Only Make Believe (7 page)

“And you’re leaving now?”

“I can’t find the gol’ darn car keys.”

I said that a Lee County detective was already looking into the matter.

Behind him, I heard a woman’s sharp voice. “Gotta go,” Chuck said. “What was your name again? Mr. Owen? Oh, Ewing. Thanks, I’ll remember that. Thanks for calling. See you later, I guess.”

I set the phone back down.

I could imagine the jokes and headlines:
DiGennaro Was a Lady. Wig and Corset No Protection for Bradenton Book Broker. Dressed to Kill.

Poor kid, he doesn’t know what’s hit him yet. Whether his daddy lives or dies, the Diva’s saddled an innocent young man with a situation that’ll blow the family apart. The boy’s life will never be the same. Bad, real bad.

Hell,
I thought.
We pay plenty for protection. And then a guest puts on a dress, sings a few songs and gets beaten up. Bud should have been here the whole weekend. It should never have happened.

That does it,
I thought.
I’m going to order Bud to resign from his reserve unit
and
his county job. The hell with the war in Korea. The hell with his government paychecks. I need Bud’s muscle full time.

Will he agree or won’t he?
And I had to answer:
I don’t know. I sure don’t know. God damn, fuck. Hell of a situation. Bad, real bad.

I took another shower and put on fresh clothes. I was about to leave for the hospital when the phone in my room rang again.

“You sure throw a great party.”
News-Press
reporter Ralph Nype’s tone was unusually snide. “But it looks like I went home too early.”

Is the news of Nick’s beating already out? What does Nype know?

“Actually, it was kind of a slow weekend,” I said, playing for time. “I was upstairs and in bed by midnight.”

“The ambulance siren didn’t wake you?”

Uh oh.
“We did have a little unpleasantness overnight. Nothing to interest your editor, I wouldn’t think.”

“We heard different. Serious injuries and police involvement. Emergency room surgeon too busy to talk. Sheriff will make no statement until after lunch.”

“You gonna call General MacArthur next? You make it sound like the landing at Inchon.”

“So what happened? Quit eff-ing around.”

Eff-ing. The man really did say eff-ing. Hard-boiled journalism at its best.

“Here’s the whole eff-ing story, Ralph. Two guests got into a fight outside the club. One was badly injured. No charges were filed.”

This was more or less true, though misleading. For the moment, Nype seemed to buy it. He thanked me and hung up.

I hit the phone’s cradle and asked the operator to put me through to the hospital. The lady on the desk told me she had no record of a Nicholas DiGennaro. I asked her to try the emergency room, explaining that I’d helped bring him in less than four hours earlier. Not possible to connect you, she said. That’s a separate number, one not given out to the public.

Sympathetic, the lady was not. I persisted. Please tell me what can we do, I asked, trying to get around her. Mr. DiGennaro is staying with me, I explained. He’s my guest. I manage the Caloosa Hotel. And I’m worried.

Business office opens at nine o’clock, she answered. Try us again then.

No record. Not possible.
I figured this meant very bad news—for Nick, for his family and possibly for the Caloosa—and that I’d better head back to the hospital on the double. Bud had the Jeep, my Chevy was in the shop so I set off on foot. I needed the exercise, and I needed to think.

Morning traffic was snarled, sidewalks crowded. A funeral cortege had just pulled away from St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, headed for the old City Cemetery. Uniformed Marines bearing flags and rifles led the way. A flag-draped coffin followed, riding a caisson drawn by a Jeep. The coffin was flanked by six more Marines. A sergeant’s hat and a sprig of live-oak leaves rode atop the coffin. A black limousine, seven or eight elderly sedans and two trucks followed. Tommy Carpenter, the club piano player, was behind the wheel of a yellow Chevrolet packed with mourners, all of them young, all of them black. Two white motorcycle cops served as the fleet’s escorts, leading and then following the line of vehicles through succeeding intersections.

I came to attention, pulled off my ball cap and saluted. Another dead solider, another Asian war.

Korea—MacArthur’s War, Truman’s War, Stalin’s War, Mao’s War. To hell with them all,
I thought.
To hell with politicians and generalissimos and dictators.

At least this man’s body came home
.
At least his parents, his wife or girl—hell, who knows, his boyhood best friend—they have a body to mourn over, they can take flowers out to the graveyard and kneel by his grave, they have him back.

My first lover, Ensign Mike Rizzo, or whatever was left of him, lay on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, or perhaps inside the wreckage of our elderly cruiser, destroyed by a Jap torpedo less than a month before the end of our war, the real war. We’d made love in our cabin aboard the
Indianapolis
dozens of times, though we’d never called it love. We’d talked only a little about what we might do after the war ended, or what we were doing with each other even then. The two of us simply fit together from the first, like two parts of a ship model, body to body, click, click, click. We’d been little more than boys then, fresh out of college, finding mates for the first time. We never dreamed that only one of us would survive. We never even got to say goodbye.

Tommy Carpenter looked out at me, raised one hand an inch off the steering wheel in greeting, and the procession slowly disappeared around a corner. I turned away, wiped my eyes on my shirtsleeves and headed for the hospital.

Nick DiGennaro was still in the emergency room, shielded by screens. A starched sheet now covered him from head to foot. An orderly told me he’d been dead about an hour. The doctors had restarted his heart twice but couldn’t keep it going. He died without regaining consciousness.

I called the hotel from a pay phone in the hall. Phil was on the desk. “Get hold of the boss,” I told him. “He’s in Miami. Tell him our guest checked out. You know the one I mean.”

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Phil whispered.

“Those three already know,” I said. “Tell the admiral and then find Bud Wright and ask him to meet me here at the hospital.”

When I returned to the emergency room, an elderly doctor I hadn’t seen before was seated at the nurses’ station, shouting into a phone: “Yes, Coroner Shepherd’s office. Can you connect me? We have a situation, a questionable decease. Before I sign the certificate I need an advise-and-consult. Yes, from the authorities, the medical examiner. Yes, this is Dr. Graves over at Lee Memorial.”

The street door opened. A short, compact woman in a stylish gray dress, matching pumps, helmet of ebony hair and obviously real pearls stormed past me, followed by a slightly taller teenage boy in pressed chinos, varsity jacket and penny loafers. His hair was as dark and thick as hers, his wardrobe as expensive, his tanned, olive complexion even darker—obviously mother and son.

“My husband,” she cried, coming to a stop opposite Dr. Graves at the desk. “Where is my husband? I am Mrs. Nicholas DiGennaro,
Amelia
DiGennaro. We came as soon as we could.”

She gripped the surface of the desk with both hands, her eyes moving from doctor to nurses, to a pregnant girl writhing on a gurney, back to Doc Graves and, finally, around to me. She was obviously used to having her questions answered promptly.

The boy looked to be sixteen or seventeen, and had stationed himself well behind her. He was hugging his chest, head down, shoulders hunched, seemingly counting stones in the terrazzo floor. He needed a shave and a haircut. Wisps of curly, untrimmed hair ran down the sides and back of his neck. They failed to disguise a bumper crop of pimples on his neck and throat. His face was unmarked except for a mole set high up on his left cheek. On a pretty woman, the mole would count as a beauty spot. Solid and compact, he reminded me a little too much of the teenage Mike Rizzo I’d never known. I had to look away for a moment.

Then I quietly introduced myself, said we’d spoken on the phone and added that I managed the hotel where his daddy had been staying.

The boy made a wrenching “guh” sound, somewhere between a high cough and a smothered curse, finally managing to say, “The Caloosa, you mean? You run that, uh, that place? Down by the river?”

I said that I did, and that I’d followed the ambulance to the hospital just hours earlier.

“So he got hurt at your place? At that hotel?” Without unlocking his arms, he scowled at me, opened his mouth, repeated his earlier “guh” cough-curse, then pulled himself together and said, “How is Daddy? Do you know? Do you, um, know where he is?”

“We’d better ask the doctor,” I said. “He’ll give you the details.”

Dr. Graves was on his feet, motioning me and the boy forward. “I understand you helped bring in the, ah, yes. Dan Ewing, is it? And you, boy, you’re the, ah, son? Well, then, why don’t we all walk down to, ah, the—we have a waiting room just down the hall. Nurse! Can you fetch us coffee from the canteen? Young man? A Coke for you? RC? Madam? Coffee, tea?”

“Where is my husband? Did you take him to a private room? Not a ward. We want a private room, of course.”

Chuck just stood there, shaking his head. He’d figured it out. I could also see that he was drunk, trying to hide it and coming down fast. I’d been there often enough. I knew how it felt—like wearing a layer of woolen flannel inside your skin. You tell yourself you can handle it, that nobody will notice, that you’re fine, just fine. And you wish you were dead.

“We’ll go right in here.” Dr. Graves held up a long, thin hand. “I’ll tell you what I can.”

He didn’t tell us much. DiGennaro had suffered a series of heart attacks presumably brought on by the beating. Graves claimed that he and his excellent medical team had done everything humanly possible to save the unfortunate patient. Finally, however, they could not keep his already damaged heart going.

He offered Amelia DiGennaro a chair, which she refused. “No, no, no,” she muttered, pacing back and forth. “This is crazy. His heart was fine. Nick drove down here for a business appointment. He’s due home tonight. No, no, no.”

I told her a county detective was already on the case. I explained that her husband was staying at my hotel, that he’d had dinner and a few drinks, retired to his room and was assaulted there. I assured her that the room was sealed pending an investigation and that everything possible would be done to find her husband’s attacker.

“You manage the Bradford? Nothing like that could happen at the Bradford. Nick always stays there.”

“I manage the Caloosa, ma’am.”

“Never heard of it. And Nick doesn’t drink. He’s due at the school board office this morning. So he’d want to get a good night’s rest. Why are you lying to me?”

I wasn’t going to bring up Diva’s wardrobe or musical performance until absolutely necessary. But the new widow’s dismissive, if understandable, attitude was getting on my nerves. “Believe me, ma’am, he put down at least a couple of cocktails. There were witnesses.”

“On Sunday? What kind of a dive do you run? Do hoodlums walk the halls? Was Nick robbed? Don’t you have any security in your fleabag hotel?”

Well, yes we do and no we didn’t
, I thought, stung.
The house dick was spooned up against my backside snoring like a freight train when somebody went after your husband.

“Nobody saw anyone go upstairs with Mr. DiGennaro. Not that we know of so far.”

Chuck remained silent, leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed on his chest, taking deep breaths. “Leave it alone, Mother,” he finally said. “You’re making it worse.”

Amelia ignored the boy and turned on Dr. Graves. “You say he was assaulted? What do you mean? I want to see him now. See my husband.”

Graves was an old hand at this kind of exchange. “Madam, I know you’ve had a great shock. We did all we could. And of course you can see your dear husband, yes, of course. In due time. But in a case like this, and given the nature of the situation, Florida statutes and hospital rules require that certain initial procedures be followed.”

“I don’t care about rules. I want to see Nick!”

“Yes, as soon as possible. But we are required to call in the medical examiner before giving out any details or allowing the remains to be disturbed. I’m afraid my hands are tied. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

“Worry?”

“Leave it alone, Mother,” Chuck said again.

Amelia finally sat down. “Shut up, Charles. That’s enough out of you.”

As if on cue, Bud knocked and entered the room. Chuck paused before moving aside, rolled his shoulders inside his jacket and stuffed his hands in his pockets.

“Detective Wright of the Lee County sheriff’s department,” I said by way of introduction. “He’s been involved since the minute they found Mr. DiGennaro.”

Bud explained that he’d just been formally assigned the case, expressed his condolences to the DiGennaros and informed Dr. Graves that Doc Shepherd and his team were on the way. The nurse in charge, Bud added, would probably want to witness the collection and labeling of evidence.