Read Midnight Pass: A Lew Fonesca Novel (Lew Fonesca Novels) for Free Online

said. “Could hear it in her voice.”
    “I heard it when I talked to her.”
    I told her what the situation was and she told me Roberta Trasker’s address.
    “She’s waiting for you,” Flo said. “But don’t expect much, Lewis. Roberta Trasker can be a frozen cod and I get the feeling she doesn’t like kids very much, not even her own.”
    Flo told me what she knew about Roberta Trasker. William Trasker did his best to make excuses for the absence of his wife at social and public functions over the years. She was ill or she was touring Europe or visiting her brother in Alaska, Montana, California, or Vermont. The Traskers had two grown sons and a daughter and four grandchildren. Flo had never seen them. One son and his family lived in Seattle. The other in Australia. They didn’t even have an address for the daughter, or so they said when they were backed into a social corner. The rumor was that the daughter was deformed, retarded, behind bars, or living as the fourth wife of a Mormon in Utah.
    Roberta and William Trasker were not close to their children.
    “Roberta looks like a lady, drinks a little but not too much, can outcuss me if she wants to, and likes being the woman of mystery. Won’t say much about her life before she moved here. Mystery woman. It’s an act. I don’t know who the actress is behind the character. Doubt if you’ll find out. She doesn’t take off the makeup.”
    “She get along with her husband?”
    “Roberta? She worships the ground he bought her. They get along in public. Times I’ve seen them in private, back when Gus was alive, they looked as if they felt comfortable together. That’s about it.”
    “What does she do with her time?”
    “Spends it,” said Flo. “And Bill’s money, but he’s got plenty to spend, more even than my Gus.”
    I put my cap back on, used the bathroom, washed my face and hands, and moved back to the living room, where Flo had risen.
    “When do I get that license back?”
    “I think it’ll come in the mail,” I said. “Maybe a day or two.”
    “Take care of yourself, Lew,” she said at the open door.
    “Take care of Adele and the baby,” I said, opening the Nissan’s door.
    “With my life,” she said. “Anything else I can do for you?”
    I paused. “You know any jokes?”

3
    I HAD TO GET as much done today as I could and it was already a little after noon. I’d have to devote at least the next day to my other client.
    My other client was a very burly two hundred and twenty pounds with a pink round face. His name was Kenneth Severtson. He had been waiting in front of my office when I came back from lunch at the Crisp Dollar Bill on Friday. He was in his late thirties and knew how to dress.
    “You’re Fonesca?” he asked, clearly unimpressed by what he was looking at. He was in a neatly pressed, lightweight tan suit complete with a bold red designer tie. I was dressed in contemporary Fonesca, complete with my Cubs cap.
    “I am,” I said, opening the door and stepping in, with him behind me.
    I flicked on the air conditioner, pulled up the shade to let some light in, and sat behind my desk. He looked around my office clearly as unimpressed with it as he was with me.
    My office is a cube about the size of a small Dumpster. One small, scratched desk, a wooden chair—no wheels, no swivel—behind it, and two chairs—simple, wood, secondhand—in front of it.
    Thumbtacked on the wall behind my desk was a Touch of Evil poster, a reproduction of the original with Charlton Heston and Orson Welles glaring at each other. The poster was beginning to curl. On the wall across from my desk was a painting about the size of an eight-by-eleven mailing envelope. Flo had given the painting to me as a Christmas gift. The artist worked at the Selby Gardens on the Bay. There was an orchid in my painting. The Selby specializes in orchids, but that didn’t tell you what you needed to know about the painting.
    “Looks like you,” she had said when