Stuart Kaminsky - Retribution

“No more, Marvin,” I said. “I have enough. I’ll use this and that’s it.”

“That’s it,” Marvin repeated, stuffing money back into his pockets. “Cross my heart.” Which he did. “Hope to die.” Which he did not.

“Now if you’d just go to work or wherever you might be going this morning, I’ll get up and get to work finding Vera Lynn.”

“I’m going. Beauty shop cleanup,” he said. “Then… I forget. I’ll remember. Sometimes I remember five years ago, twenty-five years ago better than yesterday.”

“I do the same,” I said.

“You do?”

“I thought maybe I was getting a little crazy. I know I’m not smart but I never thought I was crazy.”

“You’re not. I’ll get back to you.”

He left. This time through the front door. I gathered the bills he had dumped on my bed. I flattened out the crumpled ones and sorted them. He had dropped almost three hundred dollars. I pocketed them, checked the clock. It was a few minutes after six.

I put on my shorts and a Sarasota French Film Festival T-shirt, grabbed my helmet, and wheeled my bike out the doors and bumped it gently down the stairwell.

I was starting to get on the bike when Dave stepped out of the back door of the DQ, a broom in his hand. He looked more prepared for a day fighting marlins than dishing out shakes and burgers.

“Found something for you on the order counter this morning. Addressed to you,” he said.

He leaned the broom against the white wall, went back into the DQ, and emerged with a box. The box was gray and wet. “ FONESCA ” was printed on the box in all black capital letters.

I opened the soggy package and found a thick manuscript. The top page was clearly typed, Whispering Love, a novel by Conrad Lonsberg. There was a clear signature. The date typed at the bottom was May 12, 1990. I lifted the soggy page while Dave stood over my shoulder.

The next pages and all that followed were soaked, the words on them running and undecipherable. The manuscript was ruined.

“She has imagination,” I said. “Burning, shredding, soaking.”

“The possibilities aren’t endless,” Dave said.

“But there may be enough.”

“What’s going on?” he said.

I told him.

“People,” he said.

“People,” I agreed, tucking the soggy box under my arm.

“I prefer fish and the Gulf waters,” he said.

I wasn’t much for fish or the Gulf waters, but I knew what he meant.

“You think about that trip,” said Dave. “We could probably rig a VCR. When I run out of things to do, I could come down to the cabin and watch you looking the way you look now.”

“Haven’t had time to think about it more,” I said. “I’ll get back to you but don’t count on me.”

“I count only on David,” he said.

After I’d brought the useless manuscript to my office and placed it on my desk, I went back to my bike and pedaled the few blocks to the Y.M.C.A., my single extravagance.

I went through the cycle of machines with the others who hurried through so they could shower, put on their suits, and be at their shops or desks or in uniform and possibly even have something to eat before they did what they had to do. It was less crowded today than usual. That’s the way it was on Saturdays. That’s the way I liked it. I liked swimming alone in the pool, slow, side stroke, on my back, a crawl once in a while, and then a hot shower and bike ride back.

No matter how much I worked out, I didn’t seem to look any different, to gain or lose weight. Lew Fonesca’s body was intact and healthy. It was his mind that needed a workout. That was the workout I didn’t like. Working out was a meditation the way Sunday services used to be for me when I was a kid going to church. No thought. None expected or seen. It was the solitude not the lure of taut muscle or the healthy aerobic heartbeat that drew me.

I got a cheese sandwich with bacon from Dave when I got back to the DQ and then went up with my gym bag and changed into clean clothes. There was no message on the machine. Too early. Fine.

I had Conrad Lonsberg to face. I grabbed the soggy box of manuscript and the bag of shredded story, and the cover pages of the three manuscripts Adele had destroyed, put the cover pages in a brown paper envelope, and drove a few blocks over to the EZ Economy Car Rental Agency. Fred, the older guy, was there alone opening the door.

“Done,” he said.

“Trading up,” I answered. “I need something that’ll get me to Vanaloosa, Georgia, just outside of Macon, and back without a problem.”

“Fly,” he suggested.

“I don’t fly,” I said. “I think I told you that.”

“Must have been Al you told. Okay,” he said. “We’ll see what we’ve got for the trip up south. I understand they have a restaurant in Macon, best fried chicken in the country. Can’t remember the name.”

“Maybe I’ll look for it,” I said.

I checked my watch. I was about half an hour from facing Conrad Lonsberg.

The ride to Casey Key in the black ‘96 Ford Taurus was fast. You would think the tourists would be out on weekends along with the full-time working residents of the Gulf Coast, but they didn’t seem to be, not this morning. The sky was slightly overcast but the weatherman on Channel 40 had promised there would be no significant rain. He had the Doppler to prove it, but not the confidence. Doppler and radar had been wrong too often in Florida.

If he were one hundred percent certain it would rain, he would give the rain chance at thirty percent. If he were one hundred percent sure it wouldn’t rain, he’d give the rain chance at thirty percent. If you were looking out your window and it was raining, he would say there was a fifty percent chance of rain.

It was cloudy. There was distant rumbling in the sky. No rain. Not yet. Maybe not at all.

I pulled up next to Lonsberg’s gate, got out of the car, brown paper envelope under my arm, and pushed the button.

“Who?” came the electric crackling voice of Conrad Lonsberg over the speaker.

“Fonesca,” I said, looking up at the camera.

“Wait,” he answered.

I waited. The sky was growing darker. I heard his footsteps and the panting of Jefferson on the other side of the gate after about two minutes and then the gate opened. Lonsberg was wearing a pair of taupe chinos today with a short-sleeved gray knit pullover.

Jefferson was wearing a look of eager suspicion.

Lonsberg nodded me in. Jefferson stalked toward me as Lonsberg closed and locked the heavy gate. Jefferson was close, looking up at me and making a sound in his throat I didn’t like.

“I think he’s considering tearing off my arm,” I said, looking down at the dog.

“Jefferson’s mostly show,” said Lonsberg flatly. “He knows how to bark like fury, growl like a bear, and show his teeth like a cheap textbook drawing of a saber-toothed tiger.”

“Admirable.”

“It’s his job. He won’t hurt you.”

We stood looking at each other for a few seconds. Then he said, “You have news.”

“I have news.”

“What kind?”

“Bad,” I said.

“Let’s walk on the beach.”

He turned his back on me and headed toward the water. I caught up with him and Jefferson trotted slightly and uncomfortably behind me.

’Tell it all. Tell it carefully but tell it quickly,” Lonsberg said.

“Adele’s destroyed three of the manuscripts. Burned one. Shredded one. Soaked the third in water till it can’t be read. She made sure to leave the cover pages of each one behind.”

I pulled them out. We were standing on the sand now, the Gulf water washing in, waves a few feet high, wind light to moderate as the TV weatherman said. I handed the envelope to Lonsberg, who opened it and pulled out the three single sheets.