I pulled her close, biting her ear and slobbering on her neck. "I'm a player, baby." I put a hand in the middle of her back and went to it like I knew I could. She matched me stroke for stroke.

"You're an ex-employee," she said softly, "but I can show you how to be set."

We kept banging, my crank-powered endurance making it seem like I could go all night. "I've been workin' out every goddamn day." We kissed, our tongues locking and separating with force.

"Even if you could get a slot, Weems will block any attempt you make ever to play ball again." She reared back as we both began to sweat. She came forward again, burying my head between her breasts. She must have taken hold of the latch, because the seat flipped up as she pulled me into a sitting position, then we reared back again.

The windows were clouded over and we kept at it. I wondered if some square was spying on us outside, and it made me more excited. Soon I came and shuddered to a halt. She stayed on me, which I hate. But I figured this was the first time, I could be gracious. I was exhausted, like after that game against the Dolphins in 105 degree heat and matching humidity

"Who else do you know that has money, real money, that if it goes missing he can't report it to the police?" She squirmed and reached her hand down between us.

"Woman, you got to stop talkin' crazy" I didn't know what this broad was up to, but it made something tickle in the back of my head.

"Shit," she snorted, getting off me. "You're scared."

I shook a finger at her. "I think you been playin' around Stadanko so long, you think you can be like him. He's straight mobbed up, you understand. We fuck with him, his buddies with the funny names will chop off our fingers and make us watch as they feed them to their pit bulls."

She wasn't listening to me. She was busy with her finger inside her panties. I watched as she wiggled and moaned and got herself off. Then she put her finger on my lips. "Be brave."

"Be cool, Wilma." I knocked her hand away, getting heated from anger, not from sex. "Just 'cause you alibied me don't mean you can clown me."

"You're clownin' yourself, Zelmont. You won't admit you're not going to get back into pro ball. And no club will let you coach for them either. It's in front of your eyes, but you refuse to see." She sat up, looking at me directly "I'm talking about millions, Zelmont. Untraceable millions in cash."

I started putting on my clothes. "We gonna knock over Stadanko's safe in his office, Wilma? Or maybe he keeps the ducats at his pad out there in the Palisades. Then what? Keep running for the rest of our lives?"

"You're used to running," she cracked in a nasty tone.

"You got a mouth on you." I got my pants zipped up.

"I got eyes too, Zelmont. Stadanko hired my firm because he knew Brad, our senior partner. He brought in Brad a few years back when he was in trouble over campaign financing. After we negotiated the Barons deal Stadanko was going to cut us loose, but I convinced him having a woman of color as the team's lawyer would be good for his image and deflect criticism."

I had to get out of there. "History was always boring to me, Wilma."

"Stop thinking small, Zelmont." She talked to me like I was a child. "We can do it so the U.S. Attorney General comes down on that goof Stadanko while we make off with his goods. And Chekka and his Little Hand punks will run and hide if the feds show up."

I couldn't get what she was talking about. How in the hell were we going to rip off Stadanko? "He keeps all his millions laying around, huh?"

She got impatient again and popped my bare chest with the back of her hand. "Of course not. But it won't be hard to figure out where he hides it. He's a peasant at heart. Stadanko may have a hands-off excuse the pun relationship with his cousin, but as you'd say, he must know where the Benjamins are kept." Her top lip curled up like a wolf's and I got a tingling in my spine.

"We got to be cool," I said.

"No, you be cool. Go home and soak your hip in liniment so you can get up tomorrow and do your road work, old man."

I gave her a little shove to let her know I was nobody's chump. Then I shook a finger at her. "Ease up, Wilma."

"Oooh, so tough. That how it got out of hand with Davida? She challenge your bad-boy 'tude one time too often? That why you had to choke her and it got out of hand." She laughed, but not happy-like.

"Whatever it is you're sellin', you're crazy if"

"Get the fuck out of my car," she said, cutting me off.

"When I'm ready, bitch."

"Get out, or your little mixed-race pal will hear how you threatened me with rape and murder. It won't take much for him to believe that about you."

I felt like knocking her ass around for giving me that looking down stare. Sitting there only in her panties, she still seemed like she was queen of the city. But I kept my hands to myself, 'cause she was a lawyer and about as tame as a shark on a leash. I got my shit and booked for my ride several floors down.

Back at the pad I had some V.S.O.P. and tried to put what she said out of my head. I was going to make a comeback. I was going to sacrifice, work hard, and get a slot on the Barons. I'd been playing football one way or the other since I was nine and my uncle slapped me for crying after I got tackled for the first time in Pop Warner. Uncle Nate was an asshole, but he taught me one thing: if you want something, ain't nobody going to get it for you unless you get it yourself. And once you got it, make goddamn sure you hold onto it.

Chapter 5

All morning I'd been ducking the call. She'd left a message last night when I'd got back, but I knew I wasn't going to return it too soon. Before I was up she'd called again around 7 and again after 8 as I rolled over. My head was pounding and my muscles ached. The hip, though, felt good. I got my workout clothes on, including a rubber top to bring on the sweat. I drove over to the Canyon, and after warming up with some calf extensions I hit the hill. By the time I got to the top, my hangover was damn near burned off, and the hip only throbbed a little.

As I stood getting my breath, in my head I could hear the first message Davida's mother had left on my machine. Her English had never been too good, and it was worse now 'cause she was all broken up.

"Zelmont," she'd said, and I could tell she'd been crying. "Zelmont, tell me what has happened to my favorecida. Zelmont," she pleaded, "diga me."

Her favorite, Davida had told me. Alicia, her mother, had four kids, three husbands. Two were boys and had been in trouble from day one, growing up in the Pico Aliso projects in East Los. Mario was a glue-sniffing punk who'd been kicked out after she caught him bungholing his boyfriend in a maintenance shed when he was in high school. The other one, Rey, was a stone knucklehead who ran with some gang, a bunch of punks under the protection of La Familia, the Mexican Mafia. Right now he was doing a dime in Corcoran for some bullshit or another. Her sister Isabel, who knew how to fill out a dress, had been the only one to turn out normal.

Davida may have been nothing more than a glorified pom-pom girl, but by her mother's standards she'd done something with her life. Moms wasn't too crazy about her going around with a brother, especially one with my record, but she figured I was better than some of the others her daughter had been with. Alicia had to settle for not much her whole life. But Davida had put it in her mom's head she'd get her out of the projects once she got that Top 40 hit. Hell, she believed it too.

There was a mist hanging on the hills, and I couldn't see my house. Like the fog was a wall, a warning that if I didn't get some real money soon, the house would always be lost to me. I jogged down the hill, my upper body sweating inside the rubber top. For some reason, I still felt a chill.