B00BSH8JUC EBOK (11 page)

“That’s not going to be easy.”

“Tell me about it. See you later.”

I unlocked my room across the hall from Alie’s and left the door open. I put my stuff away and loafed around, waiting for the next summons. She surfaced in late afternoon and surprised me with a welcoming smile.

“Kotter! Can you take me over to the tournament? I want to hit some more before I play tonight.”

I was really keyed up. This was the first time I had Alie out in public since the trouble began. I was furious with Papa de Ville, too. If he’d given us a description of those goons, we’d know if they showed up. This way they had the jump on us.

Alie was spotted as soon as we arrived. I had to hand it to her, she was good with the crowds. She kept moving, but she talked and signed autographs as she went. Since Hillsboro was pretty awestruck at having her here, no one got rude, and we didn’t have any problems.

I was relieved to find the place blanketed with cops, most of them in uniform to be visible. I personally was in my blue suit and a new pair of sunglasses, doing my imitation of the Secret Service. All I lacked was one of those little buttons to talk into and a wire in my ear.

Alie went into the locker room, hooked up with a player I didn’t recognize, and then the two of them headed for a practice court. Within minutes there was a crowd, pressed against the chain link fence to watch. I think Alie had more people watching her warm up than did the two low-ranking pros playing the afternoon match.

Alie seemed restless, though. She wandered amid the practice courts, the dining hall and the locker room until it was time for her to go on.

Of course, she was the featured match of the night. Dusk was closing in as she entered the stadium court, the contrast between the growing darkness and the bright lights making it hard for me to scan the capacity crowd. Damn Papa de Ville, anyway.

People stood and cheered, but Alie was all business. She didn’t even glance at her father, sitting in a courtside box with the mayor, the diamond stick pin in his tie catching the light. Papa looked expansive. This tournament was obviously everything he wanted it to be—recognition, vindication, a gloating glory. It only remained to be seen how dear a price he would pay for it.

The next box over from Papa and the mayor belonged to the college president. I noticed my parents sitting there, along with a couple of trustees and some rich old alumni. We didn’t so much as nod.

Alie was playing Tammy Truman, the top Hillsboro College player who got into the tournament as a courtesy to the school. Poor Tammy got mugged out there. After she lost the first set 6-1, she took a white bandanna out of her tennis bag and waved it in surrender. The crowd loved it, and I saw a bunch of white handkerchiefs waving back in sympathy. Alie played along, aiming her racquet like a rifle at Tammy. The cameras flashed, and that was the picture on the front page of the
Courier
in the morning. No wonder Alie was so popular. She had talent and style—if you didn’t know her.

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.

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?”

Before 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.