Vengeance by Stuart M. Kaminsky Read Free Book Online

Maybe I could find his. Beryl Tree had lost a daughter. My wife hadn’t lived long enough to have a daughter. So, I had lost a daughter or son.
    Fonesca, I told myself, you can be a morbid son-of-a-bitch . Think of something you like, something that makes you happy, or at least content. Think of movies with William Powell and Cary Grant and Jean Arthur. Think of an order of ribs from Luny’s back on Division Street in Chicago. Think of mountains with white caps. You like mountains with white caps.
    Think of getting back to work and finding people. Worry about finding yourself later.

3
    SARASOTA HIGH SCHOOL was within walking distance of my office-home. I took the car. There were places to go, people to see, things to do and concentrate on.
    After I had shaved, washed myself and brushed my teeth in the second-floor rest room six doors down from my office, I put on clean tan slacks and a short-sleeved white shirt and one of my basic bland ties. I’ve got one brown, one blue and one gray with Mickey Mouse embroidered on it (a gift from a client with a sense of something he thought was humor) and a Salvador Dali tie with melting clocks and distant rocks. This morning I wore the basic brown. I wore my glasses. The only time I normally wore my glasses was when I was driving, but sometimes I wore them in the belief, mistaken or not, that they made me look more like a professional something.
    Before I left, I called the office of Geoffrey Green, M.D., psychiatrist to the well-to-do. I wondered what a conversation between Green and Ann Horowitz would sound like.
    The receptionist who answered was pleasantly sympathetic when I said I had a problem. She asked me who had referred me to Dr. Green and I said Melanie Sebastian. I told her I needed only a few minutes of his time.
    “One moment, please,” she said.
    I stood at my window waiting and watching the morning traffic on 301. Across the street was a bar called the Crisp Dollar Bill. It was in a sagging building and the once bright-red sign, according to Dave, had long ago faded to a sickly pink. Next to the bar was a small two-story building with a dance studio on the second floor. The studio had large glass windows. Once in a while I would stand on the balcony, maybe lean on the railing and watch people waltz.
    South of the bar there was a consignment shop and a few other stores. Behind these businesses were the last vestiges of the wall of the old White Sox spring-training stadium.
    The Sox had moved to Ed Smith Stadium on Twelfth Street before I broke down in Sarasota. In the summer, the Minor League Sarasota White Sox had played at Ed Smith and the town had boasted that Michael Jordan had briefly lived in town, a one-season drawing card. The Sox had moved out and the Cincinnati Reds had moved in. I still hadn’t gone to a baseball game.
    “Mr. Fonesca?” the receptionist chimed.
    “Yes.”
    “Dr. Green can see you for a few minutes at one o’clock today. Can you make that?”
    “Yes.”
    “Come about ten minutes early to fill out some forms.”
    “Okay. I’ll be there.”
    I hung up. I’d let her hold on to the illusion that I was a potential patient until it got to the point where I
might be billed. I couldn’t afford that bill. If I had a leg and one arm in the door, I knew how to squeeze my way in.
    The DQ was dosed. Too early. I walked to Gwen’s Diner at the corner. Gwen had retired four years ago. Her daughter Sheila had taken over. Regulars started calling her Gwen Two. After a while they dropped the “Two.” Sheila had a teenage daughter who waited tables after school. Her name was Althea. I wondered if she would become Gwen Three. Maybe it would become a tradition, like the Phantom, the Ghost Who Walks. There would be a Gwen to replace the last Gwen until some developer like Carl Sebastian decided to have a giant step on Gwen’s Diner, sweep it away and build an office building or more high-cost and high-rise apartments.
    The place was crowded with