Stuart Kaminsky - Bright Futures

I looked over at an ample woman of no more than fifty whose dark hair was a study for one of those “before” pictures on early morning television.

“Speak,” she said.

I looked at the man behind the second desk. He was gaunt and had red hair and an almost baby-like face. He could have been any age.

“You’re Reverend Pepper?”

“I am,” he said. “And you are?”

“An investigator hired to see if Ronnie Gerall killed Philip Horvecki. Want to go someplace more private?”

“Whatever you have to say to me can be said in front of Lilly.”

“Philip Horvecki,” I said. “He was not a good man.”

Lilly closed her eyes and nodded her head.

“He wasn’t punished for what he did to you,” I said.

“It was my word against his. The police said that wasn’t enough,” Pepper replied.

“He wasn’t punished,” I said.

“Yes he was, but not by the law. His punishment was delayed, but the Lord was not in a hurry.”

Lilly was slowly nodding her head to the rhythm of Pepper’s voice and the eyes of Jack Pepper vibrated back and forth.

“Where were you Saturday night?”

“What time?”

“Evening, at about ten.”

“In my home, my aunt’s home where I live. She looks after me. Lilly was there too.”

“I was,” Lilly said.

“Lilly came to dinner and to talk about a tour I have been planning. I’m sorry. I have to get back in the studio. Gilbert and Jenny are almost finished with their song.”

“And today, about eleven in the morning?” I asked.

“Another crime?”

I said nothing.

“I was here, doing the morning call-in show,” he said.

Before I could question Lilly, the theory I had been putting together about recorded shows and lying alibis seemed to come apart. Maybe I had just seen Laura too many times.

Jack Pepper rose with the help of two aluminum forearm crutches. He leaned forward as he slowly came out from behind the desk.

He looked up at me with what may have been a touch of pain and said, “MS. Multiple Sclerosis. The Lord has chosen to touch me with this affliction. Would you like the name and number of my doctor to see if I’m telling the truth?”

“No,” I said.

“Fonesca? Italian. You are a Catholic?” he asked.

Lilly was shaking her head yes. She was either answering for me or at the brilliance of Jack Pepper’s observation.

“No,” I said.

“Lapsed?”

“No. I’m a lapsed Episcopalian.”

“We are all one in Christ,” he said.

“Except for the Jews and a long list of others.”

“They are welcome to join the faith and be embraced as brothers and sisters and be saved,” he said.

“Amen,” said Lilly softly.

“You believe that in spite of what God has let happen to you?”

“Because of what God has let happen to me.”

“Philip Horvecki sodomized you,” I said gently.

“No,” he said with a smile. “He tried and failed. The Lord did not choose to let it happen.”

I shut up and watched him make his painful way toward the door to the studio in which I could see that the two singers had wrapped up. Then he stopped and looked back at me.

“The Lord has allowed something bad to happen to you, too,” he said. “You are filled with grief and sorrow.”

That could have been said of just about everyone I knew or had ever known. But, it hit me. He opened the door to the studio a few seconds after the red light over the door had gone off.

“You have a favorite first line of a book?” I asked.

“Genesis one,” he said.

“Something else.”

He paused and said, “ ‘Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.’ ”

“What’s that from?” I asked taking out my index cards and pen.

“ Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” he said.

He entered, and the studio door closed behind him.

Never underestimate the ability of a human being to surprise.

“There are many roads to enlightenment and belief,” Lilly said.

If there were that many roads, why wasn’t I on one of them? I looked at her. She was beaming, her eyes fixed on the studio door.

“All are welcome to this church,” she said.

“Then why the barbed-wire fence?” I asked.

“There are people on this earth who have been put here to challenge, vex, and destroy to keep us from spreading the faith.”

“Vandals,” I said.

“Minions of the devil,” she said.

I thought I might save a little time, so I simply asked, “You didn’t happen to kill Philip Horvecki and Blue Berrigan?”

“I don’t know any Blue Berrigan and I don’t believe in killing.”

“You happen to have a favorite first line from a book?”

“ ‘It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed,’ ” she said. “ Fahrenheit 451.”

With that, I went to the door.

“Feel free to come back,” Lilly said.

I had no intention of doing so. When I got back into the car and turned on the radio, I was greeted by the voice of the Reverend Jack Pepper:

“… a special prayer for the soul of Lewis Fonseca, one of our Lord’s lost children.”

“Fonesca,” I said softly. “Not Fonseca.”

I turned off the radio and drove amid the sound of silence.

Essau Williams was in the Venice telephone directory. I sat in the Saturn and punched in the number I had written on one of my index cards.

The phone rang three times before a man answered with a sleepy, “Williams.”

“Fonesca,” I said. “I’m from Sarasota. I’d like to talk to you about Philip Horvecki.”

“He’s dead.”

“I know.”

“I’m not sorry.”

“I’m not surprised. Can I talk to you?”

“Who are you?” he asked sounding a little more awake. “A reporter?”

“No, a friend of the family.”

“Whose family?”

“Ronnie Gerall.”

“You want me to contribute to his defense fund? Put me down for an anonymous fifty dollars. No, make that a hundred dollars. Any killer of Horvecki is a friend of mine. And since you’re calling me, I think you know why I’m being generous.”

“Can we meet?” I asked. “I’d like to gather information about Horvecki that might help justify what Gerall did.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in Venice,” I said.

“Come over.”

He gave me directions and we hung up without good-byes.

Essau Williams’s house was not near the beach. It was in Trugate West, a development about three miles south of the hospital. What it was west of, I have no idea. His was a small ranch-style house, one of hundreds built in the 1950s to house the middle-class migrants who didn’t have enough money to buy near the beach. They did have a little more money than the retirees who moved just outside of what was then the city limits into the mobile homes lying on tiny patches of grass that most of them tried to make homey with flowers and bright paint.

The green grass, really the weeds that passed for grass in Florida, was mowed short. The two trees, one a small palm, the other a tangelo, grew on opposite sides of the narrow concrete path that led to the front door.

I knocked. Essau Williams opened. He wasn’t big, he was huge. He wore a pair of blue shorts and a gray T-shirt with the name ESSAU in red block letters across his chest and the number 8 under it. He had a yellow towel draped around his neck, and sweat was thick on his forehead, cheeks, and arms. He was all muscle and probably could have made a career with his body if he had a face to match. Essau Williams, light brown with a brooding brow, looked a little like my cousin Carmine, who was not the beauty of our family. Williams had the additional drawback of a raised horizontal white scar across his forehead.