by Beverly Bird
“Then here’s how we’re going to do this,” he said. “From now on, you just stay on your side of the gym and I’ll stay on mine. I changed my mind. I don’t like you after all.”
She fought the hurt. “No problem.”
“Good.”
“Good,” she repeated.
“And stop running my name through the system. You won’t find anything else. There wasn’t a hell of a lot there to start with.”
“I didn’t—” But she had to break off. She couldn’t lie.
“Points for honesty, Officer.” His grin was feral. “Unfortunately, you started in the hole.” He left her and slammed the door hard behind him. Molly sank back down into Ron’s chair. For some reason she felt ashamed. Like she’d been narrow-minded and she’d misjudged him. But that was insane. How badly could you misjudge someone who had held up a convenience store? How badly could you misjudge someone who had been associated with the mob—the same mob her task force was looking into for the bombing?
Molly shot to her feet again, angry now, at herself and at him. She left Ron’s office without even glancing over her shoulder at the gym, but the steady thump of Danny’s basketball followed her.
Within twenty-four hours, Molly had decided two things. Dressing for success with the task force was a total waste of time because no one wanted her there, anyway. And Danny never seemed to leave the rec center. At least, that damn yellow car of his never moved.
She woke early on Tuesday morning, thinking to get a good start on the day. The telephone rang just as she was leaving her apartment. It was Ralph Bunderling asking for another date. She’d probably given him renewed hope with her phone call last night. Molly declined politely.
At least the rain had stopped, she thought, stepping outside. Because she wore flats today, her ankle didn’t turn when she stepped on the newspaper. She took a breath, grabbed it from the walkway and looked up. The sky was that cool winter blue that came in February even to southern Texas, and the sun was big and…
Lemony.
“He just moved right in on my turf,” she complained aloud. “And Ron not only let him, he enabled him.”
She realized that she was talking to herself again.
“Well, spinsters talk to themselves. I read that somewhere. They do it a lot. They talk to themselves, and they talk to their cats.” How old did one have to be to officially become a spinster? The term brought to mind doddering virgins in their eighties, she thought as she headed for her car. But times had changed. In current lingo it would probably define a thirty-year-old unmarried woman who had scarcely had more than three consecutive dates with the same man in her entire life.
She decided to drive past the rec center first. If Danny was gone, she’d stop and chat for a while with whatever kids were there. It didn’t matter that it was a weekday and the high school was in session at ten o’clock in the morning. Lester had already dropped out, and the attendance of the others was spotty in spite of the volunteers’ best efforts. Molly wondered how Danny expected them to play for a high school team when half of them already had one foot out that door.
“That’s his problem, not mine.” She slowed down as she approached the center. His car was still there. “Jerk. Store-robbing, gun-wielding, mobster jerk.” Why’d he have to go and rob that store, anyway? Why couldn’t he just have been a nice guy?
Because spinsters had notoriously bad luck where men were concerned, she answered herself. He’d seemed to be flirting with her and he looked good enough to eat, so something had to be wrong with him.
All she’d ever asked for was a man who could match her, stride for stride, she thought, driving on. Someone who wouldn’t back down from her and let her wear the pants all the time. Someone who could make her skin heat with a glance. Someone whose kiss didn’t leave her wondering what was on television later that night.
Someone with all that who didn’t have a record.
The full task force was in the war room when she arrived. They were having a meeting.
She hadn’t been informed. Molly felt a dull flush creep up her neck, but she forced herself to stride confidently to the first vacant chair she could find. They had all been lined up in rows for the occasion.
“Hi, Chief.” She sat and wiggled her fingers at Ben Stone. “I said I’d do this on my own time. I didn’t say you ought to start without me.”
Stone’s head moved as though his gaze had turned her way, but that was the only acknowledgment she got. He stood in one corner of the room, near the coffee table, taking up space between that and the American flag. She couldn’t see his eyes because of the cowboy hat he wore.
Spence Harrison, the district attorney, stood beside him at the end of the table. Molly’s glance flicked that way and she caught a quick smile touch the man’s mouth. His brown eyes were clear and direct on her for a moment before they cut to Chief Stone. “I wasn’t aware that Officer French had joined our ranks.”
Stone shrugged without actually responding. One of the task-force cops made a disparaging sound in his throat. Harrison lifted a brow at him, then he focused back on Molly. “Welcome aboard.”
“Thank you.”
“To sum up, I’m still liking the Mercados for this, predominantly because nothing points away from them,” he said, obviously picking up from where he’d been when she’d entered the room.
Translation, Molly thought, he likes them because we don’t have anything else.
“But I’m very concerned with our lack of progress,” Harrison continued. “If we don’t catch a break soon, I’m thinking we’re going to have to go outside our area for expert help. The lack of evidence so far indicates a professional job. It tells me that we’re dealing with someone who is used to committing crimes and covering his or her tracks afterward.”
“Like the mob,” one of the detectives suggested.
“That’s one scenario,” Harrison agreed enigmatically.
Now what did that mean? It was an interesting comment, Molly thought. It seemed to indicate that he had another scenario in mind. But whatever it was, he obviously wasn’t going to share it with the task force.
Everyone was standing to leave. Molly stood, as well, but she stayed behind as the others dispersed. She noticed that more paperwork had been added to the crime book table and that no one had done a thing about organizing it since she’d left yesterday. No wonder they weren’t getting anywhere. How could Chief Stone even monitor this investigation if nothing was in place?
She started to move a chair back to that table, then she realized that Spence Harrison hadn’t left. She gave him a crooked smile. “Joe Gannon seems to think it’s my Laredo connection, but maybe it’s because I’m a woman. What you think?”
“You mean why they cut you out?” He was replacing papers to his briefcase and didn’t look up at her.
“Actually, I sort of cut myself in.”
Again, he gave that fleeting grin. “It’s an old-boy network. I’ll make sure you’re notified of the next meeting.”
“Thanks.” Molly wondered how much she could trust him. Her gut instincts told her that neither Harrison nor Joe Gannon minded her being involved here. She decided to find out. She was a pretty good judge of people and their reactions to things she said. “You know, something’s been bothering me.”
The district attorney finally glanced up. “What’s that?”
“It’s Ed Bancroft. Why didn’t they take away his belt and shoelaces when they put him into that holding cell? Who booked him?”
“Joe Gannon.”
She noticed that Harrison didn’t have to consult anything in his briefcase for the answer. Molly nodded. She’d already known it, too, but she was going somewhere with this.
“And he relieved him of all his potentially deadly possessions at the time,” Harrison continued.
Molly took a deep breath. “Okay. So Bancroft had a friend who brought him the belt. And by association, Malloy probably had some friends, too.”
“It�
��s a safe guess.”
“I wonder if these friends have any more associates…within the department.”
“You’re a good cop, Molly. You’ve got to know there are also bad ones.”
There, it was out on the table, she thought. It was what she had been fishing for—support for her only theory. Malloy and Bancroft had friends in bad places—and if they did, then it was entirely possible that other cops did as well.
There had just been too many at that bombing scene, she thought again.
“For what it’s worth,” she said finally, “I like the Mercado angle for this, too. Who else could they have been hooked up with?” She refused to think of Danny when she said it.
“The Mercados are our resident bad guys,” Harrison agreed. He snapped the locks on his briefcase.
He left and Molly sat down at the crime book desk, rubbing her forehead. It was nice to know that someone as powerful as Spence Harrison didn’t think she was nuts for her theory. But she still had questions. Who had supplied Bancroft with the belt he’d looped around his neck? Had Bancroft requested it? Or had someone convinced him that he wanted it?
Molly rose from the table suddenly. She left the war room and went to the records department.
Ten minutes later she had a copy of the official visitors log from the cell area for the day Bancroft had been brought in. She ran down the list of the man’s visitors as she stood in the corridor. Some list. She was the only one on it.
No attorney? Why hadn’t Bancroft called for legal counsel? Those sharks could be counted on to show up before the key turned in the lock.
She hadn’t supplied Bancroft with the belt. Therefore, Molly thought, someone else had visited Bancroft without being signed in. Which meant that whoever had been on desk duty that day hadn’t made an issue of the belt-carrying visitor. Whoever had been on the desk had just waved the visitor in. Because it was another cop?
Her stomach shifted. She’d have to check with personnel to find out who had worked the holding cell area during that shift.
She already knew from the autopsy report that Bancroft hadn’t been dead long when she’d found him. She’d gotten him down and had started CPR herself, to no avail. Bancroft had still been warm. His mysterious visitor could have been there within half an hour of her own sign-in.
Molly started to head back to the war room, then she hesitated. Don’t do it, don’t do it, an inner voice warned her. She stepped back into the records room. “I also need the file on a six-year-old convenience store hold-up.”
“Got a number? An exact date?” the clerk asked. She was a pretty, lithe, young blonde named Gale Howard. Most of the guys loved her.
“No, just a name. Daniel Gates.”
“I should be able to find it. Hold on,” Gale said. “Sign another request for me and I’ll go look.”
And stop running my name through the system. Danny’s voice shot back into Molly’s mind like acid, seeming to singe the edges of everything it touched. “Go away,” she said aloud. “Get out of my head. You’re messing with my kids at that center. I have a right to know.”
“Were you talking to yourself?” Gale asked, returning with the file.
“Uh, no. Well, not really.” Molly took the file and stepped away from the desk.
At some point or other, the store-robbing, gun-wielding, mobster jerk would have to leave the center, she decided, returning outside to her car. He couldn’t stay there twenty-four hours a day, could he? She decided to swing by the place again.
His car was still in her space. That was when Molly got her brainstorm. She went back to the police station and found Joe Gannon in the detective’s bureau. She told him what she needed. She could do it herself, but she would probably be questioned by the brass over it.
“What’s this about?” he asked, scowling.
“I volunteer there.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that. But that’s not a no-parking zone, is it?”
“Not unless we decide to make it one.”
“On what grounds?”
Molly thought about it. “That building is a firetrap.”
“Close to it, but it must have passed code or the fire department would have shut them down a long time ago.”
Ron was going to kill her for this. Still, principle was principle. And she wouldn’t be able to park there anymore, either, would she? Plus, it really would make the building safer. “We should probably have a clear path to the front door for…you know, firefighters. Just in case.”
“What the hell are you up to?” Gannon was staring at her as though trying to find the answer in her eyes, then he scratched his temple. “Okay. Who cares? I’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
“So do I. I just want to start with the minnows.”
“You’re going to owe me for this.”
“I always pay my debts, Joe.”
“A six-pack. Any import.”
“Consider it done.”
He nodded, then he called in the tow order for the ugly lemon Dodge in front of the rec center. “I’ll have a temporary No-Parking sign there by nightfall.”
Chapter 3
It didn’t seem possible to Danny that seventeen kids in any given city in modern America could not own gym shoes. Granted, the rec center families were mostly impoverished. But Anita’s tattoo, Cia’s leather and Lester’s boots had all cost money, so the kids were finding it somewhere.
He was being played for a chump, Danny decided. And where had these other eleven kids’ names come from, anyway? There’d only been six teenagers here yesterday.
“You,” he said to Jerome, “had sneaks on yesterday.” He sat at Ron Glover’s desk facing the boy who stood on the other side of it.
“They got stole last night.”
“Stolen.”
“What, now you’re an English teacher?”
“Whatever I have to be, pal, to get you into college.”
That broke Jerome up. “Me? Yeah, right.”
“You. Right.” Danny looked down at the handwritten list. At least the kids had sent Jerome back with it. That was something. Actually, it was more than he had hoped for. “Okay, here’s the deal.”
“I don’t do deals, man.”
He caught the boy’s gaze and held it. “My guess is that you do deals every day, just not with the likes of me. Now where was I? Right. I’m going to leave here and buy gym shoes for everybody who was here yesterday. These other eleven kids—whoever they hell they are—are going to have to make an appearance and personally request their own pair—after they’ve practiced with us at least five times.” In the meantime, Danny realized, he was going to have to try his hand at a little fund-raising. They’d need uniforms, too, and various other equipment, not all of which could come out of his limited bank account.
“Man, that’s lame,” Jerome complained.
Danny stood from the desk.
“Hey, what did you do time for, anyway?” the boy asked suddenly. “You didn’t tell us.”
Danny paused on his way to the door. He’d known it was coming and had already determined to be honest with these kids. He had a halfhearted hope that some of them might learn from his experience. “Money,” he told him. “They said I stole money.”
Jerome didn’t bat an eye. “Yeah, so you got plenty, right? You can buy us all shoes.”
“If I had money to buy you all shoes, would I be driving that scrap of metal out there at the curb?”
“Ain’t no scrap of metal there now, dude.”
“Sure, there is. Right out front.”
“Uh-uh. No more.”
Then, somehow, Danny knew.
He shot around the desk, opening Ron’s office door hard enough and fast enough to make it crack against the wall like a gunshot. He heard Jerome laughing behind him as he jogged outside.
His car was gone.
Danny drove his fist against a stop sign. The metal clanged. Then he realized that he was still holding the piece of paper with the shoe sizes. Swearing, he
shoved it down into his jeans pocket and headed back to the center to call—again—for a cab.
He was going to kill her.
When Molly arrived at the center at two o’clock, the space in front of the center walkway was vacant. There was a no-parking sign there. She grinned to herself and started scouting around the block for another space. She found the Dodge around the first corner, deliberately taking up two spaces, half in each of them. Her grin vanished.
Oh, baby, this was war.
She had to park two blocks away this time. Molly locked her Camaro and headed back to the rec center on foot. She found Danny in the gym.
There were fifteen to twenty kids with him today. She’d never seen so many kids here at once in the whole two years she’d volunteered. What was he doing? Paying them to play basketball with him? She stalked across the court and approached the knot of them.
Danny looked up at her. “Good afternoon, Officer.”
“Same to you.” Then she added under her breath, “Inmate.”
He heard her. “Not anymore.” He nodded at the far basket. “Your end of the court is down that way.”
“It’s wherever I want it to be.”
“No, actually, that rule changed yesterday right around five o’clock. Now I’m assigning you one.”
He’d caught her in Ron’s office at five o’clock, Molly thought. She felt her temper spike even as her stomach squirmed with guilt. “No one promoted you to director of this place.”
“Nope. No one did.”
“Then I’d say rule making is a little out of your job description.” Where were the kids going? she wondered. A quick glance around told her that they were all easing back to the other end of the gym. “Her” end. Were they choosing up sides, determining to stick with her against him? Molly started to smile at that prospect then she noticed that Jerome and Fisk, Cia, Lester and Anita were all wearing new gym shoes. Cia wore hers with rolled-up white socks beneath a stretchy, skin-tight red skirt.
Molly picked out Bobby J. standing at the edge of the gym, watching the others the way he usually did. He wasn’t wearing new shoes. They sat on the floor beside him, still in the box.
