by Mary McBride
“I’d kill for a big, tall glass of iced tea,” she said, trying not to whine, but following up her words with a pathetic little moan she couldn’t suppress. “I guess you just forgot to bring anything to drink, huh?”
“I didn’t forget,” he said, still staring at the garage.
Laura immediately perked up. “Oh. You brought something, then?”
“No.”
“But you said…”
“I said I didn’t forget.” His gaze cut toward her briefly before returning to the garage where the suspects’ cars, a big silver boat of a Cadillac and a spiffy little red Toyota, were parked affectionately side by side. The vehicles hadn’t moved, Laura noted glumly. Nor had the garage. Nor Sam.
What a crummy, boring occupation. She was seriously beginning to wonder if she’d made a mistake choosing Zachary, S. U. to protect her. In spite of his incredibly muscular build and sensational tan, he didn’t strike her as a man of action exactly, or as all that smart and well prepared. If he had known they’d be spending half the night on a red-hot rooftop, why in heaven’s name hadn’t he at least thought to bring along something to drink? Even a thermos of lukewarm coffee or hot chocolate didn’t sound half bad at the moment. A dented canteen with one swallow of anything wet.
“Pretty stupid, if you ask me,” she muttered.
“What?”
“Not bringing anything to drink.”
“No. Actually it’s pretty smart,” he said calmly. “You don’t see any bathroom facilities around here, do you?”
She glanced around the bleak rooftop. “No. No facilities whatsoever. Just half an acre of tar bubbles and broken glass.”
“Well, there you go.” He glanced at his watch. “It shouldn’t be too much longer now. We’ll stop on the way home for something.”
“Mm.” She had a vision of a foot tall glass of iced tea with a huge wedge of lemon stuck to its rim. “Be still my heart. I think I could drink a gallon of anything wet with ice cubes floating…”
“Shh.” Sam cut off her liquid reverie with an abrupt hiss. And when Laura started to speak again, he growled, “Quiet. Somebody’s coming.”
As soon as he said that, Laura could hear the insistent bass of a boom box coming from the direction of the stairs. The noise became louder and louder until Laura could feel the rap music beginning to beat in her brain like a headache. Then the door to the rooftop opened, and two dark figures emerged.
Boys, she thought with a quick, small measure of relief. They were just kids. But as they sauntered closer, even in the dark Laura could see that both boys were decked in the obligatory ripped T-shirts, baggy, low-slung pants and turned-around baseball caps of the Devil’s Own, one of the worst street gangs in the city. Worst as in cutthroat dangerous.
“Sorry, fellas,” Sam called out above the harsh beat of the boom box. “This roof’s occupied.”
The boys stopped. So did the music. The sudden silence almost made Laura dizzy.
“Occupied,” the taller one said to his companion. “Occupied.” He set the boom box down with ex quisite care. “Maybe this man don’t know what part of town he’s occupying, Jerome.”
“Damn straight,” Jerome said gruffly as he jabbed a finger toward Sam and Laura. “This is our roof, man. We the Devil’s Own.”
They were also higher than any rooftop was ever going to get them, Laura noticed now from their slurred speech and unsteady stances. Their gazes, however, seemed to focus fairly steadily and unfortunately on her.
“Yo, mama,” the tall, lanky one purred, smiling almost viciously as he took several easy steps in her direction. “Why don’t you tell your old man there to take a hike for a little bitty while?”
She started to answer when Sam grasped her knee and said, “Just be quiet, Laura. Let me take care of this.”
“Low-ra.” Jerome turned the bill of his cap to the side, cocked his head, and grinned. Moonlight glittered on one big gold tooth. “You’re one fine lady, Low-ra. Tell that sad-ass man of yours you want to stay here on that blanket with Swat and me. What do you say, Low-ra?”
She was tempted to say that she was a special friend of the Hammer’s baby boy and if anything happened to her, they’d find themselves in a hundred various pieces scattered in dumpsters and vacant lots all over the city. Only her throat was so dry, all she could manage was to croak to Sam, “Don’t you have a gun or something?”
“They’re just kids,” Sam said quietly. “I’m not going to pull a gun on kids.”
But even as he was speaking, it seemed that the kids, Jerome and Swat, had decided they were not at all reluctant to use their own lethal weapons. First Jerome’s long-bladed knife appeared from somewhere underneath his loose T-shirt. Then Swat’s knife materialized, almost from thin air.
“Go on now, man,” Jerome said, gesturing with the glinting blade. “We got some business with your lady.”
Sam muttered a curse under his breath, then slowly began to get up. Laura’s first thought was that he was going to do just what he’d been ordered to do, that he was going to walk away and leave her alone. Alone with the Devil’s Own for some business. Panic surged up in her throat.
“Sam! What are you doing?” She reached out, grabbing for his pant leg, but he pulled away.
“Okay, fellas,” he said. “Look, you really don’t want to do this. Now put the knives away, pick up your boom box, and get the hell out of here before this gets you both a couple of years in Bakerville.”
Laura felt her eyes rolling up in her head now, hardly believing what she’d just heard. These thugs were standing there with knives the size of machetes and Sam Zachary was threatening them with reform school! My God. At least he wasn’t still wearing his blue gingham apron!
She decided right then and there that, after she survived this night, if she survived, she was going to find herself a real private investigator. A he-man. A hero. One with a very big gun.
Jerome and Swat, it appeared, had the same impression of Sam’s abilities. They grinned at each other, traded knowing looks and began to move forward, one of them edging to the right and the other to the left.
“Two against one, man,” Swat said, shifting his weapon from hand to hand and moving closer. “You scared yet?”
Plenty, Laura thought. Spitless.
“Terrified,” Sam answered with a calmness that struck Laura as irrational, if not completely insane, under the circumstances.
Now the lanky Jerome started to make kissing noises. At least that’s what Laura assumed they were. She didn’t even want to know what the noises from Swat’s mouth signified. Oh, God. This is what she’d escaped rotten Artie Hammerman for?
She glanced frantically toward the low brick wall that edged the rooftop, wondering just how much damage a sixty-foot jump might incur, thinking absurdly that if this were a movie there would be a series of canvas awnings to slow her fall, not to mention a conveniently parked truck with a flatbed of straw or stacked mattresses to keep her from breaking every bone in her body.
But this wasn’t a movie and the two gang members were even closer to Sam now. One to the right, the other to the left. Close enough for Jerome to thrust out his blade in a wide, glittering and deadly arc.
What happened next took place so fast that Laura wasn’t even sure her eyes completely registered the events. Sam’s right arm shot out, deflecting the blade, then only a blink of an eye after that his left fist thundered into Jerome’s chin, sending the boy at least half a foot into the air, literally out of his shoes. The knife went sailing, hilt over blade, into the moonlit sky, and before either Jerome or his weapon even had a chance to land, Sam’s right fist smashed into Swat’s face.
For a moment after that everything was absolutely quiet. Jerome sprawled on his back, motionless, three feet from his empty shoes. Swat knelt, his knees sunk deep in tar bubbles, his knife nowhere in sight, and blood from his broken nose pouring between his fingers.
Sam stood there for a moment, silently looking from boy to b
oy, flexing both hands, before he muttered a curse and turned toward Laura. To her amazement, he wasn’t even breathing hard, and still looked cool and collected, as if he’d merely swatted a pair of pesky houseflies rather than putting two of the Devil’s Own completely out of commission.
Then, suddenly, his gaze flicked beyond her toward the parking garage. His expression darkened perceptibly.
Oh, God! What now? The rest of the Devil’s Own? Laura wondered, looking frantically in the same direction only to see that the big silver Cadillac and the little red Toyota they’d been watching so diligently all night were nowhere in sight. The elderly Lothario and his young tootsie had apparently escaped unseen, not to mention unphotographed by that stalwart shamus, Zachary, S. U.
“Great. That’s just great.” While Sam growled, he held out his hand for Laura’s and pulled her to her feet.
It was only then, when she stood up, that she realized she was shaking, wobbling pitifully in her tarstained high heels. “Wh…what do we do now?” she asked.
Sam had reached down for the blanket and was snapping it smartly into a small square. “Now,” he said, “we haul these two clowns down six flights of stairs and deliver them to the guys at the Fourth Precinct.”
He handed her the folded blanket, and when she took it with her trembling hands, Sam didn’t let go immediately. “It’s okay,” he said softly, his eyes warm in the moonlight and steady on hers. “It’s all right now, Laura. It’s all over. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
All she could do was work up a weak, wobbly smile. “Thanks.”
Sam smiled. “Hey, you hired me to protect you, right? I’m just doing my job.” He angled his head toward the parking lot, then added glumly, “Well, one of them, anyway. It looks like we’re all through here, so after we get rid of these jerks, we’ll go get that tall, cold drink I promised you.”
Laura managed a feeble, grateful nod. “C-could you make it Scotch? A d-double?”
The Ten-Gallon Hat, on Highway Z, was a hole-in-the-wall that billed itself as a roadhouse. By day it looked more like a one-story cement block warehouse, but by night its miles of neon tubing made it look bigger and brighter and a lot more fun than any place else in the county. Sam had spent a lot of time here after Jenny’s accident, but he didn’t remember having any fun.
It was two-fifteen in the morning but the band was still playing when Sam ushered Laura across a floor strewn with peanut shells and discarded beer caps to a small booth in the back, where he hoped her outfit wouldn’t attract too much attention. At least not the sort that would require further use of his bruised knuckles.
Lynette, one of the two overworked waitresses in the place, took their order without her usual chitchat, but she still managed to give Sam a few meaningful looks and whisper, “It’s nice to see you with a date, hon.”
“She’s not a date,” Sam responded gruffly.
“Coulda fooled me,” Lynette whispered back before she disappeared into the crowd on the dance floor.
Then, after their drinks came, along with more meaningful looks, they sat quietly awhile. Laura played with the swizzle stick in her double Scotch and water, while Sam rolled his cold beer bottle across the back of one hand and then the other, trying not to wince.
It had been the first time in his dubious career as a private investigator that he’d had to use his fists. Part of him was glad to know he hadn’t lost much speed, but the rest of him—his aching knuckles, mostly—was protesting vehemently.
“Thank you, Sam.” Laura’s voice floated over the music and across the scarred tabletop. “For defending me.”
“No big deal. I told you. It’s what you’re paying me for.” He took a long pull from the beer bottle. “Anyway, it was pretty stupid of me to take you to that part of town and put you in harm’s way like that. I guess I wasn’t thinking. Probably just too used to working alone.”
Too used to being alone, he added to himself.
“Well, I don’t suppose these clothes helped any, either.” Her gaze fluttered downward for a moment. “I can only guess what kind of babe good old Jerome and Swat thought they’d discovered up there on the roof.” She gave a tiny shrug then. “Will they go to jail?”
“If I press charges,” Sam said.
Her eyes widened. “If?”
“I’m going to assume they learned a pretty good lesson tonight.”
“Sure.” Laura snorted. “They probably learned that they ought to use guns next time instead of knives.” She sipped her drink, then said, “And speaking of learning, where did you learn to throw a punch like that?”
“I did some boxing in college, then later in the Marine Corps.”
“I’m impressed.”
“Don’t be,” he told her. “I wasn’t all that good.” He touched a finger to his nose, where an unexpected left hook had left a small, but permanent detour in the cartilage. “This used to be a lot straighter.”
Even though she’d barely made a dent in her Scotch, her smile already had a slightly inebriated tilt to it. It went well with the blue velvet dress, Sam decided. She went well with the blue velvet dress.
“I have a confession to make, Zachary S. U.” she said as she traced the rim of her glass with a fingertip.
“What’s that?”
“I thought I had made a big mistake about hiring you. I was even thinking, earlier tonight, about asking you for a refund, and hiring somebody different. Somebody, um, well…better.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And?”
“I know now I didn’t make a mistake.” She leaned her head back against the booth’s battered wooden frame, then let out a long sigh as she closed her eyes. “I feel safe with you.”
She wouldn’t have, Sam thought, if she knew the direction in which his mind was tending while his gaze roamed unhindered over her relaxed face and figure. About all that separated him from Jerome and Swat right that moment was a willingness to obey the law. That and the fact that they were in a public place. Otherwise…
Otherwise what, for God’s sake?
He jerked upright and squared his shoulders, then downed the last of his beer and put the bottle down with a solid thump, loud enough to cause Laura’s eyes to pop open.
“It’s time to go,” he said, already sliding out of the booth. “Come on.”
Sleep wouldn’t come that night. Not even after the three fingers of Jack Daniel’s Black that Sam had poured as a last resort. Instead of putting him to sleep, all the bourbon did was give him a headache. And it failed miserably in blunting his desire for the woman who slept in the room across the hall.
For the hundredth time he checked the glowing blue numbers on the clock radio, realizing it would be dawn in less than half an hour. Pretty soon he’d be able to distinguish the muted plaid pattern of the wallpaper, the spiderweb fracture of the windowpane where he’d connected on one of Davey Kenyon’s curveballs in eighth grade, the dozens of trophies on the desktop and bookshelves that could use a good dusting.
He didn’t even need daylight to see the objects in this room where he’d spent most of his nights for most of his life. Most of all he didn’t need light of any sort to see Jenny’s face smiling out at him from the silver-framed photograph on top of the knotty pine dresser. It was always there, that mischievous, gamine face that he’d loved from the very first day of kindergarten when he’d come home—right here—and announced to his mother over cookies and milk that he was going to marry Jenny Sayles, then asked in all seriousness just how long he’d have to wait to do that.
Although his mother had laughed and suggested a seemly eighteen or twenty years might be good, her answer should have been forever.
Sam felt that too-familiar constriction in his throat now and the hot sheen of moisture in his eyes that always came when he allowed himself to think about Jenny for more than a passing moment. Swearing softly, he reached up to double the pillow under his head, then he closed his eyes, for all the good that would do in blocking out nearly three decades of i
mages that seemed almost permanently etched on his brain. Jenny here. Jenny there. Jenny everywhere.
Since he couldn’t marry her in kindergarten, he’d waited until their graduation from high school to ask her. She’d put him off, and then put him off again when they graduated from college. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to marry him. She did. She swore she did. But Jenny had her own itinerary. She wanted to go as far as she could as a concert pianist before settling in as Sam’s wife. And she thought she had all the time in the world. They both did.
His gaze lit on the Divisional boxing trophy he’d won in the Corps. When Jenny moved to Los An geles to study with the renowned pianist, Hermoine Stahl, it made perfect sense for Sam to enlist in the Marine Corps because Camp Pendleton was just a few hours away from L.A. Later, when Jenny moved to Paris, he pulled a string or two in order to be assigned embassy duty there. Wherever Jenny went, he followed. It had been whither thou goest in reverse.
When Jenny acquired a rampant case of stage fright that prevented her from performing, he’d resigned from the Corps and followed her back here where he’d run for county sheriff, winning in a surprising landslide. But even then, Jenny wouldn’t marry him. She needed to prove she could play on stage, if only one more time.
And then, on an icy stretch of Highway A-14, Jenny’s time had run out.
It was light enough now for Sam’s eyes to trace all the hairline cracks in the ceiling. He wondered how many men his age had only loved one woman in their lives, and of those how many had only made love to one woman. Damned few, he decided.
While Jenny was alive, he’d been oblivious to other women. In the two years since her death, he’d been both oblivious and numb. Then suddenly Laura McNeal had waltzed out of the Yellow Pages and into his office in her little blue velvet scrap of a dress, and had lit a fire in him that Sam didn’t like one bit.
He sat up now, rubbing nonexistent sleep out of his eyes. He should’ve known better than to offer to help the woman. But, since he had, he was going to help her with a vengeance. Help her right out of his life.
