Read Online Frag Box by Richard A. Thompson - Free Book Online Page A

is about as private as anything you’re liable to find. Pick up a stick and pretend you’re shooting pool, and I guarantee you nobody will pay the slightest attention to us.” Not that there was anybody else around anyway.
    He obviously didn’t like the idea, but he took a cue stick off a rack on the wall and walked back to the table. I suddenly became aware of the empty beer mug in my hand.
    “I was just going to get myself another beer. Would you like anything?”
    “Do they have food?”
    “They have the usual bar food. Fried stuff, microwave pizza, that sort of thing. The burgers are pretty good.”
    “I’ll have two burgers and fries and a large beer.”
    “The beer, I’ll get you. The other stuff, I’ll order, and Lefty will bring it over when it’s ready.”
    “Lefty. So there really is such a person. How fearsomely droll.”
    “You’re holding the cue stick by the wrong end, by the way.” I left him to ponder the subtle geometry of tapered wood and went back to the bar, where I ordered his little snack.
    “On your tab?” said Lefty.
    “No way. I don’t even know this guy.”
    “Oh yeah? Well, he knows you. He was watching you shoot pool last night.”
    “Really?”
    “Almost the whole time. Came in after you’d already started, asked me to point you out. Another beer?”
    “I suddenly lost my taste for the light buzz. Give me a new mug of beer for my spectator friend and a cup of coffee for me.”
    “Is that on your tab or not?”
    “The drinks, yes. For everything else, G. Harry there is on his own.”
    “Got it. I’ll collect cash when I bring the stuff.”
    “Can’t say I blame you.”
    We were talking about a lawyer, after all.
    I went back over in the corner and found G. Harold Mildorf pushing the eight ball around the table with his stick, scowling at it in intense concentration.
    “I don’t believe you’ve stumbled onto your secret vocation, Mr. Mildorf. There’s nobody here to impress, so why don’t we just sit down and wait for your food?”
    “Really? I thought I was doing rather well.”
    “Trust me, you don’t want to enter any high stakes tournaments.” I gestured to a couple of chairs over by the windows, and we ambled over that way and sat down. I found a small round table that was only slightly wobbly and pulled it over in front of us.
    “I don’t really have any papers to lay out,” he said.
    “How very un-lawyerlike. But you do have about four and a half pounds of food on the way.”
    “Oh, yes. Well then, a table by all means.”
    “While we’re waiting for it, why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?”
    He looked around the entire place, working his mouth in odd ways and squinting, as if some silent spy might have snuck in while we were looking at chairs. Then he leaned over close to me and said in a low, conspiratorial tone, “Charles Victor.”
    “He’s dead.” I think I upset him by speaking in a normal voice. He deepened his already monumental scowl.
    “The body on the sidewalk?”
    I nodded.
    “I feared as much. The whole point of my being here, in fact. You see, I am the executor of his estate.”
    Good thing I wasn’t sipping my coffee at the moment, because I would have definitely choked on it.
    “Estate? Charlie had an estate?”
    “But of course.”
    “Get the hell out of here.”
    “Excuse me? My food hasn’t arrived yet.”
    “It’s an expression, Mr. Mildorf. It means ‘I can’t believe what you’re saying.’”
    “Oh, I see. Get out of the hell, yes, um… Let me assure you, I am entirely in earnest. He had an estate, and you, Mr. Jackson, are his sole heir. I am empowered to give you this.” From an inside jacket pocket, he produced two or three pieces of paper that had been folded into business-envelope size. As he handed them over, he again scanned the room in all directions.
    “A copy of his will,” he said. “Only two pages, and not terribly eloquent. But it definitely names you as his one and only