Midnight Pass: A Lew Fonesca Novel (Lew Fonesca Novels) Read online

  “Off the record, Mrs. Free,” I said, “Mr. Trasker is dying and I think you know it.”

  She nodded. She knew.

  “You really think he’ll vote against opening the Pass?” she asked.

  “Good authority,” I said. “A black man of the cloth.”

  “Fernando Wilkens,” she said with a sigh that showed less respect than resignation.

  “You’re not a big fan of the reverend?”

  “I’d rather say that he serves the community when that service benefits Fernando Wilkens,” she said. “Fortunately, the two are generally compatible.”

  “You know him well?”

  “I know him well enough.”

  She looked away. She understood. The sigh was long and said a lot, that she was considering risking her job, that she was about to give away things a secretary shouldn’t give away.

  “One condition,” she said, folding her hands on the desk. “You are not to tell where you got this information.”

  “I will not tell,” I said.

  “For some reason, I believe you,” she said. “God knows why. You’ve got that kind of face.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’ve heard of Kevin Hoffmann,” she said.

  “I’ve heard,” I said.

  “He has a large estate on the mainland across from Bird Keys,” she said. “Owns large pieces of land all along Little Sarasota Bay.”

  “So he’d make money if the Pass was opened.”

  “Now boats have to go five miles past the Pass site to the end of Casey Key and then come up Little Sarasota Bay another fiveplus miles.”

  “I get it.”

  “Only part of it,” she said. “If the Pass opens, a lot of Kevin Hoffmann’s property, now a bog, could be turned into choice waterside home sites. Trasker Construction has done almost all of the work for Kevin Hoffmann. It’s been said that Mr. Trasker is in Kevin Hoffmann’s pocket. It’s also been said that Hoffmann is in Mr. Trasker’s pocket. They are certainly close business associates and have been for many years.”

  “It’s been said,” I repeated. “You think Hoffmann’s done something to Trasker to keep him from voting against opening the Pass?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  “You’ve put some thought into this,” I said.

  “Some,” she admitted, adjusting her glasses. “You can check out Kevin Hoffmann’s holdings in the tax office right downtown,” she said. “Which would be more than the local media have done.”

  “Thanks,” I said, getting up.

  “No need,” she said, rising and accompanying me down the hall. “We haven’t had this conversation. I’ve told you nothing.”

  “Nothing,” I agreed.

  “Why doesn’t Mrs. Trasker like you?” I asked.

  “Five years ago when I came to work here,” she said, “Mr. Trasker was looking less for a competent secretary than a possible sexual conquest. By the time he realized that he would not be permitted to even touch me, he had also realized that I was probably invaluable to the business. Mrs. Trasker is a smart woman. I’m sure she knew what had been on her husband’s mind. I’m also reasonably sure that she knew he had failed, but Mrs. Trasker is a vain woman not likely to be kindly disposed toward any woman her husband found attractive.”

  When we stood in front of the receptionist’s desk, she shook my hand and said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you, Mr. Fonesca, but I will give Mr. Trasker your name and number as soon as he returns.”

  It was almost four, but I drove up Swift and made good pre–rush hour time. Rush hour in Sarasota was still not a big problem, compared to Chicago or even Dubuque, but it slowed me down.

  I got to the parking lot in front of Building C in a complex of identical three-story buildings marked A, B, C, and D off of Fruitville and Tutle. It was just before four-thirty.

  Building C housed some of the offices of Children’s Services of Sarasota. Buildings A, B, and D had a few empty office spaces but most were filled by dentists, urologists, investment advisers, a jeweler, an estate appraiser, a four-doctor cardiology practice, and three allergists.

  John Gutcheon was at the downstairs reception desk, literally twiddling his thumbs. John was thin, blond, about thirty, and very openly gay. His sharp tongue was his sole protection from invaders of his life choice. His world was divided into those who accepted him and those who did not accept him.

  I was on John’s good list, so I got fewer verbal barbs than a lot of Children’s Service parents, who usually sullenly and always suspiciously brought in the children they had been charged with abusing. He looked up at me and shook his head.

  “That cap has got to go,” he said. “You are not a hat person and only real baseball players and gay men with a certain elan can get away with it. You look like an emaciated garbageman or, to be more socially correct, an anorexic sanitary engineer.”

  “Good afternoon, John,” I said. “She’s expecting me.”

  “Good afternoon,” he answered. “I’m glad you prepared her. Are you saving someone today or are you going to try to pry Sally away from her caseload for dinner? She could use the respite.”

  “Both.”

  “Good. I’ll sign you in.”

  “Thanks.”

  “It’s been drearily quiet here today,” he said, looking out the window at the cars in the parking lot. “I’m giving serious thought to moving.”

  “Key West?” I asked.

  John rolled his eyes up to the ceiling.

  “No,” he said. “Care to try for a second stereotype?”

  “San Francisco,” I tried.

  “You are a George Sanders–level cad, Fonesca,” he said. “Providence, Rhode Island, the city of my birth, the birth of my life which still puzzles my parents.”

  “Providence,” I repeated.

  “My parents are very understanding people,” he explained. “Very liberal. They walked out on Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? when they first saw it. Couldn’t accept that a beautiful man like Sidney Poitier, who played a world-famous, wealthy, and brilliant surgeon, would be in love with that dolt of a white girl.”

  “I get the point. You know any good jokes, John?”

  “Hundreds,” he said, opening his arms to indicate the vastness of his comic memory.

  “Tell me one.”

  He did. I wrote it down in my notebook.

  “Flee,” he said with a wave of his right hand when I finished writing. “Your lady awaits.”

  He pulled the clipboarded sign-in sheet on his desk and began to carefully enter my name.

  I took the elevator up to the second floor unannounced and went through the glass doors.

  In most businesses, with the clock edging toward five, the employees would be in the act of preparing for their daily evacuation. Not here. The open room the size of a baseball infield was vibrating with voices from almost every one of the small cubicles that served as office space for the caseworkers.

  Most of the workers I passed were women, but there were a few men. Some of the workers were on the phone. One woman looked at me in a dazed state and ran a pencil through her thick curly hair as she talked on the phone. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back.

  “Then when will you and your wife be at home?” she asked.

  Never, I thought. Never.

  Sally’s cubicle was big enough for her to sit facing her desk with one person seated to her left.

  The person sitting was a thin black woman in a sagging tan dress. She was worn out, clutching a little black purse against her small breasts. She looked up at me with tired eyes as Sally spoke to a boy of about thirteen standing to the right of the desk. The boy looked like the woman with the purse. His eyes were halfclosed. His arms were crossed and he was leaning back against the thick glass that separated Sally from the caseworker across from her, Julio Vegas. Vegas, on the phone and alone, gave me a nod of recognition.

  “Darrell,” Sally was saying evenly, “do you understand
what I’m telling you?”

  Darrell nodded.

  “What am I saying?”

  “I get in trouble again, maybe a judge takes me away from my mother.”

  “More than maybe, Darrell, almost certain. And you heard your mother say that if you didn’t straighten out, she didn’t want to see you till you went somewhere else and came back a responsible man.”

  “Yes,” Darrell said.

  “You think you can straighten out?”

  “Yes,” said Darrell without enthusiasm.

  “Really?” Sally said, sitting back.

  “Maybe,” the boy said, avoiding his mother’s eyes.

  “Mrs. Caton?” Sally asked, turning her eyes to the thin woman. “You willing to try once more?”

  “I got a choice?”

  “Considering his police record and breaking into the car last night, I can start the paperwork now, put Darrell in juvenile detention, or we put him into Juvenile Justice and see how fast we can get in front of a judge if you say you can’t handle him anymore.”

  It was a lose-lose situation. I recognized it. Sally had told me about it a few dozen times. Kid goes back to his mother, and there is no way outside a miracle that he is going to straighten out. Kid goes into the system, and the odds were good that if a foster home could be found, he wouldn’t straighten out and the foster home might even be worse for him than living with his mother. There was at least a shot if a good foster home could be found, but generally it was lose-lose.

  Mrs. Caton looked at her son, at Sally, and at me. Sally watched the woman’s eyes and turned to me. She held up a finger to indicate that she would be finished in a minute. Normally, Sally’s minutes were half an hour long. She turned back to Mrs. Caton.

  “Guess we can try again,” the woman said with a sigh and a shake of her head.

  “Darrell?” Sally said, turning her head to the boy.

  “I’ll habilitate,” he said.

  “Good word choice,” Sally said. “Now make a good life choice.”

  “Let’s go home, Darrell,” Mrs. Caton said, shaking her head to show that this was no more than she expected.

  Darrell, who stood about three inches taller than his mother, moved past me. Darrell whispered to me, “What’d you do to your kid?”

  Since I had no kid, I had no answer. He didn’t expect one. I didn’t put high hopes on Darrell’s habilitation.

  When they were gone, Sally swiveled her chair toward me, took off her glasses, and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Sally is dark, pretty, maybe a little overweight, and definitely a lot overworked.

  “That boy is thirteen,” she said. “His mother is twenty-eight. Do the math, Lew. I was bluffing. There’s no space in juvenile and no basis for any action. She’s stuck with him till he commits a felony, she kicks him out of their one-bedroom apartment, or he decides to live on the streets or with the crack dealer he picks up a few dollars from as a lookout.”

  “Darrell is lost?” I said, sitting in the chair where Mrs. Caton had been.

  “No,” she said, brushing back her dark hair with both hands. “Percentages are against him. I’m not. I’ll do an unannounced drop-in in a few nights, maybe take them out for coffee or an ice cream for which I will not be reimbursed.”

  Sally was a widow. Her husband had died five years ago and she was raising her son and daughter in a two-bedroom apartment about five minutes away on Beneva. She worked sixty-hour weeks for thirty-seven and a half hours of pay and once in while she sent someone to me for the kind of help I can give. Someone like Kenneth Severtson.

  “Use your phone?” I asked.

  She handed it to me and I called Dixie.

  “It’s Lew,” I said when she answered with her I’ve-got-a-bad-cold voice. “Anything on Trasker?”

  “Not a trace after last Thursday,” she said in normal Dixie. “Thursday night he paid for gas on an Amex card. That’s it. No hotels, motels, escort services, bank withdrawals, bagels, café lattes, or bank deposits. Nothing. Whatever he’s spent since last Thursday has been with cash.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Did find something,” she said before I could hang up. “He’s got a record. Goes back thirty-two years. Spent two years in a California prison for nearly killing a man who he said was diddling his movie-star wife.”

  “Claire Collins,” I said.

  “That’s the one. William Trasker was Walter Trasnovorich when it happened. Legally changed his name when he got out in 1972.”

  “Who was the man he almost killed?”

  “Actor,” said Dixie. “Movie name, Don Heller. Real name, Franklin Morris. Want to know Roberta Trasker’s name before it was Claire Collins? Roberta Goulding, but I think there’s a name even earlier. There’s a big blank in her life from the age of zero to about seventeen. I’ll keep working on it.”

  “Trasker have any family?” I asked. “Brothers, sisters?”

  “I can find out,” she said.

  I thought for a second. I could call Roberta Trasker for an answer, but I don’t like telephones. I don’t like the dead space I’m expected to fill on them and Roberta Trasker might give me a lot of dead space.

  “See what you can find,” I said. “I’m going out of town tomorrow. You can leave a message on my answering machine if you find anything. And there’s someone else I’d like you to check on: Kevin Hoffmann, the real-estate developer.”

  “Got it. I’ll have to bill you some more,” Dixie said apologetically. “I’m a working girl with two cats.”

  I hadn’t seen any cats in her apartment but I believed her.

  “Okay,” I said, and hung up to look at Sally, who was looking back at me with slightly raised eyebrows that held a question.

  “Long story,” I said. “You have time for the China Palace buffet?”

  Sally looked at her watch.

  “No,” she said. “I’ve got to put in at least another hour filling out reports and then get home to the kids.”

  “I’ll bring you some carryout. Cashew chicken and hot-and-sour soup?”

  The China Palace was three minutes away on Fruitville.

  “And a bunch of egg rolls for the kids,” she said, reaching down for her purse under the desk.

  “On me,” I said. “I’ve got a paying client, remember?”

  “Kenneth Severtson.”

  “I’m going to Orlando tonight,” I said. “His wife and children are there with—”

  “Andrew Stark,” she finished. “You have a plan?”

  “No,” I said. “Find her, watch, maybe talk to her. Maybe I just tell Severtson where they are. He tells his lawyer. Think that’s a good idea?”

  “Probably not,” she said. “I don’t think Kenneth Severtson’s likely to handle the situation very well. It’s better if you talk to her. If she won’t come back, Severtson can get a lawyer. They’re his children, too.”

  “But that would take time,” I said.

  “And money,” she added. “And she could be out of Florida before the paperwork could get done so someone like you could serve it.”

  “What do you have on the family?”

  She reached over to a stack of files leaning against the glass at the back of her desk, fished through them, and came up with the one I wanted. I knew she couldn’t let me read it, but that didn’t stop Sally from answering some questions.

  “Your own words,” I said.

  “My own words,” she said, pursing her lips. “Kenneth Severtson is not the Cosby dad, but he’s not Homer Simpson either. He’s got a temper. He’s tough to get through to. They have credit-card payment problems, even talked about bankruptcy. His business is good, but they spend like its Microsoft. He took it out on his wife. The police were called in. He needed help. He doesn’t trust therapy and resented our intervention. Janice isn’t a mouse, but she isn’t a dragon. Good mothers can do dumb things when it comes to their kids. I had her down as a loyal wife who was willing to put up with a lot to keep her marriage and family together
.”

  “Things have changed,” I said.

  “Andrew Stark,” she said. “Stark isn’t an old friend of the family. Went into partnership with Kenneth Severtson a few years ago. Definitely a shady background. He’s done some very soft time for consumer fraud, and he has not been particularly polite in dealing with women who are, unaccountably, attracted to him.”

  “You met him?”

  “No, just made a few calls to friends in the sheriff’s office.”

  “So?” I asked.

  “She’ll probably stay with Stark until he gets tired of her. Or maybe it’s true love. Truth is, Lewis, I don’t care about the future of Andrew Stark and only dimly about Janice Severtson. It’s the kids. Do what you can, Lew.”

  I nodded.

  Sally looked over at Julio Vegas, who was in animated conversation on the phone in Spanish.

  “I’ll be back with Chinese in a shopping bag,” I said, getting up.

  “I’d kiss you if we weren’t in the equivalent of South Gate Mall,” she said with a tired smile as she touched my hand. “Be careful.”

  “At the China Palace?”

  “In Disneyville.”

  5

  I HAD ALREADY PACKED my blue carry-on for a couple of nights and had my Chicago Cubs baseball cap in the front seat of the Nissan Sentra. I look like a big-eared dolt in the cap, but it protects my ever-growing forehead from burning under the Florida sun and even though it was close to seven at night, the sun was still huge and hot in the sky behind me as I headed east on Fruitville for I-75.

  I had delivered the bag of Chinese food to Sally and got twelve egg rolls, three of which sat in a brown sack on the seat next to me. Another one was in my hand. I had also bought four egg rolls for John Gutcheon.

  I drove past Target and the malls on my left and right and headed north on I-75. Traffic wasn’t bad for three reasons. Rush hour was over. It was summer and the snowbirds had left, reducing the population of Sarasota and the entire state of Florida significantly. People who worked were already home and people who didn’t were in their air-conditioned homes or at the beach on the cool white sand ignoring the ultraviolet index.