Read Online Retribution: A Lew Fonesca Novel (Lew Fonesca Novels) by Stuart M. Kaminsky - Free Book Online Page B

inside the burger. His steaks were all served the same, rare in the middle, burnt on top, and his chili dared all but the most adventurous. The Texas was a success. It might well survive the onslaught of what passed for this year’s Sarasota culture quickly surroundingit. My guess was that it would gradually change from a hangout for hard hats, nearby CPAs, and lawyers who wanted to sit back, eat food that would kill them, and swap stories. It would fill with tourists. It would become “the place you’ve just got to see.” There was already some of that. Ed would even make money, but it wouldn’t make him happy. He had moved south from an office job to become a western barkeep, not the proprietor of a chic luncheonette or a tourist attraction.
    And so, Ed greeted me glumly as I moved to a space at the bar, which even sported a rail for the rare booted foot. Ed was big, heavy, with a head of bushy black hair with long sideburns, deep black eyes, and the face of a world-weary barkeep.
    “Busy,” I said.
    “Yeah,” he agreed. “Beer and chili?”
    “Beer and burger, half pounder,” I said.
    “With the works?”
    “With,” I said. “Ames back?”
    “In the kitchen,” he said. “I’ll tell him you’re here.”
    Ed plopped a bottle of Miller heavy on the counter and moved toward the back of the bar. I took a drink and looked around. I picked up a little, a couple of guys in their thirties in suits, collars open, ties loose, loudly arguing about what the defection of Hardy Nickerson to the Jaguars had really meant to the Tampa Bay Bucs, a trio of paint-stained, T-shirted guys growing bellies and telling jokes with four-letter words, a man and woman in their fifties leaning across bowls of chili and whispering so that I caught only “there’s no other way” plaintively from the man.
    Then Ames appeared.
    Tall, lean, shaved, serious. As he always did, he held out his hand. His grip was firm. We shook and he moved next to me. His gray pants were worn cotton. His shirt was long-sleeved and blue. I thought he had done some trimming of his brushed white hair.
    “Wasn’t there,” he said, moving next to me. “Mickey at the Burger King. Hasn’t been at work for two days. Full name’s Michael Raymond Merrymen. Lives with his fatherin a development called Sherwood Forest out on McIntosh just off Bahia Vista.”
    “I know the place,” I said. “You get an address and phone number?”
    “Yes.”
    He reached into his shirt pocket and handed me an envelope. The front of the empty envelope told the recipient that he might already be the owner of a new house, a new Lexus, or ten thousand dollars. The back of the envelope told me in Ames’s penciled hand where Mickey lived with his father.
    “Thanks, Ames,” I said. “Beer?”
    “Coke,” he said.
    When Ed came back with my burger and a Coke for Ames, Ames and I moved to the table the quiet couple had just left. We pushed their dishes aside.
    “Girl’s in trouble?” Ames said.
    “Looks that way,” I said.
    “What kind?”
    I told him everything. He listened, drank slowly, nodded from time to time, and when I was finished said, “I don’t hear the why of it.”
    “I don’t either,” I said. “Maybe we’ll find out when we find Adele. Let’s try Mickey the burger prince.”
    We put Ames’s scooter into the trunk of the Cutlass. Ames was good at figuring out spaces, what would fit where. Also, the scooter was no vooming Harley.
    I drove down Fruitville. Ames sat at my side and said nothing as I listened to two talk-show guys trade giggles and bad jokes much to their own amusement. We passed the Hollywood Twenty Cinemas parking lot, the Catholic Church with the Spanish welcome on its white sign, the Chinese Star buffet where you could get a decent lunch for five dollars, and made the turn to the right on McIntosh Road just past Cardinal Mooney High School. The Jewish Community Center was on our right. McIntosh Middle School was on our left and then on