"Then you'll probably want to read it before your meeting."
Ruel watched Cheever's face try on several things and discard them. Outrage. Charm. A kind of wounded dignity. For a second it looked like he was going to say something about knowing the chief, or the mayor, or a lawyer; Ruel had heard men like him say those things in the Kroger parking lot to managers, and the managers had always gone quiet. But maybe Cheever saw something in the officer's face that told him it would not work, or maybe Laszlo Ruhland's red face beside him took the fight out of him. He bent and picked up his bag and his can of balls.
"I'll be talking to your sergeant," he said.
"Sergeant Petrosky," Ferrol said. "She's on till four. Tell her I said hi."
Cheever walked off the court. He did not go to Court 2 or 3. He went through the gate and past the board, and as he passed it, he slowed, and for a moment Ruel thought he was going to take the rag off the hook and wipe the whole Court 4 column, the yellow ghost and the white letters and all of it. His hand even moved toward it. Then he looked at the strip of old white paint with its red capitals, and his hand dropped, and he walked to the Lexus and got in and sat there, not starting it, looking at his phone.
The other three men stood around on Court 4 uncertainly, like boys whose ball has gone over a neighbor's fence.
"Well," Laszlo said to Ruel. "Sorry, son. That was ugly. You want to hit with an old mailman sometime, I'm here most Saturdays at nine." He limped toward Court 2. After a moment the other two followed him, and one of them, the young one, stopped at the board and took a piece of white chalk and carefully, without being asked, rubbed out the ditto mark beside the 9.
Ferrol came back to the gate. "Your court," he said.
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me. I almost threw you off it." He looked down at Perpetua. "And you. You went to the library."
"I'm retired," Perpetua said. "I have time to go to the library."
"Why?"