Page 10 of Shield
“Think of something else,” I muttered as I punched my pillow into submission. I lay down, closed my eyes, tried to empty my thoughts of everything that might keep me awake.
And I swear, my last thought was of a grumpy cop with tired green eyes.
ChapterFour
Jackson
The dayafter the clinic incident, I woke up with a mouth that tasted as if I’d licked the underside of the men’s holding cell latrine. You know the dragon's breath is bad when you nearly gag yourself, inhaling the fumes wafting from your mouth as you snore/snort yourself awake.
I peeked to the left. Thank God the space was empty. The guy I’d hooked up with after shots of Jager had chased beers at the Fuchsia Flamingo had left. Sitting up slowly, my head thumping, I could smell the scent of sex clinging to the stuffy air in my little bedroom.
I pulled the sheets away to stare down at my dick. Still in the condom. How lovely. Oh well, at least we’d practiced safe sex. Go us. Grimacing at the thought of the mess the saggy rubber was going to leave on my dick, I eased out of bed, stumbled into the bathroom, and flipped on the light.
Big mistake.
The guy in the mirror coated with toothpaste speckles looked like hell. No, even worse than hell. The deepest slurry pits of hell. Yep, that was better. My hair was stiff, my eyes baggy, and my prick was glued into a used condom. I stared at my reflection. I appeared ten years older than twenty-eight. Christ. I poked at the bags under my eyes. Nothing like living the high life. Cheap booze, cheaper men, and pulling double shifts in a job that few respected. Courtney had always begged me to choose a different career—as a big sister, she endlessly worried about her baby brother. But no, I had to follow the family path of law enforcement that my father and his father and his father’s father had chosen.
My bladder reminded me that I had yet to piss. Wincing as tugging the dried condom yanked a few pubes out, I chucked the messy thing into the trash. Then, because my cleaning lady would be coming today, I dug it out, wrapped it in toilet paper, and stuffed that into an empty toilet paper tube. Yep. Hashtag Glamorous Life. Pfft.
I brushed my teeth for ten minutes, showered for five, and somehow found my way to my kitchen for coffee. My apartment was one of about twenty in a renovated building supply warehouse, in a low rent area about two blocks from the Northeast Police Station I called home. I had spent more time there than I had here over the past two years. To be honest, the new building that the taxpayers bitched about steadily was homier than this one-bedroom shithole of a bachelor pad.
My sister would explode if she saw how I lived. The place was the same as it had been the day I’d moved in. Nothing on the walls, no curtains, just the battered blinds, and two pairs of sheets that Luisa changed monthly if I paid her more to do so. Smart woman. I’d not want to touch my sheets either, given some of the random men I’d fucked on them. Yanking open the fridge, I found milk, sniffed it, shrugged, and went to pour it over some cereal—when I realized that I didn’t have any cereal. Right. That required shopping. Well, fuck. I’d run through a fast-food drive-in on the way and grab something greasy with zero nutritional value.
I lit a cigarette. That had to have some kind of nutrient, right?
Padding about with questionable milk and a smoke, I took a swig from the container, found my phone resting on the wireless charging dock, and picked it up. I scanned social media quickly and spent a few minutes reading about a wild party in the Hills that got busted for underage entertainment. I ground out my cigarette butt in an ashtray on the window ledge. This building had a no-smoking policy. Which always made me sarcastic-laugh. A smoke was a no-no, but selling drugs in the lobby was fine. The fact that I was a cop meant little. The little shits would scatter like cockroaches when the lights came on when I entered the lobby to check my mail. There were too many to chase. If you arrested one, the next day, some poor kid trying to survive would be taking the previous dealer’s place. Hand to God, there were days we all felt like throwing in the towel. But then, we’d shake off the helpless feeling and go do our jobs.
I scoped out the names of the affluent individuals mentioned in the headlines. Ah, the rich and famous. Tossing the rest of the milk down, I got dressed, pulling on a pair of brown slacks, a tan shirt, and a tie with a bumblebee on it that Leo had gifted me last Christmas. I ran my fingers through my hair, pulled on some socks and my lone pair of brown dress shoes, and geared up. Gun, badge, phone, sunglasses, lingering shame of vapid sex, and a hangover. Perfect. I was ready to greet the public. Poor public.
* * *
I pulledup to the station with a jumbo cup of dark roast in my Minnie thermos and a bag filled with egg sandwiches with those delightful hash brown patties. Mack was waiting in the parking lot, talking on his phone, his red hair like a freaking scarlet beacon with the bright California sun shining on it. He glanced up when he saw my classic Riviera ease into a space far too narrow and short for my beauty of a car.
“No, hey, just run over my feet,” he called as I exited the gold Buick. “Are those doughnuts?” He waved his cell at the bag in my hand.
“Why the need to play into stereotypes?” I shook the bag. “It’s a totally unhealthy breakfast.”
“Damn, I was hoping it was doughnuts. Elena is on this health food kick and has banned all sugary sweets from the house.”
“And that is why I do not have a wife,” I replied, entering the precinct with nods to the cops filing in and out, some plainclothes, some uniformed, all tired.
“I thought it was because you were gay,” he fired back, typing and walking as we hit the elevator to ride to the second floor.
Two older cops—CHiPs—eyeballed me as we rode up, the gay comment taking the ride with us. I assumed the motorcycle patrolmen were here to partner on a case. The LAPD and California Highway Patrol did work together sometimes: DUI checkpoints, for example.
“That too,” I said as we exited on the correct floor of the mirrored building. The two staties said nothing, but their glowers could be felt until the doors on the elevator closed. That was not a unique reaction among older cops finding out there was a queer in the ranks. They’d get over it, like they did when Blacks, Latinos, and women were mainstreamed into the ranks of those in blue. Not that I wore blue, but… whatever.
Organized Crime had a small section of desks facing south. Homicide had more room with more desks. That was fine. No matter where you went, police stations all had thatHill Street Bluesvibe.Or maybe that was just in my head.
I nodded to a few cops at the water fountain as Mack and I made our way to our desks. I’d just placed my bag of deliciousness on my desk when I got a shout from the captain of detectives.
I glanced at Mason, sitting at his desk with a newspaper spread out over the top. “Touch that and die, old man,” I said and got a middle finger from the Detective III sitting in the bright sun like a turtle on a sunning log. Mack and I were both Detective I rank.Wee babes, as Mack liked to say when he was feeling his Scots.
Mack sat at his desk, across from mine, and returned to his phone as I ambled into the captain’s office, stopping halfway through the door with my thermos in hand. Captain Franks looked up from his desktop, waved me in, then sat back as I closed the door and parked my ass. His space was tidy as a fucking nunnery. Nothing out of place, which was exactly how Franks was as well. He always dresses neatly in a pressed suit, with a shaved head and a beard tightly trimmed to his square jaw. His dark eyes were sharp like a dagger.
“You look like something my wife scooped out of the cat’s litter box,” Cap said as soon as the door was closed.
“I’ve only had half a thermos of coffee and two smokes. Come see me when I’m fully rejuvenated around noon. I’ll be a brand-new man.”
