LITMIR.BIZ

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Rory said. “It sure is a beaut of a car, Cash,” he added wistfully.

      “It is that,” Tippy remarked. “I can drive, but it’s impractical to have a car in this city,” she said, indicating the abundance of taxis buzzing up and down the streets. “Usually, when I went on modeling jobs, I didn’t have time to waste looking for parking spots. There are never enough. Cabs and subways are quicker when you’re in a rush.”

      “They are,” he agreed. He glanced down at her, fascinated by her fresh beauty that was only accentuated by the lack of makeup.

      “Where are you shooting the movie?” he asked.

      “Here in the city, mostly,” she said. “It’s a comedy with touches of a spy drama mixed in. I have to wrestle with a foreign agent in one scene, and outrun a gunman in another.” She grimaced. “We only just started filming before we broke for the holidays, and I’ve got bruises everywhere already from the fight coordinator’s choreography. I actually have to learn aikido for the film.”

      “A useful martial art,” Cash remarked. “It was one of the first forms I learned.”

      “How many do you know?” Rory asked at once. Cash shrugged. “Karate, tae kwon do, hapkido, kung fu, and a few disciplines that aren’t in the book. You never know when you’ll need to fall back on that training. It comes in handy in police work, now that I’m not stuck behind a desk all the time.”

      “Judd said you worked in Houston with the D.A.’s office,” Tippy said.

      He nodded. “I was a cybercrime expert. It wasn’t challenging enough to suit me. I like something a little less routine and structured.”

      “What do you do in Jacobsville?” Rory wanted to know. Cash chuckled. “I run from my secretaries,” he said sheepishly. “Just before I phoned your sister about coming up for the holidays, the new one quit and dumped a trash can over my head.” He made a face and touched his dark hair. “I’m still picking coffee grounds out of my hair.”

      Tippy’s green eyes widened. She stopped and looked up at Cash. She couldn’t believe he was telling the truth. She remembered how efficiently he’d stopped the assistant director on her first film from touching her when she’d objected to his familiarity.

      Rory was laughing. “Really?”

      “She wasn’t really cut out for police work,” he said. “She couldn’t talk on the phone and type at the same time, so she didn’t do much typing.”

      “Why…?” Tippy fished.

      “…did she empty a trash can on me?” he finished for her.

      “Damned if I know! I told her not to force the lock on my filing cabinet, but she wouldn’t listen. Is it my fault my baby python, Mikey, jumped out of the drawer at her? She scared him. He has a nervous condition.”

      They’d both stopped now and were staring at him.

      He sighed. “Isn’t it strange how snakes make some people nervous?” he asked philosophically.

      “You have a snake named Mikey?” Tippy exclaimed.

      “Cag Hart had an albino python that he gave to a breeder after he got married. The python’s mate had a litter of the cute little things, and I asked for one. The day he gave me Mikey, I didn’t have time to take him home so I put him in the filing cabinet, temporarily, in a little plastic aquarium with water and a limb to climb. It was working very nicely until my secretary jimmied the lock. Sadly, Mikey had escaped and was sitting on top of the files in the filing cabinet drawer.”

      “What did she do?” Rory asked.

      He scowled. “She scared the poor little thing half to death,” he muttered. “I’m sure he’s going to have psychological problems for the rest of his…”

      “Afterward!” Rory interrupted.

      His dark eyebrows rose. “After she screamed bloody murder and threw my spare handcuffs at me, you mean?”

      Tippy just stared at him, her green eyes twinkling.

      “That was when she dumped my trash can over my head. It was almost worth it. She had a spike haircut and black lipstick and nail polish, and body piercings with little silver rings all over visible space. Mikey’s slowly getting over the trauma. He’s living in my house now.”

      Tippy was laughing too hard to talk at all.

      Rory shook his head. “I almost had a snake once.”

      “What happened to it?” Cash asked.

      “She wouldn’t let me out of the pet shop with it,” Rory sighed, pointing at his sister.

      “Doesn’t like snakes, hmm?” he drawled with a wicked glance at Tippy.

      “It wasn’t because I was afraid of it, it was because he couldn’t take it to school with him and I’m not home long enough to take care of a pet. But if you really need a secretary, as soon as I finish this movie, I’ll have my nose pierced and my hair spiked, first thing,” she said, tongue in cheek.

      Cash’s perfect white teeth flashed at her. “I don’t know. Can you type and chew gum at the same time?”

      “She can’t type a word. And she is scared of snakes…” Rory began enthusiastically.

      “Stop right there,” Tippy murmured with a quick look at her brother. “And don’t you let him corrupt you,” she cautioned. “Unless you want me to tell him your fatal weakness!”

      Rory held up both hands. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. Honest.”

      She pursed her full lips. “Okay.”

      “Look! There’s the guy with the bagpipes! Give me a twenty, sis, would you?” Rory exclaimed, nodding to ward a man in a kilt standing just outside a hotel near the park with a set of bagpipes. He was playing “Amazing Grace.”

      Tippy pulled a large bill from her fanny pack and handed it to Rory. “Here you go. We’ll wait here for you,” she said with an indulgent smile.

      Cash watched him go, his eyes sliding to the bag piper. “He plays well,” Cash said.

      “Rory wants a set of bagpipes, but I doubt the commandant would be inclined to let him practice in his dorm.”

      “I agree.” Cash smiled wistfully as he listened to the haunting melody. “Is he here often?” he asked her.

      “We see him all around the neighborhood,” Tippy replied lazily. “He’s one of the nicer street people. Homeless, of course. I slip him some money whenever I have a little extra, so he’ll be able to buy a blanket or a hot cup of coffee. A lot of us around here indulge him. He has a gift, don’t you think?”

      “He does. Know anything about him?” he added, impressed by her concern for a stranger.

      “Not much. They say his whole family died, but not how or when…or even why. He doesn’t talk to people much,” she murmured, watching Rory hand him the bill and receive a faint smile for it as the piper halted for a moment. “New York is full of street people. Most of them have some talent or other, some way to make a little cash. You can see them sleeping in cardboard boxes, going through Dumpsters for odds and ends.” She shook her head. “And we’re supposed to be the richest country on earth.”

      “You’d be amazed at how people live in third world countries,” he remarked.

      She looked up at him. “I had a photo shoot in Jamaica, near Montego Bay,” she recalled. “There was a five-star hotel on a hill, with parrots in cages and a huge swimming pool and every convenience known to man. Just down the hill, a few hundred feet away, was a small village of corrugated tin houses sitting in mud, where people actually lived.”

      His dark eyes narrowed. He nodded slowly. “I’ve been to the Middle East. Many people there live in adobe

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