Stuart Kaminsky - Midnight Pass

“Long story,” I said. “You have time for the China Palace buffet?”

Sally looked at her watch.

“No,” she said. “I’ve got to put in at least another hour filling out reports and then get home to the kids.”

“I’ll bring you some carryout. Cashew chicken and hot-and-sour soup?”

The China Palace was three minutes away on Fruitville.

“And a bunch of egg rolls for the kids,” she said, reaching down for her purse under the desk.

“On me,” I said. “I’ve got a paying client, remember?”

“Kenneth Severtson.”

“I’m going to Orlando tonight,” I said. “His wife and children are there with-”

“Andrew Stark,” she finished. “You have a plan?”

“No,” I said. “Find her, watch, maybe talk to her. Maybe I just tell Severtson where they are. He tells his lawyer. Think that’s a good idea?”

“Probably not,” she said. “I don’t think Kenneth Severtson’s likely to handle the situation very well. It’s better if you talk to her. If she won’t come back, Severtson can get a lawyer. They’re his children, too.”

“But that would take time,” I said.

“And money,” she added. “And she could be out of Florida before the paperwork could get done so someone like you could serve it.”

“What do you have on the family?”

She reached over to a stack of files leaning against the glass at the back of her desk, fished through them, and came up with the one I wanted. I knew she couldn’t let me read it, but that didn’t stop Sally from answering some questions.

“Your own words,” I said.

“My own words,” she said, pursing her lips. “Kenneth Severtson is not the Cosby dad, but he’s not Homer Simpson either. He’s got a temper. He’s tough to get through to. They have credit-card payment problems, even talked about bankruptcy. His business is good, but they spend like its Microsoft. He took it out on his wife. The police were called in. He needed help. He doesn’t trust therapy and resented our intervention. Janice isn’t a mouse, but she isn’t a dragon. Good mothers can do dumb things when it comes to their kids. I had her down as a loyal wife who was willing to put up with a lot to keep her marriage and family together.”

“Things have changed,” I said.

“Andrew Stark,” she said. “Stark isn’t an old friend of the family. Went into partnership with Kenneth Severtson a few years ago. Definitely a shady background. He’s done some very soft time for consumer fraud, and he has not been particularly polite in dealing with women who are, unaccountably, attracted to him.”

“You met him?”

“No, just made a few calls to friends in the sheriff’s office.”

“So?” I asked.

“She’ll probably stay with Stark until he gets tired of her. Or maybe it’s true love. Truth is, Lewis, I don’t care about the future of Andrew Stark and only dimly about Janice Severtson. It’s the kids. Do what you can, Lew.”

I nodded.

Sally looked over at Julio Vegas, who was in animated conversation on the phone in Spanish.

“I’ll be back with Chinese in a shopping bag,” I said, getting up.

“I’d kiss you if we weren’t in the equivalent of South Gate Mall,” she said with a tired smile as she touched my hand. “Be careful.”

“At the China Palace?”

“In Disneyville.”

I had already packed my blue carry-on for a couple of nights and had my Chicago Cubs baseball cap in the front seat of the Nissan Sentra. I look like a big-eared dolt in the cap, but it protects my ever-growing forehead from burning under the Florida sun and even though it was close to seven at night, the sun was still huge and hot in the sky behind me as I headed east on Fruitville for I-75.

I had delivered the bag of Chinese food to Sally and got twelve egg rolls, three of which sat in a brown sack on the seat next to me. Another one was in my hand. I had also bought four egg rolls for John Gutcheon.

I drove past Target and the malls on my left and right and headed north on I-75. Traffic wasn’t bad for three reasons. Rush hour was over. It was summer and the snowbirds had left, reducing the population of Sarasota and the entire state of Florida significantly. People who worked were already home and people who didn’t were in their air-conditioned homes or at the beach on the cool white sand ignoring the ultraviolet index.

I was on my way to Orlando armed with three photographs and wearing a Cubs cap. I listened to a talk-show guy who badgered his callers, made crude jokes, and kept saying he was just using common sense while he got the history of Israel, Iraq, France, and the United States almost completely wrong. I chewed on egg rolls and kept to a few miles over the speed limit.

There was construction on I-4 from the Tampa interchange to Orlando. I-4 is four lanes, two lanes in each direction, and it always seems there are as many trucks as cars. Still, it only took me a little over two hours to get to International Drive, a street of glitz, restaurants, hotels, a water slide, plenty of places that sell T-shirts and souvenirs, and a Ripley’s Believe It or Not house built at an odd angle, as if it had just been dropped from outer space.

The hotel wasn’t full, but all they had for me was a room at almost two hundred a night. I didn’t have a credit card, but I had taken all my cash with me. I paid a day in advance and got a receipt I could show Kenneth Severtson. The young woman behind the desk did a great job of ignoring the fact that my luggage was a single blue carry-on.

When I got to my room, I threw my cap on the table, took the John Lutz novel I was reading out of the carry-on, and went down to the atrium lobby, where I used the house phone to connect me to Andrew Stark’s room. No answer. I asked for his room number. The young woman on the phone said they weren’t permitted to give out room numbers.

I went down to the lobby. There were plenty of wroughtiron seats at tables and tastefully upholstered chairs scattered around the area. I found a chair in the atrium facing the door to the hotel and sat with my paperback open in my lap.

Little kids ran screaming in their swimsuits heading for the pool. Families went by speaking German, French, and something I couldn’t place.

Stark, Janice Severtson, and the kids came in a little after nine-thirty. Stark was carrying the little girl, Sydney, who was sleeping. Kenneth Jr. was walking slowly with a less-than-happy look on his face. His mother was definitely a beauty, but there was something less than ecstasy in her face. She was carrying a colorful shopping bag with a picture of Shrek on the side.

Stark was a good-looking if slightly beefy-looking man with wavy salt-and-pepper hair. He was at least twenty years older than Janice Severtson.

There wasn’t too much I could do to be inconspicuous. I don’t have the kind of face people remember in any case. It’s a blessing in my work and in my private life.

I managed to get on the elevator with the four of them and smiled.

“Floor?” I asked pleasantly.

“Seven,” Janice Severtson said, closing her eyes.

I hit the “seven” and “eight” buttons.

When we passed the third floor, she opened her eyes and looked at me.

“I know you,” she said.

Stark turned to face me. He was wearing black jeans and a black shirt with buttons and sleeves that came down to his elbows. He was also wearing muscles and a scowl. His face was sun-browned. His brown eyes were firmly focused on me.

“I don’t…,” I began.

“Sarasota YMCA,” she said. “Downtown. You work out there.”

So much for my keenly developed internal storehouse of names and faces. How could I not remember someone who looked like Janice Severtson? How could she remember me?