How to Score (2 page)

A sigh floated wistfully through the phone line. “That’s what I’d really want in my apartment—a woman.”

You and me both, buddy
. It had been nearly a year since Chase had broken up with Sara. Like all the women Chase had ever dated, Sara had wanted to move things to the next level. Not that he had anything against commitment—in fact, marriage was part of his Life Master Plan, and according to his LMP timetable, he should be in the marriage-execution phase right now—but Sara just hadn’t had all the attributes he was looking for.

He had yet to meet a woman who did. He had very specific criteria. He called the search Operation SCABHOG, because he wanted someone who was smart, competent, active, beautiful, honest, organized, and goal-oriented.

“Lots of girls have those qualities,” Luke had told him when he’d complained about it over a beer at their favorite watering hole a couple of weeks ago.

“Not as I define them.”

Luke’s dark eyebrows, a mirror image of Chase’s, had quirked up. “That’s because when you say ‘smart,’ you really mean ‘rocket scientist.’ ”

“No,” Chase had said defensively. “Just sharp. Quick on the uptake. Perceptive. Level-headed. Knowledgeable. Able to think on her feet and come up with creative solutions. ”

“Uh-huh.” Luke had taken a pull on his bottle of Coors. “In other words, brilliant. And what’s your definition of ‘competent’?”

“A woman who has her act together and has the track record to prove it. Someone efficient and stable and capable and reliable, who always follows through and doesn’t come with a lot of baggage. Someone who won’t disrupt my life.”

Luke had rolled his eyes. “Like that’s gonna happen.”

Chase had bristled. “Hey, there’s no reason I can’t find a woman who doesn’t turn my life upside down.”

“There’s a very good reason. She doesn’t exist.” Luke had taken another sip. “I’m not even going to ask about your definition of ‘beautiful.’ ”

“Well, I’ve got to find her attractive, don’t I? I mean, there’s got to be some sizzle.”

“Which means she needs to look like a supermodel.”

“No. Supermodels are way too skinny.”

Luke had shaken his head. “Want to know why you can’t find the right girl? You’re setting the bar too high.”

“I refuse to settle.”

“Which really means you refuse to settle
down
,” Luke had said in that annoying I-know-it-all-because-I’m-the-psychologist tone of his.

Horace’s whiny voice interrupted Chase’s thoughts. “For some reason, women just don’t seem attracted to me.”

Golly gee—I wonder why not?

“I bet you don’t have that problem,” Horace said.

As a matter of fact, Chase didn’t. His problem was keeping non-SCABHOG women from trying to drag him down the aisle.

“Can I tell you a secret?” Horace asked.

Chase closed his eyes. He hoped to God Horace wasn’t about to disclose details about his master-of-his-domain status.

“I’ve never even kissed a girl,” Horace blurted.

Wow. Chase was talking to a real-life forty-four-year-old virgin. He scanned the list of comments in the file, searching for something appropriate to say.
Use lots of sports analogies,
Luke had told him.
My clients love it.
Chase sincerely doubted it, but his brother was a sports psychologist and his speech was peppered with sports terminology. If Chase were going to pull off this impersonation, he’d better step up to the plate.

Chase reached for the list of sports comments on top of the stack of files and rapidly scanned the page. “Well, you’ve got to shoot before you can expect to make a basket.”

“Huh?”

“If you want to win at the game of life, you’ve got to know how to score.”

“But I don’t know how to score. I can’t even get a date.”

Chase searched the list for something more appropriate. “As you gain self-assurance in the outfield, you’ll become a better batter.”

“What?”

Apparently Horace wasn’t a big sports fan. “If you get better in one area of your life, the other areas will improve, too.”

“Oh. You think?” Horace said eagerly.

Not really. I think you’re a hopeless mess.
“Absolutely.” Chase glanced at his Seiko chronograph wristwatch and blew out a sigh of relief. “Our time is nearly up, Horace. So here’s what I want you to do before we talk again.” He flipped to the page of assignments his brother had outlined for Horace. “I want you to read the classified ads and pick out three apartments that sound like places you might like to live.”

“But-but—I can’t!” Horace’s voice squeaked with alarm.

“Why not?”

“Mother would have a conniption.”

“Sounds like she has those on a regular basis anyway.”

“But-but… ”

Reassure him that he doesn’t have to do anything he’s not ready to do
. “Whoa, there, Horace. Calm down. This is a practice session, not the actual game. No one’s asking you to really move. You just have to read the classifieds.”

“But Mother always watches me read the newspaper.”

“So take it into your bedroom.”

“She won’t let me. She says everything has a place and there’s a place for everything, and the newspaper is always read at the kitchen table and then put in a basket for exactly three days before it goes into the recycle bin. And she watches everything I do.”

This guy wasn’t just living with his mother; he was living with Big Brother. “Well, then, buy a newspaper of your own on your lunch hour.”

“After I’ve already read ours at home? That would be wasteful.”

“So splurge a little.”

“Oh.” Apparently the concept would never have occurred to him. “Okay.”

“I’ll talk to you on Tuesday. And Horace… ”

“Yeah?”

“I’d love to hear some more rap lyrics then, okay?”

“You really liked them?” Horace sounded like an eight-year-old boy desperate for a parent’s approval.

The neediness in his voice dredged up an old memory in Chase’s mind.

He’d been eight years old, and he’d had the role of the lead elf in the school Christmas play. His dad never came to school events, but Chase had begged him to come to this one, and Chase’s mom had made it happen.

Chase had practiced and practiced, and the night of the play, he’d acted his heart out. Behind the curtain, his teacher and the play director had raved about his performance, but it wasn’t their praise he was after.

Chase had eagerly run up to his father. “What’d you think?”

His dad had swayed, the bottle of cheap booze sticking out of his coat pocket. His breath had reeked of whiskey. “You looked like a little fag up there.”

“Richard!” Chase’s mom had gasped. “You don’t mean that.”

“I sure as hell do. Can’t believe you made me miss the game for that.”

Yeah, Chase knew what it was like to yearn for approval.

“You were great,” he told Horace now. “I’m looking forward to next time.”

“Really? Golly, wow!”

Chase shook his head as he hung up the phone and pushed back his chair. Pitiful, just pitiful—and in Chase’s opinion, his brother’s approach to coaching the poor bastard was pretty pitiful, too. Horace had already wasted forty-four years of his life, and at the rate Luke was inching him along, it would be another forty-four before he ever moved out on his own. What Horace needed was a swift kick out of his comfort zone. If he were thrown into a sink-or-swim situation, he’d be forced to grow a backbone and earn some genuine self-confidence.

But Chase had agreed to handle things Luke’s way, so he’d keep his mouth shut and follow his directions. After all, this whole situation was his own fault.

Chase rose from the table, put Horace’s file on the short stack next to the mountain of files he was sorting through, and glanced at that damned wide-screen TV. It had all started when he’d bought it last spring and invited Luke over to watch the Yankees play the Red Sox. “I’ll call in a pizza and you can pick it up on your way over,” Chase had said. “I found this great little place that makes real Chicago-style ones.”

As it turned out, pizza wasn’t the only thing being ordered at Giuseppe’s that night. The local mob had ordered a hit on a rival crime boss, and Luke had seen the whole thing—including the shooter, the getaway car, and the man in the passenger seat.

“Holy mother of Christ,” Luke had said later, after the ambulance and police cars had cleared out and Luke was thumbing through a book of mug shots at Chase’s desk at the Tulsa FBI office. “How the hell did you find that restaurant?”

“My partner and I were doing surveillance there a couple of weeks ago,” Chase had admitted. “We had a tip it was a mob hangout, but we never saw any action, so we figured it was a false lead.”

“Yeah, well, guess what?”

Chase had looked across his desk at his little brother—who at six-foot-one was just an inch shorter than Chase and not really all that little—and felt his chest tighten. He’d promised his mother that he’d look out for Luke, and he’d always done his best. He’d skipped high school sports to babysit him, gotten between him and the old man’s fists, and worked two jobs to support him after their mother had died. The thought that he’d now put Luke’s life in danger made him feel like he’d been kicked in the gut. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

“Don’t even try.” Luke had raked a hand through his hair, which was the same shade of dark brown as Chase’s, but shaggier. “Just do me a favor.”

“Name it.”

“Next time you want pizza, just call Domino’s.”

That had been nearly four months ago. Luke had ID’d the shooter, as well as the man in the getaway car’s passenger seat—who’d turned out to be Marco Lambino, the local kingpin Chase and his partner had been trying to nail for months, and Lambino’s brother, Gianno. Both Lambinos were indicted and held for trial, and everything had been fine until last week—when the Tulsa district attorney had been forced by law to give the defense their witness list for the trial and, not coincidentally, when the Lambinos would have learned Luke’s identity. The very next day, someone took a shot at Luke as he walked from his house to his car.

Which meant Luke was a marked man. Chase had damn near blown a gasket. He’d rushed his brother to the FBI field office in Oklahoma City and pulled every string available to get his brother into Witness Protection.

“You’ll only need to stay in the program until after the trial,” the craggy-faced regional commander had told Luke as they’d sat across from him at his mahogany desk. “We’re sure the shooter was the Lambinos’ nephew, Johnny, and we’re confident the uncles will give him up in exchange for lighter sentences. Once that happens, you’re home free.”

“If you know who shot at me, why don’t you just arrest him?” Luke had asked.

“We don’t have any evidence,” the commander said.

“So how do you know it was him?”

“Johnny is none too bright. If it were a real hit man, you’d be dead.”

Luke had absorbed that silently for a moment. “What’s to keep other members of the mob from coming after me?”

“This is the Calabrian Mafia, not the Cosa Nostra,” Chase had explained. “It’s made up of small family groups—usually just seven or eight operatives. Except for the nephew, we have the whole family in custody.”

“What about the new family that’s moving into town?”

“They have more reason to give you a medal than kill you,” the commander said. “You’ve made it possible for them to take over.”

“But what’s to stop the Lambinos from hiring a hit man?”

“Money. We’ve confiscated all their loot.”

“How do you know they don’t have some hidden somewhere?”

“Because their first priority is keeping their asses out of jail, and they’re so broke they’re using public defenders. Once they’re all convicted, you’ll be in the clear.”

Luke blew out a resigned sigh. “So where will I be while I’m in Witness Protection?”

“I don’t know, and if I did, I couldn’t tell you. You’ll be out in the boonies—probably out west somewhere.” The commander had leaned back in his chair and tapped his fingertips together. “You won’t find out until you get there.”

All in all, Luke had taken it pretty well—until the commander had left the room and Chase and his partner, Paul, had filled Luke in on the terms of the Witness Protection Program.

“What do you mean, I can’t call my clients?” Luke had demanded.

“You’re not allowed to have any contact with anyone you know,” Chase had explained. “Not even me. And I won’t have a clue where you are.”

“Why?”

“Witness Protection policy,” Paul had explained. The stocky man with salt-and-pepper hair had handed Luke a document outlining the rules. “You have to be untraceable. It’s part of the deal.”

“But I can’t just bail on my clients!”

Chase had shrugged. “Tell them you’re going on an extended vacation and refer them to someone else.”

“It doesn’t work like that.” Luke’s chin, so much like his own, had jutted out to a stubborn angle. “Some of these guys spent years working up the courage to reach out to someone. It’s taken months for them to trust me, and they can’t just transfer that trust to someone else. This could stop their progress dead in its tracks.”

“How much progress do you think they’ll make if
you’re
stopped dead in your tracks?”

Luke had slumped low in his chair, his eyes filled with such utter defeat that Chase’s heart had twisted. An idea had flashed through his mind—a bad idea, an idea so awful that it should have been immediately discarded. And yet, against his better judgment, he found it coming out of his mouth.

“Look—I’m responsible for getting you into this mess, so I’ll stand in for you.”

Luke’s head had jerked up. “What?”

“I’ll talk to your most desperate clients and pretend to be you.”

“Oh, right,” Luke had scoffed. “Like that’ll ever work.”

Paul had laughed. “Yeah. Not very likely.”

Chase had felt vaguely offended. “Why not? Your sessions are conducted on the phone, and people always say they can’t tell us apart on the phone. And I’m great at giving advice.”

“They need
good
advice.” Luke had looked at Paul, and both men had snickered.

“Have I ever steered you wrong?” Chase demanded.