Read Online Strip Search by William Bernhardt - Free Book Online Page A

How I loved her. She was the only real family I had now, but there was a lot more to it than that. Everyone who knew her loved her. I certainly did. Which was why I finally abandoned the custody battle and left her in foster care.
    She licked a dollop of cream out of the center with a quick flick of her tongue, an Ingrid Bergmanesque-move, if Ingrid Bergman had been as lovely as my niece. “I get up this early every morning anyway. Basketball practice.”
    “Ah. Of course.”
    “City league. I was on the school team before, but since it turned out I wasn’t half bad, I thought—why not?”
    That was my girl. Well, David’s late brother’s girl, but still. Mine. Initially I had been hostile to the idea of her playing basketball, not to mention joining a youth group and a church group and everything else that was her foster parents’ idea and not mine. But they had worked wonders with her. They were sweet old folks, straight shooters. Honest as the day is long. Boring as hell. But you could see where there might be some value in that, when you’re raising a teenage girl.
    “So,” I said, as I started my second coffee. I know, I shouldn’t, but cut me some slack—it’s my last remaining addictive substance to abuse. “Anything new in little Rachel’s life?”
    “Not really.” Her head turned down, her face shrouded by her gorgeous auburn hair. “I mean, nothing important. Nothing worth, you know, nothing—”
    I decided to put her out of her misery. In a little singsong voice, I said, “
Ra
…chel’s
got
…a
boy
…friend…”
    “I do not!”
    “Do so.”
    “Do not. Not really.”
    “Meaning, Rachel wants a boyfriend?”
    “No! Ugh! I mean, okay, not ugh, but, you know, yuck.”
    Fortunately, I speak fluent teenager. “So there is a guy and you like him but you’re not sure if he likes you yet.”
    She stared back at me. “You know, you’re really amazing.”
    “Well, I am a trained psychologist. So is this that—what was his name—the skateboard guy?”
    “Bobby? Oh, God no. He is so yesterday.”
    “Just as well.” I smiled and snarfed the last cruller. “Look, Rach, if you really like the guy, just tell him.”
    “Easy for you to say. What about you? Have you been out on a date lately?”
    “No. But Amelia and I have been running around some. Keeps me off the streets. Look, I’d better get you back to the Johnsons.”
    “There’s no rush.”
    “Rachel, it took that man three months to trust me enough to let me take you out of his sight. I’m not going to blow it now by being late.”
    “I know. But—” She hesitated, and this time I really didn’t know what was on her mind. “I—I wanted to give you something.”
    “Unless I’ve really lost track of time, it’s not my birthday.”
    “No, I meant—” She swallowed hard, then plopped it down on the table. “I saved this when Lisa moved you out of your apartment, while you were in the clinic. It’s—”
    “I know what it is.” No explanation required. I carried the thing around for almost nine years, till I started getting so drunk every day I forgot to put it in my pocket. It was a good luck charm, a tiny four-leaf clover, a real one, encased in translucent acrylic.
    “Guess I used up all the luck it had for me,” David said, while he was lying in a hospital bed in the recovery room. “Why don’t you take it? Maybe it’ll still work for you.” And it did, a least for a little while. I got David.
    David’s father was not pleased. Not about David giving away the charm he’d given his son when he was twelve or, for that matter, anything else. Or more specifically, anything relating to his son and me being together. I could see where David’s father might be overprotective—he’d already lost one son, Rachel’s father. So when David was wounded during a 405 pursuit—armed robber, gunshot to the upper thorax—his father went on twenty-four-hour orange alert.
    “I guess I haven’t been shy about my