Myron waved him off. "A knee injury isn't a mental breakdown, Ned."

"Yeah, I know but still…" He stopped again. "When the Celts drafted you, were you a Nike guy?"

"No. Converse."

"They dump you? I mean, right away?"

"I have no complaints."

Esperanza opened the door without knocking. Nothing new there. She never knocked. Ned Tunwell's smile quickly returned. Hard to keep the man down. He stared at Esperanza. Appreciatively. Most men did.

"Can I see you for second, Myron?"

Ned waved. "Hi, Esperanza."

She turned and looked right through him. One of her many talents.

Myron excused himself and followed her out. Esperanza's desk was bare except for two photographs. One was of her dog, an adorable shaggy pooch named Chloe, winning a dog show. Esperanza was into dog shows – a sport not exactly dominated by inner-city Latinos, though she seemed to do pretty well. The desk's other picture showed Esperanza wrestling another woman. Professionally wrestling, that is. The lovely and lithe Esperanza had once wrestled professionally under the name Little Pocahontas, the Indian Princess. For three years Little Pocahontas had been a crowd favorite of the Fabulous Ladies of Wrestling organization, popularly known as FLOW (someone had once suggested calling it the Beautiful Ladies of Wrestling, but the acronym was a problem for the networks). Esperanza's Little Pocahontas was a scantily clad (basically a suede bikini) sexpot whom fans cheered and leered at as she bravely took on enormous evil, cheating nemeses every week. A morality play, some called it A classic reenactment of Good vs. Evil. But to Myron the weekly action was more like those women-in-prison films. Esperanza played the beautiful, naive prisoner stuck in cell block C. Her opponent was Olga, the sadistic prison matron.

"It's Duane," Esperanza said.

Myron took the call at her desk. "Hey, Duane. What's up?"