Fool's Errand by Jeffrey Stephens

Author:Jeffrey Stephens [Stephens, Jeffrey S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Published: 2020-10-02T14:07:25+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Early the next morning I was alone in my apartment, sorting out any number of issues. Such as the improbability of Donna accepting an invitation to join me on a trip to the south of France. My decision to fly off and visit a man I’d never even heard of until a couple of days ago. The question of whether to call the police to report someone breaking into my apartment. The comments Gerry Egidio made about my father’s death. And the need to cover my responsibilities at work.

Consumed by all of this, I was startled by the unfriendly sound of someone pressing my door buzzer in three quick bursts. I was not in the mood for guests, but that was far from my main concern.

I took the box from the table, shoved it on a shelf in my bedroom closet behind a pile of sweaters, then went to the door where the buzzer was making another series of angry noises.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“A couple o’ guys knew your father,” came the reply. “We gotta talk to ya.”

I looked through the peephole, which makes every apartment its own sort of speakeasy. Two rather wide men were standing there, looking uncomfortable or unhappy or both. Maybe they didn’t like being up this early.

One of them looked vaguely familiar.

“I’m not dressed,” was all I could think of to say, realizing how lame that sounded.

“Who gives a shit?” a second voice asked. “We didn’t come here to dance with ya.”

“We were friends o’ Blackie’s,” the first voice said. “We gotta talk with ya.”

I figured, hell, if they gotta talk with me, they were gonna talk with me some time or another. I opened the door.

“What’s this about?” I asked.

They pushed past me like I was the swinging door in a Dodge City saloon and made themselves comfortable on my living room couch. I followed them inside.

“It looks like you don’t remember me,” the smaller, familiar looking man said as he had a look around. He was in his sixties, mostly bald, with a wide nose you earn from finishing second in too many fist fights. He didn’t offer his name to help me along.

“I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head as if I should feel bad about offending two thugs who had just bulled their way into my apartment at seven thirty in the morning. “I don’t.”

He smiled, a not altogether unpleasant smile. “Blackie and me, we went back a long way. I saw you when you was a kid. Probably wouldn’t a’ recognized you either, if I saw you on the street or something.”

I couldn’t think of anything worthwhile to say about that, so for a change I kept my mouth shut.

“Let’s get to it,” the younger, larger man said.

Blackie’s friend said, “You remember your father’s, uh, his, uh, friend, Big Mike?”

“You mean his boss?”

“Yeah. I didn’t wanna say it like that, but yeah. You knew Big Mike, right?”

“I knew who he was.”

“Yeah, well, you know when your dad

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