Read Online All Through the Night by Davis Bunn - Free Book Online

was quite an accomplishment.
    Foster accompanied Wayne to Orlando while Jerry babysat their cash. It was unlikely anyone would come looking for a boatload of money in the middle of a low-rent retirement community. But Jerry was by nature a cautious man.
    The afternoon was hot but the humidity low for springtime Florida. Foster kept his window down on I-95, his grey hair blowing everywhere and his eyes squinted almost shut. Wayne handed over his Oakleys. Foster slipped the bug-eyed sunglasses on his face. Wayne took one look and laughed out loud.
    Foster said, “What?”
    “You look like a roadie for the Grateful Dead.”
    “There you go again, fooling me with talk that sounds almost like English.”
    Wayne hooked onto the Beach Line Expressway and shot into the Orlando sprawl. His sister’s church had recently moved to a campus near the John Young Parkway, sandwiched between the gleaming new convention center and a neighborhood straight out of a Tijuana barrio. Her outreach center was an old convenience store with a basketball court where the gas tanks had once stood. Next door was the main church building, with a free medical clinic on the first floor, where her husband the periodontist donated one day a week. The scarred asphalt parking lot sprouted a sign with doves and rainbows and a welcome in half a dozen languages.
    They pulled into the lot and the first thing Wayne saw was his sister standing there with her hands on her hips, a look on her face he’d seen a billion times and more, her mouth going a mile a minute. Just handing it to a sullen kid holding a basketball, the kid a full head taller than the two dozen other kids standing and watching Wayne’s sister dish it out. And from the big grins most of the other kids wore, Wayne figured they were just loving it, watching the big kid catch it from Eilene.
    Which was why, when Wayne walked over, the first thing he said was, “Lighten up, why don’t you.”
    Eilene rounded on him. Like she was eleven again and he nine, and their father was out saving the world, expecting his own kids to toe the line, put on the happy-sappy face and busting Wayne’s chops because he refused to measure up. “Excuse me, did I ask for your help here?”
    “The kid is sorry. Tell the lady you’re sorry, kid.”
    The kid mouthed something behind Eilene’s back that Wayne was fairly certain had nothing whatsoever to do with an apology. Which had him hiding his own grin, since it was basically an act pulled from his own life. “There, see? You’ve burned him so bad he’ll never mess up again. He’ll go through life staying totally clean. Right, kid?”
    Eilene snapped, “Just like you.”
    “Sure thing.”
    “Mister Perfect.”
    “What can I say. If the shoe fits and all that.”
    She surprised him then. Because the one thing Eilene never did was what Wayne asked. He had bitter experience at that.
    But this time she turned to the kid and said, “The ball is for bouncing on the ground, not on other kids’ heads. Especially kids half your size. Claro? ”
    “Sí, claro.”
    “Vamanos.”
    Eilene surprised him again. Shocked was more like it. Had the pastor pulled a gun on her younger brother, the astonishment could hardly have been bigger.
    She reached over and hugged him. Hard.
    The kids clearly knew Wayne’s sister well enough to know this lady was no hugger. The chatter stopped and even the tall kid with the ball turned and stared.
    Wayne did the only thing his dumbfounded brain could come up with, which was to wrap his arms around her in a feeble response.
    Eilene said to his shirt, “I’ve been so worried.”
    “About what?”
    “Victoria called. Said you were off doing something. In the middle of the night. With Jerry and Foster your only backup.” She pushed herself out of his arms, the huggy-feely moment clearly gone. “All I could think to say was, ‘That sounds just like Wayne.’”
    He just stood there, a big hulking brute in worn jeans and T-shirt and