The Good Cop (20 page)

“No problem. Oscar's making a meatloaf that barely fit in the oven. We'll be having meatloaf for a week or two. Come on over.”

My stomach voiced its opinion with a small growl. “Okay, if you're sure you don't mind. Can I pick up anything?”

“Nah, we have everything we need.”

“Okay. I'll see you in about ten minutes.”

*

Jonathan, it turned out, was a damned good cook. The meatloaf was delicious, and he'd made some sort of garlic-glazed new potatoes. He explained that his mom had been sick a lot when he was younger, and that he'd been largely responsible for cooking for the family.

“Better watch it, Jonathan,” Phil teased. “Some guy's going to want to carry you off, lock you in the kitchen, and keep you barefoot and pregnant.”

Jonathan blushed and shot a quick lowered-head glance in my direction that, I could tell, was not missed by either Tim or Phil. I felt Phil's foot nudge mine under the table, and I looked up to see him trying unsuccessfully to suppress a smile.

Sigh
.

I told them of Bob's offer and, lest Jonathan feel like he was just excess baggage being passed from hand to hand, I stressed that they really needed help with their move.

Both Phil and Tim expressed regret at his leaving, saying that Jonathan was welcome to stay as long as he wanted, but we all knew that it was time they got their own life back—or, rather, given the short time they'd been together, got it started.

I'd noticed, too, during the course of the evening, that without the aid of makeup, Jonathan's wounds were still visible, though now only barely so. And having some sort of stability in his life for the first time since he'd arrived in town was obviously good for him. He didn't look quite so skinny as when I'd first met him, and it seemed somehow that he had gotten even more attractive.

Hardesty!!
my mind-voice warned, sternly.

Yeah, yeah, okay,
I reluctantly replied.

He had been relatively quiet throughout dinner, but while Phil and Tim cleared off the table, Tim suggested Jonathan show me the new fish they'd gotten with my gift certificate, and Jonathan segued unconsciously into his puppy-dog chatterbox mode, pointing out not only the newest addition to the aquarium—a large, thin silver creature with two large black circles on either side of its body, looking like either portholes on a submarine or the eyes on that ubiquitous yellow “happy face”, and which Jonathan had named George—but gave me the names of all the other fish in the tank, which ones bullied the others, which one ate the most, etc. I took a really odd delight in the fact that his enthusiasm was truly genuine. That they all had names and what he swore to be individual characteristics was
important
to him, and he wanted to share it with me.

I explained to him before I left that I probably wouldn't be able to spend much time with him because of everything that was going on, but that he'd like Bob and Mario and that Tim and Phil would keep a close eye on him, too. He said he understood, and that he'd be fine. I hoped he was right.

“I'll miss the fish, though,” he said.

*

Glen O'Banyon had returned my call to tell me basically what Tom had told me about Bart Giacomino's relationship with his family in general and his little brother Joey in particular. “Bart's not the brightest star in the heavens,” O'Banyon said, “and I'm afraid his ego far outdistances his abilities. He could even be called ‘shady.' But he's always lacked the ‘vicious' gene that Joey inherited from his father. So if you think you can use your knowledge of Bart in any way to try to anticipate what Joey might be up to, just take everything you know about Bart and add ‘pathological' and you'll be on the right track.”

I tried to call Tom several times in the following days, and stopped by a couple times after work. Lisa was usually there, and I could tell Tom didn't want to talk much in front of her, so we all tried to pretend everything was just fine. The labor negotiations were, according to Tom's dad, pretty much at a standstill, and apparently it might be dawning on Joey that he didn't have much of a clue what was going to happen next. The union's strike fund, which was paying the workers a small portion of their regular wages, was not a bottomless pit. Something had to give, and the only thing Joey knew was that it wasn't going to be him.

It wasn't until Friday morning—Tom's day off—when I stopped over on my way to the office after I knew Lisa had left for work, that I found out what had really been happening at work—or, I suspected, only a small part of it. Getting Tom to talk about it was like pulling teeth, but I could tell it was getting to him and he needed to be able to talk to someone. Lisa would have been more than willing to listen, but he was protective of her and didn't want to worry her more than she already was.

On Tuesday, Tom had left work to find all four tires on his car flattened. He began parking in the underground garage at Warman Park and walking the two blocks to work.

Wednesday, as he went to change out of his uniform, he found an apple on the bench in front of his locker, with a note: “A fruit for the fruit.”

Though he had very little contact during the work day with his fellow officers, and a few of them still managed, when they thought they weren't being observed, to say a few words to him, the hostility level from those in Deputy Chief Cochran's camp was rising steadily—unquestionably with Cochran's tacit support and probably even encouragement—and they intimidated the others. No one ever said anything openly to Tom's face, but he was aware he was always being watched, and frequently, after passing a group of fellow cops in the hall, would hear someone say “faggot” or “queer!” He never turned around. And he never responded, never reacted. He refused to give them what they wanted: a physical fight that could lead to his dismissal.

His home phone rang almost continuously.

On Thursday when he got to work, he was called on the carpet by one of Deputy Chief Cochran's upper-echelon cronies: “Why the hell aren't you answering your phone?” he demanded. “Either nobody answers or the damned line's busy. I was looking for an important file in that mess you've made down there and couldn't find it. If you spent less time talking to your…
friends
…and more time thinking about your duties, you'd be better off. The next time I call, I expect to get through!” The fact that he hadn't left a message himself made it pretty clear that it was a set-up, of course, to make sure Tom answered the phone every time it rang and could be subjected to the verbal abuse.

Thursday night, when he opened his locker, glitter powder poured out—someone had painstakingly poured it through the small ventilation slots on the locker door, and slipped in a note: “Fairy Dust.” Everything in his locker was covered in it. A bunch of the other officers also changing clothes didn't see the note, but their laughter made it clear they knew about it. Tom just picked up his clothes and left, still wearing his uniform.

As I say, these are only the things I managed to pry out of him. I suspected they were just the tip of the iceberg, and while my admiration for him was already boundless, I was heartsick that I couldn't do anything to help him. He never volunteered any information: He just took the abuse and said nothing. I urged him to go to Lieutenant Richman, but he refused. I was tempted to talk to Richman myself but realized that I couldn't. This was Tom's fight and I had no right to interfere, much as I might want to.

The phone, once he stopped leaving it to the machine to pick up, rang constantly and each time, Tom would simply lift up the receiver, listen for an instant—sometimes I could hear shouting from the phone even as far away as I was from it—and then hang up, his face expressionless.

*

Phil had taken Jonathan over to Bob and Mario's new house on Tuesday night, where the four of them set up a bed and unpacked some basic supplies to tide Jonathan over. Bob, to whom I talked after he and Mario had gotten back to their apartment, said they both thought, as I had thought of Mario when Bob first met him, that Jonathan was “a keeper.” In addition to his tattered old backpack, Jonathan had brought with him a cardboard box with clothes Tim had given him, insisting he'd “gotten too fat” to wear them (not true, of course), a small portable TV from Phil's old apartment, a good-sized glass bowl, and a large plastic bag filled with water and two small goldfish which Phil and Tim had gotten him as a going away present. Jonathan had duly named the goldfish “Tim” and “Phil.”

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: What would the world be like without friends?

*

When I arrived at the office after leaving Tom's on Friday morning, I had a message waiting. Two words: “The fountain?”

I was sitting on one of the marble benches circling the fountain in the center of Warman Park at exactly noon. I'd stopped at the diner in my building for a couple sandwiches, a couple orders of coleslaw, and two large Cokes to go. I imagined that Richman was giving up his lunch hour and might appreciate something to keep body and soul together.

At ten after, I saw him approaching. I got up from the bench, motioned toward one of the picnic tables, and met him there. He seemed happy to see I'd brought some food.

“I was debating on whether to stop and grab something from one of those hot dog carts, but didn't want to take the time,” he said, watching me open the bag and remove the contents.

“Ham salad or tuna?” I asked, pushing one of the Styrofoam cups of coleslaw across the table to him.

“Surprise me.” I reached into the bag and grabbed the first sandwich I came to.

“So how's Tom Brady holding up?” he asked, as he removed the plastic lid from his Coke and unwrapped his sandwich (the tuna).

“A hell of a lot better than I would under the same circumstances.”

Richman sighed. “Yeah, I know. We're trying to keep as close an eye on things as we can, and if anything overt happens, we'll jump in. But we can't really do much. Cochran's boys are just praying for us to give them something they can use against the Chief Black. Coddling homosexuals or favoritism/nepotism, they don't really care what it is as long as they can use it. And I'm pretty sure Cochran is subtly egging his guys on, watching for our reaction. But the result is—and I'm sure as hell not proud of it—that Officer Brady is pretty much on his own. But he looks like he's strong enough to handle it.”

I nodded. “He is.” I reached into the bag for the two little plastic spoons for the coleslaw, handing him one, and a napkin. “I just wish he didn't have to.”

“Just let him know that we're watching, and if things start getting out of hand…I was going to say he could come to me, but I don't think he would.”

I shook my head. “No, he wouldn't. He thinks he can take on the world all by himself, and I feel so fucking frustrated for not being able to help him.”

Richman nodded and sighed again, wadding up the sandwich wrapper in one hand and dropping it into the open but now empty bag.

“Well,” he said, “just let him know that my door is always open for him, if he needs me. Chief Black is between a rock and a hard place on this one. If Officer Brady were almost any other cop…but he's not. He's an outstanding young man who in less than a year on the force has saved the life of a fellow officer and several civilians, he was head of his class at the Academy…. No police force with any self respect or any hope of having the respect of the people it serves can just toss an officer like that aside, which is exactly what Cochran is trying his best to do. And the fact that Brady has an association, however nebulous, with the chief only makes Cochran particularly want to use him against the chief. It's a real mess.”

I wondered if he knew about the phone calls, or the harassment at work; but I couldn't mention them, because Tom wouldn't want me to.

*

Meanwhile, the labor negotiations dragged on, growing more bitter every day as it became increasingly apparent even to his fellow union negotiators that Joey G. was in over his head. He could bully and yell as well as his old man, but did not have the old man's savvy or negotiating skills. Management had offered a good, solid package, giving some concessions aimed at influencing other members of the labor team to convince Joey G. to bring the contracts before the union membership for a vote. But Joey wouldn't have it, and the Giacomino name alone kept even those who may have wanted to intervene from doing so. When management gave an inch, Joey took it as a sign that he was winning, and demanded a foot.

Much of this, of course, was played out in the media, and as the management team began to leak the terms and concessions, even the union's rank and file, growing weary of the picket lines, began to wonder what in hell Joey was trying to accomplish.

*

Gay Pride weekend was rapidly approaching, and the Pride Parade Committee wrote a formal letter to Chief Black—carefully worded—inviting Officer Tom Brady to be the Parade Grand Marshall “out of gratitude for Officer Brady's actions in protecting members of the gay and lesbian community.”

Chief Black wrote an open letter to the Committee, equally carefully worded, thanking them for their offer, but stating that “since any member of this department would have behaved exactly as Officer Brady had under the same circumstances, to single him out for special attention would place too much emphasis on one incident of police bravery to the unintentional detriment of the countless other officers who display equal bravery and courage every day in the course of their service to the city.”

By absolutely no coincidence whatsoever, the
Journal-Sentinel
, the city's smallest-circulation but most strident newspaper, noted for screaming headlines just a step or two above the “Man Eats Own Foot!” style of the supermarket tabloids, ran a front page story of the “rumored rift” within the police department under the thick black-lettered headline: “A Department in Crisis!”
The fact that this “rift” had been common knowledge since Chief Black was appointed was not mentioned. There was even a short one-paragraph reference to “strong allegations of rampant homosexuality” within the department's ranks. While Cochran's loose agreement with the chief prevented him from speaking out directly, it wasn't too hard to figure out to which “high ranking officials in the department” the story could be attributed. Boldly laying out the obvious friction between the “imported” Chief Black and “the department's proven and respected old guard,” the article reported the “deep and growing concern” of many on the force that “certain elements” were trying to ferment civil unrest by undermining the solid Christian family values upon which the force was founded. The fact that this logic would be specious even if it could be called logic mattered not a whit to the paper's editors.