“I like your tenacity,” I said, pushing Lonsberg’s bell.
“Then?”
“Publish and be damned,” I said.
Rubin smiled and readied his camera. I heard the crackling over the speaker that let me know someone was on the other side.
“Fonesca,” I said. “A reporter is camped out here. If you don’t want your picture taken, don’t show yourself when you open the door.”
I turned to Rubin who shrugged.
“Tenacity,” he said. “Eventually I’ll get it.”
“You’re wasting your time sitting here,” I said.
“My day off,” he answered. “We’re a New York Times paper. I can get a story like this on the wire, in the Times, byline. Get invited back to my Journalism Department at the University of Missouri to tell how it’s done. I like my work, Mr. Fonesca. I’m staying with it.”
The door opened a crack and I jumped in knowing Rubin was taking my picture as I did so.
“You’re late,” said Lonsberg. Jefferson was at his side looking up at me and panting. I thought of the dead pit bull at Merrymen’s. I thought of the dead Merrymen. I thought of the shell Jefferson and Lonsberg had given me and I thought of the brown packet and fragments of manuscript I handed him.
We walked back to the house saying nothing. Lonsberg looked at the manuscripts but didn’t read them. He took the pages out of the brown envelope Harvey had given me. He scanned a few pages before we reached the house.
Lonsberg’s pickup was parked in front of the house. Two little girls were jumping in the back of the pickup enough to make it rock. Jefferson looked at them for an instant and then accompanied us into the house where his daughter Laura sat in an uncomfortable-looking wooden chair with a drink in her hand.
“Mr. Fonesca,” she said. “Would you like some iced tea?”
I said I would and she went to get it as Lonsberg took the same chair she had left though there were more comfortable-looking ones in the room. He slowly went through Harvey’s report. Laura returned with the tea and handed it to me. I said thanks and we sat watching Lonsberg read as we listened to Lonsberg’s granddaughters screaming in the truck outside.
When he was finished, he laid the report on top of the manuscript fragments on a nearby table and looked up at me.
“It’s over,” he said.
“Over?” I asked.
“Forget about the manuscripts. Forget about finding Adele. I’ll give you cash, right now, five thousand, and you walk away.”
I looked at his daughter. She looked a bit green.
“It’s gone too far,” I said. “Two men are dead. Someone took a shot at me and a friend of mine. I think it’s someone looking for those manuscripts. But for a man who writes like you do, you keep overlooking the fact that it’s Adele I’m after. Mr. Lonsberg, if I don’t find her or the police don’t find her, Adele could be killed. You could be killed. Your daughter could be killed.”
Laura stopped drinking.
“Brad and my grandson are coming for dinner tonight,” he said. “We’ll all talk about it and get back to you.”
“Your son is all right?”
“He’s hiding from the press,” he said. “In addition, he’s got the flu or something, but he’s all right.”
“Tell him to be careful,” I suggested.
“I’ll tell him what I think needs telling,” Lonsberg said. “You won’t stop looking?”
“For your manuscripts? I just stopped looking. For Adele, I’ve just started looking.”
“If you find anything, call Laura,” he said. “I’ll be in touch with her.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay,” he repeated, rising. “I’m in reasonably good health. I’ve got a book or two and who knows how many stories left before I die. I’ve got a legacy to work on.”
“Then I’d better leave you to it,” I said.
“I’ll walk Mr. Fonesca to the gate,” Laura said.
Lonsberg didn’t object. He looked down at the manuscript fragments and brown envelope as we went through the door.
“Nice kids,” I said, looking at the two girls who seemed to have lost none of their energy.
“They are,” she said as we walked. “I don’t think my father has any more books in him. Not now.”
“How about an autobiography?” I suggested.
“My father?” She laughed and shook her head. “He’d rather die.”
“It would be worth a lot of money,” I said.
“Millions probably,” she said as we neared the gate. “But you don’t know my father.”
“I’m beginning to,” I said.
“Brad and I will get along without the money,” she said. “But my father has this idea of a legacy. I think he feels guilty about not publishing and giving us a life of luxury while we grew up. He’ll try to work. Brad and I won’t try to talk him out of it. There is no Conrad Lonsberg without his writing. If he couldn’t write, he’d look in the mirror and ask himself who he was. I have a feeling he wouldn’t have an answer. Or worse, the wrong answers. Were you serious about someone killing people, that we might be…?”
“I was serious,” I said.
“Mr. Fonesca,” she said.
“Lew,” I responded.
“Lew, my real fear is that my father has taken on the same look you wear, depression, despair, weariness.”
“We both earned the right to wear it,” I said.
“Maybe someday you’ll tell me your story,” she said.
“Maybe… someday. Take care of your father and watch out for yourself and your brother.”
I went out the door and she closed it behind me immediately.
Rubin was standing there. The afternoon heat had forced him to remove his jacket and his white shirt was stained with sweat. He took my picture and I moved toward the Taurus.
“I see you don’t have those papers with you,” he said.
“If you plan to camp out here,” I said, “you’re in for a long wait. It’s my understanding that Mr. Lonsberg isn’t going out anymore today or tonight. And if you plan to follow me, I’ll make a call to whoever is the editor-in-chief at your paper and tell them you’re stalking me. And if that doesn’t work, I call the police. Not good publicity for an ambitious young reporter. Besides, I’m going home.”
He shrugged. It was a you-win shrug, but one I knew wouldn’t stop him from digging. In an odd way I didn’t want him to stop. He was working hard. He was working with enthusiasm. He was looking for something like the truth and he wanted to get somewhere in life.
We were direct opposites. I wondered if I had ever been like Rubin. I think I was close once, but that was long ago and far away.
12
John Gutcheon sat at the reception desk on the first floor of the three-story Building C in the complex of identical buildings marked A, B, C, and D. The complex was just off of Fruitville and Tuttle. Gutcheon sneezed and wiped his nose with a fresh tissue from the box on the corner of his desk.
Building C housed some of the offices of Children’s Services of Sarasota. Buildings A, B, and D had a few empty offices but most were filled by dentists, urologists, a cardiology practice, investment advisers, jewelry and estate appraisers, young lawyers, a dealer in antique toys, and at least three allergists. There are a lot of allergists on the Gulf Coast. John Gutcheon was in need of one or more of them. His eyes were watering and he looked ready to reach for the tissues again.
John was busy on the phone guiding people, giving advice he wasn’t supposed to give, directing calls, taking messages, or transferring them to voice mail. A computer sat on a small, precarious wooden platform that slid out of his gunmetal desk and when he wasn’t on the phone John Gutcheon folded mailings and put them into envelopes, copied handwritten reports onto the computer and printed them, or warded off people who had come to the wrong place for help.
“Do you know who that was?” he asked, hanging up the phone and looking up at me as he folded his hands on his desk like a third grader.
“Pete Ward,” I guessed.
“Pete…?” Gutcheon said, looking at me with pursed lips in the expectation of a pale punch line.