Bobby tried to defend himself and to explain. “Look, Ham—”
“No, you look. You need to decide which world you want to walk in because it’s obvious you can’t do both. It’s cool that you kept in touch while you were off in college doing your thing, but I keep telling you, all that higher education and fancy living ain’t a plus here.”
“It was a plus back in the day when I was running weed for you with the frat boys, and it was a plus when I brought you this deal.”
“True, but look where it’s got me. The only thing standing between me and going down on an accessory to murder are two rich White men who’ll give us both up in a heartbeat if it means saving their own asses.”
“They’re not going to say anything.”
“Damn right, because if they do, you pay, Bobby. You.”
He got the point. “I’ll keep the lid on.”
“You do that.”
“So what about the next shipment?”
“Let’s wait a week. If nothing jumps off we’ll move.”
Bobby wasn’t happy about the delay, and he knew Bo Wenzel wouldn’t be either, but there was no getting around it. Ham was the distributor. The operation couldn’t run without him and his nationwide network of contacts. Bobby thought it might be in his best interest to try and hook up with one of Ham’s competitors, but that could entail way more danger than he needed in his life right now if word got back to Ham, so he was stuck. “I’ll call you next week.”
“Yeah.” Ham went back to weighing out the dimes. As the time lengthened and he didn’t look up, Bobby knew he’d been dismissed. Keeping his anger in check, he left.
Driving back to his Wilshire Boulevard office, he seethed. Tupac was still blasting on the CD, but all he heard was Ham calling him soft. Yeah, he might have traded in his tats and colors for a fancy high rise office and designer suits, but he wasn’t soft and he hadn’t lost his edge. Achieving what he had proved as much, otherwise he’d have been a burned-out banger relegated to making a living dealing drugs, like Ham.
He stopped at the light and changed the CD. As it went green, Fifty’s voice filled the speakers. He reflected that he wasn’t the first man in the history of the world to prefer the finer things in life. Just because Ham had never seen life outside of Watts and Compton didn’t mean those who had were inferior. The sooner he could cut Ham out of the equation, he decided, the better off he and the Wenzels would be.
On the drive back to her place from the Point Reyes National Seashore, Reese was more content than he’d been in a while. She’d taken him to see whales, of all things, and he knew it would be a day he’d remember for many years. But even more memorable was the woman seated behind the wheel. “Thanks for the whales,” he said.
“You’re welcome. I don’t get up here as much as I’d like, so thank you.”
Her smile touched him in the way it always seemed to do.
JT had had a great time, too. She very rarely took time out to do something like this. Work usually ruled her life. Even now the agent in her wanted to stop and call the Owens kid to find out if he’d decided to let her represent him, but the woman inside didn’t want anything to intrude. She and Reese had a wonderful day. Now, driving back across the Golden Gate, she felt as if she didn’t have a care in the world. She could get used to this real quick. “Hungry?”
“Yeah.”
By the teasing light in his eyes it was easy to see he wasn’t necessarily talking about food. As if to prove her point, he said with half amusement, “Never been around a woman I wanted all day long.”
Heat surged through her on the heels of that mahogany-voiced admission, and she had to pull in a deep breath to keep her hands steady on the steering wheel of the Lex. She hazarded a look his way and found him smiling. “Women probably melt in your mouth, don’t they?”
“Those that I taste, yeah.”
She jerked the car back into the lane. “Stop it!” she laughed.
“You asked,” he tossed back with a shrug of his sculpted shoulders and the woman-melting smile. He was wearing a white tee and a pair of jeans.
“You are awful,” she accused.
“That’s not what you said last night or this morning.”
“I think we should get some ribs,” she said, pretending that his comments hadn’t stroked her or made her nipples harden in shameless response. He was the most seductive man she’d ever met. Period.
“Ribs. Burgers. Whatever the lady wants.”
What the lady wanted was another dose of his magic, but she was trying to fight it, and losing badly, of course. She called ahead and placed their orders.
In her kitchen, they took their dinners out of the two big white bags, then sat at the table on the patio to eat. The sun was setting in a red blaze of glory, and the sky was filled with floating calling gulls.
In the aftermath of their heated banter in the car, JT’s awareness of Reese was as strong as it had ever been. His casual dress brought back the memories of their first meeting and the ride in his truck.
He asked, “Where do you see yourself five years from now?”
She pondered the question for a few moments. “Back home in Texas somewhere, chilling. Watching all the games as a fan and not as somebody counting assists or yards for the next contract.”
“I thought you liked what you do?”
“I do, but I’m starting to burn out on all the handholding and arguing and worrying about injuries. Lord knows I don’t need any more money.” She looked over at him. “What about you? Where do you see yourself?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Settled down. Maybe a wife and couple kids before I get too old to enjoy them. See if I can’t make a marriage work this time.”
“Do you see her? Your ex?”
He shook his head. “Not since the day she walked out with my autograph on the divorce papers. Put me off relationships for a long time.”
“Ugly divorce?”
“Not particularly. She wanted out so I obliged her.”
JT could only wonder about the true reason behind the breakup and how long ago it had been.
He asked, “You think about kids?”
“I do. I might like to do that somewhere down the road, before I get too old. My globe-trotting sister probably won’t have any so somebody’s gotta give my mother the grands she’s been wanting. Right now my sister’s rottweilers, Ruby and Ossie, are mama’s granddogs, as she calls them.”
“Granddogs? Named Ruby and Ossie?”
The humorous wonder in his voice made her smile. “Yep. They have a couple of sibs named Jessi and James.”
“Named for you?”
She shook her head. “No. My sister’s breeder was just trying to be cute.”
They were staring again. The attraction between them was as solid as the breakers down on the beach yet as shimmery as fog.
He said to her, “This is something special.”
She couldn’t lie or pretend that she didn’t know what he was talking about. “It is, so let’s just enjoy. No commitments, no ties.”
He leaned over and kissed her gently, “Whatever the lady wants…”
JT’s entire body came alive. Like a jolt of caffeine or a dousing from a barrel of Gatorade, her senses were instantly engaged. The barbecue dinners were forgotten, the wine ignored. They were much hungrier for each other.
They wound up on her bed, and he treated her to a loving that was as slow as it was fiery. He made her feel worshipped, adored, hot. By the time he brought her to the third orgasm, she swore she’d never let him leave her side. It was as if they both knew it would be some time before they were together again this way, so the loving continued until dawn.
When JT awakened bleary-eyed around noon, she was in bed alone. She sat up listening for sounds of him, then saw the piece of paper on the pillow beside her. It read: Called a cab. Didn’t want to wake you. See you soon. Reese.
She smiled, but inside, she felt bereft. She missed him already.
> Meanwhile, on the flight back down to L.A., Reese decided that his memories of Jessi would have to hold him for the present. She’d said she didn’t want a relationship, and he respected her honesty, or at least that’s what he told himself. In reality, he didn’t think she knew what she was up against. This thing happening between them seemed destined, fated, and if that were true, he’d been seeing her again, just like he’d written on the note, soon.
As it turned out, JT didn’t have to call the Owens kid at all. When she walked into her office Monday morning, Keith and his parents, Ken and Patrice, were seated and waiting in the outer area with Carole. “I take it you all have good news for me?” she asked, smiling.
Keith nodded, and his mother said, “Yes, Ms. Blake, we do. Don’t we, Ken?”
The father, Ken Owens, had played for USC back in the late seventies, and he still held some of the musculature that had made him such a great offensive lineman. In response to his wife’s question, he nodded. “We’d like you to handle our son’s career.”
“Then let’s go in my office and talk about it. Carole, hold my calls.”
“Will do.”
JT wanted to do cartwheels but instead calmly lead the family into her office and closed the door.
She spent the rest of the day with them. They talked about the team that had already drafted him in the first round and what he could expect in terms of salary and incentives. There were a multitude of papers to sign to make her representation of him legal. There were discussions about investment lawyers and tax issues, and she gave Mrs. Owens cards with the names of a few accounting firms many of her other clients used.
The father, Ken, asked pointedly, “You won’t keep him out of camp?”
“No. We may have to take a bit less money but I want him to start out on the right foot. We’ll make it up on the other end.”
The parents and son nodded approvingly. By late afternoon most of the paperwork had been signed and JT asked Carole to send out a quick press release announcing Keith’s decision to have her agency be his representative. She knew Bobby G3 would pitch a fit when he found out, but she couldn’t be worried about him. With a promise to call them tomorrow to give them the date for the start of her negotiations with Keith’s team, JT walked them back to their parked car, then waved good-bye as they drove off to return to their home in Bakersfield.
Back inside, she looked at Carole, let out a roof-raising scream of joy, then hurried to break open a bottle of champagne.
Later that evening, Bobby was at home looking over the paperwork surrounding the Chambers transfer to his agency and watching the sports news. When the anchor announced that Keith Owens had picked JT Blake’s agency, he threw the glass of vodka in his hand angrily against the wall.
That bitch! Owens was supposed to be his! Damn her! He’d spent six weeks and cash he didn’t have wining and dining the kid and his folks. While she’d bored Keith with talk of playbooks, minicamps, and tax brackets, he had introduced him to women, took him to parties and high-class strip joints so he could get a taste of the finer things in life. He was confident the contract settlement he’d promised to negotiate would be far and above what JT Blake planned to ask for, but it hadn’t meant a thing. “Damn her!”
His world was starting to unravel like the threads on an old sweater. If any one of his clients were bright enough to call for an audit, the books presented would pass the test, but his real books showed him to be over $16 million short. His fee from Marquise had helped his bottom line, but the bitch had Quise’s money invested in such a way that he couldn’t access the accounts without Quise’s signature and verbal okay. He’d been counting on the Owens money to make him solvent so he wouldn’t have to continue cooking his books every quarter like he’d been doing for the past three years. The deal with Ham and the Wenzels would also have been a money-maker, but now that project was on hold too. “Damn that bitch!” he yelled again.
Although he pretended otherwise, the killing of the old man had him looking over his shoulder. Just as Ham said, if push came to shove, the Wenzels would give him up faster than they could say “the Black guy did it!” But no way was he going to jail, not after the high life he’d been leading since getting his degrees. He was thirty-two, highly educated, and smart enough to know that even with his gang roots he’d be prey in prison, and he wasn’t going down like that. He had to control his own fate by making sure the Wenzels kept their mouths shut and then finding a way to put JT Blake out of business. She had everything he needed, and he was going to have to take it, even if he had to get ugly.
JT spent the early morning hours at the gun range. Wearing ear protectors, a T-shirt, and a pair of jeans, she fired her first round. Her evenly balanced stance showed her training. The perfect score on the targets showed her skill. Both she and her sister Max were taught to shoot at an early age by their uncle Wheat, their late father’s brother. He wanted them to be able to protect themselves, and taking lessons from him in both gun safety and maintenance was the only way their mother would let him buy her daughters the bb guns he wanted to give them for their birthdays.
JT walked to the next target and squeezed off another round. Unlike Max, a former cop and Marine, she had let her gun skills slide as she got older, and it had almost cost her her life when fullback Lamont Keel burst into her office and beat her so viciously she spent weeks in the hospital with three broken ribs, a busted clavicle, and so much facial bruising and swelling she couldn’t look at herself in the mirror. As soon as she recovered, though, she did the paperwork for a CW permit, bought herself a 9mm, and went back to the range. She’d been a faithful attendee ever since.
Her gun practice done, she went home, showered, dressed, and drove to work. On the drive, she thought about Reese, and the memories of their weekend evoked a bittersweet smile. At this point in her life she knew that any relationship with him would bring drama, and even if the knots could be worked out, she wasn’t sure she wanted a man. Yes, he was a lot of fun, and gave her such a good loving that just thinking about him made her nipples rise up and look for him. But she was accustomed to being her own woman. Unlike her married friends, she didn’t have to compromise on the color of the bath towels, which car to purchase, or anything else. Her world was her own, and she enjoyed being the center of it. Granted, there were women who took on relationships for economic reasons, but there was nothing a man could buy her that she couldn’t afford on her own. As for children, if she decided she wanted kids, there were sperm banks, and adoption was no longer off limits for singles like herself. So in reality, why did she need a man?
To have and to hold, the inner woman said.
She blew that off and focused her attention on the drive, but Reese’s smile continued to shimmer in the far corners of her mind.
The first thing she did when she hit the office was phone Pete Landers, the GM of the Oakland Earthquake, the team that had drafted Keith Owens. She didn’t like Landers particularly well and he didn’t like her that much either, but her Pro Bowl clients, linebackers D’Angelo Nelson and Jason Grant, played on the team too, so he had to deal with her and she with him.
The initial dollar amount Landers quoted her on the phone was below Keith’s true value—not insultingly below, but low just the same. JT didn’t fuss; negotiations had to start somewhere, so she politely told Landers she’d be in touch, ended the call, and opened her laptop to begin fashioning counterproposals. There’d be ample opportunity to yell at him later.
Reese spent the morning of his first day back from San Francisco talking to Captain Mendes about the Pennington investigation. There was nothing new. The traces of blood found in the Grizzlies conference room had been typed and matched. It was definitely Pennington’s. The only prints found by the techs belonged to the Wenzels and their secretaries, which was to be expected since they all worked in the office.
“Have you had a chance to question, Bo Wenzel?” Reese asked Mendes as they sat in his office.
Mendes was bro
wn-skinned and tall. The tailored suit belied the rumpled detective stereotype. “He’s still out of town, according to his secretary. When he gets back, he’s on the top of the list. What were you impressions of the son?”
Reese shrugged. “Seemed harmless enough. I didn’t get any vibes one way or the other. Didn’t strike me as a coke user, if that’s your question, but as cops, we know not to assume.”
“True, and my cop gut says somebody in that office knows something.
Reese agreed. “You think Big Bo is avoiding us?”
“Maybe. He’s had some legal issues over the years.”
Reese knew from the league files that Bo had wiggled out of a grand jury investigation over a decade ago. Word on the street back then had him guilty of selling fraudulent Texas oil stocks. Apparently a few of his high placed friends made the charges go away. Reese wished he knew the details about what happened to Gus Pennington in the conference room that night. Did he see something or do something that caused his demise? “I’m going to take a crack at Big Bo too when he gets back.”
“Be my guest. I’m open to any and all suggestions. I don’t want this to turn into a cold case. The victim’s family deserves to know why he died and who killed him. My detectives are still canvassing, but I’m not happy with this no progress.”
Reese wasn’t either. “I’d like to talk to the Pennington family too, if that’s okay.”
Mendes nodded. “Family was pretty shook up when my detectives first interviewed them. Maybe they’ve remembered something that might help. Also, here’s the paperwork for your state CW permit. You’re legal now if you need to be.”
Reese’s weapons certification was up-to-date back home, but he hadn’t strapped on a holster in many years. He didn’t see himself having to do that out here either, but it never hurt to be prepared. “Thanks.” He stood and shook the captain’s hand. “I’ll let you know if anything turns up.”