by Cohen, Celia
Then Alie finished what she started, mowing down Tammy 6-0 in the second set to win the match. She was a killer, that was for sure.
I lounged by the door to the locker room as I waited for Alie to change. She didn’t take long, blowing into view like a model off a runway, dressed in jeans, a white shirt and a bright, multi-colored vest. The vest, left unbuttoned, also left no doubt she wasn’t wearing a bra.
Everything about her said she was on the prowl. I used to see that look all the time when I was with Jaws, the one that athletes got after they won and were ready to collect their trophies. It had been the cause for some pretty torrid nights in the sack. There was one time after Jaws won a softball game in the last at-bat with a grand slam...wow.
Alie saw the glow of memory in my eyes and took it for admiration. She smiled smugly as I escorted her to the police car. “Ready for Poe’s?” she asked.
I came back to reality in a hurry. I slammed the door so she couldn’t escape from the backseat and got in to drive. “I told you. I can’t take you there.”
“Then just drop me off. You can say you don’t know where I am.”
“Are you nuts? I’m not allowed to let you out of my sight.”
“Look, just take the poker out of your ass and let’s go. Who’s going to know?”
“Oh sure, like you’re not the most famous person in Hillsboro and no one will notice you. Listen, I am not going to lose my badge for you.”
Alie slitted her eyes. The screech in her voice was as bad as I’d heard it. “If you don’t take me there, I’ll see that you do lose your badge.”
I’m sure Alie expected me either to wilt or get mad. What she didn’t know was that I was never more relaxed than when I was threatened. After a lifetime of being in trouble, it was my natural habitat.
I startled her by simply laughing. I put the car in gear and headed out.
“Where are you taking me? Where are you taking me?” she demanded.
I ignored her and drove to the College Inn. Alie was a thundercloud of silence. I parked and let her out. She fled upstairs and slammed the door to her room. I opened the door to mine and prepared to wait until the bars shut down at one A.M.
Time passed, and then I heard the elevator stop. It discharged Tammy Truman, the college player Alie had slaughtered earlier in the evening. Alie must have called her. Tammy went to Alie’s door and knocked. She was carrying a package that only could have contained a six-pack of beer.
Well, Tammy was of age, and I was damned if I was going to play dorm mother to see who drank it.
Alie’s door opened only wide enough to admit Tammy. I stayed on alert to see whether they tried to slip out on me, but they didn’t. They had a room service cart delivered with food and a bottle of wine, but that was it for the night.
After one A.M., I called the officer on duty in the lobby and said I was turning in. I was mildly curious about whether Tammy was going to stay, but I hadn’t had much sleep the night before and I was tired.
The hell with it, I thought, and the hell with Alie, too.
Chapter Nine
For the second morning in a row, the telephone woke me before the sun did.
“What?” I snarled, expecting the call to be from Alie, but it was Randie. Big mistake.
“Be in my office in fifteen minutes,” she said in a tone of cold command.
“Fifteen minutes!”
“One of the officers in the lobby will relieve you. Don’t be late.”
Once again I was stumbling and rushing, half asleep, as I sped through the shower and got ready. I had no idea what I had done to get the recruit-class treatment, but I was irritated and more than willing to play the part. I pulled on jeans and a faded Police Academy T-shirt, skipped the socks and didn’t bother to tuck the shirt in.
I don’t think I made it in fifteen minutes, but I was probably standing in front of Randie’s desk in seventeen. Whatever, it was close enough. I saluted and said nonchalantly, “You sent for me, Captain?”
“Sit down, Kotter.”
Randie didn’t look happy. She was in full uniform, and I had the sense that as early as she got me up, she had been up a lot earlier. I knew she wouldn’t be in the mood for any lip from me, but I wasn’t real optimistic that I would be able to control it. I draped myself insolently in a chair.
“I have just come from a rather unpleasant session with the mayor and the chief, and you were the cause of it. It seems Alie complained to her father that you were rude and arrogant last night, and her father called the mayor. He called the chief, and the chief called me, and the three of us had a little get-together. Now I’d like to give you the benefit of the doubt, except I heard the way you sounded on the phone this morning.”
I winced. “I shouldn’t have answered like that. I’m sorry. But I wasn’t rude to Alie last night. She wanted to go to Poe’s, and I wouldn’t let her. Or did the law change when I wasn’t paying attention, Captain?”
“From now on, whatever Alie wants, you do.”
“You cannot be serious.”
“I offered to remove you from this assignment, but it seems Alie made it quite clear she wants you to continue.”
“She said she’d get me.”
“Then don’t give her any more chances to do it.”
“God damn it, I don’t mind being in trouble when I’ve done something wrong, but it sure as hell shouldn’t happen when I’ve done something right!”
“Enough, Kotter. You’re dismissed.”
I stood and snapped my best recruit-class salute. It was a gesture of obedience turned into flagrant insubordination, and Randie gave me a stare as cold as Judgment Day. I glared back until I finally wised up and dropped my gaze. I was scared I really had gone too far this time. When would I ever learn to control that temper?
“You’re your own worst enemy,” Randie said. If there was no forgiveness in her voice, there was at least awareness, and I was grateful for that much.
“I know it, Captain.”
I stopped in the break room to collect myself and pick up a cup of coffee. It didn’t help that I hadn’t had any yet this morning. Although Randie had dressed me down, I knew she would have done everything she could to cover for me with the chief and the mayor. If I screwed up, I would hurt her as much as myself, and I wasn’t going to do that to her.
God, I could just kill Alie de Ville.
I returned to the College Inn and the tyranny that awaited me there. I went upstairs and saw Corporal Steve Ortega in the hallway. I liked Steve. He was another of Randie’s reclamation projects, like me. One of his cousins had played softball with me, and she introduced Steve to Randie. At the time Steve’s parents were divorcing, his grades were going to hell, and he was getting in so much trouble at school he was flirting with expulsion. Randie was the first to see the gentleness inside and Steve’s need for order. She invited him to join her criminal justice program for high school students, then in its early days. That’s where I met him, and we had been friends ever since.
Steve was a bruiser of a man, the strongest weightlifter in the police department. His uniforms had to be custom made, and still his shoulders rippled beneath the thin blue fabric. The first time I ever called for backup, when some passengers got unruly during a drunken-driving stop, Steve was the first one on the scene. That’s not something you ever forget.
“Hey, Ortega. Any sightings of Herself yet?”
“Nope. Room service delivered about twenty minutes ago. I saw more food on that cart than I could even eat.”
I wondered whether Tammy still was inside, but I didn’t mention it. “That’s the way she likes breakfast. She grazes.”
“She’s really giving you a hard time, isn’t she? It’s all anybody’s talking about at the station.”
“She really is. She’s got me in trouble with the chief and even the mayor, if you can believe it.”
“As if you needed help getting in trouble,” Steve teased. “What happened?”
Bef
ore I could answer, my beeper sounded. Alie was calling. “Later,” I told him.
Steve glanced at his watch and yawned. “Well, I’m off. Been working all night. It’s Miller time.”
“Breakfast of champions.”
Steve grinned and headed for the elevator. I knocked on Alie’s door. “It’s open,” I heard her say, and I went in, wondering what I would find there—the lady or the tiger?
The suite had suffered since I was last inside. It was littered with the debris from the night before—discarded clothes, empty beer cans, trays of food and the dead soldier of a wine bottle. It had that distinct, stale after-party pungency to it.
Tammy was not in evidence, but Alie sure as hell was. She was dressed in a white terry cloth robe and nothing else that I could see. Her long legs were exposed by the slash in the robe, and the neckline veered into dangerous territory. Even though I was furious with her, I could feel those prickly sensations that come on when you are near a woman who is hot, hot, hot. Where Alie was concerned, I couldn’t even count on my own body.
“Well?” she asked.
“You win,” I said tersely. “Wherever you want to go, you go. Whatever you want to do, you do. I am at your service.”
“I told you.”
“Are you going to rub this in?”
“As a matter of fact, I am. I think you should apologize.”
Most people hate to say they’re sorry. Not me. I can’t think of a cheaper way to get out of a jam. I apologize when I’m right, I apologize when I’m wrong, I apologize any way I can to strong women who get turned on by it. I’ve apologized a million times and never meant it. Alie de Ville could have her apology without a qualm from me.
“I am deeply and truly sorry,” I said and did not smirk.
That pleased her. She gave me a superior smile, and then she stretched. Her body moved, but the robe didn’t, and the tops of her breasts came rising like twin moons above the rough texture of the terry cloth, soft half-circles out of a coarse, slashing V. I watched and did not bother to hide that I was watching, as she prolonged the pose, making damn sure she was tantalizing me.
I should have been striding across the room, peeling back the robe, whispering crude desires to her and doing unspeakable things to her body. But I was not the one who could say what would happen here. I felt like a caged wolf.
The stretch ended. The moons sank below the horizon, and I was jarred back to all that is gritty and barren by the ungodly pitch in her voice. “I have to be out at Buena Vista again this morning. I’m playing golf with my father and my agent and some corporate bigwig who’s thinking about sponsoring me.” She made a face. “I told my father I didn’t want to do any business this week, but he said this guy was flying in special. Anyway, what else is there to do in this diddly little town?”
“Well, the college library has a display of medieval manuscripts, but I don’t think that’s what you had in mind.”
Alie giggled. “God, you have a smart mouth.”
The better to—I thought it, but I didn’t say it.
In forty minutes we were on our way to Buena Vista, Alie in the back seat just as chipper as she could be. Either she got laid last night, or else this babe really got off on power trips like the one she pulled on me.
Of course, she looked exquisite in her little plaid golf shorts and white shirt with matching plaid collar. I was doing my Secret Service imitation again—tan suit and sunglasses.
Buena Vista was an armed camp of cops, and I wasn’t needed. I got permission from the sergeant in charge to knock off as long as Alie was on the golf course. I headed for Julie’s office.
She was in the back with a client. I helped myself to some coffee—hazelnut this morning—and before I had drained the cup, the client emerged. She was one of those blue-haired ladies who kept Julie comfortably in business. This one swept by me with a look that said I may have youth, but she had money, and one day my youth would be gone but her money wouldn’t. It wasn’t the first time I had seen that look from one of Julie’s clients.
Julie followed a moment or two later. “Kotter! What are you doing here? Hey, what’s wrong? You’re not looking so good.”
“I was insubordinate.”
“Oh! You poor baby.” If anybody else had said that—including Randie—I would have cut it off and said something obscene. But not Julie. She was a healer, and her sympathy was neither pitying or patronizing. It was what I needed.
I told her of the morning’s events, and I was as hard on myself as Randie would have been. As I spoke, Julie helped me out of my suit jacket and then massaged my neck and shoulders and upper back, until the tension and my words drained and drained and drained away all at the same time.
“Don’t worry, Kotter. I’ll take care of this with Randie for you.”
“I don’t know how you do it.”
Julie smiled mischievously. “Let’s just say I have a few more tricks at my disposal than you do.”
I drank coffee with Julie until her next client arrived, and then I wandered into the clubhouse lobby and shot the bull with some of the other cops. About the time I figured Alie should be finishing up her round of golf, the sergeant came looking for me.
“Someone else will take Alie de Ville back to the hotel,” he told me. “You’re to report to Captain Wilkes at the station.”
I wondered why. What I didn’t know was that all hell had broken loose. At least this time it had nothing to do with me.
Chapter Ten
When I walked into Randie’s office, she was waiting at the door for me. She put her hand on the back of my neck, and my breath caught, but there was no anger in her touch. It meant I was already out of the doghouse and on probation. I relaxed. Julie would take care of the rest.
Randie fingered the collar and lapel of my jacket. “How many suits did you buy for this assignment?”
“Two,” I lied. Actually I had bought three—the blue one, this tan one and a dark green one—but the green was only for emergencies in case one of the others got stained or torn. The odds were good Randie would only see me in the blue and the tan. “I can always use them when I make detective.”
“By the time you make detective,” Randie said drily, “these suits are going to be out of style.”
“Very funny, Captain,” I said, giving her the cop’s smirk.
“Detective!” Randie was chuckling now. “When you finish this assignment, you’ll be lucky if I let you write parking tickets on Main Street. School crossing duty is going to look like a perk to you.”
It was time for me to remember my right to remain silent. There was no sense giving Randie any more ammunition. I wondered what had happened since the morning to turn her mood around. I didn’t have to wait long to find out.
Randie shut the door—something she rarely did—and said, “There’s going to be a briefing for the entire security detail later on, but I want you to know what led up to it. Obviously anything I tell you stays here.”
“Sure. What’s going on?”
“Penn. Jonnie Penn. He’s screwed everything up. The chief and the mayor are furious, and so is Papa de Ville.” Randie seemed quite pleased about it, too.
“Let’s see,” I said. “Does this mean that along with repealing the drinking age for Alie, the chief and the mayor are going to want to repeal the freedom of the press, too?”
“God damn it, Kotter, you are incorrigible!” Randie said, and then she laughed. As a matter of fact, in all the years I had known her, I don’t think I ever saw her laugh so hard or so long. I had her wiping away tears.
“All right,” she finally said. “Let me tell you what happened. The only one I feel sorry for in all this is Sam Van Doren. Poor Sam. He stayed up all night, going through those old police records without finding a thing, and then Penn figured it out from old newspaper stories. I swear, if Penn ever wants to quit the Courier, I’d hire him in a minute.
“Our hunch was right. Papa de Ville hung around with some pretty shady char
acters when he was growing up in Hillsboro. Penn found an old file on him in the newspaper library. Papa was involved in one of the worst scandals ever to hit this town, back when he was in high school. Probably not very many people remember he was a part of it, but I bet the chief does—he was just starting out on the force at the time. I bet the mayor does, too.
“Anyway, a bunch of young toughs put a gambling ring together and bet on high school football games. Eventually they tried to talk some of the Hillsboro players into throwing a game, and one of the players went to the coach. To make a long story short, everyone in the gambling ring was kicked out of school for the rest of the year.
“The newspaper story said Papa was a junior at the time, but it doesn’t look like he ever went back. Penn called the high school, and there’s no record he graduated.
“There’s nothing else on Papa in the Courier library, but there were stories about some of the others in the gambling ring who went on to rougher stuff—burglaries, bad checks, small-scale drug dealing, assaults during bar fights, the usual.
“Penn called me this morning to tell me what he had found, and we talked off the record. He wanted to know if we had anything else on Papa or these other guys, but I told him he’d done a better job than we had. He asked if I thought Papa’s old pals could be the ones who jumped him, and I said that’s sure as hell where I’d start.
“Later Penn called the chief to get an official comment and to tell him he was writing a story about Papa’s past in Hillsboro. The chief freaked, and that’s when the fun started.”
“Great story,” I said. “Father of tennis star gets his start in sports by betting on them.”
“Exactly. Penn’s out there trying to get comments from the mayor, Papa de Ville and his old cronies. Meanwhile, the mayor’s been on the phone with the publisher, trying to get the story killed, and Papa’s threatening to sue the paper if they print it and cancel the tennis tournament.”