Read Online 4 - Stranger Room: Ike Schwartz Mystery 4 by Frederick Ramsay - Free Book Online Page A

cultures, and something like a new enlightenment emerging. But bad cuisine is bad cuisine, irrespective of whatever higher calling one may have, and the townspeople were not about to pay four times the minimum hourly wage for rubbery baked chicken even if it was called “cocoa van . ”
    Karl paused and looked up.“What’s up with you, Sam?”
    “Up? Nothing’s up with me.”
    Did she sound short? She didn’t mean to. She forked through the greenish tangle on her plate. The menu had called it épinard en crème and that sounded good. It wasn’t. Spinach, creamed or otherwise, never rated very high on her vegetable hit parade. She felt cheated. She grew up in a part of the country where meals consisted of meat, broiled, boiled, or roasted, and starches, always boiled. Green things were a dietary obligation usually ignored. She put her fork down and planned dessert. Chez François might be a bust at anything except roast beef, but M. Francois did do desserts.
    “You look, like, faraway or something.”
    “Oh. I’m sorry. It’s just…I really don’t like spinach…and, um…when is your hearing?”
    The hearing was, in fact, what was up with Sam. For the last three and a half months, Karl had been on temporary assignment in Picketsville. She feared he might be just a temporary assignment to her as well. And that could change soon. If the board cleared him, he might be heading back to DC. That would mean, at best, a return to the commuter relationship they’d had before the big blow-up with his boss. That would be a step backward. And he might be transferred to almost anywhere, and that seemed more likely, given the circumstances.
    “I should know in a week or so,” he said, and sipped his wine. The label featured a frog and the words Jeremiah. “Nice wine.”
    The room seemed warm, close. She could almost smell fermented grapes. Wine made her sneeze and she was afraid she would do so at any moment.
    “Is going back so important?”
    He looked at her. A deep V formed between his eyes.
    “Sam, all I’ve ever wanted was the FBI. Other kids in my neighborhood were heading to the carwash or jail, but not me. I worked. I studied. I hoped I would find a way. The lucky ones, like me, who could play a sport, got their ticket out of the neighborhood.”
    “You played basketball at college, I know, but…”
    “It was my ticket out. There were kids in my neighborhood who were better than me, you know? They could sink a three pointer from outside the line with their eyes closed, but they stayed back.”
    “If they were that good…”
    “Good at b-ball. Not good at life. They couldn’t get past all the stuff out there, petty crime, and gangs. I could have been part of it, you know. It was there—the drugs, the scams, the players, and the easy money.”
    “But not you.”
    “No, not me. If you have a record, most coaches won’t recruit you. I say most. There are still some real felons in schools, here and there, but coaches won’t take a chance any more. Too many ‘spoiled athlete’ stories in the news. Too many brushes with the law, rapes, robberies, bribes, DUI, you know. But, like I said, FBI is all I ever wanted.” He mopped a crust of bread through the dark sauce on his plate and bit off an end.
    “Those guys I played ball with? They went to class only often enough to get by, to stay eligible. They spent their time on the hardboards shooting, passing, dribbling, and more shooting, getting ready to be drafted by the NBA. Some of them were at the university for six or seven years. As long as they had some eligibility left, they stayed and played, hoping some NBA scout would catch their act, so to speak. I was in the books, not shooting threes, shooting for A’s. FBI is tough. They don’t take dummies in the Bureau.”
    “No, of course not. Were you drafted?”
    “Me? No, no way. I was in class or in the library, not working on my hook shot, not shooting one hundred foul shots a day. No, I played just