A Trouble of Fools Read Online Free PDF

look at all like Robert Redford.
    “That is too bad,” the man on the phone said. He sounded sincerely concerned.
    “Any possibility of an extension on those fourteen days?”
    I asked.
    “Well, it’s very unusual. I would have to speak to my superiors.”
    “Why
    don’t you do that,” I said, “and I’ll call back.”
    ‘Try to get in touch with your husband, Mrs. Carlyle.”
    “Right,” I said.
    I hung up and stared balefully at T.C. I mean, you can kiss a frog on the nose and have a chance at a prince, but what the hell can you do with a cat?

CHAPTER
    I suppose I could have tried the direct approach, sidling up to one of the Geezers, buying him a whiskey or three in memory of our former camaraderie at Green & White, then easing in the crucial questions: So where’s old Gene Devens?
    What’s he up to these days? But I suspected that some of the old coots might remember my transformation from cabbie to cop. And if they hadn’t told Gloria about Eugene’s disappearance, I figured they weren’t about to give me the inside scoop.
    The situation called for subterfuge. Sneakiness. I live and breathe for that kind of stuff. If I thought I could possibly agree with half—well, a quarter—of their activities, I might have joined the CIA. Spying has its attractions for me. Government does not.
    I knew one important fact about Eugene Devens. He drank.
    I could have tried every Irish bar in Boston, beginning with the Eire Pub in Southie, grandaddy of them all, but that would have taken six months of hard drinking, and Margaret Devens didn’t look like a lady who’d take kindly to footing the bill for a six-month bar tab.
    Now a man might give up his home. He might stray to the arms of a thoroughly unsuitable suburban divorcee, say, or even hit the skids and forget the joys of domestic life with a devoted elderly sister. But if that man has a history of drink, and a group of buddies with whom he regularly takes a drop, odds are he will show up in their company one night.
    Gloria declared she hadn’t the faintest clue where Gene and the Geezers did their boozing. So starting fresh Monday night, I hung out with her—keeping away from the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups by sheer force of will—until, with a nod, her mouth too full of Twinkie for polite conversation, she informed me that a couple of Eugene’s cronies were bringing their cabs in for the night.
    The first time I tried to follow them, they split, and zoomed off in different directions. I took a chance and tailed old Sean Boyle, who went straight home to bed.
    So did I.
    The second night was more of the same, except Gloria’s brother Leroy, a mere bruiser of six three, took ten bucks off me at five-card stud. When Leroy wins, I always breathe a sigh of relief. This time, I followed Joe Fergus home to his apparently blameless sheets.
    The third night, Wednesday, was more promising from the start.,Three of the old coots piled into a yellow Dodge Charger that looked like a graduate of a demolition derby.
    Now cabbies aren’t easy to follow. They do the damndest things with the most righteous air, secure in the knowledge that traffic laws apply only to nonprofessionals. I’d almost forgotten the thrill of the illegal U-turn, the music of the two-wheeled corner, the joy of navigating the narrow back street. These guys had a route that took them along roads no full-sized car had discovered, at speeds never intended by Chrysler. I don’t think I breathed until that Dodge pulled into the parking lot of the Rebellion.
    The Rebellion is the Irish bar in Brighton. It’s on Harvard Street, in the middle of a working-class block that’s experiencing Vietnamization. “Vietnam Eggrolls” reads the neon on the new take-out joint. The laundries have signs in an alphabet I can’t read, and so does the Kao Palace Fish Store and Restaurant, which, by the way, is a great place for softshell crabs.
    I could see that the shamrock was still the bumper sticker of choice