by Beverly Bird
“Whatcha need, hon?” the woman asked without looking up. She wore a red beehive hairdo that seemed in danger of toppling over.
“Shift records.” She still wanted to know who had been on the holding cell desk the day Ed Bancroft had been brought in.
The woman finally lifted her gaze from the keyboard. “Sorry. They’re not available to civilians, at least not without a subpoena and a corresponding act of God.”
Molly found herself laughing. “That’s good to know. I’m a police officer.” She could understand the woman’s caution. She wasn’t in uniform.
The clerk cracked her gum. “You’ll still need a subpoena and a load of prayer, honey.”
“Are you serious?”
“As a hospital stay,” the woman agreed. She finally got up and came to the counter. “I’m Evie Castelano.”
She held out her hand. Molly shook it. “I’m Molly French. I’m just trying to find out which of us was working the holding-cell area on a certain day about a week or so ago.”
Evie cocked her head. The bright-red beehive tilted. Molly wondered for a moment if it was going to flop right over. “Well, for that you’d need clearance from your immediate supervisor and IAD.”
Molly blew out her breath. “Wow. You run a tight ship.”
“Not me, honey. The Mission Creek brass. I never worked a place this tight, to tell you the truth. And I’ve worked in a few, just never in the grand state of Texas before now.”
Molly shot another question off the top of her head. “What about the bombing task force? Do they get access?”
Evie looked surprised. “Yeah. Actually, they do.”
Molly grinned. “Well, I’m on it.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” Evie grabbed a black spiral bound notebook from under the counter. “Molly French, you said? I’m still going to need some ID.”
“Will a driver’s license do?”
“Works for me,” Evie said cheerfully, then she frowned. “Except you’re not on the list. How do you spell your last name? Like the foreign language?”
“That’s right. I just got the appointment late on Sunday.”
“Paperwork must not have caught up yet, then. Sorry.”
Surprise, surprise. Molly set her teeth. A lot of her paperwork wasn’t catching up to where it was supposed to be, she thought, including notification of meetings. “I don’t believe this.”
Evie looked at her sympathetically. “Get me some kind of clearance from Chief Stone, and I’ll show you whatever you want to know.”
“Thanks, Evie.” Molly turned away. Damn it. It would probably take her five more memos to get Stone to even consider another request from her.
Now what? she wondered, leaving personnel and heading outside to her car. How was she supposed to crack this case if she couldn’t get access to the information she needed? She wanted more than the shift records from that day, she realized. Who had Bancroft and Malloy been friendly with? Wouldn’t bad cops tend to stick together, especially if they were working for the same mad bomber? She wanted a list of current partnerships as well.
“I’ve got a better chance of meeting the president.” A woman she passed in the corridor hesitated and looked at her oddly. “Just talking to myself,” Molly explained.
The woman smiled. “You know what they say. If you don’t get answers…”
She could use a few answers right now, Molly thought, even if they were of her own device.
She was back in her car, hunting down a parking space at the rec center, before she realized that she was a full two hours earlier than usual. But why not? Danny had more or less appointed her to raise donations for his team. She didn’t mind doing all that, but she didn’t want it to cut into her regular time with the kids. She’d worked hard over the past two years to gain their trust. If she broke her routine now, they might think that she had abandoned them. She could invest a couple of hours on the telephone in Ron’s office, then she could spend her usual time schmoozing with the kids until three-thirty or so.
She parked three blocks away and stopped at a convenience store as she passed it to buy herself some lunch. Then she trudged on, chewing a hot dog and thinking. She considered having Joe Gannon take the No Parking sign down again, but Danny lived at the center. The minute that space in front of the building was available, he’d move his car right back there. One way or the other, Molly knew she wasn’t likely to park there again in her lifetime.
Danny’s voice hit her, ringing off the gym rafters, as soon as she stepped inside the vestibule. Molly leaned against the double doors to push one open a crack. She peeked in.
Gym shorts. He was wearing gym shorts again today. Want me to kiss you now? Her heart jittered and she took a small, involuntary step forward.
“This is called three-on-three pass/cut,” he told the kids. All the regulars were there—Lester, Fisk, Jerome, Cia and Anita. Bobby J. was missing. She wondered where he was today.
“You, Lester! Catch!” Danny shot the ball to him. “Take it out of bounds. I want you to inbound to Cia and Jerome. Fisk and Anita are going to try to deny you.”
Lester planted his hands on his hips as the ball bounced right past him. He made no move to catch it. “Man, this is so stupid.” He spouted a good line of swearing.
“Not in my gym.” Danny’s voice lowered by five or six dangerous, significant notches.
“What did you say, man?” Lester came back with his best belligerent tone.
“I said no foul language in my gym. If you don’t like the rule, then leave.”
“I leave, then you don’t have five kids. Basketball needs five players.” Lester seemed proud of himself for figuring this out. Molly could tell by the way he rocked back on his heels.
“Basketball needs a minimum of ten,” Danny corrected. “Five offensive, five defensive players. This particular drill really needs six. So no matter how you look at it, I don’t have enough. I’m not going to miss one less.”
Lester’s jaw set and his eyes clouded over. He turned away and started to leave the court.
“By the way,” Danny called after him. “Leave the gym shoes at the door.”
Lester turned back to him. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“You want to try me?” Then Danny’s gaze moved and he caught sight of her in the door. “Just what I need. More trouble.”
Molly stepped into the gym. “Hey, champ, you’re the one who said he needed donations.”
“The office is that way.” He pointed over her shoulder. “The phone’s in there. And you’re early. You never get here this early.”
It pleased her more than she cared to admit that he’d noticed. “I was having such a horrible day, I thought I’d just contribute to it and make it as bad as it can be. Crossing paths with you came to mind.”
“Try calling all the Carsons and Wainwrights then, to scare up a hundred bucks a pair for basketball shoes. That ought to help your mood.”
Molly felt a corner of her mouth try to pull into a smile. She started to step back through the doorway, then Anita’s voice stopped her.
“Hey, wait, Coach said he needed six!”
Molly frowned at the teenager. Why had she never noticed before that the girl had a wicked grin? “What? And why aren’t any of you guys in school instead of here?”
“Staff development day. Coach just said we need six for this drill,” Anita repeated. “We got five. Plant it, Lester, you ain’t going nowhere ’cause you’re not going to lose those shoes. Coach is teaching us, Molly, so he’s got to give the directions. That means you need to play.”
“She doesn’t know how to play,” Danny argued quickly.
“Well, neither do we, right?” Anita asked. “That’s why you’re teaching us.”
Danny opened his mouth and closed it again. “We need money more. I can work this drill with five of you.”
In response to that, Molly shrugged her oversize purse from her shoulder. It dropped onto the floor in the doorway with
a thud. He wanted to shoo her off, did he? She headed toward him.
“Get those high-heeled boots off my gym floor,” he warned.
“No problem.” She sat suddenly where she stood and unzipped them. Then she stood again and took them to the edge of the court where she dropped them. “Socks okay with you? I mean, they won’t offend your floor or anything like that, will they?”
“You offend me,” Danny grated.
“What? What was that? Sorry, I didn’t catch you.”
She was still coming straight at him, Danny thought, and there was something of the devil in her green eyes now. That worried him.
Two could play this game, Molly thought. He thought he shook her up. Well, they would just see about that.
She had never backed down from a fight in her life.
She stopped toe-to-toe with him and was immensely proud of herself when she saw something like panic in his eyes. They moved away from her, then back, then away again. “Want me to kiss you now?” she purred.
Every ounce of blood in his body did a dive. As hot as lightning, it aimed for the core of him. “Okay, so maybe that wasn’t my best-thought-out provocation.”
“Provocation,” she repeated, as though tasting the word. “Ooh, big words like that just turn me on.”
Danny lost the ball. It dropped from his hands, hit the floor and rolled off. He grabbed her by both elbows and fairly lifted her off her toes before he realized what he was doing. He’d been prepared for anything today except for her turning this around on him.
Worse yet, he liked it.
“Damn it, if you send these kids running out of here again today with your antics, I’ll make you regret it.”
“Oops. No swearing in Coach’s gym.”
He let her go. Fast. Before the urge not to became too much for him.
He should have gone out last night, Danny thought. Should have found an available woman and taken the edge off. Why hadn’t he? He couldn’t remember. He put his mind back to the business of basketball.
“Why are all of you just standing there?” he demanded of the kids. “I thought I told you to take position.” They scurried into place.
“Where do you want me to go?” Molly asked.
He smiled quickly—like a fox might, she thought. “Don’t tempt me with a question like that.”
“Okay, try this one,” she said sweetly. “What are you trying to achieve with this drill?”
“You heard me earlier. You were eavesdropping in the door.”
“Expound then.”
“Ooh. Big word. Turns me on.”
It stopped her dead in her tracks. Danny smiled fully this time. Then he came to his senses.
What the hell were they doing here? Best to call it quits right now, he thought, before it got out of hand. The word play was just too much fun. And it had a lot of potential for leading somewhere neither of them wanted to go.
“You’re on defense,” he told her. “Go stand over there. Leave me alone.”
“That means I’m one of the ones…how did you put it? Denying Cia and Jerome?”
“And me.”
“You’re not playing. You’re coaching.”
“Depends on which game you’re talking about. Do you need a coach, Molly?”
Her knees went a little unsteady. Never in her life had she had unsteady knees. And for the life of her, Molly couldn’t come up with a comeback.
“Cat got your tongue?” he asked, giving her that slow, sly grin again.
Her brain jolted back. She opened her mouth and flicked it at him. “Want to check and see?”
Then she saw his eyes change and everything inside her went still. “Molly, this is no good.”
She knew that. She let out her breath. What was she doing, playing games with him like this? Was she crazy? It was just that…no one had ever engaged her like this before. For whole moments she didn’t care who or what he was. All she knew was that he came back at her, word for word and barb for barb.
He took a step toward her. “Listen to me. We’ve got to stop this.”
“Consider it stopped.”
“Right,” he said quietly.
“Good. Go teach basketball,” she advised.
“I will.”
Except there were no kids left. Sometime during their interchange, they had all vanished out the door again.
“I guess I’ll just go call the Carsons and Wainwrights,” she said quickly and beat a hasty retreat.
“For what? What? I need ten kids for a team, damn it! If I don’t have kids, I don’t need money! You chased them off again!”
He was genuinely angry. Before she knew she was going to do it, Molly came back and put her hand on his arm. She noticed that it took him a whole three or four seconds before he pulled away as though she had scalded him.
“Danny, they’ll come back. They always do. Every day. They have nowhere else to go.”
“What about Bobby J.?” he asked suddenly.
Molly tucked her suddenly free hands under her arms. “So you noticed him.”
“It would be like overlooking a ghost rattling chains in your attic. He’s spooky.”
“He’s just starting to talk to me. I’m working on it. But so far, I don’t really know what his story is, other than the fact that he’s got three younger sisters, a mother who’s drunk a lot and they all live over in the south-side projects. Also, he’s been arrested three times and he’s only fifteen.”
“For drugs? I saw him talking to an older guy outside the bank earlier. It looked like they were exchanging something.”
Molly winced. “Two of his arrests were for possession. The last charge was dropped on a technicality. The usual police procedural goof.”
“It doesn’t sound like your talking is doing him any good, then.”
Molly bristled. “That’s what I do here. I talk, you coach. I buy condoms and pregnancy tests and—”
“For who?” he interrupted.
Molly caught her tongue quickly. “Never mind. It was in confidence. I can’t tell you.”
“Why not? We’re on the same side here.”
“Are we?” And something in her heart wanted to hurt because she knew they weren’t, not really. He might have turned on the mob and he might want to help these kids stay straight and get out, but the plain truth was that their delinquency sprees could not possibly horrify him the way they did her. Because he’d been a criminal himself.
Molly changed the subject. “What was the purpose of that drill you were trying to pull off a little while ago?” She watched him frown at her. “Three-on-three pass/cut,” she clarified. “Isn’t that what you called it? That wasn’t in my book.”
“Which you left here yesterday,” he pointed out. It was an inane comment and it took them a little too close to ground they didn’t want to cover.
“I don’t want to talk about yesterday. We’re not going to tease like that anymore.” But her mind spun back there, anyway. What if he had kissed her? What would she have done?
Danny seemed to take a deep breath. Basketball, he reminded himself. “In the long run, it’ll teach the kids to start moving and dribbling the moment the ball hits their hands.” When she looked at him blankly, he added, “You were asking me about the drill.”
“You really know this basketball stuff, don’t you?”
“I used to. But then I went for more immediate gratification.”
That quickly, she thought, that simply, a word or two could make a memory come back. She’d blown off immediate gratification in her own youth…and Mickey had died. “Good for you,” she said shortly, turning away.
“Now I know I said nothing right then to tick you off.”
“Shows how little you know me.”
He’d barely scratched the surface of her, he thought. And that was the way it was going to stay.
But as he watched her go, he wondered what it was that he’d just said that had made pain move through her eyes. There were layers there, interesti
ng layers to pretty Molly French, all the way from that glib little tongue of hers to the darkness behind her eyes that spoke of too much pain.
He didn’t want her to have layers, didn’t want to be intrigued, so he let her go. It was best for both of them, he thought. No matter how much she intrigued him. She was still a cop.
He went to retrieve the basketball as the double doors swished shut behind her. He shot it viciously through the hoop. It was for the best, he told himself. He gathered up the basketball and headed for the door to his apartment upstairs, then he thought he heard movement in the back room. He turned that way and found Plank Hawkins moving industriously around the kitchen.
“Hey, what’s going on?” Danny asked, snagging a carrot from the butcher-block table. He was starving.
“Sure, help yourself,” the old man grumbled, then he gave him a nearly toothless grin. “Used to cook for Archy Wainwright’s boys. I ever tell you that? I’m used to folks snitching my food. Those guys got no civilization in them.”
Danny was reasonably sure he had never talked to the guy before, about the Wainwrights or anything else for that matter. He took another carrot. “How come you’re here now?”
“Got my butt fired. Went to jail. Said I was rustling steers.”
Danny’s brows climbed. Interesting. “Did you?”
The cowboy cackled. “I ain’t telling.”
“Don’t blame you.” He started to leave, then he looked back. “How long have you been out now?”
“Oh, ’bout twenty years or more. Tell you what you need to do tonight, boy. You need to go out and find yourself a woman.”
“You don’t say.”
“Know where you been. Ron told me. And I know where you ain’t been yet—in some lady’s bed.”
Danny couldn’t help himself. He laughed. He liked this guy. “How do you know that?”
“’Cause you been aiming a little too hard at our Molly. You mess with her, boy, I gotta hurt you.”
The old man was maybe five-foot-nine, 140 pounds. Danny wasn’t worried. But he was alarmed by the observation. “I’m not aiming at her.”