Tami Hoag: Prior Bad Acts

They were all half out of their chairs when Liska spoke up.

“Wait!” she said, wide-eyed, bringing everyone to attention. “Look at Kovac! Is that a-a- new brown suit?”

The oohs and aahs made him blush.

Kovac rolled his eyes. “Oh, for God’s sake. Don’t make a big deal. I buy one every decade, whether I need it or not.”

He stood in front of the mirror in the men’s room, trying to decide if he needed to shave again. Better not to. He would undoubtedly cut himself and show up at dinner with toilet paper on his face.

Liska walked in as he put on a fresh shirt. He scowled at her in the mirror.

“You have to stop coming in here, Tinks.”

“Don’t spoil my fun. This is all the action I get these days.”

“Jesus.”

“Where’s your patch?” she asked. “You haven’t given up already.”

“I quit.”

“Sam, you make me crazy! If you get lung cancer and die-”

“No. I mean I quit. Smoking.”

The look of stunned disbelief would have made him laugh if he hadn’t been so goddamn nervous.

“Wow. Just like that?”

“Just like that. It’s time I started paying attention, before I end up like Stan Dempsey, living alone with an arsenal and one lawn chair in the backyard.”

Liska sniffed the air. “Do I smell a midlife crisis coming on?”

“You’re in the men’s toilet. Chances are good you’re smelling something else,” he said, fumbling with his brand-new amber necktie, which a very gay salesman in the menswear store had told him brought out the whisky tones in his eyes.

Jesus H.

Liska batted his clumsy hands out of the way and tied the thing herself.

“Nice tie,” she said. “It brings out your eyes.”

Kovac scowled.

“So where are you off to in such a hurry, mister? Got a hot date?”

“Dinner,” he mumbled, his eyes darting away from her.

“A dinner date?”

“Dinner.”

“With anyone I know?”

“None of your business, Tinker Bell,” he said irritably, adjusting the knot at his throat so that he didn’t feel like he was going to choke to death.

“Well, that makes it entirely my business,” Liska said with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.

“I’m having dinner with Judge Moore,” he confessed.

Liska’s brows went up. “Judge Moore.”

“Yes.”

“Carey,” she said.

Kovac huffed out a sigh. “Carey.”

Liska laughed and clapped her hands. “Oh, you total liar! You’re going on a date. You cad. The hubby’s ass is still stinging from the door hitting him on the way out.”

“It’s not like that,” he grumbled. “It’s just a little thank-you dinner. With her five-year-old daughter. It’s nothing more than that.”

“Give it up, Kojak,” she said. “I was wise to you a long time ago. You don’t buy a new suit to have dinner with a five-year-old child.”

Kovac didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what he could have said. He didn’t want to make too much of Carey’s inviting him over. It was too soon after everything had happened. She was traumatized. That had to be the only reason she had asked him; she wasn’t in her right mind.

Liska reached up and snugged the knot again. She looked up at him, somber, and patted a hand over his heart. “Be careful with this, will you?”

“It’s kinda too late for that,” he admitted. Jesus Christ, he was sweating like a horse. He jerked the tie loose again.

“Just bear in mind one thing, Sam,” she said seriously.

“What’s that?”

“That she’s… she’s…”

“Too good for me?”

“A lawyer.”

They both laughed. Liska gave him a hug.

“On your way with you, young man,” she said, snugging the knot up once more. “Be polite, don’t eat with your fingers, don’t talk with your mouth full, and be home by curfew.”

“Yes, Mom,” he said, slipping on the new jacket as he headed for the door.

“And Sam?”

He looked over his shoulder. Her expression was dead serious.

“What?”

“Leave that goddamn tie alone, or I’ll break your fingers.”

Always with the kind word, his partner.

Kovac saluted and went out the door, moving toward something good.