"Never."
"Or Afghanistan?"
Gray shook his head.
She demanded, "Then how does this Nikolai Trusov know you?"
"I've thought of little else lately. I have no answer."
"Maybe the only connection is that he heard of your reputation, and he can't stand the idea of someone out there better at killing than he is. You had ninety-six kills, he had only seventy-eight. This town ain't big enough for the both of us, partner, that kind of macho testosterone foolishness."
Gray didn't feel like arguing with her. His workout had worn him down.
"I imagine that's why you became a sniper, isn't it?" she asked pointedly. "Testosterone?"
"You see that fellow over there?" Gray inquired obscurely. "The black fighter working the heavy bag? He's a middleweight named Joe Leonard. Why don't you ask him for a boxing lesson? I had a lesson from him and I learned a lot."
She rose from the bench. "I don't need a lesson. I'm already tougher than him. And you."
Gray prided himself on his poise and dispassion and his ability to step back from a situation to assess it critically. But her adeptness at reducing him to childish responses bordered on the bizarre. So he was delighted when he did not burst out with his first reaction: Oh yeah? Says who?
Still, he could not prevent himself from replying, "We are talking about different things here. You are tough only in an affirmative action, I Am Woman Hear Me Roar kind of way. You are not tough compared to me."
Gray finally caught himself. "Jesus, I'm arguing about who's bigger and meaner, you or me." He laughed in a brittle way and shook his head. "I apologize."
Her smile could have melted paint from a Chevrolet. "Let me show you something. Take a swing at me."
Take a swing? Alarms went off inside Gray's head. He brought his eyes up to hers, but they were unreadable. Unfathomable, maybe forever unknowable. But Christ they were blue.
"You mean hit you?" he asked. "I'm an adult, a member of society."
She laughed brightly, genuinely, Gray thought. Was this an awkward attempt at a truce?
"You don't have to actually hit me," she said. "Throw the punch but bring it up short."
Gray pushed himself up from the bench. "You know judo and I'm going to get my butt kicked. Am I right?"
"I don't know judo from jellybeans," she said.
"But I'm going to get hurt, right?" Gray asked warily.
"If we are going to work together you need to learn to trust me. Throw a jab and I'll show you something. Trust me."
Was this the siren's song that lured sailors upon the rocks?
She stepped closer, then tilted her head, presenting a target. Her hands were at her sides. Joe Leonard and Benny Jones paused in their workouts to watch. The girls were smiling widely, perhaps thinking Adrian Wade was lifting her head for a kiss.
Gray brought his hands up in good imitation of Muhammad Ali, he thought. He gently — very gently — jabbed his left hand at her face, intending to stop his fist well short of her chin.
She moved with a startling rapidity. Suddenly she was standing next to him, her black scented hair in his face, her hip dug into his thigh in a manner that in any other situation would be erotic. At the same instant, Gray felt her leg sweep into the back of his legs, low on his calves. Her arms shot up. His feet left the ground and began a wide arc. He swung on the axis of her hip, and the floor suddenly seemed to be above him. Her hand was at his throat and his windpipe felt like it was collapsing. He had no contact with the world, no stable point of reference except where their bodies were joined at their hips. He spun in a helpless cartwheel.
The gym's wood floor must have been traveling fifty miles an hour up at him. The entire length of his body from nose to toes slammed into the floor with a sickening crack. His mind fluttered to whiteness, then regained itself. A surge of nausea rose from behind his breastbone. He tried to look up, but her foot was across his face, pinning his head to the floor.
Carolyn and Julie stared but did not move toward him, perhaps thinking their father had just shown their new friend Adrian some self-defense technique. Joe Leonard and Benny Jones and Sam Owl were fond of Owen Gray, and were trying not to laugh, but with only limited success.
"You do have one tiny endearing element to your personality," Adrian said from high above him.
"Get your foot off my face." Gray's words were muffled by her shoe pressed against his lips.
"You are delightfully naive."
"Get your foot off my face." He was sprawled on the floor like a rag tossed aside, one arm twisted painfully under his back, his legs splayed out.
She removed her foot. Gray found he could focus his eyes. She was wearing the same smile. The girls ventured over.
"You okay, Dad?" Carolyn asked.
"I'm fine," Gray said weakly.
"He was showing me one of his moves," Adrian deadpanned. "How to make a gymnasium floor surrender."
"You going to get up, Dad?" Julie asked.
"I want to lie here a minute." He could still taste shoe leather in his mouth. No part of his body did not ache except maybe his hair. He didn't trust his legs to get him up or keep him up. "You girls can go with Ms. Wade now. She'll take care of you."
Adrian Wade led the twins away. Both girls glanced over their shoulders at him several times until they disappeared through the gym's door.
"I've heard these things about white girls, but I never believed it till now," Joe Leonard called. "Was it good, Owen?"
Gray levered himself to standing. His legs seemed to work. Maybe nothing was broken. Ignoring Leonard, he wobbled in the direction of the locker room. He was tiring of these ignominious retreats to the shower.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"Idon't like it, none of it," Pete Coates said. "But I can't talk the commissioner out of the plan. He told me he'd sign the documents and have them here within the hour. He's going to turn that Marine and you into New York's finest for a day."
Gray was sitting on a metal folding chair across from the detective's desk. "Did you talk to the commissioner, level with him?"
"I told him the police department is in the business of arresting criminals, not whacking them. But he said Nikolai Trusov is never going to let himself be arrested, and he'll kill four or five policemen before he goes down. So your plan is a go."
"And my part in it?"
"The commissioner knows your file better than I do. He says you are the only one who has a chance to beat Trusov."
Coates's office had the dimensions of a closet. His desk filled most of the space, with room left only for two folding chairs and two black file cabinets. Gray had to sit rigidly upright because his knees were pressed against the front of Coates's desk. An interior window opened to a hallway and other offices. A hum of distant conversations and typing and telephone ringing filled the area. There was no window to the outside, but even so, other detectives and policemen stayed well away from Owen Gray. The office was not air conditioned, and Coates's tie was loose around his neck and damp patches appeared on his shirt under his arms.
The desk was covered by an inch of assorted documents, and by abandoned paper coffee cups, doughnut wrappers, a telephone, a Rolodex, and a plastic cup of pens. Files were piled high on the cabinets and on the floor in two corners. An empty coat hanger occupied another tight corner. The computer's CPU was squeezed between the desk and a wall, and its fan filled the office with a low drone. A square glass case was mounted on the back wall with a sign on it reading "In Case of Emergency, Break Glass." Inside was a Thompson submachine gun.
Coates turned from the monitor to Gray. "So you think Nikolai Trusov will go for it?"
"He wants something from me."
"Or he wants you to do something," Coates amended. He had been working two shifts, and his face was wan and his eyes red-rimmed behind his spectacles. He needed a shave.