Ames was making his daily stop at Lew’s office-home to pick up the mail, see if anything needed fixing or cleaning up. Ames’s scooter was parked in the Dairy Queen lot about thirty feet from the bottom of the concrete stairs and rusting railing of the two-story building. Lew had helped Ames when he had shot an old betraying partner on South Lido Beach. They had been friends since and just two days before Lew had left for Chicago, the two had sat at a table in the Texas Bar and Grille where Ames worked keeping the place clean and where he lived in a small room next to the exit near the kitchen. They had celebrated Ames’s seventy-fourth birthday with a beer. No one else had been invited. No one had been told. Lew had given Ames the latest biography of one of Ames’s heroes, Zachary Taylor.
“Fonesca?” said the man on the phone.
“No.”
“Is he there?”
“No.”
“Will he be there soon?”
“Don’t know.”
“Where is he?”
“Couldn’t say for sure.”
“Can I reach him? It’s important, very important.”
“Name and number,” said Ames.
“Earl Borg. Tell him dogs and hogs. He’ll know.”
“Dogs and hogs,” Ames wrote on the pad of lined paper he had brought and placed next to the phone.
Lew worked with worn-down pencils, writing on the backs of envelopes and flyers. His notes, including addresses and phone numbers, were stacked neatly in the bottom drawer of the desk.
Borg gave Ames the phone number and address.
“It is extremely urgent. A life is… just have him call me.”
“You got troubles, maybe I can give you a hand till he gets back.”
“You are…?”
“Ames McKinney.”
“And you…?”
“Work with Lewis sometimes,” said Ames.
A double beat and then Borg hung up.
Ames looked around the room, the outer room. There wasn’t much to do. There wasn’t much in the room to clean, straighten or fix. Ames had turned the window air conditioner on low when he had arrived. He had swept and straightened the lone painting on the wall, the painting by Stig Dalstrom was of a dark jungle with a hint of a moon blocked by black mountains. The only color was a small yellow-and-red flower. The painting was Lew. No doubt.
He had checked the other room, the small space with a closet that Lew called home. That space, Ames knew, would be neat and clean, everything in place, a cell waiting for inspection.
Lew had left his sister’s phone number with Ames, Ann, Flo and Adele. Ames picked up the phone and dialed.
Victor Lee’s house was in a three-year-old development called Oak Branch Park, two-story frame and brick family houses on lanes that circled, separating every seven or eight houses into discrete cul-de-sacs.
Three children about seven or eight years old, two girls and a boy, wearing sweaters and giggling, ran in the driveway. Lew parked and walked up the brick path.
One of the girls, a pretty, giggling girl who might be Lee’s child, ran in front of him, looked up, shrugged her shoulders, said, “Excuse me,” and ran on with the other two children in pursuit.
He pushed the button next to the door and a chime echoed inside. He waited and pushed again. When the door opened, a woman in her late thirties opened it and looked at him.
“Mrs. Lee?”
She was pretty, Chinese, dressed in a business suit and wary of the sad-eyed man wearing a baseball cap.
“Yes.”
“Is Mr. Lee home?”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t live here anymore.”
Lew said nothing. Waited.
“He hasn’t lived here for almost two years,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” Lew said.
“So am I,” she said. “Who are you?”
“I just came from Mentic Pharmaceuticals. This is Mentic’s address for your husband.”
“He didn’t want anyone to know,” she said. “He was, is, ashamed. You are the first one from the company who has ever come here. I can get a message to him if you like.”
“Where does he live?”
“He… Victor is… is this really important?” she asked, still standing in the doorway.
The children screamed behind them.
“Yes.”
She stood considering.
“When did you last see him?” Lew asked.
“More than a year, but I know he sometimes goes to our daughter’s school and watches her come out and get on the bus. He told me. We talk a little on the phone, not much. Is this something that will cause trouble for Victor?”
“If there’s trouble, it happened a long time ago,” said Lew.
“Four years?”
“Yes, four years,” said Lew.
She nodded and said, “He would never tell me, but one day he came home and he wasn’t Victor anymore, not the Victor I knew. For two years he tried, but… he sends me almost all the money from his check every month.”
Lew nodded.
“Can you give me his address?”
She hesitated and then told him the address and apartment number.
“He called me a few hours ago. He said, ‘Goodbye.’ That’s all he said. Please go there.”
Lew nodded.
Mr. Showalter,
I have moved out. Here is my check for this and next month’s rent. You may keep the deposit I put on the apartment when I moved in. I’m sorry for any inconvenience.
Victor Lee
The note and the check were inside an envelope with Mr. Showalter’s name neatly written on it. The envelope was tacked to the door of the apartment.
Lee’s apartment was on the second floor of a renovated three-story brick walk-up building in Aurora. The hallway smelled like strawberry Kool-Aid. A battle had been waged against determined mildew. The battle was being lost.
“I think that’s for me.”
A hand reached around Lew and took the note, envelope and check.
The man was about fifty, black, a compact car of a man, wearing a business suit and tie.
“Showalter?”
The man answered, “Umm” and read the note, shaking his head.
“Yes,” he said, looking up. “Ving Showalter. Who are you?”
The man could be thinking only one thing, that Lew, a little man in a jacket wearing a Cubs cap, was here to steal and had almost gotten away with the check Victor Lee had left.
“Lew Fonesca. I’m a process server.”
