Free Ground Money by Rex Burns

can’t count on them, either. You’d better believe you’re out there alone. You start believing you’re not … well, that’s when you get in trouble.”
    “I know that, Gabe. But that’s the street, and this isn’t. It’s the carrying over of that attitude into our feelings for each other that’s frightening. Two minutes ago you could easily have told me to go to hell and walked out, and I wouldn’t have said a thing to stop you. Just like,” she added, “the other night. For no reason we argued and then we split and it could have stayed that way. I didn’t want it, but I was willing to let it happen.”
    “I didn’t want it either. I called you up later, didn’t I?”
    She laughed. “And gave me an ultimatum: beer or fear. I really like you, Gabe. I have fun with you—when you let yourself have fun—and you’re good to sleep with. No, don’t start acting nervous and tough; I’m not looking for a husband. I don’t even want to use the word ‘love.’ But I like you very much, and I wouldn’t want to be without you. Yet these moments come when I could shrug you off, and that’s what frightens me—I wonder if I’m becoming an isolated function instead of a person.”
    “And you think that’s what’s happened to me?”
    “Sometimes, yes.”
    Maybe it had. God knew that sounded like what Lorraine used to say in one way or another, that Wager was a cop and nothing else—and she wanted something more. “You know, one of the reasons I don’t like vacations is that when I get back, my timing’s off. It takes a couple tours to feel like I fit in again—to be able to see things with my skin as well as my eyes. What I’m trying to say is, yes, I do feel like a function, and it doesn’t bother me. What the hell, it’s what I’m paid for; it’s who I am. What I am is who I am. And when I function well, I feel good. Everything else comes second.”
    “Everything?”
    He nodded, not really wanting to say the word, but not willing to lie, either. “Yes.”
    “We’re a lot worse off than I thought.”
    “So we enjoy what we’ve got while we’ve got it.”
    It was her turn to nod as she stared at the unfinished plate on the red-and-white cloth. Then, with a shrug, she glanced at her watch. “It’s almost seven. You’ll be late.”
    “Right.” Wager signaled for the check, trying to hide the relief he felt at seeing an end to this conversation, one that forced him to poke into areas of self that he preferred to leave sleeping.
    In the parking lot, Wager held open the door to his Trans-Am for Jo. She hesitated before sliding in. “Are you sure you want to spend this vacation together? Are you sure it might not commit you to more than you’re ready for?”
    A touch of bitterness in that? Wager almost said he felt safe enough, but that sounded harsher than he meant. “We’ll see what happens,” he said. “You might decide you don’t want a damn thing to do with me.”
    “I might.”
    The first person Wager saw in the echoing lobby of District One headquarters was Police Reporter Gargan. Wager pretended to be interested in a spot on the wall back by the elevators, but there weren’t many places to hide as he crossed the expanse of brown tile floor, and Gargan called to him, trotting over from the desk sergeant’s counter, a jingle of keys and coins in his pockets.
    “Wager—wait a minute. I got some questions for you.”
    “I’ve got to be on duty in five minutes, Gargan.”
    “Won’t take that long.”
    There was something different about the reporter, and it took Wager a couple of seconds to figure it out: no black turtleneck. Because of the heat, he had traded his usual uniform for a short-sleeved shirt open at the neck and bristling at the pocket with an array of ballpoint pens. It left him looking thinner and oddly nude and vulnerable, like seeing your father in his underwear.
    “Remember the stabbing the other night? The Indian who got stabbed?”
    “I do.”
    “What