He got up, put out his hand to Ames and me to let me know the meeting was over. His handshake was firm. So was his decision.
“Okay, then we’d like to see Dorothy Cgnozic,” I said.
“You were here earlier, weren’t you?”
“We were,” I said. “Dorothy’s an old friend.”
“You mean,” said Trent, “Dorothy is old and you are friends, not that you’ve been friends a long time.”
Trent looked at Ames.
“We’re friends,” he said.
“Well,” said Trent. “That’s up to Dorothy, but I believe she is sleeping, afternoon nap. We don’t like to wake our residents up when they’re napping. You understand?”
“Perfectly,” I said.
Trent looked at his watch and said, “I’ve got to get to a meeting. Look, I know about Dorothy’s… mistake, delusion, dream. She’s been telling everyone, the residents, nurses, even the dining room staff about the supposed murder. No one was murdered. Dorothy has, let’s see how I can put this, Dorothy has an active imagination. Her husband was a poet.”
I didn’t see how Dorothy’s husband being a poet had anything to do with her having an imagination, but I just nodded.
He was looking at Ames again when he said, “If the time comes when you’re inquisitive about assisted living…”
I didn’t give him any help.
“Father? Uncle?” he tried.
“Mr. McKinney is my friend,” I said.
Ames wasn’t smiling. Ames smiled almost as little as I did and I never smiled.
“Sorry,” said Trent. “I just thought…”
“You boning me?” Ames said evenly.
“Boning you?” repeated Trent with a smile.
“Playing with me,” he said.
“I wouldn’t play with my friend,” I said, recognizing the look in Ames’s gray eyes.
In a few seconds if Trent didn’t leave or we didn’t back out, I was reasonably sure Ames would find a way to make the mustached manager of the Seaside suffer.
“Let’s go,” I said, putting a hand on Ames’s sleeve.
“Dorothy doesn’t get many visitors,” Trent said, folding his hands in front of him. “Please come back to visit.”
In the parking lot we got into the car. I backed out of the space and turned down the road past the pond, where two ducks floated.
“He was boning me,” Ames said.
“He was,” I agreed.
Silence again as we drove south on Beneva and turned at Webber, heading for Tamiami Trail.
“We’re goin’ back,” he said, looking straight ahead.
“Yes.”
“When?”
I looked at the clock on the dashboard.
“About two in the morning,” I said. “Suit you?”
“Suits me just fine,” he said.
I drove Ames to the Texas Bar amp; Grille, and said I’d pick him up at one-thirty in the morning. That suited him fine too.
Then I headed for El Tacito, the Mexican restaurant where Arnoldo Robles, the man who had witnessed Kyle McClory’s death, worked. El Tacito is in a shopping mall at Fruitville and Lime. I found a parking space four doors down from the restaurant in front of a dollar discount store.
I had a friend, James Hahn, back in Chicago. He was an ex-cop who got a PhD in psychic studies at Northeastern Illinois University. He claimed that he could conjure up parking spaces, that by simply concentrating, envisioning and believing, he could make a space available when he arrived where we were going. I tried him on it a couple of times. It seemed to work for him. It never worked for me.
I don’t believe in magic. I don’t believe in the miracles of the Bible. I’d like to. I’d like to believe that my wife is somewhere, that she is some kind of entity, that she is not simply gone, but I can’t. I’ve tried.
There was an early dinner crowd, about twenty, at El Tacito, or maybe it was a late lunch crowd. The air smelled of things fried, sauces hot, and tacos crisp. There were large color photographs on the wall, all of them of hills, mountains, probably in Mexico. Music was playing, guitars and a plaintive tenor almost in tears. I think it was “La Paloma.” The people at the red-and-white-tableclothed wooden tables paid no attention to the music. They talked, mostly in Spanish, ate, laughed and raised their voices.
A harried waitress, thin with long dark hair tied back, hurried from table to table taking orders, delivering orders, giving orders when she went back to the kitchen.
“Sit anywhere,” she said with a smile.
She had a pile of dirty dishes cradled in her left arm. A wisp of dark hair escaped the band that touched the nape of her neck. She brushed the stray strand away with her hand. She looked tired, satisfied, pretty.
“Looking for Arnoldo Robles,” I said.
A trio of men at a back table called to her by name, Corazon. She held up a single finger to let them know she’d be with them in a second or a minute, depending on how much time I took.
“Arnoldo’s busy,” she said, smile gone, starting to turn away.
“Just take a minute,” I said, holding up one finger as she had done.
“You know Arnoldo?” she asked.
I shook my head no. She looked at me from stained loafers to Cubs cap.
“You’re not with Immigration?”
I shook my head again.
“Arnoldo has his green card,” she said.
“Good.”
“Corazon,” called one of the trio in the back.
“Then what do you…?”
“The dead boy,” I said. “I’m working with the boy’s family.”
It was her turn to nod.
“He’s in the kitchen.”
She looked at the back of the restaurant, turned and headed for the three men. I followed and moved past her through a swinging door decorated with bright paintings of flowers, musical instruments and a single word, GUADALAJARA.
To my left was the open doorway to a small kitchen, barely big enough to let the two men in white aprons working in it move. The griddle was sizzling; a red light glowed above the oven in the corner. The air was steamy in spite of an old wall-mounted air conditioner that rattled noisily.
Both men were slightly built, about my height. Both were dark. Both had neatly shaved heads. One man was probably in his sixties, the other in his forties. Both men were moving quickly, hands flying, conducting a kitchen symphony, maybe about to do a juggling act. They were perspiring. The older one quickly reached for a half-full bottle of water and took a few quick gulps. The younger one looked over at me. He had a knife with a broad flat blade in his hand.
“Arnoldo Robles?”
His grip on the knife got tighter.
“Can we talk?”
The older man looked over his shoulder at me.
“What about?”
“What you told the police,” I said.
“Who are you?”
“Not the one who was driving the car,” I said, looking at the blade. “I’m working for the boy’s mother. I could use your help.”
“Busy,” he said.
“He’s busy,” the older man added.
Corazon came through the swinging door, looked at the two cooks and me and then went on through another door where I heard dishes clacking.
“I can wait,” I said.
“I don’t want any trouble,” Arnoldo Robles said.
“I worry about people who want trouble,” I said. “I’m not bringing trouble.”
The two men’s eyes met, and Arnoldo sighed and looked at the ceiling. They said something to each other in Spanish. The older man wasn’t pleased or cooperative. He finally shrugged and went back to work.
“Have a seat out there,” Robles said to me. “I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
I went back into the restaurant and found a small table near the window. A few people had left. The waitress named Corazon came up to me, hands on hips, but there was no challenge in the move, just a weary resignation.
“Arnoldo can’t sleep,” she said. “He says he keeps seeing that boy in the street and the car… He thinks he should have done something.”
“You’re his…?”
“Wife,” she said. “We’ve got a little boy, eight. My mother watches him when he gets home from school. She thinks some crazy man is out there trying to crash into little boys. She won’t let him out to play. Is she right? Is there a crazy man out there?”