Free Brooklyn Bones by Triss Stein Page B

name used to be in more important places than your exhibit. And now? I made a few enemies in my time—I’d rather be forgotten. Lunch doesn’t do a thing for me, either. I’ve got diabetes—can’t eat anything I like.”
    He was the opposite of friendly. I could even have called him hostile, and yet he wasn’t hanging up.
    “Aside from cash, which I don’t have, and food and fame, which you don’t want, what would tempt you? I bet there’s something?”
    “Time was, it could have been Scotch. Or even rye. Now doc says it will kill me. My barfly days are long over. In the words of an Ellington song you probably don’t even know, I don’t get around much anymore. And who needs it anyway?”
    I thought I heard a little something there and went with my hunch.
    “Would you like an outing? I have a car. We could take in a movie, or a music club, even without drinking?”
    There was a long silence, and then he said abruptly, “Tell you what. I’m sick of the sight of my own four walls. Take me for a ride out to Coney Island, buy me a hot dog at Nathan’s, and we’ll talk. Maybe I’ll tell you something. Throw in a kasha knish and maybe I’ll even tell you something useful.”
    “Sounds like a deal to me. When?”
    “Tomorrow is good. My calendar isn’t exactly crowded these days.”
    “It’s a date.”
    Then the house went deeply, emptily silent again. I tried to glue myself to my work, but some other part of my mind was fixated elsewhere, becoming nearly desperate enough to consider calling my dad, or doing some house cleaning. When the phone rang at last, it was an unfamiliar Manhattan number.
    “Ms. Donato? It’s Steven Richmond.”
    Darcy’s friend. The Wall Street guy. On a Sunday. This was not a phone call I wanted.
    “I apologize for calling you on Sunday and if you tell me you are too busy, I’ll go away until it’s working hours, but if you are not…?”
    “I am not too busy at the moment now. I have a few minutes.” Technically, I wasn’t busy at all, as I was not actually doing any of the things I should have been doing. My instinct, however, was caution. Something about our previous meeting made me think he would take favors for granted.
    “Excellent. Something has come up, in connection with the project we have been discussing.” That was an exaggeration. We’d only had that one brief meeting, but now I was curious. “Would you happen to have time to go over it now? It would be on the clock, of course. I could pick you up and go to a café, or whatever you would prefer?”
    I’d been up since five o’clock. What I would prefer was a nap or perhaps a long soak in a tub. No, a nap. I would definitely not prefer going anywhere. Actually, I would prefer to say, go away.
    “Come here. My house is a construction mess, I’m renovating, but I have a deck where we can be comfortable. Does that work?”
    ‘I’ll be there in ten. And thank you.”
    I looked down at the now-wrinkled and very random cut-offs and t-shirt I had put on that morning, and my bare feet, considered more professional or merely more adult attire for a split second and thought, the heck with it. He is intruding on my down time; he can take me as I am.
    Eight minutes and he was ringing my doorbell, juggling two luxurious iced drinks and his computer bag, and saying, “Sorry again for barging in. I hope these help make up for it. I didn’t know your favorites, so I brought one chocolate, one mango.”
    A bribe? Why not?
    “Come on in, and excuse the mess. We can sit outdoors.”
    My house was certainly not at its best. Construction debris was everywhere. I was trying to hustle him past the mess, but he stopped in front of the fireplace. The construction mess around certainly was attention getting, and so, perhaps, were the remaining shreds of bright yellow police tape.
    “Darcy told me what happened here.”
    I hoped he didn’t see me flinch. I didn’t want to talk about it with every random stranger. So I