'I'm not lying. I got it for Christmas.'
'Jesus.'
He started to take it off. 'Here, you can have it.'
'Leave it on,' she said scornfully.
'No, really.'
'Who gave it to you?'
'My folks. It's the gold one.' He had taken it off. He held it out,
offering it to her. 'No diamonds, but all gold, the watch and the
band.'
'What is that,' she asked incredulously, 'fifteen thousand bucks,
twenty thousand?'
'Something like that,' one of the hurt boys said. 'It's not the most
expensive model.'
'You can have it,' the owner of the watch repeated.
Heather said, 'How old are you?'
'Seventeen.'
'You're still in high school?'
'Senior. Here, take the watch.'
'You're still in high school, you get a fifteen-thousand-dollar watch
for Christmas?'
'It's yours.'
Crouching in front of the huddled trio, refusing to acknowledge the
pain in her right foot, she leveled the Korth at the face of the boy
with the watch.
All three drew back in terror.
She said, 'I might blow your head off, you spoiled little creep, I sure
might, but I wouldn't steal your watch even if it was worth a
million.
Put it on.'
The gold links of the Rolex band rattled as he nervously slipped it
onto his wrist again and fumbled with the clasp.
She wanted to know why, with all the privileges and advantages their
families could give them, three boys from Beverly Hills would sneak
around at night defacing the hard-earned property of a cop who had
nearly been killed trying to preserve the very social stability that
made it possible for them to have enough food to eat, let alone Rolex
watches. Where did their meanness come from, their twisted values,
their nihilism? Couldn't blame it on deprivation. Then who or what
was to blame?
'Show me your wallets,' she said harshly.
They fumbled wallets from hip pockets, held them out to her. They kept
glancing back and forth from her to the Korth. The muzzle of the .38
must have looked like a cannon to them.
She said, 'Take out whatever cash you're carrying.'
Maybe the trouble with them was just that they'd been raised in a time
when the media assaulted them, first, with endless predictions of
nuclear war and then, after the fall of the Soviet Union, with
ceaseless warnings of a fast-approaching worldwide environmental
catastrophe. Maybe the unremitting but stylishly produced gloom and
doom that got high Nielsen ratings for electronic news had convinced
