Lucky Leonardo Read Online Free PDF Page B

smiled with many teeth. “Why,” Leonardo asked himself, “do I still let her take my breath away?”
    She was a consultant—whatever that meant, Leonardo used to joke—at a consulting firm downtown. If, prior to his discovery of smiling Stan, Leonardo had been stretched on a rack and required to spit out the name of a person who might be having an affair with his wife, after having endured a fair amount of pain he would have come up with Byron Plummer, the smooth, squash-playing, managing partner of Barbara’s firm.
    Of course, there might have been more than one right answer.
    Barbara was holding a section of the morning Globe. “Did you hear what happened at DeltaTek last night?” she asked as she opened the door. “Strange stuff…”
    â€œI heard,” said Leonardo.
    â€œYou know I own stock in DeltaTek.”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œFrom my mother.”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œWho never liked you.”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œI’m thinking this is a good time to get rid of it. It was crazy yesterday. Like a roller coaster.”
    â€œHmm,” Leonardo murmured, feeling a range of conflicting impulses. “I don’t know,” he said. “This could be one of those times when the weak-hearted jump, and those with courage stay and get a…nice surprise…”
    â€œDo you know something?”
    â€œI don’t know anything. Really. Forget I said that.”
    â€œWhat do you mean forget you said that? Why should I forget you said that? Is this like I’m on the jury and the judge says forget the guy confessed to the murder because it wasn’t admissible? What are you talking about?” It didn’t take much to get Barbara in his face.
    â€œIs Harvey ready?” he asked.
    â€œHarvey,” she hollered into the house from her post at the door. “Your father’s here.”
    â€œComing,” Harvey hollered back.
    â€œWhat do you have planned?” Barbara asked Leonardo.
    â€œWe’re going shopping.”
    â€œOh?”

Chapter 8
    It was difficult for the spouse to read news off the surgeon’s face as he crossed the waiting room toward her. He was square-jawed, masculine, darkly handsome, and free of information leaks. She stood up. He greeted her by name, and bent down to her worried face. He spoke in a low, clear voice: “I think your husband will be fine. The leg will be in a cast for a while, but it should heal as good as new. The ribs will be painful, but will mend. The arm will require intensive therapy, and possibly additional procedures, but I am optimistic.”
    Tears poured from the spouse’s eyes. She shook uncontrollably at this great relief. This man was the closest thing to God she had ever seen. Capable of miracles. She looked up to him and said, “Doctor, thank you. Doctor, thank you.”
    An hour later they allowed her to see her husband in post-op. He was bandaged from head to toe, and still groggy from the anesthesia, but he smiled the biggest smile ever when he saw her face, and in the most delicate way, barely touching a bandage, she embraced him. “Ben,” she said, “I love you.”
    Meanwhile at a hospital across town things were not so optimistic for Eugene Binh. He was unconscious, in intensive care, in critical condition. He was bizarrely lucky to be alive. When he smashed through the glass wall, on his way to sure death upon impact with concrete seven floors below, his right foot caught one of the window-washer straps that hung from the roof and supported Ben Grevere’s clandestine observation post. Instead of flying out from the building, Eugene’s body was pulled back to the building by his stuck foot, like a door slamming on its hinge. He slammed into Ben, and then through the window on the floor below, ending up in a bleeding, broken heap on the plush carpet of the office of General Counsel Janet Casey.
    â€œIf I knew he