Stuart Kaminsky - Midnight Pass

“Fonesca, are you there?” Kenneth Severtson’s voice came frantically. “For God’s sake, pick up the phone if you’re there.”

I picked up the phone.

“I’m here,” I said.

“They’re holding Janice,” he said. “Just got a call from her. The kids are in some kind of place they keep children.”

“Where are you?”

“In my car, on the way to Orlando. What the hell happened?”

Paranoia is the patron saint of the guilty. I didn’t think anyone had the time or inclination to bug my phone but I wanted to take zero chances.

“Did you get the message I left you yesterday?”

“Yes,” he said impatiently. “Stark killed himself. Well, the Orlando police say they’re not sure. They’ve been badgering Janice. What the hell did she do?”

“Looks like she got herself involved with a violent alcoholic,” I said. “Your partner.”

“So now it’s my fault? Is that what you’re saying? You’re saying it’s my fault. The hell with it. I’m not forgiving her, not for what she’s done to my kids. I talked to my lawyer. I’m getting Ken and Sydney and bringing them back home and Janice can…I don’t know.”

“Stark killed himself,” I said.

“In front of my children?”

“No.”

“Janice was there?”

“Yes.”

I heard the sound of a horn and Kenneth Severtson cursed bluely and loud.

“That son of a bitch,” he said.

I didn’t know if he meant Stark or the other driver.

“Get her a lawyer,” I said. “You know any in Orlando?”

“Why should I…No…Yes, a group that does tax law.”

“Call them. Ask them for a criminal lawyer. See if someone can meet you. Has your wife been charged with anything?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t care.”

“You care,” I said.

“Okay, okay. I’ll call the lawyer,” he said. “What are you going to do?”

“Make a call, get back to Orlando, talk to the police.”

“And tell them what?”

“My story,” I said.

He gave me his cell-phone number. I wrote it on the pink Post-it pad on my desk and told him I’d call him back.

I called the Reverend Wilkens. This time I got an older-sounding woman. I told her I had to speak to Wilkens and who I was. He was on a few seconds later.

“Mr. Fonesca, you’ve found William?”

“I have and I haven’t. He’s at Kevin Hoffmann’s house, too sick to be moved according to Hoffmann and a doctor named Obermeyer. You know this Obermeyer?”

“No,” he said. “Do you believe Hoffmann? What does Trasker’s wife say about all this?”

“She says she believes Hoffmann.”

“Do you believe Hoffmann?”

“I don’t believe Hoffmann and I don’t believe her,” I said. “I’ve got to get to Orlando. I should be back by late in the afternoon. I’ll talk to her. I don’t know if she’ll cooperate.”

“My questions are simple,” Wilkens said. “Why is William Trasker in that house? Why isn’t he at home or in the hospital if he is ill? Is he too ill to come to the Friday-night meeting if he is, indeed, that ill? It does not have the odor of honest concern on the part of Mr. Hoffmann. Hoffmann wants Midnight Pass open.”

“I know. He told me,” I said. “He also not very tactfully told me that he’d break my head with a genuine Babe Ruth bat or have a man named Stanley shoot me if I didn’t stop bothering him.”

“Is it essential that you go to Orlando? We are running out of time.”

“It is essential,” I said. “I’ll call you when I have more.”

Three hours later I was back in Orlando and with a few questions found the detective who was handling Stark’s death. His name was Tenns, Sergeant Jacob Tenns. He came out to meet me in the waiting room at the station, where people sat with their heads in their hands, their briefcases on their laps, their eyes open and looking at nothing or their eyes shut and looking at too much.

Tenns was a throwback. Lean, dark slacks, suspenders, white shirt, and a tie. His glasses were perched on the end of his narrow nose. His hair was dark, combed straight back. He wore broad suspenders. He was trying out for a part in Inherit the Wind.

“You Fonesca?” he said approaching me.

“Yes.”

“You made a statement the other day about Andrew Stark’s death,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Officer who took your statement was given a reprimand,” Tenns said. “You should have been held as a material witness till a detective talked to you. Follow me.”

I did, through a wooden door, down a narrow corridor to a small room with a table surrounded by six chairs. There was a humming refrigerator on one side of the room and two vending machines on the other: one gave out Cokes and Sprite if you inserted seventy-five cents or a dollar bill, the other gave out candy if you put in a dollar or correct change. Along the wall facing us as we entered was a counter and sink with closed cupboards over it. A half-full Mr. Coffee pot sat in one corner of the counter with Styrofoam cups nestling inside each other.

“Coffee?” asked Tenns.

“Yes,” I said, sitting.

“Anything in it?”

“Sugar, milk,” I said.

He nodded, got me a cup of coffee and one for himself. He sat down and looked at me.

“Her story’s a crock of shit,” he said calmly.

“Janice Severtson’s?”

“No, Madonna’s autobiography,” he answered. “Mrs. Severtson says she went to you for help because she knew you from Sarasota.”

“That’s right. We both work out at the Y.”

“You do any other kind of working out with Janice Severtson?” he asked.

“What?”

“She was here with a man who wasn’t her husband,” Tenns said. “Coincidentally, you, a friend, happened to be here, too.”

“You’re saying maybe Janice Severtson and I…?”

“Stranger things have happened,” Tenns said, working on his coffee.

I tried mine. It wasn’t bad. Wasn’t good either.

“I had a case two years back,” Tenns said. “Little dwarf, half-black, half-who knows what the hell else, ugly as a possum. He and this full-size stripper were lovers, killed her husband. Little guy had to stand on a chair behind the husband to hit him with a bat.”

“What was her name?” I asked.

“Stripper? Elaine Boulenbar. Why?”

“Conversation,” I said. “I’m not a dwarf. I’m not rich. I’m not good-looking.”

“She could have hired you,” he said. “I checked. You’re a process server.”

“I thought that was considered honest work,” I said.

“It means you deal sometimes with some bad people,” Tenns said. “Sometimes it rubs off a little.”

“You deal with bad people more than I do,” I said.

“Which is why I’m going down this street.”

“Why would she hire me to kill a man she ran away with?”

“Don’t know. Conversation. Did she hire you?”

“No, I was here because her husband asked me to find her. I found her. She spotted me, remembered me from Sarasota. What I told the officer was the truth. I went back to Sarasota and told her husband. He’s here someplace trying to get his kids.”

“I know,” said Tenns, turning his cup in circles. “He’s in another room. We’re bringing the kids. You don’t have a private investigator’s license, Fonesca.”

“I don’t want one. Severtson came to me, asked me to help him find his wife and children. I said I would.”

“He pay you?”

“Yes. Where’s Mrs. Severtson?”

“Medical examiner says Stark stabbed himself downward, not straight in,” Tenns said, demonstrating the thrust with his right hand. “Odd. Awkward.”

“I didn’t know the man,” I said.