by Joe Gores
“Can I walk on the ceiling?” He shrugged and turned away.
Heslip had never had a finer compliment. MacLashlin didn’t want to fight, not because he feared a beating, but because he might be humiliated by a black man. Then Nicoletti’s voice jerked at his partner like a bullwhip wrapped around his neck.
“Mac! You still owe him an apology.”
“What the hell goes on?” MacLashlin’s face was chalk; he backed away uneasily, looking from one to the other, hand on holster.
Heslip realized that Nicoletti was going to push it. And MacLashlin would have to give in, because Nicoletti was the harder. Two officers, partners in an unmarked car, had to depend on each other’s judgment, intuition, and guts to stay alive. To Nicoletti it really had nothing to do with Heslip, or the color of his skin.
Heslip cleared his throat. “Thanks, Benny,” he said levelly. “But don’t bother. It would break his teeth to say it.”
Turning away, he caught amazement on MacLashlin’s brutal features. It was enough.
He could feel their eyes on his back, burning like sunlight through a glass as he walked away; then a black-and-white cruiser swung into Clayton from Oak, and the feeling was gone. Suddenly he felt fine.
He pulled the coil wire from his pocket. Yeah! Dodge Dart, delinquent seven months. In twenty minutes more he’d have it in the barn. Tomorrow the Jensen file at DKA would go into the CLOSED file.
He flipped up the hood of the car; then a thought sagged his jaw. Corinne! He hadn’t even called her! How was he going to square last night? And the missed picnic today? He slowly replaced the coil wire. You in some mighty deep stuff, baby. But then he grinned. He began singing.
His tune was: A Good Man Is Hard To Find. His lyric was: A Hard Man Is Good To Find.
Hell, man, all he had to do was convince Corinne of that.
www.doverpublications.com
