“Till your way doesn’t work anymore.”
I looked at him. He didn’t look at me. He seemed to be admiring the trees and houses and, particularly, a concrete mailbox shaped like a manatee.
Sally had told me Dwight Handford worked out of a Texaco station on University Parkway, east of I-75. It was easy to find. It was a self-service place with a double-bay garage and two tow trucks. A good-looking blonde in shorts was pumping gas at one station. The others were empty.
We parked in front of the station, got out of the Geo and stepped inside. There was no one at the cash register, but there were two men working on cars beyond an open door that led to the garage. The hood of one car, a Mazda, was up. A heavyset man with a mop of white hair was leaning deep into the open mouth of the Mazda. He was wearing overalls. The heavyset man was talking to a kid in similar overalls. The older man’s voice echoed within the Mazda.
“Here, see this, right here. Leak.”
“I see,” said the kid, leaning forward.
The kid was skinny. Grease spotted his overalls.
“We’ll have to take the whole damn thing out,” said the heavyset man, easing back out from under the hood. “I told him it might happen. ‘Shit happens,’ I told him. You know what I mean, Arch?”
“I know what you mean,” the kid said. “Shit happens.”
The big man patted the kid on the back once and said,
“You’ll learn something with this one.”
The big man started to clean his hands with a cloth. He looked away from the Mazda at us.
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
“Dwight Handford,” I said.
“Don’t know the man.”
“Dwight Prescott.”
The big man gritted his teeth, looked away and said,
“He’s not here.”
“When will he be here?” I asked.
“Never,” he said. “If he shows up, I go for my gun and the phone. Son of a bitch should be locked up again.”
“You fired him?”
“Two days ago,” said the big man. “Who are you?”
“Friends of his wife,” I said.
The big man looked at Ames and then back at me.
“He’s married?”
“He was till yesterday,” I said. “She’s dead.”
“He kill her?”
Arch was fascinated by the conversation. He stood listening, mouth slightly open.
“Between you, me, Arch and my friend here, I’d say it was a good bet.”
“Violent bastard,” said the big man.
“Why did you fire him?”
“I told him to do something, go out on a call. He said he had somewhere he had to be. I was tied up with a hurry-up. Arch was off. I told Dwight to go. He started lipping off, came into my space. I had a wrench in my hand and more than a belly full of that son of a bitch.”
“You knew he had done time?” I asked.
“I did more hard time than he did, but that was some time back and for armed robbery. I’ve raised a family since. A friend asked me to give Prescott a chance. I did. He blew it.”
“You know where he is now?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “Don’t want to know. I’ve got a home address for him.”
“In Sarasota?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“I’ll take it, but I think it’s not where he really lives,” I said. “Did he ever say anything about his daughter?”
“Daughter?” asked the big man, looking at Arch.
“Adele,” said Arch.
“Yes,” I said.
“Adele is his daughter?” asked the big man.
“I figured,” said Arch.
“You didn’t tell me,” said the big man. “He had her with him two or three times. I figured she was his girlfriend, a little young, but
… the way he-”
“She’s fourteen,” I said. “Just barely.”
The big man looked at the stained cloth in his hand.
“My oldest is fifteen,” he said. “I got a late start. If old Dwight comes around, I just might go for the wrench.”
I handed him my card and said, “If he comes back and survives, I’d appreciate your giving me a call.”
“You a private detective?” he asked.
“Process server,” I said.
“You’ve got papers on Handford?”
I smiled and held out my hand.
“Fonesca,” I said.
“Lopez,” he answered, taking my hand.
Ames and I left. Dwight Handford Prescott, I thought, was developing a long pregame lineup of people who wanted him to disappear.
I considered going back to my office, but I wasn’t sure what or who might be waiting for me there.
Instead I went to the Texas Bar and Grill. It was late afternoon. There were only a few people having beers, maybe a bowl of chili here and there. The television over the bar faced toward the tables. There was a baseball game going on. It wasn’t baseball season. It looked like the rerun of a game between St. Louis and Chicago. People didn’t get tired of seeing Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa hitting home runs. It beat the news hands down.
Ames disappeared behind the bar and headed for his room.
Ed Fairing brought me a beer. I took it and moved to the telephone at the end of the bar. I called the DQ. Dave answered.
“It’s me,” I said.
“Lewis,” he said. “Business has been brisk. So have the inquiries about you and the visitors to your door. Some of the most recent visitors were the police. It’s a good day to be out on the water. There are times when I… forget it. And my suggestion is that you don’t come back here for a while. You know a guy with an Italian face, no offense, who looks like photographs of Tony Galento and drives a late-model Buick, blue?”
“I know who you mean.”
“He pulled in about half hour ago, bought a root-beer float then parked across the street in the acupuncture- and-dance-studio parking lot,” said Dave. “He finished the float and threw the container out the window. Then he sat there about twenty minutes and took off. I’m going to have to go there and pick up his mess. Can’t leave a Dairy Queen container littering a parking lot. And you wonder why I prefer the sea to land.”
“He ask about me?”
“No,” Dave said.
“If he comes back and asks, tell him… nothing.”
“That’s what I’ll tell him. Hold on. A lady with two kids is waiting for dinner.”
He was gone about two minutes.
Mark McGwire hit a home run. High-fives all around the field as he rounded third and headed for home with a
