Stuart Kaminsky - Bright Futures

He grinned and pointed a finger at me to show I had hit the mark.

“Answer four questions and we’re friends again,” I said.

“Ask.”

We crossed the foyer to the front door.

“You know a policeman named Essau Williams and an Evangelist named Jack Pepper?”

“D. Elliot Corkle knows who they are,” he said. “Wait a moment.”

He hurried to the closet off the front hall, opened it and disappeared for no more than a few seconds before coming out with a white cardboard box and handing it to me. Second question?”

“Have you given money to either one of them?” I asked as we went out onto the redbrick path.

“Nothing to Williams but I did volunteer to put up a suitable headstone of his choice for his mother when they die. Five thousand dollars to Pepper to help support his ministry.”

“In exchange for?”

“Nothing, but I did indicate to both of them that I appreciated their efforts to bring Philip Horvecki to justice.”

“Blue Berrigan?” I asked.

“Unfortunate. No, tragic. No, shocking. A terrible coincidence. If you see my daughter…”

“Yes?”

“Nothing,” he said. “She’ll come back here. She always does when her funds get down to the level of the gross national product of Poland. Another question.”

“Does Jeff Augustine play golf?”

“Why? Do you want him to join you on the links at the Ben Hogan Gulf Club? I don’t know if he plays golf. I do know that if he does it will be a bit difficult for him now with but one eye.”

He closed the door and I carried my prize to the car, where Rachel was sitting in the front passenger seat. I got in beside Ames and Darrell.

“Where are you taking me?” Rachel Gerall said.

“Wherever you want to go,” I said.

“To see Ronnie,” she said, her voice in twang from the center of the State of Florida.

She was frail and pale, red of hair and green of eyes. She should have been Irish. She had a pinched face and thin lips. She could have been cast as a tubercular resident of an Irish mining town a century ago. Either that or a hardcore drug user.

“Who are you people?” she said, half turning to look at me.

“People trying to help the police find whoever killed your father,” I said.

“I don’t trust you,” she said, giving me the evil eye.

“Trust him,” Darrell said. “He ain’t lying.”

“Ronnie’s in jail,” I said.

“Big boy jail,” said Ames.

“And his name ain’t Ronnie,” Darrell added.

“That’s no never mind to me,” she said. “I want to see him.”

“Do you know what happened to the one-eyed man who took you from the motel?” I asked.

“No.”

“Would you like a drink?”

“Of what?”

“Whatever you want to drink,” I said.

“I’d like an iced tea with lemon,” she said.

“We’ll stop,” said Ames.

Victor drove to the Hob Nob on the corner of Seventeenth and Washington. The Hob Nob isn’t trying to look like a fifties diner. It is a fifties diner. It hasn’t changed in half a century. It’s open air with a low roof, picnic tables, a counter with high stools and bustling waitresses who call you “honey.” Smoking is permitted. You could be sitting next to two local landscape truckers, a couple who’ve just escaped from a drug bust, or a retired stockbroker from Chicago and his wife. There’s not much privacy at the Hob Nob, but the food is good and the service is fast.

Darrell lived within walking distance of the Hob Nob, passed it almost every day, ate at it almost never. He ordered a burger and a Coke.

“I know what you want,” Rachel said after I ordered her an iced tea with lemon.

Ames, Victor, Darrell, and I all wanted different things, none of which we could imagine Rachel providing.

“You want me to tell you that Ronnie killed my father.”

“Did he?” Ames asked.

“No, he did not,” she said, raising her head in indignation. “It was that other man.”

“What other man?” asked Ames.

“The one who went out the window. I heard the noise, my father shouting. I was in my room. I opened the door and saw this man climbing out the window and Ronnie, all bloody, kneeling next to my father.”

“What can you tell us about the man who went through the window?” I asked. “White, black, tall, short, young, old?”

“He was white and he had an orange aura,” she said with confidence.

“Orange aura?” asked Darrell.

She turned to Darrell and said, “Orange is anger. Yours is green, nervous.”

Connecting thoughts did not seem to be a strong element of Rachel’s being.

“You watchin’ too much TV,” said Darrell. “A wife can’t be forced to testify against her husband, but if she wants to nail his ass, it’s party time. If you want to help him, you’d be best off sticking with the guy through the window and forgetting auras. Tell her, Fonesca.”

“He’s right,” I said.

Her iced tea had arrived. She slowly removed the straw from its wrapper, dropped the wrapper in the black plastic ashtray on the table, and inserted the straw into her drink.

Rachel was a little slow in everything she did-thinking, talking, moving. My first thought was drugs, but my second thought was that heredity had not been kind. Or maybe it had. There was an almost somnambulatory calmness to the young woman. Daddy had bullied his way through life. His daughter was sleepwalking through it.

She sipped her drink loudly with sunken cheeks.

“Could your husband have killed your father, maybe with the other man’s help?” I asked.

“You’re trying to trick me, like the one-eyed man,” she said coming up for air.

“The one-eyed man tried to trick you into saying Ronnie killed your father?”

“He did,” she said emphatically. “But I told him no such thing. He was on television.”

“The one-eyed man?”

“Yes. I watch television,” she said. “Good, clean entertainment if you are discerning. Rockford Files on the old TV channel.”

“He was on the Rockford Files?” Ames asked.

“What’s the Rockford Files?” asked Darrell.

The marriage of Torcelli and Rachel had been made in heaven or in hell. He exhaled a slick veneer of deception and she floated on a vapor of ethereal innocence.

“Did he kill your father?” Ames asked.

“The one-eyed man?” she asked, bubbling the last of her iced tea through the straw.

“Your husband,” I said.

She thought, looked down at her drink, and said, “May I have another one?”

I ordered her another iced tea. Rachel wasn’t brilliant, but she wasn’t a fool. If she was playing with us, we were losing.

“Ronnie,” I repeated. “Did he kill your father?”

She sucked on her lower lip for a few seconds as she considered her answer and said, “I wouldn’t have blamed him if he did. My father was not a good man. He never hurt me, but he wasn’t a good man. No, he was definitely a bad man. Ronnie saved me from him. When I finish my second iced tea, I’d like to see him.”

“You’re very rich now,” I tried.

“Lawyer said. Policeman said. Man with one eye said,” she said. “Ronnie married me for the money.”

“He did?” I asked.

“He did,” she said as she worked on her drink. “He never denied it. He said when my father died we would be rich and he would be a good husband. Ronnie’s a looker and though I am somewhat plain and wistful, he treats me nicely and I tell him he is smart and beautiful which he delights in hearing provided I don’t overdo it, and he pleases me in bed or on the floor. He likes sex.”

“More than I need to know,” said Darrell with a mouthful of hamburger.

“Did Ronnie kill your father?” I tried once more.