Read Retribution: A Lew Fonesca Novel (Lew Fonesca Novels) for Free Online Page A

everything in those cabinets and drawers.”
    “Do you want to remember them?”
    “No … yes. This isn’t fun.”
    “It’s not supposed to be fun. You don’t know how to have fun yet.”
    Ann stood up and jogged in place a few seconds.
    “Knee tightens,” she said, sitting again. “You showed me her photograph. She was pretty.”
    I nodded, seriously considering never coming back here again.
    “Lewis, you are not pretty.”
    “I know. We … she picked me. We had …”
    “Fun?”
    “A lot in common,” I said. “Movies, books. We found the same things funny. Monty Python, Thin Man movies, Rocky and Bullwinkle.”
    “Moose and squirrel,” Ann said in a terrible imitation of either Natasha or Boris. “What?”
    Something must have broken through. I bit my lower lip.
    “Sometimes she called me Rocky,” I said. “If I was beingparticularly dense, she called me Bullwinkle. I… I called her… No more.”
    Ann clapped her hands and rocked forward once.
    “Perfect. Are you still going to the beach?”
    “When I can.”
    “And the gulls, do you still hear them speak?”
    “Gulls don’t speak,” I said. “Sometimes their squawk … I’ve told you this… Sometimes their talk sounds like they’re saying, ‘It’s me.’”
    “You like the gulls?”
    “Yes.”
    “And the pelicans?”
    “And the pelicans who dive like clumsy-winged oafs into the Gulf literally going blind from the constant collision with the water in search of food.”
    “You are getting very literary, very poetic,” said Ann.
    “As my friend Flo would say, ‘Bullshit.’”
    “You are the gull crying, ‘It’s me.’ You are the pelican going blind while it dives for food.”
    “I’m literary. You’re cryptic.”
    We went on like that for a while. I glanced at the clock on the wall over her desk. Five more minutes.
    “You ever read Conrad Lonsberg?” I asked.
    “Yes,” she said. “Compelling, disturbing, elevating. Isn’t that what the reviews said? All true but there was a true despair behind those poems and stories. I met him once, briefly, here in Sarasota. I recognized him from the old photograph on the jacket of
Fool’s Love
. He was more than forty years older than the man in the photograph leaning against a tree with his hands in his pockets. But the eyes were the same. I remember. Our eyes met. It was at Demitrio’s on the Trail. Melvin and I were there. Lonsberg was with a young woman. Our eyes met for an instant and he knew I recognized him. I think I smiled to let him know his secret was safe and I would not bother him. I wonder if he has had any therapy. Judging from his books, I would say it would be a good idea as long as he didn’t go to one of the quacks with shingles. Why the interest in Conrad Lonsberg?”
    “Remember Adele?”
    “Vividly,” said Ann. “There is a connection between this evocation of Conrad Lonsberg and Adele? It is not a simple stream of consciousness, a seeming non sequitur?”
    “No.”
    “You want to tell me what you are talking about or, rather, what you want to ask me?”
    “Too long to tell the whole story,” I said, looking at the clock on the wall. “Our time is just about up and I hear your next client coming through the outer door.”
    “Give me the question,” Ann said. “In your eyes, you have a question.”
    “Why would Adele, who Lonsberg has been working with, deface her copy of one of his books and not just tear it up or throw it away?”
    “You want a two-minute answer, which is the time we have left?”
    “What I want and what I get are almost never the same,” I said.
    “She is angry with him, very angry, feels betrayed, but can’t bring herself to throw away the book. Something is unfinished. Something went very wrong. In that which we call reality. In the reality of Adele’s mind. Lewis, I would need more information. Ideally, I would need Lonsberg and Adele together in this room. I think that unlikely. Meanwhile, I’ll end with a question.