Unmanned by Lois Greiman Read Free Book Online Page A

ludicrous, weeklong sex. But my mind…What did
I
want? Shouldn’t I want more? Shouldn’t I
demand
more? Intimacy. Honesty. Security.
    From Rivera?
    The idea was almost laughable. The dark lieutenant was one bone-through-the-nose short of being a club-carrying Neanderthal. And yet, sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to watch him sleep beside me at night. To wake up with him on Sunday morning. To discuss politics and history and why small dogs make twice as much noise as big dogs.
    It was stupid, of course. Because Rivera wasn’t that kind of guy. I’d known it even before he’d made my endocrine system sizzle, had seen it on his face a hundred times. The most I could hope for from him was a seven-day orgy.
    Holy shit.
    I thought about that and squirmed on the Porsche’s leather seat as I merged onto the 2, heading south. I hadn’t planned on going to work, but as it turned out, the Magnificent Mandy hadn’t actually canceled all my appointments. In fact, she’d only called one client before becoming distracted, possibly by a laser pen or a ball of string.
    Micky Goldenstone was a couple of minutes late when he stepped into my office nearly an hour later. I’d been counseling him for fewer than six months, and I admit that the first time I saw him I was a little taken aback. He stood just over five-nine in his Nikes, was as black as an eight ball, with short cropped hair and eyes that spoke of a darkness I could only just imagine. Upon first impression, I thought he might be one of the Hell’s Angels’ brightest, but as it turned out, he taught fifth grade at Plainview Elementary in Tujunga.
    It had taken me two weeks to learn he had also been a prison guard at Folsom. It had taken me eight to find out he’d been neglected by his mother and abused by her boyfriend. He’d left D.C. long ago and had kept the past hidden away for most of a lifetime. There’s some sort of ungodly guilt associated with domestic abuse. Some kind of guilt that is harder than hell to purge. He had seen a psychiatrist in the past, but only for a short time, maybe because he hadn’t been ready.
    But he seemed ready now. In fact, we had become friends of sorts. He’d even offered to slip me cigarettes if I was ever a guest of the California penal system. Apparently, he had some clout. The way things were going, it was good to know, but today he seemed a little tense, a little sad. I prodded gently.
    “How is work going? Last time we spoke you indicated you were concerned about anger issues where your students were concerned.”
    He sighed. Leaned back against the couch cushions. “Fifth-graders.” He looked introspective, inhaled deeply, flaring his nostrils. “Makes me wonder why Grams let me live past middle school.”
    The way he’d explained it, Grams was the reason he
had
survived. She’d taken him in after his mother had overdosed for the third time. Taken him despite a myriad of protests, governmental and familial. “Do you have reason to believe she resented your presence in her life?”
    He stared at me a moment, then laughed, but the sound was coarse. He glanced out the window. “I threatened her with a switchblade once. Did I tell you that?”
    I didn’t answer. It wasn’t unusual for him to leap right into the fray, to slap my sensibilities aside and leave me mentally gasping.
    “I wanted to shoot hoops with the boys…” He paused. “‘The hoodlums,’ as she called them.” A glimmer of a smile appeared. I watched. He looked a little like Don Cheadle to me, but had a dark, damaged demeanor I couldn’t quite explain or condone.
    “
Were
they hoodlums?”
    “We were all hoodlums. Hoodlums or worse.” There was sorrow again in his soul-tortured eyes. Another careful breath. “They called me ‘Pit Bull.’ Or ‘Bull.’”
    “They?”
    He looked as if he hadn’t heard me. “Shi’s dead now.
    Terrence is doing life. And Cole…Haven’t heard from him in years. Could be he made