You should be able to hear it.”
“I hear it,” I said.
“Okay, maybe I can save us some time.” He took a deep drink of lemonade and looked in the general direction of the running water. “Philip Horvecki raped my mother and aunt when they were kids and got away with it. Eight years ago Philip Horvecki came to my mother and my aunt’s home, threatened them, and left them crying. He warned them not to tell anyone or he would come back and kill them.”
I nodded. There was nothing else to do. He went on.
“My mother was sixty-four, my aunt sixty-six. I was on the force in Westin, Massachusetts. They didn’t tell me what had happened till I came down for Thanksgiving. That was three months after the attack. I went to the sheriff’s office and demanded that Horvecki be arrested. My mom and aunt filed criminal complaints. Only the word of my mom and aunt against Horvecki, who had the best lawyers money could buy. They tore at the reports, said they were filed by two sexually frustrated, old black women who changed their minds about selling the house for what he called ‘a fair price.’ He also said they were angry because he wouldn’t accept their advances. His lawyers brought up medical histories, family history. We didn’t have a chance.”
“So…”
“Didn’t even go to trial,” he said, shaking his head. “He walked. Then I moved here, took a job with the Venice police and began watching everything Horvecki did or said. My mother and aunt moved back north. They’ve both been in therapy. They’re recluses. They seldom go out, and they’ve got guns and know how to use them. They think Horvecki’s going to make good on his promise to kill them.”
“Didn’t you feel like doing more than watching him?”
He was nodding now, considering. Then he leaned forward toward me.
“I wanted to kill him. I told him I would. I told him I’d pick my own time. I wanted to turn him into a pile of frightened jelly.”
“Did it work?”
“No,” he said. “After a while, he didn’t believe me. The fact, which I’ll deny, is that I had a date set, the anniversary of what he did to my mom and aunt, to beat the bastard to death. Three weeks from today. I’m glad someone beat me to it.”
“Horvecki was rich,” I said.
“Very. Worth about sixty or seventy million. Real estate. He made at least two million of that from my aunt and mother’s house and property.”
“You know who gets his money?”
“His daughter I guess. Who cares? My mother and my aunt are lost. You know what it’s like to lose someone you love? You know what it’s like to become obsessed with punishing him?”
“Yes,” I said.
He looked at me long and hard over the rim of his lemonade and then said, “Maybe you do. When you see him dead in a funeral home, the feeling of vindication doesn’t come. You just feel flat, empty.”
“I know,” I said. “Did you kill Horvecki?”
“What?”
“Did you kill Philip Horvecki?”
“No. I told you. I thought you were trying to find information that would justify what Gerall did, not come up with another suspect. Who do you work for?”
“Ronnie Gerall. I told you. He says he didn’t do it.”
“Surprise. A killer denies his crime. If you find out someone else did it, I’ll give that hundred dollars to his defense. Now I think you better leave.”
He stood up, but I didn’t.
“I think there’s something you’re not telling me,” I said.
His fists were clenched now. The scar across his forehead distended and turned a clean snow white.
“Get out,” he said, kicking the bench.
“You’ve got a temper,” I said. “How angry are you?”
“You want to find out?”
He was around the table now standing over me. I didn’t want to find out.
“You lose your temper easily,” I said.
“Maybe.”
He had me by the front of my shirt, now, and pulled me to my feet.
“You are about to have an accident,” he said. “A bad one.”
“Don’t think so,” came a familiar voice from the corner of the house.
Ames stood there with a pistol in his hand.
“Best put him down and back away,” Ames said.
“You have a license for that weapon?” asked Williams.
“No, but if I shoot you dead, legality of the weapon won’t mean much, will it?”
He still had my collar and was squeezing more tightly. I gagged.
“You won’t shoot,” Williams said.
“He will,” I gagged. “He’s done it before.”
Williams lifted me farther. I felt myself passing out. Ames fired. He was a good shot, a very good shot. The bullet skidded between Williams’s feet leaving a scratch in the bricks. Williams let me drop. I tumbled backward, fell over the bench, and landed on my back.