Stuart Kaminsky: Denial

Kyle looked like many teens, a little scrawny, mop of reddish hair, face like his mother’s, teeth a little large. Good-looking kid. I turned my cap over and laid the photograph gently inside, face-up, so I could look down at it.

Kyle had been a good student at Sarasota High. Not a great student, but a good one, his mother said. Played soccer, hoped to be a starter the next season, had there been another season for him. Liked science.

I could also tell he liked video games, the new kind with people scoring points for how many prostitutes and men in turbans they kill. She didn’t tell me that. I could see the boxes on the table behind the kid in the photograph in my lap.

She told me Kyle had a few friends. He had been out the night he was killed with his best friend, Andrew Goines. According to Nancy Root, they had gone to a movie at the Hollywood 20 on Main Street. Andrew was fifteen, couldn’t drive. His mother had picked him up.

When Kyle’s father, Richard McClory, had gone to the theater to pick up his son, Kyle wasn’t there. Kyle had a cell phone. His father called him. No answer.

McClory called his ex-wife and left a message. She was doing a George Bernard Shaw play, Man and Superman, at the Asolo that night. She and McClory had been divorced for six years. Kyle was staying that week with his father, a radiologist. The father had a small house on Siesta Key a block from Siesta Key Village, a one-block walk to the beach.

The night McClory had gone to pick up his son at the movie, he waited, wandered, drove, got the Goines’s number from Information, talked to Andrew, who said he had no idea where Kyle was.

“He ever run away?” I asked.

“Kyle?” she said.

“Yes.”

She shook her head no, once.

“Nothing like that. Never,” she said. “No problems. No drugs. No smoking. No drinking. No girls. Straight arrow. Straighter than his mother, God knows.”

I guess I made a sound that prompted her to add, “I didn’t wear tinted glasses around Kyle,” she said. “He knew he could tell me anything he did. He knew I had done it all. And even if he had decided not to tell me, I’d have known.”

“You would?”

“The telltale signs of corruption,” she said with that sad smile. “Nicotine stains on his fingers. Knickerbockers rolled down.”

I looked at Tycinker.

“ Music Man,” he said. “It’s from The Music Man. ‘Trouble in River City,’ right?”

Nancy Root nodded to show he was right.

“I played Marian the librarian in rep in Portland,” she said. “Long time ago.”

“Kyle,” I reminded her.

“Richard and my… our only child.”

I drank the coffee. It was straight, black, hot, no real flavor besides coffee. I burned my upper palate.

“Richard was waiting for me after the show,” she said, eyes moist, mouth open, taking in air. “They’d found Kyle’s body, his wallet, couldn’t reach me, called Richard. Kyle had four dollars and sixty-two cents in his pockets. He also had a Susan B. Anthony dollar he kept for good luck. His keys. His…”

She stopped, breathed deeply.

“His cell phone?” I asked.

“They couldn’t find it, the police,” said Tycinker.

“And there was a witness?” I asked.

“Mexican,” said Tycinker. “Ruiz or Rubles. It’s in the police report. Said the boy was… Nancy, is it…?”

“Go ahead,” she said, pulling herself together.

“Witness was walking home from work,” Tycinker went on. “Assistant cook at some restaurant. Didn’t see much. Came from behind. Car was moving fast. Dark car. Kyle was in the middle of the street. Car caught him in the headlights. Kyle was frozen and…”

“Ruiz or Robles see the driver?”

“Says no,” said Tycinker. “No license number, even partial. You’ll have to look at the report to get any more.”

“Anything else?” I asked.

“No,” Nancy Root said. “Find him.”

“You have a standard fee for this sort of thing?” asked Tycinker.

“Just reimburse me for what it costs,” I said. “I’ll keep receipts.”

“I’d rather just give you a check for professional services,” she said. “What’s fair?”

Not much, I thought. Not in my life and it looks like not in yours either.

“Three hundred,” I said. “Pay me if I find the driver.”

“ When,”she said with intensity. “When you find the driver.”

“Done,” said Tycinker, rising behind his desk before I could respond. He held out his right hand.

I put down my coffee, reached over the desk and shook it. Firm grip. Nancy Root put out her hand too. I took it. It was cold.

When she let go, she opened the small purse next to the chair she had been sitting on, came out with a wallet and handed me five twenty-dollar bills.

“Not necessary,” I said.

“Oh yes,” she said. “It is. Call it an advance on the three hundred dollars. You’ll have expenses.”

I understood. I had to be retained for her to feel I had made the commitment.

I folded the bills and put them in my pocket.

“My card,” she said, handing me a small white card.

The card simply gave her name, address and phone number. Nothing fancy. No border curls, touches of light. No Actress in the lower left-hand corner.

I pocketed the card and told her I’d get back to her when and if I found anything.

“Find something, Mr. Fonesca,” she said.

I left the half-finished coffee on a coaster Tycinker had provided. I had no more questions and I was sure none of us wanted to sit in silence or engage in conversation about the economy and tax cuts.

Cap in hand I went to the office door. Nancy Root lingered. As I stepped out I caught a glimpse of Tycinker in front of his desk holding both of her cold hands in his large firm ones. There was nothing covert in the hand holding, but I couldn’t tell if he was playing comforting attorney, good friend or something closer.

I’d need a car. I made a decision and biked back to Washington Street, took my bike up to my office, went back out past the DQ and a small line of storefronts on the west side of the street and walked to the driveway of the car rental agency I did business with when I needed four wheels.

EZ Economy Car Rental is a half block north of the DQ. Once, long ago, it was a gas station. That was before I came to Sarasota. It still looked like a gas station without the pumps. The lot was small but there was space behind the whitewashed office for a dozen cars in addition to the four parked beyond the two open sliding doors where once oil was changed, tires repaired, engines overhauled and grease-covered hands cut with the lids of opened cans.

Inside the small office, Alan, a big, bulky man in his late forties, drank two-handed from a pink cup that had the word MOCHA running in large letters facing me. He was leaning back against one of the two desks.

His partner, Fred, in his sixties, big belly, wasn’t in sight.

“Fonesca,” Alan said with a sigh. “I’m not sure I’m up to the challenge. I’d ask you to try smiling a little, but I don’t think I could take it.”

He pushed away from the desk and looked down at whatever was in his cup. Alan was known, as Fred put it once, to “tipple” from time to time. “Nothing serious,” Fred had said. “Takes the edge off.”

“Edge of what?” I had asked.

“Edge of the weary life we all bear,” Fred had said. “Weighs heavier on him than most with the possible exception of Lewis Fonesca, whose very presence proclaims the end of days.”

“Where’s Fred?” I asked Alan.

“Where’s Fred?” Alan repeated. “I’ll tell you where Fred is. He’s in his third day at Sarasota Memorial Hospital. Third day. Third heart attack. Man’s had three wives, three kids. Now he’s had three heart attacks. What he needs is three wishes.”