Driving badly is an infectious disease on Florida’s Sun Coast. I think it started with native Floridians in pickups and baseball caps who zipped in and out of traffic in a hurry to win the race that had no winner. A variation, in mutated form, had been imported from the North with little old retired men and women who kept their eyes straight ahead, drove a dangerous ten miles under the speed limit, never looked at their side or rearview mirrors even when they changed lanes as they sat with necks craned so they could see over the dashboard. Finally the disease had been passed on to people angry at the pickups, angry with the ancient drivers. This group drove a few miles over the speed limit and had an uncontrollable urge to curse at everyone who hogged or shared the road.
Someone inside one of those cars on the streets of Sarasota with me that day was even more dangerous than all the rest of the drivers on the road. He was the one who had tried to kill me.
6
I pulled into the driveway of Flo Zink’s house on a street off Siesta Drive before you get to the bridge to Siesta Key.
My leg hurt. My shoulder ached. I was thirsty.
The SUV was in the driveway. Before I knocked, I could hear guitars and singing beyond the door. This meant that either Adele was out somewhere with the baby or the baby was not taking a nap. The sound system and the pumping of country-and-western music played several decibels too loud were turned off when Adele’s baby was sleeping.
Flo, glass of amber liquid in her right hand, opened the door and smiled at me. Flo is a short, solid woman in her late sixties. She used to wear too much makeup. Now she wears a little. She used to dress in flashy Western shirts, jeans and cowboy boots. She still does.
The music was loud behind her, but nowhere near as loud as when I had first met her. I must have looked at the drink in her hand. She did too.
“Pure, zero-proof Diet Dr Pepper,” she said.
I looked at the drink, saw the bubbles and nodded. I had pulled some strings, very thin strings, to get Flo’s driver’s license back. Adele was a few days away from turning sixteen. She would be able to drive on her own then, but until she could do it legally, she needed a licensed driver in the car. That was Flo.
“Quiz, my sad Italian friend,” Flo said, stepping back to let me in. “What Cole Porter song did Roy Rogers make famous?”
“‘Don’t Fence Me In,’” I said.
The song was playing throughout the house. I didn’t recognize Rogers’s voice, but I recognized the song.
“You are a clever son of a bitch,” she said. “What are you drinking?”
“Diet Dr Pepper will be fine,” I said.
“You know where the kitchen is.”
She closed the front door behind me. I limped in and she said, “What’s wrong with your leg?”
“Bumped into something.”
“Let me take a look. Sit down and drop your pants,” she said, motioning toward one of the living room chairs.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“And I’m Nicole Kidman. Sit. Drop ‘em or roll’em up.”
I sat and rolled up my pants leg. Flo looked down at it. Roy Rogers sang about gazing at the moon.
She looked down at my leg.
“Knee’s a little swollen,” she said. “Nothing too bad.”
She patted me on the shoulder. I winced.
“What’s wrong up there?”
“Bumped into something else,” I said.
“You are one injury-begging sad sack or a liar,” she said.
“Adele home?” I said, rolling down my pants leg, getting up, about to head for the kitchen, just left of the front door off the living room.
“Sit back down. I’ll get it,” said Flo, holding up her glass and heading toward the kitchen and calling back, “She’s home. I’ll get her after I bring your drink.”
Behind us Roy Rogers sang about starry skies and wanting lots of land.
I didn’t want lots of land. I wanted to get back to my small box of a room behind my office. And I could do without starry skies. I liked small enclosed spaces. I hated lying on my back outdoors at night. It made my head swirl. I had felt a little of this before Catherine died. Since she was gone, it had gotten more defined. I welcomed it.
Flo didn’t have to get Adele. Adele came down the hallway to the living room, baby in her arms. Adele smiled at me. No, actually, it was a grin. Catherine, five months old, thin blonde hair, was thoughtfully chewing on her mother’s hair.
“Mr. F,” Adele said. “Want to hold her?”
“No thanks,” I said.
Flo came back in the room, handed me a cold glass of Diet Dr Pepper, touched Adele’s face, kissed the baby’s forehead and scurried off down the hall.
I didn’t want a baby’s life literally in my hands. I don’t trust fate and I know if there is a God or gods, devils or demons, they can play games a certified sociopath might admire.
Flo came back with a colorful Indian blanket and rolled it out on the living room floor. Adele loosened the baby’s grip on her hair and placed Catherine on the blanket on her stomach, facing us. The baby lifted her head unsteadily, hands pushing against the rug, and looked at me. Our eyes met.
“Lew,” said Flo. “Lew.”
The thought had crept up on me. My wife, Catherine, and I might have had a baby like the one who was looking up at me if a hit-and-run driver on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago hadn’t killed her four years ago.
“Yes,” I said.
“You all right?” asked Adele, coming to my side. Roy Rogers had stopped and Johnny Cash was singing about killing a man in Reno as I rejoined the living.
Adele was about my height, blonde, clear-skinned and definitely pretty. She had lost the touch of baby fat shortly after I first met her.
“How’s school?” I asked.
Catherine rolled over onto her back.
“Straight A’s, arts editor of the paper,” Flo said.
Catherine rolled onto her stomach, heading toward the edge of the rug. As she rolled again, Adele stepped over and put her back in the center of the rug. Flo picked up a red plastic baby toy that looked like a ball with handles and placed it in front of the baby.
“How’s life treating you, Mr. F?” Adele said.
I knew how life had treated Adele. Her father had sold her to a local pimp when she was thirteen. Her father had murdered her mother. Adele had gotten into an affair with the married son of a famous man when she was fifteen, who had taken her in. Result: Catherine was named for my wife. Catherine’s father was serving a life term for murder. And yet there was Adele smiling, finishing high school, and writing award-winning stories that were sure to get her an invitation to major universities.
“Fine,” I said.
“He’s been bumping into things,” said Flo.
Johnny Cash was finished. The Sons of the Pioneers were now singing “Cool Water.”
I drank some Diet Dr Pepper and watched Catherine suck on one of the handles of the circle.
“You know a boy named Kyle McClory?” I asked as Adele sat cross-legged on the rug next to the baby.
“Knew,” Adele said. “He got killed about a week ago. Hit-and-run.”
“How well did you know him?” I asked.
“Hardly,” she said. “He was a freshman. Two years apart in age. Two decades apart in life school. He was a kid. You trying to find the driver, right?”
“Yes. I’m working for his mother.”
“Wait, wait,” said Flo. “How’s knowing about the boy going to help you find some hit-and-run drunk?”
“He thinks maybe Kyle was murdered, right, Mr. F.?” Adele was smiling, her hand gently rubbing the back of the baby, who was totally absorbed with the difficult choice between which handles of the toy she was going to put in her mouth.
“It’s possible,” I said. “What about Yolanda Root? Kyle’s sister.”
Adele looked up and said, “Half sister. She wants no part of Doc McClory or his name. He wants no part of her. Probably the only thing they ever agreed on. Her, I can tell you a whole lot about. What are you thinking, Mr. F? Someone ran down her kid brother to get back at Yolanda or something?”