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“No,” Mack grunted again. “Look, I'm busy.”
“Oh, yeah, sure.” Tim turned to leave but popped his head back. “Listen, Mack. My older sister is visiting me… she's thirty-eight…my parents had me late …I was a surprise. Anyway. Shelia, my sis. Single, and a real pretty woman. A little on the chubby side, but still—”
“No,” Mack told Tim in a hard tone.
Tim sighed.
“Yeah, I kind of figured. Never hurts to ask, though.“Well, I'll see you later, good buddy,” he said, forcing a smile to his face. “Keep up the good work.”
Mack watched Tim leave his office and then shook his head. “A kid from Oklahoma working as a cop in New York. He'll get broken real quick. He'll—” The gray phone on his desk rang. “Detective Abernathy.”
“You're sitting at your desk wearing a wrinkled up black suit, right?”
Mack grinned after hearing her voice.
“Right, Brenda.” He glanced down at a cheap black suit that he always wore. The suit was worn down, and tattered and torn from street fights. “What’s happening?”
Brenda gulped down a glass of orange juice as a piece of toast popped out of the toaster.
“On my way to the office,” she explained, catching the toast. “Director Summers called. He wants to have a meeting.”
“In other words he's going to push you into a corner and give you two choices: Protect the criminals or lose your job.”
“Yeah, that's the feeling I get,” Brenda nodded her head as her eyes surveyed her small, neatly organized kitchen. “We're getting older, Mack. We have different problems now. Seems like yesterday when we first met.”
“I remember,” Mack answered in a quiet voice, feeling his memories walk back through time.
“I was down and out,” Brenda confessed, buttering her toast. “I managed to stay alive, Mack, and fought my way through a deadly night. But did I really come out okay?”
“You're doing better than okay, Brenda.”
“Yeah, sure. I've got my gambling problem under control but other than that… I don't know, Mack? Lately I've been feeling… pretty useless. I saw a play a few days ago, but I just ended up wondering why bother with anything,” Brenda sat down at her small round wooden kitchen table.
Mack usually backed away when a friend pressed their personal life on him, but Brenda was different. “We can't change what is done, Brenda. All we can do is keep taking one day… one bullet… one tear … one funeral… one birth… one life… at a time.”
“Yeah, but—” Brenda heard someone knock on the front door of her apartment.
“Hey, Mack. I have a visitor. I'll call you back.” Brenda tos
sed down her cell phone, checked the dark blue suit she was wearing, and glanced at the time. She trudged from the kitchen to an equally small living room with a simple brown couch, a writing desk and a sitting chair; no television or nice decorations.
“Who is it?”
“Summers,” a hard voice answered.
Brenda stared at the front door of her apartment for a few seconds. There is no way Curanto is that fast.
“Director,” Brenda said in a professional voice as she opened the door. “I thought our meeting was to take place in your office.”
A tall, skinny man brushed past Brenda.
“Look, Brenda.” Brent Summers spoke in an angry voice, his black coat damp with melting snow. “You need to cool the cowboy stuff.”
“Cowboy stuff?” Brenda questioned, closing the door.
Brent spun around and aimed a hard finger at Brenda.
“You know what I mean. You can't mess with Joey Curanto. This isn't the old days. Curanto is a powerful man, and he's connected to some powerful people. Do you understand?”
