Greg thought about it, but Winn answered.
“He transferred to Pine View after his sophomore year. Came from Texas, San Antonio.”
“He have a girlfriend?”
“Lots. He had a fake ID,” said Greg. “Went out to bars, picked up women. Said he wasn’t into high school girls. Why?”
“He ever mention Rachel Horvecki?”
“Horvecki’s daughter? No,” said Greg. “I don’t remember. Why?”
“Have any idea where he might be now?”
I got up and went to the closet for a clean pair of jeans and a blue short-sleeved Polo pullover.
“No,” said Winn.
“Any idea where your mother is?”
“My mother?”
“Your mother.”
“No. Home. Shopping. Buying. I don’t know. I don’t keep track of her. Why do you want to know where my mother is?”
“Just a few questions I need to ask her.”
“My mother?”
“Your mother.”
“I said no. Have you found out who killed Horvecki yet?”
“No, but I will.”
Greg had clasped his hands together and was tapping his clenched fist against his chin.
“You need more money?”
“More time,” I said. “Now, it would be nice if you left.”
“Sorry,” said Winn.
He adjusted his glasses and reached over to urge his friend out of the chair.
“I’ve got more questions,” said Greg.
“I can’t give you answers now,” I said. “Ronnie’s out on bail.”
Greg reluctantly rose from the chair, nodded a few times as he looked at me, then turned and, after a light punch to Winn’s arm, went through the door. Winn Graeme hesitated, looked at me and whispered, “Nickel Plate Club.”
Then he was gone. I stood listening while they opened the outer door and moved into the day.
I put on my Cubs cap and stepped into my outer room. Victor was sitting on the floor on his sleeping bag, a cardboard cup of coffee in his hand, looking up at one of the Stig Dalstroms on the wall.
A cup of coffee sat on my desk alongside a paper bag which contained a Chick-Fil-A breakfast chicken sandwich. I sat and began working on my breakfast. I put the coffee in my hand next to the one on my desk.
“I looked,” he said.
“At…”
“Internet. Ronald Owen Gerall.”
The door opened, and Ames came in bearing a Styrofoam cup of coffee. He nodded at Victor and handed the coffee to me. I put it alongside the others.
“I just had a visit from Winn and Greg,” I said working on one of the coffees. “They think we haven’t made any progress. Progress is overrated. Victor has some information for us about Ronnie.”
“He is married,” said Victor. “To Rachel Horvecki.”
“That a fact?” Ames said, looking at me for an explanation for why we were listening to something we already knew.
“Ronald Owen Gerall spent a year in a California Youth Facility when he was sixteen. Assault.”
That was new information.
“There’s a little more,” said Victor, showing more signs of life than I had ever seen in him before. “Because he was under-age when he came to Sarasota and he claimed to have no living relatives, he needed someone to vouch for him, help him find a place to live, and accept responsibility.”
“Who?”
“Sally Porovsky.”
While Ames, riding shotgun, went off with Victor to try to find Ronnie Gerall, I went to Sally’s office at Children and Family Services to do the same thing. I could have called to find out if she was in or off to see a client, but I didn’t want to hear her say that she was too busy to see me. Besides, I don’t like telephones. I don’t like the silences when someone expects me to speak and I have nothing to say or nothing I want to say. I use them when I must, which seemed to be a lot more of the time.
I parked the Saturn in the lot off of Fruitville and Tuttle where Children and Families had its office. Then I picked up my ringing phone and opened it. It was Dixie.
“Your Ronnie Gerall problem just got a little more complicated.”
“How?” I asked.
“Ronnie Gerall is dead.”
“When?”
“Six years ago in San Antonio,” Dixie said. “Which means…”
“Ronnie Gerall is not Ronnie Gerall. He stole a dead boy’s identity.”
“Looks that way,” she said. “But there’s more. I tried a search of the back issues of the San Antonio newspaper for a period a year before your Ronnie got here. I tried a match of the photograph of him in the Pine View yearbook.”
“And?”
“Bingo, Bango, Bongo. Newspaper told me his name is Dwight Ronald Torcelli. He fled an indictment for felony assault. Then I did a search for Dwight Ronald Torcelli. He’s twenty-six years old. His birthday’s tomorrow. He’ll be twenty-seven. Maybe you should buy him a cake or give him some Harry amp; David chocolate cherries.”
“Is that a hint?”
“Hell yes. I love those things. Want me to keep looking?”
“Try Rachel Horvecki or Rachel Gerall,” I said.
“They may have a license and a minister’s approval, but they are definitely not married.”
“I wonder if she knows that.”
“Good luck investigating, Columbo.”
We hung up, and I looked at the entrance to Building C of a complex of bored three-story office buildings that couldn’t decide whether to go with the dirt-stained brick on the bottom half or the streaked once-white wooden slats on top. Building C was on the parking lot between A and D. There was a neatly-printed sign plunged into the dirt and grass in front of the space where I parked. The sign said there was an office suite available and that it was ideal for a professional business.
The offices were almost all occupied by dentists, urologists, and investment counselors who promised free lunches at Long-horn for those who wanted to attend an equally free workshop on what to do with their money. A four-man cardiology practice had recently moved out and into a building they had financed on Tuttle, about a mile away.
Cardiologists, cataract surgeons, specialists in all diseases that plagued the old and perplexed the young are abundant in Sarasota, almost as abundant as banks.
John Gutcheon was seated at the downstairs reception desk making a clicking sound with his tongue as he wrote on a yellow pad.
John was in his mid-thirties, blond, thin, and very openly gay. His sharp tongue protected him from those who might dare to attack his life choice, although he had told me once, quite clearly, that it was not a choice and it was not an echo. His homosexuality was a reality he had recognized when he was a child. There were those who accepted him and those who did not. And he had come to terms with that after many a disappointment.
“Still wearing that thing,” he said, looking up at me and shaking his head. “Lewis, when will you learn the difference between an outrageous fashion statement and bad taste.”
“I like the Cubs,” I said.
