Occasionally, I would turn up some street trade, a referral like Beryl from Dave at the Dairy Queen. I lived in and worked out of a second-floor office in a two-story office building behind the DQ parking lot. Entrance to each of the offices was through a door to the outside. My door, like the others, needed a coat of paint. The metal railing on the balcony was starting to rust seriously.
I had a deal with the building manager. The landlord lived in Seattle. By giving the manager a few extra dollars a month beyond the reasonable rent for a seedy two rooms he referred to as a “suite,” he ignored the fact that I was living in the “suite.” The outer room where I now sat with Beryl was designed as a reception room. I had turned it into an office. The room behind it was a small windowed office, which I had turned into a living space. I had fixed it up to my satisfaction. The clothes I had brought with me from Chicago would hold out for another year or two. I had a narrow bed, an old dresser, a small closet, a television set-with a VCR picked up at a nearby pawnshop-and a low bookcase, which stood next to the dresser and was overflowing with paperbacks and videotapes. To get to the bathroom, which had no bath, I had to walk outside past five offices, accepting whatever the weather had to offer. I showered at the downtown YMCA every morning after I worked out there. Normally, I bicycle to the Y. My bike was standing in the corner behind my new client.
There was nothing but my name printed on the white-on-black plastic plate that slid into the slot on my outer door. The plate didn’t indicate what service I provided.
“Man at the Dairy Queen,” she said, nodding at the door, beyond which was the concrete landing overlooking the Dairy Queen on Route 301, which was also Washington Street, though in my two years in town I never heard anyone call it anything but 301. They also called Bahia Vista “Baya Vista,” and Honore Avenue. was usually referred to as Honor Avenue.
“He said you had feelings.”
She looked at me for about the third time and saw a sad-looking forty-two-year-old man with rapidly thinning hair and reasonable dark looks wearing a short-sleeved button-down blue shirt and gray jeans.
“You’re a detective, like on television,” she said. “Rockford.”
“More like Harry Orwell,” I said. “I’m not a detective. The only license I have in this state is a card with my picture on it that says I’m a process server. But any citizen can make inquiries. That’s what I do. I make inquiries.”
“You ask questions.”
“I ask questions.”
“What do you charge?”
“Fifty dollars a day, plus expenses.”
“Expenses?”
“Phone calls. Gas. Rental car. Things like that. I report to you every night if you want me to. You can stop my services anytime before the next day. My guess is I’ll find Adele in two or three days or tell you she’s not in Sarasota.”
“Okay,” she said, opening her purse once again and pulling out a wallet, from which she extracted five tens. “I will need a receipt.”
I took the money, found a pad of yellow legal-sized paper and wrote out a receipt. She took it and said, “I told you I’m staying at the Best Western. I’m in Room Two-o-four.”
“Well,” I said, handing her my card. There was nothing on it but my name, address and phone number. “You can call me here day or night.”
Beryl took my card, looked at it, put it in her purse, and snapped her purse closed.
“I am not a warm woman,” she said. “I do not show my affections. I did not do so with Adele, but I do love her and I think she knows that. Please find her.”
“I’ll do my best to find her.” I said. “A few more questions. What’s your last name?”
“Tree. My name is Beryl Tree. My daughter is Adele Tree. Took my maiden name back when Dwight walked out, took it back and gave it to my daughter. His name is Handford, Dwight Handford.”
“And he knows you’re in town and where you’re staying.”
“Didn’t tell him where I was stayin’. Just ran into him on the street, coming out of the Waffle House across from the motel. He looked scared, then mad. I asked him where Adele was. He hit me, told me to get back to Kansas or the next time he saw me he’d…”
She stood looking at the humming air conditioner. She had something more to say. I waited.
“He, Dwight, was married before me. Said he divorced her. Had a daughter before he married me. Josh, he’s the sheriff…”
“I know.”
“Josh came checking on him once. Didn’t know what it was about till Adele ran off. Then Josh told me. Dwight spent prison time for… for doing his first daughter when she was twelve.”
I knew what “doing” meant.
“Adele’s a pretty girl,” she said. “Too pretty maybe.”
“I’ll find her,” I said.
And she was gone.
I pulled some Kleenex from my drawer, wiped my head, face and neck, and threw the used tissues into my Tampa Bay Bucs wastebasket. My shirt was sweat-blotched and clinging wet to my back. It was a hot December day in Sarasota, probably about eighty-four degrees and humid-hot for winter, but not unheard of. It was the middle of the snowbird season. Tourists and winter residents rented or owned overpriced houses and apartments on the mainland in Bradenton, Sarasota and all the way up the coast to Pensacola and down the coast to Naples. The winter crowd with real money were in the resorts and condos on the beaches of Longboat and Siesta Keys. All in all, there were about 200,000 people in Manatee and Sarasota Counties combined during The Season.
In Sarasota, south of the airport, there is a strip of low-cost motels on Tamiami Trail. The strip stretches for a couple of miles to downtown and stops just before the theater district. The primary residents of the motels are small-time pimps and prostitutes, mostly runaways like Adele, though in the winter unknowing French and German tourists wander into these motels with their families, swimsuits and cameras. This was where I’d start looking for Adele’s phone booth. If that failed, I’d go south of Bay Front Park and downtown and start my search among the malls, restaurants and shops.
Sarasota has hundreds of restaurants catering to retirees, tourists and full-time working residents. It could be a long day or two of work. If she was still in town, I didn’t think Adele would be that tough to find, and I needed the fifty dollars. My backup was to find Dwight Handford. From what little Beryl had told me about her husband, I had the feeling he wouldn’t be found by simply looking in the phone book. I was right. I’d find him if I had to, but I’d go for that phone booth first. How long it would take to find Adele Tree depended on what happened at my meeting in less than half an hour.
I had gone three weeks with no work but serving papers twice, thirty-five dollars for each job. Both servings had been easy. They’re not always easy. People who took the court order I handed them tended to see me as the enemy, the messenger for the system, the first step in doing them in. I’ve been slapped, threatened and hit a few times. Usually, though, the recipient was stunned. I always dressed casually, spoke politely and asked if I was speaking to the person I was looking for. If I was, I handed the papers to him or her. If I wasn’t and the person admitted that I had come to the right place, I gave that person the papers. It was legal.
I could simply drop the papers on a table or on the floor.
There are servers who simply tear up the papers they are supposed to serve and swear that the deliveries were made. There are others who carry guns and push through doors and face a knife or a rifle to get the job done. Pride, not money, for these people.