Tough Customer

her eyes were swollen and red from crying. Her eyelashes weren't so spiky when wet with tears. 'Oh, hi,' she said nervously. 'This is, uh, this is Franklin. My boyfriend.'

Albright looked him up and down. 'Nice uniform.' He leaned forward and read the make-believe name stitched in red lettering on Dodge's left breast pocket. 'Marvin,' he added, smirking when he said it.

Dodge ignored him and addressed Crystal. 'How come you're crying? Can I help?'

Franklin Albright gave Dodge's shoulder a hard shove. 'You can help by minding your own fucking business.'

Dodge, who'd been spoiling for a fight when he arrived, wanted to dive into the ex-con, but he settled for shaking off the hand on his shoulder. 'Watch your language in front of the lady.'

'It's okay,' Crystal said quickly. 'I wasn't crying. I've got allergies. A Sudafed should fix me up.' She gave her boyfriend a worried glance, then nodded Dodge toward the plant's entrance gate. 'Don't be late for work on my account.'

'Do you have some Sudafed? Because I'll be happy to go get some for you.'

'I've got a box in my desk drawer, thanks. If you're late, they'll dock you.'

'Well, you would know, Miss Payroll,' he said in a teasing voice.

She gave him a tremulous smile. Franklin Albright was all but snarling.

Dodge stared him down, trying to look like a geek trying to look tough, then ambled off in the direction of the gate, shooting one final glance at them over his shoulder before entering the plant and thinking,

Hee-hee.

'Sure enough,' he told the other members of the task force during their meeting that evening, 'ol' Franklin was waiting for me when my shift ended. He accosted me just outside the gate.'

'Define accosted,' the captain said.

'Grabbed me by the shoulders and backed me into the fence. I made a stand, but not too much of one. I didn't want to let him know that I could have laid him out flat if I had wanted to.'

'What did he say?'

'He told me to stay away from Crystal.'

'What did you say?'

'I said I'd do what I damn well pleased.'

'Then what did he say?'

'He said I could do that, sure. If I wanted my head ripped off and used as a urinal.'

'Franklin's got a real way with words, doesn't he?' one of the other officers quipped.

'Did you find out why she was crying?'

'Over lunch, she told me that she'd brought up the subject of matrimony again, and Franklin had said no, no way, no way, Jose. I lent her a sympathetic ear, told her he wasn't just ugly, he was stupid.'

'How'd she react?'

'She laughed. She thinks I'm funny and sweet and brave for standing up to him. But she warned me against waving a red cape. She said he has a temper, as well as a knife. I told her I wasn't afraid of him.' He shrugged complacently. 'I'm her hero.'

'But your cover is blown.'

'By playing Sir Galahad? Hardly.'

'But now you're in Albright's sights.'

'As a complete schmuck who has designs on Crystal. If he gets wind of my prying now, he'll figure I'm just trying to move in on his girl. If I was prying for no apparent reason,

that would have bleeped on his radar screen and caused him to be suspicious.'

'So where'd you leave it?' the captain asked.

'Yeah, you haven't explained how your face got messed up,' another officer observed.

'Franklin thought we'd reached an understanding. He poked his finger in my chest and said, 'You're not going to talk to Crystal anymore, right, Marvin?' And I said, 'Sure, okay, because I can screw her without talking.''

'Holy--'

'You didn't.'

'Dodge, I swear.'

'You asked for it.'

'Of course I asked for it,' Dodge told the group. He would have grinned, but his split lip hurt when he did. His eye was the color of an eggplant and swollen nearly shut. 'I'll show up at work tomorrow with Franklin's handiwork on my face, and Crystal will be full of remorse and apology. But underneath her big tits, her little heart is going to be pitter-patting at the thought of me standing up to big, bad Franklin on her behalf. I'll have won her heart and her loyalty.'

'But he'll tell her what you said about screwing her.'

'And I'll deny it. I'll pretend to be crushed and offended that she could even think I'd say such a thing. My feelings toward her are honorable and pure.'

'I'm gonna puke,' one of the group said drolly.

'What makes you think she'll believe you over Franklin?' the captain asked.

Despite his busted lip, Dodge spread his grin around the room. 'Because she wants to.'

And then Caroline King crossed his mind, and his grin dissolved. Almost to himself, he said, 'Even when the bad is staring a woman in the face, she wants to believe her man is good.'

CHAPTER 15

WHAT WERE THE CHANCES?

That was the question Oren had been asking himself for most of his life. Whenever Fate pulled a nasty practical joke on him, which was with unfair frequency, he had asked himself what were the odds of that happening, whatever that was in any given situation.

Obviously the odds of shit happening to Oren Starks were very good because the bad luck just kept coming.

Friday night had been a fiasco. The 'lake house incident,' as it was being referred to by the media, had been a disastrous personal failure, but to an outside observer, its absurd outcome must appear almost laughable. It had been like a bad farce, with the villain making his exit by falling down the stairs no less.

Given its comic elements, the shooting of Ben Lofland possibly could have been written off as a squabble among former co-workers. No one had died. Lofland's condition wasn't even all that