“Blue Berrigan,” I said. No response, so I repeated, “Blue Berrigan.”
“The clown,” he said softly.
“He wasn’t a clown.”
“Greg didn’t do that.”
“Horvecki?”
“Greg didn’t do that. We weren’t unhappy about it, but he didn’t do that.”
“Did you?”
“No,” he said.
A yellow and black Mini Cooper turned the corner and came to a stop in front of the Graeme house.
“I’ve got to go,” he said. “I told you all this because I’m sorry that I didn’t do anything to stop Greg. He’s my friend. Whatever I’ve said here I’ll deny ever saying.”
“Why?” I said though I knew the answer.
“Why what?”
He had the door open now.
“Why is he your friend?”
“We need each other,” he said as he got out of the car. “Greg didn’t kill anybody.”
He closed the door, crossed the street and raised his hand in greeting to the boy who leaned out of the window of the Mini Cooper.
The boy in the car was Greg Legerman.
Greg looked back at me and ducked back through the window. Winn Graeme crawled in on the passenger side, and they drove off.
I could have confronted Greg Legerman, but sometimes it’s better to let the person you’re after worry for a while. I had learned that as an investigator with the state attorney’s office in Chicago. Patience was usually better than confrontation, especially with a nervous suspect, and they didn’t come any more nervous or suspicious than Greg Legerman. I wasn’t afraid of Greg’s not talking. I was afraid that he wouldn’t stop.
I did follow the little car down Midnight Pass and off the Key, but I kept going straight when they turned left on Tamiami Trail.
My cell phone rang. I considered throwing it out the window, but I answered it.
“Lewis, I have a death in the family,” said Ann Hurwitz.
“I’m sorry.”
“My cousin Leona was ninety-seven years old,” she said. “She’s been in a nursing home for a decade.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Lewis, you are one of the few people I know whose expression of sorrow over the death of a very old woman you don’t know I would believe. I must cancel our appointment tomorrow so I can attend the funeral in Memphis.”
“All right.”
“But I have an opening today,” Ann Hurwitz said.
“When?”
“Now.”
“I’m on the way.”
“You did your homework?”
My index cards were in the notebook in my back pocket.
“Yes.”
“Good. Decaf with cream and Equal. Today I feel like a chocolate biscotti.”
“With almonds?”
“Always with almonds,” she said and clicked off.
Fifteen minutes later I picked up a pair of coffees and three chocolate biscotti from Sarasota News and Books and crossed Main street. I was about to go through the door to Ann’s office on Gulfstream when he appeared, mumbling to himself.
He was black, about forty, wearing a shirt and pants too large and baggy for his lean frame. His bare feet flopped in his untied shoes. He looked down as he walked, pausing every few feet to scratch his head and engage himself in conversation.
I knew him. Everyone in this section of town near the Bay knew him, but few knew his story. I’d sat down with him once on the park bench he lived under. The bench was across the street from Ann’s office. It had a good view of the small boats moored on the bay and the ever-changing and almost always controversial works of art erected along the bay. He had been evicted from his bench in one of the recurrent efforts to clean up the city for tourists. I didn’t know where he lived now, but it wasn’t far. Even the homeless have someplace they think of as home.
“Big tooth,” he said to himself as he came toward me.
“Big tooth,” I repeated.
The bag in my hand was hot and the biscotti must have been getting moist.
He pointed across the street toward the bay. There was a giant white tooth which was slowing the passing traffic.
He scratched his inner left thigh and said, “Dentist should buy it. Definitely.”
One of the charms of the man was that he never asked for money or anything else. He minded his own business and relied on luck, the discards of the upscale restaurants in the neighborhood and the kindness and guilt of others.
I reached into the bag and came up with a coffee and a biscotti. He took them with a nod of thanks.
“You, too?” he asked, tilting his head toward the nearby bench-not his former residence, but the one right outside Ann’s office.
“Can’t,” I said. “Appointment.”
“Old lady who talks to ghosts and crazy people?”
“Not ghosts,” I said.
“I’m not a crazy person,” he said.
“No,” I agreed.
“You a crazy person?”
“I don’t know.”
“You should maybe find out,” he said, moving toward the bench, his back to me now.
“I’m working on it,” I said and stepped through the door.
Ann’s very small reception area was empty except for three chairs, a neat pile of copies of psychology magazines, and a small Bose non-boom box playing generic classical music. The music was there to cover the voices of any clients who might be moved to occasional rage or panic, usually directed at a spouse, child, sibling, boss or themselves. The music wasn’t necessary for me. My parents never raised their voices. I have never raised mine in anger, remorse, or despair. All the passion in our family came from my sister, and she more than compensated for it with Italian neighborhood showmanship.
Ann was, as always, seated in her armchair under the high narrow horizontal windows. I handed her the bag. She smelled it and carefully removed coffee and biscotti and placed them on the desk near her right hand.
“No coffee for you?” she asked, handing me a biscotti.
“No,” I said. “Caffeine turns me into a raging maniac.”
I took off my Cubs cap and placed it on my lap.
“Levity,” she said, removing the lid of her coffee and engaging in the biscotti-dipping ritual.
“I guess.”
“Small steps. Always small steps. Progress,” she said. “Biscotti are one of the tiny treasures of life. When one of my clients tells me he or she is contemplating suicide I remind them that, once dead, they will never again enjoy coffee and biscotti.”
“Does it work?”
“Only one has ever committed suicide, but I can’t claim that the biscotti approach has ever been the reason for this high level of success. Did your mother make biscotti?”
“No, she ate it. My father made pignoli. My uncle made biscotti.”
“ Pignoli?”
“A kind of cookie with pine nuts.”
“My mother made mandel bread,” Ann said. “That’s like Jewish biscotti, made with cement, at least the way my mother made it.”
I looked at the clock on the wall over her head. Five minutes had passed.
“You want to know when we are going to start,” she said. “Well, we already started.”
“I asked Ames to be my partner.”
“Putting down roots,” she said, finishing her biscotti. She had eaten it in record time.
I handed her mine.
“You sure?” she asked. “I didn’t have time for lunch.”
“I’m sure about you having my biscotti. I’m not sure about asking Ames to be my partner.”
“Why?”
“He’ll expect me to stay around.”
“Yes.”
“Besides, I make just enough to live on.”
“Yes, but you asked him and he said yes.
“He said yes.”
“Sally’s leaving, moving North. Better job.”
Ann said nothing, just worked on her biscotti, brushing away stray crumbs from her white dress with dancing green leaves.
“Did you ask her to stay?” she said finally.
“No.”
“Do you want her to stay?”
“Yes.”
“Is there anything you could say or do that would make her stay?”
“I think so. Maybe.”
“But you won’t say it.”
“I can’t. You want to hear the first lines I’ve collected?”
“Not this session,” she said.