The Pope of Palm Beach Page 26

  Serge handed them back and pointed. “They go to Coleman.”

  “Oh, right. I didn’t know how it worked.”

  Someone else: “Everyone says I have a fascinating life story. Will you write it for me?”

  “That’s an easy one!” said Serge. “No . . . Who’s next?”

  “I just got out of prison. Your books helped me get through.”

  “That’s fantastic!” said Serge. “Don’t do it again.”

  “I just recovered from a long illness and your books got me through.”

  “Fantastic! Don’t do it again.”

  The next reader leaned and whispered, “I got a couple joints for you.”

  Serge pointed at Coleman.

  A woman gave Serge a business card. “I’m on a business trip. My hotel and room number are on the back.”

  “Super!” Serge pocketed the card. “Don’t wait up.”

  The next person had a phone out. “Can you talk to someone for me? He’s in prison.”

  “Definitely!” said Serge. “Hello? How are things in the Gray-Bar Hotel? . . .”

  A blond businesswoman came around the counter. “I’m Joanne, the owner. Thanks for putting us on your tour.”

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” said Serge.

  “Back there,” she said. “Through that door to the storeroom.”

  Serge trotted off as readers continued filling the store.

  Books were rung up at the registers, seats taken.

  Serge ran back to the owner. “I hate to tell you this, but people are vandalizing your bathroom.”

  “What!”

  Serge nodded sadly. “There’s a bunch of graffiti.”

  “Oh, that.” A light laugh. “Some of our authors write insults to each other.”

  “The monster of envy is so bad in the publishing world that they deface your store?”

  Another laugh. “No, actually it’s all in fun. They like each other.”

  “Really?” Serge clapped. “Can I play?”

  “Here’s a Magic Marker.”

  Serge took off.

  More patrons entered the store. The cash register spit out receipts.

  Back in the bathroom, Serge read the scribbling of some of his favorite writers. He found one in particular and uncapped his marker, leaning against the wall as he wrote:

  “Remember your novel Twelve Mile Limit? Should have been Twelve Word Limit.”

  He returned the marker. Bookshelves had been rolled aside to create the seating area. Serge waited in back as the store owner walked to the front of the room.

  “Coleman,” said Serge, “this is really exciting! What do you think?”

  Coleman patted the new contents of his pants pocket. “I love book signings!”

  The owner stood behind the podium and bent the microphone holder closer to her mouth.

  “I was going to give a long introduction because there’s so much we’re all excited about tonight. But you didn’t come here to listen to me. So without further delay, the writer who needs no introduction, Kenneth Reese!”

  Applause broke out as Serge warmly shook the owner’s hand. The clapping finally subsided, and Serge cleared his throat.

  “Anyone here watch Law and Order or CSI or one of the other police shows?”

  The majority nodded.

  “Ever notice how whenever anyone gets a phone call on those programs, it’s exactly on point with whatever they’re talking about at the time: ‘We’ll know a lot more if ballistics gets a match.’ A phone rings. ‘Hello? . . . Okay, I’ll tell them . . .’ Click. ‘Ballistics just got a match.’ Or ‘This jerk is going to walk on three murders and make fools of the whole department! If only they could link his DNA!’ Ring. ‘Hello? . . . They linked his DNA.’ How often does that happen in real life? For the sake of credibility, I would just once like to see: ‘We’ve got a serial rapist on the loose and the whole city is in lockdown, but we just might have caught a break with a security camera at a tollbooth to the Lincoln Tunnel. Forensics could call us any minute now!’ Ring. ‘Hello? . . . No, you idiot, this isn’t the prop department! You’ve called the set again while we’re filming! Fuck off!’”

  A hand in the audience went up.

  Serge pointed. “Yes?”

  “Is this in your book?”

  “No, I just thought about it on the drive over and it started bugging me . . . And another thing! You know how a phrase is repeated so often that it just becomes accepted without question? ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ And everyone automatically thinks, ‘Yeah, sounds good to me.’ Phooey! Where is that in the Bible? In fact, it’s the opposite of what the Bible teaches. Someone just made that shit up as an excuse to throw unfortunate people under the bus. Show me one gospel where the apostles are walking along the Sea of Galilee. ‘Hey, Christ, that old man over there is pinned under a really big rock and could use some help.’ ‘Don’t look at me. He’s not even trying’ . . .”

  Another hand went up.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” said Serge. “I got another. Tax collectors who add a charge if you pay with your credit card and call it a ‘convenience fee.’ Yeah, convenient for your lard-ass office to continue munching Kit Kat bars . . . And television commercials that mock the Amish as they never would any other religion, probably because they don’t have TVs . . .”

  A half hour later. “Check it out! Check it out! I just bought a new and improved one!”

  The audience ducked as a drone swooped over their heads.

  Chapter 37

  The Next Morning

  An hour’s drive north of Miami, a black Mercedes took the exit off Interstate 95, followed by several pickup trucks.

  Salenca had a private detective look into the matter, but he’d rolled snake eyes the night before. Most investigative success these days comes from computers, but the detective couldn’t locate anything. No tax records, nor liens, nor court filings, unlisted numbers, utility hookups. Nothing. Not even old stuff in the Internet databases that went back almost twenty-five years. The investigator had never seen anything like it. The author’s bio must be wrong.

  Salenca thought otherwise.

  Time for old-fashioned field research. The vehicles entered a municipal parking lot, and five men entered the Riviera Beach Public Library.

  “May I help you?” asked the research desk.

  “Phone books.”

  All business, no expressions or extra words. The librarian got the same nervous vibe that most did.

  “Uh, that way, special collections.”

  They headed off with the same lack of ceremony, and soon began pulling down thick volumes with tattered paper covers. Salenca stood back and let the others flip pages, jotting down every address for anyone named Reese. All of them thinking: This is going to take forever. But they’d heard the rumors about why they were there, and they all knew better than to question.

  “How far back do you want us to go?”

  The others momentarily froze. You asked a question.

  Salenca firmed his mouth in irritation. “All the way back till he was born.”

  More books came down from the shelves, 1977, ’76, ’75 . . . They gathered around a table and compared addresses. Most were duplications of the same people appearing in multiple phone books years after year. Salenca’s senior lieutenant compiled a master list, newest to oldest. Forty-three total.

  They hit the streets, knocking on doors. Some opened up. “Are you cops?” Others shouted through closed doors, “We’re not buying anything,” which bought louder knocking until they opened up. But none had any relatives named Kenneth, at least none who wrote novels or looked remotely like the photo from the book jacket. Salenca and his crew never needed lie detectors. Their direct glares sufficed. These people were genuinely clueless.

  They kept going down the list, back in time, until the residents were no longer named Reese. Knock, knock, knock. “Kenneth who?” “I don’t know anything about the previous owners.” “Probabl
y three different families have lived here since then.” “You’ve got the wrong house.”

  Only three addresses left on the list when they turned onto Thirty-Fourth Street. They rang the bell.

  The door opened. An older woman still in bedclothes in the afternoon, smoking a Pall Mall. She was immune to their glares. The TV was up loud on a game show.

  “. . . Let’s play . . . Family Feud! . . .”

  She took a long drag. “What the heck’s wrong with you people? Don’t you talk to each other?”

  “How do you mean?” asked Salenca.

  “You’re the second guys who’ve come around looking for this Kenneth whatever.”

  Salenca and the others exchanged glances.

  “. . . Name a musical instrument that people try to take on airplanes but is too big for the overhead bins . . .”

  “Who exactly came by asking about Kenneth?” said Salenca.

  “Abbott and Costello, one tall and thin, the other not.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Are you cops?”

  “Detectives,” said Salenca.

  “. . . A tuba . . .”

  She shrugged. “The tall one wanted to lie down in a bed, but I told him to get his lazy-bum ass out of here.”

  Salenca showed her the back of a book. “Have you ever seen anyone who looks like this?”

  She put on glasses that were hanging from her neck by a decorative chain. “Maybe, yeah . . .”—tapping the photo with a finger—“. . . but he looked younger and didn’t have a beard.”

  That got the whole crew’s attention.

  “. . . A grand piano . . .”

  “Where did you see him?”

  Another Pall Mall drag. “You’re not very good detectives, are you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was one of the two guys I just told you about. Weren’t you listening?”

  “. . . Those big harps that stand on the floor . . .”

  “But . . .” Salenca turned the book around and pointed at the author’s name. “It’s a photo of the writer. Kenneth Reese.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” said the woman. “The guy in the picture was asking about Kenneth. Why would he be looking for himself?”

  Another round of glances.

  Salenca abruptly led his group back to the car.

  From behind them: “You’re welcome, you assholes!”

  “. . . A Chinese gong . . .”

  The door slammed.

  The crew huddled by their vehicles and decided to dismiss the woman as a confused old coot.

  They drove. Two addresses left. Two more dry holes. Salenca stopped to ponder, and nobody interrupted. He began nodding to himself. “We need to come at this from another direction.” He handed the book to his top lieutenant. “Call the publisher. Find out where he is.”

  “What do I say?”

  “Who cares? You’re doing a documentary. You need a keynote speaker. Make something up.”

  He called and made something up.

  “I’m sorry, but our policy is not to give out information on our authors,” said Kenneth’s publicist, typing on her computer as she talked. “But I’d be happy to pass along your information.”

  “It’s actually pretty time-sensitive,” said the lieutenant. “We’re down here in Palm Beach now—last-second kind of thing. Otherwise, we’ll have to cancel. Any way at all to reach him?”

  The publicist looked up and smiled as a guy from the mail room dropped the usual pile on her desk. Then into the phone: “Hold on a second.” She pulled up a page with Kenneth’s contact profile, and virtually everything was in the name of a lawyer. No harm in giving out that info; he was paid to represent Kenneth, after all. And it would get this annoyance off her plate. “You have something to write with? . . .”

  The Mercedes drove south into downtown West Palm Beach, and found a modest yellow-brick legal office on Banyan Street next to a bail bondsman.

  The lawyer was packing up his briefcase at the end of the day when the bell rang. He’d already let his secretary go home and had to answer it himself. “Can I help you?”

  “Hanley Dunn?”

  “Yes?”

  “We would like to discuss some business,” said Salenca.

  “I’m actually closing for the day, and I work by appointments,” said the lawyer. He stood blocking the partially open doorway in a manner that indicated anything they had to discuss would be from the sidewalk. “But if you leave your card, I’ll have my secretary call you tomorrow to set something up.”

  “It’s an emergency.” Salenca reached in his pocket. “What’s your hourly fee?”

  Dunn quickly calibrated upward. “Three hundred.”

  Salenca peeled off large bills from a wad with a gold-horseshoe money clip. “Here’s four hundred.” He stuffed the bills in Dunn’s shirt pocket. “You’re on retainer.”

  The crew barged past him and marched toward his office.

  “Wait.” Dunn caught up. “This isn’t how I operate.”

  “Then give me my money back,” said Salenca.

  Dunn took a pensive breath and found his desk chair. “Okay, let’s all sit down and start over.”

  They chose to stand. “Where’s Kenneth Reese?”

  “Who?”

  “We know you represent him.”

  “I’m not at liberty—”

  “Cancel liberty.” Five automatic pistols were suddenly in his face. “Where can we find him?”

  Panic, but the kind that brings clarity in some people. “If you kill me, you’ll never find out.”

  “You’re right.” Salenca turned around so his back was toward the attorney.

  The others rushed the desk, seizing him by the arms. They always started by breaking the nose, to set the theme. What followed was rapid and effective.

  Salenca didn’t need to watch. He knew the lawyer’s type—the kind without street experience who fold rather quickly. Salenca listened to the screams and begging until he was sure the jar lid had been sufficiently loosened. He turned back around. “Where’s Kenneth?”

  The attorney spit out some blood, a tooth, and an address.

  “Blanco, stay with him while we check this out.”

  Serge opened the cabinet doors under the sink. “Kenny, we’re leaving now for tonight’s book signing. Sure you don’t want to come?”

  No response.

  “Okay, maybe next time.” Serge closed the doors.

  Salenca’s crew bolted from the legal office, leaving just Blanco to watch the attorney. Blanco considered it easy lifting. White-collar types like Dunn were too traumatized to try anything. He took a seat on the far side of the office to create enough separation, just in case the lawyer did try something. He picked up a magazine and turned the pages with his pistol held casually in his right hand.

  Dunn’s mind reeled. He’d always thought Kenny was just eccentric, but now he got it. He watched the gunman guarding him, who wasn’t really watching back. Dunn waited to see how attentive Blanco was, except he didn’t have time to wait. It wasn’t that long of a drive over to Kenny’s house. The lawyer jacked forward, pretended to hack up more blood, but it wasn’t much of an acting stretch. Blanco smirked and turned a page. Dunn reached into his pocket and pulled a cell phone out under his desk.

  He turned the volume off and dialed. And dialed again, over and over, but the screen kept indicating the number was out of service, as if someone had cut the line . . .

  . . . The Mercedes screeched up the driveway of a wood-frame house south of Blue Heron. They didn’t even mess with the front door because of nosy neighbors. Four ran around the side of the house, leaving one in front, in case Kenny made a break that way.

  Kenny had crawled out from under the sink to stretch in his lounge chair, when the stereo blared heavy footsteps. Kenny sprang up. He grabbed the rifle and ran to the windows to peek. Four bad dudes with guns already drawn.

  Violent banging on the back door.


  Kenny shrieked and flung the gun without realizing it.

  The banging stopped. Through the stereo: “It’s got a steel plate. Get the battering ram.”

  That did the trick. The steel plate held, but the doorframe was splinters. The four men fanned out. All rooms and closets checked. The crew regrouped in the kitchen.

  “I know he’s here!” said Salenca. “I heard a shriek . . .” His eyes slowly lowered. He got down on his knees and opened the cabinet doors under the sink.

  A quivering ball.

  “Jesus!” said Salenca. “None of you fools looked down here? Get him out!”

  They threw Kenny into one of the kitchen chairs, and Kenny threw up.

  Salenca got in his face. “Are you Kenneth Reese?”

  Urine puddled under the chair.

  One of the crew stepped forward. “We’ll get him to talk.”

  Another yanked Kenny to his feet and seized him from behind by the arms.

  “Stop!” yelled Salenca. “Let him go!”

  “But he hasn’t said anything yet.”

  “And he’s not going to!” said their boss. “Just look at him. He’s more unnerved than most of the other guys at the end of a beating.”

  “That means he’s guilty!”

  “No, it means he’s acting like half the innocent people in this town would if we knocked down a door and barged in with weapons,” said Salenca. “We want the truth, not something he makes up out of fear.”

  “Then what do we do?”

  “It’s more than simple,” said Salenca. “Just find something in here that says who this guy is.”

  “Like what?”

  “Do I have to do all your thinking for you?” Salenca thrust out an arm. “You’re standing right next to the goddamn answering machine, for heaven’s sake! Just press the button to play the fucking greeting!”

  He did.

  “You’ve reached Guido Lopez. Please leave a message after the beep.” Beep.

  Salenca grabbed a drinking glass off the counter and smashed it against the refrigerator. “That cocksucking attorney! He deliberately gave us the wrong address!”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” said one of the crew, sneering and gripping Kenny by the arm. “I think he’s trying to trick us!”