The old guy drove on mumbling something.
Laura Ordette knew many things besides the fact that the duffel bag was heavy. She knew that all adults were liars. She knew that most kids were liars. She knew Reverend Scools, the pastor at her church, was a liar and stupid. The only people who didn’t lie, who didn’t have to, were the smart ones with money and power. They didn’t have to lie though maybe they did it for fun. She knew that she would grow old and die. She knew that when she died she was not going to go to heaven or hell. You just died. That was it. The rest was shit. She knew that men and boys who were old enough looked at her thinking what it would be like to have her tits pressed against their naked chests, their tongues in her mouth, their wang tall and hard inside her. Yucch. Laura Ordette was above that. If people were all animals, and that’s what she believed, the ones who were worth breathing were the ones who stayed above being breeding animals distracting themselves while they waited to get old and die.
Laura Ordette was going to New York. She knew the bus schedule. She had called to be sure there would be a seat. Laura Ordette was going to New York, the daughter of a wealthy Concord family who disdained their money and pleas and walked out to make it on her own. She would become a writer, a Broadway ticket seller, a greeter at some big art gallery on Fifth Avenue. She would go for that job in her one good dress, all made-up, tell them how she was going to New York University at night, and get the job. She was going to get her own room. She was going to meet rich, smart people, see a real play, speak in a voice nothing like that of Sherry whose name she was already forgetting as she had forgotten what her father had done to her, what her mother had said. No, not her father. That Sherry’s father, that weak, whining Sherry’s father and mother. Laura Ordette’s parents were upstanding, supportive, there for her if she wanted to go back.
When she hit State 70 she put the duffel bag down. It had D. Stephens stenciled on it in black. Laura would get rid of it when she got to her home in New York. About two blocks down she could see the sign for the bus station. She lifted the duffel bag again and waited till the traffic let her cross.
She was happy. She was on her way. Then why was she crying?
Two hours had passed and I was almost finished with the book. I stopped after the scene in which Laura dumps the fully clothed drunken high school English teacher into his bath of cold water.
No one had come in or out of the Lonsberg fort. I headed for the nearest pay phone. That took me all the way back to a gas station on the Trail. I called the Texas Bar and Grille on Second Street. Big Ed Fairing answered the phone.
“Ed, is Ames there?”
“He’s here. I’ll call him.”
I heard Ed bellow for Ames above the late-afternoon beer and burger crowd.
“He’s coming,” said Ed. “You know they’re creeping up on me, Fonesca?”
“Who?”
“Developers,” he said. “This used to be a perfectly respectable run-down street with some character. Now, art galleries, Swedish tearooms, antique shops. They’re creeping up. The upscaling of downtown is taking away its character. We’ll be looking like St. Armand’s Circle in two years. People have no sense of history. You know what they’re putting in next door? I mean, right next door where the cigar store was?”
“A tanning salon?” I guessed.
“No, Vietnamese fingernail place,” he said. “That’ll bring in a lot of business. Here’s Ames.”
“McKinney,” Ames said in his deep and slightly raspy western Sam Elliott drawl.
Ames is tall, white-haired, grizzled, lean, brown, and almost seventy-five years old. Ames was not supposed to bear arms. It was a right he had lost after using an ancient Remington Model 1895 revolver to kill his expartner in a duel on the beach in the park at the far south end of Lido Key. Ames had hired me to find his expartner who had run away with all the money in the bank and everything he could sell from the company he and Ames owned, a company worth forty million dollars. Ames was ruined. The bank took the company. Ames with a few thousand dollars in his pocket had tracked the partner for more than a year on buses from Arizona to St. Louis and then to Sarasota. I had found the partner. I tried to stop the two old men from dueling. I failed but I was there when it happened and testified that the expartner had fired first. Ames got off with a few minor felony counts and two months in jail. He now believed that he owed me. He never got any money back but he felt that I had helped him regain his self-respect.
Ames had a job at the Texas Bar and Grille, a room in back, and a motor scooter. He also had access to Ed Fairing’s considerable collection of old rifles and handguns that Ames kept in perfect working order.
Ames considered me his responsibility. He was probably also the closest thing I had to a friend.
“Ames, Adele is missing,” I said.
“Run off?”
Ames was with me all through the ordeal with Adele and her parents. Ames had gotten along particularly well with Adele’s mother Beryl. When Beryl died, Ames rode shotgun at my side, literally, when we got Adele back from her life on the North Trail. When Ames looked at Adele with disapproval, Adele’s inventive foul language disappeared. There was something about the old man that made people want to earn his respect.
“I don’t know,” I said. “You know the Burger King on 301, near the Ringling School?”
“Know it,” he said.
“Kid works there named Mickey. Don’t know his last name. Must be about twenty. See if you can track him down, find out where he lives. Adele might be with him.”
“If I find her?” he asked.
“Leave a message on my machine,” I said. “You ever hear of a writer named Conrad Lonsberg?”
“I have.”
“He lives out on Casey Key. He might know something about Adele. I’m waiting for him.”
“Want help?”
Which meant, do you want me to come down there with a shotgun, break down the door, and threaten the noted man of letters.
“Not yet,” I said. “You read any of his books?”
“Liked Plugged Nickels” said Ames. “Didn’t read the poetry. The first one, Fool’s… something.”
“ Fool’s Lover,” I said.
“Fool’s Love,” he said. “Couldn’t get through it. Too much feeling sorry for everybody.”
“It’s considered a classic,” I said.
“Not by me,” Ames said.
“Can’t say I’m looking forward to finishing it,” I said.
“Put it away. Try Plugged Nickels if you have to read him. I’ll call you.”
I hung up, got back into the Cutlass, and drove over the bridge. It was almost dark when I parked across from Lonsberg’s gate. Across the Gulf of Mexico I could see the sun balanced big and yellow-red on the horizon line. A white heron flew in from the water and landed about a dozen feet from the car. It strutted, long-necked, gracefully, and then stood as still as a pink lawn flamingo. I was watching the sun beaming off the heron till the bird decided to look at me and fly back out over the water. I watched the sunset. A few seconds after it was down I heard the gate open.
It was on some kind of automatic device like a garage door. A battered blue Ford pickup rumbled out and the gates closed behind it. I had my lights off though it was dark enough to use them. I followed whoever was in the Ford down the road, off the Key, and over the bridge toward the mainland.
I stayed far enough behind that I hoped he wouldn’t see me but close enough that I wouldn’t lose him. He wasn’t going fast. Since the windows of the pickup were tinted, I couldn’t see who was driving but at least it was a human from the Lonsberg enclave. It was a start.
The pickup went north and turned into the mall just before Sarasota Square and parked near the Publix. I parked in the next aisle.
A lean, average-sized man with white hair, gray chinos, and a black short-sleeved polo shirt got out. The shirt wasn’t tucked in. I knew Lonsberg was about seventy. This man walked like a man twenty years younger and in a hurry. I followed. He got a cart at Publix. So did I. I followed him around and got a few decent looks. The face was sun-darkened, lined, good teeth that looked real, a serious look. He selected grits, eggs, cheese, a wide variety of vegetables, meat, chicken, fresh grouper, and a big jar of Vita herring in sour cream. He added six gallons of bottled water and six half gallons of Diet Dr Pepper before deciding he had all he needed or wanted. His eyes met no one’s and no one seemed to take note of him.
