Heâd have killed for a beer. A big, frosty mug filled with some dark import that would go down smoother than a womanâs first kiss. A beer in some nice, dim, cool bar, with a ball game on the tube and a few other stool-sitters who had an interest in the game gathered around.
While he staked out the womanâs apartment, Jack Dakota passed the time fantasizing about it.
The foamy head, the yeasty smell, the first gulping swallow to beat the heat and slake the thirst. Then the slow savoring, sip by sip, that assured a man all would be right with the world if only politicians and lawyers would debate the inevitable conflicts over a cold one at a local pub while a batter faced a count of three and two.
It was a bit early for drinking, at just past one in the afternoon, but the heat was so huge, so intense and the cooler full of canned sodas just didnât have quite the same punch as a cold, foamy beer.
His ancient Oldsmobile didnât run to amenities like air-conditioning. In fact, its amenities were pathetically few, except for the pricey, earsplitting stereo heâd installed in the peeling faux-leather dash. The stereo was worth about double the blue book on the car, but a man had to have music. When he was on the road, he enjoyed turning it up to scream and belting them out with the Beatles or the Stones.
The muscle-flexing V-8 engine under the dented gutter-gray hood was tuned as meticulously as a Swiss watch, and got Jack where he wanted to go, fast. Just now the engine was at rest, and as a concession to the quiet neighborhood in northwest Washington, D.C., he had the CD player on murmur while he hummed along with Bonnie Raitt.
She was one of his rare bows to music after 1975.
Jack often thought heâd been born out of his own time. He figured heâd have made a pretty good knight. A black one. He liked the straightforward philosophy of might for right. Heâd have stood with Arthur, he mused, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. But heâd have handled Camelotâs business his own way. Rules complicated things.
Heâd have enjoyed riding the West, too. Hunting down desperadoes without all the nonsense of paperwork. Just track âem down and bring âem in.
Dead or alive.
These days, the bad guys hired a lawyer, or the state gave them one, and the courts ended up apologizing to them for the inconvenience.
Weâre terribly sorry, sir. Just because you raped, robbed and murdered is no excuse for infringing on your time and civil rights.
It was a sad state of affairs.
And it was one of the reasons Jack Dakota hadnât gone into police work, though heâd toyed with the idea during his early twenties. Justice meant something to him, always had. But he didnât see much justice in rules and regulations.
Which was why, at thirty, Jack Dakota was a bounty hunter.
You still hunted down the bad guys, but you worked your own hours and got paid for a job and didnât answer to a lot of bureaucratic garbage.
There were still rules, but a smart man knew how to work around them. Jack had always been smart.
He had the papers on his current quarry in his pocket. Ralph Finkleman had called him at eight that morning with the tag. Now, Ralph was a worrier and an optimistâa combination, Jack thought, that must be a job requirement for a bail bondsman. Personally, Jack could never understand the concept of lending money to complete strangersâstrangers who, since they needed bond, had already proved themselves unreliable.
But there was money in it, and money was enough motivation for most anything, he supposed.
Jack had just come back from tracing a skip to North Carolina, and had made Ralph pitifully grateful when he hauled in the dumb-as-a-post country boy whoâd tried to make his fortune robbing convenience stores. Ralph had put up the bondâclaimed heâd figured the kid was too stupid to run.
Jack could have told him, straight off, that the kid was too stupid not to run.
But he wasnât being paid to offer advice.
Jack had planned to relax for a few days, maybe take in a few games at Camden Yards, pick one of his female acquaintances to help him enjoy spending his fee. Heâd nearly turned Ralph down, but the guy had been so whiny, so full of pleas, he didnât have the heart.