“I eat ham. I like ham. If God wants to punish me for eating ham, I have little use for her.”
“Tradition,” I said.
“We were talking about your unwillingness to deal with the problems you’ve taken on,” she said. “I’ll deal with my God.”
“You pray to your God?” I asked.
“I talk to my God and call it prayer. If my God talks to me, I call it schizophrenia.”
“Klaus Kinski?”
“Thomas Szasz. Let’s deal with your God.”
“I have none,” I said.
“Nonsense,” she said, chewing. “God is in your head. You created God. Deny other people’s God. Deal with your own. You have no intention of running away. If you did, you wouldn’t have called me. You would just go. You want me to talk you out of it.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You don’t have to,” she said. “I know. I’ve been doing this for fifty years. What is on that list of yours? You’ve got five minutes.”
I told her, even mentioned Jerry Lee the gator and ended with my visit to Richard McClory.
“I’m tired,” I said.
“Not sleepy?” she asked.
“Tired.”
“I’ll ask my required question now,” she said.
“No, I’m not thinking about suicide. If death wants me, I’m easy to find. I’m not running…”
“Got you,” she said. “You’re not running away from death. You are living a paradox. You want to run from your grief, but you don’t want to leave it behind. You want to just let the days go by, but you can’t do it.”
“You tricked me,” I said.
“I’m good at it. I’m not telling you anything I haven’t told you before. You listen, but you hear very little. You are a tough case, Lewis, but an interesting one. I’ve got to go. I hear my next victim coming through the outside door. Go to work, Lewis. Don’t go to sleep. Don’t go to Key West or Columbia, Missouri. Come see me next week, usual time and day.”
She hung up.
I felt better, not good but better. If I hurried, I could get to Yolanda’s grandfather’s hardware store in Bradenton. On the phone, she hadn’t sounded as if she was going to let anyone see her grief, if she had any. That was fine with me.
I drove up 41 past the Asolo, past the Sarasota/Bradenton airport, past malls, one-story chiropractic offices, dentists, Sam Ash’s music store, all the fast food franchises known to the world. I listened to Neal Boortz on WLSS. He was talking about airplanes. I’m not sure what he said.
Root’s Hardware was in a small strip mall on the north side of DeSoto. It wasn’t big. It wasn’t small either. Finding Yolanda was no problem. She stood behind the counter tallying up items for a chunky man with a freshly shaved head and a bushy mustache.
Yolanda wore a yellow tight-fitting tank top, a black skirt, a silver ring in her navel, makeup that would be right at a Halloween party and a sour look that said, What do you want?
When the man with the shaved head had gone through the door, little bell tinkling, I moved to the counter and said, “Lew Fonesca.”
She looked at me, folded her arms under her breasts and sized me up. I don’t think she was impressed. Her mouth was open. She had a silver tongue ring.
“I’m busy,” she said.
I saw no customers.
“I’ll be quick,” I said.
“The Cubs suck,” she said, nodding at my cap.
“Things change,” I said. “Know anyone who might want to hurt your brother?”
“You could have, like, asked me that on the phone.”
“I like to see people I talk to,” I said.
“So, you looking?”
She unfolded her arms and smiled. It wasn’t a friendly smile. It was a taunt. It was a tease. It was an I- know-what-men-think smile designed to put her in charge.
“You’re a pretty girl,” I said. “You don’t have to hide it.”
“Who’s hiding anything?” she said.
“Most people,” I said. “Kyle. Someone who might want to hurt him?”
“No,” she said. “You mean, like, kill? He was, like, fourteen, for God’s sake, you know?”
I didn’t answer.
“No,” she repeated.
“Anyone want to hurt you?” I asked.
“Me?” she asked, shaking her head and closing her eyes, pointing a crimson fingernail at herself. “You want to get on the list? Take a number. But no way anyone would try to get to me by killing Kyle.”
“You got along with him?”
“Sure. He was always trying to show me how he and his friend Andy had done stuff. Kid stuff. He was just, like, trying to impress me.”
“Stuff?” I said.
“Water balloons, scratching parked cars with a key or something, you know. Spitting on people from the parking garage by the Hollywood 20, stuff like that, you know. He was a kid.”
“So you liked him?” I asked.
She shrugged.
“Sure. That make a difference?”
“Yes.”
“Why? He’s dead. Like, end of his life, end of story. Go talk to his daddy.”
The word daddy dripped with venom a coral snake would envy.
“I did,” I said.
“All broken up?”
“Yes.”
“Fucking hypocrite,” she said. “He didn’t give a shit about Kyle. Just threw money at him and let him know he didn’t want to hear about any problems.”
“And your mother?”
Yolanda shrugged again.
“She’ll cry you enough tears to fill Robarts Arena. She’s an actress.”
The word actress came out with the same venom that had covered the word daddy.
“What are your plans?” I asked.
“My… what’s that got to do with anything? None of your fucking business. I haven’t decided yet. You got any ideas?”
The words were clearly provocative, words she had used on men and boys for the past four or more years.
“You’d be a good actress,” I said.
She laughed.
“I mean it,” I said.
She stopped laughing, looked at me.
“You’re not kidding, are you?”
“No.”
“I’ve thought about it,” she said. “My mother…”
The mask softened a little, but there was no time for it to drop. A man in his sixties, white hair, rugged farm look on his dark face, stepped around an aisle and moved to the counter. He was wearing dark slacks and a white shirt with a blue tie.
