Fugitive Nights(14)

"If you know all that what do you want me to do?"

"I want you to take a picture of him having sex with the other woman."

"Another other woman?"

"No," she said, and Lynn Cutter would've been disappointed to see that she chewed gum with her mouth open. "The only other woman. Me."

"You want a photo of you two having sex?"

"Yes. A secret photo. Real explicit. Without him knowing."

"What for?"

"So I can send it to his wife and show her what a bastard he is."

"You wanna punish him, that it?"

"No. I wanna marry him. I wanna make her dump him. He broke up my engagement to another guy by making me fall in love with him. I'll tell him my old boyfriend musta hired somebody to take the secret picture."

"I'm sorry, I don't do that kind of work."

"Why not?"

"Too complicated."

"Okay, if you did it what would you charge?"

"I wouldn't do it for any amount of money."

Suddenly, the young woman dropped her demure little voice. "Well, no shit! A keyhole-peeper with scruples!"

Lynn could hear Breda raise her voice then, and he heard the shapely young woman raise hers right back.

When the young woman came storming out, she said to Breda, "I got two words for you, a verb and a noun: Fuck you!" Then she was gone.

Lynn looked at Breda, who stared at him through her Yuppie strawberry eyeglasses with that irritating grin. "It's a pronoun," Breda said. "What is?"

"You. As in . . . fuck . . . you."

"Your lenses're fogging," Lynn said. "My musk glands must be overactive."



Chapter 4

Until she was driving home that afternoon Breda Burrows hadn't realized how stressful the day had been. It wasn't the Clive Devon case; she'd work that out or she wouldn't, and either way the money was too good to pass up. Her stress was caused by having to work with a man for the first time since she'd retired from police work.

A few of her old police academy classmates had warned her that after she retired she might spend months remembering nothing but the good times and then months remembering all the bad times. Maybe meeting that smart-mouth Lynn Cutter had started the bad-time memories.

Breda had been one of the female officers chosen to work uniform patrol when the LAPD first started putting women out on the street in radio cars. By the time she'd retired in June of 1990 things were a lot better for female officers, even though the younger women complained that not much had changed.

Breda knew better. When she was a young officer on patrol, women couldn't complain.

It was considered amusing in those days for male cops to stand around grinning like baboons and watch a female bust her bra trying to wrestle a semiconscious wino from the police car to the drunk tank. And more than once she'd found herself put in a dark and terrifying place, all alone, wondering if they'd left her out there on purpose. Sometimes she'd worried that they wouldn't back her up the way they would a man, until she'd proved she had the moxie of a man.

Proving themselves once was never enough; the women had to prove themselves time and again. If a male recruit made a mistake during his probationary period he was a callow lad who needed seasoning. If a woman made the same mistake she was a useless bimbo who should be fired on the spot. Every woman who went through the rigors of recruit training in those days learned soon after graduation that their troubles had just begun.

Even so, she'd been proud of her badge and had made friends she couldn't seem to duplicate in civilian life. At least when male and female cops were out on the streets-sometimes with personalities as compatible as Gorbachev and Yelstin-each would literally lay it on the line for the other if one's safety depended on it. That kind of experience never happened in civilian life. She missed that bond.

But she didn't miss the male bonding that was an important part of police life, that weenie-welding experience where every practical joke-some of them nasty-was tried on female cops. The women were coffee-talk for the boys who figured that every female cop could be had, and it was the duty of each one of the guys to prove it.

And because they were women, the females often had to become surrogate mothers or big sisters out there in the patrol units at night to all those blue-suited Rambos who temporarily traded testosterone for teddy bears, whining and whimpering about that bitch they married, or that bastard of a sergeant, or the ungrateful taxpayers. She'd heard every complaint that could be uttered by boys in blue. It seemed that the siege mentality demanded release whenever a woman was riding in a car with a man. Mommy, make it all better!

And heaven help the female officer in those days who got pregnant. Pregnant? Maternity leave? But I didn't make you pregnant, Officer. The department didn't make you pregnant.