“I’m not up to having a personal discussion right now, that’s all. My car’s dead, I’m exhausted, I’ve got work to do. You know what I mean?”
She laughed. “You’re not up to it. Having a hard night, are we?”
“Now that you mention it, yes. I didn’t need a broken-down car right now, that’s for sure, and…” “And you don’t need me asking personal, friendly questions of an old girlfriend, right? Well, pardon me!”
“God, Marion. I only said… look, there’s a gas station coming up on your right. Why don’t you just…”
“You want out? Is that it? You fucking want out? You want out of the car right now?”
Where the hell is all this coming from? she thought. What in god’s name did I do?
"Okay, yes. I think I do.”
"You think you do?”
"I think that’d be best.”
"Right here.”
You’re angry and… yes. I think that’d be best.”
“It would, huh?” She looked at her, lips pressed tight together. “Yeah, maybe it would at that.”
Her foot went to the brake and the car slowed and Janet could finally breathe again. Then she hit the accelerator. Tires screeched beneath her and jolted her back in her seat. Marion was grinning.
“Nah,” she said. “I want the company.”
They were standing behind her a little to the left by the jukebox along with three other guys watching her make her shot, the girl leaning way over the table to reach the cue ball so that her ass punched the cutoffs from within like a blast of helium into a balloon. She was wiping the floor with this kid. She made the comer shot and then lined up the seven to the right side pocket and sunk that too. Gently easing it in so that the eight ball was directly opposite. The kid was shaking his head and scratching distractedly at his pimples while Patsy Cline sang “Faded Love.”
“Side pocket,” she said.
Her voice had a hint of country twang to it.
Not a New York State kid.
She took her time. Aimed low for the backspin and got it right. The eight clattered home and her cue ball stopped on a dime directly in front of the pocket. She smiled and the skinny kid smiled and shook his head again and somebody applauded and Billy and Ray and one of the other guys across the room laughed along with the kid’s former partner. She picked up the quarter off the table. Her fingernails were cut short and flat.
“Who’s next?”
“Me,” Billy said and stepped over with his cue.
“You any good?”
“I am the best.”
Emil couldn’t help it. With Billy sometimes you just had to smile. She put the quarter in and when the balls dropped gathered them to the table and racked them efficiently and perfectly over the head spot while Billy chalked his cue halfway to death. She rolled him the cue ball over the foot spot. Directly over the foot spot. “Your break.”
“Side wager, miss?”
“Sure. Ten?”
“Ten will be fine. May I buy you a beer?”
“Thanks. I got one already.”
She lifted it and drank.
By the time she sank the fifth ball he was ready to make his move. Billy’s break had sunk nothing but scattered everything as was typical of Billy, who was decidedly not the best and she was popping them in all over the place. Guys were hollering encouragement. The girl was smiling. Billy looked like he was about to blow any minute but you had to know him like Emil and Ray did to see that.
He moved behind her and when she drew back the cue took hold of the hilt and held it. The girl turned around. Annoyed with him.
“Guess that’s it,” he said.
“Huh?”
He reached into his back pocket, fished out his wallet and flashed her the phony shield. Then returned it to his pocket.
“Got any ID?”
“Hey, come on. What is this?”
“I think you’re underage. I think you’re drinking in a public place and hustling my buddy here for pocket money. I’ll take the cue now, miss.”
She handed it to him and he set it against the wall.
“Lean over on the table. Hands on the table. Spread your legs, please.”
And yeah, he’d been right all along. She was underage and she was scared now and humiliated and she did as she was told so he proceeded to pat her down, thinking it was too bad about the cutoffs because he’d have liked to give those good smooth thighs a squeeze but there was no excuse for that with the girl bare-legged, though the ass was fine and the tits were especially fine and those he did squeeze and when she gasped and the two burly men who saw him do it started forward he reached for the pool cue and pointed it at them.
“Don’t even think it, gentlemen.”
The room was quiet now except for Patsy Cline and the girl, who had started to cry. Emil stepped away from her toward the men and watched them back down in front of the cue and move silent and sullen back to the wall.
“Okay, miss,” he said. “Get your purse. Officer Short here and I will escort you to the station. Billy? Officer? Let’s go.”
Again the girl did as she was told and bent and retrieved her purse, and Ray had her by the arm and was starting to move her along when the kid she’d just beat muttered something to his buddy across the room.
“What’s that?”
“I said you guys ain’t cops. You didn’t read her her rights.”
“You’re interfering with an officer of the law, sonny. Put your quarter on the table and let somebody else whip your ass before I take you along and read you your rights.”
He took her other arm and Billy trailed along behind while they marched her out of the room and into the bar, weaving their way through the tables and only then was he aware that the barman and some of the guys at the bar were watching all of this, so he stopped in front of the barman and pointed at him.
“ You I’ll be seeing a little later, friend,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere.”
The barman frowned and turned his head away, all of a sudden paying very close attention to the glasses in the sink.
Offensive action. Worked every time.
Lieutenant Paul Wellman picked up his Dewars and finished it and turned to the bartender.
“You know those guys?” he said.
“Nope.”
“That’s interesting. Neither do I.”
He tapped the three singles in front of him. “Yours,” he said. “And thanks. They’re right about one thing though. You shouldn’t have served her.”
He got off his stool and walked out of the bar, stood on the porch steps and lit a smoke. They’d moved fast. He could hear them laughing across the lot, but at first he couldn’t spot them. If they were cops at all, which he doubted, they were not from around here and thus had no jurisdiction. He knew that because he did have jurisdiction. Then he heard more laughter caught in the warm summer breeze and muffled screams and protests from the girl and by the light of the moon saw them standing in a tight half-circle around her behind a beat- up Jeep.
Christ, he thought. Right here out in the lot. When he was a boy his dad had talked about how stupid criminals were, but he hadn’t really believed him because there had always been their behavior on television and in the movies to contradict him. It was only when he followed in his footsteps and became a cop himself that he realized what he should have known all along.
Father knows best.
He moved off the stairs and casually across the lot as though he were headed for his own car, the Colt unholstered and held to his leg slightly behind him. He tossed away the Marlboro, wondering why in hell he’d lit it in the first place. Nerves, he guessed. At cigarette prices these days I can’t afford nerves.
The guy who’d spoken to the bartender had one hand inside her tank top and the other cupped over her mouth and must have been squeezing pretty hard because she was wriggling and pushing at him and trying to yell, her back arched against the hood of the Jeep and the other two were watching, leaning against the Ford Maverick parked beside it as he approached them. Waiting for sloppy seconds, he guessed. So that at first they didn’t see him. And then of course they did.