“Busy,” I said.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Beer and chili?”
“Beer and burger, half pounder,” I said.
“With the works?”
“With,” I said. “Ames back?”
“In the kitchen,” he said. “I’ll tell him you’re here.”
Ed plopped a bottle of Miller heavy on the counter and moved toward the back of the bar. I took a drink and looked around. I picked up a little, a couple of guys in their thirties in suits, collars open, ties loose, loudly arguing about what the defection of Hardy Nickerson to the Jaguars had really meant to the Tampa Bay Bucs, a trio of paint-stained, T-shirted guys growing bellies and telling jokes with four-letter words, a man and woman in their fifties leaning across bowls of chili and whispering so that I caught only “there’s no other way” plaintively from the man.
Then Ames appeared.
Tall, lean, shaved, serious. As he always did, he held out his hand. His grip was firm. We shook and he moved next to me. His gray pants were worn cotton. His shirt was long-sleeved and blue. I thought he had done some trimming of his brushed white hair.
“Wasn’t there,” he said, moving next to me. “Mickey at the Burger King. Hasn’t been at work for two days. Full name’s Michael Raymond Merrymen. Lives with his father in a development called Sherwood Forest out on McIntosh just off Bahia Vista.”
“I know the place,” I said. “You get an address and phone number?”
“Yes.”
He reached into his shirt pocket and handed me an envelope. The front of the empty envelope told the recipient that he might already be the owner of a new house, a new Lexus, or ten thousand dollars. The back of the envelope told me in Ames’s penciled hand where Mickey lived with his father.
“Thanks, Ames,” I said. “Beer?”
“Coke,” he said.
When Ed came back with my burger and a Coke for Ames, Ames and I moved to the table the quiet couple had just left. We pushed their dishes aside.
“Girl’s in trouble?” Ames said.
“Looks that way,” I said.
“What kind?”
I told him everything. He listened, drank slowly, nodded from time to time, and when I was finished said, “I don’t hear the why of it.”
“I don’t either,” I said. “Maybe we’ll find out when we find Adele. Let’s try Mickey the burger prince.”
We put Ames’s scooter into the trunk of the Cutlass. Ames was good at figuring out spaces, what would fit where. Also, the scooter was no vooming Harley.
I drove down Fruitville. Ames sat at my side and said nothing as I listened to two talk-show guys trade giggles and bad jokes much to their own amusement. We passed the Hollywood Twenty Cinemas parking lot, the Catholic Church with the Spanish welcome on its white sign, the Chinese Star buffet where you could get a decent lunch for five dollars, and made the turn to the right on McIntosh Road just past Cardinal Mooney High School. The Jewish Community Center was on our right. McIntosh Middle School was on our left and then on our left again was a sign that said, “Sherwood Forest, Deed Restricted.”
We drove down a tree-lined street of well-maintained single-family houses, mostly the two- or three-bedroom variety, no two quite alike. A heavy old woman was walking a tiny white dog. She waved her pooper scooper at me and pointed the scooper at a sign that said, “Maximum Speed 19 MPH.” To remind us of the seriousness of the statement we hit a yellow speed bump that felt as high as a low hurdle. The Cutlass scraped the ground when we hit and I slowed down.
We found the house of Mickey Merrymen at the end of a cul-de-sac between two other larger houses. There was a late-model blue Chevy in the driveway and the house’s night lights were on.
Ames and I got out and went to the front door. There didn’t seem to be a bell and there was no knocker. So I did it the old-fashioned way. I knocked.
The man who opened the door was somewhere in his forties, lean, with recently barbered dark hair. He wore a determined scowl, a red sweatshirt, and a pair of khaki pants. He was barefoot and had a baseball bat in his right hand.
“We’re looking for Michael Merrymen,” I said as Ames stepped forward.
“You found him,” the man with the bat said. “I’ve been waiting for you for hours.”
He stepped back to let us pass. When we were inside he walked ahead of us into a living room with one of those long gray couches that form an “L.” A shorter matching couch faced it and a low coffee table covered with magazines and books sat in the middle of the brick-walled room.
“You’re the Michael Merrymen from Burger King?” I asked as the man motioned for us to sit on the L-couch. Flo had described him as a kid. This was no kid. Flo’s sense of youth might have been a bit warped.
I sat. Ames stood. The man with the bat paced.
“Yes,” he said.
“You know why we’re here?” I asked.
“It’s about her,” he said, stopping. “That little bitch.”
“We’re looking for her,” I said, keeping my eyes on the bat that shifted from hand to hand.
“She’s not hard to find,” he said angrily, pointing in the general direction of his kitchen. “She’s right next door.”
“Right now?” I asked.
“Right now,” he said. “You want to hear my side of this or are you just going to sit there?”
“Your side,” I said.
He let out a deep sigh and stopped pacing to lean on the bat and look at me and Ames. Then he looked at Ames again and said, “You two are the best they could get. An old man and a little guy.”
“Your side of the story,” I repeated.
“Okay, it started when I moved in,” he said. “I had my land surveyed. The neighbors on both sides were on my land. A few inches on one side. Almost a foot on the other. Hot tub right over the line on one side. Tangelo trees on the other.”
I looked at Ames who folded his arms and waited to see where this was going.
“Okay, I thought. Live and let live, but no tangelo tree dropping fruit on my property and no lard ass dipping almost naked in her hot tub and spying on me. Are you following this?”
“Yes,” I lied. “Go on.”
“Okay, then came the mailbox,” he said. “Deed restricted community. My mailbox didn’t meet their rules. They turned me in. I was given a written order to move my mailbox back and get it repaired. But that’s not what you want to hear.”
“No,” I agreed.
“You want to know about her,” he said, tapping the bat on the floor. He reminded me a little of Fred Astaire tapping a black cane before he went into a dance.
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, I got the dog,” he said. “No restrictions on dogs. Only have to clean up after them, keep them leashed if you walk them. I got a dog. I got a pit bull. Staked him in the yard so he could reach the property line. He could go right up to that fucking hot tub. So she started the calls. Got a lawyer. Said the dog smelled up the neighborhood even though I cleaned up after him. They are out to get me and you have to stop them. I can get a lawyer too.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Ames asked.
“The bitch next door,” Merrymen repeated. “I called to get her to shut up and that’s why the fuck you’re here for Chrissake.”
“You’re Michael Merrymen?” I asked.
“Yeah, funny,” he said. “My son and me are the Merrymen of Sherwood Forest.”
“Your son?” Tasked. “He’s Mickey?”
“Michael Junior,” he said. “Works for me at the Burger King. I’m the manager. What the hell are you talking about? Did they make an Internet search for the two dumbest deputies in the county and come up with you?”
Ames looked at me. He had a low boiling point but he didn’t show it. He looked calm. He always looked calm even when he was gun to gun with someone who might want to end his life. This time the someone had a baseball bat, but Ames didn’t care. Loyalty and dignity were important to him above all things and I had the feeling though he was giving away about thirty years and a baseball bat, Michael Merrymen might be in trouble.
“We’re not deputies,” I said, pleading with my eyes for Ames to stay put. “We’re looking for your son.”