Dr. Meredyth Sanger watched from across the street as the man she had been following climbed from his squad car and made his way toward the bar. “Oh, shit, Stonecoat's a lush…” She groaned and shook her head, disappointed at what she saw here. On the surface, she saw an on-duty police officer first sip from a questionable receptacle in his car and now step into a bar before noon. It wasn't pretty and it wasn't promising, not for Stonecoat and not for her… not for anyone. “Damn,” she cursed.
Dr. Sanger had had it with the kind of mentality exhibited by Captain Lawrence, his wait-and-see approach, his hands-off attitude, his management-by-crisis style. She was equally tired of seeing the kind of exhibition she'd witnessed out Lawrence's window, where subordinates were treated so shabbily by ranking cops that they were denied a chance to work up to their potential; that certainly seemed to be the case with Officer Lucas Stonecoat, who must take orders from a Stan Kelton.
She had to admit, though, that Lawrence was far easier to take than some men she'd worked with in police circles. She once had had to expose a watch lieutenant who had raped a female officer and had threatened the woman's life if she should ever talk. The woman had come to Meredyth for advice, help, comfort and support. Meredyth gave her all this and more over a period of a year, while the handsome but vicious lieutenant continued a constant barrage against the young woman until finally she agreed to wear a wire. With the help of Internal Affairs, Meredyth was able to corner this man, to put him where he belonged. He was serving eight to ten for rape now, and his conviction had been upheld on appeal.
Despite the good work she was doing within the department, men like Lawrence still failed to take her seriously- partly due to the Blue Code, which labeled her a snitch, because the unspoken and inane belief held by many cops was that no matter what a fellow cop did, you never ratted on him. She sometimes wondered just who was crazy and who was sane.
How did a guy like Lawrence get ahead? He was a throwback to an earlier time, a freaking caveman without the body hair, yet he fit right into the old-boy system of the HPD. Hell, he fished and hunted with the best of the brass, told off-color and ethnic jokes so nasty they'd make Don Rickles cry and Howard Stern wince, and he talked openly in the squad room with his detectives of his many encounters and conquests of women as if some newsreel were playing relentlessly inside his self-deluded brain.
“Fatso” was Lawrence's squad room handle, but now that he was thirty pounds lighter than when he began and now that he was a captain, nobody dared call him that to his face, except perhaps the self-destructive type-maybe a guy like Lucas Stonecoat, from what she could see.
She leaned back into the cushioned car seat now; she had felt some guilt at first for having followed Lucas from the precinct, but not near so much as she had while watching him as he swilled booze a hundred yards away from her.
She had bottled up so much outrage at Phil Lawrence that her anger with Stonecoat was mild by comparison. “Damn that Lawrence,” she said to the empty car. “Why can't the captain see facts in evidence when put before him?”
She had stumbled onto some interesting anomalies with regard to the recent murder and mutilation case of a man named Charles D. Mootry. The man, an appellate court judge, died under gruesome circumstances. He was first dispatched with an arrow fired from some sort of high-powered gun or crossbow, piercing the victim directly through the heart. The unusual choice of weapon used by the killer was just the beginning in this bizarre case, for the victim's head had been removed and carried off by his assailant, along with other telling body parts, such as the hands, feet and the privates. Only a torso with arms and legs remained.
She'd first learned of the case itself, minus the most heinous details, through newspaper accounts, along with everyone else. She, like the poor slob in the basement pushing dust mites about, was not on Phil Lawrence's kiss list. In fact, Phil didn't believe in either of two facts of life in 1996- that women belonged in police work, or that men who were real men ever needed psychiatric support. In effect, he didn't believe she could work effectively within the superstructure of a paramilitary organization such as the Houston Police Department, which was not only a male-dominated environment but one rooted in the history of the decidedly male Texas Rangers, another law enforcement agency under repeated siege due to sexual harassment charges that could no longer be ignored.
So what good was her mental medicine here? What possible good could she do here? Men like Lawrence hid their prejudices well for appearance' sake, allowing underlings like his detectives to do their talking for them. Perhaps no psychiatrist-male, female or neuter-could be of any damned use whatsoever to a man living out a fantasy of being Wyatt Earp or Matt Dillon. God, she hoped Stonecoat wasn't a Geronimo wanna-be.
Both her sex and her profession irked the captain, but she didn't work for him, not strictly speaking, and while she hadn't wanted to go over his head-another cop taboo- Phil didn't exactly leave her with any choice. She was damned if she did and damned if she didn't, but also damned if she'd sit another day in her office while Lawrence casually, unassumingly, even cunningly assured his men that appointments with her were made to be broken-despite his lip service, despite what he called policy, as when he'd told Lucas to submit to her scrutiny on a routine basis. It was all hogwash.
She realized that Texas was part of the Bible Belt, that it was ten, maybe twenty years behind in both the civil rights movement and in women's rights issues, and that men like Lawrence were on every old-boy circuit in the bloody state, but it was high time someone explained the facts of life to “Cap'n Phil,” as his boys called him. She'd gone to top brass officials and had quoted their offical manuals to them. She had not only blown the whistle on Captain Lawrence's out-of-date practices, but had also pointed a finger at his ineptness and incompetence. She had gone out on a lengthy, shaky, narrow limb.
She still fumed from what he'd said to her behind the closed door of his office this morning. After getting assurances that he wasn't being put on tape by a hidden recording device, he had half-kiddingly and sanctimoniously dared ask her if she'd take exception to his frisking her. She did take exception and promised their discussion was strictly private. “Good,” he'd replied to this, coming around his desk and pressing his body close to hers, searching her eyes for a rise. She instead glared and stepped back, giving off no uncertain signs.
“Look,” he said, his voice quivering, “no pussy with a Ph. D. is going to screw me over in my own department and get away with it.”
“Is that a threat, Captain?”
“Consider it fair warning.”
“Consider this, then. I'll file charges against you if you so much as come near me again.”
She'd stormed from Lawrence's office, driven by anger and frustration to chase out after the only man in the department who didn't appear to be under Lawrence's thumb, yet-Lucas Stonecoat.
“Right, you are,” a small voice told her. “He's not under Phil's thumb now, but give him time.” She realized the bastard had gotten to her, that she was talking to herself now.
She didn't know precisely how Lucas Stonecoat and Lawrence were getting on, but she knew Lawrence was just bigoted enough to rub Lucas the wrong way. A feud between them was as likely as water rolling down a rocky slope. Perhaps she could usher in the feud between them a little sooner with a few well-placed words, all to her advantage. It wasn't a pleasant alternative and certainly called her ethics into question, but it was feminine, after all, and she damned sure had to do something. She was grasping at straws, and the largest one to come along in some time was the tall, imposing Lucas Stonecoat.
She considered his size as he climbed from the car across and down from her. She thought Lucas strong looking, handsome, save for the scar, but even this added an element of mystery that lured her on. His voice, so like a whiskey-drinking blues singer, reminded her of her father's cracked tones.
Maybe she'd best get to know Lucas Stonecoat, she thought, see if he could provide some assistance. After all, he'd once been a detective. His insights on the Mootry case might prove invaluable.
To this end, she'd stalked him from the precinct like a cub following a lumbering grizzly bear. This grizzly drove like a crazy man, a good deal more fleet of wheel than he was of foot, given the pronounced limp. He was already ducking out of sight ahead of her. Damn, he really was going into a bar this time of day, while on duty. What kind of a fool was he?
She hesitated now, debating with herself. Should she boldly go inside, confront him, or see him another time? Time was a luxury she could ill afford, especially now that Lawrence had taken off the gloves. At bedrock of all the rumors she'd heard about Lucas Stonecoat, there seemed a grudging admiration on the part of others that Lucas was a badger once he clamped down on a case, the kind of tenacious, tough detective who'd make for a useful ally, if only she could get him to listen to her.
She pulled up, passing his vehicle, U-turning and placing her own car right in behind his. Taking a deep breath, thinking of all that had brought her to this time and place-her father, her mother, her uncle Bill, all pushing her to be the best at whatever she chose to do in life-she got out of the car and marched in to find this supposedly crazy Indian cop to learn firsthand his story, tired of the secondhand crap she'd been handed. All this effort put forth, all this dangerous activity in which she risked so much, she thought. Perhaps she liked it, the intrigue; perhaps it was just what Lawrence had said it was, “A self-serving attempt to further your career.”
“No, no!” she'd fended off the allegation. “It's to build a bridge of connections between the Mootry case and case files I've found in the Cold Room dating back some ten years, possibly more.”
The old pain had come back like a rodent sniffing out prey: quietly at first, before pouncing. It was the pain that made his already pronounced limp, due to the stiffness in his hip, even more pronounced. He wondered how he'd ever hidden the true extent of his continuing physical ailments from the training officers all through his trainee period. It hadn't been easy, relying on painkillers and trying to remain alert at the same time. In the end, he'd made it, and despite the hellhole to which he'd been assigned, he was, at the very least, carrying a shield again. It wasn't a detective's shield, not even second-class; it was the silver of the uniformed street cop, but it was something.
Still, Lucas did have his first-class Dallas gold shield, along with the gold watch they'd foisted upon him… along with his damnable disability retirement. And although being reactivated to duty in Houston meant the loss of his retirement funds from Dallas, his forced departure and the endless days back home on the reservation had been driving him insane, so coming out of retirement was worth it at any price.
He opened his wallet and placed his two badges onto the bar side by side, the gold and the silver, weighing them out in his mind as he sipped at his bourbon.
He lifted and studied the Dallas gold shield, which looked liked most any gold shield in any city in America, save for the lettering. He superstitiously rubbed it between his large fingers for good luck before tossing it face up on the bar, where he stared into its gleaming, reflective light.
His silver HPD shield was better than no shield at all, he rationalized; it had gotten him in charge of the damn Cold Room, hadn't it? It gave him slightly more weight than status as a former Dallas Police Department cripple with three-quarter Texas Cherokee premium red pumping through his battered body. Hadn't it?
He couldn't let them see his pain, so he forced it back with a second shot of bourbon where he stood at the bar, not anxious to sit again for some time. He took the bourbon straight up and neat-best way for the pain, he kept telling himself. But also for the pain that claimed him and told him daily it'd be with him until his grave, Lucas knew to utilize that strict code of the ancient Zen-like masters of his tobacco-twisting, magic-making race.
He just had to control it.
Had to be smart.
Had to second-guess the department. Beat them at their so-called spot-testing program.
He could do it. If anyone could. He was smart.
When he lowered the shot glass and saw her in the mirror, standing in the middle of the bar behind him, he brought the tumbler down with the sound of a gunshot. He wheeled, and his anger shone as thunderbolts flitting maniacally across each dark iris.
“What're you, following me?”
“I had to,” she pleaded, her arms wide, palms up as she approached.
“Did that bastard, Lawrence, sic you on me?”
“Christ, Stonecoat, I'm not an attack dog! And no, quite the contrary; he warned me to steer clear of you.”
“Said that, did he?”
“That's right,” she lied, but it felt right.
“So you disobey him, like-”
“Disobey? I'm not a child, and I don't take orders from the likes of Phil Lawrence. Technically speaking, I'm a civilian and not part of his paramilitary organization.”
“Who do you report to, then?”
“Commander Andrew Bryce, or at least his office. That's where my reports go.”
“And Bryce is over the division?”
“You got it.” Good, she told herself, now you've got him interested.
“You followed me here from the station house? Last time we talked, you said you weren't interested in me. What's with you, Dr. Sanger?”
“What I said was, I don't need another wigged-out cop on my couch, if you'll recall.”
'Then what do you want from me?”
“Buy me a drink, and we'll talk,” she offered.
“Like to play the bad girl? Is that it? This your way of getting back at Lawrence for some slight?”
“Bad girl?”
“Madonna, all that.”
“Jesus, you're hard to talk to. You always so hard to approach, Stonecoat?”
“No, only when I'm expected to perform, and I've got a notion you're looking for a performance of some sort.”
“Please, Lucas… can I call you Lucas?”
When he failed to answer, she stared into his eyes, finding herself swimming in a deep brown warmth and hidden hurt for a moment before she barreled on. “I think we could help each other out.”
“I really don't recall asking for your help, Doctor!”
The bartender, without shouting, demanded, “Either take it to a booth or outside, but keep it down, will you? I run a quiet joint here.”
“So,” he said to her, indicating the second bourbon in his hand and leading her to a booth, “now you know my secret.”
One of them, perhaps, she thought, carefully considering her words. “One of them is painfully obvious, but listen here, Lucas, I see a lot of cops with hard-core problems every day, problems you don't come near, so…” She paused, picking her way over the minefield of his emotions. “Fact is, there's very little I haven't seen on this job. So what if you drink while on duty? Half or more of the force does. I'm not here as a police shrink or to pass-”
“Sit,” he ordered. She silenced herself and slid into the corner booth. “What'll you have?”
“A Coca-Cola's all.”
“Coke,” he shouted to the bartender. “Make it two. Wouldn't want you drinking alone in a bar.”
“I'm sorry if I startled you, but-”
“Startled me?” He half grinned, and this made his face more handsome, the scar more easily tolerated. He tried a flagrantly lazy laugh, repeating the word startled as if the sheer impossibility of his being startled by her was as remote as finding a winning lottery ticket in this place. He turned his eyes and his scar tissue away from view in a practiced, now habitual fashion.
“I'm not exactly on Lawrence's guest list for the Christmas party, believe me,” she continued again. “I guess I came after you because… because I need a… an ally, a professional connection, and because your record indicates a distinguished career.”
Now he did laugh openly.
“You won two medals for valor before the accident.”
“I don't want to talk about medals or accidents.”
“All right, but what about it? I could use a friend, someone who-”
“A friend?”
“-somebody who hates that bastard Lawrence as much or more than I do, and I figure you're it.”
“How do you figure that? Lawrence hasn't done anything to me.”
“Are you kidding? He's a racist, for one. How do you imagine you wound up in the Cold Room in the first place, Lucas?”
“By his request?”
“It wasn't via lottery.”
Lucas breathed this information in. “He heard plenty about me in Dallas, didn't he?”
“Everybody knows about Dallas, about John F. Kennedy's assassination there and about your accident there, but with Lawrence, when you went after the city in that court battle, that was enough to destroy any chance you had on his force.”
“What a ya know… it all goes back to Dallas, doesn't it? They warned me that Houston's still a small town in many ways.”
“Most Texas cities are…”
He raised a hand to his chin and nodded in silent agreement.
“And everything about a police department is small-town,” she added. “A lot of cable's been laid between here and Dallas, and you're something of an infamous fellow. And here you are, pretty much alone, and I'm… well, I'm pretty far out on a limb with Captain Lawrence, too.” She now stared purposefully once more into the rippling and layered pools of his marble-hard brown eyes. This time, he held her stare as if daring her to break it off, as if studying her level of intensity, or sincerity, or both. Or was he thinking sex? She did not know.
“How do you know I'm not a racist or a sexist?” he asked her. “Many Indian men are proud to be both, you know…”
She laughed lightly at this, realizing that he was kidding for the first time with her. Maybe the bourbon wasn't such a bad idea, after all.
“Seriously, Dr. Sanger, just what is it you want from me? You certainly didn't come here to warn me about Phil Lawrence.”
She snatched a notepad from her purse and slipped on a pair of reading glasses that made her look like a school teacher, he thought. “What I'm going to tell you, Lucas, must remain confidential if-”
“So long as this entire meeting remains confidential, I think I could agree to that,” he countered with a snakelike reaction.
She looked from her notepad over her glasses and across at him. “A greed. Like I said, I've got more important fish to fry than your ass over an indiscretion more suited to the concerns of Internal Affairs.”
“But don't you work closely with IAD?”
“IAD doesn't work closely with anyone. Listen, I am not your enemy.”
“Shall we shake on it, to ensure the bond?” he suggested, still unsure of her motives, still not certain he could trust her. “God, next you'll be asking me to slit my wrist and mingle my blood with yours in some pagan ritual out of-”
“Not a bad idea either.”
“Okay, all right already.” She reached across the rough, scarred tabletop, and he firmly took her hand in his, testing her strength for a moment, allowing his hand to linger in hers as they shook. She frowned, tugged her hand from his and turned her attention back to the notepad now lying between them. “I've mapped out my suspicions for several weeks now, all brought on by the Mootry killing.”
A glazed, unknowing blink was quickly masked, even as he said, “Okay…
“A brutal mutilation murder like that doesn't go unnoticed and-”
“Then this isn't a dead file case? It's not something out of the Cold Room?”
“Well, it is and isn't.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“Well, let me finish. The Mootry case is current, but a less recent killing, a senseless murder here ten years ago come Friday, held some fascinating similarities. I wasn't on staff here then, but I read about it in the Seattle papers.”
“You've only been here how long?”
“Four months come Tuesday.”
“And you're from Seattle?”
“Yes.”
“Your people all there?”
“Yes, now let me finish. Anyway, it occurred to me… I mean, I… the Mootry murder immediately brought back memories of similar deaths both here and elsewhere. I wondered if the three crimes could possibly have been connected. So I did some checking.”
“I don't get it. Why didn't you just turn your suspicions over to the detective bureau?”
'That's just it. I did, but no one's taking me seriously, least of all Lawrence.”
“Well, you are sticking your nose into his territory when you-”
“God, I hate that kind of thinking.”
“What a ya mean? What kind of thinking?” he countered.
“We're going to let macho shit-head territorialism come before the truth?”
“It usually does.”
“With men, yes.”
He smiled. “You got me there. Something to do with the testosterone levels, I believe.”
Well spoken, well read, fast on his feet, she thought. “Will you just listen?” she suggested.
“Shoot, Doc.”
“I've found several suspiciously similar former cases, some of the information coming out of your dead file room down in the basement.”
“Well, from all appearances, a lot of cases wind up in that twilight zone.”
“One was the file I just gave back to you this morning.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. Have you re shelved it yet?”
“No.”
“Good, then read it; see what you think. Then go back and check out the others I've read over the past few weeks. That's all I ask, Lucas.”
“The way I had to remind you to check that file in this morning?
How am I going to know which ones you've checked out before?”
“I checked 'em all back in, in order.”
“You mean you were just a little flustered this morning?” he teased. She managed a smile. “You might say that.”
“All right, so what if these cases are linked?
“What?” She gave him a confused stare.
“If they're in the Cold Room, they're like me.”
“Come again?”
“They're not likely to be of any great interest to Lawrence or anyone out ranking him.”
'They will now… or should.”
“Meaning?”
“Where've you been. Chief?” She realized now that he had no notion of the enormity of the Mootry case. “The Mootry case, the one that's been front page for the past week?”
“I don't read the newspapers. They depress me. Besides, I've been working my tail off night and day as a rookie, remember? Work detail by day, class work by night.”
“Couldn'tve been easy after the years of rehab you've gone through,” she replied, her tone consolatory, sincere.
“No one said it was going to be easy…”
'Tell me about the most important single event in your life, the accident,” she blurted out, her training as a psychiatrist getting the best of her, coloring her tone with condescension, making her immediately sorry, wishing she'd found a smoother transition into this touchy, obviously unhealed wound. “I know you want to talk about it to someone…” she said, trying to repair the damage done by the blatant nosiness that accompanied her profession.
“I'm going to make you work hard for this,” he said, his smile a curling snake.
“So I've noticed. Look, I'm sorry if I've overstepped my bounds. I must appear nosy, but in fact I'm… well, just…”
“Interested?”
She nodded, smiling. “Yes, interested.”
He shook his head like a big dog and then fixed his eyes on her. “I talk to the One God, the Great Spirit, about it.
That's enough.”
“Bullshit. Tell me about it; trust me, it'll only make you feel better.”
“Me? Feel better? Not ever going to happen in this life, Doctor. Maybe when the Great Spirit comes for me, but not on this plane ever again. Besides, I had a shrink on my case, along with six physical therapists.”
“Yours is a real success story. Surprised the movie people haven't sought you out for one of those-”
They did and I refused. It wasn't exactly Robert Zemeckis and DeNiro beating down my door to make the offer.”
He dropped his gaze, staring through the solid oak table, and he began to tell her the story in as brief a clip as possible, knowing that if he fed her this, maybe she'd see him as more than the cripple he'd become, and perhaps she'd better understand why he was here now, downing whiskey. She listened without interruption.
“My partner, Jackson, and I, we had just gone off duty. We had hoisted a few when we heard the radio call on a heist nearby. In fact, we believed it had to do with a case we'd been working for months, so we responded.” He explained that the car accident had happened while he was on what had begun as a rather routine call, since it appeared the gunman had abandoned the scene long before they'd arrived.
“So at this point it'd become a routine investigation of a robbery at a downtown liquor store in Dallas. The scene had actually been secured, cordoned off. It should've been routine. But it ended in a high-speed chase gone bad. Thanks to my now dead partner, who was a worthless drunk, a rotten wheel man, and the best cop that I've ever known.”
“He was your senior partner?”
“The best. Learned so much from Wallace Jackson, but the crazy bastard got himself killed and very nearly killed me with him.”
“Stonecoat, you aren't still angry at Jackson, are you?”
“Hell, yes… Hell, yes… All right, hell, no… whichever answer keeps me off your office couch.”
She gave a little shake of the head, her silver-blond hair caught in the breeze created by the wafting overhead fan.
“Anyway, Dallas PD was embarrassed to its shorts by a press corps that'd already been vilifying them on an 'inside' investigation of the 'excessive number' of high-speed chases in the Dallas area resulting in the deaths of civilians and officers.”
“I get the picture.” She drank from her fizzling Coca-Cola.
“So the force was sorry for the loss of their black detective-one of a handful-and neither were they crazy about the idea of returning their Indian back to active duty.”
“You realize, don't you, that Captain Lawrence can't look favorably on a detective who sues his own department?”
“I dropped the damned suit before it ever got to court.”
“You dealt it out, I hear. You walked away without a fight.”
“Let's put it this way, Doctor. I wasn't walking, period, at the time.”
“I only meant that they paid you off without a fight.”
“And I'm telling you, I fought from my hospital bed, on my back, like a goddamned overturned turtle. And trust me, I had a greater enemy to fight than with the Dallas Police Department.”
“You'd have won a much heftier settlement. You had a good case. Obviously, no one was looking after your interests. What about the Police Benevolent League, what about the Patrolman's Fund, what about-”
“I started an action against the force. Lawyers got involved and fees got too heavy and too many for me. Still payin' 'em each month, along with rent.”
“But you won?”
“Won the right to sit home and wait for a check, yeah. It took two years and a divorce for me to find a new situation while I lived on disability checks and TV dinners and beer. My so-called wife didn't even bother to come down to the hospital; said she'd had enough of life as a cop's wife. Meantime, the problem I was having with my own department in Dallas was due to a bureaucracy mired in itself, along with my police superintendent, who sold me and Jackson out. This creep was worried about his own job, so he just made certain that the redskin would stay off the payroll, nailing the coffin shut on the Indian problem he'd had all along.”
“Nothing like having your superior go to bat for you,” she commiserated.
'The bastard was nobody's superior. His main interests were his own interests,” he replied. “But it taught me a valuable lesson.”
“Oh, and what's that?”
“Never get blindsided. Never assume anything, and never underestimate the depths to which human nature sinks.”
“So, you rehabilitated yourself physically, but it sounds to me as though you have a ways to come back emotionally. I mean, you've got to learn to trust again if you're ever to fully-”
“As you have seen, and so you shall see, this man is fully recovered in every way. I wear more body armor, sure, and I like it that way!” he said with a flourish of his large right hand, tipping his bottle at her and downing the drink in a final gulp. “Thank the Great Spirit, Houston wasn't being too choosy. That explains why Lawrence was saddled with the likes of me, wouldn't you say?”
“With a mandate and a federally funded program to train one thousand new foot soldiers in President Clinton's war against crime, and given your experience on the force, I really shouldn't-”
“Wonder? The redskin is put to great use now…
Some help I'll be in the war against crime here in Houston, sitting down in that hole Lawrence has found for me.
Then the bastard has the balls to pretend he likes me by telling jokes about… well, never mind.
“ He leaned back in the cushion, uncomfortable now.
“You okay, Lucas?”
“Can't sit in one place too long. Insides start to act up on me. A pain that is coming from deep within is always also a going-back pain, so it hurts both ways.”
An old Indian expression, she guessed. Want to get out of here?
Yeah, any ideas?
Park's not far from here.
“Park?”
“Municipal Zoo.”
“Animals… I love animals,” he replied. “They never ask anything from you, never take anything from you, and they never lie to you.”
She eyeballed him, wondering about the double entendre of his words. “That's certainly true, and lovely in the way you express it,” she finally agreed.
“So, let's do it. Let's go see some honest citizens of Houston. All in the zoo, right?”
She wondered just how seriously to take him. Was he kidding, half kidding, or deadly serious? Did he know that she'd told a few lies to get his attention? Was he including her in with all the dishonest citizens of the city, everyone outside of a cell? Was he saying that people in prison were more straightforward and honest than the average citizen, or was he just talking about animals? His mind seemed as agile as a fox's.
She grabbed the check, but not quickly enough. He grabbed her hand, pried the check from her and plunked a twenty over it. “This'll take care of everything,” he said.
Machismo in a cripple, she thought. Kind of nice, far. more so than in others. He was on his feet and offering a hand to her as she slid out of the booth. She sensed that it was important to him that she accept his helping hand. She imagined how difficult it must be for him to begin his career over again here in Houston, only to find the same foot on his neck as he'd had in Dallas.