The Lemon Thief's Ex-Wife's Third Cousin

  He did live on Mistercarlton Terrace, but not at 26441 as it turned out, but at 24661. Apparently other previous Cardoval seekers had been equally misinformed by the Misterharrison couple, so I did end up on his doorstep where I was greeted by a definitely not little and hardly darling Miss Angelica Cardoval. She was at least six three, at least two forty, and hard at work on several pizzas when she reluctantly came to the door and peeked out.

  "Who you and what you want?" she inquired. I noticed she had inherited her father's grammar if not his size.

  "Is your father home? I asked.

  "Why? what you want with him?" she demanded, as if she were some kind of gatekeeper. She certainly seemed suspicious of me.

  "I'm hoping he can help me in the matter of a mutual friend," I said, and when she insisted on knowing who this mutual friend was, I told her his name, Hernan Kaitel.

  "That dickweed?" she snorted. "There's no helping him." She seemed to remember her pizzas just then, and started to close the door, but as she did she told me that her father was not there but could probably be found at Tony's Pizza on Misterabbey Boulevard.

  Once again I was extremely grateful for my car's navigation system. I would never have found the place otherwise. Despite the grandiose inclusion of the word 'boulevard' in its name, Misterabbey was barely an alley crammed between two gas stations and backed up onto a freeway underpass. When I got out of the car, I was wishing the vehicle had also come equipped with a bodyguard. It was not a good feeling I had, looking around at the several young men wearing identical blue wool caps under their fleece hoods sitting on trash cans by the side of the road doing nothing but looking right at me. Two of them silently turned to each other and began a game of rock-paper-scissors, on which my life perhaps depended. I tried not to think about it, and instead headed straight for the screen door banging open in no breeze, and walked into the so-called restaurant.

  Tony's was basically a greasy aluminum counter with a fat guy standing behind it holding a butcher knife, and two guys occupying the two bar stools in front of it. They swiveled around at my entrance and I was momentarily relieved to see that one of them was indeed Enrique Cardoval. He looked just as I had seen him earlier, only now I took in more of him. He had to be at least forty, but his face looked more like fourteen, except for a deep scar above his left eye. He still had a thick head of black hair, no gray in it at all, and was as skinny and short as a normal, healthy grown man could be. His companion was about my size, which is to say average, and about my age too, a decade and some older than Ricky. His hair was dyed blond, which was a little strange, and his eyes were bright green, giving him a sort of otherworldly appearance, but he smiled and said,

  "You sure you're in the right place, mister?"

  "I'd like to speak with Mr. Cardoval," I said, a little nervously, I admit. "About our friend Hernan," I added.

  "You're that guy." Ricky said, and snapped his fingers. "This is that guy," he repeated, turning to his associate, "the one I was telling you about, from this morning. He showed up with Nando, then the cops hauled his ass off."

  He turned back to me and sort of sniffed. I mean he wrinkled his nose and made a little snorting sound. I suppose it was some form of communication, but I did not comprehend the gesture.

  "Can you tell me where he is? I asked. "Where he is right now? I'd very much like to see him."

  "Oh, he's safe," Ricky laughed. "Perfectly secure, I'd say."

  "You mean he's in police custody," I guessed. The two men broke into a duet and sang a verse or two about being back where one belonged, or something like that.

  "There's been a mistake," I said. "We just arrived here last night, from Wetford. Hernan's family moved away from here when he was twelve and he's never been back here since until now. You know that, right? Weren't you a friend of his when you were children?"

  "Sure enough," Ricky said to me, and then to his friend he added, "must be some kind of nut job." Turning back to face me he said,

  "I don't know what your game is, pal, seeing as you say you're a friend of Nando and all that stuff about Wetford. Wetford? So maybe you're having a bad day or a bad life or something, so I'll tell you right out, Nando ain't never moved away from here. He ain't never been to no Wetford, neither. Who'd want to go there, anyway? That place is a dump, not to mention haunted."

  "His father," I replied, ignoring the slander on my home town,"moved the family for work reasons when Hernan was twelve. Then his parents split up and his mom moved back here, had another kid, a brother Hernan never met."

  "A brother? That's a joke," Enrique laughed his bitter laugh once more. "You go tell her that, I'd want to be there for that one. She's right over, right across, right, oh I forget. Wilson? Where she at these days?"

  "Mistercorn," his companion replied. "Seven hundreds, I think, that's where that old bat moved off to."

  "Right," Ricky agreed. "Mistercorn. You go around there, ask for Dotty Wooten, it ain't her name but it's what they call because it's what she is, kind of dotty. See if she ever had another boy kid. Yeah, you got the splitting up part right. Old man went away, that too, but Nando? Naw, he never left, practically grew up in my own house, my mom being more mom to him than his own mom ever was. Ain't it so, Wilson?"

  "It is so," Wilson complied. It was only then that I noticed they were each holding a paper dixie cup containing some sort of yellow liquid. Ricky noticed me staring at it because he turned all the way around and told the fat man behind the counter to be polite and offer his new customer a lemonade, first new customer you've had in years, Ricky put it. I already realized I was in a kind of club house, probably a gang site. I was on the verge of giving up and heading back to the police station when a cup of the yellow stuff was passed over to me, and I felt it would be rude, and possibly dangerous, to refuse it. I studied the liquid for a moment, and then took a sip. It tasted like good old fashioned lemonade, nothing more.

  "I've known Hernan a long time," I said, "I met him through his wife, Magdalena. He works for me now."

  "Magdalena?" Ricky shook his head. "Molly went and got some fancy name I never heard about? She never were no Magdalena."

  "Molly," I sighed. "Next you'll tell me there's a Candy, too."

  Ricky jumped off his stool and stepped right up to me. I would have been more intimidated if he'd come up to higher than my collarbone, but he looked pretty angry.

  "I don't know what you're up to buddy," he said, "We don't know you, and we know you don't know Nando. If I were you, I'd back up real slow and get the hell out of here right now."

  I put my hands up, being careful not to spill my cup, and did as he advised. Wilson was also standing now and the fat guy behind the counter was leaning on it and sneering at me as I departed. I was quite relieved to find my path to the car unhindered, and the car itself untouched. I did get the hell out of there, and went straight back to the hotel to try and breathe again.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Somehow I wasn't surprised to discover, on returning to the hotel, that they'd switched my room from a double to a single and from the fourth floor to the third. Perhaps the police had already informed them of Hernan's situation. I didn't know, and it had been such a long and trying day that I didn't even try to find out. I felt as if I wasn't merely in a different city, or even a different country, but a new universe altogether, one whose rules of operation I wasn't familiar with. People looked the same and spoke the same, but beneath the skin they might have been giant bug-eyed reptiles for all I could tell. From my new vantage point on the third floor, I ordered a sandwich and chips from room service and scanned the local television stations for any evidence of inter-galactic mayhem, but all I found was traffic reports and intermittent listings of recent business re-locations. These people were keen on keeping up to date on where everyone else had got to. They had a mania for constant change, it seemed.

  I spent a sleepless night in three fourteen. The events of the day were confusing enough, but when fatigue and worry
were added to the package, I was unable to keep anything straight in my mind. I knew my Hernan Kaitel, or at least I thought I did, and I knew he was no wanted fugitive who'd spend the last months on the run from the law, perhaps hiding underground in that inexplicable bunker, or hanging around with those awful greasy spoon gangsters. He had been, and I had to keep reminding myself of this definite fact, living in my own house and working for my own paper, under my very eyes practically the entire year to date. So who were all these people claiming otherwise, and why was Hernan remembering things that never happened, and what did it all add up to? Had we imperceptibly crossed paths with some sort of a mirror dimension? Were we now truly walking on the road not taken? That seemed as reasonable a notion as any.

  I'm sure I came across as a babbling idiot the next morning when I broached some of these notions with Hernan's attorney, to whom I was directed by the sergeant on duty at the station, after he refused to let me visit with my incarcerated friend. The lawyer's name was Robin Pence, and she was apparently a highly respected one, judging from the shiny condition of the walnut paneling in her downtown high-rise office, and the golden nameplate on its door. She was relatively easy to track down, too, actually located at the very first address I was given. She was a very imposing presence, at least six feet tall. She was very dark with a mass of curly black hair which made her entire height approach the rim of the standard-size basketball hoop adorning one of the walls. She also had a very deep and calm voice, and it was easy to imagine her having a side-job narrating nature documentaries. She sat behind a wide obsidian desk in a red leather chair and listened to my chronological rendition of the story, just as you yourself have heard up until this point. When I finally paused for breath, she whistled, smiled and said,

  "I've been Nando's lawyer for a long time now and this is by far the best he's come up with yet."

  "The best what?" I asked.

  "Alibi," she said. "He's always good for a new one. Every time he gets caught, which is something that occurs on a quite regular basis, by the way, although this time he did manage to elude the authorities for several months. I have to admit I had placed a small wager on the tall tale he'd drag in this time. I see I was wrong, very wrong. I had something more along the lines of 'my ex-wife's third cousin stole my identity', or the classic 'you know what bacon does to my system', or even 'the dog ate the diamonds', something uniquely Nando like that."

  "I don't know anything about diamonds," I said, discouraged.

  "They'd already been sold," she said. "Weeks and weeks ago. The jewels went through so many hands along the way that the police can't trace it all the way back, but they're pretty sure they've got some telling links. Not enough for a conviction perhaps, but enough for a case. Nando will be going to trial this time. Ah," she leaned back in her chair and pretended to exhale from an imaginary cigar, 'The Case of The Christmas Heist'. It's going to be fun, and I'm going to enjoy it."

  "The Christmas Heist?" I asked.

  "Surely you heard about it," she said. "Even in Wetford they must have some idea of what goes on in the world. It was the most spectacular burglary in years. The Hanover diamonds, on loan from the Hapsburg collection, swiped from the Ruggeinheil Museum in broad daylight during operating hours, heck, during a public tour no less, in the presence of hundreds, and on Christmas day itself!"

  "Well, it couldn't have been Hernan," I said, "that same day he was busy losing his life savings at the Pindar Casino in Pink City."

  "What's that?" Robin Pence broke out of her reverie. She must have been imagining how even more famous she would be after her day in court on this case.

  "And his car," I added. "Hernan lost everything last Christmas day."

  "At the Pindar Casino, you say? In Pink City? I didn't know they had Indian casinos there, and I never heard of that particular tribe."

  "These Indians are from India. Pink City's a little unusual, you know."

  "Pindar Casino. Interesting." Robin Pence was nothing if not connected. In minutes she'd been on the phone with someone very important in Pink City, who'd connected her with someone very important at the Pindar Casino, who ran an immediate scan and came up with not only printed but video evidence as well, evidence which would be perfectly admissible in court, according to Robin Pence, after she hung up the phone.

  "Very," she abbreviated, once again holding up the invisible cigar to her lips.

  "Very very, indeed," she contemplated.

  "I must say, Mister - I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name."

  "It doesn't matter what my name is," I replied. "All I care about is getting Hernan out of that jail and back home with me."

  Chapter Fourteen

  Robin Pence told me to take a long walk, and by the time I was finished with that, she would have Hernan out of the pen on bail and back home safe and sound. It didn't even take that long. I had only made it halfway across the park, along a lovely meandering stream bordered on either side by towering weeping willows, when I received a call from her secretary informing me that Pence had done exactly as she'd promised. Nando, as they persisted in calling him, was on his way home at that very moment, the secretary asserted. I almost let her hang up before I realized I had no idea which "home" they were talking about. Was it the half-demolished structure on Misteranibal Street, if that had indeed been the home of this Nando character, or did they mean they were driving him back to my own house in Wetford?

  "Let me see," she murmured, and took some time to research the matter. When she finally returned to the phone she gave me two possible addresses, neither of which corresponded to my earlier anticipations.

  "He'll be either at 1717 Mistergoodley Terrace, or 983 Misterhatton Street," she announced, and promptly hung up. Once again, my car's navigation system attempted to come to the rescue. It decided to steer me toward Misterhatton Street first, since it was closer, and from there I could take the bypass of Misterclemens Avenue to Misterfittle Drive, which led directly to Mistergoodley Terrace. Naturally, the people who answered the door at the Misterhatton Street address had never heard of Nando or Hernan or even Molly whatever-her-last-name-might-have-been. They couldn't place my detailed description of my friend, nor did they have any recollection whatever of whomever might have been the previous tenants. Of course, they informed me, the building was brand new and they didn't even know what the previous residence had looked like, except that it was not in the current style, that much was certain. The entire block had been re-beautified in the past two years! I didn't give two hoots about the current style at this point, but climbed back into my car and let the navigational personage tell me where to go.

  I was familiar enough with the town of Misterlittleton by then, so I was not surprised at the constant construction on every block, the unexpected detours which forced the navigational system to recalculate its bearings every so often, giving up on the whole bypass idea and sending me in a broad loop around the sports facility and then the convention center, and one or two Westburg trademarked shopping malls, before guiding me to a parking spot right in front of a pleasant three-story red adobe-with-black-glass apartment building at 1719 Mistergoodley Terrace. This turned out to be off by a mere two numbers, but there you have it. There was no such place as 1717, only 1715 and 1719, and naturally, as you already expected, there was no trace of my friend at either locale.

  My patience level had dropped to around a 6 on a scale of 4 to 13. I called Robin Pence's office but could only leave fruitless messages on their machine. Apparently my priority level on their scale was even lower. I considered returning once again to the police station, but I didn't really think I'd have much better luck getting the right address out of them, even though they were the only people so far who'd provided anybody's correct location. I certainly did not want to return to Tony's Pizza. I was running out of ideas. I went back to my hotel room and used their stationery and pen to write down everyone I knew or had heard about in that increasingly annoying city, and my last resort came down to a choice
between trying to track down this Molly person, about whose whereabouts I had no clue, or my friend's alter ego's alleged mother, whose address had been provided to me by those lemonade sipping hoodlums.

  According to my notes, her name was Dotty Wooten, and she resided in the 700 block of Mistercorn. I took a deep breath and plunged back into my car, certain of getting lost at least a few more times that day, and less and less convinced I would ever see my friend again.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I found the block readily enough, and was surprised to find one entire side of it stood without a single demolition in its midst. It consisted of closely connected row houses of the traditional type, complete with concrete steps and semi-enclosed porches of the kind you would have found a century earlier in some north-eastern city slum. These homes, though, appeared to be in good repair and freshly painted, alternately white and red. Since I did not have an exact address, I started with the first door on the even numbered side of the street, and patiently waited after ringing the doorbell. An old woman in a walker shuffled over to open it, making me feel immediately guilty for causing her such trouble. She was ancient, indeed, bent over and hunched and impossibly hard of hearing. I repeated my query three or four times before apologizing and giving up. She continued to stare at me as I backed down the steps and up to the neighbor's door. There a middle-aged housewife opened up right away, and noticing the old woman still perched in her own doorway, yelled at her to go back inside, that everything was all right, and she would be over just as soon as she could. The old woman seemed to grasp this scenario and disappeared from view.

  "She's a bit, you know," the housewife stated and I nodded.

  "I'm looking for someone named Dotty Wooten," I explained, "and all I know is I was told she lives on this block."