“I don’t think you should say that,” I said.
“You don’t think so?” Ronnie said with a smile.
“He doesn’t think so,” said Ames. “And you’d best heed what Mr. Fonesca tells you.”
“Or what, old man?”
“Or I reach across this table and slap you three or four times. And you won’t stop me, because even though I just warned you, you won’t be able to,” said Ames, eyes fixed on Ronnie Gerall’s face.
“He’ll do it, too,” I said.
“Then he’ll be in here with me,” said Ronnie.
“Is that where you want him? Respect means a great deal to Mr. McKinney.”
The uniformed guard slouched a little more. He wasn’t interested in what we had to say.
“You found Horvecki,” I said.
“On the floor in the hallway. Definitely dead. Lots of blood on his face and shirt. Mouth open. I thought I saw someone in an open doorway on the right. Then I saw someone go out the window.”
“And you followed him,” said Ames.
“No. I mean yes. I went out the front door looking for him. Whoever it was was gone.”
“You saw nobody?” I asked.
“No… wait. There was a man in a pickup truck, but it wasn’t the one who was in the house. The guy in the pickup was there when I got to Horvecki’s. I thought he was waiting for somebody.”
“Could he have seen the man who jumped out of the window?” I asked.
“Could have? He would have had to,” said Ronnie.
“Can you describe the man or the truck?” I asked.
“It was a small pickup, not old, not new. Guy in the truck had on a baseball cap. Couldn’t see his face. I think he was black. Maybe. Couldn’t tell you how… Wait, I had the feeling he wasn’t an old guy like Stokes over here.”
Ames did not take kindly to the remark, but he held his tongue.
“And I don’t know how tall he was,” Ronnie went on. “He never got out of the truck. I only saw him for a few seconds.”
“Did he look at you?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“We’ll find him,” I said.
I must not have filled the room with my infectious optimism, because Ronnie said, “You don’t believe me.”
“No matter if we believe you,” said Ames. “It matters if we find him.”
“What did you do after you went outside and didn’t see him?” I asked.
“I went back in the house to be sure Horvecki was dead. Before I could call 911, I heard the door to the house open. Then a voice saying, ‘Throw your gun toward the door and stand up slowly with your hands high and your palms showing.’
“I did. I was read my rights and arrested.”
“Did you tell them about the person in the doorway and the man in the truck?” I asked.
“I did. They didn’t believe me, either. I’m glad Horvecki’s dead, but I didn’t kill him.”
“You have a lawyer?” I asked.
“You’re not a lawyer?”
“No,” I said.
“Goddamn it!” he shouted loud enough to make the guard almost slump to the floor. “I’ll kill Greg when I get my hands on him.”
“You really know the right things to say,” I said.
“What the hell are you then?”
“A process server,” I said. “And someone who finds missing people.”
“Who the fuck is missing here?”
“The person who shot Philip Horvecki,” said Ames, “provided that person is not you.”
“And,” I added, “whoever might have been standing in the open doorway when you went into Horvecki’s house.”
“Guard, get these two out of here,” said Ronnie. Then he turned to me and said, “I’ll get my own lawyer.”
“Suits me,” said Ames rising.
I got up, too. The guard was alert now.
We got to the door. Then Ronnie Gerall said, “Wait.”
I turned as the guard moved toward the prisoner.
“I think the person in the doorway was a woman.”
“Horvecki’s daughter?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Whoever it was might have seen the person who went through the window kill Horvecki,” I said.
“Or might have been the person who killed Horvecki,” said Ames.
“I’ve got no money, but I don’t want a public defender,” Ronnie said. It sounded like a challenge.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said.
Ames and I went past the guard and into the corridor.
“He’s scared,” Ames said.
“He’s scared,” I agreed as we walked toward the thick metal door.
“Full of hate,” Ames said.
“Full of hate,” I agreed.
“You gonna help him?” Ames asked as we got to the door.
“It’s why I get the big bucks,” I said.
“Philip Horvecki,” I said.
There were twenty-two wooden steps leading up to the three rooms under a pitched roof into which I had moved. This was on Laurel, around the corner and about half a block from the departed Dairy Queen. The steps had once been white. The railing, which shook if you put a hand on it, had once been green. I couldn’t call it an apartment. You had to move carefully under the ceiling or you would bump your head. The first room was a big, blank square with a bathroom across from the front door. The second room, about the size of a prison cell, looked as if it had originally been installed by indifferent Seminoles and recently painted white by someone who wanted to set the record for speed painting. There was a third room, a little bigger than one of Superman’s phone booths. With luck you might be able to get a rocking chair into it.
The walls of the big room were white painted plaster board under which the smell of sad and ancient wood managed to persist. The big and little rooms were connected by a varnished wooden door. There were no overhead lights, but Flo Zink, who had found the place, had not only painted it but put two bright floor lamps in each room. I had met Flo shortly after I came to Sarasota. I had found her husband, Gus, who was dying from too many diseases to count. Gus had been kidnapped to keep him from voting on a land issue in the City Council. Ames and I had gotten him to the meeting, where his last act on earth was to cast the deciding vote. He left Flo with enough money to sustain five widows comfortably for a lifetime. Flo felt responsible for me. Finding my new home was just one of the ways she had shown it over the last four years.
There were three small windows in the big room and one in each of the other two rooms. Ames had already moved the air conditioner from my last place overlooking the defunct DQ to a window in the big room. It was already clear that the air conditioner wouldn’t be able to adequately cool one room let alone two or three. There was more space than I needed.
As Augustine had said, my boxes and furniture had been moved. My meager furniture looked sad and frightened in these rooms.
The first thing Victor Woo had done was put up my Stig Dalstrom prints, including a recent painting Flo had given to me as a house warming present. Victor had pinned the Dalstroms to the wall in about the same places they had been in my former space.
“Philip Horvecki,” I repeated into the cell phone which I now reluctantly owned.
The phone was another house warming present. It was from Adele, who was just about to become a freshman at New College in Sarasota. She could have gotten into dozens of colleges, but she wanted to continue to live with her baby, Catherine, in Flo’s house. No dorm experience for Adele, but she wouldn’t regret it. Adele’s father had sold her to a pimp when she was fourteen. Getting her away from Dad and pimp had had its complications, but when Flo took her in, Adele blossomed, turned her life around, became an A student in high school, and was now going to college. There had been one major speed bump in the path. Adele had gotten pregnant by an older man who was now doing time in prison for murder. Adele had named the baby Catherine in honor of my dead wife.
“Horvecki. Did he have a criminal record?” I asked.
“I’ll check,” said Viviase. “The county might have something. If that doesn’t work, I’ve got another place you can look.”