“I think we should stop here, Mrs. Root.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I want him dead. We want him dead. It’s not enough, but the thought of him being alive when Kyle is dead is too much to live with. You understand? Every day I’ll know Kyle is buried in that coffin and the man who ran him down is alive, waking up every morning, eating, showering, reading, working at something, watching television. That is unacceptable. Do you have any idea of how we feel?”
“Yes,” I said. I knew exactly how she felt.
“The horrible irony is that Kyle’s death and that man have brought the three of us together,” she said with a laugh that wasn’t a laugh. “If you call what you just witnessed being together.”
I said nothing.
“Well?” she said. “Do I have to be more specific?”
“No,” I said.
She wanted me to find the man who ran Kyle down and kill him.
“Good. You know what I want and I don’t have to say it. Richard will pay fifty thousand dollars, cash, nothing signed, no income to report.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“What about that old man, your friend?”
“Ames?”
“Mr. Tycinker tells me he killed a man a few years ago.”
“Ames isn’t a hit man,” I said. “And he can’t be bought.”
“Then,” she said with a sigh, “when you find him, let me know before you go to the police. One of us will… do it.”
“Makes me an accessory,” I said.
“I know about your wife. What would you do if you found him, the person who killed her?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Do you believe in God, Mr. Fonesca?” she asked.
“He asked me the same thing,” I said.
“He?”
“The man who killed Kyle.”
“You talked to him?”
“He calls me,” I said. “He’s falling apart. I don’t know.”
“Know what?”
“If I believe in God.”
“Do you believe in an afterlife? Any kind of an afterlife? Nirvana? Anything?”
“I don’t think about it,” I said. “I work hard at not thinking about it.”
“It takes a great deal out of you, doesn’t it, not to think?”
“Yes,” I said. “When I find him, I plan to turn him over to the police. You want to end my services?”
“If I said yes, you’d just stop looking?”
“No,” I said. “I’ll keep looking. I’ll find him.”
She slumped back.
“Am I fired?” I asked.
She waved a hand and looked out the window at the trees.
“No,” she said.
I wanted to give her some comfort, tell her that she would find some peace in simply knowing her son’s killer was found, was punished, was exposed. But I knew it wouldn’t work and if I tried it, it would be a lie.
“Do what you have to do,” she said.
I got up, took my cap and went to the door. In the corridor Yolanda was leaning against a wall, arms folded, looking at the floor. McClory was pacing. They both looked at me and knew that I had turned down Nancy Root’s offer.
McClory walked past me without meeting my eyes and headed down the hallway. Yolanda started to ease by me and into the conference room. She stopped, turned toward me, her face inches from mine.
“He’s a wimp. You’re a wimp. If I get the chance, I’m going to stab the guy who killed Kyle. I’m gonna stab him and keep stabbing him and hope that he begs for his life and cries while he dies.”
“It’s not so easy to murder someone,” I said.
“He did it,” she said.
“I don’t think it was easy for him,” I said.
“You don’t… you feel sorry for him?”
She seemed to be waiting for me to respond. I had no response.
“I’ll find him,” I said.
About ten minutes later, I parked back at the DQ and walked south on Washington to Gwen’s. There were no fish cakes on the menu but the chalk list on the blackboard on the wall a few feet from the Elvis poster said meat loaf was. One space was left at the counter. I sat next to a thin, young guy with a beard, long hair in a braid and a faraway look in his glazed eyes as he ate a burger. On the other side of me was a regular at Gwen’s, a guy with muscles in a white T-shirt with a stitched blue outline of a stationary bike over the pocket, the emblem of the gym down the street. He was drinking soup. No Tim from Steubenville.
“Digger show up this morning?” I asked Gwen when she came back with my meat loaf.
“Showed up, did just fine for the first day,” she said.
“You just missed him. He made the meat loaf.”
“Looks good,” I said.
“Enjoy,” she said, grabbing the almost full coffeepot from the burner behind her and heading around the counter to make the round of the tables.
Something, I thought, pouring ketchup on the plate in an open space between the meat loaf and french fries.
“Huh?” asked muscles.
I didn’t know I had said it out loud.
“Just something I’m trying to remember,” I said.
“You’re the guy who lives in the office behind the DQ.”
“Yeah.”
“You work out?”
“At the Y,” I said.
“I can get you a good price at Milt’s Gym,” he said. “Just a few feet from your place.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
“Good price,” he repeated. “Remember what you were trying to remember?”
“Not yet. Something someone said to me today.”
“Right training, right food, right herbs can get your memory kicking ass,” he said.
I could not come up with a concrete image of my memory, let alone an image of it or me kicking ass.
“It’ll come,” I said.
“Don’t bet your left arm on it,” said the blond guy with the beard through a mouth full of burger.
“I won’t,” I said.
“Not that I know what anyone would want a fucking left arm for,” he said. “I mean one that wasn’t his.”
“Maybe the same reason someone would want a pound of flesh.”
“Pound of flesh?”
That pretty much ended the luncheon repartee. We finished in silence. Muscles left first after going into the pocket of his T-shirt and coming out with a business card he handed to me. I put it in my pocket.
I finished next, looked at the check, nodded at the blond guy, who was staring at his plate, left a dollar tip and paid Gwen at the cash register.
“Pretty nice day,” she said, glancing out the window.
I nodded.
There was no one on the sidewalk. People didn’t stroll in Sarasota, but cars did flash by. I was about twenty feet from the DQ lot and almost next to Milt’s Gym when I heard it. It sounded like a car behind me coming up the sidewalk. I started to turn. It was a car coming toward me on the sidewalk.
Tinted windows. Small car, tires on the right side in the street, on the left almost scraping the wall. There was a break in oncoming traffic. I jumped to my right into the street in front of a blue pickup truck. The pickup driver swerved to his left, missing me by a few feet and almost colliding with an oncoming squat convertible. The car on my tail turned with me. Whoever it was did not seem concerned about who or what was coming or going. This was a person with a clear mission, to run me down.
12
A car screeched out of the DQ lot in front of me and headed right at me. One car behind. One car in front. Me in the middle trying to find space to cross the street to the other side. I was trapped ten feet off the curb. The car with the tinted windows swerved back toward the sidewalk. I stood on the white line. The right fender of the car coming toward me grazed the right fender of the car behind me, which was back on the sidewalk. I heard a headlight pop.
I made it across the street and looked back over my shoulder. The car with the tinted windows that had tried to run me down was skidding across the street and into the northbound lane. It roared on, glass from the broken headlight tinkling behind. The other car that had come out of the DQ lot was turning down the narrow street just past Gwen’s.
People were streaming out of Gwen’s, including Gwen, who shouted across the street, “Lew, you all right?”