Stuart Kaminsky - Vengeance

Across the street, a man and a boy in his teens who should have been in school walked into the acupuncture center under the dance studio. On a really quiet day when the traffic was light on this urban stretch of 301, I could even hear the music while I ate at Dave’s. My favorites, which they played over and over, were Eydie Gorme singing “La Ultima Noche,” an orchestral verson of “The Vienna Waltz,” and Tony Bennett singing “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” People were dancing in the window now. One of the instructors, a thin man with a small, well-trimmed beard, was demonstrating something Latin. He had one hand up in the air and the other on his stomach. His eyes were closed and an old couple were holding hands and watching. I couldn’t hear the music.

There was a tire shop on one side of the acupuncture building and then to the left as I faced it stood a trailer-supply store and then the bar called the Crisp Dollar Bill. On the other side of the bar was the dance studio I could see from my office window. I had never been in the bar. Dave told me that it had been called the Dugout before the White Sox moved their training camp.

“Mr. F.,” Dawn called.

I looked over at her framed in the window.

“Mr. F., I may be nuts or so, but I saw that guy you asked me about, least I think it was him. Could have been. He parked in the lot ‘bout an hour back. Pickup truck with one of those things, you know, for hauling cars. Got out and looked around. I remember him ’cause he didn’t buy anything, just stood around. Morning breakfast was busy. Then he was here, got a coffee, took it off and…”

There was no pickup truck in the parking lot. I took a final bite of my burger, got up as quickly as I could and dumped my early lunch in the garbage can.

“I think I’m wrong, Mr. F.,” she said.

I looked toward the back of the lot and up at my office door.

“I think you’re right. Thanks, Dawn,” I said.

I went past the Geo and headed for the steps, past the spot where Dwight had come out of the bushes. He could have reparked the pickup and waited in his familiar spot. There was no Dwight now. Dawn could have been wrong, but I had a pain in my stomach and a wish for a tire iron that said she wasn’t.

The slightly open door to my office made me sure.

Dwight had probably just looked around, seen no one watching and, when Dawn wasn’t paying attention, come up the stairs and thrown his shoulder against the door. It was no match for him. I stepped in. The lights were on. Dwight had trashed the place, not that there was much to trash. I pushed the door shut. It stayed in place. Drawers were on the floor. The desktop had been swept away. Papers, an empty glass, business cards and things I didn’t remember having were all over the floor. I moved to the other room. Nothing had been touched.

Dwight hadn’t been there just to give me a warning. If he had, he would have caved in the front of my TV with the tire iron that now lay on the floor in the doorway. Conclusion: Dwight had been looking for something, something he found. As far as I knew, the only thing I had that Dwight wanted was the file I kept on Adele. It was on the floor with other debris. I had made a note in it that I had taken Beryl to Flo Zink’s

I turned my desk chair around, picked the phone off the floor and hit the redial button.

“I’m here,” came a familiar voice.

“Flo, it’s Lew.”

“Bad news for you, Lewis,” she said. “Bad news. She’s gone.”

“She’s gone,” I repeated.

“Got a phone call about an hour ago. Guy said you’d given him the number. Asked for Beryl. Said he was a lawyer friend of yours, that he was going to get an injunction against her husband, going to get him to tell where Adele was. I asked him if he wanted to talk to Beryl. Said no, asked me the address. That’s when it hit me.”

“He wasn’t a friend,” I said.

Dwight had probably called from my office sitting in my chair.

“That’s what hit me. You would’ve called, told me he was gonna get in touch. You would have told him where I live.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Beryl had left, gone off to a motel or somewhere. I said she got in a cab and went off, didn’t tell me where. The son of a fuckin’ bitch hung up. I told Beryl, told her to get her things together, that we were taking her someone safe. While she got ready, I got the car out of the garage, drove around front, went in to get her and-”

“She was gone,” I said, seeing if it was worth super-gluing a broken little plaster duck I kept on my desk for luck.

“Gone, walked away. I looked for her. Drove all over. Nothing. Lew, I think it’s time for the cops. That shit’s after her and she’s running scared.”

“Maybe you’re right, Flo.”

“I’m sorry, Lew. I fucked up.”

“No you didn’t,” I said, putting the two halves of the duck on my desk. “You figured it out. Flo, I think you might want to get out of there.”

“Lewis, I want that bastard to show up here,” she said. “I want it so bad I’d pay big dollars for the joy. I’m holding a very large weapon in my hand and if I see him coming to my door, I’m shooting a hole right through the door and him.”

“Not a good idea,” I said.

“Lewis, I’ve got money and one hell of a great lawyer. Lord, let him come.”

“He’s driving a pickup truck-Ford-with a tow winch,” I said.

“One more question,” she said.

“I’d say ‘shoot’ but under the circumstances…”

“You’ve got a sense of humor hiding behind that sad face, Lewis. Question is, does he have my address? Are you sure? I’m not listed in the phone book.”

I looked at my mess of address and business cards on the floor and said, “I think so.”

All Dwight Handford had to do after he read my file on Adele and found out I had taken her to Flo’s was to get the address out of the address book on my desk.

“How long does it take you to get here from your place?”

“Fifteen minutes, maybe a little more,” I said.

“He called a lot more than an hour ago. What’s keeping the bastard?”

“Good question, Flo. Maybe you should get out of there for a while.”

I knew what her answer would be.

“Beryl was scared, real scared. That man’s hurt her. He’s sure as hell hurt that kid. He is one dangerous asshole.”

That I knew, but I said,

“Lock up tonight. I’ll keep calling.”

“You going to look for Beryl?”

“I’m going to look.”

There was a sound of footsteps coming slowly along the the concrete walk outside my office. I hung up and went for my tire iron. When I had it in hand, I faced the door. Someone pushed it open. I hoped the someone didn’t have a gun. He didn’t.

“Ames,” I said.

He looked at me as unmoved as he always was and said, “I came to work on the air conditioner some more.”

He looked at the air conditioner and so did I for the first time since I had come into the office. The front of it was caved in.

“You go berserk?” Ames asked, calmly nodding at the tire iron and then looking around the room.

“No,” I said. “Someone came in. Beryl Tree’s husband. He was looking for something.”

“Find it?”

“Yes.”

Ames nodded as if it was all clear to him. Maybe it was.

“Never fix the air conditioner now,” he said. “Don’t think there was much chance of it yesterday when it was still sort of alive.”

“We’ll give it a decent burial,” I said, sitting at my desk and biting my lower lip.

“Somethin’ hurtin’?”

“Beryl’s husband. Last night. Told me to stop trying to find his daughter and to get Beryl out of town. He performed euthanasia on the air conditioner and made this mess.”