Adele had shot Pirannes and her father was killed by… but that story’s over. With the help of family therapist and friend Sally Porovsky, I had managed to have Adele taken in by Flo as a foster child. Adele had gone straight. Adele was doing well at Sarasota High School, even won a few prizes for poetry and stories, one of which was published in Sarasota City Tempo magazine. Adele’s story was about an abused girl who runs away from her family and finds salvation and respect as a waitress. I liked the story. I didn’t like the message from Flo. Flo had given up her love affair with alcohol for the chance to take in Adele. I didn’t know with certainty how tempting the memory of the comfort of gin might be and Flo’s voice was a toss-up between tipsy and distraught. Adele wasn’t easy. Before I called Flo, I opened Marvin Uliaks’s album.
Marvin’s album contained eighty photographs and a few postcards and newspaper clippings. Under each photograph Marvin had neatly printed in pencil the name of the person or persons or things in the photographs. No dates. I went through photographs of parents, aunts, uncles, people I supposed were friends, pictures of people clipped from magazines and newspapers including Mario Van Peebles, Al Unser, Bette Midler, Lionel Hampton, the Marlboro Man, Lainie Kazan, Bruce Cabot, and Douglas MacArthur. There were a few dozen of Marvin as he aged from golden childhood to gradual nearly blank homeliness. In each photograph, Marvin was smiling or grinning. He looked better smiling. There were also six photographs of Vera Lynn. In the most recent one she looked about eighteen, a pretty girl in a white Sunday dress with a big white bow in her short blond hair. Marvin’s little sister would be in her mid-forties now.
I read the one letter in the album, the one Marvin had shown me. It didn’t help much. It was postmarked Dayton, Ohio. It was in pencil, short, written simply in block letters for a slow-witted brother or by a slow-minded sister.
DEAR MARVIN,
CHARLES AND I ARE MARRIED. WE ARE GOING TO MOVE. FORGIVE ME. I’LL WRITE AGAIN.
YOUR SISTER, VERA LYNN
Vera Lynn’s printing was clear. Finding her might be easy or impossible. If I ran into emptiness, I could simply give Marvin his album back. I wouldn’t insult him by trying to return the forty dollars.
I decided to call Richard Tycinker’s office first. I got his secretary Janine who told me the papers were ready for me to pick up for delivery.
“Bubbles Dreemer slapped me in the face when I slapped her with the papers,” I said.
“Part of the job, Lewis,” she said.
Janine was black, in her late thirties, raising two kids alone and managing to look like a model. Sympathy was not part of her job description.
“I was telling you so you could make a note in her file for the next person who served her papers,” I explained.
“If it happens,” she said, “it will probably be you.”
“I’ll deliver it in a hockey mask,” I said.
“Summons delivered by Michael Myers,” said Janine.
“Might stun her long enough for me to get away.”
“Might,” she agreed. “It would work on me.”
“Is Harvey in?” I asked.
Harvey was the official file coordinator for the firm of Tycinker, Oliver and Schwartz. His real job was unofficial computer hacker. Schwartz had offered me a retainer. I had turned down the retainer and agreed to a flat fee for each legal paper I delivered to the unwilling and often unsuspecting. Instead of the retainer, I got the use of Harvey’s talents when I needed them. Harvey had once been a successful businessman in love with alcohol, computers, and a series of three wives, all of whom eventually left him alone with his computers and the bottle. Lately he had cut out the alcohol and was spending more time on the computer, Diet Pepsi, and women. There was enough unravaged in the forty-nine-year-old Harvey to attract some very attractive women.
Harvey had a very well equipped room down a corridor near the washrooms where the lawyers and secretaries could drop by and check on whether Harvey was drinking Diet Pepsi or something stronger.
Some of what Harvey did bordered on the illegal. The firm knew it, counted on it and the signed document by Harvey that he would never engage in any illegal activity on the Internet.
Janine connected me with Harvey, who answered, “Yes?”
“It’s Lew,” I said. “Got your pen?”
“Always.”
“Vera Lynn Uliaks. Born, I think, in Ocala. Lived there till about 1970, somewhere in there. Moved to Dayton, Ohio, maybe. Probably got married there. Don’t know to who, someone named Charlie. Brother here in town, Marvin Uliaks.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” I said.
“Are we in a hurry? I’ve got a few company projects.”
“No big hurry,” I said.
“Should have it for you by tomorrow,” said Harvey. “You want to call me?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Having a bad day, Lew?” he asked.
“They’re all bad days,” I said.
“I’ve been there,” Harvey answered. “Back to work.”
He hung up. So did I.
Flo Zink was next on my short list. The phone rang once. Actually, it was only half a ring when she picked it up.
“Lew?” she asked.
There was a lot in that question. Panic with a dash of fear and maybe, just maybe, a shot of Jack Daniel’s.
“How are you, Flo?”
“How am I? How am I? How the fuck do I sound?”
“Charming,” I said.
“How fast can you get here?” she asked.
“On my bike? Half an hour.”
“Rent a car. I’ll pay.”
“Flo, what…?”
“Adele’s gone. I’m not going to spill my soul on this goddamn telephone. Get here.”
She hung up. I checked my watch. I had an appointment with Ann Horowitz in two hours. I don’t have a shower. I don’t have a sink or a toilet. I usually shower after my morning workout at the YMCA downtown, which is a ten-minute walk from my place. But there is a building rest-room outside my office and four doors down. It is not on the top ten list of facilities in Sarasota County, but it had a mirror and I had an electric razor, the same one my father had used for ten years before he died and my mother gave it to me in a box of his things. It worked well enough to get me through the day.
The thin guy in the mirror looked at me and shook his head as we shaved. I normally didn’t take a good or even passing look at the man in the mirror. His cheek was Bubbles Dreemer pink. I didn’t like meeting his sad spaniel look. I washed, brushed my teeth, combed back my remaining hair, and felt no more ready to meet the world than I had when I got up that morning.
The EZ Economy Car Rental Agency was six doors down on my side of 301. It had once been a Texaco gas station. The two guys who owned and ran the place were Alan and the older Fred. They looked like rotund cousins. They thought they had a sense of humor.
“Ah, Mr. Lewis Fonesca. How can we be of service to you today?” asked the older, pink-cheeked Fred.
Fred had a paper cup of coffee in his hand. Alan was nowhere in sight.
“Where’s Alan?” I asked.
“Home. Got Le Grippe, the flu, the bug.”
“Sorry.”
