Midnight Pass: A Lew Fonesca Novel Part 23

"Ames?" I called to Ed, who nodded toward the narrow hallway next to the bar.

"Fonesca," Ed said, stopping me as I started to walk past the bar. "Listen, I'm thinking of making this place a little more upscale. Lot of pressure on me from some of the downtown business people. Jerry Robins, you know him? Know what he said to me? *Ed,' he said, *you've got a really funky place.' I said, *Yes, thanks,' and he said, *I hate funky.' You understand where I'm going with this?"

"No," I said.

"I don't want to change the Texas," he said. "I'm thinking about it but I don't want to do it. I like it just the way it is."

"Funky," I said.

"I guess," he agreed, "but that's not the way I see it. I see it as authentic. You know people, right?"

"People?"

"You know what I mean," he said confidentially. "People who might be persuaded to get people like Jerry Robins to leave me alone. People like Trasker and Hoffmann. People on the City Council or Board of Commissioners. People who might owe you a favor, might see the Texas as kind of a landmark."

"That kind of person can't be bought for what you could afford to pay, Ed."

Ed touched the corners of his handlebar mustache to be sure they were still there and properly upturned.

"I'm not talking about bribing anybody," he said. "I'm talking about your maybe calling in some markers."

Markers. He sounded like Dean Martin in Rio Bravo.

"I'll talk to someone," I said.

"Thanks," said Ed with a small, gentle punch of my arm. "A beer?"

"Maybe later," I said.

I went down the hallway past the ladies and men's rooms and the utility closet and knocked at a door on the right.

"Who is it?" Ames asked.

"Lew. Want me to wait for you at the bar?"

He paused a long pause and said, "Come in."

I had never been in Ames's room before. He liked his privacy, not as much as I loved my isolation, but enough to be respected, and his privacy was intruded on far less than my isolation. Ames had the bearing of man whose s.p.a.ce and dignity should not be violated. I had the bearing of a man whose isolation seemed to call for intrusion.

His room had mine beat in size, cleanliness, and color. There was a bed against one wall under the only window in the room. The view through the window was the alley behind the Texas Bar and Grill. There was a chest of drawers, slightly scratched, against the opposite wall. A heavy, dark wood rocking chair sat in one corner next to a floor lamp. In the middle of the room was a wooden table with heavy dark legs. There were no prints or paintings on the wall, just a small battered wooden crucifix next to a magazine-sized, framed black-and-white photograph of a young woman in an evening dress. The photograph looked as if it had been taken at least half a century ago. Ames McKinney sat at the table in one of the three chairs that faced the door.

In front of him were the parts of what looked like a rifle.

"New?" I asked.

"Hmm," Ames answered as he finished polis.h.i.+ng a black metal bolt about six inches long. "Marlin, New Model 1895 Cowboy," he said, looking up at me, blue eyes, leathery face. "Ed just bought it. I'm checking it out."

He began to put the rifle back together.

"Good feel," he said as he worked. "Old Western-styled 45/70 with a twenty-six-inch tapered octagonal barrel with deep-cut Ballard-type rifling, nine-shot tubular magazine, adjustable Marble semibuckhorn rear and Marble carbine front sight."

I sat across from Ames and watched quietly while he finished, put a cap on the oil can in front of him, wiped his hands on an oily piece of dark soft leather, and lay the gun gently down in front of him.

"Here about the dead lady?" he asked.

"Maybe. Probably. I want to take a look at Midnight Pa.s.s. Like to see it?"

"Want me to carry?"

"Don't think it'll be necessary but it can't hurt to bring something small."

He stood up and showed me that he was wearing his belt with the built-in pistol.

"That should do it," I said.

Ames nodded, picked up the rifle, and left the room, closing the door behind him. When he came back a few minutes later, he was wearing his yellow slicker.

"Looks like it might rain some more," he said.

I looked at the window. It was definitely getting darker.

"Then let's go," I said.

The rain started when we were no more than five minutes out of downtown. It stayed light and steady but the wind began to pick up when we made the turn on Stickney Point Road, turned left on Midnight Pa.s.s and headed down the two-lane road.

It still wasn't heavy when I made a right turn into Sarasandbay Cove, a private, s.p.a.ced-out quintet of huge houses facing the water. I had been here before, serving papers on a plastic surgeon named Amos Peet, who was being sued for malpractice. Women who didn't like the way things had turned out were constantly suing plastic surgeons. Usually the insurance companies settled, knowing that if it got to a jury, the plaintiff would walk away with a very large check. So, insurance for a plastic surgeon's practice was higher than the annual salary of a Sarasota fireman. So the plastic surgeons charged more and more. It costs about two thousand dollars to get eight hours of cardiac-bypa.s.s surgery and six months of follow-up, and four thousand dollars to get an hour of plastic surgery. I had served papers to Dr. Peet on behalf of one of Tycinker, Oliver, and Schwartz's dissatisfied clients.

Amos Peet had been a gentleman about it. He had been through it all before. He did not blame the messenger. He offered the messenger a cup of coffee.

I remembered him telling me that he was about two hundred yards from Midnight Pa.s.s. I wasn't interested at the time. This time I was. I parked next to a short, thickly leafed clutch of trees.

Ames and I got out of the car. It still wasn't raining hard, but it was getting darker and the threat of something more was out there. I didn't mind being soaked. I liked going back to my office, getting out of my clothes, toweling down, and getting in bed in a fresh pair of boxer shorts and a T-s.h.i.+rt.

A little distant thunder, a slight increase in the rain, and a noon as dark as night. We went behind Amos Peet's house and headed in the direction of Midnight Pa.s.s. Ames led the way through the miniature rain forest. My sneakers were muddy long before we got to the clearing and the open stretch of rocks and shrubs.

"You think this is it?" I said.

"Don't seem like much," Ames said. "Can't even build on it."

"It's worth millions," I said. "Maybe a lot of millions."

A trio of small crawfish scuttled behind a rock on the gravel to my left, and the wind picked up. The rain was steady and getting stronger and the sky was almost night black. Lightning crackled out across the Gulf. Neither wind nor rain made it any cooler. It was humid and hot. A steamy mist was forming close to the ground.

I couldn't see Kevin Hoffmann's house from where we stood, but I imagined it surrounded by fog. Inside that house lay William Trasker, and I didn't seem to be getting very far in earning the money the Reverend Wilkens had given me.

There was nothing much else to see. It didn't look like it would take millions of dollars to study the narrow strip of land to determine if it could be dredged. I didn't know why it would take millions more to keep the Pa.s.s open once it was dredged.

"They could just put in a ca.n.a.l," I said, kneeling and picking up a handful of stones and cracked seash.e.l.ls.

"Not that easy," Ames said.

Ames had a degree in engineering. I didn't know what kind of engineering but I was sure he knew more than I did.

"Erosion, pressure from drifting land, storms, level differences to be considered," he said. "Not that easy."

"Maybe this storm will turn into a hurricane and G.o.d will part Midnight Pa.s.s and everyone will rise up in jubilation," I said.

Ames didn't say anything. In fact, he was no longer standing next to me. I turned and saw him about fifteen yards away, looking toward the thick bushes and heavy-leafed trees swaying and rustling noisily in the wind.

Then the shot came. I wasn't sure it was a shot at first, just another cracking sound that could have been an old rotted tree weighted down with water and breaking at the trunk. It was the second shot that convinced me, partly because I saw the spray of mud, wet leaves, and pebbles fly up about ten yards in front of me.

I went down on my stomach and heard a third shot, but this one sounded different, a lot different. I looked up and Ames was holding a sawed-off shotgun. It was aimed at the bushes in the direction from which we had come.

Ames fired off a second blast. Leaves exploded. Standing upright in his yellow slicker, Ames cracked open the shotgun and was reloading it with sh.e.l.ls taken from his pocket.

I expected another shot from the dense blowing trees and bushes. I was a good target. No shot came from whoever seemed to be trying to kill me, but Ames was advancing slowly toward the direction of the shooter. Ames fired another blast, stepped to the edge of the thicket, and fired again.

Maybe I heard something or someone moving in front of Ames. Maybe a frightened animal. Maybe nothing but more sounds of wind and rain.

"He's gone," Ames said over his shoulder, reloading again.

I got up, mud-covered and brus.h.i.+ng debris and something that looked like a centipede hanging from my chest.

"We going after him?" Ames asked.

"Yes," I said. "We're going after him."

Shotgun held with barrel forward in his right hand, Ames hurried back the same way we had come. I was right behind him. Ahead of us a car started.

Something crawled up my leg. I swatted at it.

Mud crept into my shoes and squished with each step. I couldn't do anything about it.

We moved faster. When we were in sight of my car, we could hear the shooter's car turn a corner and kick up gravel.

I was going to have to explain to Fred and Alan why the front seat of the rental car was covered with moldy, junglelike decay. Maybe I could clean it up a little myself before I returned it.

When Ames had closed his door and was sitting with shotgun in hand, I turned the car around and went in into thunder, lightning, and rain in search of the person who had shot at me. I hit Midnight Pa.s.s Drive no more than fifteen seconds later.

Ames looked right. I looked left. Not a car in sight.

"He pulled into one of the driveways," I said.

"Looks that way," Ames agreed.

"Which one and in which direction?"

"We can start trying *em," Ames said.

We started toward the left, the logical direction if he was trying to get off the key and not get trapped at the dead end to the right at the end of the key. We found some cars parked on paved paths, found driveways leading into developed communities like the one the plastic surgeon lived in, found homes with high walls.

There were some cars parked in many of the places we looked, but no one sitting in them. He could have been hunched down or leaning over. We could have gotten out and started checking and feeling the car hoods to see if they were warm. And as much faith as I had in Ames, there was always the possibility that the shooter would be waiting for us behind a tree, a rock, a wall, or an SUV.

"No point, is there?" I said, after we did stop to check out a Jaguar and a Ford Explorer parked side by side in a driveway.

"No," said Ames.

The curtains of the window of the house in whose driveway we were standing parted and an old woman looked at us, horror in her eyes. Before her in the rain stood a tall old man in a yellow slicker cradling a shotgun in his arms and next to him stood a shorter, thinner version of the Swamp Thing.

The curtains closed.

Ames and I got back in the car and headed for home.

"You all right?" Ames asked, tucking the shotgun in a deep pocket he had created inside his slicker.

"He missed," I said.

"Question was, are you all right?"

"Yes," I said.

For a supposedly suicidal man, I was doing a remarkable job of surviving.

I dropped Ames at the Texas Bar and Grill and told him I'd be back later, that we had something to do. Ames didn't ask what it was. He never did.

The rain was no better when I pulled into the DQ parking lot. There were no customers. The girl at the orders window had her head in her hands, her elbows propped up on the counter. She was watching traffic slosh by.

When I got to my office and opened the door, I kicked off my muddy shoes, took off my s.h.i.+rt, pants, underwear, and socks and dropped them in a heap along with my drenched Cubs cap. I padded carefully to my room, picked up my last clean towel, wrapped it around myself, and grabbed my soap.

I pushed my wet clothes out of the way with my foot, left the door unlocked, and went outside on the landing. No one was there. It didn't matter.

No one was in the rest room either. It looked clean and smelled good. Marvin Uliaks had done his daily cleanup. I locked the door and ran both faucets of the sink full blast, cupped my hands, and covered myself with water. I repeated this four or five times before I started using soap, lots of soap. Then I rinsed twice more with cupped hands and began drying myself.

I was clean. The rest room floor wasn't.

While I was drying, I saw myself in the mirror. Someone had tried to kill the man in the mirror, the unremarkable man in the mirror.

It hit me. If he or she had succeeded, there would have been some kind of funeral, probably paid for by Flo, and people would actually come to the funeral-Ames, Flo, Adele with her baby, Ann, her husband, Sally, Dave, John Gutcheon, maybe Billy the bartender at the Crisp Dollar Bill, Marvin if he could get a ride, and maybe even Digger, though I doubted that. Then, if someone tried to find them, some of my family in Chicago would show up. My father would insist on an Episcopalian minister.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

I finished drying and wrapped the wet towel around my waist, took my soap, and headed back to my office. My plan was to write a will saying I wanted to be cremated and have my ashes buried next to my wife in Illinois.

When I got back to my office and opened it, the lights were on and the window air conditioner that Ames had put in about a year earlier was humming.

Detective Etienne Viviase was standing in front of the small Stig Dalstrom painting on the wall. He turned his head to look at me.

"Wanna get dressed?" he asked.