Stuart Kaminsky - Retribution

The dog hesitated, put his head down, and kept moving toward me, slowly now, growling.

“Here,” Lonsberg called a little louder. The dog ran to him. Lonsberg put out his hand and the dog gave it a sloppy lick. Lonsberg patted the dog’s head. Jefferson closed his eyes in ecstasy.

“He won’t bother you,” Lonsberg said, moving to the back of the pickup and handing me a bag of groceries.

Lonsberg picked up the other bag and headed onto the low porch. Jefferson still seemed particularly interested in me. He stood there watching as we entered and followed us inside after Lonsberg opened the door. I felt the big dog nudge past me.

Jefferson might not bother me but he was a significant distraction.

I followed Lonsberg through the hallway, past a room to our left filled with books and bookshelves, a sofa, and two very old overstuffed chairs, one with a matching hassock. The sofa and chairs were a set. They looked as if they had been bought by someone’s great-grandmother who had recovered them a century ago with blue and red flowers against a background of what might have once been yellow but was now a worn-out off-white.

A glimpse of another room on the right as we moved to the sound of Jefferson’s claws ticking against the wooden floor revealed an office with a desk, more bookcases, a row of file cabinets. The desk was clear except for a computer and a printer.

A few doors were closed. The kitchen was as big as the two rooms in which I lived and worked, which means it was an average-sized room with a wooden table in the middle surrounded by four chairs. Lonsberg put his bag on the table. So did I. Jefferson moved quickly to sniff at both bags. I could now see that Jefferson had jowls and large teeth. I had known Jeffersons in the past. He was a drooler.

“Have a seat,” Lonsberg said, putting his groceries into cabinets and the refrigerator.

I sat waiting. Jefferson decided to sit next to me and regard my face with his head tilted to one side.

“Do the police know you’re looking for Adele?” he asked, stacking his cans in a cupboard.

“No.”

He shook his head as if that were solid and solemn good news. Then he turned, wiped his hands on his pants, and sat across from me.

“What do you see, Fonesca?” he asked.

“See?”

“Me, what do you see?”

“A man, lean, healthy-looking, good head of hair, serious, judging whether or not he’s going to tell me something.”

“What do you know about me?” he asked.

“Famous writer, haven’t published much. Man who likes his privacy.”

“Have you read anything of mine?”

“Fool’s Love, long time ago. I’m rereading it,” I said.

Jefferson moved close to me and rested his head on my lap.

“What do you think of it? The book?” Lonsberg asked, hands folded on the table.

“It’s a classic, great book,” I said.

“What do you think of it?” he repeated.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes,” he said.

“So far, it’s not my kind of book. Maybe when I really get into it…”

“It was a fluke,” Lonsberg said. “I was a kid who thought he could write. It was short, easy. I expected nothing to happen, except that I’d keep working in my father’s drugstore in Rochester, marry Evelyn Steuben, have children, go to pharmacy school. The book happened to hit the right agent and the right publisher at the right time. Teenage girl rebels, sets off on her own, learns the truth about people, the good, the bad, grows up fast, gets swept up in the anti-Vietnam business, moves in with a cello player old enough to be her grandfather. Controversy on that one. Publicity. Big success. Fonesca, the book is second-rate. Too short. Too easy with answers. It’s smart-ass wit and a few good observations.”

“I think it’s better than that,” I said.

“So does most of the world,” he said. “I don’t.”

I wondered why this famous recluse was giving me the thirty-second biography and interview he wouldn’t have given to The New York Times or Time. I thought I knew.

“Adele,” I reminded him.

“Adele,” he said, turning his head toward the wall to his right. There was an eight-by-ten framed black-and-white photograph on his kitchen wall. Four people were lined up against a background of trees. The man was a young Lonsberg.

“My wife, Evelyn,” he said, looking at the photograph. “My two kids, Laura and Brad. Both grown. Both with kids.”

“Where are they?” I asked.

“Evelyn? She died more than twenty years ago. Laura and Brad live here, not in the house. Laura is in Venice. Martin’s in Sarasota.”

Jefferson drooled on my leg. I patted his head.

“Adele,” I reminded him again.

“What about you?” he asked. “Your story?”

“My story?” I asked. “Why?”

“Your story,” he repeated.

“Adele,” I said again.

He looked at me and nodded.

“Your story first,” he said.

I told him about my wife’s death, a little about my family, less about what I did, a mention of my depression.

“What do you take for the depression?” he asked.

“Nothing, I see a psychologist.”

“I take Chinese herbs,” he said. “Acupuncture.

“They work on my blood pressure, my liver problems, but they can’t penetrate, get inside whatever it really is that we call ‘soul.’”

“Adele,” I said.

“Come on,” he said, getting up. I eased myself away from Jefferson and followed Lonsberg through a door. Jefferson followed. At the end of a short hall was a door, a particularly thick wooden door. Lonsberg opened it with a key and we stepped in.

It was a strange sight. Inside the room was a huge vault, the kind you might see in a bank. This vault door was open. I followed Lonsberg in.

“What do you see?” he asked.

“Empty shelves,” I said. “Except for that box.”

The wooden box sat closed about chest high in the middle of one of the dark metal shelves.

’Two days ago they weren’t empty,” he said. “They were filled with manuscripts, neatly bound, carefully placed in folders, everything I’ve written over the past thirty-five years.”

It had been rumored that Lonsberg had written a few books since he went into hiding from the world, but these empty shelves represented more than a few books.

“Someone stole them?” I asked.

“Adele,” he said.

“Why? How?”

“She knew about the vault,” he said, surveying the empty shelves. “I showed it to her, let her read a few things.”

“You didn’t call the police?”

“I’m a recluse,” Lonsberg said. “You know that. I started out just wanting to be away from the reporters, the fans, the scholars, and then it became a minor literary myth. I began to live it. It grew. The more I tried to protect my privacy, the more I was sought out by the determined. And the more reclusive I became. Now I like it that way. No, amend that. I’ve grown comfortable in my relative isolation. There’ve been rumors for years about my ‘secret’ writing. I was stupid enough in the last interview I gave I don’t know how many years ago to a small magazine, stupid enough to say that I still write. I don’t want the police. I don’t want to be in newspapers and tabloids. I don’t want television crews parked at my gate. I dread stepping into a courtroom, a press of reporters, a gaggle of fans.”

“A press of reporters,” I said. “A gaggle of fans. Like a pride of lions?”

“A literary critic has finally entered my house,” he said flatly.

“No, I’m a man trying to find a missing girl. You think Adele took everything?”

“Yes, and I want it all back,” Lonsberg said. “No questions asked. No charges filed. I’m told the manuscripts are worth millions of dollars. Be worth more when I die. Those books and stories are my legacy to my children and grandchildren.”