B00BSH8JUC EBOK (12 page)

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.

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 characters 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.”

“What do you think will happen?”

“Oh, you know the newspapers. They’ll run the story.”

“Let me guess. The chief says the story will screw up our investigation, and you say the more people who know about it, the better chance we have of protecting Papa and Alie and cracking this crime.”

“You’re learning, Kotter.”

“So now what?”

“Now at least we have the names of Papa’s old pals. Recognize anyone?”

Randie handed me a list of a dozen names, and I scanned it. “I arrested a guy named William Gibbons a couple months ago for credit card fraud, but he was young. Maybe a son or a nephew or something.”

“Maybe. It’s a pretty common name, though. We have mug shots on some of these characters, but nothing recent. Still, it’s a start.

“The briefing is in an hour. Sam’s going to conduct it, although I’ll come by. Be there.” Randie put a hand on my shoulder, captain to cop. “Don’t you forget about our talk this morning. You have your orders. This changes nothing.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

***

I got back to the College Inn in time to drive Alie to the tournament. Like the day before, she
wanted to get there early. I noticed she was edgy again, like a thoroughbred approaching the starting gate.

“Is everything okay?” I asked, wondering whether Papa had told her about Penn’s discoveries.

“Oh, I always get nervous before a match. It doesn’t matter if I’m playing a qualifier or Steffi. I used to throw up, even. Now I just always think I’m to lose, and then I go out on the court and something comes over me and I get fierce and I win. It’s like Wonder Woman or something.”

I figured that was as profound as Alie de Ville got. I left her to her thoughts. I kept an eye on her until match time, and then I wandered courtside and took up a position just behind the low wall that separated the court from the crowd. I had memorized the few mug shots we had, and I felt much more comfortable as I checked out the scene. I noticed the other cops seemed more confident, too. There was no guarantee, of course, that Papa’s muggers were local, and we might be entirely off the track. Still, we felt we had accomplished something.

Papa and the mayor showed up a little before Alie was scheduled to appear for the traditional, pre-match warmup. Shortly after they arrived, so did Penn. He had press credentials around his neck and a notebook in his hand as he approached the mayor’s box. He said something, and the mayor, who had his fill long ago of Penn’s embarrassing stories, turned in fury. Papa stood up and shook his fist, unleashing the street punk that loomed inside the multi-millionaire. Penn raised his hands in a gesture of apology and retreated. It sure looked like a couple of “no comments” to me. I had to admire Penn. He did a lot of the unpleasant things we did—and without a badge or backup.

The players emerged to a standing ovation. Alie was going against one of those fifteen-year-old sensations who should still be in high school, not trying to make it on the tour. Her opponent had a bunch of weapons, but she was too young to be consistent with them. She would follow up a spectacular shot with a total muff job—which certainly kept the match interesting. Alie had the patience to let her make her mistakes and walloped her in straight sets, 6-3, 6-3.

Now it was my turn to be nervous and maybe a little bitter. Alie came out of the locker room, signed some autographs and said to me, “Take me to Poe’s.”

I nodded, feeling sorely used. Alie might not take prisoners on a tennis court, but she sure as hell took hostages in real life.

Alie looked hot to trot. She was dressed in another one of those silky shirts, this one in green, which might as well have had a road map pointing, “This way to the nipples.” She also wore khaki jeans, neatly pressed, just begging to be stripped off and rumpled. Walking into Poe’s, she would be a knockout even if she wasn’t Alie de Ville. She wasn’t making it easy on the cop assigned to security, I can tell you that.

Poe’s was packed, its primal rock music pulsating into the parking lot every time the door was opened, which was frequently. I took a look at the customers and realized the tennis tournament managed to coincide with the summer practice for Hillsboro College’s football team. Huge, swaggering college boys were everywhere, the kind the locals resented. Damn. Poe’s was going to be its combustible worst.

I let Alie out of the car and followed her toward the door. She stopped and said, “I don’t want you too close to me. I don’t need any nanny.”

“Okay.”

She grabbed my lapel playfully. “Unless, of course, you want to have a drink with me, Kotter.”

“No, ma’am, I’m on duty.”

“Fuck you, Kotter.” She shoved me aside and walked away. Her hips were rocking.

Inside people had to turn sideways and shoulder their way through the gyrating crowd. Alie spotted some other tennis pros at the bar and bulldozed toward them. They were encircled by a panting crew of football players.

It took a moment for the crowd to realize Alie was Alie. Heads turned, fingers pointed, and there was a general surge in her direction, although not many people got through. I took advantage of the disruption to wedge myself against the wall near the door. If I couldn’t stay close to Alie, at least I could prevent her from leaving without me. I settled in grimly for a long and miserable evening.

In Alie’s little group she quickly became the center of attention. She joked with the other tennis players, flirted with the football studs and even kissed the bartender. She drank way, way too much.

The night wore on. The music got louder and more frantic. A couple of the other tennis players left, but not Alie. By this time, she was drunk enough to be leaning against the bar for support. One of the football types, the biggest and blondest among them, helped her toward the rest rooms in the rear. At first when they didn’t return right away, I wondered whether there was a line. Then I wondered whether Alie was sick. Then I broke out in a cold sweat as I wondered whether they had gone out the emergency exit. If the alarm went off, no one would have heard it in this din.

I shot out the door and sprinted toward the back. I saw them in a corner of the parking lot. The football player had Alie pinned against a pickup truck, his hands groping wherever they wanted, his mouth covering hers. She was struggling, but she couldn’t get away.

I ran up to them. “Police! Let her go.”

The football player turned partially toward me but still kept a hand on Alie’s hip. The guy was easily six-foot-four, and he was drunk. He took one look at me and laughed. “Go fuck yourself, copper,” he said.

He shouldn’t have done that. I was carrying a blackjack. It was no longer regulation, and I wasn’t supposed to have one. If I got caught with it, I’d be in trouble, but sometimes you do what you have to do.

A blackjack was a joy to use. You could conceal it in your hand and then smash it with all your might against an elbow, even one belonging to a guy who was six-foot-four, and watch as the excruciating pain left him crumpled and howling. Stick it as hard as you could into his gut, and you had really made your point.

As he doubled over, trying to clutch his stomach and his elbow at the same time, I snarled my identification at him. “Kotter, W.L., Hillsboro P.D., badge number two-four-six-oh-one. Go ahead and turn me in.”

I knew he wouldn’t. There was no way a guy like him would ever let it be known he had been whipped by a female cop like me.