you talking to yourself?” Gale asked, returning with the file.
“Uh, no. Well, not really.” Molly took the file and stepped away from the desk.
At some point or other, the store-robbing, gun-wielding, mobster jerk would have to leave the center, she decided, returning outside to her car. He couldn’t stay there twenty-four hours a day, could he? She decided to swing by the place again.
His car was still in her space. That was when Molly got her brainstorm. She went back to the police station and found Joe Gannon in the detective’s bureau. She told him what she needed. She could do it herself, but she would probably be questioned by the brass over it.
“What’s this about?” he asked, scowling.
“I volunteer there.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that. But that’s not a no-parking zone, is it?”
“Not unless we decide to make it one.”
“On what grounds?”
Molly thought about it. “That building is a firetrap.”
“Close to it, but it must have passed code or the fire department would have shut them down a long time ago.”
Ron was going to kill her for this. Still, principle was principle. And she wouldn’t be able to park there anymore, either, would she? Plus, it really would make the building safer. “We should probably have a clear path to the front door for…you know, firefighters. Just in case.”
“What the hell are you up to?” Gannon was staring at her as though trying to find the answer in her eyes, then he scratched his temple. “Okay. Who cares? I’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
“So do I. I just want to start with the minnows.”
“You’re going to owe me for this.”
“I always pay my debts, Joe.”
“A six-pack. Any import.”
“Consider it done.”
He nodded, then he called in the tow order for the ugly lemon Dodge in front of the rec center. “I’ll have a temporary No-Parking sign there by nightfall.”
Chapter 3
It didn’t seem possible to Danny that seventeen kids in any given city in modern America could not own gym shoes. Granted, the rec center families were mostly impoverished. But Anita’s tattoo, Cia’s leather and Lester’s boots had all cost money, so the kids were finding it somewhere.
He was being played for a chump, Danny decided. And where had these other eleven kids’ names come from, anyway? There’d only been six teenagers here yesterday.
“You,” he said to Jerome, “had sneaks on yesterday.” He sat at Ron Glover’s desk facing the boy who stood on the other side of it.
“They got stole last night.”
“Stolen.”
“What, now you’re an English teacher?”
“Whatever I have to be, pal, to get you into college.”
That broke Jerome up. “Me? Yeah, right.”
“You. Right.” Danny looked down at the handwritten list. At least the kids had sent Jerome back with it. That was something. Actually, it was more than he had hoped for. “Okay, here’s the deal.”
“I don’t do deals, man.”
He caught the boy’s gaze and held it. “My guess is that you do deals every day, just not with the likes of me. Now where was I? Right. I’m going to leave here and buy gym shoes for everybody who was here yesterday. These other eleven kids—whoever they hell they are—are going to have to make an appearance and personally request their own pair—after they’ve practiced with us at least five times.” In the meantime, Danny realized, he was going to have to try his hand at a little fund-raising. They’d need uniforms, too, and various other equipment, not all of which could come out of his limited bank account.
“Man, that’s lame,” Jerome complained.
Danny stood from the desk.
“Hey, what did you do time for, anyway?” the boy asked suddenly. “You didn’t tell us.”
Danny paused on his way to the door. He’d known it was coming and had already determined to be honest with these kids. He had a halfhearted hope that some of them might learn from his experience. “Money,” he told him. “They said I stole money.”
Jerome didn’t bat an eye. “Yeah, so you got plenty, right? You can buy us all shoes.”
“If I had money to buy you all shoes, would I be driving that scrap of metal out there at the curb?”
“Ain’t no scrap of metal there now, dude.”
“Sure, there is. Right out front.”
“Uh-uh. No more.”
Then, somehow, Danny knew.
He shot around the desk, opening Ron’s office door hard enough and fast enough to make it crack against the wall like a gunshot. He heard Jerome laughing behind him as he jogged outside.
His car was gone.
Danny drove his fist against a stop sign. The metal clanged. Then he realized that he was still holding the piece of paper with the shoe sizes. Swearing, he shoved it down into his jeans pocket and headed back to the center to call—again—for a cab.
He was going to kill her.
When Molly arrived at the center at two o’clock, the space in front of the center walkway was vacant. There was a no-parking sign there. She grinned to herself and started scouting around the block for another space. She found the Dodge around the first corner, deliberately taking up two spaces, half in each of them. Her grin vanished.
Oh, baby, this was war.
She had to park two blocks away this time. Molly locked her Camaro and headed back to the rec center on foot. She found Danny in the gym.
There were fifteen to twenty kids with him today. She’d never seen so many kids here at once in the whole two years she’d volunteered. What was he doing? Paying them to play basketball with him? She stalked across the court and approached the knot of them.
Danny looked up at her. “Good afternoon, Officer.”
“Same to you.” Then she added under her breath, “Inmate.”
He heard her. “Not anymore.” He nodded at the far basket. “Your end of the court is down that way.”
“It’s wherever I want it to be.”
“No, actually, that rule changed yesterday
