Bright Futures: A Lew Fonesca Mystery (Lew Fonesca Novels) by Stuart M. Kaminsky

your office the last time I was here.”
    “The joke,” she said.
    “Actually, he gave me five of them.”
    I took out my index cards.
    “One will be enough.”
    “Treat each day as if it’s your last. One day you’ll be right.”
    “That’s a joke?”
    “Yes.”
    “You think it’s funny?”
    “No.”
    “Next time, first lines,” she said.
     
    Augustine was waiting for me outside of Ann’s office again, but this was a very different Augustine from the one who was there the last time I emerged into sun and heavy, moist air.
    “Need a ride?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “I put your bike in my trunk. I’ll buy you a new lock.”
    “Thanks,” I said.
    He walked us slowly to the corner and made a right turn onto Main. He was silent. So was I. I was trying not to think about what Ann and I had talked about, but I was doing a bad job.
    “How is your eye?” I asked.
    His hand reached up to be sure the patch was still there.
    “Hurts,” he said.
    “I’m sorry,” I said, and I was.
    “Corkle fired me.”
    “What for?”
    “Failure to get rid of you.”
    We hit the first corner and I was tempted to invite him across the street to News and Books, but I had had enough darkness for one day.
    “Get rid of me? He just hired me.”
    “He wants to scare you away from the job. He’s nuts. I’m glad I’m no longer in his employ. He gave me a check for five thousand dollars and an instant electric machine that both cores and peels apples, pears, and even peaches and plums.”
    “How will you get it on a plane?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Why does he want to scare me away?”
    “Don’t know. Ask him.”
    “And you’re telling me this because . . . ?” I asked.
    “I like you,” he said. “And I don’t like loose ends.”
    His car, a gray two-door Mazda rental, was parked halfway up the block. Parking space downtown was always at a premium. I didn’t consider telling him he was lucky. He had almost lost an eye. It could have been much worse.
    “I think the kid shot at us,” he said when we were driving.
    He was one of those people who instantly turns on music when you get into their car. It made intimate conversation difficult. The music was ’40s and ’50s pop. Rosemary Clooney was singing “Come On To My House.” She bounced.
    “The kid?”
    “Corkle’s grandson, Gregory Legerman.”
    “Why?”
    “Because Corkle thinks the kid killed Philip Horvecki.”
    “And then hired me to find himself?”
    “Go figure,” he said, making a turn on Orange and heading south. “We’re talking about crazy people here.”
    “Corkle’s daughter, too?”
    “Why not?”
    We drove silently for a few minutes, and then he said, “I’m not supposed to drive till I get another driving test. Hell, I can drive better with one eye than all these old farts with two.”
    “Someday you may be an old fart,” I said.
    “Great, an old fart with one eye.”
    He went to Laurel and turned left. A minute later he parked in front of my new home, the one with rooms too big and visitors too many.
    “I’m cashing Corkle’s check and heading for the Tampa airport,” he said. “I’ll work in commercials if I’m lucky, dinner theater, wherever a one-eyed character actor is wanted. Who knows? This . . . ,” he said, pointing to his patched eye, “may be the opening of new career opportunities.”
    “Who knows?”
    “We both do,” he said with a smile as bitter as orange peel.
    I got out of the car.
    “Watch yourself, Cub fan,” he said.
    I touched the brim of my cap in a gesture of good-bye. He tore down the street with a drag racer’s abandon. The tires weren’t his. The car wasn’t his. It was too bad the Dairy Queen two blocks down was closed and torn down. He could have had a Blizzard to ease the rush hour trip to Tampa.
     
    “Let’s go,” Ames said when I went through the door.
    He was standing to my left, near the wall. Victor, in his Chicago Bulls sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off, was seated