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

camouflaged by a plant with big leaves.
    I wasn’t sure if I could be heard but I said, “My name is Lew Fonesca. I’m a friend of Adele Hanford’s. Could I talk to you for a few minutes?”
    I don’t know why but I held up my copy of
Fool’s Love
for the camera.
    Nothing happened. I stepped back and noted that the camera lens didn’t follow me. I got in the car, turned around, and parked where I could watch the gate. The Gulf was behind me. I turned off the engine, opened the windows, and listened to the surf. A few gulls drifted by, most of them made their squawking sound. A few said, “It’s me.”
    I opened
Fool’s Love
and began to read:
    By the time Sherry Stephens hit State Highway 71 at Weaver’s Texaco station, she had become Laura Or-dette. She shifted her full duffel bag, the green one her brother George had given her when he got back from Korea, into her left hand.
    Laura Ordette didn’t look back. Laura Ordette was not the kind of woman to look back. Sherry Stephens would probably be crying now walking along the roadside of Martin’s Lagoon Street, probably be looking back, thinking about what she was leaving. Sherry Stephens would be thinking about the small room she shared with her sister. Sherry Stephens would be thinking about her sister and her mother. Her mother was at work now answering calls at Rowlinson’s Real Estate. Sherry’s mother had a good telephone voice, deep and friendly. Those who actually met Grace Stephens were often surprised to see a small, serious woman in no-nonsense suits. Sherry’s father? Was he worth thinking about? Not by Laura Ordette. He was a red-faced, red-necked slab of beef who drove trucks across six states. Sherry would be worrying about missing school. Not Laura Ordette. Sherry was fifteen. Laura was eighteen and had three hundred dollars in her pocket. Sherry had saved it working after school at Pine’s Drug Store. Well, she had worked for mostof it. About half she had taken from the cigar box in the bottom drawer of her father’s dresser.
    A car passed going in her direction. It stopped. “Want a ride?” the man asked. He was as old as her father. He smiled like he meant it but she knew he didn’t. He might be harmless. He might be hoping. Sherry would have said “no” and kept walking without looking at him. Laura looked, appraisingly, sighed, and said, “What kind of car is that?”
    “Buick.”
    “I don’t ride in Buicks,” Laura said. “My parents died in one.”
    The old guy drove on mumbling something.
    Laura Ordette knew many things besides the fact that the duffel bag was heavy. She knew that all adults were liars. She knew that most kids were liars. She knew Reverend Scools, the pastor at her church, was a liar and stupid. The only people who didn’t lie, who didn’t have to, were the smart ones with money and power. They didn’t have to lie though maybe they did it for fun. She knew that she would grow old and die. She knew that when she died she was not going to go to heaven or hell. You just died. That was it. The rest was shit. She knew that men and boys who were old enough looked at her thinking what it would be like to have her tits pressed against their naked chests, their tongues in her mouth, their wang tall and hard inside her. Yucch. Laura Ordette was above that. If people were all animals, and that’s what she believed, the ones who were worth breathing were the ones who stayed above being breeding animals distracting themselves while they waited to get old and die.
    Laura Ordette was going to New York. She knew the bus schedule. She had called to be sure there would be a seat. Laura Ordette was going to New York, the daughter of a wealthy Concord family who disdained their money and pleas and walked out to make it on her own. She would become a writer, a Broadway ticket seller, a greeter at some big art gallery on Fifth Avenue. She would go for that job in her one gooddress, all made-up, tell them how she was going to