“I’ll clean up the mess you made. It’s too late for the apology.”

“They’ll clean it up,” Dave said. “It’s their mess, Lew.”

I shrugged.

“Then how about I give you each five bucks.”

“Why not?” said the mediator, moving between Dave and Jason and heading for me.

I pulled out my wallet and give him five singles. I would charge the payoff to Carl Sebastian. There was no point in asking them about Melanie Sebastian. She was in a different league.

“Sarasota High,” said the kid, who was blond and reasonably good-looking except for some much-needed dental work.

“She goes to Sarasota High School?”

“She did,” he said. “I haven’t seen her around the last three, four weeks, somethin’, you know?”

“Not enough,” I said, though it was a start.

“That’s what I know. You guys know what happened to Easy Adele?” he asked.

Jason smirked. The third kid said, “She said she was living with her father. I don’t know where. She was whorin’ on North Trail. I seen her. By the motels, you know?”

“I know,” I said.

The kid in front of me backed away and Dave repeated calmly,

“Pick up your mess.”

Jason was the last to bend over and start the job.

After the three had driven off, taking time to screech the brakes and throw Dave and me the finger, I got a fish sandwich, a burger and a cherry Blizzard. There was no one waiting in line behind me. A couple with a small girl had disappeared when Dave came out of the DQ.

“They’re not bad,” he said. “Just stupid. I don’t like that kind of stupid.”

Dave got my sandwiches and cherry Blizzard and started to read the article.

I went across the parking lot and up the stairs to my laundry basket-sized two rooms with a view of 301 from each.

I turned on the lights, looked at the whirling air conditioner and sat down at the desk in the outer office to check the Sarasota and Bradenton phone book for Dwight Handford. There was nothing. I didn’t expect there would be. I tried Dwight Tree. Nothing.

While I worked on my dinner and watched the ice cream melt in my float, I called the Best Western and asked for Beryl Tree’s room, 204. She answered on the second ring.

“Yes,” she said.

I could hear a television in the background. I thought I recognized the Hollywood Squares music.

“Lew Fonesca,” I said.

“Yes?”

“I haven’t found her yet but I have a lead. It looks like you might be right. I think she was is or was staying with her father.”

“Oh.”

“She did go to a high school here, at least for a while. I’ll go over there in the morning. They may not want to give me any information so I might have to get you to talk to them.”

“I’ll be here all day,” she said. “I’ll just get something to eat and bring it back to the room.”

“I’ll call tomorrow,” I said. “Good night.”

I took off my clothes, touched the stubble on my face, put on my YMCA shorts and a University of Illinois T- shirt and moved into my back room. I had what was left of my food and my Blizzard. I had the folder on Melanie Sebastian and I had a tape of Charade I’d bought two days before for two dollars at Vic’s Pawn Shop on Main Street.

While I watched Cary Grant searching for Carson Dyle, I started a folder on Adele Tree. So far there wasn’t much in it, a photograph and the few notes I was now writing. I had a feeling the folder would grow.

I was working. Two cases. Lots of questions. My grandfather, my mother’s father, played the mandolin. He used to say that the mandolin held the answers. He never made it clear what the questions were. I liked listening to him play old Italian folk songs, songs he made up, even an Elvis tune. He particularly liked “Love Me Tender.” He lost himself in the mandolin. Closed his eyes and listened to the answers.

“It all ties together,” he would say, eyes closed, mind who knows where.

I heard the mandolin in my head. It asked questions. I had two clients who had lost someone close to them. Carl Sebastian, who had chosen me on a chance recommendation, had lost his wife. I had lost my wife. Maybe I could find his. Beryl Tree had lost a daughter. My wife hadn’t lived long enough to have a daughter. So, I had lost a daughter or son.

Fonesca, I told myself, you can be a morbid son-of-a-bitch. Think of something you like, something that makes you happy, or at least content. Think of movies with William Powell and Cary Grant and Jean Arthur. Think of an order of ribs from Luny’s back on Division Street in Chicago. Think of mountains with white caps. You like mountains with white caps.

Think of getting back to work and finding people. Worry about finding yourself later.

3

Sarasota High School was within walking distance of my office-home. I took the car. There were places to go, people to see, things to do and concentrate on.

After I had shaved, washed myself and brushed my teeth in the second-floor rest room six doors down from my office, I put on clean tan slacks and a short-sleeved white shirt and one of my basic bland ties. I’ve got one brown, one blue and one gray with Mickey Mouse embroidered on it (a gift from a client with a sense of something he thought was humor) and a Salvador Dali tie with melting clocks and distant rocks. This morning I wore the basic brown. I wore my glasses. The only time I normally wore my glasses was when I was driving, but sometimes I wore them in the belief, mistaken or not, that they made me look more like a professional something.

Before I left, I called the office of Geoffrey Green, M.D., psychiatrist to the well-to-do. I wondered what a conversation between Green and Ann Horowitz would sound like.

The receptionist who answered was pleasantly sympathetic when I said I had a problem. She asked me who had referred me to Dr. Green and I said Melanie Sebastian. I told her I needed only a few minutes of his time.

“One moment, please,” she said.

I stood at my window waiting and watching the morning traffic on 301. Across the street was a bar called the Crisp Dollar Bill. It was in a sagging building and the once bright-red sign, according to Dave, had long ago faded to a sickly pink. Next to the bar was a small two-story building with a dance studio on the second floor. The studio had large glass windows. Once in a while I would stand on the balcony, maybe lean on the railing and watch people waltz.

South of the bar there was a consignment shop and a few other stores. Behind these businesses were the last vestiges of the wall of the old White Sox spring-training stadium.

The Sox had moved to Ed Smith Stadium on Twelfth Street before I broke down in Sarasota. In the summer, the Minor League Sarasota White Sox had played at Ed Smith and the town had boasted that Michael Jordan had briefly lived in town, a one-season drawing card. The Sox had moved out and the Cincinnati Reds had moved in. I still hadn’t gone to a baseball game.

“Mr. Fonesca?” the receptionist chimed.

“Yes.”

“Dr. Green can see you for a few minutes at one o’clock today. Can you make that?”

“Yes.”

“Come about ten minutes early to fill out some forms.”

“Okay. I’ll be there.”

I hung up. I’d let her hold on to the illusion that I was a potential patient until it got to the point where I might be billed. I couldn’t afford that bill. If I had a leg and one arm in the door, I knew how to squeeze my way

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