been a horrible pool player?” Cooper was stunned by the riskiness of Edward’s plan.
Edward shrugged. “I’ve been racking and whacking since I was a kid. In clubs, in jail, at people’s houses . . . As long as you didn’t scratch or shoot the wrong balls every time, I figured we’d win this thing easy enough. I just let you go first to see what you were made of.” He smiled. “Turns out, you got game.”
Edward was right. While the second-round players possessed a crude name, their skills were also equally unrefined. After Cooper and Edward sent the glowering men packing, they next defeated a pair of big-bellied bikers. Only the reigning champions, the Snipers, barred their path to victory.
“Good team name,” Edward commented to no one in particular as he placed the loose balls in the wooden triangle. The Snipers, swarthy young men in their early twenties, wore dress shirts unbuttoned far enough to reveal tanned, hairy chests and thick ropes of gold chains hanging down from their necks. Cooper could smell their musky cologne from across the table. As she studied them covertly, she realized that their outfits were very similar to the clothing in Miguel’s closet and decided that it might be worthwhile to flirt with whichever player wasn’t currently shooting in hopes of discovering a more tangible connection to the dead man.
“That’s a hot shirt,” she said, leaning against one of the Hispanic men as she stroked the smooth material.
The man, who had introduced himself as Jorge, responded immediately. “You like what you see, huh, baby? Nothin’ but silk. I got silk sheets on my big, big bed, too. You wanna come over and see?”
Cooper pretended to consider his offer. “I dunno. I kinda came here with another guy.”
“So?” he practically spit out the word. “He can’t do for you what I can do for you!”
“Yeah, you Latino men are supposed to be talented.” She did her best to form a sultry pout. “But I’ve only been with one and he wasn’t that great.”
Jorge began to laugh, slapping the leg of his pressed trousers. “Shut up! One of my brothers couldn’t get the job done! Who was this loser?”
Shrugging, Cooper said, “You probably don’t know him. Name’s Miguel Ramos.”
“Oh, but I did know him.” Jorge scoffed and chalked the end of his cue stick. “He got clipped, girlfriend, so he won’t be disappointin’ any more hotties like you.” He licked his lips. “You can count on me to light your fire.”
“He’s dead?” Cooper interrupted while trying to act skeptical. “He seemed like a nice guy. Who’d bother killing him?”
“Nice don’t cut it on the street. You can be as nice as you want, but you better not get greedy or you get cut down,” Jorge preached importantly and then stood back in order to examine Cooper’s buttocks. “Let’s have a little side bet, huh? Make things more interestin’. I win, you come home with me.”
“And if I win?”
Jorge grinned lecherously, his white teeth gleaming beneath the neon lights. “Then you get to come home with me. See? You get to be happy either way!”
Just then, Jorge’s partner missed a shot and it was Cooper’s turn. If she could sink the thirteen-ball followed by the eight-ball, she and Edward would win the tournament. As she leaned over the ball, her hand didn’t feel as steady as it should. She backed away from the table and reached for her beer, trying to shut out Jorge’s derisive laughter and lewd tongue gestures.
“Get your brain in the game,” Edward suddenly hissed in her ear. He then tapped her gently on the side of her head. “Take yourself out of this bar and to a place of peace before you pick up that stick again.”
Cooper heeded his advice. She gazed at the floor for a long moment, picturing herself in the backyard of her parents’ house. There, in the shelter of a rear wall, was an aviary custom-built for Columbus, the wounded red-tailed hawk Grammy had adopted several years ago. It was one of Cooper’s delights to take the injured raptor to the large field bordering their property so that the bird could use his crippled wing just long enough to hunt for a meal. In her mind, she left the noise and stale air of Club Satin, opened Columbus’s cage, and invited the majestic bird to alight onto her gloved arm. She visualized walking with him to the field behind her house, seeing the thistles and buttercups waving in the