Stuart Kaminsky - Retribution

“Soon,” she said softly.

I knew what she meant. We had been seeing each other for almost half a year. We had never gone beyond some very close fully clothed kisses. The memory of my wife wouldn’t go away. Ann was working with me but I couldn’t and wouldn’t lose those memories, the good ones and the ones of her death. Before I came into her overly busy life, Sally had decided that she couldn’t add a close relationship to a man to her existence. Celibacy might not be perfect, was her belief, but it beat the entanglements of a relationship. In some ways, I was about all she could handle or want from a man for now. We were a perfect match. A good-looking widow with two kids, and a short depressed Italian process server losing his hair. God had brought us together.

“Don’t take a chance you don’t have to,” she said.

“I’m not suicidal,” I said.

“There are suicides and suicides,” she said.

“I’ve gone a long way with Ann Horowitz,” I said. “I don’t want to die. I just want to stay depressed and hide.”

“Progress,” she said. “I’ve got to get back to the file. Call me.”

I said I would as she went back to work. I took the elevator down, waved at John, who was on the phone, and went back to my office.

Marvin Uliaks was waiting at my door. When I got out of the car after parking at the DQ I looked up and there he was waving down at me.

I hurried up the steps and was twenty feet from him when he called, “Find her yet?”

I hadn’t found anyone yet, not Adele, not his sister, but I had high hopes.

“I have a good lead on where she is, Marvin,” I said, opening my office door.

Marvin followed me in. I didn’t turn on the lights, just pulled up the cord on the blinds Ames had installed the last time my window had been broken. There was plenty of sun. This was Florida. Heat. Sun. Rain. Five months of spring. Seven months of summer. Nothing in between.

Marvin wore dark baggy pants and an oversized white T-shirt that had “ TITUS ” printed in silver, with a picture of Anthony Hopkins in a helmet staring at me when I turned.

“You need more money?” Marvin said as I sat behind my desk and looked at my answering machine. Two messages.

“No,” I said as Marvin reached into both baggy pockets. My “no” was emphatic. It stopped him.

“Where is she? I gotta talk to her. I gotta find her. You unerstan’?”

“A few days, maybe a week,” I said, thinking that I would have to go to Vanaloosa, Georgia, to find the long missing Vera Lynn to deliver her brother’s urgent message.

“A few days. Maybe a week,” he repeated softly to himself as if he were trying to commit it to memory. “A few days. Maybe a week. Okay. You sure you don’t need money?”

“A few days,” I said.

He moved to the door, turned, and stood looking at me.

“A week at most,” I said.

“A week at most,” he repeated. He kept repeating it as he went through the door. I remembered the newspaper photographs of Marvin as a baby. I didn’t feel like answering my machine, but I pushed the button and heard the voice of Adele.

“Five more, short stories, have been sent to sea on a plastic raft. Tell him. No titles this time. Let him guess.”

Then there was a pause. I expected her to hang up but she came on with a different, less confident voice.

“Lew, I don’t want to hurt Flo or Mickey. The wrong people are getting hurt. I’ll call you back.”

I was pretty sure I could hear her start to cry when she was hanging up. That was a good sign. I needed good signs.

The second call was from Richard Tycinker’s secretary. Very businesslike she said, “Mr. Tycinker has some papers for you to serve. To be precise, an additional summons for Roberta Dreemer. Come by as soon as you can.”

I hung up. All this and Bubbles too. I could turn down the job or call back and say I would need more money to take it on, but I didn’t need more money. I needed to never see Bubbles Dreemer again. But I knew what I was going to do. I would have to face Bubbles. My hand went up to my cheek. The only impression I still had of the enormous Bubbles was not the physical one she had given me but a fuzzy, dreamlike, and definitely unpleasant memory of a confrontation I would like to avoid. Why was it that I kept having to face people I wanted to avoid? Question for Ann. I wasn’t suicidal but I had to admit to myself that what I was planning to do in a few hours was distinctly a confrontation I would prefer to avoid even more than taking on Bubbles Dreemer.

I checked my watch. Nearly five. Time had grown restless. Maybe I had time to simply grab a burger from the DQ and watch a few chapters of The Shadow. It was too early for Joan Crawford or Bette Davis. They were for the nights to hold off the dreams. I needed a jolt of Victor Jory’s Lamont Cranston taking on simple evil and hiding his identity.

I called Ames, told him what I planned, and asked him if he wanted to join me. He immediately asked if he should drive over or I should pick him up. I told him I would pick him up. End of conversation.

I went out, locked the door, walked past the DQ parking lot, and crossed 301. I went into the Crisp Dollar Bill. There were a few people at the bar I didn’t recognize, both men, one in a suit looking at the drink in his hand, hoping it had answers, the other hunched over, thick, tanned arms flat on the bar. He wore a solid black short-sleeved shirt and a look that definitely said, “Leave me alone.”

My booth was empty. I sat deep in the corner listening to Country Joe and the Fish sing about Vietnam. Billy looked over at me from behind the bar where he was busy leaving the muscular guy in the black T-shirt alone.

“What have you got healthy?” I asked.

“Is a steak healthy?” he asked.

“Why not?”

“Onions?”

“Grilled?”

“You got it,” said Billy. “Beer?”

“Beck’s,” I said.

Billy nodded, happy to be doing something instead of pretending to do something. The evening group, never a crowd, was hours away. Billy brought my beer. Country Joe finished singing. The guy in the suit stopped looking at his glass, took its contents in with a single long gulp, dropped some bills on the bar, got off the stool, looked at the door, shook his head, and left.

I was alone with Billy, the bad news black shirt, my thoughts, and now a Mozart string quartet. I glanced at the black shirt whose hands and arms were still on the bar to see if he was a Mozart man. He didn’t move. I could see his face dimly in the window behind the bar.

The steak Billy finally brought was thick, rare, and covered with grilled onions. There were fries on the side. I reached for the ketchup and Billy plunked down a second Beck’s I hadn’t ordered.

“Drinks are on him,” Billy said, nodding toward black shirt. “He says he’s celebrating.”

“He looks it,” I said. “Tell him thanks for me.”

“My pleasure,” Billy said with a perfect touch of small irony.

The steak was good. I ate half the fries, drank the second Beck’s, and checked my watch.

Billy was going classical. It seemed to calm black shirt. Three more customers came in. I recognized one, the clerk at the Mexican food market across the street and four or five doors down. His name was Justo. Justo nodded at me and headed for the pinball machine. Justo was about fifty, a purist. No video games for Justo, just pinball. He stacked up his quarters and Billy kept him supplied with whiskey on the rocks.

The pinball game wasn’t loud, but it was a pinball game and it didn’t go with Mozart. Billy switched to a John Philip Sousa march by the Boston Pops after he had taken all the drink orders.

Black shirt ordered drinks around for everyone again. I didn’t want a third beer. I had a killer to deal with and a body built for no more than two beers even with a full stomach.