Straits of Fortune - Anthony Gagliano [91]
From the heat and the height of the sun, I estimated it to be around seven or eight o’clock. Surely someone must have spotted Williams’s body by now, and that meant it was time to go. The question was, where? It occurred to me that I had absolutely nowhere to go except home. It was the only place that made any sense, even if the cops were looking for me. It didn’t matter; I was too tired to care.
I walked up to where the street flanked the beach and checked for some signage to figure out where I was, which turned out to be a bit north of a little town called Dania Beach. I walked into a diner and ordered ham, eggs, coffee, and a pitcher of water. In a booth at the end of the restaurant, a pair of middle-aged cops were eating their breakfast and ignoring me. The waitress who served me treated me as though I looked perfectly normal and even called me “sweetheart” when she refilled my coffee cup. The food brought back some of my strength, though it hurt to eat, especially when I tried gnawing through the slab of ham that came with the eggs. By the time I finished my third cup of coffee, I began to think I might actually make it home without collapsing.
A half hour later I was on U.S. 1, walking south and feeling vaguely human and looking for a pay phone so that I could call a cab. Finally, at a gas station, I found one that actually worked, and ten minutes later I was sailing toward Miami Beach. I was well fed, poorly rested, and ready to go to jail. I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew, the driver was waking me up.
“Rough night, huh?” he said. His Russian accent was as thick as herring in cream sauce.
“Very rough,” I told him. My face was hurting again, and I was thinking about having it amputated when I got the time. I handed the driver a twenty-dollar bill and told him to keep the change.
“I hope she is worth it,” he said. “My friend, you look like hell.”
“People keep telling me that. I’m beginning to take it personally. Was she worth it? Ask me in a month. I’ll tell you then.”
Sternfeld, the landlord, was standing on the front step when I hauled my body out of the cab. As usual, he was braced inside the chromium bay of his walker. He was nearsighted, and so I was almost in front him before he realized who it was. He squinted at me and frowned.
“You look like the walking dead,” he said.
“Coming from you,” I said, “that’s hard to take.”
“Where the hell have you been? I saw you on television the other night. There’s some people looking for you, kid.”
I put my foot on the first step and looked over my shoulder. “It was all a big misunderstanding. Everything’s okay now.” I heard myself saying it, but I had trouble believing that it was true. It was as though some divine law were being violated, a law that says there must be a wake created by our actions that will surely wash back on us no matter how long it takes. I looked up at the cracked façade of the Lancaster Arms as if it were the Wailing Wall. It had taken a long, hard night to make the place look good to me, but then, like I said, every paradise is relative.
“You’re late with the rent again,” Sternfeld said. “Nothing new there.”
“Anybody come by to look for me recently?” I asked.
“The cops, a few days ago. Suits with badges. I told them you had skipped. They didn’t seem that disappointed.”
“They search my room?” I asked. I was thinking about the fifty grand under the kitchen sink. That might be hard to explain.
“They searched the one I showed them—204,” Sternfeld said, smiling slyly. “Right next door to yours. Vacant, though.” He shrugged. “What can I tell you? I guess maybe I got the Alzheimer’s.”
“Why’d you do that for? You might get yourself in trouble.”
“I did it because I liked them even less than I like you.”
“Anyone else besides the cops stop by?” I asked.
Sternfeld surged forward in his walker