’Tell it all. Tell it carefully but tell it quickly,” Lonsberg said.
“Adele’s destroyed three of the manuscripts. Burned one. Shredded one. Soaked the third in water till it can’t be read. She made sure to leave the cover pages of each one behind.”
I pulled them out. We were standing on the sand now, the Gulf water washing in, waves a few feet high, wind light to moderate as the TV weatherman said. I handed the envelope to Lonsberg, who opened it and pulled out the three single sheets.
“Meet the Charming Devil, Come Into My Parlor, Whispering Love,” he read from each sheet. “Not my best work. Not my worst. Come Into My Parlor is no loss. Meet the Charming Devil… I can’t even remember it. Whispering Love, not a bad novel, not a good one. I was going through
… through some problems when I wrote it. I wonder if she read them before she destroyed them?”
“I don’t know.”
“She tell you what she wants?” he asked as he motioned for Jefferson to run down the beach. Jefferson ran north along the beach. He seemed to have something in mind.
“No,” I said. “She said something about making you pay page by page. Said she would do it a little at a time and let me know.”
He nodded in understanding.
“So what are you doing?” he asked, looking down the beach at Jefferson who seemed to be trying to catch some gulls and having no luck.
“Waiting, trying to talk to her when she calls,” I said. “She wants to be caught. She wants to hurt you, taunt you, and be caught.”
“If you’re lucky, you’ll catch her and salvage some of my work before it’s all gone,” he said without emotion.
Jefferson was loping back toward us down the beach, something flopping in his mouth.
“Luck would be fine,” I said, “but I’m not counting on it. I know Adele. She’s smart, but she’s angry. And she’s traveling with a kid named Merrymen. You know him?”
“Merrymen,” Lonsberg repeated, leaning down to pick up the dead fish Jefferson had dropped at his feet. The fish had been dead at least two or three days. Crabs had gotten to it and it gave off the distinctive smell of death.
Lonsberg patted Jefferson on the head. The dog’s eyes closed in ecstasy. Lonsberg pointed south on the beach and Jefferson took off.
“Merrymen,” he repeated. “Young, lanky, decent-looking, quiet, didn’t seem bright enough for Adele. Met him twice when he picked her up. The first time he gave me an are-you-a-dirty-old-man look. The second time he just kept his head down, nodded, and got away as quickly as Adele was willing to leave. Jefferson took a definite liking to the kid. Jefferson’s not easy to please.”
Down the beach the big dog decided to plunge into the water where an incoming wave took him in the face. He weathered it and swam out in search of some treasure for Lonsberg.
“What else?” Lonsberg asked, looking at the dead fish.
“Bernard Corsello,” I said. “Mickey Merrymen’s grandfather. Someone shot him.”
“So, what have I to do with Hecuba or Hecuba to me that I should weep so for her?” he asked.
“Shakespeare,” I said. “Hamlet, I think.”
“I apologize,” said Lonsberg. “I was trying to keep you in place. I don’t know what place, but…”
“I read a lot,” I said. “I read and watch old movies. I like the way Shakespeare sounds.”
“My favorite is Titus Andronicus” said Lonsberg. “Murder, mutilation, racism, hubris, mistakes, lies, rape, cannibalism, madness, and a sense of humor. “None of which are really part of what I write. Which is your favorite?”
“Macbeth,” I said. “Nice and straightforward. But I’m more a Stephen King man myself.”
“Underrated,” Lonsberg said. “Overpaid.”
“Bernard Corsello,” I repeated as Jefferson bounded out of the water with a new treasure in his mouth. “Adele and Mickey Merrymen steal your manuscripts. They go to Mickey’s grandfather to hide while Adele destroys your manuscripts. Someone comes looking for them, tracks them to Corsello’s, kills the old man, doesn’t find Adele, Mickey, or the manuscripts.”
“You think I killed this Corsello?” Lonsberg asked with a smile as Jefferson ran up and dropped a large shell at his feet. It was a beautiful turquoise shell without a nick, worn clean and smooth.
Lonsberg picked it up and turned it over. The shell was white inside. He handed it to me.
“A gift from me and Jefferson,” he said. “A bonus. I didn’t kill any old man. If you talk to Adele, tell her that… tell her you told me what she was doing and I said nothing. You can tell her I’m sorry. No, she wouldn’t care. Just tell her I said nothing.”
“Sorry? About what?” I asked.
“Just tell her I said nothing,” he said, looking toward the horizon.
“I’ll tell her,” I said. It would be the truth.
I put the shell in my pocket. We started away from the beach slowly, Jefferson at Lonsberg’s side.
“I met your daughter and son,” I said.
“Did you?” he asked but it wasn’t really a question. “A lost generation, at least in my family. My grandchildren show some promise even if Laura, my daughter, does teach them to hate me as much as she does.”
“I don’t think she hates you,” I said.
“You don’t?” he said, again as if I had made a faulty observation.
“Dislike, maybe. And still…” I couldn’t bring myself to say it so he did for me.
“Love,” he said. “Dislike and love. Almost a good title. Probably also true. And Bradley the C.P.A.?”
“You’re not the warmest man in the world,” I said.
“Not quite a nonsequitur,” he said. “But your point is taken. Bradley wants to be everything I’m not. Warm, outgoing, friendly, uncreative, goes fishing with his son, has a good smile. Likable. That the way you found him?”
“Pretty much,” I agreed.
“I don’t think about my children much or my grandchildren as far as that goes,” he said as we approached the gate. “I think about my wife. I treated her the way I treated my children. She saw something inside me that kept her coming back for more. She gave up trying to make me into something else and accepted what I was. She was a good listener and a more than decent poet. She used a pseudonym. Won’t tell you what it was. No one’s found that out yet. Some avid graduate student will probably make the discovery someday taking weeks or months he could be living to do it. She wanted to make it on her own and she did. New Yorker, Atlantic, little magazines.”
We were at the gate now.
“I just talked to you more than I have to anyone except Jefferson in the last six or seven years,” he said. “You’re a good listener, Fonesca. Now, go be a good detective.”
He put his hand out and we shook. Strong, firm, but there was a tremble, slight but real, early Parkinson’s? I doubted it. Something I had told him? Possibly, but what?
I got in my rented Taurus and pulled out Jefferson and Lonsberg’s gift shell. I laid it on the dashboard and looked at it for a few seconds, hoping it held some secret that would come out as if it were a magical gift from the sea. It told me nothing. I wasn’t surprised. When my wife was alive I used to watch the skies with a telescope we kept on our small balcony. From time to time I thought I spotted a U.F.O. I was always wrong. She humored me. I wanted to find something out in the skies, something that would alter the world and open eternity. When she died, I left the telescope behind. Whoever has the apartment now is either using it, letting it sit in a corner, or has donated it to Goodwill.
On the way back to my office home I stopped at Flo’s. Her car was parked in the driveway. I rang the bell. It chimed back the music from the ten notes of “If You Loved Me Half as Much As I Love You.” I didn’t want to press the bell again. I didn’t have to.
“Who?” Flo called from inside.
“Lew,” I said.
“Alone?”
“Alone,” I answered.
She opened the door, the barrel of a rifle aimed at my stomach.