Want To Play (Monkeewrench)

then.’

‘About. Hey, is that a dog?’

Grace’s arm shot out to block the kid’s chest. ‘He scares easy.’

‘Oh.’ The kid went down on his knees and stretched out one arm, pink palm up. ‘C’mere, boy, c’mere.’

Charlie flattened his head onto the ground and tried to disappear.

‘Jeez, what happened to him?’

‘He came that way.’

The kid cocked his head and studied the dog for a minute. ‘That’s really sad.’

Grace gave him a sidelong glance, considering. It was her opinion that anyone who could empathize with the suffering of an animal might not be totally irredeemable.

She made a small gesture with her hand that Charlie considered for a long moment before rising and moving cautiously toward them, head down in fearful submission.

‘Wow,’ the kid whispered, staying stock-still. ‘He’s scared to death, and he still comes. You’re some alpha dog.’

‘Where do you get this stuff?’

‘I read, I told you.’

‘Nine-year-old kids aren’t supposed to read. They’re supposed to sit in front of violent video games, frying their brains.’

The kid’s teeth shone an unreal white in the dark. ‘I’m a rebel.’

‘I guess.’ She watched Charlie inching closer, his trust in Grace doing noble battle with his fear of strangers. ‘Come on, Charlie, it’s all right.’

But Charlie was having none of it. He stopped dead and sat down, worried eyes jerking back and forth between the woman who represented safety and the apparently terrifying visage of a four-foot-tall boy.

‘I guess that’s as close . . .’ she started to say, but before she could finish the sentence the kid was on his back on the ground. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Exposing my belly,’ he whispered up at her. ‘Total submission pose. Nonthreatening.’

‘Ah.’

‘That guy who went up to Alaska and lived with the wolves? He said this is what the outside wolves have to do to get accepted into the pack. How come you carry a gun?’

Grace sighed and looked down the dark street, thinking she must really be slipping if a fat cop and a little kid pegged her in one day. When she looked back, Charlie was standing over the boy, washing his face with his long sloppy tongue, his hind end wagging like crazy.

‘Hey, Charlie, you good ole boy, you,’ the kid giggled, squirming now, trying to dodge the lashing tongue. ‘That old wolf man, he sure knew what he was talking about, huh?’

Grace folded her arms and looked on, her expression faintly disgusted. Charlie was all over the kid now, licking, whining, the stump of his tail beating the world, generally making a fool of himself. There was no dignity in this. Worse yet, it was distracting. A car seemed to appear out of nowhere, cruising slowly by the park. She hadn’t even heard it coming.

‘Charlie!’ A little panic in the voice as she watched the car pass, then turn into the driveway next to the stucco house. A woman got out, reached back in for a bag of groceries. Grace exhaled. ‘It’s time to go home.’

With obvious reluctance, Charlie moved obediently to her side and the kid got up, brushing dried leaves off his pants. ‘We were just playing. Dog like that needs a boy. If you like, I could come over after school sometimes, keep him company till you got home.’

‘No thanks.’ Grace jerked her head toward his house. ‘Your salvation just arrived.’

The kid glanced over at the car, and when he looked back, Grace and Charlie were already walking away. ‘Wait a minute! You didn’t show me that thing you did to Frank yet!’

Grace shook her head without turning around.

‘Come on, lady, have a heart! Thing like that could save my little black ass, you know!’ he shouted after her.

She kept walking.

‘Trouble with some people is they just don’t get what it means to be afraid all the time!’ An angry shout now; frustrated.

That stopped her. She took a breath, let it out, then turned around and walked back. He stood his ground, looking up with the whites of his eyes showing. Defiant and wet, all at the same time.

‘Listen, kid . . .’

‘My name’s Jackson.’

She ran her tongue over the inside of her left cheek, considering. ‘You’re too short for the hold I put on Frank, got it? But I could show you something else . . .’

19

Freedman and McLaren were thorough. They did one walk through the boat with Captain Magnusson, then another on their own, double-checking the three sets of restrooms, the food service areas, even the tiny cabin where the captain kept a book, a recliner, and a spare uniform hanging on a wall hook.

‘Not a lot of space in here,’ Freedman had told him, trying to maneuver his bulk through the doorway.

‘All I need,’ the captain had replied, eyes twinkling. ‘Now the wife, she needs a living room, a dining room, a family room, a breakfast nook, just room after room, God knows why, but me? Give me a chair and book and maybe a little TV and I’m in heaven. I’ve often thought if men really ran the world like the women claim, all the houses would be eight by ten and we’d have a lot more room in the suburbs.’

By the time crew and caterers arrived at six Freedman and McLaren had their squads and uniforms posted in the lot, helping Chilton’s men screen the arrivals, and the other plainclothes officers briefed and stationed on board.

At 6:30 they stopped at the bar in the center-deck salon before going back outside in the cold. They begged a couple of bottles of water from the young man polishing glasses, then drank them while they watched the caterer’s staff put finishing touches on white linen tables crowded with crystal and silver and fresh flowers. A fussy, hawk- nosed woman in a dark suit was following them about, occasionally moving a glass or a piece of silver an inch this way or that.

‘We’re ready,’ McLaren said.

‘Couldn’t be any readier,’ Freedman agreed, his eyes taking in the two plainclothes officers by the restrooms, then following three of Chilton’s men as they paced the salon’s circumference like caged animals. ‘Damn boat’s like an armed camp.’

‘Too much hoopla,’ McLaren said. ‘He’s not gonna show up here tonight.’

‘Nope. Which means we’re going to have to do this all over again Saturday.’

‘I got Gopher tickets Saturday. They’re playing Wisconsin.’

Freedman clucked his tongue in sympathy.

The two of them each took a gangway once the guests started to arrive, watching Chilton’s people run the sweeps, eyeballing every single person who boarded. A colossal waste of time, Freedman thought, shivering in his wool suitcoat, watching a parade of the state’s rich and richer pass through a phalanx of armed men with metal detectors as if they did it every day. Maybe they did. How would he know?

When the boat finally cast off and moved out into the river, he and McLaren started making the rounds they had worked out, alternating levels inside and out. Cold as it was, after a few circuits Freedman began to feel more comfortable outside than in. You put a six-foot-nine black man in a cheap suit on a boat with a bunch of Fortune 500 white people, and pretty soon some ditzy broad wearing his year’s salary around her neck is going to ask him to refill the water carafe. It had happened four times in the first fifteen minutes, and his patience was wearing about as thin as his self-esteem.

‘Hey, Freedman.’ Johnny McLaren was coming out the center-deck salon doors as he was heading in. ‘I was just coming to get you . . . What’s the matter with you?’

‘People keep asking me to get them drinks, that’s what’s the matter with me.’

‘Assholes. Fuck ’em.’ He pulled Freedman inside and started weaving through tables toward the dance floor.