She walked into my life only a few days ago. She wouldn't say where she was from. She wouldn't tell me where she lived. All I got was a name: Candy Parker. It was obvious she was running from something. She hadn't come to me looking for a private investigator, she said. What she needed, she said, was a friend. So I became her friend. That's the way this thing began -- not like my other cases. Not like anything I'd ever dealt with before.

My name is Kevin Marcus.

But they call me Kid P.I.

I'm fourteen years old.

You wanna make somethin' out of it?

Anyway, she came around each afternoon this week, Candy Parker did, and we went places together. The ice cream shop. The local movie house. This town didn't have much to entertain you, but if it was there we covered it. I took her to the playground. I even took her to the post office to show her some new stamps I was adding to my collection. Four days of this got me nowhere. Then the clouds rolled in on Friday, just as she arrived at my office. I ran my P.I. business out of a treehouse in the woods behind my house. I figured if Candy wouldn't open up out in public, maybe we needed a more intimate setting. I knew a place to take her. And the weather seemed to be cooperating perfectly with my plan.

Since I wouldn’t get my driving permit for another month, Dad offered to drop me across town at the Eastside rec center for my Lakers first game.

Dad had to get to work, so I’d have to get there early. It was enough I got talked into being basketball coach for a bunch of hard-headed kids. I didn’t want to hang around with them, too. Anyway, even though I wasn’t worried about it, I figured it was a good thing to go on over a little early. See how everything runs.

Dad drove us all the way through downtown and bumped us under the train trestle before saying anything. “You guys home or away?

“We’re home.” I dug out the schedule from my back pocket to make sure. “It’s not a big deal. Home just wears white.”

Dad started laughing. “Oh yeah. It’s all a big deal.”

I didn’t see what the big deal could be. It was just some little kid basketball game, and I was pretty pissed at Dad by the time he pulled up next to the outdoor court. I knew I wasn’t really pissed at Dad, though. I was pissed because that’s where I should be, on the court balling with real Eastside players working my own game.