We moved around a small pond where a white heron was dozing. A few dozen yards past a barbecue pit we hit the beach. I took off my shirt, slung it over my shoulder, and sauntered down the shore with Ames at my side.
“You’re a big retired movie star,” I said, waving at a trio of kids building a castle of white sand. “A cowboy like John Wayne.”
“All the same to you,” he said. “I’ll think Buck Jones.”
The three kids stopped building and looked at Ames. A jogger in bare feet, red swimsuit and a white T-shirt with Betty Boop reclining on his chest glanced at us as he passed and left footprints in the sand. I laughed as if Ames had just said something hilarious. Ames just looked forward. I was beginning to think that bringing Ames along was not such a good idea. In fact, my coming at all was probably not a good idea, but all I could think of was the fourteen-year-old girl whose picture was in my wallet, her dead mother, her father who had sold her, and John Pirannes who had bought her.
When we came up behind the Beach Tides on the beach, we walked around the pool, where a single old man treaded water, nodding at us as we passed.
We tried three buildings, checking names in the lobby, avoiding the security people who rode around on little golf carts. In the third building, we found a J. Pirannes and I pushed the button.
No answer.
I pushed again. This time a girl answered and said.
“Hello.”
“John Pirannes, please,” I said.
“He can’t come to the phone,” she said.
“Why?”
“I think he’s dead,” she said.
“Adele?”
“Yes.”
“Adele, push the button and let me in,” I said.
“Button?”
“On the phone, near the door, somewhere.”
“Who are you, the police?”
“Good guess,” I said. “The door.”
I heard her put down the phone and waited, phone in hand, watching the driveway outside for the golf-cart patrol. Then, a buzz. I hung up the phone and went into the lobby. Pirannes’s apartment was on the sixteenth floor. We were up and running down the corridor in about twenty seconds. Ames was almost keeping up with me in spite of the slicker, the shotgun and the more than thirty years I had on him. The door to Pirannes’s apartment was locked. I knocked. I. knocked again.
“Who is it?” Adele asked.
“You just talked to me on the phone. Open the door, Adele.”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“I’m a friend of your mother,” I said.
“My mother’s dead,” she said, sounding very much like the child she really was.
“I know,” I said. “Who told you?”
“Mr. P. Someone called him. Then he told me. Why would someone want to kill my mother?”
She was crying now.
“I think it’d be a good idea if we talked about it inside.”
“I can shoot the door open,” Ames said evenly.
“A little noisy,” I said.
“May be the best we can do,” said Ames.
“Adele,” I tried again, hoping the neighbors weren’t listening. “Pirannes is dead?”
“Yes,” she said. “I think so.”
“We’ll take care of it,” I said.
“We?” she asked.
“Me and another friend of your mother. My name’s Lew Fonesca. My friend, your mother’s friend too, is Ames McKinney. Look, I know Sally Porovsky. We’re friends.”
The pause was long. Without looking around to see if anyone was watching, Ames pulled the shotgun from under his coat and leveled it at the door.
“I’ll make a hole. You reach in and open the door if it doesn’t pop,” he said.
Before he could fire, the door opened.
Adele stepped back when she saw the gun aiming in her general direction. She covered her face and whimpered.
“It’s all right,” I said. “Ames isn’t going to shoot you.”
The girl in the middle of the all-white room-furni-ture, carpeting, walls-was a thin, frightened mess wearing a red mesh dress too old and too tight for her. She was barefoot. Her blond hair was all over the place and it looked as if she had been playing Dress-up and Makeup. Her lipstick was smeared. Her mascara was a dark splotch over her left eye and a running mess on her right.
Ames put his shotgun at his side.
“I’m so cold,” she said.
The room was warm, but Adele was shivering. Ames stepped toward her and she backed up with a little whimper, her hands up to try to counter the attack she knew was coming.
Ames took off his slicker and draped it over the girl’s shoulders.
“Help any?” he asked.
She took her hands away from her face and said, “Yes. I think so.”
“Where’s Pirannes?” I asked.
She pointed a red-painted finger toward a chair, a white chair facing the window.
“I turned him around,” she said. “I really didn’t look. I saw the blood and…”
Ames led the girl to a sofa and sat her down. I moved to the chair Adele had pointed to and touched the back. It spun around. I found myself looking down at a well-dressed man with dark hair and a graying mustache. He was looking up at me surprised. He had a hole in his head. The white chair was covered in blood.
I stood looking down at the corpse, knowing I should do something, that I should pick up the phone and call the police, ask for Detective Ed Vivaise and tell him the truth. Maybe he’d believe me. I wouldn’t if I were the cop and he was the process server who had found his second murder victim in less than twenty-four hours.
“Ain’t him,” Ames said behind me.
“What?”
“Ain’t Pirannes,” he said. “When I went up on the murder charge, I met Pirannes. We had the same lawyer.”
“Adele,” I called.
She was shivering on the couch, Ames’s slicker pulled tightly around her for comfort.
“Adele, you said Pirannes was dead.”
“He is,” she said, a shrill touch creeping into the fear. “Just look at him.”
“I think you better look at him,” I said.
“No,” she said. “I can’t.”
“It’s not Pirannes,” I said.
“It is,” she screamed.
“It ain’t, girl,” Ames said.
Adele got up and moved toward us. Ames went to help her.
“Spiltz,” she said, looking at the corpse.
“Spiltz?” I asked.
“I thought it was… I mean I heard the gun, saw the blood. I turned the chair without looking at him and then I… I just sat there till you called. What is he doing here? Where’s Mr. P.?”
“How long ago did you hear the shot?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where were you?”
“In the bedroom,” she said, pointing behind her.
“Doorbell rang. He told me to stay in bed. I… He went out. They talked a little. I wanted to take a bath or watch TV or something but I was afraid he’d come back and…”
“And?”
“Pirannes and whoever it was argued.”
“Two men,” she said.
“You recognize any of the voices?”
“For sure?”
“For sure.”
“None but Mr. P. for sure. Maybe him,” she said, waving at the dead man without looking at him. “He was here yesterday night.”
“And the other man?”
She shook her head no.
“Was it your father?” I asked.
“Don’t know,” she said. “I wanted him to come. He wouldn’t have come without seeing me.”
She was crying now.
“I wanted him to come, say he made a mistake, take me back. I’ll say it. I hoped it was my father. I hoped he killed Mr. P., but… Can I smoke?”
It was a bad time to give a lecture on the evils of tobacco.
“Sure,” I said.
She went to a table near the front door, lifted the cover on a white wooden box and took out a cigarette. She placed it between her lips and started to look around for a lighter or match.
“There’s one here. Got to be,” she said, running frantically from table to table, back through the door she had indicated was the bedroom. She came out again, sighed, took the cigarette from her lips and dropped it on the sofa.
“I don’t feel so good,” she said.
“What did he do to you?”