Stuart Kaminsky - Midnight Pass

“Nice-looking,” I agreed.

“So, tomorrow I take the kids to Disney World.”

“I was there the other day,” I said.

“You?”

“Yeah.”

“Have fun?” Dave asked.

“I’ll never forget it,” I said.

Dave smiled, glanced at his children. His eyes went moist with a vision of happy kids and magical rides and singing dwarves. Or maybe I imagined it.

I went back to my room and erased the four messages on my machine without listening to them. Then I called Ann Horowitz’s answering machine at work.

I hoped she wouldn’t answer on a Saturday. She didn’t. Her machine said I could leave a short message and she would get back to me quickly or I could call her emergency number if I had an emergency. I didn’t have an emergency. What I had to tell her would take a while.

There was a knock at the door. I didn’t want a knock on the door unless it was a special delivery from a God I no longer believed in telling me that the last three years of my life had only been a dream.

“Come in,” I said.

Digger came in. He was smiling sadly. He needed a shave.

“How was last night?” I asked.

“Perfect. You should have seen me. Tripping the light fantastic. What does that mean, ‘tripping the light fantastic’?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Well, I did it. I charmed old ladies, didn’t eat too much from the buffet if you know what I mean, and got paid in cash and asked to come back on Monday to maybe talk about teaching dance lessons part-time.”

“Congratulations,” I said.

“I’ll try it,” he said, sitting in the chair across from my desk. “But I don’t know if I can handle real life.”

“I know what you mean,” I said.

“How was your night?” he asked.

I could have said, Digger, I saw a man shot to death, got up this morning and had breakfast with two murderers, but I said, “Fine.”

“You look tired.”

“I am.”

“I was going to offer to buy you breakfast at Gwen’s.”

“Another time, Digger.”

He got up to leave.

“Wait,” I said. “I’ve got something for you.”

I dug into the brown paper bag on my desk, the one from Mickey’s, and came up with a button. I handed it to him.

On the button was a photograph of Dick Van Dyke on a rooftop in Mary Poppins. In quotes above Van Dyke’s head were the words “Steps in Time.”

Digger grinned at the button and carefully pinned it to the buttonhole on his pocket so he wouldn’t make a hole in his shirt.

“I’m a working man,” Digger said with a deep sigh, and left the office, closing the door quietly as he left. I hadn’t slept much the night before. I pulled down the shades, climbed into bed around two, and turned on a tape of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I watched Walter Huston do his dance on the mountain and call Curtain and Dobbs damned fools for not knowing they were standing on top of gold. I watched Emilio Fernandez say, “Badges, badges, we don’t need no stinkin’ badges.” I said it along with him.

I made it to the end of the tape and immediately fell asleep.

I had closed the door between my room and the office but I was vaguely aware that the phone rang while I slept. The second time it rang something in the dim female voice got through to me. It rang more times. I slept. Then one of the rings got through to me in the middle of a dream I lost when I opened my eyes. I checked my watch. I had slept three hours.

I staggered to the phone and played the messages back. All of them were from Detective Etienne Viviase. All of them said I should call him as soon as I got in. He left his office and cell phone number.

I tried the office. He didn’t answer. I tried the cell phone.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Fonesca,”

“I talk, you listen,” he said. “Understand?”

“I understand.”

“Kevin Hoffmann shot Stanley LaPrince last night. He told the officers who were dispatched by 911 that Stanley had killed Roberta Trasker and was about to shoot him. He also told them that you and two other people saw it all and that you had left the house with Trasker. When I got there, Hoffmann was tossing an autographed baseball in the air and watching a Yankees game. He wouldn’t talk to me. He wanted his lawyer. Questions. Were you there?”

“Yes.”

“Did Stanley admit he killed Roberta Trasker?”

“Hoffmann said he did. Stanley didn’t deny it.”

“And Stanley was going to shoot Hoffmann?”

“Looked that way,” I said.

“Who were the other two witnesses?” he asked.

I didn’t answer.

“McKinney?”

I didn’t answer.

“Who was the black guy?”

I didn’t answer.

“You took Trasker,” Viviase said.

“He went with me willingly,” I said. “You can ask him.”

“I heard about the commission vote,” he said. “I will ask him. I want you to come in and sign a statement. Today. You understand?”

“Perfectly,” I said, and hung up.

The phone rang before I could take my hand from it. I picked it up and listened to the voice on the other end. Then I hung up and called Sally.

Fifteen minutes later I had parked in the emergency-room lot at Sarasota Memorial Hospital and was taken to the little room where I now sat.

Sally walked in.

“How does it look, Lew?”

She took my right hand in both of hers.

“He’s going,” I said. “Doctor says it’s a miracle he made it through last night. Obermeyer was probably right.”

We looked at William Trasker, his eyes closed, mouth open, tube in his nose, tendons in his neck blue against white skin.

“What I don’t understand,” I said to Sally, looking down at the dying man, “is why he asked for me.”

“Maybe because he knew his children couldn’t get here in time,” she said.

“Wilkens then,” I said.

“You know why,” came Trasker’s faint voice from the bed. His eyes fluttered open. “Unless you’re a dumber son of a bitch than I thought you were. If I had the time, I’d call my lawyer and have him change my will. I’d make you a rich little wop bastard, but you wouldn’t want it, would you?”

“No,” I said.

“No,” he said, eyes trying to focus now, voice failing. “I didn’t think so. Trying to do the right things before I die, but there are too many.”

“Maybe you’ll get better long enough to do a few more,” Sally said.

“You a nurse?” he whispered.

“No,” she said. “A friend.”

“Whose?”

“Lew’s,” she said. “Now yours.”

“Is there anyone we can call for you?” she asked.

Before he could answer, two people in blues, one man and one woman, came in the room and said they had to take him now. They were in a hurry.

“You can wait here or in the waiting room,” the man said.

Sally and I got cups of coffee from the vending machine and went into the lobby. It was Saturday but it was early and the weekend horror had slowed down until night came, but there were still people waiting.

“A kid named Alaska Dreamer ever make her way across your desk?” I asked.

“Alaska Dreamer? No, I’d remember, but I’ll ask around. Why?”

“I’ve got a present for her in the car.”

“Lew, are you all right?”

“Getting better all the time,” I said.

Sally drank some coffee.

“Maybe this is a bad time,” she said. “But remember the woman who was in my office the last time you came? Son named-”

“Darrell,” I said.

“She’s trying hard, Lew. How’d you like to be a Big Brother?”

“I wouldn’t,” I said.

“Think about it? You’re good with kids, Lew. You’re good with my kids.”

“I…”

The nurse in blue who had wheeled Bill Trasker out of the Emergency Room came through the sliding doors and approached us.