Denial: A Lew Fonesca Mystery (Lew Fonesca Novels)

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Authors: Stuart M. Kaminsky
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looking for little boys to run over.”
    “How do you know this?” she asked.
    “I think he was just after one fourteen-year-old boy.”
    “You know this for sure?”
    “No, not for sure.”
    “Then I think maybe we’ll keep Carlos inside till he’s caught, this driver,” she said.
    “It can’t hurt. How are the tacos?” I asked.
    “How are the tacos?” she repeated, shaking her head and smiling. “What do you expect me to say? The tacos are terrible? The tacos are good, the best.”
    “Two tacos,” I said, “and a Diet Coke.”
    “He’s a good man, Arnoldo,” she said. “A very good man and a good father.”
    My turn to nod. She walked away and I waited and looked out the window. The clouds were white cotton. The sun was behind one of them heading for the Gulf of Mexico.
    I had finished the first taco when Arnoldo Robles sat down across from me still wearing his apron, a bottle of water in his hand. Corazon Robles was right. The taco was good and big.
    “I’ve got maybe five minutes,” he said.
    “You look tired.”
    He shrugged.
    “You know this song? The one playing?” he asked.
    “‘La Paloma,’” I said.
    “Yes, ‘The Dove.’ People think it is a Mexican song, but it is not,” he said, looking at the tablecloth. “It is Spanish and the other famous song in Spanish, ‘Granada,’ about a city in Spain, is a Mexican song. Irónico . You understand?”
    “Ironic,” I said. “Almost the same word. You look tired.”
    “Bad dreams,” he said. “My wife told you?”
    “Yes.”
    “I dream about that boy, that car,” he said.
    “I have nightmares too. My nightmares are about my wife. She was killed by a hit-and-run driver.”
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “When?”
    “Four years, one month and six days ago.”
    I took a bite of the second taco.
    “Good taco,” I said.
    “You talked to the police?” asked Robles.
    “Yes,” I said.
    “I don’t have anything more to tell you than I told them,” he said after a long drink of water. “I was walking home. I see this kid in the street. There’s a car behind him. Kid runs down the street, right in the middle, you know? Kid turns, holds up his hand, but the guy in the car just …”
    “Ran him down,” I said.
    “Ran him … ?”
    “Hit him on purpose.”
    “Looked that way to me,” said Arnoldo.
    “What was the boy doing in the street?”
    “I don’t know. I could see him like I see you now. He turns, headlights on his face, and the guy in the car steps on the gas, screeches the tires. I can hear it.”
    “What did the kid’s face look like?”
    I kept my eyes on him and worked my taco.
    “Look like? I don’t know. Afraid and then another look. Don’t know what it was and he puts up his hand maybe like he wants the guy to stop, but the guy in the car steps on the gas and I’m just standing there.”
    “You couldn’t see the driver?”
    Robles shook his head.
    “In my dream, he’s a big guy, big shoulders, but I didn’t get a good look at him. In his car he was just …”
    He held out his hands.
    “ … like a shape. Like the one in the backseat.”
    I put down my taco.
    “In your dream there’s someone in the backseat of the car?”
    “In my dream? Yeah, but in the real car too. Someone not so big. Maybe a girl. Maybe a kid.”
    “You tell this to the police?”
    “Yeah, sure, cop named Ralston.”
    “Ransom,” I corrected.
    “Ransom, whatever. I told him. He said maybe I was seeing things. I said maybe but I didn’t think so. He said maybe the kid who got hit had run onto the street. I said no way. He said maybe the screeching I heard was the driver trying to stop before hitting the kid. I said for sure, no. I could see.”
    “Anything else you remember?”
    “Blood, maybe brains on the street. Boy was dead when I got to him. Car was driving fast down the street. Boy’s body all twisted. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a doctor. No more. You really working for the boy’s mother?”
    I

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