“Who is he?”
“Homeless, sometimes. Tried working at McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried, Burger King. All dumped him. Ed Fairing tried him as a bartender for a few days. You read Omar Khayyam?”
“Not recently,” I said as we drove east on Main Street.
“What does the vintner buy half so precious as that he sells,” Ames said.
“Nuttley drank more than he sold,” I said.
“Lasted two or three days. Ed gave him a few dollars and walked him out the door. Sun’s up, weather’s warm. Got a few places to try. Five Points first.”
I turned the car around and headed back to Five Points Park. A group of the homeless, a small group, heads down, were sitting on the grass across the street from the Golden Apple Dinner Theater. I slowed down.
“The one with his hands in his pockets,” said Ames.
I parked illegally, leaving Ames in the Taurus, and ran over to the small group. Nuttley looked up at me with clear eyes silently saying, “What’s the world going to do to me now?”
I handed the folded paper to the bewildered man and hurried back to the car where I filled in the form stating I had delivered all three of the papers.
We brought the form back to Werring’s office where his secretary prepared a check and took it in for the boss’s signature. She was back in less than a minute.
“New record,” she said.
“I got places to go and people to see,” I explained. “Starting with Harvey.”
Ames and I went down the corridor and into Harvey’s computer room. The counter next to him was lined with cans of Sprite.
“I did it in forty minutes,” he said, proudly handing me a brown clasped envelope. It felt as if it contained a magazine. “I can probably get more but I don’t know what it would be worth.”
“We’ll see after I read this,” I said.
“You just serve some papers?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Dinner at Michael’s at the Quay, Friday,” he said. “You pay. We can go early and catch the early bird specials.”
“If I’m in town,” I said.
“I’m bringing a date,” he said.
Harvey was a good-looking man and now a sober man. He had told me that he was staying away from women until he felt alcohol-safe. So either he did feel safe or he was taking a chance. Either way, I owed him. I would see if Sally was available.
“Use your phone?” I asked.
Harvey nodded and went back to his computer screen.
I got Sally at her desk after the fifth ring.
“Lew,” I said.
“She didn’t call,” she said. “I’m going to have to turn her in.”
“One more day,” I said. “I want to go over some things with you first. I’ve got an idea or something that resembles one. This evening?”
“I’ll probably be out on cases or in my office late tonight,” she said. “I’ve got a client and her kids with me right now.”
“It’s important,” I said.
“My office, seven o’clock,” she said and hung up.
I checked my watch. Just enough time to drop Ames back at the Texas, read what Harvey had dug up, and get to Lonsberg’s.
“Been a busy day,” I said to Ames when he stepped out of the car.
“You know where to find me,” he said.
I nodded and watched him go into the Texas. Then I opened the envelope Harvey had given to me and began to read. It didn’t take long. With the remains of Conrad Lonsberg’s two manuscripts and the envelope with the material from Harvey, I got some gas and headed toward Casey Key fairly sure of what was going on now, but needing Sally to fit one more piece together if she could. I needed the world’s foremost expert on Adele. Sally was it.
I got to Lonsberg’s five minutes late. There was a car parked near the gate, a blue Toyota a few years old. When I parked, a kid in jeans, a white shirt, and a blue blazer jumped out of the Toyota. A camera dangled around his neck. He ran like an athlete and looked like one, a young Paul Newman, but this guy had the nose of my uncle Guiliarmo, big, arched. It gave him the look of a preening bird.
“Fonesca?” he said when he approached, no sign of being out of breath.
“Rubin?” I guessed.
He nodded and took my picture before I could protest.
“Lewis Fonesca in front of Conrad Lonsberg’s house,” he said. “I’ve got enough. You want to give me a little more? Your explanation?”
“I’m a process server,” I said.
“And you’re serving all those papers under your arm to Conrad Lonsberg?”
“No comment,” I said, heading for the door.
“You get my message on your machine?” he asked, taking another picture.
“I got it,” I said. “No comment.”
He took another picture.
“We can deal here,” the kid said. “I give you this roll of film if (a) you get Lonsberg to talk to me, (b) you talk to me, or (c) you give me something, documents, something I can go on.”
“I like your tenacity,” I said, pushing Lonsberg’s bell.
“Then?”
“Publish and be damned,” I said.
Rubin smiled and readied his camera. I heard the crackling over the speaker that let me know someone was on the other side.
“Fonesca,” I said. “A reporter is camped out here. If you don’t want your picture taken, don’t show yourself when you open the door.”
I turned to Rubin who shrugged.
“Tenacity,” he said. “Eventually I’ll get it.”
“You’re wasting your time sitting here,” I said.
“My day off,” he answered. “We’re a New York Times paper. I can get a story like this on the wire, in the Times, byline. Get invited back to my Journalism Department at the University of Missouri to tell how it’s done. I like my work, Mr. Fonesca. I’m staying with it.”
The door opened a crack and I jumped in knowing Rubin was taking my picture as I did so.
“You’re late,” said Lonsberg. Jefferson was at his side looking up at me and panting. I thought of the dead pit bull at Merrymen’s. I thought of the dead Merrymen. I thought of the shell Jefferson and Lonsberg had given me and I thought of the brown packet and fragments of manuscript I handed him.
We walked back to the house saying nothing. Lonsberg looked at the manuscripts but didn’t read them. He took the pages out of the brown envelope Harvey had given me. He scanned a few pages before we reached the house.
Lonsberg’s pickup was parked in front of the house. Two little girls were jumping in the back of the pickup enough to make it rock. Jefferson looked at them for an instant and then accompanied us into the house where his daughter Laura sat in an uncomfortable-looking wooden chair with a drink in her hand.
“Mr. Fonesca,” she said. “Would you like some iced tea?”
I said I would and she went to get it as Lonsberg took the same chair she had left though there were more comfortable-looking ones in the room. He slowly went through Harvey’s report. Laura returned with the tea and handed it to me. I said thanks and we sat watching Lonsberg read as we listened to Lonsberg’s granddaughters screaming in the truck outside.
When he was finished, he laid the report on top of the manuscript fragments on a nearby table and looked up
