Read Sweetheart for Free Online

toast. Other customers arrived, and he nodded to most. He was on his second cup of coffee when a stranger entered and glanced casually about. With continued nonchalance the man hung his hat, scarf, and coat next to Wade’s things and said, “May I?”
    “Plenty of other tables,” Wade said, but the man, who had an easy way of moving, every gesture timed, joined him anyway. He had scant, coarse hair, like a coconut, and wore a vested suit and gold-rimmed glasses that seemed bolted into his face. He could have passed for a lawyer or a broker of sorts.
    “I was told you eat here.”
    “You must’ve got up early to get here.”
    “That’s a fact. The name’s Victor Scandura.”
    “I know what it is. I used to study pictures, a whole book of them.” Wade, who had quit smoking and was starting up again, opened a green-and-white pack of Merit Menthols. “I never got close to you, but I busted up a booking operation a cousin of yours was running.”
    “You didn’t bust it up. You made it difficult for a day.”
    Wade smiled pleasantly. “You’re probably right.”
    Scandura removed his glasses, diminishing his eyes to specks, and breathed on the lenses. He polished them with a silk handkerchief. The waitress brought him coffee. It was all he wanted, as if the thought of food so early sickened him.
    “Ulcer?” Wade asked.
    “If I had an ulcer I wouldn’t take the coffee.” He returned the glasses to his face, carefully fitting them on. “I’m here on behalf of Anthony Gardella.”
    “I figured.”
    “You can understand what he’s going through. His mother and father were wonderful people. Twenty-five years ago he bought the farmhouse for them. They wanted the country, he gave it to them. He wanted them to have a mansion, but the little house was all they wanted. The old man, you know, was never involved in anything. A straight arrow. Look where it got him.”
    Wade drew on his cigarette. The waitress freshened his coffee. “What can I tell you?” he said with a shrug.
    Scandura spoke low. “How close are you to grabbing the bastards who did this thing? Anthony wants to know.”
    “You want an honest answer, I’ll give it to you. There are plenty of local yokels around here capable, but we’ve got no solid lead. Maybe something will develop.”
    “That’s not good. These yokels you talk about, there must be some in your mind stand out bigger than others. You must’ve picked up something.”
    “Nothing.” Wade sat back, his chin pulled in, his thoughts on his wife. The last time he had seen her, a hurried but sincere attempt at reconciliation, he had kissed her soundly, instantly, after which she had eased away from him with the words that there were no fresh starts in life, no erasures, no rolling back of a decade or even a year or two. All a person could do, she had said, was swerve. He said to Scandura, “The only thing I’ve got is an old guy who drove by the house in his pickup. You probably read his name in the paper. Maybe he’s telling God’s truth when he says he didn’t see much, I don’t know for sure. I’ve put as much pressure on him as I’m allowed … by law.”
    Victor Scandura instantly caught and read the inflection. “I like what you’re saying.”
    “I’m not saying anything,” Wade shot back. “You and Tony Gardella don’t interest me. I’m bothered that two homicidal morons are walking the streets.”
    “Not too many streets out here. This is another world. How the hell do you stand it?”
    “I’m trying to get back to Boston. Maybe it’ll happen.”
    “Maybe we can help,” Scandura said casually, and Wade looked at him severely.
    “You don’t do anything.”
    “I think we owe you something.”
    “You owe me nothing,” Wade said. He had snuffed his cigarette, but it still fumed in the ashtray.
    “How can you smoke those things?”
    “I don’t know. I hate ’em.”
    They left the coffee shop together, an icy wind stabbing them. Soiled snow that