Stuart Kaminsky - Always Say Goodbye

Lew looked at Ames, whose nod of yes was almost imperceptible.

“I need some information,” Lew said to Borg.

“Whatever you want,” said Borg. “Want to talk money first?”

“How much is she worth to you?” Lew asked.

“My fortunes have diminished a bit since you last saw me, but I’m far from impoverished. So, I’ll pay, at the far end of reasonable, whatever you ask if you bring her to me or her mother safely and get those two whelps the hell out of Florida forever.”

Lew looked at Ames, who met his eyes. Across the table Earl Borg stared between them.

“Gas, car rental, expenses, reimbursement for any information I have to buy.”

“That’s it?” asked Borg.

“There’s a children and family services fund in the county,” Lew said. “Give them a donation.”

“Four thousand?”

“Four thousand,” Lew agreed.

“Best deal I’ve ever made if you don’t count the time I got four acres of downtown Sarasota from a half-wit named Tarton Sparks,” said Borg. “Ask your questions. Take your time.”

Three hours up I-75 through heavy snowbird and normal traffic they passed a jackknifed truck that lay dead on its side. The truck’s hood was open like a King Kong dinosaur. After the gapers’ block, traffic moved faster, but not much. Early in the afternoon, Lew pulled into the same gas station and general store he had gone to the last time he had come to Kane. The boiled peanuts sign was still there, now peeled away so that it read: B ST OILED PEA TS IN THE SOUT.

Another change from the last time Lew had come to Kane was that Ames McKinney was with him and armed with an impressive long-bareled revolver in the pocket of his yellow slicker. The revolver was there courtesy of Big Ed and the Texas Bar amp; Grille. Big Ed told people that the gun, which usually rested in a glass-covered display case on the wall behind the bar, had belonged to John Wesley Hardin. Ames doubted the legend, but admired the weapon. Ames’s job, among his others at the Texas, was to keep the display guns clean and in working order.

Lew filled the tank with gas.

The overweight woman behind the counter was the same one who had been there the last time. It even seemed to Lew as if she were wearing the same dress. She looked at Ames and then at Lew and back at Ames. Her hands were facedown on the glass countertop.

Lew handed her a twenty-dollar bill.

“Sixteen-twelve out of twenty,” she said as if making the transaction were a burden.

She opened the cash register with a soft grunt, deposited the twenty, counted out change, closed the register and faced Lew and Ames with a gun in her right hand.

“Why the gun?” asked Lew.

“Everyone in this town has a gun,” she said. “When a couple of new folks come to town and one is carrying a gun under his slicker, you consider if you might be on the wrong end of a holdup.”

“Makes sense,” said Ames. “But it’s not so.”

“I’ve been in here before,” said Lew.

“Don’t remember you,” she said, gun steady.

“Guess not. You know a girl named Lilla Fair, a woman named Denise Fair?” asked Lew.

The gun was steady in her hand. Her expression didn’t change.

“I know everybody in and around Kane,” she said. “All four hundred and eighty-two of them.”

“How many are named Lilla Fair?” Lew asked.

The woman’s eyes moved back and forth from Lew to Ames.

“Why?”

“She’s missing,” Lew said.

“No,” said the woman, shaking her head. “She’s with the Manteen boys. Left two days ago, stopped for gas. Ask me, I’d say Denise is some kind of fool to let Lilla go anywhere with Chester and Matthew. Lilla’s not a baby girl anymore, if you know what I mean.”

“I know,” said Lew. “Would you mind putting the gun down?”

“You related to Denise?”

“No,” said Lew. “Lilla’s father wants to be sure she’s safe.”

“Well, he will not soon have his wish,” she said. “Long as that girl is with those nutcrackers, he will not have reason to be sure she’s safe.”

She put the gun back under the counter and handed Lew his change.

Denise Fair stood on the wooden stoop of her two-bedroom, one-story box of a house. The house was about a two-minute drive from the gas station. From the look on her face, both Lew and Ames concluded that the overweight woman had called to announce that they were coming.

She wore tan slacks and an extra-large orange University of Florida sweatshirt. Her arms were folded against her chest. She looked like a college student, hair tied back in a ponytail, skin clear, pretty.

“My name is Lewis Fonesca. This is my friend Ames McKinney. Earl Borg has asked us to find your daughter.”

She looked at the two of them and was clearly not impressed.

“Tell Earl,” she said evenly, “that I am still begging him to pay what they want. They wouldn’t hurt Lilla. They’ve known her all her life. They may be stupid, but they’re not going to molest or hurt their own half sister, especially if Earl gives them the goddamn few hundred dollars. Problem is that Lilla is diabetic. Her medication is gone. She took it when they… I think she has enough for…”-she shook her head and went on-“I don’t know. I know Matt and Chet. Lilla likes them, but they’re not… no, they wouldn’t hurt her.”

Both Ames and Lew knew she was trying to convince herself and was failing.

“Any idea where they might take her?” Lew asked.

“Earl’s still in Sarasota?”

“Yes,” said Lew.

“They don’t have much in the way of imagination,” she said. “They’d go where they could be close to the money they hoped to get from Earl.”

“Sarasota,” said Ames.

“Sarasota,” Denise Fair confirmed.

“Chet and Matt’s mother,” said Lew. “Is she in town?”

“Alma Manteen died last week,” she said. “May account for why they’re doing what they’re doing.”

“You have a photograph of Lilla we could borrow?” Lew asked. “A recent one.”

“Yes,” she said. “I’ll get it for you. You don’t have to return it. Give it to Earl. Yes, I know, he can’t see it, but he can hold it. Give it to him and tell him to pay them. He’s stubborn, but the Lord knows Earl loves Lilla. If he won’t pay, then I pray the Lord guide you to her.”

“We’ll find her,” said Ames.

“Lilla’s all I’ve got,” she said. “I lost my son in Iraq.”

“Fred,” said Lew.

She looked at him.

“I was there when Lilla named the hog,” Lew said.

Denise Fair, arms still folded, went back into her house to find a photograph of her daughter.

If the photograph of the girl was close to her reality, than Lilla Fair was not destined for beauty. She was thin, long dark hair over a smiling face, showing large teeth, round surprised eyes, and a night sky full of freckles. She looked more like Borg than she looked like her mother, but she really didn’t look that much like him either.

The bonus in the photograph was that a group of people in the background were standing with beer bottles in hand. Except for one, they weren’t paying attention to Lilla. The one looking at her was either Chet or Matt. The other twin was next to him in profile. He was hoisting a blur of a beer bottle toward his mouth.

The first thing Lew and Ames did when they got back to Sarasota was to make ten wallet-size machine copies of the photograph at Office Max on Bee Ridge. The second thing they did was walk to the end of the mall and have dinner at the nofrills home cooking restaurant that featured mini-burgers.

“Dinner’s on Borg,” Lew said when they were seated across from each other at a small booth.