Lassiter 06 - Fool Me Twice by Paul Levine Read Free Book Online

kid, who was still pouting.
    “ Kip,” I called out in my
let’s-be-pals voice, “how ‘bout some fishing? Want to chase the
wily bonefish with a fly rod?”
    “ I hate fishing,” the kid
said.
    “ Fair enough,” I responded.
“How ‘bout a swim? I could toss you overboard and chum for
sharks.”
    “ Jake!” Granny warned
me.
    “ Just like Lifeboat ,” Kip said,
nonchalantly.
    I stopped poling. “Huh?”
    Kip looked at me with the air of superiority
kids use when dealing with an adult who’s never learned their
games. “The movie. After a shipwreck, there isn’t room for
everyone. Some are thrown overboard so others can live.”
    “ Sounds like plea
bargaining in a case with multiple defendants,” I said.
    “ It was filmed during World
War Two,” Kip continued, “a parable for what was going on in
Europe.”
    “ A parable,” I repeated,
impressed.
    “ Yes, that means you can
take it literally or—”
    “ I know what it means,
kid.”
    “ Jake, don’t stifle
Kippers,” Granny ordered, keeping her eyes on the water. “Movies
are very important to him.”
    I turned back to the
precocious pouter. “I’ll bet you even know who directed this Lifeboat .”
    The towheaded kid gave me
another look of youthful disdain. “ Everybody knows Hitchcock was the
director.”
    Granny dropped a cast near some green
floating gunk.
    “‘ Bout all Kippers does is
sit home watching movies on the cable. Makes me want to take the
twelve-gauge and blast a hole in that damn satellite dish.” She
turned and peered at me from under the canvas hat. “I was hoping
maybe you could get the lad more interested in the
outdoors.”
    “ I could use him to pull
weeds in my backyard,” I offered, generously.
    Granny reeled in a stringy mess of seaweed
and cleaned off her line. “That’s not what I had in mind. Maybe you
could toss the football with him. I told Kippers you used to play
for the Dolphins.”
    “ I looked you up in my card
book,” the kid said.
    I grunted an acknowledgment. Little boys are
always impressed by athletes, even second-stringers.
    “ Your rookie card is only
worth twenty-five cents.’’
    “ You don’t
say.’’
    “ That’s the minimum,” he
reminded me.
    “ Sounds like a good
investment,” Charlie chimed in, though nobody asked him to. Then
Charlie launched into a soliloquy on the depressed international
art market, mainly due to economic woes in Japan, when the kid
interrupted him: “Most football movies are yucky.”
    “ Yucky?” I asked
him.
    “ The Longest Yard was okay. I mean, Burt Reynolds was pretty good.
He played at Florida State, you know ...”
    I knew.
    “ Then he did Semi-Tough where he
played a running back. Boy, what a stinker. In Everybody’s All-American, I thought
Dennis Quaid’s legs were too skinny to be a real football player.”
So did I.
    “ Now, North Dallas Forty was pretty decent,
though a little dark,” Kip said. He gave the appearance of
furrowing his brow in serious contemplation, but with his long
blond bangs, it was hard to tell. “I give it three stars.” The kid
studied me a moment, shading his eyes from the sun. “You know, you
look a little like Nick Nolte.”
    “ Thanks.”
    “ But he’s more
handsome.”
    My head was throbbing again. “Hey, Granny,”
I called out. “Did you pack a real lunch, or do we have to start
eating the passengers?”
    “ Just like Soylent Green ,” Kip said,
showing off some more.
    “ Granny, how do you turn
off Siskel and Ebert here?”
    “ Edward G. Robinson’s last
movie,” the kid concluded, finally cracking a smile.
    ***
    We were back at Granny’s place on the Gulf
of Mexico side of Islamorada. I had lived there, too, in the old
Cracker house of cedar planks and tin roof, eaves spouts that
collected rainwater in barrels and a sturdy wooden porch with a
swing, awning, and rocking chair. Charlie was snoozing in the
rocker, the kid was watching TV in the Florida room, and I was
keeping Granny