Stuart Kaminsky - Retribution

I hung up, called Flo, told her Adele was fine, and then decided it was too late to call Sally. I’d call her early in the morning before she picked up the newspaper.

I opened my desk drawer and pulled out the two notes Digger had seen the monk pin to my door. I read the top one:

STOP LOOKING FOR HER. ONE INNOCENT PERSON IS DEAD AND GONE. LET IT BE AN END. LET THIS BE A WARNING.

It didn’t sound like Brad Lonsberg, and Digger, even given his relative lack of connection to the real world, had said the person who had left the note was small. The person had probably been wearing a raincoat and hood, enough to make Digger see a monk.

Some words in the message jumped out at me. “Innocent, gone, her.”

It wasn’t a warning to stop looking for Adele. It was a warning to stop looking for some other woman. There was only one other woman I was looking for, Marvin Uliaks’s sister Vera Lynn Dorsey.

I went to bed. No Joan. No Bette. I had lived and seen enough melodrama for one night. I slept without dreaming and woke early. Digger was back in the bathroom wearing relatively clean pants and a gray sweatshirt that had “Rattlers” written on the front with a picture of a coiled rattlesnake under it. Digger was shaved and looked sober.

“Rained last night,” he explained. “Ran out of the money you gave me so I had to come here.”

I started to reach into my pocket.

“No,” he said, trying to stand tall with some dignity while I stood shirtless washing myself.

“Five dollars for more information on that monk who left the note on my door,” I said, soaping my face and neck. “Payment for services.”

“That’s different,” said Digger. “What can I tell you?”

“You said the person was short.”

“Very short.”

“Shorter than me?”

He nodded his head. “Shorter than you.”

“Could the person have been a woman?”

“Women ain’t monks,” said Digger.

“Maybe it was a woman in a raincoat,” I said as I finished washing.

Digger looked up and then over at me. “Could’a been. Sometimes I’ve got a little imagination.”

I rinsed, dried myself with the towel I had brought from my room, and handed Digger a five-dollar bill. He pocketed it quickly and deep.

“Thanks,” he said.

“You earned it,” I said and went back to my office where I dressed, threw some clean underwear, socks, a clean shirt, and my razor in the Burdine’s cloth bag I had in the closet and went back out into another sunny day.

I picked up Ames who had a small duffel bag in his hand. He was wearing dark pants and a long-sleeved blue shirt. No slicker. No jacket. No visible weapon. He climbed in next to me and reached back to place the duffel bag on the floor of the backseat. It dropped a few inches with a metallic clank. I knew where Ames had stored his artillery.

We paused at a 7-Eleven for donuts and coffee and then headed straight up 175 North. There were a few slowdowns, once along the Bradenton exits for road construction, and then near the Ocala exit.

We stopped at a Shoney’s for lunch. There wasn’t much to say or see on the drive. Trees, a few rivers, exit signs that promised Indian Reservation gambling, clubs that promised nude women twenty-four hours a day, flea markets.

At lunch, Ames finally spoke.

“Adele,” he said. He didn’t make it a question.

“I talked to her last night,” I said. “I’ll see her when we get back.”

“Is she keeping the baby?”

“I don’t know,” I said, working on a burger. “She sounded like she was planning to.”

Ames shook his head and pushed away the empty plate that had recently held a chicken fried steak and a lot of green beans.

“You think she should abort?” I asked.

“I don’t like Conrad Lonsberg’s son,” Ames said. “Child will be half his. Carry his blood. The girl’s barely just sixteen.”

It wasn’t the position I expected from Ames.

“So, you think she should abort?” I asked.

“Nope,” he said, getting up. “I don’t believe in killing babies. Maybe she can give it up. Maybe she and Flo can raise it. Maybe it’s none of our business.”

I nodded. That was pretty much the way I felt.

I turned on the radio to listen to talk shows, voices as we passed the turnoff for Gainesville and later crossed 110. Left for a long time on 110 took you to Tallahassee. Right for a long time took you to Jacksonville. I hadn’t been to either one. I had seen almost none of Florida outside of the Sarasota area. This was by far the longest trip I had taken since I had come down from Chicago and parked forever in the DQ parking lot.

Vanaloosa was a little hard to find. It was on the map, not far from Macon, which was a large circle. Vanaloosa, about ten miles outside of town, was a dark dot. We got off of 175 and headed for Vanaloosa.

When we got there it was dark. After asking a few questions at a Hess station just inside the town, we made our way to Raymond’s Ribs. The night was dark and the neighborhood filled with run-down homes. The faces we saw in cars and in front of the houses were black.

Raymond’s was small, little more than a shack. Four cars were parked in front of it. As we got out of the Taurus, we could smell the rib sauce. It hit me with memories. My wife and I loved ribs. There were lots of rib places in Chicago and we… No, not now. A fat black man with a big white paper bag came out the door of Raymond’s Ribs as we walked in.

There wasn’t much there: a wooden counter, a small area for customers to stand and order, no tables or chairs, and an open grill behind the counter sizzling with ribs being tended to seriously by a small black woman. Serving the customers was an old black man who took orders. There was a phone on the counter.

A young couple and a slight man with a small beard who kept looking at his watch were ahead of us. When it came to our turn, there was no one behind us.

“Can I get you?” the old man said.

“Ribs and slaw for me.”

“Same,” said Ames.

“Full ribs, half ribs?”

“Full,” I said.

Ames nodded. The old man turned to the woman at the grill and gave her our order. She wiped her hands on her work dress and started the order while I started talking.

“You Raymond?”

“That’s right,” he said.

“Get many white customers?”

“Fair number,” he said with clear pride. “We got the best ribs in the county.”

“In the state,” the woman at the grill said. “Best outside of New Orleans.”

“Best outside of New Orleans,” Raymond agreed with a smile.

“Last week a white man made a long distance call from your phone,” I said.

Raymond stopped smiling.

“I don’t remember that,” he said.

“The white man who made that call must have paid for it,” I said.

Raymond shrugged and looked back at the woman at the grill. She had her head down.

I took the folded Arcadia newspaper clipping from my pocket, unfolded it, and laid it on the counter.

“He’s about twenty years older now,” I said. “Recognize him?”

Raymond glanced at the clipping and shook his head “no.”

“You police?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “We’re trying to find him and his wife. His wife’s brother wants to get in touch with her. Family reunion.”

Raymond looked down at the clipping again and thought.

“That’s Mr. Cleveland,” he said. “Regular customer. Doesn’t talk much. Regular customer. Never knew till now he had a wife.”

“What’s his first name?”

“Don’t know,” said Raymond. “Comes in once, sometimes twice a week, orders enough for four people, says hi and good-bye, and that’s what I know. Here’s your order.”