The House of Wolves (House of Wolves #1)(88)

The crowd was standing and cheering then. At the last moment, before the cart disappeared back into the tunnel, Billy McGee managed to lift his hand into the air before it dropped back to his side.

Then he was gone.





One Hundred Four



I DROVE AROUND FOR a long time after I finally left the stadium, not listening to any of the sports stations as the hosts recapped the game, not listening to music.

Not listening to anything.

I even stopped by Hunters Point High School, got out and walked on the field, trying to remember what it had been like, trying to recapture the feeling I’d had the day my Bears had beaten Basin Park to win the championship, the kids acting as if they’d won the championship of the whole world.

I didn’t decide where I was going when I was back in the car until I was almost all the way there, as if I owned one of those self-driving cars and it had programmed itself.

When I’d finally made my way down to the parking lot after the game, all the traffic gone by then, even my brother Danny long gone, I’d only thought about going home, being alone there just because I was tired of being alone in the suite after Danny left.

Then I wasn’t on my way home.

It just happened.

The way a lot of things just happened, starting last night, when I’d opened the door and there Billy McGee had been, drunk out of his mind.

If Detective Ben Cantor was surprised to see me when he opened his front door, he hid it pretty well.

“I was just wondering if you’re a fan of the local football team.”

He smiled.

I thought: Still a good smile.

Dammit.

“As a matter of fact, I do check in on them from time to time around my busy work schedule. Especially this late in the season.”

“Well,” I said to him, holding up the bottle of red wine I’d brought with me from Danny’s suite, “it turns out they won a pretty big game tonight.”

“Speaking both as a member of the law enforcement community and as a die-hard Wolves fan,” Cantor said, “it seems to me that it would be practically criminal for you to even attempt to celebrate something like that alone.”

Then he smiled again and said, “Would you like to come in and celebrate with me?”

“I would.”

When we were inside Cantor opened the wine and poured. We were sitting on his couch by then. I could hear jazz coming from two speakers in the corners. It occurred to me that this was the first time I had actually made it through the front door. Previously, that was as far as we’d gone.

In all ways.

Cantor raised a glass.

“To the Wolves.”

“To the Wolves,” I said, before adding a toast I used to hear sometimes from my father.

“Here’s to them, and screw everybody else.”

I told Cantor then about Billy McGee and the condition he’d been in when he showed up at my front door the night before and how it was a minor miracle that he’d gotten on the field at all.

“You want to keep talking about football?”

“Not so much, now that I think about it.”

“Same.”

“I’m glad I came.”

“Not nearly as glad as I am,” Ben Cantor said.

I curled my legs underneath me and turned so I was facing him on the couch.

“I’m sorry for the way I acted at dinner that night.”

“So am I.”

“But I was the one acting defensive. And treating you like one of the people coming after me.”

“I have been after you,” he said, smiling again. “Just not as an intrepid crime fighter.”

“I am sorry,” I said. “I’ve become so conditioned to acting like a tough guy that I didn’t know when to turn it off. And let’s just say that in the years since my divorce, I haven’t exactly specialized in successful relationships.”

I paused and took another sip of wine. “You were just doing your job.”

“Not as artfully as I might’ve wished,” Cantor said.

“I wasn’t sure you’d invite me in.”

“Then you’re never going to make detective, Ms. Wolf, are you?”

We both laughed then. It felt good. But then it had been a good night, ever since Chase Charles shocked the world and probably himself most of all by coming off the bench to complete three straight passes after Billy McGee got hurt, the last one a sweet throw to Calvin Robeson in the back of the end zone that put the Wolves back in the playoffs.

“I’m still sort of on probation with my bosses,” Cantor said. “They don’t like that kind of publicity. Meaning the kind they got because of those pictures of us.”

I grinned. “I’m still on probation with the other owners. Who absolutely hate the kind of publicity I’ve been giving them.”

“They’ll get over it.”

“You sure?”

The music had stopped. I noticed that both our glasses were empty. Somehow Cantor had covered the distance between us on the sofa. I might not have been much of a detective in his eyes.

But I had picked up on that.

“You sure about this?” he said now.

“This?”

“Us.”

“We have a saying in the Wolf family that I might not have mentioned to you before.”