Jesus Christ.
I turned us a bit, enough to see Bycheck swinging along on hiscrutches, headed out the concourse we’d just left. Somehow he managed to makethat three-legged gait look like marching. I swear, you take away the suit andthe haircut, you could still pick out a Bureau Boy from the crowd, just by thatarrogant strut.
He vanished around a corner without glancing back, and I letCash go. She didn’t move, just a few seconds, snuggling like she meant it. Thenshe backed off and ran a hand over her corn-rowed hair — must have been an oldhabit, you’d need nuclear weapons to muss up that ’do.
“Mmmm. Didn’t want to get into a catfight with that Bureauasshole, turf wars and chickenshit swagger. You think he was bad in youroffice, try it on as a girl cop sometime. Besides, I’ve been wanting to trapyou in some dark corner for a few years now. Good excuse.”
I blinked. “You should back off a bit on that teasing. Somemen might think you mean it.”
She cocked her head to one side, studying me, then slipped awry half-smile. “You don’t have a clue, do you? What you do to a woman? It’snot like Maggie Driscoll didn’t have plenty of choices. And once Maggie wentdown, Sandy moved in on you before the dust settled? I was going to give youanother week or two, for decency’s sake.”
I stood there stunned like she’d landed a straight right to mychin. “Jesus, Cash. I’m old, I’m fat, I’m going bald, I stink of pipe tobaccoall the time. I drink too much. And sure as hell, I ain’t rich. You can findbetter studs around any corner. You’re right, I don’t have a clue.”
She grabbed my wrist and headed out toward her cruiser, gripas tight as any handcuff. And then she stopped and laughed and let go.
“No, I don’t have to haul you straight home and prove it. Mustbe some kind of inverse square law involved. The sexier a man thinks he is, theless real interest he stirs up. I’ve had some locker-room bull sessions, girlson the city force and Cathy at the ME’s office and such. General consensus,yeah, you’re a sex-magnet. You set off something deep down in a woman’shormones that says you’d be a top-notch source of genes for the nextgeneration. Bedtime. Doesn’t have anything to do with muscles and wavy hair andPaul Newman’s soulful deep blue eyes.”
She grinned at me. “And you’re a nice guy, too, no matter howhard you try to hide it behind that hard-boiled mask. That rates as a definiteplus.”
Jesus Christ with bells on. I knew Cash was a hard bitch, butI hadn’t realized she was sadistic. This pushed way beyond the limits.
Then she read my mind again, or came damned close. She stopped,right there in the middle of the terminal crowd, and put her hands on myshoulders, and kissed me. No Bycheck excuses, this time. A gentle, seriouskiss, with promises behind it.
“No, I’m not teasing you. I’m not playing games. Give me acall when we aren’t on company time.” She paused, a look in her eyes I couldn’ttranslate.
“I quit training a few weeks back, get the cycle restarted.Women runners need to do that. And the ol’ biological clock keeps tickingalong. Maybe the next generation needs some cream mixed in with the coffee.”
I blinked. “Babies? What about your job? What about yourrunning?” I’d never seen her as the mother type. Whatever that is.
Cash grinned. “Jury’s still out on that.”
Then she turned away, leaving me with my jaw on the floor. Ipicked it up and followed her outside. Shaking my head.
Yeah, whack me hard enough between the eyes, with a big enoughmallet, and I can figure some things out. Those outfits she’d been wearing?Nothing about distracting people from the bulge under her left armpit. Theywere bait. For me, crazy as that sounds.
We settled into her cruiser and belted in, neither onetalking. That woman sure knew how to jolt a man out of dark thoughts. I’d beenwallowing in Kratz, in the futility of trying to find a needle in a haystack —a smart and street-wise needle who knew a million ways to hide and could useany face and name he wanted. We had alerts out on the wire, a hundredjurisdictions looking for Al Kratz, and I knew damn well that the bastard couldwalk right up to any cop on the beat, stare him in the eye, take the officer’sown weapon away from him, and shoot him. Like I said, futility.
Cash shook me out of that.
I rode in stunned silence, chewing on what she’d told me.Modern times, decadent times, a woman could come right out and say that sort ofthing. None of this pale languishing nonsense, not that Cash could do palewithout a bucket of whitewash. And that last kiss had told me she wasn’tfaking.
If you’re the kind of Master Race sort who gets wound up andwrath-of-God over interracial couples, from either side, you can just take thisbook and shove it up your ass until it hits your tonsils and be done with it. Ihad enough of that from my father. I kind of enjoyed the thought of himspinning in his grave. The exercise would do him good. He was fat, too, but you’dnever catch him taking the stairs when an elevator presented itself.
Anyway, I chewed away on the alien concept of John Patterson,babe magnet, while Cash drove in her usual competent and excessive style. Sheran another light, under the nose of a city black-and-white, and the copignored us because he recognized either her or our cruiser, or maybe she hadher own “don’t notice me” field going.
I couldn’t figure Cash out. None of the standard tests showedany signs of magical ability, but she kept doing things like that. Didcenturies of slavery force selective breeding for stealth wizards? AmericanBlacks test out a lower percentage of magic than the general population, inspite of Voodoo and Obeah and the other African traditions. But there are allthose basketball players who jump higher and stay
