LITMIR.BIZ

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of the Los Angeles Police Department and currently a commando working out of Stony Man Farm—an ultra-covert intelligence agency nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains—he believed in action, truth and just the facts. But, he had to admit, bumping into another cop he had partnered with for more than a year in a police department clear on the other side of the country—a man he hadn’t seen, heard from nor thought about in well over a decade—was on the hinky side of coincidence.

      But there Jim Evans had been, seconds away from either getting bounced on his ear out of the bar or breaking the joint up with collateral damage to doormen and patrons, a guest stint in a D.C. jail with the kind of unsavory characters he loathed, had busted up and feared his daughter falling into league—or bed—with. Bizarre fluke or some guiding cosmic hand, Lyons couldn’t help but wonder, just the same, about the events leading up to the chance encounter.

      After three days decompressing from the latest mission, Lyons had rounded up the other two-thirds of Able Team for a quick getaway until duty called again. Restless, feeling confined at Stony Man Farm in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, Lyons, the leader of Able Team, had piled the three of them into the oversize War Wagon—which wasn’t supposed to leave the Farm’s premises for a mere joyride—then driven them to the Key Bridge Marriott where he’d paid for a penthouse suite for a week. Still restless, tired of watching Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz and Rosario Blancanales enthralling themselves with the same movies on cable or playing computer games until he was sure they were bug-eyed, he had set out by himself for a few belts and beers, a tour of downtown D.C. strip joints on the play-card, fantasies of getting lucky urging him on. Cheap thrills had a way of bringing trouble to Lyons, and this time out had proved no different. It had been touch-and-go back at the titty bar, wrestling Evans free of the bouncers, packing the ex-L.A. detective, drunk and belligerent, into his Lexus rental, trying to get both the story and the facts straight.

      Lyons, sensing Evans about to launch himself on the verbal rampage again, was not sure he was willing to sit through another diatribe. Judging from whiskey fumes strong enough to gag a buzzard, one cloud of cigarette smoke after another blown out in long, angry exhales, he didn’t see the man calming down anytime soon. Add the snail’s pace the Stony Man warrior was forced to keep the rental creeping through Georgetown and Lyons found his own aggravation level rising.

      He looked over at Evans, found a wrinkled, leather-faced, heavier version of the cop he’d once known. With his black Stetson, sheepskin coat and cowboy boots, Evans in his Wild West garb was damn near a circus act in a coat-and-tie Beemer and Evian town that looked down its nose at anyone who didn’t fit the yuppie and PC parameters. Then again, Lyons, with his knee-length black leather trench coat, aloha shirt alive and flaming with palm trees, flamingos and scantily clad island girls, with white slacks and alligator shoes… Well, he knew he didn’t have much room to judge the fashion show. In fact, he recalled one of the musclebound punks with an earpiece back at the bar tagging him “Don Ho” and ordering him to get his buddy, Wyatt, back home to the ranch.

      Kids these days, he groused to himself, no respect for their elders.

      Evans, he recalled, hadn’t been a particularly good cop, nor a bad one, at least not the renegade he was purported by the press to be when Lyons had worked with him. There were rumors of brutality, charges of racism, L.A. media making a big stink over a couple of questionable shootings before the man had transferred to Lyons’s division. They had gone through some doors together, solved some tough cases, but Lyons had never found himself ready to cozy up to the man, on or off the job.

      He had never been able to put a finger on his feelings toward the man, supposed he was just plain mean-spirited, with or without a badge, the whole world crap, not a decent human being anywhere, a borderline bully out to control, dominate or punish. He wasn’t the kind of man Lyons would sit down with and drink a few beers, but Evans had jumped in front of a bullet for him, getting seriously wounded in the process, commendations eventually pinned on both of them.

      What was this moment supposed to mean? he wondered. Was Fate, after all, calling in a marker? Was some cosmic force urging him to extend a helping hand, if not for Evans, but for the innocent life of a young girl? Whatever the emotional quandary, it was a rare day on the planet, he figured, when just about any man’s intentions and motives were altruistic.

      So far, Lyons had the gist of why Evans had come to town. Up to a point he supposed he could understand the man’s pain and anger over a runaway child. Hadn’t he once been married? It was true, he had a son, Tommy, but he hadn’t spoken to either the ex or his boy—now fully grown—in quite a while. What was he feeling now? What was he thinking? Did he regret the path in life he’d chosen, sloughing off whatever responsibilities as a father he should have seen through? If so, why? Because it was a big bad savage world out there, after all, and his skills as a warrior were more needed for the greater good of humankind, instead of raising a family? Was he on the verge right then of doing some voyeuristic dance through another man’s broken family life? Was he thinking he could and should help Evans find his daughter, despite his true feelings for the guy?

      Lyons jostled through a bottleneck of vehicles playing bumper cars, lurched ahead as a light turned red and a few horns blared their ire at him.

      “Did you report her missing?” Lyons asked when Evans fell silent.

      “No.”

      “Why not?”

      “Hell, I was embarrassed. I didn’t want anyone to know, or think I’d failed as a father. Judy, even though she’s not Deirdre’s real mother, somehow found plenty of ways to want to blame me, but that’s another stinger to pull out of my hide at some point. Didn’t come right out and say it, but she had her way of telling me she’s my problem, I deal with it. How do you like that?”

      Another marriage made in hell, Lyons thought. “Seems you picked up the trail pretty quick.”

      “She left with an older girl, a Susan Barker. I heard she’d been hanging around with her. Susie’s something of the town good-time girl, nice way of saying she’s just a whore. I own a bar—maybe I told you that—and I hear things. One rumor led to another. I had a talk with this girl’s sometime boyfriend.”

      “And a little chat with the boyfriend pointed you east to this fair city?”

      “Let’s just say I got a few answers the old-fashioned way. And, my daughter absconded with a couple of my credit cards. Easy enough to track them both to a motel here—the bills started coming in—but Susie’s sometime squeeze filled in a few blanks about their little jaunt to D.C. Seemed Susie filled Deirdre’s head with a lot of nonsense about how they could make it big here, she had friends in the area, some kind of big shots in the entertainment business. I already had my head crammed with visions of pure assholes she’d come here and get scammed by, or worse. Only I get the impression it was something more than just…stripping for a bunch of assholes who oughta be home with their wives and kids. Just today I found Susie holed up in some crack motel up New York Avenue, staked it out, followed Susie to work, where you found me. She goes by the name of Candy. Get this. Walk in, like a regular asshole, I see my daughter’s picture on the wall in this dump, goes by Dee-Dee. The bastards—no better than pimps—had her all dolled up in some cowgirl outfit.”

      “Did you, uh, run into your daughter back there?”

      Evans scowled. “No. I was told she was off tonight.”

      “I got the impression you were making a hard pitch.”

      “Yeah, like telling the manager he’s got a sixteen-year-old girl taking her clothes off in his place, and if he didn’t want the cops shutting him down or my fist doing a rectal probe, he’d better tell me where my daughter was. That’s where you entered the picture.”

      Lyons cleared his throat, already knew the reaction he’d get when he dropped the bomb. “I have to ask, Jim. Are you leaving anything out?”

      “Such as?” Evans growled.

      “Kids run away from home for a reason.”

      “Why don’t you just come out and ask it, Carl, instead of

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