Boystown 7: Bloodlines Read Online Free PDF

Fante who didn’t seem to be related to any of the Fantes in Chicago. She must be from somewhere else originally, I thought, though it was hardly useful.  
    I followed the same procedure for Roland Bowen, who also wasn’t listed. I thought it was a strong possibility that he lived in the suburbs. Most of them were included in the Metro phonebook. But if he taught Madeline as a teenager that meant he was teaching in Park Ridge. I’d been to Park Ridge and knew it was a pricey suburb surrounded by several less pricey suburbs. As a teacher, it was unlikely that he lived in Park Ridge itself. I guessed he could have lived a half an hour to forty minutes further west, which might have put him into a different phonebook. Or, like Emily Fante, he had an unlisted number.
    I suppose I could have dialed information and started guessing at which northwestern suburb he might live in, but instead I decided I’d take the easy way out and flipped to the yellow pages. I looked up dentists and found the number for Caspian Levine Dental Care. I patiently waited until the clock clicked eight and dialed the number. Unfortunately, I got their answering service and was told the office didn’t open until nine. Given people’s work schedules I suspected that there were appointments available before nine, so the office was open. They just weren’t answering the phone.
    I turned on my radio and switched to a jazz station I liked. The news was still on and I learned that tensions in the Middle East were high now that Passover had begun, the Vice President was in Geneva working on disarming the Russians, and an announcement was expected soon as to the cause of AIDS which, according to the newscast, was some kind of cancer virus. That wasn’t too far off from the information in the brochure Brian picked up in New York, How to Have Sex in an Epidemic . In fact, I gathered from Brian that people had been saying it might be a virus for almost a year. But that didn’t make a lot of sense to me. A cold was a virus. If AIDS traveled like a cold, then why didn’t everyone have it? Unless, it was a virus that worked more like mononucleosis? Mono was called the kissing disease, but did it really transfer that way? Is that how AIDS transferred? Through deep kissing? No, probably not. If it were we’d have an even bigger mess on our hands.
    Feeling lazy, I shoved the phonebook back in its drawer and called directory assistance. I asked for a number for Herb Dotson in Skokie. It wasn’t listed. I tried Lana Shepherd in Skokie but got nothing. In Chicago, the operator found an L. Shepherd on Lake Shore Drive. I took that number. Then something occurred to me. Something that should have occurred to me right off the bat. I hung up and dialed Cooke, Babcock and Lackerby. Owen Lovejoy, Esquire picked up his own telephone. It was still too early for a secretary to be there.
    “Question. Why did you give me a sheet of names without phone numbers?”
    “Oh, sorry. It’s the list that we’re preparing for the State’s Attorney. We don’t want to give them too much.”
    “But I’m not the State’s Attorney.”
    “Yes, but you do know how to find people without phone numbers, don’t you?”
    “Absolutely. I just hate billing you to get information you already had.”
    I felt like I was fighting with him and I didn’t want to be. I decided to throw him a bone and said, “I already talked to Melody Oddy.”
    And of course, that was the wrong thing to say. “Sweetheart, I asked you to work on the other side of the list first. Did you not hear me?”
    “Yeah, but Melody works in a restaurant and I was hungry.”
    I could almost hear him shaking his head. “Well did you find anything out?”
    “She gave me an idea why her parents won’t testify, which I wanted before I go see them.” I let the idea that I might know what I was doing sink in, then I asked, “Look, you know more than I do about all of this. Let me ask you a few questions before I run