Repairman Jack [07]-Gateways (9 page)

He spotted a bottle of Rose’s lime juice on a door shelf. On a hunch he opened the freezer and there it was: a frosty bottle of Bombay Sapphire. Looked like Dad still liked a gimlet now and then.

He wandered through the front room and recognized some of the paintings from the family home in Jersey. He noticed a trophy shelf on the south wall and moved in for a closer look. First place in the men’s doubles in tennis—no surprise there—but what was this? A plaque for second place in the men’s bocce tournament?

My father, the bocce champ. Jeez.

He called Gia to give her the medical report on his father. She said how sorry she was that the news wasn’t better. Jack said hello to Vicks, then told them he’d call back later.

After he hung up he stepped into one of the bedrooms. This looked like a guest room/office: a bed, a dresser, and a desk with a computer and a printer. Jack saw a list of buy-sell confirmations in the printer tray. Looked like Dad was still day trading. He’d started it way before it became the rage in the nineties and had made enough to retire on. He’d tried to get Jack into it once, saying that if you were vigilant and knew the ropes, it didn’t matter if the market was up or down, you could make money every day.

Not if you don’t have a real Social Security Number, Dad.

He moved on to the other bedroom, more cluttered and obviously Dad’s. He stopped in the doorway, taken aback by the photos filling the walls. Mostly Mom, Tom, and Kate at various ages, salted with a few of Jack as a kid. Here were the five of them as they embarked on their one and only family camp-out…what a disaster that had been.

Memories flooded back, especially of Kate—as his teenaged big sister, looking out for him…as an adult, dying in front of him.

He quickly turned away and checked the closet. There they were: Dad’s ugly Hawaiian shirts. He pulled one out and looked at it: huge bulge-eyed goldfish swimming in a green fluid that could only be bile. Jack tried to imagine himself wearing this and failed. People would…notice him.

As he replaced the shirt he noticed a gray metal box on the shelf above the rod. He reached for it, hesitated, then took it down. He thumbed the latch but it was locked. He shook it. Papers and other things shuffled and rattled inside.

Locked…that piqued his curiosity. But this was his father’s, not his, and probably locked for a good reason. He should put it back, he knew he should, but…

What would his father keep locked up when he was the only one in the house?

Jack looked at the little keyhole. Eminently pickable. All it would take was—

No. Mind your own business.

He put it back on the shelf and returned to the main room. He repressed a shudder. Time to visit the cops.

Jack found the phone book and looked up the address of the local police station. He’d planned to call them for directions, but why not see if he could learn what he wanted over the phone. Anything to avoid setting foot in a police station.

He dialed the number and was shuffled around until he wound up with Anita Nesbitt, a pleasant-sounding secretary who said she’d see what she could do for him.

“I’m assuming I’ll need a copy of the accident report for the insurance,” he told her. “You know, to get the car fixed.”

“Okay. Here it is. I’ll put a copy aside and you can pick it up.”

“Any way you can mail it?”

“I suppose. We have his address on the report. How is your father, by the way? I heard he was pretty banged up.”

“Still in a coma.” A thought struck him. “Was anyone else injured?”

“Not that we know of,” she said. “It was hit and run.”

Jack swallowed. Those last three words sent a wave of unease through his gut.

“Hit and run?”

“Yes. It’s under investigation.”

“Save your stamp and envelope,” Jack told her. “I’m coming down to pick up that report.”

14

Dusk had arrived and the air was cooling enough to bring out the mosquitoes as Jack reached the mustard-yellow building with a two-story center flanked by single-story wings that served as Novaton City Hall. A skeletal clock tower, too modern for the rest of the building, loomed over the high-columned entrance. A green roof, front portico, and awnings completed the picture. A sign said the police station was toward the rear on the left side.

Steeling himself, he stepped inside and asked for Ms. Nesbitt. The desk sergeant directed him to her office. Walking down the hall, passing cops moving this way and that, he felt like Pee Wee Herman at a Klan rally. If anyone peeked under the sheet…

He hoped no one asked for ID to prove his relationship. His father’s last name was not Tyleski.

Ms. Nesbitt turned out to be a plump and pleasant little woman with glossy black skin, short curly hair tight against her scalp, and a radiant smile.

“Here’s the accident report,” she said, handing him a sheet of paper.

Jack took a quick look at it; he meant to read it later but his eyes were drawn to the diagram of the accident site.

“Where’s this intersection?” he said, pointing to the sheet. “Pemberton Road and South Road?”

She frowned. “They cross in the swamps on the fringe of the Everglades, way out in the middle of nowhere.”

“What was my father doing out in the middle of nowhere?”

“That’s what we’re hoping you could tell us,” said a voice behind him.

Jack turned to see a young, beefy cop with buzz-cut hair. His massive biceps stretched the seams of the short sleeves of his uniform shirt. His expression was neutral.

“This is Officer Hernandez,” Anita said. “He took the call and found your father.”

Jack stuck out a hand he hoped wasn’t too sweaty. “Thanks. I guess you saved my father’s life.”

He shrugged. “If I did, great. But I hear he’s not out of the woods yet.”

“You’ve been keeping track?”

“We’d like to talk to him, get some details on the accident. Any idea what he was doing out there at that hour?”

Jack glanced down at the report. “What hour?”

“Around midnight.”

Jack shook his head. “I can’t imagine.”

“Could your father have been mixed up in something he shouldn’t have been?”

“My dad? Into something shady? He’s like…”

Like who? Jack tried to think of a public figure who was a true straight shooter, whose integrity was beyond reproach, but came up blank. There had to be somebody. But no one came to mind. He almost said Mr. Deeds but Adam Sandler had screwed up that reference.

“He’s like Casper Milquetoast.” Jack saw no hint of recognition in Hernandez’s face. “He’s a regular everyday Joe who minds his own business and doesn’t take chances. My dad is
not
a risk taker.” Jack didn’t want to call him timid, because he wasn’t. Once he took a position he could be a bulldog about defending it. “He lived in Jersey most of his life, not fifty miles from Atlantic City, and in all that time I don’t think he once visited the casinos. So the idea of him being involved in something even remotely criminal is, well, crazy.”

Hernandez shrugged. “Doesn’t have to be criminal. He could have been fooling around with the wrong guy’s wife or—”

Jack held up his hands. “Wait. Stop. Not him. I promise you. No way.”

Hernandez was studying him.

Uh-oh. Here it comes.

“Do you live around here?”

“No. I’m still in Jersey.” Where did Tyleski live? All these identities…after a while they ran together in his head. “In Hoboken.”

“How often do you see your father? How many times a year do you visit him?”

“He hasn’t been here that long. Less than a year.”

“And?”

“And this is my first visit.”

“Do you talk often?”

“Uh, no.”

“Then you really don’t know that much about your father’s life down here.”

Jack sighed. There it was again. “I guess not. But I know what kind of man he is, and he’s not a sneak or a liar, and people who are have no place in his life.”

But how much more do I know? he wondered. What do you know about anyone, even someone who raised you, beyond how they act and what they’ve told you about themselves?

Anya’s comment from this afternoon stole back to him:
Trust me, kiddo, there’s more to your father than you ever dreamed
.

He hadn’t paid much attention to it then, but now with Dad the victim of a hit-and-run accident in the middle…

“Say, if he got hit in the middle of nowhere…” He turned to Anita. “Didn’t you say a call came in?”

She nodded. “It’s in the report.”

“But that means someone must have witnessed it.”

“That’s the obvious conclusion but…” Hernandez’s macho cop persona wavered. Just a little.

“But what?”

“Well, it took me about twenty minutes to reach the intersection, and when I got there, your father’s car was the only vehicle at the scene and it looked like the accident had just happened. The car was sitting across Pemberton Road. From the debris spray I reckoned your father had been proceeding west on Pemberton. He had a stop sign at South. Looked like he was almost halfway across when he got hit. Maybe he hadn’t been paying attention, maybe he ran the stop sign, maybe he was having a little stroke. All I know is that something hit him hard enough to spin the car ninety degrees, and there was no one else in sight when I got there.”

“Then who called in?” Jack said. “Man or woman?”

“Tony, the desk sergeant took it. I asked him but he couldn’t tell. Said the person was whispering, real quick like. Said, ‘Bad accident at Pemberton and South. Hurry.’ That was it.”

“Did they ID the number?”

Hernandez glanced at Anita. “That’s another thing we can’t figure out. The call came from a pay phone outside the Publix.”

“Publix? What’s a Publix?”

“Like a Winn-Dixie.”

“I’m sorry.” Was this another language they were speaking? “I’m from up north and I still don’t—”

“Publix is a chain of grocery stores down here,” Anita said. “It’s like…” She snapped her fingers. “I’ve been up your way. What’s it called…? A&P. That’s right. Like an A&P.”

“Okay. And where’s this Publix?”

“About three blocks from here.”

“What? But how? That’s…”

“Impossible?” Hernandez said. “Not really. The hit-and-run driver might have been into something illegal and that’s why he didn’t stop. But he might have had an attack of conscience and called a friend and told him to call it in from a public phone so we couldn’t ID him.”

“Thank God for attacks of conscience,” Anita said.

Hernandez nodded. “Amen to that. All I can say is it’s a good thing we got the call when we did, otherwise your father might have been DOA.”

15

Jack’s mind raced as he drove toward the south end of Novaton.

After telling Hernandez where he was staying and promising not to leave without checking in with him—in case the cops had more questions—he’d left the police station in something of a daze. But not before getting directions to the impound lot where his dad’s car had been towed.

A hit-and-run driver damn near kills his father but has enough Good Samaritan in him to arrange for the cops to be notified. A mixture of bad luck and good.

But the big question still remained: What the hell was Dad doing out there in the swamp at that hour?

The light had pretty well faded by the time Jack reached the south end of town. As Hernandez had told him, he passed an old limestone quarry, then a trailer park, then came to the impound lot.

It turned out to be a combination junkyard/used-car lot called Jason’s. The place was closed. Jack could have climbed the chain-link fence but didn’t want to risk an encounter with a guard dog, so he wandered the perimeter, squinting at the wrecked cars within.

The accident report said the make was—what else?—a silver Mercury Grand Marquis, the unofficial state car of Florida, and gave the plate number. Jack found it near the gate. He clutched the fence and gaped at the front end. The bumper was gone, the right front fender was a memory, the windshield was a caved-in, spider-webbed mess, the engine block was tilted and canted and twisted to the left.

Had he run into a tank?

Jack’s fingers squeezed the chain-linked wire, making it squeak. Who’d done this and run off? Maybe Dad had been thinking of something else and hadn’t seen the stop sign. Okay. His bad, not the other driver’s. But still…what the hell had the other guy been driving?

16

Jack’s stomach started to growl as he left Jason’s. He realized he hadn’t eaten anything since the crabcake sandwich at Joanie’s. He’d seen a Taco Bell on the way in and couldn’t help thinking of little Oyv. He stopped for a couple of burritos and a Mountain Dew to go.

As he ate and drove, he decided to swing by the hospital on his way back to Gateways South and have another look at his dad.

On the third floor, Jack met Dr. Huerta coming out of the room, followed by a red-haired nurse. Her picture ID badge read C. MORTENSON, RN.