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“Give me your right hand behind your back.”
“Look, you don’t need—”
“Right hand behind your back. Now.”
He complied. She took the handcuffs out of the waistband at the back of her pants and snapped one around his wrist.
“Now the left.”
Delsey complied again, but not without complaint. “I’m just saying, if you’re here for him, you don’t have to hook me up,” he said.
“Who said I’m here for him?” Ballard said. “Move.”
She pulled him away from the wall and walked him to the center of the apartment’s living room. There was a threadbare couch, a beat-up La-Z-Boy chair with its faux leather cracked and split on the armrests, and a flat-screen TV tuned to a muted music channel.
“On your knees,” Ballard said.
“Aw, come on,” Delsey said.
“Knees.”
“Fuck it.”
Delsey dropped to his knees on the uncarpeted terrazzo floor. Ballard grabbed the chain between the cuffs with one hand and the back collar of his Hawaiian shirt with the other.
“Okay, I’m going to lower you onto your belly now. This is for my safety and yours.”
“Yeah, bullshit.”
Ballard pushed him forward and he went down easily.
“Okay, what is this?” Delsey protested. “Are you here for me or him?”
“For you, Dino,” Ballard said. “And I could violate you right now and put you in the pen. I watched you drinking and toking on the balcony ten minutes ago.”
“I got news for you: I’m over twenty-one, and recreational use of marijuana is legal.”
“And I got news for you: Read the terms of your probation. No alcohol and no drugs, even legal ones, without permission of the court. You want to show me your court permission to get high?”
She waited. Delsey was silent.
“I didn’t think so. You are fucked, my friend. I own you.”
“Fuck this. I want to see some ID right the fuck now.”
“That’s funny. I want to see some ID too. My ID. But you took it.”
Delsey strained to look up at Ballard standing over him. She saw that he recognized her from the LAPD ID card stolen from her car.
“Yeah, it didn’t take me long,” Ballard said. “I found your ass.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Delsey said.
“Sure you do. But you know what? This is your lucky day, Dino. If you make it right, you can stay out of jail. Otherwise, we wait here for dear old Dad to come home and see if he wants to make a deal instead. He still has five years on his parole tail. You have eighteen months on your suspended sentence. I’m guessing he’ll throw you under the bus to avoid going back to Soledad for the full nickel.”
Delsey was silent. Ballard waited.
“What do you want?” he finally said.
