“Off the record, Mrs. Free,” I said, “Mr. Trasker is dying and I think you know it.”
She nodded. She knew.
“You really think he’ll vote against opening the Pass?” she asked.
“Good authority,” I said. “A black man of the cloth.”
“Fernando Wilkens,” she said with a sigh that showed less respect than resignation.
“You’re not a big fan of the reverend?”
“I’d rather say that he serves the community when that service benefits Fernando Wilkens,” she said. “Fortunately, the two are generally compatible.”
“You know him well?”
“I know him well enough.”
She looked away. She understood. The sigh was long and said a lot, that she was considering risking her job, that she was about to give away things a secretary shouldn’t give away.
“One condition,” she said, folding her hands on the desk. “You are not to tell where you got this information.”
“I will not tell,” I said.
“For some reason, I believe you,” she said. “God knows why. You’ve got that kind of face.”
“Thanks.”
“You’ve heard of Kevin Hoffmann,” she said.
“I’ve heard,” I said.
“He has a large estate on the mainland across from Bird Keys,” she said. “Owns large pieces of land all along Little Sarasota Bay.”
“So he’d make money if the Pass was opened.”
“Now boats have to go five miles past the Pass site to the end of Casey Key and then come up Little Sarasota Bay another fiveplus miles.”
“I get it.”
“Only part of it,” she said. “If the Pass opens, a lot of Kevin Hoffmann’s property, now a bog, could be turned into choice waterside home sites. Trasker Construction has done almost all of the work for Kevin Hoffmann. It’s been said that Mr. Trasker is in Kevin Hoffmann’s pocket. It’s also been said that Hoffmann is in Mr. Trasker’s pocket. They are certainly close business associates and have been for many years.”
“It’s been said,” I repeated. “You think Hoffmann’s done something to Trasker to keep him from voting against opening the Pass?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him.”
“You’ve put some thought into this,” I said.
“Some,” she admitted, adjusting her glasses. “You can check out Kevin Hoffmann’s holdings in the tax office right downtown,” she said. “Which would be more than the local media have done.”
“Thanks,” I said, getting up.
“No need,” she said, rising and accompanying me down the hall. “We haven’t had this conversation. I’ve told you nothing.”
“Nothing,” I agreed.
“Why doesn’t Mrs. Trasker like you?” I asked.
“Five years ago when I came to work here,” she said, “Mr. Trasker was looking less for a competent secretary than a possible sexual conquest. By the time he realized that he would not be permitted to even touch me, he had also realized that I was probably invaluable to the business. Mrs. Trasker is a smart woman. I’m sure she knew what had been on her husband’s mind. I’m also reasonably sure that she knew he had failed, but Mrs. Trasker is a vain woman not likely to be kindly disposed toward any woman her husband found attractive.”
When we stood in front of the receptionist’s desk, she shook my hand and said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you, Mr. Fonesca, but I will give Mr. Trasker your name and number as soon as he returns.”
It was almost four, but I drove up Swift and made good pre-rush hour time. Rush hour in Sarasota was still not a big problem, compared to Chicago or even Dubuque, but it slowed me down.
I got to the parking lot in front of Building C in a complex of identical three-story buildings marked A, B, C, and D off of Fruitville and Tutle. It was just before four-thirty.
Building C housed some of the offices of Children’s Services of Sarasota. Buildings A, B, and D had a few empty office spaces but most were filled by dentists, urologists, investment advisers, a jeweler, an estate appraiser, a four-doctor cardiology practice, and three allergists.
John Gutcheon was at the downstairs reception desk, literally twiddling his thumbs. John was thin, blond, about thirty, and very openly gay. His sharp tongue was his sole protection from invaders of his life choice. His world was divided into those who accepted him and those who did not accept him.
I was on John’s good list, so I got fewer verbal barbs than a lot of Children’s Service parents, who usually sullenly and always suspiciously brought in the children they had been charged with abusing. He looked up at me and shook his head.
“That cap has got to go,” he said. “You are not a hat person and only real baseball players and gay men with a certain elan can get away with it. You look like an emaciated garbageman or, to be more socially correct, an anorexic sanitary engineer.”
“Good afternoon, John,” I said. “She’s expecting me.”
“Good afternoon,” he answered. “I’m glad you prepared her. Are you saving someone today or are you going to try to pry Sally away from her caseload for dinner? She could use the respite.”
“Both.”
“Good. I’ll sign you in.”
“Thanks.”
“It’s been drearily quiet here today,” he said, looking out the window at the cars in the parking lot. “I’m giving serious thought to moving.”
“Key West?” I asked.
John rolled his eyes up to the ceiling.
“No,” he said. “Care to try for a second stereotype?”
“San Francisco,” I tried.
“You are a George Sanders-level cad, Fonesca,” he said. “Providence, Rhode Island, the city of my birth, the birth of my life which still puzzles my parents.”
“Providence,” I repeated.
“My parents are very understanding people,” he explained. “Very liberal. They walked out on Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? when they first saw it. Couldn’t accept that a beautiful man like Sidney Poitier, who played a world-famous, wealthy, and brilliant surgeon, would be in love with that dolt of a white girl.”
“I get the point. You know any good jokes, John?”
“Hundreds,” he said, opening his arms to indicate the vastness of his comic memory.
“Tell me one.”
He did. I wrote it down in my notebook.
“Flee,” he said with a wave of his right hand when I finished writing. “Your lady awaits.”
He pulled the clipboarded sign-in sheet on his desk and began to carefully enter my name.
I took the elevator up to the second floor unannounced and went through the glass doors.
In most businesses, with the clock edging toward five, the employees would be in the act of preparing for their daily evacuation. Not here. The open room the size of a baseball infield was vibrating with voices from almost every one of the small cubicles that served as office space for the caseworkers.
Most of the workers I passed were women, but there were a few men. Some of the workers were on the phone. One woman looked at me in a dazed state and ran a pencil through her thick curly hair as she talked on the phone. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back.
“Then when will you and your wife be at home?” she asked.
Never, I thought. Never.
Sally’s cubicle was big enough for her to sit facing her desk with one person seated to her left.
The person sitting was a thin black woman in a sagging tan dress. She was worn out, clutching a little black purse against her small breasts. She looked up at me with tired eyes as Sally spoke to a boy of about thirteen
