Stuart Kaminsky - Denial

Digger was smiling. With people who look like Digger, the conclusion to jump to was that he had spent the night cuddling with a bottle of inexpensive but well-advertised wine or some drug not of choice but of last resort. Neither was true. Digger neither drank nor used drugs. His troubles were deeper than that, rooted, as he put it, in faulty genes, ill-fated life choices, a series of concussions and a god or gods who enjoyed experimenting on him. I knew those gods.

“Ideas,” he said, looking down at my list and then back up at me. “I’ve thought of starting a church, the First Presbyterian Church of the Tupperware. Sell religion and plastic containers that you put things in and pop the tops. On top of each lid will be an inscription: jesus saves; so should you.”

I nodded. Digger leaned forward.

“How about this? A line of candy. Simple chocolates maybe made in the shape of offensive things. I’d call it Good-Tasting Chocolate in Bad Taste. You know. Swastikas. Klansmen. That one would be white chocolate, which you know is not really chocolate at all.”

“I didn’t know,” I said.

“What do you think?”

“I think you need a job and a loan,” I said.

Digger stopped smiling.

“I paid you back last time,” he said.

“That you did.”

“Well, I’ve started finding some dignity. Now I guess I’d better find another job to keep the search going.”

I shifted my weight, took out my wallet, removed three twenties and handed them to Digger. I noticed that his hands were clean and his face freshly shaved. He took the money and touched his cheeks.

“Spic and span and speaking Spanish,” he said. “Ready to take on the world again.”

“Good,” I said.

“Any ideas?”

“Can you cook?”

“Continental, Mexican, Italian, Thai, Chinese, French,” he said, counting each one off on his fingers.

“Short order,” I said. “Griddle cakes, eggs, bacon, sausages.”

“With the best of them, whoever they might be,” he said.

“Gwen’s looking for an early-morning short-order cook,” I said.

Gwen’s was just down the street, a clean, bright survivor of the 1950s, not a kitsch and cool fifties diner, but the real thing. There was even an autographed poster of Elvis on the wall near the cash register. Elvis had dropped in for breakfast in 1957 when Gwen was a little girl and her parents had owned the place. Now, Gwen and her daughters ran the diner, kept the prices down and the food simple.

“I’m the man for the job,” Digger said. “Though I have to confess, I can’t really handle all that ethnic cuisine.”

“Confession accepted,” I said. “You know Gwen?”

“Of course,” he said.

“Let me know how it goes,” I said, getting up. He did the same.

“Can I buy you breakfast?” he asked.

“Get the job and you can make me breakfast tomorrow.”

“How do I look?” he asked.

“Got another shirt?”

He looked down at himself.

“Yes.”

“Clean?”

“Spotless,” he said.

“Put it on and go see Gwen. Tell her I sent you.”

“Here’s hoping,” he said, moving to the door.

I had long ago given up hoping and I didn’t think Digger had much left in him, but he hung on. I hung on. I was never really sure why. That’s one of the reasons I saw Ann Horowitz.

I got a clean towel from my closet, took my ziplock bag containing a disposable Bic razor, soap, toothbrush and toothpaste and made my way to the rest room along the railed concrete walkway outside my door.

The rest room was always clean, thanks to Marvin Uliaks, slow of wit, doer of odd jobs on the stretch of Washington Street between Ringling and Bahia Vista. He swept floors, cleaned toilets, washed windows and smiled at whatever cash was handed to him. I regularly gave him a dollar a week. It was worth it.

It was going to be a busy day. I did not want a busy day. I had my list from the Seaside. I had a dead boy whose mother was waiting for something that people called “closure.” Closure, the end of grief and the answer to why a tragedy burst through their door. I didn’t have hope and I suspected that closure, if I ever found it, would close nothing, just open new doors.

When I got back to my office, I sat down and made a list of people to see:

Richard McClory, the dead boy’s father

Yolanda Root, the dead boy’s half sister

Andrew Goines, the dead boy’s best friend

The four people who had been released from the Seaside Assisted Living Facility the night Dorothy Cgnozic had seen someone murdered

I wanted to go back to bed.

The phone rang.

“Fonesca?”

It was a woman. I recognized her voice. I closed my eyes, knowing what was coming.

“Yes.”

“Two today,” she said.

“My lucky day.”

The woman was Marie Knot. She was a lawyer. She was around fifty, black, no-nonsense face, thin and all business. I wanted to say no, but I couldn’t afford to lose her as a client. I was, according to the card with my picture on it in my wallet, a process server.

“I’ll pick them up in a little while,” I said.

“Need them served before five,” she said. “Shouldn’t be hard. I have addresses.”

She hung up. My going rate was seventy-five dollars for each person served, regardless of how long it took or how much abuse I had to deal with.

I made a few phone calls.

Andrew Goines was in school. When I told his mother that I was working for Nancy Root, she said I could talk to her son when he got home at four.

“I don’t really know Kyle’s mother,” she said. “Talked to her on the phone a few times. His father too. Kyle… Andrew could have been with him when it happened.”

The familiar sound of a computer printer clacked on her end.

“I work at home,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’ve got to get back online with a client.”

“I’ll come by at four,” I said.

“Mr…?”

“Fonesca,” I said.

“Hope you don’t mind, but I am going to call Nancy Root to verify that you’re working for her.”

“You want her number?”

“No, I’ve got it,” she said. “Got to run.”

She hung up.

I found the phone number of Elliott Maxwell Root in Bradenton. Sally had said Yolanda had been living with her grandparents. I called. The voice that answered was young, female.

“Yolanda Root?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

Careful, slow, wary.

“My name is Lew Fonesca. Your mother hired me to try to find out who killed your brother.”

“What difference does it make?” she said. “He’s dead. We’re all dead or will be sooner or later.”

“Can I talk to you about Kyle?”

“Go ahead,” she said. “I’m waiting for a ride. When he comes, I say good-bye, private eye.”

“I’m not a private detective,” I said. “I just find people.”

“Interesting,” she said, making it clear that she didn’t find it interesting at all.

“Can we talk in person?”

“Sure.”

“When?”

“I’m between jobs, sort of,” she said. “I clerk a few hours at my grandfather’s hardware store on DeSoto near Fifty-seventh. I’ll be there between one and three.”

“I’ll be there,” I said.

I started to hang up but she said, “Wait.”

“I’m here.”

“What the fuck. Yeah, I’d like to know who killed Kyle. They could have stopped, called the police, given him first aid, something, instead of running away.”

“Any idea who might want to hurt Kyle?”

“Hurt? It was some drunk or some blind old lady or something,” she said. “Hit-and-run. Police said.”

“We’ll talk at your grandfather’s,” I said.

“Hey, if you-”

I hung up.