Stuart Kaminsky: Denial

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Alan shrugged.

“Makes the days long. Coffee?”

“No thanks.”

“Transportation then?” said Alan, taking a slow sip from his cup.

“Yes.”

“Take the Saturn,” he said, tilting his head toward the window. “Gray one, ninety-eight, right out in front.”

“How much?” I asked.

“Whatever you want to pay Lewis, bringer of light and joy, bearer of good spirits,” he said, toasting me with his coffee.

It was a little after ten in the morning. Alan wasn’t smashed, but he was sloshing down the road to oblivion.

“Same as last time?” I asked.

“Whatever. You caught me depressive,” he said with a shrug. “I try to stay manic. Right now, I don’t think these walls can hold the power of depression you and I can generate.”

“Keys?” I said.

“On the board,” he said, nodding his head at the Peg-Board on the wall to his right. “Help yourself.”

I found the right keys.

“You all right?” I asked.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “I’m hoping the manic stage will kick in, but I don’t think it will, not for a while. When I’m manic, I can rent an oil-leaking ninety Honda that shits rust and farts oil to Mr. Goodwrench. Can’t stop, but this…”

“I know,” I said.

“Fred keeps me above the line,” he said. “Costello was no good without Abbott. Hardy wasn’t much without Laurel. Jerry Lewis… you get it. I need a straight man.”

I reached for my wallet. Alan, cup to his lips, saw me and held up his right hand.

“No,” he said. “I don’t feel like doing the paperwork, writing a receipt. Just take the car. Belonged to a secretary in the biology department at the University of South Florida. Standard shift.”

“Fine,” I said.

The door opened. A couple, Mexican, maybe in their late thirties, both plump, both serious, with a boy about twelve at their side, came in. They didn’t quite look frightened, but they didn’t look confident either.

“That little car outside for sale?” the man said. “Sign says eight hundred dollars?”

Alan sighed.

“The Focus? Six hundred,” he said. “Gala sale day.”

I went outside and got into the Saturn. It was clean, smelled a little musty, and the window at my left rattled as I pulled onto 301.

Stuart M. Kaminsky

Denial: A Lew Fonesca Mystery (Lew Fonesca Novels)

I took a chance. It wasn’t a big one. I drove past downtown a few blocks away and turned onto Sixth Street past city hall and parked across from the Texas Bar amp; Grille.

The lunchtime regulars at the Texas, lawyers, cops, construction workers, shop owners on Main Street, lost tourists and snow birds, were about an hour from coming through the door.

A lone guy with three chins and a business shirt with a morning beer and The Wall Street Journal sat at a table by the window. Ed Fairing, white shirt, black vest, flowing dark mustache, hair parted down the middle, sat at a table to the right, a book in his hand. Ed was from Jersey, living out his dream of being an old-fashioned barkeep and saying, “What’ll it be?” a few hundred times a day.

The Texas was known for its one-pound burgers and beer on tap. Ed was known for his esoteric knowledge of bars of the Old West. The walls of the Texas were covered with old weapons kept in working condition by Ames McKinney, and photographs and drawings of some bars, including the Jersey Lilly with Judge Roy Bean, lean and glinty-eyed, one hand on the bar behind him, the other clutching a thick book that Ed said contained the laws of Texas. Another showed the Suicide Table in Virginia City, Nevada. Ed had been to Virginia City, a pilgrimage, had seen the Suicide Table, where three men were reported to have killed themselves after losing small fortunes.

“Lewis,” Ed said, looking up over the top of his rimless glasses.

“Ed,” I said.

“If you’ve come to collect for the United Jewish Appeal, I gave at the blood bank,” he said.

I’m not Jewish. Neither is Ed. Ed thinks he has a sense of humor. I wouldn’t know. He had given me a joke to tell Ann Horowitz. It had something to do with aardvarks walking into a bar. I had forgotten the punch line.

“Ames is out back,” Ed said. “Garbage pickup this afternoon.”

I walked past the bar at the rear, down the narrow hallway, past the small kitchen that smelled of grease and sugar, past the rest rooms and through the rear door.

Ames, tall, wearing a red flannel shirt in spite of the seventy-degree weather, was hoisting a fat green plastic garbage bag into a yawning Dumpster.

“Busy?” I asked.

He wiped his hands on his jeans and turned toward me.

“Last one,” he said, nodding at the Dumpster.

That’s all we said. Nothing more was needed. Ames was seventy-four now, lean, still over six-four, long white hair, a Gary Cooper face of suntanned leather.

Four years ago he had come to Sarasota to find his partner, Jim Holland, who had run away with every nickel he could steal from their company in Arizona, moved to Sarasota, changed his name and became a pillar of society, a hollow pillar made of plaster.

I had helped Ames find Holland. Ames wanted his money and some retribution. Holland wanted to keep everything and get rid of his old partner. I had arranged for them to come unarmed at nine at night to the beach in the park at the south end of Lido Key.

When Ames and I arrived, we crossed the road and walked around the parking lot chain. I didn’t know how often the police patrolled the park after closing, but it was hard to keep people out since the beach ran into the park on the Gulf side.

We listened to the surf, the gulls and the crunch of parking lot stones under our feet as I led the way past picnic tables and through a thin line of trees onto the narrow beach. Across the inlet, the lights from the houses looked friendly but far away.

We were early. Holland wasn’t there.

I moved to the shore with Ames and looked into the clear moonlit water. A ray about the size of a large kite glided just below the surface of the water no more than a dozen feet out

“Ames,” I said. “It’s beautiful here.”

“That’s a fact.”

“Being alive is not bad.”

“Depends. You’re talking to the wrong man.”

At that point, the right man came walking through the trees about thirty yards up the beach. A small white heron skittered away from him. Jim Holland walked erect, sure-footed in our direction, a little man with a mission, hands behind his back. Ames took four or five steps in his direction.

I stepped between them when they were about a dozen paces apart.

“Hold it,” I said. “I talk. You listen. You both agreed.”

They said nothing.

“Compromise,” I said.

“There’s no compromise about this,” said Ames.

“Told you that. He gives me my money back and I let him live.”

“Money is mine, my father’s,” said Holland. “I told you that. He gets out of town and I let him live.”

“Cash money,” said Ames, standing tall, a rush of warm wind bristling his hair.

The white heron had wandered back and stood a few paces behind Jim Holland in the moonlight.

“That’s it,” I said. “That’s it. We’re leaving now. I’m preparing a report and turning it over to the police in the morning. I’m also giving a copy to my lawyer.”

That part had been a lie. I had no lawyer.

“Can’t work like that,” said Holland.

“Can’t,” agreed Ames.

“I’m not a violent man,” said Holland. “I told you, but I see no options here. I’ve got a business, a wife, children and family honor.”

My stomach warned me even before Holland pulled a shotgun from behind his back.