Authors: Dani Alexander
Alvarado jogged up the path and rang her bell. There was an animated conversation in which Rhonda shook her head a few times, arms flailing with fingers clutching a cell phone. Two seconds later, she dialed a number and spoke into the phone.
When she hung up, she said something to Alvarado, something that lit a fire under his ass. He rushed back to his car.
“Hour’s up,” Luis said, twisting the car on and making a U-turn to follow Alvarado’s black SUV.
“This is why you should always listen to my instincts,” I grinned. “If we’d left earlier…”
“Your instincts? As in the 4th Street Deli?” “Hey, we both tested negative for hepatitis.” “The ‘strange’ looking guys at the grocery store on Racine Street?”
“Stopped a robbery, didn’t we?”
“I got shot.”
“You
got
grazed
,” I corrected. “Are you hormonal or something?”
“You ever say that to Angelica?”
“Do you see me still breathing? Yes? There’s your answer.” I didn’t want to think about Angelica. The guilt and recrimination
wouldn’t help with the case. I needed to focus on work.
“Where’s he going?”
I twisted and grabbed my suit jacket, slipping it on and adjusting my holster. “Obviously somewhere import—” My words died as Alvarado swung his car left into the lot of the restaurant where Peter worked.
Oh, Shit. Oh, Shit. Have I Mentioned: Oh, Shit!?
The
parking
lot
of
Colorado’s
Finest
Diner
was
uncharacteristically empty for three in the afternoon. I expected it to be just as crowded as ever, but apparently Tuesdays were slow.
Alvarado had parked in a spot less than three strides from the front door, before disappearing inside the restaurant. Luis and I pulled in a minute later. The flashing “CAREER ENDING
NOW” sign reappeared.
“This is Joe Dench’s place,” Luis murmured, turning the car off and settling back in his seat. “Where you waited for the no-show?” “Yeah,” I croaked, watching the side door with trepidation.
My stomach tightened and twisted.
Retired Detective Joe Dench was, from what I heard, a soft-hearted schmuck no one figured would last a year in vice. And they were right. He lasted twenty-seven instead. Nearly four years ago he abruptly retired at age fifty-six, bought the diner and then not-so-quickly keeled over of a heart attack three years and eight months later. I only knew of him from Luis, who made comparisons of him and me. According to Vice legend, Joe Dench was a bleeding heart who had too soft a spot for street
kids.
Luis had backed into the parking spot at the far corner of the lot, sandwiched between a minivan on the left and an older model sedan on our right. I avoided glancing at the sedan, since it was exactly where I had parked last night. We could only see the cash register and first four booths from our vantage point, but the side door and alley were in full view. Directly across from the side door was a retainer wall, with dumpsters huddled against the far end. Peter stepped outside with two large black bundles, which he tossed in the trash containers.
“And that’s Joe’s kid,” Luis said with a nod, just as Alvarado followed Peter out and jammed a cell phone into Peter’s chest and spitting words at him.
“Huh?” I said intelligently.
“Foster kid. Took in him and two other kids, about four years ago. They all used to hustle under the bridge. Coincidence Alvarado’s here looking for Gaines?” Lovely.
“Now that I think about it,” Luis continued, “there was talk that Dench and Alvarado had ‘history’.” He air quoted the last word.
I sat there and watched the heated exchange, deliberately not clenching my fists as Peter slapped away Alvarado’s pointing hand. They were toe-to-toe, giving the impression they were going to come to blows, when something far more disturbing happened.
Prisc’s palm roped around Peter’s neck and pulled him into a hard kiss.
“Now that is interesting,” Luis said. I tried not to do
something ridiculous—like growl. I was only partially mollified when Peter pushed Alvarado away.
To feel the first stirrings of jealousy was shocking. Especially since I didn’t have
any
relationship with Peter. Besides, I had plenty of other problems without adding possessive feelings for a whore to the list. I had never been a jealous guy, which might explain why it had always been easy for me to cheat. Every one of my relationships had ended because of my philandering.
Angelica was the first and, so far, the only person who had ever been able to curb that particular vice.
“I said no!” Peter shouted. He backed up to the retainer wall, tactically lighting a cigarette to maintain the distance between himself and Alvarado. It worked. Alvarado retreated to the opposite wall, still muttering something in a voice too low to carry our way. Good thing he did, too, because we would have had to intervene if things had gotten physical, which would have meant giving away our position and the fact that we were tailing Alvarado.
And it would have meant me giving away a lot more personally.
“Please tell me how the fuck that asshole got released this fast?” I was more terrified than angry, but my words were filled with so much heat that I hoped Luis couldn't hear the quiver in them.
“Even murderers get bail, let alone glorified pimps.
Alvarado’s star is rising. Lots of cash for fancy lawyers.” Luis blew a long stream of smoke into the car after he lit up. I couldn’t summon the will to wave it away, so I settled for a cough full of fucking-stop-smoking meaning.
“Asshole lawyers,” I muttered, my imagination conjuring a very satisfying picture of shooting Alvarado in the face with my Taser. And then shooting his lawyer.
The conversation between Alvarado and Peter continued out of earshot, with several rebuffed attempts at affection by Alvarado—a hand swatted away from Peter’s cheek, a hard shove when Alvarado moved in closer. Most of the ‘discussion’
was one-sided, with Peter answering nonverbally so often that I figured he could find work as a bobble head.
Luis pointed his cigarette at the pair. “Doesn’t seem to be about Gai—” He was interrupted by his cell phone ringing.
“Martinez,” he answered. “When? … Where?” He started the car while I frowned at him. “Nah. Keep him there.” After clicking the phone off, he gave a relieved puff of air. “They got Gaines.”
“When? Where?” Today was apparently Repeat What Luis Says day.
“Walked into the station and demanded protection. Seems he suspects a hit is out on him.”
“Gee, can’t think why.” I leaned over and picked up an empty coffee cup from the floor and busied my fingers picking it to pieces.
“He’s in lockup,” Luis said and then added, “for protection,” with air quotes.
I tapped my index finger against the dash, something I was prone to do when puzzled. It drove Luis nuts when I did it, but the gesture always helped me think. I considered it payback for the premature death I was sure he was going to give me by way of secondhand smoke. “You know, yesterday, sitting there
across from Alvarado and his five-hundred-dollar-an-hour mouthpiece, with this mountain of questions we needed to ask, all I wanted to do was ask him one question,” I stuck the crook of my elbow out the window. “Why the fuck would he keep a dumbass like Gaines on his payroll?” Luis initiated a smile which never quite materialized as his features contorted. With a concentrated squint, he lifted the cigarette to his lips and twisted to settle his eyes on Alvarado and Peter. I followed his stare, matching my partner’s frown. “Why Gaines?” I asked again.
Luis still appeared contemplative, but I wasn’t done. “You’re Alvarado. You have a lucrative business starting up. Bigger and more complicated with a lot more risk. Lots of cash rolling in.
So naturally you pick a two-time loser like Gaines to help handle your entire network? A guy who’s waiting on a third strike? A guy so dumb he gets caught with smack because he forgets to turn his headlights on and turns snitch?” “Questions like that remind me why you made detective,” Luis replied.
It took five seconds for me to comprehend the insult in that compliment. “Nice,” I grumbled. “Why are we still sitting here?” We needed to be talking to Gaines about this and with him in lockup we no longer needed to follow Alvarado. And besides, I did not want to witness the makeup between Peter and Asshole, if there was going to be one.
Luis shrugged, stared at me too long, and way too intensely.
Then he made me choke on my own spit when he casually dropped his cigarette out the window and said, “I thought, since we’re here and all, maybe you wanted to ask Peter the whore for
a date. And maybe you could get a few questions in about his boyfriend, too.”
Oh, shit.
I Did Not Have Sexual Relations With That Man. Yet Silence followed. A long one. Not long enough for me to come up with an appropriate denial, but longer than necessary to seal any doubts Luis might have had at his assumptions.
“Did you pay that boy for sex?”
“It would seem that way,” I said with a lame attempt at humor which, unsurprisingly, fell flat when my voice came out tired and fatalistic.
“Meaning?”
“I didn’t have sex with him, or intend to.” I slanted my eyes, checking Luis’s reaction. That was the truth as I saw it. “Of any kind,” I added hastily at his unblinking stare. “But I did give him money for…contact.” Time moved too slowly, emphasizing my speed-of-light heart rate. At any moment I was destined to either throw up or drown in my own sweat.
“I don't have time for any of your bullshit, Glass. Did you compromise yourself and this case?” Every minute, every second of him studying me was a second closer to the end of my life as I knew it. Bite the bullet and trust him, or lie and twist things to a better light? At this point I could tell Luis that I had suspicions about Peter. That I paid him for information. But I would never do that to my partner.
Cop partnerships can be more intense than marriages. You ride along with this person, both of your guns weighing heavily on your belts, and you’re completely responsible for this other
human being for eight, ten, twelve hours a day, sometimes seven days a week. And not the kind of responsibility that means love and affection in compensation. With your partner, the compensation is protection. You leave the station house
knowing that their life is in your hands, and that yours is in theirs. There’s no honeymoon stage, no adjustment period. There’s you and your partner, committing to an absolute trust. You can lie in a marriage and still make it work, but if you lie in a partnership, you put your partner’s career, their
life
in jeopardy. And if they think you’re willing to abandon that trust, how could they have faith in you?
Then there was the gay. The second part of the Austin Glass is Fucked equation. I wanted to tell Luis the truth, and while I trusted him implicitly, I was terrified. Lie or truth? Lie or truth?
Lie? Or truth? To me, both options could mean the end of my career, and of our partnership. So I just sat there, suffocating from the combined heat and silence. I didn’t know when or where, or even how, to begin. I wasn’t someone who lied about important things. Cheat, yes. Lie, no. A fine line, but distinct in my mind. Instead of lies, I used off-color humor to make the truth sound ridiculous, so I didn’t
have
to lie. But even after wracking my brain, I still couldn’t come up with a way to do that here. Or even use humor to diffuse the situation. I was too nauseated to be funny.
“Did you compromise this case?”
Did I?
“Probably,” I admitted. “Or, at least, my involvement in it.” I could have made excuses about how I didn’t know he was a prostitute. Or that he was involved with Alvarado. How I didn’t
sleep with him. How I was having an identity crisis, and it had all begun as something very innocent. Really.
But Luis didn’t care about those things. Luis wasn’t worried about the fact that I had traded cash for the services of a whore.
Luis probably didn't even care that I might be gay. No, Luis was worried that there was a person close to Alvarado who we now wouldn't be able to pressure into answering questions because I had paid him money for sex. Luis cared about this investigation, and his career. And right now he was deciding if his partner’s ass was worth covering or if he should feed me to the wolves.
“Tell me,” he said.
And so I did. I told him, as succinctly as possible, about Peter, me, and everything that had happened between us. I didn't leave anything out.
And speaking of out, apparently I now was. Some people maintained it was very freeing to take that step. I didn’t share their assessment. It did make me wonder, though. How did one go about being out when they weren’t gay?
“He knows you’re a cop?” Luis asked.
“Unless he’s blind and stupid.” I lifted my jacket to reveal the obvious badge and gun clipped to my belt.
“He solicited a cop?”
“He didn’t know then, maybe. But even if he knew, he also had to have known that there was no chance I’d actually bring him in. Not if it meant confronting questions about why a hustler was in my car after hours, soliciting sex.” “Or maybe you’re not the first cop on the down-low to approach him,” Luis mused.