“Lewis Fonesca,” I said.
“You found her?”
“No, but I’m getting close. Maybe another two days, three at the most.”
“She’s still in the area?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive,” I said.
“Find her as fast as you can,” he said. “Find her by tomorrow and I double your fee.”
“It’ll take at least two days,” I said.
He sighed.
“Two days then.”
“Possibly three.”
He hung up.
I made another call.
“Texas Bar and Grill,” came Ed Fairing’s voice in the Texas drawl he had picked up from the movies.
“It’s Fonesca,” I said. “Ames there?”
“I’ll get him.”
“Can you spare him for an hour or two?”
“He’s his own man,” said Ed.
About a minute later Ames answered the phone.
“Yes.”
“Ames, did you clean up my office this morning?”
“Yes. Watched the police leave, came in, went.”
“You see a woman outside or inside my office? Beautiful woman?”
“No.”
“Beryl Tree’s dead.”
Silence.
“Ames?”
“Here,” he said.
“She was killed in my office.”
“It was her blood then, her blood I cleaned up? How’d she die?”
“I don’t think you want to know.”
“I want to know, Lewis.”
“Tire iron. I think I know where her daughter is. I think I’m going to go get her. You want to come?”
“I do,” he said.
“Might want to bring a weapon,” I said.
“I mean to,” he said. “She with the person who killed Ms. Tree?”
“I don’t know.”
“I hope so,” he said.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“I’ll be out in front.”
There were three people in shawls in my dream. Ann Horowitz was one. I had a feeling Ames McKinney was another.
“Ames was waiting in front of the Texas. He was wearing a slicker over his denims and flannel shirt. It didn’t look like rain and it wasn’t cold, but I knew there was a very deep pocket inside the slicker, probably deep enough for a short or sawed-off shotgun.
Ames climbed in and closed the door.
“I plan to shoot him if it’s the one who killed Ms. Tree,” he said. “Thought I’d just tell you up front.”
“I appreciate it,” I said, “but I can’t take you with me if that’s the only choice you have.”
I was on the way down Fruitville to 41.
“I’ll hold off then,” he said.
That was the end of our conversation. I considered turning on the radio and decided against it. I made a right turn off of 41, drove past high-rises and over the bridge to Bird Key, and then kept going to St. Armand’s Circle. The circle was alive with tourists. I swerved to avoid hitting a horse-drawn tourist carriage and then headed toward Longboat Key, over another bridge and down Gulf of Mexico Drive, the only road on the eleven-mile-long island.
Longboat is money. Resorts and high-rise beach condos on my left, very private home developments on my right. Wealthy French and Germans lived here in the winter. Movie stars had million-dollar retreats, and John Pirannes and others like him quietly sold damaged people, tainted land, and decaying schemes of wealth.
I pulled up to the guard gate at the Beach Tides Resort, rolled down my window and smiled.
“Mr. Pirannes is expecting us,” I said.
The guard was old, but he wasn’t stupid. He looked at Ames, who was staring ahead, and went into his glassed-in hut to call. He was back out in about thirty seconds.
“No answer,” he said. “Sorry.”
“I just have a-”
“Sorry,” the guard said as if he were truly sorry.
I backed up, turned around and went back out on Gulf of Mexico Drive, where I did what I should have done in the first place. I drove to the small shopping mall a quarter of a mile down, pulled in and parked. Not much was open, but there were other cars. Ames and I walked back to the Beach Tides Resort, hoping a cop wouldn’t stop us and ask questions. We kept close to the trees and found an opening in the shrubs we could get through. Security at the resort was fine as long as you tried to get through the front gate, but few of the resorts had fences or walls all the way around them.
My guess was that security was better at night, but I saw no signs of cameras in the trees. The Beach Tides Resort was badly in need of a security consultant.
We moved around a small pond where a white heron was dozing. A few dozen yards past a barbecue pit we hit the beach. I took off my shirt, slung it over my shoulder, and sauntered down the shore with Ames at my side.
“You’re a big retired movie star,” I said, waving at a trio of kids building a castle of white sand. “A cowboy like John Wayne.”
“All the same to you,” he said. “I’ll think Buck Jones.”
The three kids stopped building and looked at Ames. A jogger in bare feet, red swimsuit and a white T-shirt with Betty Boop reclining on his chest glanced at us as he passed and left footprints in the sand. I laughed as if Ames had just said something hilarious. Ames just looked forward. I was beginning to think that bringing Ames along was not such a good idea. In fact, my coming at all was probably not a good idea, but all I could think of was the fourteen-year-old girl whose picture was in my wallet, her dead mother, her father who had sold her, and John Pirannes who had bought her.
When we came up behind the Beach Tides on the beach, we walked around the pool, where a single old man treaded water, nodding at us as we passed.
We tried three buildings, checking names in the lobby, avoiding the security people who rode around on little golf carts. In the third building, we found a J. Pirannes and I pushed the button.
No answer.
I pushed again. This time a girl answered and said.
“Hello.”
“John Pirannes, please,” I said.
“He can’t come to the phone,” she said.
“Why?”
“I think he’s dead,” she said.
“Adele?”
“Yes.”
