Midnight Pass: A Lew Fonesca Novel (Lew Fonesca Novels) Read Free Page A

“And why?”
    I’m not listed in the phone book, either in the white pages or in the yellow pages. I’m a process server with even less ambition than DQ Dave. I work as little as I can, live as cheaply as I can, and have as little to do with people as I can. I checked my watch and glanced at my bicycle leaning against the side of the DQ. If I didn’t get going in the next five minutes and pedal hard, I’d be late.
    “My lawyer, Fred Tyrell,” Wilkens said. “He told me about you.”
    I nodded. Tyrell was the token black in the downtown law firm of Cameron, Wyznicki, Forbes, and Littlefield. No “Tyrell.” Tyrell’s job was to take minority clients and even drum them up. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes even the most committed African-American activists wanted a smart white lawyer, preferably a Jewish one. Cameron, Wyznicki, etc., had one of those too, Adam Katz. I think the firm took him in about a decade before I came simply because of his last name. I had done work for both Katz and Tyrell. The partners had their own short list of investigating and process-serving private detectives and process servers, though I got most of my business from another law firm, Tycinker, Oliver, and Schwartz on Palm Avenue.
    I nodded again, looked at my empty cup.
    I’m what is usually called medium height and probably seen as being on the thin side, but I pedal to the downtown Y every day, work out for at least an hour three times a week, and have grown hard in a town of white sand beaches and lazy hot days. I grew hard to stay away from my own desire to turn into a vegetable.
    “Parenelli will vote with me,” said Wilkens.
    I nodded a third time. This was no surprise. Parenelli was the closest thing we had to a radical liberal on the council. He was old, crusty, had moved down from Jersey thirty years ago, and would have gladly voted for Eugene V. Debs for governor if Debs were alive and eligible. Sometimes the other council members kept certain issues until late in each session in the hope that Parenelli would be too tired to protest or might even doze off. Parenelli was too crafty an old socialist to let that work. He sat with his thermos of black coffee, did crossword puzzles while he pretended to take notes, and waited for the big vote.
    Three commission members always voted together on money issues. They would furiously debate for hours whether they should approve an unbroken or broken yellow line down the middle of the recently widened Tuttle Avenue, and you would never know how that one would go, but on expenditures, they were closer together than the Statler Brothers. That left Wilkens and Parenelli together on social issues. Votes of three to two were common, but it was even more common to have unanimous votes because most issues were without controversy and without interest to even the commission members.
    “The way I count it, you’re one vote short.”
    “Trasker,” the Reverend Wilkens whispered, leaning even closer to me.
    I thought delusion had set in on Wilkens and considered advising him to wear a hat and stay indoors. I had a University of Illinois baseball cap I could offer him, but I didn’t think he’d accept the gift or use it.
    I even considered inviting him across the parking lot to my barely air-conditioned office and living closet, but decided that whatever confidence he might have in me would be gone with his first view of my professional headquarters.
    “William Trasker is one of the block of three,” I said.
    Wilkens smiled. Nice teeth. Definitely capped.
    “William Trasker is dying,” he said solemnly, though I had the feeling that Trasker’s impending death didn’t completely displease him.
    “Trasker came to my church office day before day before yesterday,” Wilkens went on. “Told me, said there was nothing they could do to him now and that he’d enjoy surprising the commission by voting with me. It was to be a done deal.”
    “Still two questions,” I said, pitching the empty