He shook his head, but put the .38 in my hand and said, “Be my guest. You want a fresh target?”
“No. You left plenty to play with.”
“I’m anxious to see what you can do. After all, you said you’d seen better....”
“Back off and let a woman in.”
Rafe stepped out of the cubicle and I took his place and assumed the proper stance.
I took half a second to aim before my six shots blurred into one roar, and twenty-five feet down, the little puckers in the paper clustered even tighter than Rafe’s had, only mine were centered on the cartoon perp’s forehead.
My smile was smug, I admit it, when I returned the empty weapon to Rafe’s outstretched hand. Cordite smell hung in the air like a curtain that had dropped after my performance.
He was grinning again, shaking his head a little, clearly impressed. He emptied the spent shells from the .38’s cylinder into a waist-high tray at the shooter’s station; the shells made a brittle rainfall.
Then his expression turned innocent. “Does it help?”
I just looked at him.
He nodded toward the head-shredded target down there. “That it’s a guy?”
I rewarded him with a little laugh, then asked, “What do you know about this case that I don’t, Rafe? Come on. Spill.”
He was looking past me, toward the target, reflective suddenly. “You know, Michael, I’m not surprised you quit the force. You really were wasted in Records.”
“That was where you met your husband,” the doctor said.
“That’s right. Records. Mike Tree was a lieutenant with Homicide, and me? I was a glorified clerk. My father had been a career cop, most decorations in the history of the department, and thus far in my so-called career, I’d been a damn drudge, a grunt in Records, a uniformed policewoman copying information from official forms into a computer file.”
“So you quit.”
“No, doc, Rafe was wrong: I didn’t quit, not exactly.”
“But you did quit...”
“I resigned.”
“Odd distinction.”
I sighed. “Okay. Let’s just say, quitting hadn’t been my idea.”
He shifted in the chair and the leather squeaked. “Please explain.”
Mike Tree was just this big fullback-looking guy with a military crewcut and gentle blue-green eyes and an unforgiving square jaw and the kind of battered good looks that some women find sexy. Unfortunately, I was one of them.
He was legendary around the department as one of the toughest cops in town, though it was the kind of tough that people usually tagged “but fair” after. He flirted with every woman on the department, whether cute or chunky, married or lesbian, but never really hit on any of them and never dated a fellow cop. That was the word, anyway.
Which I admit frustrated me, because he always stopped and talked to me a little longer, flirted a little more boldly, than with any other girl on the force. A part of me resented that. A bigger part wished it would go further....
On this particular afternoon, I hadn’t noticed him approach my little outpost in the Records bullpen. Suddenly he was just there beside me, dragging a chair from somewhere to sit on it backward next to me in a boldly familiar way, as if he’d done it a hundred times, when it was probably only fifty.
“Afternoon, sexy,” he said. His voice had a husky, almost raspy sound.
I kept typing. Didn’t look at him. “Wow. You must not’ve heard about the new Sexual Harassment Protocol.”
“What new Sexual Harassment Protocol?”
“The one they just adopted, fifteen years ago.”
He shrugged. Yawned and made a show of it. “I’d have to work here for that to matter.”
Now I looked at him. Couldn’t help myself. “Since when don’t you work here?”
His smile was endless and endlessly self-satisfied. “Since five minutes ago. Tended my resignation...or is that tendered? Which is right? Ah hell, make it ‘tendered’...I’m feeling more tender today, anyway.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked irritably, doing everything I could to sound like I didn’t care. I was back to my typing, not looking at him anymore, but I won’t say it was easy.
He leaned in. “What I’ve been talking about. For months now.”
“Remind me.”
“Starting my own agency.”
“Oh. Mike Tree, Private Eye. I thought that was a pipe dream.”
He gestured with both hands, leaning against the back of that chair as his friendly mug hung over it. “If so, I’m smoking some really good stuff. ‘Cause I turned in my written resignation and my badge and I.D. and even my gun.”
Now I looked at him, right at him. “You’re serious.”
“As a heart attack.” He pointed at me, Uncle Sam-style. “You know why I stopped by, don’t you?”
“To say goodbye? Goodbye.”
“No. Because I need a few good men.”
“You what?”
“For my new agency. I need a few good men.” I’d turned back to my typing, but from the corner of an eye, I saw that cocky half-grin of his. “I could even use a few good women.”
I paused. Turned toward him again. “What is this, a proposition?”
He didn’t rise to my bait, instead shifting tone and, seemingly, subject. “Look, your pop was the best cop ever...a cop’s cop...so you became one, right?”
“Right.”
“You were the only child, and you happened to be a girl, which disappointed Daddy but which I happen to be fully in favor of....Anyway, the point is, you picked up the family banner. You got a two-year law enforcement degree at that junior college out in the suburbs, what’s it called? Doesn’t matter, and before you know it, you’re at the academy acing every damn thing they could throw at you. Right?”
“Right. So?”
He leaned in again. Way in, this time. The eyes, typically, were gentle, sweet, but that jaw remained determined. “So where’d you start out, after graduating with top honors? Where did this boy’s club called the Chicago PD feel your gifts could best serve our fair city?”
“Don’t say it.”
“Writing parking tickets,” he said.
“I asked you not to say it.”
“And so you worked your way up to Records. And gee whiz, gee willikers, it only took three years. Why, you’ll be on the street in...let me do the math... never.”
I said nothing for a moment.
He let me mull it.
Then I said, “You have a better offer?”
“Miss Friday, I certainly—”
“I prefer ‘Ms.’ ”
“Do you?” The blue-green eyes twinkled. No shit, they twinkled. “Maybe you’d prefer being a real cop.”
I frowned. “Private variety? Divorces and security systems? No thank you.”
Both eyebrows went up. And his smile had no smirk in it at all. “Even if I offered you a full partnership? I’m bringing over a couple of other coppers, too, though they aren’t as cute as you...well, maybe Dan Green is.”
“You don’t mean that kid Green, the patrolman?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly who I mean. Took him a whole year to get out on the street. Oh, and Roger Freemont, of course.”
“That asshole?”
“Yeah. That asshole.” He flipped a hand. “Roge was my partner starting out, and the first person I thought to ask aboard...though you were always high on the list, Ms. Friday.”
“You’re on my list, too. And please spare me the story about Freemont saving your life in Desert Storm. I’ll wait for the movie.”
I swung back toward the computer, my fingers poised. But somehow I couldn’t bring myself to type.