Retribution lf-2 Read online

  Lonsberg looked at me. So did Jefferson.

  “I can’t do that,” he said.

  “You keep any copies of those stolen manuscripts?” I asked

  “You know I didn’t.”

  “Adele, or whoever took them, could be taking your name off now and sending them out under their name to agents, publishers, Internet sites.”

  “They’d be worth nothing,” he said. “Or at least not very much. Their value has nothing to do with whatever quality they may have. Their value lies in the fact that they were written by Conrad Lonsberg. Find me some scribbles and stick figures, junk by Picasso on a sheet of paper, and I’ll get you half a million dollars as long as it’s signed and authenticated. No, it’s more likely they could all be getting shredded or thrown into a bonfire right now,” he said.

  He shook his head.

  “Okay, someone doesn’t like you, Lonsberg,” I said.

  “And her name is Adele. Ten thousand dollars,” he said. “I’ll pay you ten thousand to get them back.”

  “What does money mean to you?” I asked.

  “Food, shelter, paper, postage, a few clothes, security for my family,” he said.

  “What does your writing mean to you?”

  “I get your point. You want me to give up something important to me,” he said.

  “Something that means something to you. Adele means something to me. Not money.”

  “You’re a remarkable man, Fonesca,” he said, smiling again. “You may also be a stupid one or you’ve read too many romantic novels.”

  “Movies,” I said. “I got it from movies.”

  He looked at me for a long time and came to a decision. “And from life. All right. You can have the rights to a story if you get all my manuscripts back.”

  “Plus one thousand dollars for expenses, in advance.”

  “I pick the story,” he said. “Adele said you’re a good man. She thought I was a good man. She was wrong about me. Her judgment does not match her talent.”

  “One of her problems,” I said. “We have a deal?”

  “We do,” said Lonsberg.

  “Tell me again, how many people know about your vault and the manuscripts?”

  “My son, daughter, Adele, me, and you,” he said. “I bought the place because it was isolated and because it had the vault. The last owner was a drug dealer. He had to leave the country quickly.”

  “Your son or daughter may have told someone about your manuscripts,” I said. “Maybe Adele mentioned it.”

  “Fonesca,” he said evenly. “Whoever took them knew when I was going to be out. Whoever took them got past Jefferson who wouldn’t let a stranger in. Both of my children know they get the manuscripts when I die. And they are quite aware that no one can sell or publish those stories, certainly not with my name on them, while I’m alive. My will is clear.”

  “Did your son and daughter meet Adele?”

  “Yes.”

  “They get along?”

  “With Adele or each other?” he asked.

  “Both.”

  “I think they liked Adele,” he said and then paused. “As for each other, it’s on and off. And in anticipation of your next question, I think my children respect me. I think they don’t like me. I’m not a tender man, Fonesca.”

  “I’ve noticed. I’ll need their addresses and phone numbers,” I said, turning and walking out of the vault. “Anyone else Adele might have met through you?”

  “There is nobody else,” he said, moving into the kitchen with the box of money in his arms. Jefferson ambling behind us. “Wait.”

  He put down the box, pulled a small, battered black notebook out of his back pocket and a click pen from a front pocket, tore out a page, and quickly wrote the names and addresses of his two children. Then he opened the wooden box and counted out a thousand dollars in bills of various denominations.

  “I’ll be in touch,” I said, taking the cash and the small sheet and heading toward the front of the house. “You want a receipt?”

  “You get nothing with my name signed and I want nothing with yours,” he said behind me. “I have one last question.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “Who slapped you?” he said, looking at my cheek. “And don’t tell me you fell. I know what a slap looks like. I’ve had them. Good ones. Solid ones. Usually I deserved them.”

  “I served papers on a woman named Bubbles Dreemer this morning,” I said. “She took exception.”

  “Great name, Bubbles Dreemer,” he said.

  “It doesn’t belong to a great lady.”

  “Makes it even better,” he said. “Mind if I use it?”

  “It’s not mine to give,” I said.

  I went out the door.

  Jefferson’s claws tapped behind me along with Lonsberg’s soft footsteps.

  Outside he said, “I have a button inside. When you get to the gate, I’ll buzz you out.”

  I took a last look at Lonsberg with Jefferson at his side. Lonsberg had one hand in his pocket and the other on the dog’s huge head. I walked down the dirt trail to the gate. I heard the gentle buzz, pushed at the door, went out, and watched the door close behind me with a metallic slap.

  4

  I was thirsty. Lonsberg hadn’t asked me to stick around for lunch or have a glass of beer or a Coke. I headed for the Texas Bar and Grille on Second Street.

  The late-afternoon crowd was just beginning to fill the place that was meant to look like an authentic Old West bar and eatery but looked more like a set from a John Ford western. Round wooden tables and simple wooden chairs. Wooden pillars of no distinction. A bar without stools. There was a buffalo head on one wall, authentic western weapons mounted all over the place. The prize displays were a carbine authenticated as the fifth ever made and a shotgun with a butt plate saying it was the official property of Buffalo Bill Cody. It was dated 1877. This had also been authenticated by Ed Fairing who served the best burgers in town, no competition. His specialty was a one-pounder with onions and mushrooms grilled inside the burger. His steaks were all served the same, rare in the middle, burnt on top, and his chili dared all but the most adventurous. The Texas was a success. It might well survive the onslaught of what passed for this year’s Sarasota culture quickly surrounding it. My guess was that it would gradually change from a hangout for hard hats, nearby CPAs, and lawyers who wanted to sit back, eat food that would kill them, and swap stories. It would fill with tourists. It would become “the place you’ve just got to see.” There was already some of that. Ed would even make money, but it wouldn’t make him happy. He had moved south from an office job to become a western barkeep, not the proprietor of a chic luncheonette or a tourist attraction.

  And so, Ed greeted me glumly as I moved to a space at the bar, which even sported a rail for the rare booted foot. Ed was big, heavy, with a head of bushy black hair with long sideburns, deep black eyes, and the face of a world-weary barkeep.

  “Busy,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “Beer and chili?”

  “Beer and burger, half pounder,” I said.

  “With the works?”

  “With,” I said. “Ames back?”

  “In the kitchen,” he said. “I’ll tell him you’re here.”

  Ed plopped a bottle of Miller heavy on the counter and moved toward the back of the bar. I took a drink and looked around. I picked up a little, a couple of guys in their thirties in suits, collars open, ties loose, loudly arguing about what the defection of Hardy Nickerson to the Jaguars had really meant to the Tampa Bay Bucs, a trio of paint-stained, T-shirted guys growing bellies and telling jokes with four-letter words, a man and woman in their fifties leaning across bowls of chili and whispering so that I caught only “there’s no other way” plaintively from the man.

  Then Ames appeared.

  Tall, lean, shaved, serious. As he always did, he held out his hand. His grip was firm. We shook and he moved next to me. His gray pants were worn cotton. His shirt was long-
sleeved and blue. I thought he had done some trimming of his brushed white hair.

  “Wasn’t there,” he said, moving next to me. “Mickey at the Burger King. Hasn’t been at work for two days. Full name’s Michael Raymond Merrymen. Lives with his father in a development called Sherwood Forest out on McIntosh just off Bahia Vista.”

  “I know the place,” I said. “You get an address and phone number?”

  “Yes.”

  He reached into his shirt pocket and handed me an envelope. The front of the empty envelope told the recipient that he might already be the owner of a new house, a new Lexus, or ten thousand dollars. The back of the envelope told me in Ames’s penciled hand where Mickey lived with his father.

  “Thanks, Ames,” I said. “Beer?”

  “Coke,” he said.

  When Ed came back with my burger and a Coke for Ames, Ames and I moved to the table the quiet couple had just left. We pushed their dishes aside.

  “Girl’s in trouble?” Ames said.

  “Looks that way,” I said.

  “What kind?”

  I told him everything. He listened, drank slowly, nodded from time to time, and when I was finished said, “I don’t hear the why of it.”

  “I don’t either,” I said. “Maybe we’ll find out when we find Adele. Let’s try Mickey the burger prince.”

  We put Ames’s scooter into the trunk of the Cutlass. Ames was good at figuring out spaces, what would fit where. Also, the scooter was no vooming Harley.

  I drove down Fruitville. Ames sat at my side and said nothing as I listened to two talk-show guys trade giggles and bad jokes much to their own amusement. We passed the Hollywood Twenty Cinemas parking lot, the Catholic Church with the Spanish welcome on its white sign, the Chinese Star buffet where you could get a decent lunch for five dollars, and made the turn to the right on McIntosh Road just past Cardinal Mooney High School. The Jewish Community Center was on our right. McIntosh Middle School was on our left and then on our left again was a sign that said, “Sherwood Forest, Deed Restricted.”

  We drove down a tree-lined street of well-maintained single-family houses, mostly the two- or three-bedroom variety, no two quite alike. A heavy old woman was walking a tiny white dog. She waved her pooper scooper at me and pointed the scooper at a sign that said, “Maximum Speed 19 MPH.” To remind us of the seriousness of the statement we hit a yellow speed bump that felt as high as a low hurdle. The Cutlass scraped the ground when we hit and I slowed down.

  We found the house of Mickey Merrymen at the end of a cul-de-sac between two other larger houses. There was a late-model blue Chevy in the driveway and the house’s night lights were on.

  Ames and I got out and went to the front door. There didn’t seem to be a bell and there was no knocker. So I did it the old-fashioned way. I knocked.

  The man who opened the door was somewhere in his forties, lean, with recently barbered dark hair. He wore a determined scowl, a red sweatshirt, and a pair of khaki pants. He was barefoot and had a baseball bat in his right hand.

  “We’re looking for Michael Merrymen,” I said as Ames stepped forward.

  “You found him,” the man with the bat said. “I’ve been waiting for you for hours.”

  He stepped back to let us pass. When we were inside he walked ahead of us into a living room with one of those long gray couches that form an “L.” A shorter matching couch faced it and a low coffee table covered with magazines and books sat in the middle of the brick-walled room.

  “You’re the Michael Merrymen from Burger King?” I asked as the man motioned for us to sit on the L-couch. Flo had described him as a kid. This was no kid. Flo’s sense of youth might have been a bit warped.

  I sat. Ames stood. The man with the bat paced.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “You know why we’re here?” I asked.

  “It’s about her,” he said, stopping. “That little bitch.”

  “We’re looking for her,” I said, keeping my eyes on the bat that shifted from hand to hand.

  “She’s not hard to find,” he said angrily, pointing in the general direction of his kitchen. “She’s right next door.”

  “Right now?” I asked.

  “Right now,” he said. “You want to hear my side of this or are you just going to sit there?”

  “Your side,” I said.

  He let out a deep sigh and stopped pacing to lean on the bat and look at me and Ames. Then he looked at Ames again and said, “You two are the best they could get. An old man and a little guy.”

  “Your side of the story,” I repeated.

  “Okay, it started when I moved in,” he said. “I had my land surveyed. The neighbors on both sides were on my land. A few inches on one side. Almost a foot on the other. Hot tub right over the line on one side. Tangelo trees on the other.”

  I looked at Ames who folded his arms and waited to see where this was going.

  “Okay, I thought. Live and let live, but no tangelo tree dropping fruit on my property and no lard ass dipping almost naked in her hot tub and spying on me. Are you following this?”

  “Yes,” I lied. “Go on.”

  “Okay, then came the mailbox,” he said. “Deed restricted community. My mailbox didn’t meet their rules. They turned me in. I was given a written order to move my mailbox back and get it repaired. But that’s not what you want to hear.”

  “No,” I agreed.

  “You want to know about her,” he said, tapping the bat on the floor. He reminded me a little of Fred Astaire tapping a black cane before he went into a dance.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well, I got the dog,” he said. “No restrictions on dogs. Only have to clean up after them, keep them leashed if you walk them. I got a dog. I got a pit bull. Staked him in the yard so he could reach the property line. He could go right up to that fucking hot tub. So she started the calls. Got a lawyer. Said the dog smelled up the neighborhood even though I cleaned up after him. They are out to get me and you have to stop them. I can get a lawyer too.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Ames asked.

  “The bitch next door,” Merrymen repeated. “I called to get her to shut up and that’s why the fuck you’re here for Chrissake.”

  “You’re Michael Merrymen?” I asked.

  “Yeah, funny,” he said. “My son and me are the Merrymen of Sherwood Forest.”

  “Your son?” Tasked. “He’s Mickey?”

  “Michael Junior,” he said. “Works for me at the Burger King. I’m the manager. What the hell are you talking about? Did they make an Internet search for the two dumbest deputies in the county and come up with you?”

  Ames looked at me. He had a low boiling point but he didn’t show it. He looked calm. He always looked calm even when he was gun to gun with someone who might want to end his life. This time the someone had a baseball bat, but Ames didn’t care. Loyalty and dignity were important to him above all things and I had the feeling though he was giving away about thirty years and a baseball bat, Michael Merrymen might be in trouble.

  “We’re not deputies,” I said, pleading with my eyes for Ames to stay put. “We’re looking for your son.”

  “My son? What the hell for? And who are you?”

  “Your son is friendly with a girl named Adele Hanford,” I said. “She’s missing. Her foster parent doesn’t want to call the police so she asked us to find her.”

  Merrymen laughed and shook his head.

  “Mickey is among the missing,” he said. “We don’t get along that well. He goes for days at a time. Usually to his idiot grandfather.”

  “Your father?” I asked.

  “My dead wife’s father,” he said. “I don’t know who else he sees or what he does.”

  “Your father-in-law’s name?” I asked.

  “Corsello, Bernard. Why?”

  “You’ve never met Adele?” I asked in return.

  “No, and I don’t give a shit about her or what Mickey is doing with her,�
� he said.

  “You’d best watch your mouth,” Ames said evenly.

  “I’d best… this is my fucking house,” Merrymen answered, pointing the bat at Ames.

  The fat end of the bat was inches from Ames’s chest. Merrymen’s chin jutted out.

  “If you’ll just let us look at your son’s room, we’ll go quietly,” I said.

  “No,” he said, smiling at Ames who didn’t smile back.

  I got up to leave. Merrymen walked across the room to a door off the kitchen. He opened the door and the dog came running in. He was big for a pit bull though not as big as Jefferson, but this was a pit bull and Jefferson was just a dog.

  The pit bull looked at Merrymen and Merrymen made the mistake of pointing the bat at Ames again. The dog knew what he was supposed to do, but so did Ames and Ames was smarter than the dog. He yanked the bat from Merrymen’s hand and as the dog leaped toward him, Ames flipped the bat and took a full swing at the animal that was in the air flying toward his throat.

  Ames connected. A line drive. The dog flew across the room, hit the wall with a yelp, and turned to attack again. Only now there was something distinctly wrong with his right front leg. He growled and limped forward. Ames readied the bat and then swung it once four feet in front of the dog who squealed, turned, and headed back for the door from which he had come.

  Ames walked slowly over to the door and closed it.

  “You son of a bitch,” Merrymen said, reaching for the bat.

  Ames held out his arm warning the hysterical man to stay back.

  “You break in…”

  “You invited us in,” I reminded him.

  “You attacked my dog. In my house. You bastards. She sent you, didn’t she?”

  Merrymen pointed toward the kitchen again.

  “We’re looking for your son,” I reminded him. “We’re looking for a girl named Adele.”

  “You’re looking for jail time,” he said. “I’m calling the police. What are your names?”

  “Hal Jeffcoat and Glenn Beckert,” I answered. “Now we’re leaving.”

  I moved toward the front door. Ames backed away with me and dropped the bat on the tile floor. Merrymen took a step toward his fallen club.