Stuart Kaminsky - Denial

There was very little left of Tim from Steubenville beyond his convictions. Blue veins undulated over the thin bones in his hands as he drank his coffee from a white mug.

“I tried Digger out,” Gwen said. “He can cook the easy stuff, good enough for breakfasts. He’ll make enough to live on if he’s careful, and the food’s free if he doesn’t overdo it.”

I thanked her.

“No favor,” she said. “I can use the extra help in the morning now that my firstborn is out producing grandbabies.”

Gwen was buxom and full of energy with curly brown hair that she was constantly brushing back with her arm. She poured me a cup of coffee. I put in two Equals and a lot of milk from the small metal pitcher.

“Banana cream?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said.

She winked and went off to get me a slice of pie.

“She shouldn’t pay him more than the free market will bear,” said Tim. “Minimum wages are an infringement of free enterprise. If the market says she has to pay him twenty dollars an hour, so be it. If the market says she only has to pay him four dollars an hour, so be it. Free market.”

He held up his mug as if he were toasting what he had just said. I held my mug up too.

When I finished the pie, I felt better, but better is a comparative term; better than what? Better than when? Gwen was talking to two men at a booth who looked like truckers. Something she said made them laugh. I put four dollars on the counter and got up.

“I say,” said Tim, looking at his almost empty coffee mug, “almost every damn government agency should be shut down. Now, tomorrow. That’s what I say.”

I knew. He had said it before. The next thing he would do if I didn’t escape would be to go through the list of government departments that should be dismantled. He usually started with OSHA, but sometimes the FDA came first.

“You know it’s damn unconstitutional to deprive Americans of their right to get their damn prescription drugs wherever they want,” he said.

“You were a constitutional lawyer?” I asked, immediately regretting it.

He turned his head to me and said, “I worked the line in an automobile assembly factory for almost fifty years. I don’t need a damn law degree. Just read the Constitution.”

“I will,” I said. “Gotta go.”

It was almost three. I hurried to the Gillespie Park neighborhood, got out of the car and walked the same route Kyle McClory had walked before he died. I turned on the cell phone I had bought and punched in the number Richard McClory had given me. There was no answer. I didn’t expect one. I was listening for the ringing on Kyle’s phone, looking in the bushes and grass. Nothing.

I tried for the fifth time. I was about where Kyle had been standing when he was hit. This time someone answered. Or, to be more accurate, someone was breathing hard on the other end.

“Hello,” I said.

More breathing.

“Hello,” I repeated.

“Fonesca,” he said with a sigh. It was the voice of the man who had told me to stop looking for who killed Kyle.

“Can we talk?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “I should have thrown this thing away as soon as I picked it up. I’m going to do that now.”

“What happened? The night you killed Kyle?”

“No,” he said. “Just listen to me. Listen. You’ve got to stop. Please. I don’t want to kill you. I’ve… I… just stop. No one will be helped by you finding me.”

“I’ll find you,” I said.

“You’re going to make me kill you, aren’t you?”

“You sound like you’d rather not,” I said.

“I can’t think of another choice,” he said.

“Well, since it’s my life we’re talking about, maybe I could come up with some alternatives.”

“I don’t think there are any,” he said.

“How about-” I began, but he turned off the phone.

I headed for the Goines’s home off Gulf Gate. It was easy to find. A quiet street. Modest one-story two-bedrooms. I parked in the driveway next to a Kia mini-SUV and went to the door.

The woman who answered about fifteen seconds after I rang wore jeans and a yellow man’s shirt with the sleeves rolled up. She looked at me over the top of her round glasses.

“Mrs. Goines?” I asked.

She looked too young to be Andrew Goines’s mother, at least at first glance. Her skin was clear, her eyes blue, her hair short, straight, blonde.

When she spoke, I added a decade to my first impression.

“Yes,” she said.

“Lew Fonesca,” I said. “I talked to you earlier about your son and Kyle McClory.”

“Oh yes, sorry,” she said. “I thought you were someone here to try to sell me something or donate to saving the world or supporting a political hack. I’m working on a grant for the Sarasota County Film Commission. Almost finished. Come in.”

I followed her in. The entryway was small. The living room to my right was small. The dog that came bounding out of nowhere was big, big and hairy and brown. He tried to stop his rush at me but slid on his nails on the tile floor and bumped into me. I didn’t fall but it was close.

“Clutch,” she said. “Get out of here.”

Clutch was panting, tongue out, looking from me to her.

“Out,” she repeated.

The dog took a few steps into the tiled living room and then looked back at me.

“Out,” she repeated.

The dog slowly, almost mournfully disappeared through an open sliding door.

“I did call Nancy Root,” she said. “She told me you were working for her. Mr. Fonesca, Andy got a little, well, nervous when I told him you were coming by. He was better, but not much, when I told him I’d talked to Kyle’s mother about you.”

“How has he reacted to Kyle’s death?” I asked.

She shook her head and said, “Odd; he seems-maybe I’m just imagining it-frightened. He puts on a front, but the more he says everything is fine, the more I’m convinced everything isn’t fine. He won’t talk to me about it.”

“Andy’s father?”

“Dead,” she said. “He was a helicopter pilot in Afghanistan. It went down. Everyone on board died. The captain who came by said it wasn’t downed by enemy fire. As if that makes a difference.”

“Andy?”

“Andy’s in his room,” she said. “I told him you were coming. Don’t expect a lot of cooperation.”

“You said you didn’t know Kyle McClory well.”

“Not well,” she said. “Tell the truth, the few times he came over he worked a little too hard to be likeable. Tried to say what he thought I wanted him to say. Couldn’t get past that. Can’t say I really tried too hard to break through. Poor kid.”

“Andy?”

“Oh, sure,” she said. “Come on. Call him Andrew, at least to start out. My guess is if you call him Andy, he’ll tell you to call him Andrew. If you call him Andrew, he’ll tell you to call him Andy.”

I followed her through the living room into an alcove with three doors. The door in the middle was the bathroom. That door was open. The door to the right was obviously Mrs. Goines’s bedroom. The door to the left was closed and a yellow plastic streamer said, verboten.

She knocked.

“Yeah,” came the boy’s voice.

“The man I told you about is here,” she said.

“Changed my mind,” he said.

“Andy, he’s working for Kyle’s mom,” she said. “Give him five minutes.”

“I haven’t got anything to say that’ll help him.”

“You never know,” I said. “Five minutes is all I need.”

Long pause, the door opened. Andy Goines, barefoot, cutoff jeans and a Def Jam T-shirt, stood in front of me. He was short, stocky, round pink face, dark hair brushed straight back. He looked at me and clearly wasn’t impressed.