The gavel fell, and Ben McCarthy was free. Mira, that was fast, Lucia thought, stunned; she'd been expecting ... something else. A bit more theater, perhaps; at the very least a token few questions or some fussiness from one attorney or the other.
Instead, the judge hadn't wasted any time, given the very early morning hour; he'd looked as coffee-deprived as Lucia Garza felt, and both counselors looked hung over as well ... though the prosecutor looked significantly worse, pale and drawn, squinting against the harsh overhead lights. She was a hard-looking woman, with pale skin and dark hair and a fashion sense that tended to square-cut shoulders and block skirts and sensible shoes. No doubt she won a lot of cases, but it wasn't on style points.
Lucia didn't begrudge her the harsh lemon-sucking expression, considering how humiliating it was to have to publicly acknowledge a prosecutorial mistake of this magnitude. It hadn't just been a clerical error; this had been a gigantic miss for the cops and District Attorney's office. A murderer had gone free, and a cop -- not a good cop, granted -- had been wrongly accused and convicted. His life was over, professionally speaking; he was damn lucky that it wasn't over in every sense. The time McCarthy had spent behind bars had been hazardous. He had the broken bones to prove it.
McCarthy, as soon as the gavel hit wood, turned to look over the sparse crowd in the courtroom. Looking for Jazz Callender, Lucia knew, because he and Jazz had always been close, and it was reasonable to expect her to be present for his exoneration.
As Jazz would have been, if not for a conspiracy to keep her out of the way: half of that burden was Lucia's, and the other half had to reside with Jazz's lover James Borden. They both wanted to protect her. Jazz was still healing from a recent close encounter with a bullet, and this was the most logical place for anyone who wanted to kill her to set up an ambush ... but that didn't mean Jazz would be inclined to be grateful for the consideration from her friends and loved ones. Or, for that matter, logical.
Well, if she's going to be mad, better at me than Borden, Lucia thought. She and Jazz were new at this partnership thing. A few violent storms were only to be expected at this stage of a business relationship, and because it was business -- mostly -- Lucia was well able to face it dispassionately.
Borden, however ... no, he and Jazz had a fragile new relationship, forged after months of careful moves and countermoves, not to mention misunderstandings.
Better he stayed out of it altogether.
The judge rose in a flutter of black robes and escaped back to his chambers, leaving the few participants to mill around aimlessly in the room. Apart from the usual complement of guards and court stenographers, there was the sour-faced prosecutor, the cheery-looking defense attorney, Ben McCarthy (somehow still neat and striking even in a prison-issue jacket), three bleary-eyed reporters ... and a man sitting two rows ahead of her, hunched forward.
Ben McCarthy's eyes gave up the search for Jazz Callender and fastened right on her, and she felt an undeniable surge of ... something. Not a handsome man, McCarthy, not in any sense she could name, but there was something about him that was compelling. Clear blue eyes in an expressive face, a force of personality about him that could freeze you solid or melt you to syrup, depending on his mood -- she'd learned that quickly, during their prison interviews. He wasn't tall -- in fact, in heels she probably topped him by an inch -- but he was strong, and there was something graceful about him. The way he moved. The small, neat hands.
She saw the flash of disappointment. He'd expected Jazz, of course. He'd had ever right. But the flash was only that, and then he smiled at her -- a warm smile, and a nod of his head. This wasn't unusual; men smiled at Lucia Garza a lot. She was beautiful, and she was a careful steward of the gift; she took pains with her hair and her makeup and her clothing, she stayed in shape. She was used to male attention.
And still, that smile made her go entirely too warm in secret places. They'd gotten to know each other well these last few weeks, while Jazz was recovering and Lucia assumed the primary investigator spot for McCarthy's case. It had started cautiously, but Lucia, much to her surprise, hadn't found McCarthy the typical closed-off cop, or the equally typical closed-off prison burnout. He'd been ... interesting. Literate and smart and cool.
She had, in fact, interviewed him more than was strictly necessary, professionally speaking. Fifteen visits in all, two with Jazz, the rest without. He had remarked, the last time, that it had been the best interrogation of his life.
She'd found that flattering, in more ways than one, and subsequently had spent more than a few hours wondering why Jazz had never succumbed to temptation with McCarthy; after all, she'd had plenty of opportunity. They'd been partners for years. But Jazz had assured her -- the third time loudly and profanely -- that she'd never slept with him, and never really been tempted. They just hadn't clicked.
Whereas, Lucia was interested to note, she seemed to be clicking with him like a castanet.
She stood up, smiling and nodding in return, and willed herself to keep it cool and professional. She edged down the row to the central aisle. McCarthy stopped to exchange some words and a backslapping handshake with his attorney, then a not-very-cordial look with the prosecutor as she snapped her briefcase closed. No handshakes necessary on that one.
He turned toward her, and took two steps in her direction.
Someone came between them. Man, tan suit, rounded shoulders, wire-tight body language. Lucia snapshotted him with the unerring instincts of someone who'd spent sweaty months in counterterrorism training; the man spelled trouble, even as she was seeing him, from the back. He wore a cheap summer-weight tan suit coat with a faintly grubby feel to it, as if he'd worn it for months at a time and never bothered with dry cleaning. Even from ten steps back, Lucia had the unmistakable impression that he needed a shower. He wasn't much taller than McCarthy, and a great deal more nervous; from behind him, Lucia could see the jangles and twitches in his arms and legs. Emotion, possibly, or drugs. Certainly, the guy was edgy.
"McCarthy," she heard him rasp, in a voice like silk ripping on razor wire. "You son of a bitch."
Ben McCarthy's face went still and masklike, the blue eyes opaque. He shot one fast glance over the man's shoulder, at her, and then focused in on his opponent's face. He stayed very still, a total contrast to the man facing him, who had tension vibrating through every muscle. Lucia could feel it like an electrical field, radiating off of him, as she moved forward -- not quickly, just steadily. She had her weight poised, in case she needed to move fast, and she'd focused in on the balance points that were her targets.
She didn't have a gun -- a wholly unusual circumstance for her -- but that wasn't an issue. Neither did the man facing down McCarthy.
"Stewart," McCarthy said. "Hey. Thanks for coming."
Ken Stewart. Kansas City Police Department, Detective First Class. Oh, boy. This wasn't good. Lucia let the adrenalin course a little faster, let her heart rev up another couple of beats per minute. Stewart was, at best, unpredictable. At worst ... Jazz's bitter assessment came back vividly: he's got the winning personality of a Rottweiler raised by wolves. And he looked noticeably less together than she'd ever seen him. He'd always struck her as volatile, but now she was convinced he was a Molotov cocktail in search of a lit match.
"You think I'm here to smile and kiss your feet like these other assholes?" Stewart asked, and took another step into McCarthy's space. McCarthy didn't back away. He tilted his head back a few degrees to continue to stare right into the other man's eyes. "You hear me? I'm not letting you just walk away from a mass murder, you bastard. If it's the last thing I do, I'm going to make you pay."
McCarthy said nothing for a few seconds, then glanced over his shoulder at Lucia. "Detective Ken Stewart," he said, calm and steady, "meet Lucia Garza. Since she's a witness to you threatening me, you should probably be formally introduced."
"Oh, we've met," Lucia said crisply, as Stewart turned around to look at her. He had blue eyes, too. Crazy ones, shallow as glass. His skin looked pasty-pale, unpleasantly shiny, and his hair stuck up in greasy-looking spikes as if he never washed it and constantly ran his fingers through it. Very unattractive indeed.
He tried the crazy-eye with her. She simply stared back, a faint smile on her lips, until he whipped back around to McCarthy and muttered something under his breath, and pushed past to talk to the prosecutor.
It was comforting to see that the prosecutor didn't look any happier to see him, especially when she entered ground zero of his body odor.
McCarthy took a deep breath, let the coldness fade from his face, and said, "Sorry about that." He came the last few steps to join her, but his attention was still on the other man, who was haranguing the prosecutor in a low, furious mutter.
"No problem. It isn't the first time Detective Stewart and I have locked horns."
"No?" That got his attention, with a vengeance. He was wearing a blue sport coat that was too large for him, blue jeans that were perfectly acceptable, and a plain open-collar shirt. No tie. Relaxed, for a court appearance, but then he'd been there to get out of jail, not try to avoid going in. He smelled of a particularly cheap aftershave, probably prison-issue, and an underlying astringent smell that was probably prison-issue as well.
"He's made a run at Jazz a few times."
He started slowly walking toward the courthouse doors. She kept pace. "Bet she handed him his nuts on a platter," he chuckled.
Which was about as succinct a description of Jazz Callender as Lucia had ever heard. She grinned. "I don't think she bothered with the platter."
"Yeah, she's not much in the kitchen. So ... where is she? I admit, I kind of expected to see her ..." McCarthy opened one of the doors and stepped aside to let her pass. She glanced at him, but there wasn't any calculation in his eyes. It was automatic gentility. He wasn't even aware of doing it. She suppressed another smile as she thought of how that would have chafed on Jazz, little gestures like that. Jazz liked her independence, and she looked at every common courtesy as an infringement on it. She should have been born in the Old West, where she could have made a living on the frontier, riding rough, drinking hard, and swearing at the top of her lungs. Calamity Jazz.
McCarthy was fishing for an answer to a question he hadn't asked. She obliged. "Truthfully? Borden and I kept her away. We didn't want her presenting a clear target." James Borden had volunteered to keep her distracted -- not exactly a sacrifice, the man had been mad in love with her for almost a year -- and the significant lack of Jazz's unmistakable presence this morning might mean that they'd finally tipped over from flirting to ... something more.
Or alternately, knowing Jazz, it could mean she'd had a massive fight with Borden, gotten drunk, belligerent, taken on a motorcycle gang in a fistfight, and was celebrating her victory with a hospital visit.
McCarthy looked somber. "She okay? Jazz?"
"She's fine."
"You're sure?"
"I'm sure." Again, a little white lie. Jazz was all right in one sense, in that the past few months had made a huge change in her life. Since the day that Jazz had been given her first red envelope -- the same day that Lucia, halfway across the country, had received one -- her life had began an uphill path, after the downhill express she'd taken following McCarthy's arrest. But the offer Lucia and Jazz had jointly received, to open a new detective agency with funding from a rich, but highly secretive donor organization, had come with tripwires attached, and Jazz had been a casualty. Their last outing, operating on one of those damned red letters for the Cross Society, had nearly killed her.
Lucia had no idea how much of that (or how little) Jazz had shared with her former partner. Knowing Jazz, probably little; she wouldn't want him to worry, and she'd be afraid that he might think the whole thing weird, or worse -- ludicrous.
No new envelopes had arrived recently. Lucia allowed herself to think that perhaps, just perhaps, that insanity was over. She knew that was a faint hope, but she refused to abandon it just yet. Jazz had it right: all of this unexplainable conspiracy-theory stuff was just too odd to live with for long, if you expected to have a firm grip on reality.
McCarthy had noted her brief mental detour. "Somebody's still gunning for her, though, right?"
"Why do you say that?"
He grinned, a flash of humor that lit his eyes like sunlight. "Hell, you tell me. You're the one who kept her out of the courtroom."
"Well, somebody was gunning for her. Are they still?" Lucia shrugged. "I don't know. But I prefer to be careful, these days."
"Good plan."
They moved outside in the hall, and he suddenly stopped walking. She took a step more, turned, and looked back at him with eyebrows raised. As she watched, he surveyed the hallway, the people coming and going as the day began to come alive. The glow of dawn outside of the courthouse windows.
His eyes had a wet shine to them. Tears.
"McCarthy?" she asked gently.
He took in a breath. "Yeah. Freedom. Kind of took me by surprise," he said. "Give me a second."
"Take your time," she murmured. She knew how it felt. There had been a dark time in her life -- pitch black, in fact -- when she hadn't been sure she'd ever see daylight again. The emotional impact of realizing that the trauma was over, that you were free ... it could be overwhelming. It wasn't relief. It was terror.
When you get used to the dark, the light can burn you.
He blinked, and smiled slightly. "Sorry," he said, and cleared his throat. "So. Want to have breakfast with an ex-con? I mean, it's not like we're not acquainted already. Fifteen hours of interviews has to count for something."
First, second, and third dates, most likely. She cleared her throat, banishing the thought. "I'd love to."
"Got to confess, I'm low on funds."
"They confiscated your ill-gotten gains?" She made it an ironic question, not quite accusatory. He met her eyes without shame.
"I asked them to," he said. "Wanted to start out fresh."
"Ah. My treat, then."
He offered her the crook of his elbow. She put a hand in it, and they resumed their walk down the long paneled hallway, to the free world.
###
Over breakfast at Raphael's, which was a good deal fancier than McCarthy's suit jacket warranted, McCarthy wolfed down a Hangover Omelet stuffed with chili, chorizo and potatoes; Lucia stuck to a large fruit cup and dry toast. She enjoyed watching him eat. He seemed utterly enchanted with everything he tasted, but then, she supposed nearly two years of prison chow would do that. Still, she suspected he was always a bit of a sensualist. Something about his eyes, his smile, the clever exact movements of his hands ...
She pulled herself back from the dizzy edge of that thought, and said, "Do you have any idea who could have used your gun to commit the murders?" Because the circumstantial evidence had been convincing, at the very least. McCarthy's gun had been matched to the bullets in the bodies. There had been footprint evidence at the scene, too, and an eyewitness who'd seen McCarthy with the victims half an hour before their murders, although personally Lucia had doubted the authenticity of that particular evidence. Eyewitnesses were often wrong.
"Oh, I know who did it," McCarthy mumbled around a mouthful of eggs and cheese. "Stewart."
"He didn't."
"Crazy enough."
"Jazz checked it out. Stewart had an alibi."
"So did I. Funny how that is."
"Stewart was booking a carjacker downtown at the time of the killings, in front of twenty other cops."
McCarthy studied her with those intense blue eyes as he chewed and swallowed, wiped salsa from his lips, and for a second she thought he was going to argue the point. Instead he said, "So what's your story?"
"Excuse me?"
"Fifteen hours of talking, and I don't think you said boo about yourself. Name, rank and serial number, sure, but you didn't exactly meet me halfway. So tell me how you got mixed up in all this -- and why the hell you care about a guy like me."
Lucia was, for an instant, thrown. She disliked talking about herself, especially when faced with someone like McCarthy, who was certainly a damn good investigator and could get her to say more than she intended. She chose her words carefully. "Did Jazz tell you how we came to be partners?"
"Yeah. A letter to each of you, offering to put up the money to open a detective agency. Some kind of nonprofit agency. I get why Jazz took the deal. Why did you?"
"I didn't," she said calmly, and speared a slice of electric-green cantaloupe. "I turned it down." She enjoyed the look on his face as he assimilated that. "I was leaving when Jazz got shot in a drive-by attack -- you know about that?" He nodded shortly, face set into a bland mask. "I had my doubts about her as a partner, and about the whole agreement. But I don't like people shooting at me, and I don't like people shooting my friends, even if they're newly made. So I decided that it might be a good idea to stick around. One thing led to another, cases came up, we solved them. And here we are."
She nibbled the fruit. He watched her, concentrating on her mouth, and she felt a surge of self-consciousness that surprised her. Something about McCarthy threw her off stride, made her hyper-aware of how her clothes fit, of the tiny imperfections in the way the sleeves hugged her arms, the way the lapels didn't quite lay straight the way she wanted them to.
The way her arms shivered into gooseflesh when he stared at her.
McCarthy tilted his head. "Jazz is a walking disaster, but somehow, she does okay. She's a pretty good judge of character. Me notwithstanding." He continued to watch as she chewed and swallowed. "I know what you mean about sticking around her, though. I wasn't going to be her partner; I was just saddled with her for a week. But she grows on you. You want to protect her from herself. Doesn't generally work, though. She ends up saving your ass more than you save hers and before too long, you're joined at the hip. And then you realize that's not a bad thing."
"Regarding ass-saving, I believe the score's just about even between now," she replied.
"That tells me something about you."
"What?"
He surprised her with a wicked grin. "You're damn good at what you do. Whatever it is."
"Obviously, I'm a private investigator."
"And I'm your Maiden Aunt Sally," he snorted. "I've known a lot of PIs over the years, and none of them ever came looking or sounding like you. -- You avoided the question. What's your story?"
"I'm avoiding the question because I don't want to answer it."
"Because ...?"
"Because it's none of your business, Mr. McCarthy," she said evenly, and took another bite. Pineapple, fresh and sweet and pulpy. She savored the juice on her tongue, and the look of surprise on his face. "I helped Jazz get you out of prison, that's all. I don't owe you any information, any conversation, or anything else."
"Yeah? So what's this?"
"I said I don't owe it. I can still give it of my own free will."
He'd demolished the omelet into a few random crumbs of egg and fragments of chorizo, and now he settled his fork down on the plate with a clink and took a drag of coffee from the heavy white cup. Around them, the morning breakfast crowd in their expensive suits and well-groomed casual wear chatted and smiled. We're both out of place here, Lucia thought, even though she seemed to fit seamlessly into the crowd. There was something different about McCarthy that spoke to the wildness at her core. It wasn't his prison-roughened image. It was something else.
McCarthy smiled at her. "Okay, so you don't owe me. I was hoping you liked me enough to want to answer anyway."
"I don't like anybody that well."
"Harsh."
"Pragmatic," she countered. "I hardly know you, except that I know you might not be guilty of murder, but you're surely guilty of corruption. Your alibi against murder was that you were taking bribes behind a strip club. Add that to the fact that your friends and relatives were hardly crowding the gallery today -- "
His face shut down even farther, hiding emotion. Lids drifted down to hood his expressive eyes. "Let's leave them out of it," he said. "I was a cop, and my buddies were all cops. Cops stay away, times like these, until they feel better about the facts; Stewart's not the only one that still thinks, deep down, I pulled the trigger on those people." He stared down at his coffee, and took another deep swallow. "My brother would have been here, but he's out to sea. Sent a letter, though. He's on a tuna boat this season. My parents -- " He shook his head.
She took pity on him. "I doubt they could have made the trip," she said. "Your mother is ill, isn't she?"
"Old," he said. "Your folks still alive?"
She smiled noncommittally. "So I'll forgive you the low turnout among your admirers. Still, it does say something, doesn't it? To have more reporters there than supporters?"
She got a thin slice of a smile. Cynical. "Careful when you cut me like that. You'd have to buy me a new shirt. I'll bleed all over this one."
"I'm tempted to buy you a new one whether you bleed all over it or not."
"That's kind-hearted of you."
"Call it fashion charity."
He was studying her again, eyelids just a little down in lazy interest. "I just can't picture you and Jazz as friends."
"Why?"
"She's just -- one of the guys, you know? Not so -- " He gestured vaguely with one small, neat hand, letting her finish the sentence with whatever adjective seemed best. Wise of him. "I was surprised how good she looked, last time I saw her. Your influence, or the Counselor's?"
He knew about Jazz's lover Borden, then. Yes, of course he did. She shrugged. "Maybe both."
"She's not drinking so much."
"No."
"Not getting into fights."
"Well, we're working on that part."
"Good luck with that." He grinned, and caught the attention of a passing waiter to get a refill on his coffee. He drank it black, Lucia noticed. Black as the devil's heart. "So, if you're not going to tell me anything, I'll just have to tell you three things about yourself, Miss Garza."
"Is this popular at parties?"
"A riot on Cell Block Six."
"Then please, enlighten me."
"One, you manipulate people. Sometimes for their own good, but always to your advantage." He sopped a piece of toast in a remaining bit of peach jam and ate it, watching her reaction. She kept her face bland, but felt the barb sink unpleasantly deep. "Two, you use your looks as deception. You look warm and girly and elegant, but I'll bet you can hand most guys their asses in a fight."
He was right again, of course. She didn't allow herself to blink. "And three?"
"How am I doing so far?"
"We'll see. And three?"
He shrugged. "You're lonely."
She laughed out loud. "Excuse me?"
"You heard."
"Hardly!"
"I didn't say you don't get attention; every guy in here has checked you out at least once, and half the women, too. I said you were lonely. A woman as beautiful as you is nothing but lonely. Even when you're with somebody, you're wondering if they're into you or the glossy package, and sweetheart, just from the fifteen -- no, make that sixteen -- hours that we've been talking, I can tell you that you're high on the paranoid scale anyway. So the point is, you don't let anybody close these days."
It hit hard, under the armor, right in a soft place she didn't know she had. Years of dealing with a string of men who'd professed love and delivered obsession. Years of mistrusting and holding back and staying cool.
For a second, she hated those blue-diamond eyes, hard and bright and beautiful, seeing everything.
Lucia forced herself to take a measured sip of her tea, and smile. "You've studied FACS."
"FACS?"
"Facial Action Coding System. They teach it at Quantico, among other places. You were watching for micro-reactions in my face."
"You just turned the spotlight back on me."
"Yes. You're wrong, incidentally. I'm not lonely. Far from it."
He gave her a slow smile. "That tells me something else about you. You think you're a good liar. And hey, for most people, you are."
"Do you make a habit of insulting people who do you good turns?"
"Yeah, usually they want something. Speaking of that, what is it you want?"
Once again, he caught her off guard. "Me? I'm only here out of courtesy."
"Courtesy?"
"It has something to do with manners. Perhaps you've heard of it."
"Sorry, not exactly popular where I've been." She'd struck a nerve; she could see it in the subtle reactions of his face. She'd recognized what he was doing because she'd been trained in it herself. It was a useful skill. Not infallible, but highly reliable. "You just came in Jazz's place, is that it? Second string?"
She took the insult without comment or reaction. "I want her to be safe, yes."
"What about you? Aren't you in just as much danger, if the two of you are supposed to be partners?"
It was an excellent question, and one to which she didn't have an answer. They were working for the Cross Society, but she had only the vaguest hints as to who those people were, and how they operated; for all she knew, the danger that Jazz had run into head-on had come, not from an outside enemy, but from someone inside of the Cross Society organization.
She'd seen cut-throat competition inside of nonprofit organizations, but this certain must be a new record, if her instincts were correct.
In any case, whether it was the Cross Society or -- as their mysterious benefactors insisted -- the rival Eidolon Corporation who'd taken such a deadly interest, they hadn't sent soldiers after Lucia specifically; she'd only been in the vicinity. Jazz was the target. Then again, the enemy didn't seem prone to doing gentlemanly things like firing warning shots.
Lucia wondered if McCarthy had deduced why she'd taken a table at the back of the restaurant, in a protected corner that had no direct view from the windows.
She'd also been ceaselessly vigilant for any hint of trouble, hyper-aware of movements in her peripheral vision. The only trouble she'd identified so far was an overdose of cholesterol that was surely going to spell trouble for McCarthy's arteries in the future.
She let him see her confidence, embodied in a slow smile. "I think I'm safe enough," she said. "Why? Are you volunteering as a bodyguard?"
"Well," McCarthy said, "I do need a job. Prospects coming out of the Big House aren't good, unless you're into loading trucks, making French fries, or beating up people for a living." It was said lightly, but she heard the ring of truth in it. There was a certain grimness in his eyes, the set of his mouth, as he finished his coffee in a long sip. "Okay, the truth. I've got a hundred dollars in my pocket right now, my apartment's long gone, and the KCPD wouldn't have me back even as a janitor. So yeah, I wouldn't kick a little work to the curb. Bodyguard, investigator, whatever. If you need it."
"Your job prospects aren't any worse than for anyone else walking out of jail."
"Since my job used to be a police officer, yeah, I think they kind of are. Look, I never deserved to be there in the first place. I lost two years of my life to this crap." He'd gone intense again, head inclined toward her, voice urgent. "I don't even know where I'm going after breakfast. You know how that feels?"
She did, but it didn't seem the time to tell him so. "You begin your life again. That's what people do, Mr. McCarthy. Start over. Reinvent themselves. Become someone new and, hopefully, better."
Something went chilly in his eyes. "Nothing wrong with who I am right now."
"Isn't there?" She raised her eyebrows slowly. "Are you sure?"
She accepted the leather folio containing the check from the waiter. McCarthy gestured for her to hand it over.
"I already said I was paying," she said. "Remember?"
"That was before you pissed me off. Now I'm paying."
"Don't be ridiculous," she said, and pulled her wallet from her black leather purse, the one that was specially reinforced to hold her containers of mace, clips for her gun, a six-inch collapsible truncheon, handcuffs, and -- sometimes, but not today -- a taser. "You'll have a hard enough time without worrying about picking up the check for me at Raphael's."
"Then I'll owe you. And pay you back."
"Without a doubt. This isn't a date. And I'm not some prison groupie." Ouch. She really hadn't meant it to be so harsh. He'd pushed a button -- she hardly even knew which one -- and she'd responded in kind. Or unkind.
He was staring at her, hands on the clean white tablecloth. Just ... watching. As if he knew that last part had been, in some small measure, a lie, because she had found him attractive. Did find him attractive.
And yes, this had been a date, hadn't it? Unorthodox as that might be ...
She handed the folio to the waiter, who whisked it off so quickly his apron fluttered. Probably afraid that Ben McCarthy, who was looking more than a little feral in his cheap coat and ragged haircut, might come after him and wrestle him to the ground for it.
As she watched the waiter depart, she said, "Allow me to make some insightful comments about you, Mr. McCarthy -- "
"Just Ben," he said. "This mister/miss crap is getting old."
"Fine. Ben. You are tough, clever, and you're probably the single best liar I've ever seen in all of my life. And believe me, Ben, I've probably seen almost as many as you have."
Her turn to score a hit; she saw him blink, saw the prison-hard Ben McCarthy waver for a second to reveal someone far less armored.
"Why do you say that?" he asked.
"Because Jazz never believed you were guilty of anything," she said, "and you were, weren't you? Just not of murder. She's incredibly sharp, and you had her completely snowed for years. Do you have any idea how much that hurt her, by the way?"
He stared at her for so long that she felt uncomfortable. Whatever was going on in his head, none of it was showing in his face.
"Yeah," he finally said. "I know. And you're right. I'm a son of a bitch."
"Have you changed? Has prison reformed you?"
He gave her a small, cynical smile. "Sure. Doesn't it reform everybody?"
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