Stuart Kaminsky: Denial

It couldn’t be Welles. He was dead. I realized that I would miss his calls, at least for a while. I wasn’t sure why.

“Fonesca,” I said, picking up the phone.

“This is Darrell’s mother.”

“Yes.”

“I want to thank you,” she said. “Darrell’s been talking about what-all you did. I know he’s making up more than half of it but whatever you did, he’s looking forward to doing more of it. And he said something about a Dixie and computers. Wants me to go with him to see her. She really mean it?”

“She means it,” I said.

“And you’re gonna keep seeing Darrell?”

“I like Darrell,” I said.

“Most don’t,” she said. “Next Saturday?”

“I’ll be waiting,” I said.

“Thank you again,” she said. “Wait. He wants to talk to you.”

I took another bite of burger and Darrell came on. “You catch that guy?”

“Yes.”

“And? What happened?”

“We’ll talk about it next Saturday,” I said.

“Old Ames, he shot him, right?”

“No. Next Saturday,” I said. “Stay out of trouble.”

I hung up before he could say more and the word came to me, the word I needed, the word that had been playing with me for almost two days. I was tired. I was more than tired. If I went to bed, dreams might come and I might lose the word.

“There was a farmer had a dog and Bingo was his name,” I said rather than sang. “ B-I-N-G-O. ”

I was pretty sure I knew who had died at the Seaside Assisted Living Facility. I was also pretty sure who the woman was who was trying to kill me.

I called Dixie’s phone number. She was home. I told her what I needed. She said she had a date with a SaraSox first baseman, but that she had about forty-five minutes and could probably find what I needed through the Internet in less than half an hour.

There were still a few things about it I needed to know. They would have to wait till tomorrow. I finished eating and sat in the near dark waiting for Dixie’s call. It took her less than half an hour.

I wrote the information she gave me in my notebook, thanked her and said I’d drop an envelope with a cash payment in the mail the next day.

I made another call, this one to the Seaside Assisted Living Facility, and asked one question.

When I got my answer, I hung up and unplugged the phone.

Ann Horowitz had said I kept the phone plugged in because even though I denied it, I wanted some connection with the outside world, the world of the living.

This night she was wrong.

Early the next morning, I parked in the Seaside lot next to a small white van with the words MICRON LABS written on its side in red letters. I was halfway toward the nursing station when Amos Trent, the hefty director of Seaside into whose office Ames and I had broken, stepped out of a doorway and blocked my path.

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave, Mr. Fonesca,” he said.

“I’ve come to see Dorothy,” I lied.

“I’m afraid she’s resting now,” he said. “We can’t disturb her.”

“I’ll wait till she wakes up.”

I tried to walk around him but he took a sidestep and was in front of me again.

“I think it would be better if you don’t come here again. In fact, if you do return, I’ll have our lawyer seek a restraining order.”

His voice was low. His breath was minty.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because residents and their families are now asking questions about the murder Dorothy dreamed up,” he said. “People don’t like to send their family members to an assisted living facility where someone may have been murdered.”

“And if you found out that someone had been murdered?”

“It didn’t happen.”

“It did,” I said.

He inched closer to me.

“If our residents and their families believed that,” he said, “they would start an exodus from which it would be very difficult to recover. We’re running a good facility here, but our profit margin is very low. So, if you are trying to blackmail us, not only is there no money to pay you, but I would be forced to report it to the police.”

“Emmie is on duty,” I said.

He looked puzzled.

“Emmie Jefferson?”

“You’ve got more than one Emmie?”

“What are you doing, Fonesca?”

A man in janitor blue denim jogged past us, they keys attached to his belt jangling.

“Whirlpool’s down again,” the man in blue said to Trent as he hurried by.

“See?” Trent said, turning back to me. “You know what it costs for parts for a whirlpool?”

“No,” I said. “Emmie Jefferson.”

“You want to talk to Miss Jefferson?”

“Yes. To her or a policeman named Viviase if I have to,” I said.

“She’s a night nurse,” Trent said.

“But she’s on this morning. I called.”

The corridor was cool, but Trent was perspiring, not much but enough to dapple his upper lip.

“Let’s say we put you on a retainer for a while,” said Trent. “Two hundred a month for a year, to provide security. That’s all we can afford. Might that be incentive to give up your delusion that someone was murdered here?”

“It’s not a delusion,” I said. “I talk to Emmie Jefferson or I talk to the police.”

“You go public with this madness and I’ll sue you,” he said, his voice rippling with anger, his face pink.

“No, you won’t,” I said. “I don’t own anything and you’d have to pay your lawyer.”

He leaned very close now and whispered, “And what if I just beat the fucking shit out of you?”

“It’s an option,” I said. “But it wouldn’t stop me.”

Defeated, he took a step back and said, “Okay, five minutes with Emmie and then you are out of here. Let’s go.”

He turned his back on me and headed for the nursing station.

“Alone,” I said.

He stopped and looked over his shoulder at me.

“I could just wait till she gets off of work and talk to her outside,” I said.

“Five minutes,” Trent said, facing me again, holding up the fingers of his right hand. “You talk to her, you leave and I never see you here again.”

I knew that wasn’t to be. He knew it too, but if it helped him save face in the hallway, it didn’t cost me to keep my mouth closed.

“Thanks,” I said and walked past him to the nursing station. Emmie Jefferson was standing behind it talking to an old woman whose eyes barely reached the top of the counter. The old woman was wearing a black sweater with baggy sleeves.

“Mrs. Engleman,” the nurse was saying, “there isn’t any mail for you. I’m sorry.”

“He told me he would write every day,” the little woman said, reaching up to slap her palm on the counter.

“If a letter comes for you, I’ll bring it to your room personally.”

“You won’t look inside and read it?” the little woman asked with suspicion.

“Cross my heart,” Emmie Jefferson said, crossing her heart.

“A Bible promise would be better,” the woman said.

“Swear on a Bible,” the nurse said, holding back a sigh.

“Better if we had a real Bible you could put your hand right down on,” Mrs. Engleman said.

“There’s one in the library if you want to go get it.”

“Maybe I’ll do that,” the old woman said, stepping back. “Maybe I’ll just do that. I won’t tolerate censorship.”

“I understand,” said Emmie Jefferson as Mrs. Engleman shuffled slowly away.

She hadn’t seen me yet, but now she looked up, let out a massive sigh and put her right hand to her forehead.

“Mrs. Cgnozic is sleeping,” she said.

“Really?”

“No, but that’s what I’ve been told to say if you or that old cowboy show up. Trent sees you here and he’ll throw a fit and probably call the cops.”