Finnegan's Week Read Online Free

Finnegan's Week
Book: Finnegan's Week Read Online Free
Author: Joseph Wambaugh
Tags: Suspense
Pages:
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shocked when his father replied, “That might be a good idea. Get out on your own and start scratching like everyone else has to do.”
    That evening Harold Temple wrote his son a check for $5,000. He called it “seed money.” And that was that.
    Jules packed his things and left the next morning, moving in with Margie, a divorced cocktail waitress he’d been dating. She said he could stay until he got on his feet. It was while living with her, after he’d grown desperate, that Jules Temple again became an entrepreneur.
    The idea came to him when he was baby-sitting for Margie, who had the late shift at a nightclub in downtown San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter. He’d spent night after miserable night in front of the TV, drinking the cheap Scotch that Margie bought at discount outlets. Margie’s seven-year-old daughter, Cynthia, had been begging him to play dolls with her when it happened: the idea!
    He’d heard of the pedophile’s motto: “Eight is too late.” Cynthia was only seven, but she looked even younger. She was very pretty, but not a terribly bright child, not nearly as bright as Jules’s own daughter had been at that age. Cynthia was a lot like her mother, he thought.
    The next day Jules was in several adult magazine and book shops in downtown San Diego looking for chickenhawk and pedophile publications. When he got back to the apartment, he studied many photos of naked children in provocative poses. Then he homed in on the ads in those publications to learn how they were set up.
    Later that evening when Margie was at work, Jules suggested to Cynthia that they play “movie star.”
    â€œYou have to promise me that you won’t tell Mommy,” he said. “Cross your heart. It’s our secret.”
    â€œOkay,” the child said, and obeyed her director’s instruction to the letter.
    Jules did her makeup as best he could, using Margie’s cosmetics. He believed that scant clothing would be more titillating than nudity, so he posed her in panties and ballet slippers, trying to imitate the young models. Essentially, he wanted a seven-year-old Madonna.
    Jules knew that he didn’t dare have more than one photo session because Cynthia might accidentally spill the beans. By the time that Cynthia had informed her mother of Jules’s “movie star” game, Margie had already kicked him out for making long-distance calls, lots of long-distance calls all over the country that he said were “just business.” Margie never understood that his business intimately concerned her daughter.
    Jules had bought ad space in three pedophile publications. His ad included a photo of the child and listed a post office box in downtown San Diego. Within two weeks, more than sixty pedophiles had responded in letters directed to “Samantha’s Uncle.”
    Almost all the pedophiles used post office boxes of their own, or general delivery, and within days each would receive glossy photos of the little girl. Along with the photos was a typed letter:
    Dear Sir ,
    My name is Samantha. I am six years old and have been taught many things that will please you. If you would like to meet me and learn what I can do, please call my Uncle Desmond any time between 10:00 A.M. and 2:00 P.M. PST .
    Love ,
    Samantha
    Jules Temple went to the trouble of switching his answering service every two months during a year in which letters were exchanged with pedophiles as far away as Alaska. He ultimately received more than two hundred phone calls, and decided that nearly half of them were worth tape-recording surreptitiously.
    During the pedophile’s recorded conversations with “Uncle Desmond,” Jules would usually manage to solicit a callback number, and surprisingly, the caller often gave his true name and address when asking for more photos, this after long and lascivious conversations with Uncle Desmond about Samantha.
    Shortly thereafter, selected
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