“So are you,” Wade said.
“The odds were more in my favor.”
Wade took a seat at the counter. Mandy came over and poured him a cup of coffee.
“How was your first day?” she asked with a smile.
“You’ll have to ask me tomorrow,” he said. “It’s not over yet.”
“What are your hours?”
“Today it’s twenty?four, but starting tomorrow, my shift is nine at night to nine in the morning.”
“Yikes. I’ll make you a canteen of coffee that you can take with you tonight.”
“That would be nice,” he said.
“Everybody’s talking about you,” Mandy said. “Your showdown with Timo, you moving in, the sit?down with Duke, your arrest of that junkie.”
“Word gets around,” he said.
“Isn’t that what you wanted?”
It was and she got points in his book for knowing it.
“So what’s the consensus?” he asked.
“Duke bought you, or you’d already be dead.”
“What do you think?”
“I think if you could be bought, you’d still be in the Major Crimes Unit and not here.”
“You read up on me,” he said.
“I did,” Mandy said. “What would you like for dinner?”
“The usual.”
“You’ve only been here once.”
“Now you know how much I liked it.”
She took the order back to the cook in the kitchen and then served some other patrons at the counter.
While Mandy did that, two of the guys who’d trashed Wade’s car came in and approached Guthrie. But they kept their eyes on Wade, staring at him with cold hate.
Wade just sipped his coffee, unperturbed by their presence, which perturbed them plenty.
Without a word, Guthrie opened the register, took out some money, and handed it to them. They walked out.
Wade had another sip of coffee. “Donating to charity?”
“Paying my weekly security bill,” Guthrie said.
“I thought this was hallowed ground.”
“Even the Vatican needs security,” Guthrie said.
“I don’t recall seeing any smiling pancakes on the walls of the Sistine Chapel.”
“If you look closely, they’re there,” Guthrie said. “Michelangelo hid pancakes everywhere. It was his thing.”
“Have you thought about not paying?” Wade asked.
“The DVD place tried that,” Guthrie said. “They had a fire and now they’re gone.”
“But now you’ve got a police station right across the street,” Wade said. “That changes things.”
“We’ll see,” Guthrie said and starting coughing.
Mandy came out of the kitchen with Wade’s pancakes and bacon and carried them to an empty booth by the window. She set the plates down on the table and came back to the counter.
“Your dinner is getting cold,” she said.
He picked up his coffee and went over to the booth. A moment later, Mandy slid into the bench seat across from him, setting down the pot of coffee and half of an apple pie.
“What are we doing over here?” Wade asked as he started to eat.
“I wanted some privacy while I chatted with you.”
“Do you want to tell me something that you don’t want your father to overhear?”
“I might say something racy and suggestive.”
“Like what?”
She picked up a fork and took a bite of his pancakes. “I haven’t had sex in six months.”
“Oh,” Wade said.
“Aren’t you going to ask me why?”
“Nope,” Wade said, continuing to eat. He liked how frank she was and how relaxed she seemed to be with him. It made him feel relaxed, more at ease than he’d felt in months. The uniform did too, though he didn’t know why.
“Aren’t you interested?” she asked.
“Sure I am,” he said. “But I’m being chivalrous.”
She stole another bite of his pancakes. “I didn’t know that chivalry involved not talking about sex.”
“Sir Lancelot never talked about sex.”
“But he got plenty of it,” she said.
“Probably,” Wade said.
“That’s why they called it Camelot,” she said.
“I think you’re mispronouncing it,” he said.
“What about you, Tom?”
“What about me, Mandy?”
“Are you getting plenty of it?”
“No,” he said.
“Any?”
“I’m not very good at this.”
“I doubt that,” she said. “I think you’re a man who doesn’t do anything unless you’re certain that you’re good at it.”
“What I mean is that I was married for a long time.”
“But you aren’t anymore,” she said.
He shook his head. “I’m not sure I know how to be with someone else anymore.”
“Do you want to be?”
“I didn’t until now,” he said.
She took another bite of his pancakes. “Maybe you should be less chivalrous.”
He pushed aside his plate and she slid the pie in front of him.
“Want some apple pie? It’s my momma’s recipe.”
“I’m told it’s better than sex.”
“I think we ought to do a comparison,” she said. “While the taste is still fresh in our mouths.”
She stuck a fork into the pie, carved out a bite, and ate it.
They made love with tender urgency on the bare mattress amid all of his unpacked boxes in the center of his apartment.
When it was over, she lay naked on top of him, her head on his chest.
“Was it Camelot?” he asked.
“I think you’re mispronouncing it,” she said.
“Just following your lead,” he said.
“You followed it well,” she said.
He stroked her back and sniffed her hair. He wanted to remember her smell, to always have that intimate recognition of her no matter what happened next.
“Why me?” he asked.
“You mean, why did I pick you to end my celibacy?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Because I know I can trust you. I didn’t think I would be able to trust a man again,” she said. “I also like the way you move, especially on top of me.”
“You didn’t know that before tonight.”
“I had a strong inkling,” she said. “Why did you accept my invitation to bed?”
“I’m a man,” he said.
“You really are, maybe more than any man I’ve known,” she said. “But not in that way. You wouldn’t fuck a woman just because she asked you to.”
“I might,” he said. “Just to be chivalrous.”
“I want a straight answer.”
“You’re smart and you’re direct. You are who you are. You don’t make excuses for it and you don’t try to be anything else. I like that.”
“It’s what you like in yourself.”
“You’re also a very attractive woman. You mentioned that you’ve been away for a while. Where were you?”
“It wasn’t prison, a mental institution, or a convent.”
“That’s a relief.” Wade looked over her shoulder at the watch on his wrist. It was nearly 8:00 p.m. He hated to say what he had to say next. “Officer Greene will be here in a few minutes to start her shift. I need to go. I’m sorry, I wish I didn’t have to.”
“Me too.” She kissed his chin and rolled off him onto her back. “But we’ll have other opportunities.”
He looked at her. “That would be nice.”
“Nicer than my momma’s apple pie?”
“Much,” he said.
Chapter twelve
Wade let Charlotte drive the squad car to give her a chance to feel in control of her situation and to discover the neighborhood on her own. But mostly, he did it because he was feeling pleasantly, postcoitally languid and wanted to enjoy it. She kept stealing suspicious glances at him and he pretended not to notice.
“You didn’t seem surprised to see me,” she said.
“I shot Billy, not you. It’s not bothering him any.”
“Because he’s an idiot.”
“He’s smarter now than he was yesterday,” Wade said.
“I came back because I realized all that bullshit you said about this being the one place I could make a difference actually wasn’t bullshit.”
“Good to know. What did forensics say when you dropped off the guns?”
She gave him a long look, clearly disappointed that he wasn’t treating her admission with the gravity she felt it deserved. He looked out the window at the dark, abandoned factories.