Denial: A Lew Fonesca Mystery (Lew Fonesca Novels) by Stuart M. Kaminsky Read Free Book Online

where the boy had been hit and killed. There was no blood, none that I could see.
    I went to Washington Boulevard, turned right, went to Fruitville and then headed east just past Tuttle.
    John Gutcheon sat at the reception desk on the first floor of the three-story Building C in the complex of identical buildings marked A through D.
    Building C housed the offices of Children’s Services of Sarasota. Buildings A, B and D had a few empty offices but most were filled by dentists, urologists, a cardiology practice, investment advisors, jewelry and estate appraisers, young lawyers and a dealer in antique toys.
    John was the receptionist, dispensing advice, directing calls, folding sheets and stuffing them into envelopes and warding off people who had come to the wrong place.
    “You want to hear a dentist tale?” he asked when he saw me come through the door.
    “Is it funny?”
    “No,” John said, rolling his eyes. “It’s the truth. You want a joke, I’ll tell you one when I finish with the dentist business.”
    John was thin, blond, about thirty and unmistakably and unapologetically gay. His sharp tongue was ever ready to cut off those who questioned his lifestyle by look or word.
    “How did your art show go?” I asked.
    The last time I had seen him Gutcheon had told me that two of his paintings were going to be shown at the Wardell Studio during the monthly art walk.
    “No sale,” he said, holding up both hands with a shrug.
    “Sorry,” I said.
    “You didn’t see them,” he said. “Sally said she’d try to get you to go.”
    “I’m—”
    “Not a people person,” he completed. “Yes, that much is obvious. Can I tell you about the dentist thing?”
    “Yes.”
    “Building D,” he said. “John Gault, DDS. His real name isn’t John Gault but I call him that. You know, Ayn Rand?”
    “Not intimately,” I said.
    “Look who’s trying to display a sense of humor,” he said. “Anyway, you wouldn’t want to be intimate with Ayn Rand. Interesting writer but I hear she was a bitch.”
    I nodded to show I was listening.
    “Well, anyway,” he went on. “The dentist. Tooth gets chipped. One back here.” He curled up the right
side of his mouth and pointed. “Got chipped. Piece came right off in that Chinese restaurant on Clark, the little one. Nice people. Something in the fortune cookie. Cookie says, ‘Your plans will soon change.’ I went to Dr. Gault the next day and he said I needed two crowns, eleven hundred dollars each. Mr. Lewis Fonesca, I do not have two thousand and two hundred dollars. He says I can pay it out for the next three centuries but I check with other people and my friend Pauly tells me to go to his dentist. You want the result?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    “Well, Pauly’s dentist looks at the X-rays, examines my teeth and says, ‘You don’t need two crowns. There’s nothing wrong with that second tooth.’ Furthermore, he says the chipped tooth doesn’t need a crown, just a filling. He fills it immediately, charges me sixty dollars.”
    Gutcheon looked at me for a reaction.
    “Interesting,” I said.
    “It is, but I can see you are not one who is interested.” He sighed. “The worst part?”
    “What?”
    “I went to John Gault because he is gay. Betrayed by one of my own. You see the irony?”
    “Yes.”
    “But it’s not the irony you want to see,” he said.
    “It’s Sally. Go up. Go up. You want a joke? You still collecting them?”
    “Yes.”
    “What do you give a man who has everything?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Antibiotics.”
    I took out my pad and wrote the joke.
    “You didn’t even smile,” said Gutcheon.
    “It’s humorous,” I said.
    “George Carlin once said, ‘Don’t you find it a little unsettling that dentists call what they do ‘a practice’?”
    “He said doctors ,” I said, putting my notebook away.
    “Well, I amended it to fit … never mind.”
    The phone in front of him rang. He picked it up and I went into the open