Retribution: A Lew Fonesca Novel (Lew Fonesca Novels) (7 page)

At that moment I learned who Jefferson was. A gigantic dog of a dozen breeds looking like a hairy version of the Baskerville hound bounded around the house heading toward us. No, amend that. He was heading for me and barking. Jefferson knew how to bark.

“No,” Lonsberg commanded gently.

The dog hesitated, put his head down, and kept moving toward me, slowly now, growling.

“Here,” Lonsberg called a little louder. The dog ran to him. Lonsberg put out his hand and the dog gave it a sloppy lick. Lonsberg patted the dog’s head. Jefferson closed his eyes in ecstasy.

“He won’t bother you,” Lonsberg said, moving to the back of the pickup and handing me a bag of groceries.

Lonsberg picked up the other bag and headed onto the low porch. Jefferson still seemed particularly interested in me. He stood there watching as we entered and followed us inside after Lonsberg opened the door. I felt the big dog nudge past me.

Jefferson might not bother me but he was a significant distraction.

I followed Lonsberg through the hallway, past a room to our left filled with books and bookshelves, a sofa, and two very old overstuffed chairs, one with a matching hassock.
The sofa and chairs were a set. They looked as if they had been bought by someone’s great-grandmother who had recovered them a century ago with blue and red flowers against a background of what might have once been yellow but was now a worn-out off-white.

A glimpse of another room on the right as we moved to the sound of Jefferson’s claws ticking against the wooden floor revealed an office with a desk, more bookcases, a row of file cabinets. The desk was clear except for a computer and a printer.

A few doors were closed. The kitchen was as big as the two rooms in which I lived and worked, which means it was an average-sized room with a wooden table in the middle surrounded by four chairs. Lonsberg put his bag on the table. So did I. Jefferson moved quickly to sniff at both bags. I could now see that Jefferson had jowls and large teeth. I had known Jeffersons in the past. He was a drooler.

“Have a seat,” Lonsberg said, putting his groceries into cabinets and the refrigerator.

I sat waiting. Jefferson decided to sit next to me and regard my face with his head tilted to one side.

“Do the police know you’re looking for Adele?” he asked, stacking his cans in a cupboard.

“No.”

He shook his head as if that were solid and solemn good news. Then he turned, wiped his hands on his pants, and sat across from me.

“What do you see, Fonesca?” he asked.

“See?”

“Me, what do you see?”

“A man, lean, healthy-looking, good head of hair, serious, judging whether or not he’s going to tell me something.”

“What do you know about me?” he asked.

“Famous writer, haven’t published much. Man who likes his privacy.”

“Have you read anything of mine?”

“Fool’s Love
, long time ago. I’m rereading it,” I said.

Jefferson moved close to me and rested his head on my lap.

“What do you think of it? The book?” Lonsberg asked, hands folded on the table.

“It’s a classic, great book,” I said.

“What do you think of it?” he repeated.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes,” he said.

“So far, it’s not my kind of book. Maybe when I really get into it…”

“It was a fluke,” Lonsberg said. “I was a kid who thought he could write. It was short, easy. I expected nothing to happen, except that I’d keep working in my father’s drugstore in Rochester, marry Evelyn Steuben, have children, go to pharmacy school. The book happened to hit the right agent and the right publisher at the right time. Teenage girl rebels, sets off on her own, learns the truth about people, the good, the bad, grows up fast, gets swept up in the anti-Vietnam business, moves in with a cello player old enough to be her grandfather. Controversy on that one. Publicity. Big success. Fonesca, the book is second-rate. Too short. Too easy with answers. It’s smart-ass wit and a few good observations.”

“I think it’s better than that,” I said.

“So does most of the world,” he said. “I don’t.”

I wondered why this famous recluse was giving me the thirty-second biography and interview he wouldn’t have given to
The New York Times
or
Time
. I thought I knew.

“Adele,” I reminded him.

“Adele,” he said, turning his head toward the wall to his right. There was an eight-by-ten framed black-and-white photograph on his kitchen wall. Four people were lined up against a background of trees. The man was a young Lonsberg.

“My wife, Evelyn,” he said, looking at the photograph. “My two kids, Laura and Brad. Both grown. Both with kids.”

“Where are they?” I asked.

“Evelyn? She died more than twenty years ago. Laura and Brad live here, not in the house. Laura is in Venice. Martin’s in Sarasota.”

Jefferson drooled on my leg. I patted his head.

“Adele,” I reminded him again.

“What about you?” he asked. “Your story?”

“My story?” I asked. “Why?”

“Your story,” he repeated.

“Adele,” I said again.

He looked at me and nodded.

“Your story first,” he said.

I told him about my wife’s death, a little about my family, less about what I did, a mention of my depression.

“What do you take for the depression?” he asked.

“Nothing, I see a psychologist.”

“I take Chinese herbs,” he said. “Acupuncture.

“They work on my blood pressure, my liver problems, but they can’t penetrate, get inside whatever it really is that we call ‘soul.’”

“Adele,” I said.

“Come on,” he said, getting up. I eased myself away from Jefferson and followed Lonsberg through a door. Jefferson followed. At the end of a short hall was a door, a particularly thick wooden door. Lonsberg opened it with a key and we stepped in.

It was a strange sight. Inside the room was a huge vault, the kind you might see in a bank. This vault door was open. I followed Lonsberg in.

“What do you see?” he asked.

“Empty shelves,” I said. “Except for that box.”

The wooden box sat closed about chest high in the middle of one of the dark metal shelves.

’Two days ago they weren’t empty,” he said. “They were filled with manuscripts, neatly bound, carefully placed in folders, everything I’ve written over the past thirty-five years.”

It had been rumored that Lonsberg had written a few books since he went into hiding from the world, but these empty shelves represented more than a few books.

“Someone stole them?” I asked.

“Adele,” he said.

“Why? How?”

“She knew about the vault,” he said, surveying the empty shelves. “I showed it to her, let her read a few things.”

“You didn’t call the police?”

“I’m a recluse,” Lonsberg said. “You know that. I started out just wanting to be away from the reporters, the fans, the scholars, and then it became a minor literary myth. I began to live it. It grew. The more I tried to protect my privacy, the more I was sought out by the determined. And the more reclusive I became. Now I like it that way. No, amend that. I’ve grown comfortable in my relative isolation. There’ve been rumors for years about my ‘secret’ writing. I was stupid enough in the last interview I gave I don’t know how many years ago to a small magazine, stupid enough to say that I still write. I don’t want the police. I don’t want to be in newspapers and tabloids. I don’t want television crews parked at my gate. I dread stepping into a courtroom, a press of reporters, a gaggle of fans.”

“A press of reporters,” I said. “A gaggle of fans. Like a pride of lions?”

“A literary critic has finally entered my house,” he said flatly.

“No, I’m a man trying to find a missing girl. You think Adele took everything?”

“Yes, and I want it all back,” Lonsberg said. “No questions asked. No charges filed. I’m told the manuscripts are worth millions of dollars. Be worth more when I die. Those books and stories are my legacy to my children and grandchildren.”

“Why didn’t you just have some of them published while you’re alive?”

He looked at me intently.

“I write because I must,” he said. “I don’t want to be misunderstood by a world that will laud, speculate, read my stories and contort them into their stories, turn my work into movies or television miniseries. It happens to them all. If it can happen to Tolstoy, Melville, Dickens who are perfectly clear, it can and will happen to a minor quirk in the history of literature named Lonsberg. Let it happen when I’m dead. I write them to stay sane, to trap my demons on paper. I’ve got some money that still comes in from my books, but I’m not rich. And every year the fewer and fewer things written about my work have grown more obtuse and
stupid. People should read novels and short stories instead of reading books about novels and short stories.”

Jefferson was sniffing at the shelves. Lonsberg and I watched. And then Lonsberg spoke again.

“You know Adele,” he said. “You’re a process server. You know how to find people and you know how to keep quiet. Find her. Return my manuscripts. I’ll give you five thousand dollars if you get my work back. Quietly.”

“And Adele …?” I asked.

“No questions,” he said. “I get my manuscripts back and press no charges.”

“I’ve got questions,” I said.

He nodded.

“Why would she do this?” I said, looking around at the empty shelves in the vault.

“I don’t know,” he said.

I had a feeling he did, but there are right and wrong times and ways to deal with lies. It takes a feel for the person who is lying to me. I can call someone a liar, which results in grief, almost always mine. Or I can wait till I find the truth myself or the right time to ask the question again. I usually wait.

“Holding them for ransom?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

“Why?”

Lonsberg moved to the wooden box, took it down, and brought it to me.

“Open it,” he said.

I took the box and opened it. It was filled with cash. Fifties, twenties, hundreds, tens, fives.

“Forty-six thousand four hundred in that box. Adele knew it was there. There are other places in the house with a lot more money. I don’t use banks. Adele knew where it all was. There’s not a dollar missing.”

He looked at me and took the box back.

“Makes no sense, does it?” he said.

“So she took them to hurt you,” I pushed, knowing I could push only a little further, but I decided the moment was right. He looked just a bit bewildered by the emptiness of the vault. “Did you and Adele ever?”

“Sex?” he asked. “No. Would I have liked to? Yes, I’m old but I’m not dead. I also know what statutory rape is. I never touched her, never even kissed her. I have a grandson older than Adele. I turn seventy in two weeks. Letting my ancient libido go at the risk of losing Adele’s talent would have been stupid. Do you think I’m stupid?”

“You’re not stupid. Then …?” I asked.

“You’ll have to ask her,” he said. “Well?”

“One short story,” I said.

“What?”

“If I find her,” I said, “and you get your manuscripts back, you give me one short story, any one.”

“No. I’ll give you the five thousand dollars,” he said.

“One short story,” I answered. “Full rights.”

Lonsberg looked at me. So did Jefferson.

“I can’t do that,” he said.

“You keep any copies of those stolen manuscripts?” I asked

“You know I didn’t.”

“Adele, or whoever took them, could be taking your name off now and sending them out under their name to agents, publishers, Internet sites.”

“They’d be worth nothing,” he said. “Or at least not very much. Their value has nothing to do with whatever quality they may have. Their value lies in the fact that they were written by Conrad Lonsberg. Find me some scribbles and stick figures, junk by Picasso on a sheet of paper, and I’ll get you half a million dollars as long as it’s signed and authenticated. No, it’s more likely they could all be getting shredded or thrown into a bonfire right now,” he said.

He shook his head.

“Okay, someone doesn’t like you, Lonsberg,” I said.

“And her name is Adele. Ten thousand dollars,” he said. “I’ll pay you ten thousand to get them back.”

“What does money mean to you?” I asked.

“Food, shelter, paper, postage, a few clothes, security for my family,” he said.

“What does your writing mean to you?”

“I get your point. You want me to give up something important to me,” he said.

“Something that means something to you. Adele means something to me. Not money.”

“You’re a remarkable man, Fonesca,” he said, smiling again. “You may also be a stupid one or you’ve read too many romantic novels.”

“Movies,” I said. “I got it from movies.”

He looked at me for a long time and came to a decision. “And from life. All right. You can have the rights to a story if you get all my manuscripts back.”

“Plus one thousand dollars for expenses, in advance.”

“I pick the story,” he said. “Adele said you’re a good man. She thought I was a good man. She was wrong about me. Her judgment does not match her talent.”

“One of her problems,” I said. “We have a deal?”

“We do,” said Lonsberg.

“Tell me again, how many people know about your vault and the manuscripts?”

“My son, daughter, Adele, me, and you,” he said. “I bought the place because it was isolated and because it had the vault. The last owner was a drug dealer. He had to leave the country quickly.”

“Your son or daughter may have told someone about your manuscripts,” I said. “Maybe Adele mentioned it.”

“Fonesca,” he said evenly. “Whoever took them knew when I was going to be out. Whoever took them got past Jefferson who wouldn’t let a stranger in. Both of my children know they get the manuscripts when I die. And they are quite aware that no one can sell or publish those stories, certainly not with my name on them, while I’m alive. My will is clear.”

“Did your son and daughter meet Adele?”

“Yes.”

“They get along?”

“With Adele or each other?” he asked.

“Both.”