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

from the bookstore at the corner of Main and Palm. Parking didn’t come easy and two-hour parking meant two-hour parking or a ticket.
    I found a pay phone and called Harvey the computer.
    “Haven’t had time yet,” he said.
    “I’m not calling about Vera Lynn Uliaks,” I said. “I need an unlisted phone number.”
    “When?”
    “Now,” I said, holding my hand over my ear to blur the sound of a couple in their fifties doing battle as they headed in the general direction of the library.
    “Okay,” said Harvey.
    “Don’t put me on hold,” I said. “I can’t take the music.”
    “Name?”
    “Conrad Lonsberg,” I said.
    “He doesn’t have a phone,” said Harvey. “That’s an easy one. Tycinker wanted to reach him a few months back about some case. No phone. I can give you an address.”
    “I’ve got one. Harve, what do you think about AA?”
    Pause and then. “They can help,” he said. “It’s like a religion if it works. I tried it, needed too much support, went cold on my own. So far so good. Why are you asking?”
    “I’ve got a friend,” I said.
    “Good luck. Talk to you tomorrow.”
    He hung up and I checked my watch. I had five minutes, just enough time to stop at Sarasota News & Books, pick up two coffees and a biscotti. I paid Ann Horowitz twenty dollars a visit when I could afford it, ten when I couldn’t, and always brought her coffee and a chocolate biscotti.
    She was just around the corner on Gulf Stream, a small office with a small waiting room. Ann had no secretary and a select few patients. At the age of eighty-one and with her annuity from Stanford University plus investments she had mentioned from time to time plus the money her husband Melvin still brought in as a successful sculptor, Ann could have retired two decades earlier. But therapy was what shedid and enjoyed in addition to conversation, history, odd facts, coffee, biscotti, and opera. Ann and Melvin had chosen Sarasota because their only son lived here with his wife and two grown daughters.
    Ann’s inner door was open. I could hear her talking. From the pauses, I figured she was on the phone so I moved to the doorway where she motioned for me to take my usual seat across from her.
    Ann is a small woman with a tolerant smile. She likes bright dresses. Her hair is gray, straight, and short enough to show off her colorful earrings.
    “No,” she told the person on the phone, “I’ll see you at four… no, you will not kill yourself… I understand… four. Did you read the book?… I gave you a book,
Lost Horizon
… No, I did not want you to rent the movie. I wanted you to read the book… You’ve got a few hours. Start reading.”
    She hung up the phone and accepted the coffee and biscotti from me, placing both on the desk to her right, and looked at me.
    I knew what she was looking at.
    “I got slapped by a woman I was serving papers,” I explained as she examined the side of my face.
    “And what did you do?”
    “Do?”
    “In response to being slapped. What did you do?”
    “I got on my bike and left.”
    Ann shook her head.
    “What should I have done?” I asked.
    “Getting on your bicycle is one thing. Getting angry is another. Saying something to the woman.”
    “I wasn’t angry,” I said.
    “You should have been. You should let yourself feel, but don’t worry. I’m not commanding you to feel. It doesn’t work that way. Here, take this with you,” she said, handing me a copy of
Smithsonian
magazine. “Article in there about gargoyles. Fascinating.”
    I took the magazine. There was a grinning stone gargoyle on the cover, just the right gift for a depressed client. Anntook the lid off the cup of black coffee and dipped the biscotti.
    “Can you do it today?” she asked, looking at me as she lifted the saturated biscotti to her mouth.
    “Not today,” I said.
    She wanted me to speak the name of my wife. I had done it only twice since she had died, once to Sally and two weeks ago when I managed