Retribution: A Lew Fonesca Novel (Lew Fonesca Novels) Read Online Free PDF Page A

mother. Tell you the truth, I didn’t know who the hell Conrad Lonsberg was, but Adele did. She’s been great, Lew. These months … her grades went up. She pretty much stayed home though she worked on the school paper. She started going with this Mickey kid. Seemed okay. Friendly. Things were going great. Then this Lonsberg calls. I sort of remembered the name, I think. He asked if he could talk to Adele. Adele was shaking when she took the phone. Anyway, Lonsberg told Adele that he had read her story and would like to meet her. She stood there holding the phone waiting for me to give her permission.”
    “And you did?”
    “Adele’s picture had been in the paper, remember? She had been interviewed by Channel 40. Adele is one beautiful sixteen-year-old. But then again I seemed to remember Lonsberg was an old guy, older than yours truly Florence Ornstein Zink.”
    She drank to that too.
    “So,” she went on, “seemed okay to me and I figured from the look she had that she would probably see him even if I said ‘no,’ but thanks for asking, I thought.
    “They set up a time the next day after school,” Flo went on. “He gave his address on Casey Key, north end. I drove her down, a thick folder full of her stories and poems in her lap. You know that big stone wall on the north end of the Casey?”
    “Which one?”
    “The one out toward the water. White stone walls maybe nine feet high?”
    “I think I know the place. That’s where Lonsberg lives?”
    “That’s where,” she said, looking at her now-empty glass. “Adele rang a bell. Few minutes later the gate was opened and she went in.”
    “And you?”
    “Wasn’t invited,” she said, getting up with a sigh. “Sat in the van reading something. I can’t remember what. Sat for about an hour. I was thinking of ringing the bell when she came out, all excited. Lonsberg wanted to work with her, wanted her to come every Saturday morning. So, that’swhat we did. She told me he was a nice old man. I know about nice old men. Old men are still men. So, every Saturday we drove to Casey Key and I sat in the car reading. Son of a bitch never invited me in, never so much as came over to the car and introduced himself. I kept asking Adele if he tried to get in her pants or touch her. She said he didn’t Went on like this for five or six months, then six weeks ago Saturday she came out, got in the car, and said, ‘Let’s get away from here.’ We got away. She was mad as a cougar with an arrow in his ass and she was shaking. Adele’s been through a lot we both know about, and she can handle herself. She wasn’t handling herself after that visit. She wouldn’t talk about it. And she never went back to Lonsberg’s place. A couple of days later she started going out with this kid Mickey, the one from Burger King, almost every night. I saw some of the old Adele coming back. Smart-ass talk, schoolwork just barely getting done. She stopped writing and I think she was making it with this Mickey.”
    “So something happened at Lonsberg’s that day and she’s run away with Mickey,” I summarized as Flo went to the wooden liquor cabinet to pour herself another drink.
    “Lonsberg called last week,” she said, bottle in hand closing the cabinet door. “Adele talked to him for maybe thirty seconds, mostly she listened and then at the end said ‘yes’ and slammed down the phone.”
    Flo brought her bottle to the sofa and poured herself another drink, putting the bottle on the table in front of the Remington horse.
    “She tell you what the call was about?”
    “Nope,” said Flo, taking a drink. “Not a word. Then, like a fast fart from a buffalo, she leaves a note and takes off.”
    “I’ll find her,” I said.
    “Good,” Flo said, toasting.
    “Does Sally know?”
    Flo shook her head “no.”
    Sally Porovsky was a social worker with Children’s Services of Sarasota. Adele was one of her cases. I was also seeing Sally and her two kids from time to time. In a