Where You'll Find Him by Mel Bossa

Author:Mel Bossa [Bossa, Mel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2015-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

THEY’D FINALLY made it through the restaurant’s dining room and out onto the terrace, but as they sat down, someone accosted Wolfe again. This time, they were interrupted by a heavy woman carrying a cardboard box full of kittens. She stopped by the terrace’s short fence, near their table, and grinned at Wolfe. Her toothless smile made Gaspard squirm in his seat. He quickly put his sunglasses on and picked up the menu. He couldn’t believe how many people had stopped Wolfe during their short walk to the restaurant on Sainte-Catherine Street. He was trying not to be annoyed, but the woman wouldn’t take any of Wolfe’s subtle hints, and he suspected she’d probably be standing at their table for a while. Her kittens badly needed a home, and she was insisting Wolfe take them to the YBR center with him today.

With very frantic movements, the woman opened the box and showed him the litter squirming and climbing up the sides.

“Oh, wow,” Wolfe said. “Hello there.” He looked into the box and petted one of the kitten’s little gray heads. He glanced up at the woman. “They’re adorable.”

“Aren’t they?” She sniffed and looked around the street. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and her huge breasts sagged under her brown T-shirt. Her hair was matted and hadn’t been cleaned in a long time. She had blue-and-yellow marks, old bruises, on her neck and arms. “But I can’t keep them, you know,” she told Wolfe, shutting the box again. “There’s no place for them where I’m living now. And the bed bugs would eat them.” She swung back and forth on her heels, moving constantly. Something was eating through her. “So, what do you say? Will you take them? Will you?”

Until this morning, Gaspard had been under the false impression the people Wolfe helped were somehow all young and pretty, needing only a little pep talk or a pamphlet from him. Reality wasn’t like that at all. The people who’d accosted Wolfe were mostly homeless men and drug addicts. On the corner of Saint-Hubert Street, they’d been stopped by a young man, obviously a hustler, coming out of a cheap hotel. Unaffected by the guy’s jitters and overall countenance, Wolfe had spoken to him as if they were friends, taking the time to ask about his recent hospital stay. These were dirty and gritty people. Insane people too. One guy had been licking the top of a dumpster as they’d passed him in a side street. Upon seeing them, the man had looked up to say hello to Wolfe. His street name was Licky Luke, and softly, Wolfe had explained that the YBR often helped Licky Luke with getting his various medical prescriptions renewed.

The YBR wasn’t supposed to be focused on this type of clientele, but with social services being cut every day and shelters overloaded, the YBR was like a patch in the system, and since his arrival in Montreal, Wolfe had been trying to figure out the neighborhood, getting

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