Stuart Kaminsky - Denial

I was in a corner booth in the back on the right facing the door. I nursed my beer knowing that as soon as Bernadette Peters’s last plaintive notes ended, the music would blare. It did. “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

“Oh shit,” someone at the bar said.

“Departure is always an option,” said Billy amiably.

I was halfway through the Beck’s, considering what to do next, when the door opened and Ames came in. He knew which booth I was in. He sat across from me.

“I think our Miss Dorothy is onto something,” he said.

“Four people aren’t at Seaside Assisted Living who were there two nights ago,” Ames said.

“Someone in the office told you that?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “Went to see Dorothy. We took a walk around, talked to people. Came up with a list. Word is no one died the night our Dorothy says she saw the murder.”

A new song came on. A tenor was warbling something called “I’m Going Shopping with You.” Ames turned his head toward the speaker over the bar.

“That’s Dick Powell.”

“Right. Give the man a free beer,” said Billy from behind the bar.

“What happened to the people who left?” I asked, bringing Ames back to the present.

“Word is one was transferred to a nursing home,” he said. “Another two left on their own. Other went to live with her daughter-in-law.”

Billy came over with a beer for Ames and said, “On the house. Got another Powell coming up, ‘Speaking of the Weather.’ Know it?”

Ames nodded. He knew it.

“You checked with the nurses?” I prompted as Billy walked back to the bar.

“That’s your job,” he said.

He was right. Ames nursed his beer through Dick Powell before we left.

It took about ten minutes to get to the Seaside and five minutes to be sent into the office of the director, Amos Trent, a serious, heavyset man with a well-trimmed mustache and a suit almost as tan as his face. He said that neither he, nor the nurses, nor any member of the Seaside staff could give information about residents except to relatives. His eyes moved for an instant toward the four-drawer steel filing cabinet in the corner of his office.

“You understand,” he said. “Privacy. There are people who prey on older people, offer them everything from jobs stuffing envelopes to life insurance for a dollar a month. We have to be concerned about insurance, liability. One of our heaviest insurance premiums covers privacy of records. I’m sorry.”

He got up, put out his hand to Ames and me to let me know the meeting was over. His handshake was firm. So was his decision.

“Okay, then we’d like to see Dorothy Cgnozic,” I said.

“You were here earlier, weren’t you?”

“We were,” I said. “Dorothy’s an old friend.”

“You mean,” said Trent, “Dorothy is old and you are friends, not that you’ve been friends a long time.”

Trent looked at Ames.

“We’re friends,” he said.

“Well,” said Trent. “That’s up to Dorothy, but I believe she is sleeping, afternoon nap. We don’t like to wake our residents up when they’re napping. You understand?”

“Perfectly,” I said.

Trent looked at his watch and said, “I’ve got to get to a meeting. Look, I know about Dorothy’s… mistake, delusion, dream. She’s been telling everyone, the residents, nurses, even the dining room staff about the supposed murder. No one was murdered. Dorothy has, let’s see how I can put this, Dorothy has an active imagination. Her husband was a poet.”

I didn’t see how Dorothy’s husband being a poet had anything to do with her having an imagination, but I just nodded.

He was looking at Ames again when he said, “If the time comes when you’re inquisitive about assisted living…”

I didn’t give him any help.

“Father? Uncle?” he tried.

“Mr. McKinney is my friend,” I said.

Ames wasn’t smiling. Ames smiled almost as little as I did and I never smiled.

“Sorry,” said Trent. “I just thought…”

“You boning me?” Ames said evenly.

“Boning you?” repeated Trent with a smile.

“Playing with me,” he said.

“I wouldn’t play with my friend,” I said, recognizing the look in Ames’s gray eyes.

In a few seconds if Trent didn’t leave or we didn’t back out, I was reasonably sure Ames would find a way to make the mustached manager of the Seaside suffer.

“Let’s go,” I said, putting a hand on Ames’s sleeve.

“Dorothy doesn’t get many visitors,” Trent said, folding his hands in front of him. “Please come back to visit.”

In the parking lot we got into the car. I backed out of the space and turned down the road past the pond, where two ducks floated.

“He was boning me,” Ames said.

“He was,” I agreed.

Silence again as we drove south on Beneva and turned at Webber, heading for Tamiami Trail.

“We’re goin’ back,” he said, looking straight ahead.

“Yes.”

“When?”

I looked at the clock on the dashboard.

“About two in the morning,” I said. “Suit you?”

“Suits me just fine,” he said.

I drove Ames to the Texas Bar amp; Grille, and said I’d pick him up at one-thirty in the morning. That suited him fine too.

Then I headed for El Tacito, the Mexican restaurant where Arnoldo Robles, the man who had witnessed Kyle McClory’s death, worked. El Tacito is in a shopping mall at Fruitville and Lime. I found a parking space four doors down from the restaurant in front of a dollar discount store.

I had a friend, James Hahn, back in Chicago. He was an ex-cop who got a PhD in psychic studies at Northeastern Illinois University. He claimed that he could conjure up parking spaces, that by simply concentrating, envisioning and believing, he could make a space available when he arrived where we were going. I tried him on it a couple of times. It seemed to work for him. It never worked for me.

I don’t believe in magic. I don’t believe in the miracles of the Bible. I’d like to. I’d like to believe that my wife is somewhere, that she is some kind of entity, that she is not simply gone, but I can’t. I’ve tried.

There was an early dinner crowd, about twenty, at El Tacito, or maybe it was a late lunch crowd. The air smelled of things fried, sauces hot, and tacos crisp. There were large color photographs on the wall, all of them of hills, mountains, probably in Mexico. Music was playing, guitars and a plaintive tenor almost in tears. I think it was “La Paloma.” The people at the red-and-white-tableclothed wooden tables paid no attention to the music. They talked, mostly in Spanish, ate, laughed and raised their voices.

A harried waitress, thin with long dark hair tied back, hurried from table to table taking orders, delivering orders, giving orders when she went back to the kitchen.

“Sit anywhere,” she said with a smile.

She had a pile of dirty dishes cradled in her left arm. A wisp of dark hair escaped the band that touched the nape of her neck. She brushed the stray strand away with her hand. She looked tired, satisfied, pretty.

“Looking for Arnoldo Robles,” I said.

A trio of men at a back table called to her by name, Corazon. She held up a single finger to let them know she’d be with them in a second or a minute, depending on how much time I took.

“Arnoldo’s busy,” she said, smile gone, starting to turn away.

“Just take a minute,” I said, holding up one finger as she had done.

“You know Arnoldo?” she asked.

I shook my head no. She looked at me from stained loafers to Cubs cap.

“You’re not with Immigration?”

I shook my head again.

“Arnoldo has his green card,” she said.