Running from the Law by Lisa Scottoline Read Free Book Online

bony forehead with a paper napkin. “It’s hot in here. The cards are gonna be sticky. I hate that, when the cards are sticky.”
    “Everybody’s complainin’ tonight,” my father said.
    Cam rose and got a box of Reynolds Wrap from the drawer. Not that he wanted to wrap anything, he used the box to hold his cards, in the slit behind the metal strip. “Stop your complainin’, everybody. You’re upsettin’ Vito.”
    Sal looked down, examining his arthritic fingers. “I’m not complainin’, I’m just sayin’. We should get air condition.”
    Herman rubbed his tummy through his T-shirt. “Vito Morrone, an air conditioner? You have to spend money.”
    “Hah! I spend money, I spend plenty of money. I just don’t like air condition. I got enough time to be cold after I’m dead.”
    “It’s the humidity,” Uncle Sal said quietly. “The humidity, it makes the cards sticky.”
    My father frowned at him. “It’s ’cause the windows are closed, we don’t have the cross-ventilation. Every other time, we have the cross-ventilation. So stop your complainin’, Sallie.”
    “I was just sayin’. It’s humid, to me, is all.”
    Cam took his seat. “Stop fightin’, both of you. We’re okay without air condition. It’s not that hot, just stop talkin’ about it. So how’s the meat business, Herm?”
    “Lousy. Couldn’t be worse. There used to be four hundred kosher butchers in this city. Now there’s only a handful. A handful.”
    “Gotta make more Jews,” Cam said.
    Herman laughed. “Don’t look at me, I did my part.” He had three daughters he loved to the marrow. It was the middle one, Mindy, who’d painted the casino chip on his yarmulke. I’d met her at her son’s bris, then later at a custody trial for the same child. She was a smart brunette, clever, and feisty enough to take on her lawyer husband, and win.
    “How’s Mindy and the baby?” I asked him.
    “Real good, real good. And she’s makin’ good money with the court reporting. Good money, Rita.”
    “Terrific. Tell her to send me more of her business cards. Now, what are we gonna play? Seven-card? No high-low?”
    Herman and Cam nodded, but my father said, “That’s all you ever want to play.”
    “Sue me. Mindy will do the transcripts.”
    “Seven-card it is,” Cam said. He was the best player at the table, he liked to say he beat us with one hand tied behind his back. “If my Rita wants seven-card, it’s seven-card.”
    “Thanks, handsome,” I said, and he grinned.
    Seven-card stud was my game. Four of the cards are showing, three are dealt facedown. It was harder than knowing none of the cards at all. Imagination, speculation, and fear rushed in to fill the gaps; the trick was to keep your illusions and reality straight. If I’d been losing my touch away from the table, I felt at home here, with Cam’s stump and Herman’s chips and Sal’s complaints. I was glad I came.
    There was a buzz from the door downstairs. “That’s David,” Uncle Sal said.
    “No, I thought it was Santa Claus,” my father said, getting up and shuffling downstairs.
    Herman snorted. “Let him wait in the rain. I’m not going through this every week.”
    “They take advantage,” Sal said again.
    In a minute I could hear my father climbing the creaky stairs with David, then a clang as David dropped his umbrella into the metal can by the apartment door. I knew my father would like taking David in from the rain, I remembered him doing the same for me as a child. Unbuttoning my red boots, popping the loop of elastic around the button, then tugging off my damp socks. Laying them out on the radiator in the living room, where they dried into cottony arched backs, with a ridge down the middle like a spine.
    “Sorry, I’m late,” David said as he came into the room in a damp polo shirt and unstructured sport jacket. He looked at me in surprise. “What are you doing here, Rita?”
    “Waiting to kick some wrinkly butts.”
    Cam laughed. “Oh