Midnight Pass: A Lew Fonesca Novel (Lew Fonesca Novels) by Stuart M. Kaminsky

Author:Stuart M. Kaminsky [Kaminsky, Stuart M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2003-02-01T06:00:00+00:00

10

IT WAS THURSDAY NIGHT, a little before nine. The rain had started again. It wasn’t much of a rain but it was enough to hide the moon and stars and give me a feeling of protective isolation from people.

Traffic going north on Tamiami Trail was light, but there was the usual cast of coastal Florida characters on the road. I passed the infirmed and ancient, weak of sight, hearing, and judgment, hunching forward to squint into the darkness, driving twenty miles under the speed limit, trying not to admit to themselves that they were afraid of driving. These senior drivers were a potential menace, but I understood their loneliness, their unwillingness to give up driving and lose even more of their contact with the world.

Then there were the grinning kids in late-model cars or pickup trucks. They took chances, cut people off, and were unaware that death was a reality. You might challenge death fifty, a hundred, two hundred times, but the one time you lost, the game was over. They didn’t consider losing. The game was everything.

There were families on their way back from somewhere or someone, one or two children sleeping in the backseat, mother and father in the front listening to the radio, just wanting to make it home and to bed for a few hours.

And then there was me.

I stopped at the video store a block from the DQ. They specialized in Spanish-language movies, but had a good collection of American movies from the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties, most of them second-generation copies.

Eduardo, overweight, sagging eyes, too-small button-down shirt, sat behind the counter at the back of the small store. He nodded when I walked in. Eduardo had been an almost promising middleweight in the late Seventies. Time had been no more kind to him than it had to me.

I didn’t think I would find what I was looking for, but I did. I almost missed it. It was one I hadn’t seen before called Forbidden Destiny. I recognized the title, knew who was in it. I found it in the bin of overused tapes for sale in a plain white box with the title printed in ink on the spine. I gave Eduardo three dollars.

“Rain,” Eduardo said, looking out the window. “Bad for business. I think I’ll just close up early and get a beer at the Crisp Dollar Bill. You want to come?”

“Tired,” I said. “Busy day.”

Eduardo understood tired. I don’t think he knew much about busy days. He nodded.

When I got to my office just before ten, I found a message on the machine from Sally. “Lew, call when you get this if it’s before ten.”

I called.

“Hello,” said Susan, Sally’s daughter. Susan was eleven and was convinced that every time the phone rang it was for her.

“It’s me, Lew,” I said.

“I’ll get her,” Susan said, and put down the phone.

I could hear the television playing. The voice sounded like George Clooney in serious mode.

“It’s Mr. Sunshine, Mom,” Susan called.

“Dork,” said Michael, who was going to be fifteen some time soon.

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