Read Online Bright Futures: A Lew Fonesca Mystery (Lew Fonesca Novels) by Stuart M. Kaminsky - Free Book Online

sufficiently nervous to make the patrons uncomfortable. He wore jeans and a short-sleeved buttoned shirt with a collar. The shirt was green with yellow lines. He sat on the open stool to my right.
    The old man leaned forward to get a better look at Greg and said, “Young man, you think people have souls?”
    “Good question,” said Greg, avoiding my eyes.
    I thought serving this permanently wired kid coffee would not improve the coming conversation, but I was too late. Gwen’s daughter, the one with two kids, including a teenage boy who sometimes worked in the shop after school, put a mug of hot liquid in front of Greg and said, “Decaf. Breakfast?”
    “Waffles,” Greg said.
    She nodded and moved off. You ordered waffles here. You got waffles, butter, maple syrup. You didn’t get built-in blueberries or bananas or bacon bits. You didn’t get wheat or bran waffles. You got the old-fashioned kind. Just the way Elvis had eaten them half a century ago.
    “I can explain,” Greg said.
    “I’m sure you can,” I said.
    “I was just joking,” he said. “I do things like that for no reason. I get excited . . .”
    “Carrots are bullshit and so are you,” I said. “How did you know someone had shot at me?”
    “Everybody knew,” he said.
    “Everybody? The King of Jordan knew? Brad Pitt knew?”
    “Oh come on,” he said. “I mean . . .”
    “First you hire me to help Ronnie Gerall. Then you call me to warn me off. You think he did it.”
    “No, it’s just that I . . . it’s too dangerous.”
    “For who?”
    “I gave you five hundred dollars to find the real killer. I’ll give you five hundred dollars to stop looking.”
    He reached into his pocket and came up with a roll of bills wrapped in a thick rubber band, which he placed in front of me. I pushed it back and added to it the money he had given me the day before.
    “My teeth need fixing,” the old man said. “If neither one of you want that money . . .”
    Greg Legerman and I ignored him and looked at the money.
    “Leave it there,” said Gwen’s daughter as she placed the plate of waffles in front of Greg, “and it’ll be the biggest tip anyone ever left here.”
    “What about Elvis?” I asked.
    “His tip is legendary,” she said moving on.
    “Someone shot at me in a car and probably blinded the man with me,” I said. “Then someone shot a pellet into the back of a fourteen-year-old I’m responsible for. He could have died if he tumbled down my steps. It seems pretty likely that someone was trying to shoot me. I’m getting interested in finding out who killed Philip Horvecki.”
    “Why’d they shoot at you?” asked the old man.
    “To scare me off.”
    “Please stop,” Greg said. “You could get killed.”
    “My therapist says I’m suicidal, only I’d never kill myself. I wouldn’t, however, object to someone else doing it for me.”
    “Why are you suicidal?” asked the old man with interest.
    “Because my wife was murdered and the killer was never arrested.”
    “Then go look for him, Cubs,” said Tim.
    “I know where he is.”
    “Where?”
    “Sleeping on the floor of the place I’m living in.”
    “You are a strange duck, Cubs. Kid, you think people have souls?” he asked again.
    This ignited Greg. “No definitive evidence,” he said. “Though research at universities in France, Germany, England, and the United States, including Princeton, is inconclusive, there seems to be evidence that electrical impulses . . .”
    “Greg,” I interrupted.
    “He’s just getting started,” said the old man.
    “I know. Who are you trying to protect?”
    Greg shook his head no.
    “Winn doesn’t know what you did, does he?”
    Greg shook his head again.
    “No. You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
    “You don’t even like Ronnie,” he said. “No one does.”
    “He hasn’t been arrested because people don’t like him. He has been arrested for killing Philip Horvecki.”
    “Lots of people wanted to