Tilly touched the can of Mountain Dew to his forehead and closed his eyes.
“I’ll give old Dwight this,” he said. “He’s not a nigger-hating redneck. Just your all-out motherfuckin’ son of a bitch.”
Someone opened the door with a key. A heavily madeup young woman who might have been Hispanic with a touch of Asian stepped in. She was wearing or almost wearing a short, tight black dress. She smiled at me and looked at Tilly to confirm that I was a customer. Tilly still hadn’t opened his eyes.
“Go get me a cup of coffee, Francine,” he said. “Make it a big cup. And you have one too. Drink it before you come back. Put a lot of cream in mine. You know.”
The smile disappeared from Francine’s very red lips and she eased out of the room and closed the door.
“What the hell,” Tilly said, opening his eyes and sitting up with his arms spread over the back of the sofa. “I’ll tell you something if you give me your word that you won’t tell where you got it.”
“Why would you take my word?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t, man,” he said with exasperation. “I think it would be just fine if you found that girl and took her home to her mama. I think it would piss off Dwight and maybe a couple more people who I’d like to see pissed off. You follow?”
“Blindly,” I said.
“Mr. John Pirannes,” Tilly said with contempt. “Big operator out of the Beach Tides Resort on Longboat. Services tourists, mostly rich old white guys. Picked out Suzanne after she was here for a week or so. Came to me with Dwight backing him up, you know. Just like in the movies. Real tough like. Mr. John Pirannes makes me an offer to take over Suzanne. Piece-of shit offer. I figure Dwight is looking for bigger bucks.”
“And you…?”
“Took my hit from Dwight and accepted the offer,” said Tilly.
“People-selling’s a tough job,” I said.
“You’re telling me. No shit. Hey, I just gave you free, key information. Don’t stand there trying to give out free trips to Guilt City. I’m not taking the offer. There’s always a catch.”
He was right. Tilly emptied the can of Mountain Dew and placed it on the small white table in front of him. I had to give him credit. He didn’t crush the can.
He shot it toward the wastebasket next to the refrigerator.
“That it?” I asked.
“That’s fucking it,” he said, clicking on the television set behind me with a little black remote.
“Thanks.”
“I’m doing you no favors. Getting that girl away from Mr. John Pirannes won’t be a run to the 7-Eleven, if you know what I mean. I hope you know where to find a small army. Now if you’ll just move out. You’re blocking the screen.”
“Last question,” I said.
He hit the mute button and the voice of a vaguely familiar woman stopped in midsentence behind me.
“What do you think the best Italian restaurant in town is?”
“Say what?”
“The best-”
“I heard you. Are you nuts, man?”
“Italian.”
“Bacci,” he said. “Across from Barnes and Noble. Go on Wednesday and order the osso buco special. Now take your act somewhere else and don’t come back. We’re not talking again.”
I walked to the door and the woman’s voice came back on. I glanced at the television screen just before I left. Mary Tyler Moore was trying to explain something to Ed Asner.
Francine was just inside the motel office when I passed. She was smoking and doing what she was told to do, having a cup of coffee. I pointed back to the room to show that it was all hers. The kid behind the counter looked my way and I nodded to show that everything had gone well with Tilly. He was safe. Adele wasn’t.
I had left the key in the car. Sally had turned it on and was listening to All Things Considered, where a serious discussion was going on about the renewed interest in banjo music.
“And so?” she said.
“Ice cream?”
“Gelato,” she said. “Classico. You know it?”
I did. Ten minutes later I was having a regular-size orange chocolate and she was having a regular half coconut, half chocolate almond.
“You ever hear of a man named John Pirannes?”
“I’ve heard. Even met him once. Name came up at the edges of a few of my cases and the middle of one. No one would say much but he’s made the newspaper a few times. Pirannes,” she said, trying to decide whether the spoon should go for the coconut or chocolate almond and deciding on the coconut, “likes to wear white, combs his white hair straight back, has nicely capped teeth and a decent vocabulary. He has slight lisp. Word is that he has all his money tied up in cash. Been here about five years. Very, very high-class call girl operation. Reputation for angry public outbursts, usually with one of his girls. According to some police officers who know, he travels with an ever- changing backup man.”
“You know a lot about Mr. Pirannes,” I said.
I had finished my orange chocolate and was considering another, but I exercised restraint.
“Looked him up,” she said. “Asked questions. Went to the library. His name kept coming up in my cases, other people’s cases, always about young girls he had hurt. The police never got one of the girls to tell who hurt them, but some of those hurts were deep.”
“I know him,” I said.
“You do?”
“Couldn’t be two men in Sarasota with that description. He works out early mornings at the Y. I see him there. Even said hello a few times. There’s always someone with beef waiting for him and watching television in the lounge. Pirannes is a man of few words.”
“But he reads a lot,” she said. “Classics mostly.”
“You know a librarian.”
“I know the clerk at Barnes and Noble,” she said. “A former client. I think Pirannes once had another name. I think he took up reading when he was in a place where there wasn’t much to do. I think John Pirannes did something very bad and got caught.”
“You know or you think?”
“A little of both,” she said.
She touched my hand. I liked it.
“I’ve got to get home. Early meeting with a case manager. Lew, Pirannes has Adele, right?”
“Looks that way,” I said.
“There’s more?”
I took a half dozen beats before I answered.
“Her father dealt her to him.”
Sally’s head went down. She bit her lower lip and then lifted her head. Her eyes were moist. But there was anger too.
“The world would be a better place if people like Dwight Handford weren’t in it,” she said.
I didn’t disagree.
“But not only are they in it selling their daughters, molesting their daughters and beating their wives, the courts give them… I’ve got to get home. Here.”
She reached for a napkin, took a pen out of her purse, gave it a click and wrote something. She handed it to me.
“It’s in Palmetto,” she said. “I think that’s where he lives. The Sarasota address he gave was to get Adele into Sarasota High.”
“Thoughtful father,” I said, folding the napkin and putting it carefully in my pocket.
I drove her home. We didn’t say much on the way.
“You feeling… awkward?” she asked when we were about half a mile from her apartment complex.
