series of tapes and CDs he loved that seemed to have nothing in common. There was Mel Torme, Verdi operas, the Pointer Sisters, Linda Ronstadt, Ruben Blades, B. B. King, Blue Grass, Dinah Washington, Sinatra, and odd German stuff that sounded like Kurt Weill gone into a depression not far from my own. You never knew who you might hear from the Bose speakers when you entered the Crisp Dollar Bill. Right now it was Joe Williams singing “Don’t Be Mad at Me.” Billy had been a hippie, a cabdriver, and for a brief time a minor league catcher with a very minor league Detroit Tigers farm team. Best of all, Billy was not a talker. He wasn’t much of a listener either except for his large collection of tapes.
The door of the Crisp Dollar Bill opened and in walked Marvin Uliaks. Actually, you couldn’t call Marvin’s mode of transportation “walking.” It was much closer to a shuffle. In this case, a nervous shuffle.
Marvin had brought an unwelcome blast of sun behind him reminding me that there were hours to go before I could call it a day.
“Close the door,” Billy said automatically without looking up from the copy of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune laid out on the bar in front of him.
Marvin shifted the weight of the oversized book under his arm, pulled himself together, and closed the door. Then he squinted, blinked, and tried to adjust his eyes to the amber darkness.
Marvin’s nose was pushed to one side as if his face were permanently pressed against a store window. His large popping eyes made him look amazed at even the most inconsequential contact with other human beings. Marvin was short, had an unkempt mess of brown hair beginning to show gray at the temples, and was so thin that you wondered how well he could stand up against an evening breeze off the Gulf. I imagined Marvin in a hurricane, arms out, hair blowing as he went spinning in the air, a startled look on his face as he passed the same cow Dorothy had seen on her way to Oz.
Marvin had the kind of face that made people say, “He’ll never win a beauty contest.” As I was soon to discover, people were once again wrong. The great “they,” the ones we mean when we say “they say,” were often wrong but completely protected by being someone other than you and me.
Marvin’s eyes adjusted quickly and he headed straight for my booth. He dropped the huge book in front of me and sat facing me across the table. The pockets of his well-weathered denim jacket were as bulged out as his eyes. He folded his hands in front of him on the table and looked at me.
“Look at it,” Marvin said.
He was harmless and quiet, two levels below minimally bright. I pushed my Shadow videos aside and opened what was clearly an album of photographs and newspaper clippings. The first item was a newspaper clipping that said Marvin Uliaks, age three, had won the annual cutest child contest at the county fair in Ocala in 1957. The article, wiltingly Scotch-taped in the album like every other item, had a photograph of a smiling blond kid with curly hair wearing a sailor suit. The kid was pointing at the camera and beaming. Flanking the little boy were a thin, sober-looking man with a baby in his arms and a pretty brunette who was holding Marvin’s free hand. The woman wore a little hat and held her free hand up to shield out the sun. The man and woman were identified as the proud parents of Marvin.
“That’s me all right,” Marvin said, tapping a finger on the newspaper clipping. “My mother, my father, and my baby sister.
“My sister, Vera Lynn. She was named for a singer.”
“‘Till We Meet Again.’” I said.
“Don’t know where, don’t know when,” Marvin sang. Vera Lynn, the British singer during World War II, was a favorite of my father’s who made it through the war with all his organs and body parts except his right eye.
“Look at the next one,” Marvin said with excitement.
In the photograph, Marvin’s father was holding the little blond boy upside down by the ankles. The father had a little smile. The boy was grinning.
“Turn the album upside down,” Marvin said, turning the album. “See, now I look right side up and my father looks upside down.”
“You’re right,” I said, turning the album around again.
“Marvin, what…?”
“Keep looking, Mr. Fonseca. Keep looking,” he urged, turning the page.
“Fonesca,” I corrected.
“Yeah, oh, sorry. My name’s Uliaks.”
“I know,” I said, looking at several pages of photographs that meant nothing to me.
“I went to your office,” Marvin said. “You weren’t there. I went to Gwen’s. You weren’t there either. I went…”
“You found me,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, shaking his head once with pride.
“Why?” I reached for my beer.
“I want you to find Vera Lynn.”
“You want me to find your sister,” I said, putting the beer down. “I’m a process server. I find people to give them orders to appear at court or in a lawyer’s office for a deposition, or to produce documents. I’m not a private investigator.”
“You find people,” Marvin said. “I heard. Old guy at Gwen’s told me.”
“A few times,” I said. “A few times I found some people.”
“There, there she is,” he said, tapping on a photograph on the page I had just turned to. He was tapping on the color photograph of a very pretty and very well sculptured blonde in a blue dress. The girl was smiling. Her teeth looked white and perfect. I guessed she was no more than eighteen. Another girl about the same age stood next to the blonde. She was pretty, thin, wearing a red dress and no smile.
“Who’s the other one?”
Marvin craned his neck awkwardly to get a better view at the photograph with a look of amazement as if he were seeing it for the first time.
“Sarah,” he said. “She’s been dead a long time. I need to find Vera Lynn.”
He was looking at me and rocking back and forth.
“When was the last time you saw Vera Lynn?” I asked.
He bit his lower lip considering the question.
“Twenty, twenty-five years maybe. I got a letter.”
He reached over and turned the album pages quickly past yellowed notes, withering photographs, cracking postcards, matchbooks, and some candy wrappers.
“Here,” he said, triumphantly slapping the page he was looking for with the palm of his hand.
I was looking down at an envelope.
I had come to the Crisp Dollar Bill to have a sandwich, a beer, and to feel sorry for myself, not for Marvin Uliaks. I removed the letter from the envelope.
Marvin fidgeted around and leaned forward getting nearly on top of me.
“Letter’s from Vera Lynn,” he said, pointing to the neatly scripted name in the corner of the envelope I had laid aside. “She’s not in Ocala no more. She’s not in Dayton no more. I called, asked. Long time ago. I looked for her couple of times. Took the bus or a car out of Ocala after the wedding.”
I was tempted to ask Marvin about Dayton and whatever wedding he was talking about. I didn’t. Instead, I said, “This letter’s almost twenty-five years old.”
“I know. I know. I just want you to find her. Tell me where she is, is all.”
“Why?”
“Family business,” he whispered as he rocked. “Important family business. All I can say about it. Family business is all I can say.”
“Why now after all this time?” I asked.
“Somethin’s come up. Family business. I don’t want to talk about it. Please just find Vera Lynn. Let me talk to her, like just a minute. Converse.”
“Fresh beer?” Billy called from the bar.
“No, thanks,” I said.
“On me, Mr. Fonesca,” Marvin said. “On me.”
“You want privacy, Mr. F.,” Billy said from behind the bar. “I’ve got a job out back Marvin can do, cleaning out
