Read The Big Boom for Free Online

did—in his law office, right about my age, dreaming of some place he’d never been, maybe, a face he could not quite remember …
    Cicero’s phone rang.
    It was his wife, Louise. She was his third wife—his fourth, really, if you counted those two lost weeks he’d spent with a beautiful schizophrenic in Reno. But that had been annulled and not too much later he’d married Louise. Louise Goode. Not yet divorced when they’d met, the estranged wife of one of his clients. She was twenty-odd years younger than himself and had a demure manner, just graying elegance, pale skin, and a softness that belied something cold underneath. Just turned forty-five the day they’d met. That is, if she were telling the truth. It didn’t matter. There was something about Louise he couldn’t resist. A steeliness in her sensuality. A hunger. They’d been married two years.
    “Jake,” she said now, over the phone—and the way she said it made him think of how she looked in bed, hovering over him. The way her mouth opened and you could see her teeth. “I’ve got the brochures.”
    He felt something flutter inside. Louise had been talking lately about a cruise. It was something that had started down at the racquetclub. Jake didn’t care for the club himself, but she looked good in those pleated skirts, out on the court.
    “I thought we had till the end of the month to decide about that.”
    “We do, but accommodations—those are first come, first served. It would be nice to have a suite with a balcony.”
    “Let’s talk about this tonight,” he said.
    “I really don’t want to go by myself, honey. I really want you to come.”
    He’d been on a cruise ship years ago, and he wasn’t crazy about it. Ports of call and duty-free liquor and overpriced artwork and long hours at dinner tables with strangers and not a fucking thing to say. It was no Orient Express.
    “You’re too young for a cruise. Why do you want to waste yourself on a boat full of old men?”
    “Don’t be silly,” she said. “You’re not so old.”
    Something about the way she said it put a knife through him. Earlier, he’d suggested she go on her own. That he wouldn’t mind. He had his business here to take care of. The truth was, though, he didn’t want her to go without him.
    “Anyway, I just wanted to know when you would be home.”
    “Around seven.”
    “All right,” she said. “I’ll be here, waiting.”
    The last time Louise had said that, though, she hadn’t been home. She’d been out with her girlfriends at the club. And Frank Strum, the attorney.
    “Oh Jake,” he whispered to himself again.
    He should turn his attention to his work, but he was thinking about Louise. He and she were alike in more ways than one. They’d both been married several times, and they both had lives they’d leftbehind. People they’d abandoned. Louise had resisted him at first, he remembered, same as his first wife.
    Jake thought of them sometimes, his various wives. Alice, his first, and their seven years together. Then Jeanine, with her blond hair and her blousy looks, who’d ultimately grown to regard him as a fool. And from those two marriages, three kids—none of whom regarded him as their father.
    Sometimes he wished he could go back in time and set all that straight.
    There was a knock on the door.
    Dante Mancuso entered. He was a sticky one, Mancuso. Cicero had known Dante when he was a young homicide cop. At the moment, Dante stood in the doorway with his fists all but clenched. He had penetrating eyes and an old-fashioned nose—the kind of nose you didn’t see much anymore, a fisherman’s nose, a big hook to drag in the sea. Dante smiled, somewhat thinly. Cicero had known Dante’s mother, too, and the smile reminded him of her. A beautiful woman, before she’d gone to the asylum.
    “Oh, the man of the hour,” said Cicero.
    “Why do you say that?”
    It was one of his stock phrases. Cicero had no idea why he said such things. Because it