“Look out on the right over ahead. Hardly see it, but there’s a low wooden fence and an open gate.”
Victor turned into a rutted path even narrower than the dirt road. Ahead of us about fifty yards was a mobile home with a small addition. It was a house of aluminum waiting for a hurricane to wash it away.
The closer we got the better it looked. The place was recently painted white. A small, umbrella-covered metal table with three wrought iron chairs sat in front of the mobile home’s door.
Victor parked. We got out as a man lumbered through the door and held the sides of the doorway to keep from slipping on the two steps to the ground. He was short, with a sagging belly. He wore jeans with suspenders over a blue striped polo shirt that was sucked into the folds of his neck. He was about sixty years old.
He looked at the three of us with amusement.
“A visit from a formidable trio,” he said. “A cowboy, a chink, and a gingerbread man. What brings you, and would you like a beer?”
We all said no. Pertwee shrugged and said, “So be it. What brings you here?”
“Deputy I met said you know a lot about Philip Horvecki,” said Ames.
“That I do,” said Pertwee. “And who did you say you were?”
“My name is Lewis Fonesca and I-”
“Lewis Fonesca,” he said. “Formerly an investigator in the state attorney’s office in Cook County, Illinois. You came here four years back after your wife was killed in a hit-and-run on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. The driver of the red convertible that killed her was an Asian man who has yet to be found by the police.”
“This is the man,” I said, nodding toward Victor.
Pertwee bent forward and looked up at Victor. Not much could happen that would surprise him.
“And this is Ames McKinney,” I went on.
“Four years ago, beach at Lido,” said Pertwee. “You shot your ex-partner. Fonesca was there. You did a little time. I sit out here, keep track. Retired detective, Cincinnati Police. Come on in.”
We followed the wobbling Pertwee into his house. The living room was larger than I had expected. It had the musty but not unpleasant odor of dried leaves. Family portraits hung on the walls, and the sofa and matching chair were each covered with a bright blue knitted blanket. Beyond the living room and down a step into the one-room addition to the home was an office lined with file drawers. A computer with a large screen sat next to a printer and a fax machine. There was a duplicate of the sofa in the other room complete with knitted blanket, only this blanket was brown.
“Wife’s in town at a photography class at Selby Gardens,” Pertwee said. “Won’t be back for a long while. She’ll have a portfolio full of photographs of flowers and trees when she walks through the door.”
He nodded toward the wall over the sofa. Color photographs were mounted one after another, all around the room. All the photographs were of flowers or bright fish in a pond.
Pertwee sat in front of the computer and pressed the power button. While the machine was firing up, he rose and waddled to a file cabinet, opened it, rummaged in a lower drawer, and came up with a manila file folder.
“Cold cases,” he explained as the image of a red flower appeared on his computer screen. “Sheriff’s office lets me see what I can find. Won’t find stuff like this on the Internet.”
“Horvecki was involved in a cold case?” I asked.
Victor had sat on the sofa. Ames stood at my side looking at the screen. Pertwee’s face was red with the reflected color of the flower before him.
“Two cold cases,” said Pertwee, opening the file folder and placing it on the table next to him. “First case was back in 1968. Young Horvecki was but a stripling. “Two fourteen-and sixteen-year-old black girls were raped and beaten. They were found wandering the byways. Both girls identified Horvecki as the attacker. Both later changed their minds. Case still open. Both girls are grandmas now. One’s a great grandma. One has a son who is not fond of Mr. Horvecki and has been known to speak ill of the now deceased. Son’s name is Williams, Essau Williams. Detective in the Venice Police Department. Detective Williams has been given disciplinary warnings because Horvecki claimed Williams has been stalking him for years.”
“And the other case?” I asked.
Pertwee said, “Ah” and flipped pages until he found what he was looking for.
“Here ’tis, 1988, same year Cynthia and I arrived in the State of Florida and purchased this little bit of heaven. Costs almost as much to get an Internet hookup and dish TV as it cost to buy Buddenbrooks.”
“Buddenbrooks?” I asked.
“The abode in which we sit, away from civilization in a field of rattlesnakes, raccoons, and seldom-seen rodents of unusual size and appetite. I can shoot them at my ease from one of those chairs under the umbrella. My principal physical exercise.”
“Sounds like fun,” Ames said.
“Yes, ’tis. However, all in all, I’d rather be back in Cincinnati. Cynthia, however, longed for Paradise, and we wound up here. I’m not complaining.”
“The second case in your files,” I reminded him.
He turned the page of the stapled sheets in the folder and said, “One Jack Pepper, sophomore at Riverview High School. Attacked from behind while crossing an orange grove on his way home from school. Assailant told him to pull down his pants or die. Assailant proceeded to attempt anal intercourse. Failed. Boy stepped out of his pants and drawers and ran. Pepper turned and saw the attacker coming after him. Pepper ran faster, covered himself with a damp, dirty newspaper and entered a gas station. Pepper identified Horvecki but Horvecki had the best lawyers money can buy and some friends in the right places. That was nineteen years ago. Jack Pepper is now thirty-six years old and living in relative tranquility in Cortez Village. Thrice Jack Pepper confronted our Mr. Horvecki in public places, broke his nose and cheekbone with a well-placed and probably knuckle-hurting punch, and kicked him into unconsciousness. Attempted murder, but…”
“Horvecki did not press charges,” I said.
“He did not. No other incident involving the two of them in the last nineteen years.”
“You have Pepper’s address?” I asked.
“That I have. I’ll give you both his and Essau Williams’s address,” said Pertwee. “And I shall print some possibly pertinent information for you.”
“Cost?” asked Ames.
“Close those two cold cases and find out who killed Horvecki,” said Pertwee. “These cases of open files challenge and mock me. The fewer there are, the lighter my burden, even though I know others will come to fill the drawers.”
We started back to the car, and Pertwee called out, “A sweet fella like Horvecki probably had lots of people who didn’t much care for him besides Williams and Pepper.”
We kept walking. One of the people who didn’t like Horvecki was Ronnie Gerall, sitting in juvenile lockup for killing a man everyone seemed to hate.
Cell phones are wondrous things. They keep people connected regardless of where they are. Going to be late for an appointment? Call. Have an accident on the road and need AAA? Call. Lapse into drunkenness at the side of the road and need AA? Call. Supposed to meet someone and they don’t show up? Call. Cell phones are wondrous things. They take photographs and videos, tell you the temperature and baseball scores, let you order pickup at Appleby’s, tell you what time it is and where you are if you get lost, and play music you like.
People can find you no matter where you are.
The problem is that I don’t want to be connected, don’t want to order braised chicken to be picked up at Appleby’s, don’t want to take photographs or videos, and am in no hurry to get baseball scores.
But the machines give us no choice.
The young don’t have wristwatches.
Phone booths are dying out.
Good-bye to all that.
Still, I had a cell phone in my pocket, a birthday present from Flo Zink. Adele had programmed in a ringtone version of “Help!” that was now playing.
“L.F., unless her body is enriching a wood or bog, Rachel Horvecki is not dead. And she is still not leaving her footprint on the sands of time. I can tell you stuff about her. Got time to hear?”
“Yes.”
“She is twenty-seven years old, went to Sarasota Christian High School where she was on the yearbook
