Swindlers by D.W. Buffa Read Free Book Online Page A

cool.
    “We need to go eat,” said Tommy as he stood
up and headed back to the house. “I’ll change. It won’t take a
minute.”
    It took less than that. He put on a long
sleeve shirt and we were ready to leave. He still had on the khaki
shorts and the sandals with the broken strap. We drove into town,
less than a mile away, a four block street that seemed deserted,
and out the other end, through two miles of orange groves to a
roadside café. The waitress knew Tommy by sight, and without
waiting to be asked brought him a glass of red wine. She had broad
shoulders and the large hands of a woman who had always worked, and
the tired, friendly eyes of a woman who never complained. When I
told her I would have the same thing, she nodded her approval.
    We were halfway through dinner when Tommy
again brought up St. James.
    “He’s going to be indicted, and he’s too
smart not to know it. That’s the reason you were invited, wasn’t
it? Because he wanted to have a chance to get to know you, to
decide if everything he had heard about you was true – he would
have had you checked out before he ever thought about meeting you,
of course, as he’s that careful. He asked you, didn’t he?”
    “Yes, no…not exactly,” I mumbled
incoherently.
    “Yes, no, not exactly? What kind of answer is
that?” laughed Tommy.
    “He told me that he might need a lawyer, but
I’m not really sure anymore that it was his idea. I’m not sure it
wasn’t his wife’s idea instead.”
    I told him what had happened, how she said we
had met before, and the strange reaction she had when she realized
that I did not remember, but Tommy was not listening; he was
enjoying too much some thought of his own.
    “No, I didn’t!” I protested when I realized
what it was.
    “You weren’t screwing around with Nelson St.
James’ gorgeous wife? You’re going to tell me that nothing
happened?”
    We had known each other too long, known each
other too well. His laughing eyes taunted me with what they
knew.
    “I kissed her, once – that’s all,” I
insisted.
    He raised an eyebrow and nodded eagerly,
waiting, certain there was more and that I would not be able to
stop myself from telling him.
    “I shouldn’t have done it, and I knew it, and
it didn’t matter: as soon as it happened, I wanted to again. It was
after dinner, and there had been a lot of drinking, and she asked
me to meet her up on deck. That’s when it happened, and then her
husband showed up and -”
    “He caught you? What did -?”
    “He didn’t see us. That’s what we thought,
anyway. As soon as she heard him, she disappeared. Then he saw me,
standing there alone, and he came over and started talking about
his wife, how she was probably downstairs in bed with someone else,
and then he let me know that he knew she had been there with me. I
don’t think he saw us; I think he was guessing, but guessing the
way you do when you’re sure of something, when you know it, when
you can feel it. Then, later, she slipped into my room.”
    Tommy’s blue eyes glittered in anticipation
of what he was certain must have happened. I did not say anything
and let him know by my silence that there was something unusual,
unpredictable, about what had happened.
    “She came to tell me that she could not see
me again – nothing had happened, just that one, fugitive kiss.
That’s when she told me that we had known each other before and
that she knew I did not remember. And that was all. She did not
tell me where, or when, or anything. I’ve tried to remember. It
doesn’t seem possible. Who could forget her?’
    “Maybe she just wanted to make you crazy. One
thing’s for sure: you’ll never forget her now.”
    “You’re probably right about that,” I sighed.
“I’ll never see her again, but I won’t forget her.”
    “You might see her again. St. James is still
going to need a lawyer.”
    I reminded him that it was not the kind of
case I took.
    “I wouldn’t know what to do in a