Stuart Kaminsky - Bright Futures

When we got out, it was dark.

“Help that near-crazy lady,” Darrell said as we let him off outside the apartment building on Martin Luther King in which he lived with his mother.

I didn’t answer. Neither did Ames. We drove off with Victor.

“Someone beat Horvecki to death,” Ames said. “Someone killed Blue Berrigan almost in front of our eyes. Why? Who?”

“And someone shot Darrell in the back and put a pellet through the window of Jeffrey Augustine’s car,” I said. “Who? Why?”

Victor parked in the narrow driveway next to the house. We all got out.

“You’ve got some ideas,” said Ames.

“An idea,” I said.

“Partners, right?”

“Right,” I said.

“Ideas?”

I told him. He rolled his scooter out from under the stairs and drove back to his room at the back of the Texas Bar and Grill.

Victor took a shower and then settled into his sleeping bag in the corner of the office. I got into my black Venice beach shorts and my X Files black T-shirt and spent about an hour in bed, just looking up at the ceiling. I considered calling Sally. I didn’t. Sleep snuck up on me, as it usually does just when I’m convinced insomnia will have me waiting for the sun to rise.

No wandering preachers or wayward policemen woke me. No new great ideas came to me in dreams. I remembered no dreams. I woke up three minutes after six in the morning. My X Files shirt was soaked with sweat, though the room felt cold. I got up, dressed in clean jeans and a plain blue T-shirt, and picked up the Memphis Reds gym bag I had purchased for two dollars at The Women’s Exchange.

In the outer office, Victor was tossing on his sleeping bag. Half of him was on the bag. The other half was on the floor. I made it out the door without waking him and went down the stairs to retrieve my bicycle from the shed under the stairs.

The morning was cool, maybe in the seventies. The sky was clear and traffic on 301 was lighter than usual. The YMCA was on Main Street in the Mall next to the Hollywood 20 Movie Theaters.

I saw a few people I knew as I did my curls with fifteen-pound weights. It felt better after I got them done and began my second set. Then I did crunches, bends, and heartbreakers until my shoulders began to ache.

After I finished my workout, I showered, put on my clothes, and stepped out onto Main Street where someone took a shot at me.

I stood on the sidewalk for a few seconds, not quite registering what had happened. A trio of teens passed me laughing, noticing nothing. An elderly woman with a walker slowly crossed the street, looking forward and moving slowly. Nothing seemed unusual until the second shot fell short, pinging off the hood of a shiny new red Honda Accord a few feet away from where I was standing. I could see the small dent in the car showing silver metal under the red paint. With the second shot I held up my gym bag and bent at the knees. Something thudded into the bag I held in front of my face. I ducked for cover alongside the Honda, hoping the shots were coming from the other side of the street and not from either side of me.

I sat on the sidewalk, my back to the car, my Cubs cap about to fall in my lap. A couple in their fifties came down the sidewalk. They tried not to look at me.

“Down,” I said. “Get down.”

I motioned with my hand. They ignored me, probably considering me an early-morning drunk. They walked on. No more shots.

After a few minutes I hadn’t been killed, so I stood up carefully and looked around. There were places to hide, doorways to consider, rooftops, corners to duck around. I looked at the front of my gym bag. A pellet was lodged in the fabric. I pulled it out, pocketed it, and went to get my bicycle from where it was chained around a lamppost. There was a Dillard’s bag dangling from the handlebars. I looked inside and found a folded handwritten note.

Should you survive, think no ill of me.

Folly is as folly always does.

Folly is and never was completely free.

Stop or hear again the bullet’s buzz and it will be as if Fonesca never was.

“High school kid,” said Ames, looking down at the poem that lay flat on my desk. “Maybe a girl.”

“Real men don’t write poetry?” I asked.

“They might write it, but they don’t show it to anybody.”

“Why write a poem?” I said. “Why not just a note saying, ‘Stop trying to help Ronnie Gerall or I’ll shoot at you again and next time I won’t miss.’ ”

“Guns are easy to get,” Ames said. “Why shoot at you with a pellet gun, especially after having been less than gentle, beating two men to death?”

“Maybe,” said Victor who stood looking out the window at nothing.

Ames and I both looked at him.

“Maybe,” Victor continued, “the person shooting at you is not the killer of Horvecki and Berrigan.”

With my Bank of America pen, we made a list of everyone we could think of who would know I was trying to find a suspect other than the former Ronnie Gerall. The list was long.

“Where do we start?” Ames asked.

I told him and he said, “Dangerous out there for you.” “Whoever is shooting at me,” I said, “is a rotten shot. Plus, he won’t shoot at me again till he knows I haven’t dropped the case.”

“She,” said Ames.

“Right,” I said. “He or she.”

“Let’s do it,” said Ames and we went out the door and down to my car.

Victor sat in the back, Ames next to me. I turned the key and the Saturn powered on with something approaching a purr.

“Worked on it early this morning, before church,” Ames said.

“Sounds great,” I said.

“It’ll do,” he said.

I didn’t ask Ames what church he belonged to, though I knew he would tell me. I didn’t ask Ames if he had a weapon under his well-worn tan suede jacket, though I knew there was one there.

We got to the church in Cortez just before noon. Services were over, but the Reverend Jack Pepper was delivering a pensive message on station WTLW.

“Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord,” came Pepper’s voice over the radio as we sat listening to the man in the small studio in the building just beyond the tall metal mesh gate. “But we are the vessels of the Lord, the instruments of the Lord. What if the Lord calls upon us to seek his vengeance?”

He paused for a few seconds to let his listeners consider what he had just said. I imagined a 1930s farm couple, Dad in his overalls, Mom wiping her hands on her apron, son on the floor looking up at an old Atwater Kent radio as if it might suddenly turn into a television set. I wondered how many people actually listened to Jack Pepper.

“Ponder this further,” Pepper said. “How will we know when it is the Lord commanding us? We have free will for the Lord has given it to us along with many of the blessings of life including the bounty of the seas right in our own waters-fish, shrimp, crab, scallops, lobster. When are we really hearing the Lord? I’ll answer this after these messages from the good Christian business in our own neighborhood.”

I got out of the car after telling Victor to get behind the wheel and Ames to stand by the gate and be ready. I wanted to talk to Jack Pepper alone.

As Ames and I walked to the gate, I could hear Victor behind us, listening to Jack Pepper urging his good listeners to buy their bait and tackle at Smitty’s Bait and Tackle.

I pushed the button next to the gate. Pepper, complete in suit and tie, came out, told the dog to go sit “over there,” and let me in.

“You find something that will help Gerall?” he asked opening the gate to let me in.

“Maybe,” I said. “I’ve got a few questions.”

“I’ve got to get back on the air,” he said, motioning for me to follow him. I did.