Chapter 34

The phone didn’t ring until Monday at 9PM. “Hello there Mr. Tommy. So how goes your day?” I asked while preparing myself for the onslaught.

“Tell me Ed, are you going to join us or not. Lucinda wasn’t sure after you stormed out of the Stew and Que?” he asked.

You know I have to keep her guessing. I just hate to be taken for granted,” I explained with a laugh.

“Hey, she asked you over dinner,” Tommy replied trying to make nice.

“Did she tell it that way?” I asked with another laugh. “I had to pay for the dinner.”

“So what’s going to be next,” he asked.

Well, if you don’t have anything you are upset about at the moment, maybe we should see how Gerome feels about his life,” I suggested.

“Or Mary Beth even,” he added.

“That is true. She might need one of her bridge partners investigated. You know how crooked those gray haired old ladies are. Convince Lucinda to call around to see if anyone at the gym wants to suggest something,” I suggested it hoping I didn’t sound like I was slacking off.

“Alright but call your son to see if he needs anything. Cheating husbands really are a waste, since we can’t use the film we shot,” he offered,

“To be honest, Gerome shot that film and I’m not convinced it isn’t on the dark web somewhere. Lucinda probably got him to stick it on one of those revenge porno sites,” I suggested.

“I wouldn’t be shocked. Women just aren’t what they used to be. They are so much more,” Tommy said. “Anyway talk to John and see if he knows of anything.”

“Okay I’ll do it, but I have to make him think it was his idea. I don’t want to be beholding to him. You know how fathers and their sons are?” I demanded.

“I had a daughter, so it is not really the same thing. I just had to give her mother money, and keep my hands off of her. I did that and things were cool.” Tommy said. “Call me if you get something.”

“You got it boss,” I said.

“Yeah, right,” where his last words.

I left a message for my son John. ‘If you have anything you need done let me know. Some friends and I are opening a kind of information exchange.’ Nobody knew exactly what it would be like yet. It was the beginning of something new for all of us.

None of us quite knew how to refer to the Group at that moment in time. I told Lucinda that ‘The Cartel’ was out of the question for sure. Since she still thought that it was a cool name, she decided to still call it that.

Anyway Tuesday Lucinda called to tell me Mary Beth’s husband ‘the professor’ had a job for us. She had set up the meeting for 7PM at the downtown coffee shop. The thing we agreed to tackle for Michael Williams, the professor as I thought of him was for his wife. Mary Beth was a charter member of our little group of four.

“The shop will be more or less empty at that time. The Gym won’t be. It stays open till midnight,” Lucinda advised me.

“The coffee shop is fine. If we were working for the CIA, we might need someplace more secure. I doubted seriously the professor’s problem has any national security implications,” I commented.

When we were all assembled at the coffee shop I began, “Michael, I know that I speak for all of us, when I say we wish to thank you for your help last week. So what can we do for you.”