The Good Cop (3 page)

“Kismet yet again,” Tom said. “I decided it was time to make the change. And while Chief Black of course can't guarantee that I'll be accepted, having him as a family friend sure can't hurt, and I'm sure he'll be glad to put in a good word with the applications committee if one were needed. I submitted my application the first week we got here. There's a lot of paperwork involved: background check, even a lie detector exam. Fortunately, if I was gay or not wasn't one of the questions.”

“But…” I started again, and forgot again.

“And, no,” Tom said, apparently having a better idea of what I was trying to get out than I did, “he doesn't know I'm gay.”

I took a deep breath. “I'm really glad for you if this is what you really want, but you must know how homophobic this police force has always been. I don't want to be the voice of doom, here, but I'm not being melodramatic when I say you could very well be putting your life in danger.”

Tom shrugged. “I know, but this force isn't all that much different from any force anywhere, and things won't change until somebody
makes
them change: There's got to be somebody willing to take the first step toward integrating the force: especially this one. I know it won't be easy, but I know Chief Black, and I know he's a good, decent man who's determined to make changes that need being made. He won't let anyone get out of hand.”

He grinned at me and moved his hand down to lay it on top of my leg. “Besides, it's not like I'm going to go around waving the rainbow flag or hang around the locker room groping my crotch and drooling. But I know there are already other gay cops on the force—there
have
to be. Maybe, when there are enough of us…I just want to make a difference; to show the straights that we've got the ability—and the right—to be as good a cop as any heterosexual.”

I shook my head slowly. I was impressed by his altruism, but was really concerned about his walking into the lion's cage without a whip and chair. Still, it was his life. “Well,” I said finally, “if that's what you really want, and you realize what you're getting into, go for it. I wish you the best.”

He grinned. “Thanks, Dick. I knew you'd understand.”

I wasn't sure I did, but…. And I really wondered what Tom's dad had to say about all this, or even if he knew yet. But it wasn't my place to ask—at least not now. Knowing me, I knew I'd manage to bring it up at some point.

The grandmother clock on the credenza struck 11, and I automatically looked at my watch for verification.

“Wow,” I said, “it's getting late. I guess I'd better be going.”

Tom, whose hand still rested on my knee, squeezed it slightly. “You don't have to go, do you?” he said with a grin that made Western Union obsolete.

I felt a wave of…what?…awkwardness. I mean, here we were, sitting across from his wife (yeah, yeah, wife in name only, but still…) and his wife's lover and I was suddenly feeling very midwest/middle class…well, stodgy. I hated that.

Carol deliberately reached over and took Lisa's hand. “We're going to go spend the night at my apartment,” she said as they exchanged smiles. “We thought maybe the two of you would like to have the place to yourselves.”

Oh, my, yes!
my crotch—which was never much one for social conventions—said eagerly. I looked at Tom, who just grinned at me.

“Gosh,” I said. “If I'd have known, I'd have brought my jammies.”

“I don't think you'll need them,” Tom said.

And I didn't.

*

Time has an annoying habit of sneaking by when you're not paying attention, and that's what happened to the next several weeks. The patent case I was working on dragged on and on and involved far more detail than I'd have any interest in relating here. In the end, however, I was able to determine that the defendant had indeed engaged in a little skullduggery. Unfortunately, it was the defendant whom Glen O'Banyon was representing. Oh, well, you can't win 'em all, and even a lawyer as good as O'Banyon can't always be on the right side. (In fact, it's precisely because he was as good as he was that clients who knew they were in the wrong sought him out.)

Tom's application to the Police Academy was accepted with what must have been unprecedented speed, and he was told there'd been a “last minute” opening in the very next class when one of the scheduled recruits had had to withdraw for personal reasons. The speed of the process surprised even him, and turned out to be a little more life-disruptive than he'd anticipated. He'd notified his father before putting in his application, and while the older man was understandably less than overjoyed by Tom's decision to leave the family business, he knew his son had a mind of his own, and didn't try to stop him. Tom had assumed he'd have at least a month or so before his acceptance came through, and even considered postponing entering the Academy for a class or two to give his dad time to make other arrangements for an assistant manager. But he realized that part of the speed of his approval was undoubtedly due to his association with Chief Black—though Tom had of course never even mentioned it in his application or in the pre-admission interviews. Postponing his entry was, he decided, out of the question. He entered the Academy exactly two weeks after our reunion dinner.

He did love the Academy, though, and he was like a little kid when he described everything he was learning. Apparently he was doing very well and was at or near the top of his class, which came as no surprise. While I still had my doubts about what he might be facing in the future, I was glad for him.

*

As for me, though most of my cases during those weeks were considerably less interesting than watching paint dry, my social life provided enough stimulation to keep me from getting totally bored. My friend Jared Martinson, who had been driving a beer truck for well over a year while he worked on his doctoral dissertation in Russian Literature (a long story), finally finished it and, after making his oral presentations, hoped to have everything tied up so that he could receive his official diploma at the next graduation ceremony. Though we were jumping the gun a bit, I and some of our mutual friends held a little surprise party at my place to celebrate. I'd not been used to throwing parties since when Chris and I were together, what seems like a couple hundred years ago, now. It took up a lot of time, pulling everything together, but it was worth it and everybody seemed to enjoy themselves.

Basically the same group of friends as were at Jared's party had gradually established an informal weekly Wednesday night get-together at Bob's bar, Ramón's. I got a kick out of thinking of the group—for no other reason than that I'd heard the name as a kid and loved it—as “The Elves, Gnomes, and Wee-People's Marching and Chowder Society.” But I kept the name to myself, lest one of the other “members”—not one of whom could be considered an elf, gnome, or wee-person…or a fairy, for that matter—not appreciate my humor and be tempted to punch me out.

I'd arrived early—surprise—for one of our get-togethers to find only Bob and his lover Mario there before me. Bob was behind the bar as a backup for Jimmy should one be needed, though Wednesday wasn't the busiest night of the week and we met and disbanded fairly early due to its being a weeknight.

“Any news on the house?” I asked Bob as soon as I'd pulled up a stool and sat down. He and Mario had made an offer on a great old Victorian house in one of the areas being saved from the urban sprawl by gentrification. It needed a lot of work, of course, but it was basically solid with, they'd told me, beautiful woodwork and even a small coach house in back.

Bob grinned. “We should be closing any time now.”

“That's fantastic! I'll volunteer for the moving crew whenever you're ready.”

“Glad to hear it. If you hadn't volunteered, I'd have drafted you.”

Jimmy was at the front of the bar talking with a couple customers, and while I couldn't hear the conversation, I did catch the name “Nightingale” several times. The Nightingale was a small bar on one of the side streets just off Arnwood.

“Something happen at the Nightingale?” I asked Bob when he brought my Manhattan over to me.

He nodded. “It got held up last night,” he said as he put two maraschino cherries on a plastic pick and dropped them into my drink.

“No shit?” I was sorry to hear it, but only mildly surprised. “There seems to be a lot of that going on these days.”

“Yeah. Way too much. Three guys just walked right in and robbed the place. Luckily, it was near closing and there weren't more than three or four guys in the place, but still…. That takes a lot of balls.”

“Gang members?”

Bob shrugged. “Probably, I'd imagine.”

“Well, hopefully things will get better once Chief Black gets settled in.”

“I sure don't envy him,” volunteered Jimmy, who had come to our end of the bar for another bottle of gin and who never seemed to miss out on much.

“I do know that business at Venture has sure picked up,” Mario observed. Mario was a bartender at Venture, which was closer to The Central and therefore considered relatively safe. “Kind of a double-edged sword, though…we're glad for the extra business, but sorry it has to be at the expense of the Arnwood bars.”

At that point, Tim and Phil walked in and joined us. Tim hadn't made it to the past few gatherings, the increase in business at the coroner's office, where he was a junior medical examiner, having picked up considerably in wake of the police being distracted by the upheavals at headquarters.

Greetings exchanged and drinks ordered, Bob grinned at Phil and said: “You look a mite tuckered, Phil…Tim not letting you get enough sleep?”

Phil grinned. “Sleep? What's that? It's the trying to juggle a new job, go to night classes, and move all my junk
and
Tim's to the new place all at once that's wearing me out.”

“Hey, I help when I can,” Tim said, defensively.

“Uh huh,” Phil said, unconvinced.

“That's what happens when you get married and settle down,” Mario said.

“Watch it, Mario. Don't use the ‘M'-word or you'll have Tim bolting for the hills.”

Tim grinned. “That's right. Tell the press we're ‘just good friends.'”

The back door opened and Jared came in, spectacular as always. Another round of greetings and handshakes, and Jared took the stool beside me, his knee automatically finding my thigh.

“What'll it be, Jared?” Bob asked as Jared exchanged a wave with Jimmy at the far end of the bar. “Or should we start calling you ‘Dr. Martinson'?”

Jared shook his head. “Not quite yet. Now that my dissertation defense is out of the way and everything's been submitted, it'll still probably take a while.”

Bob put Jared's drink in front of him, then moved around from behind the bar to pick up his own glass, and raised it: “To Dr. Jared Martinson,” he said, adding “…whenever.”

We all joined in the toast, with glass-clicks all around.

“Well,” Tim said, “I'll bet you'll really be sorry to have to give up your beer delivery route. Maybe they'll let you keep it on weekends.”

Jared grinned at him. “Uh, tempting as that sounds, I don't think I'd want it even if they offered. There's talk that our union dues are going to at least double after the contract negotiations are over.”

Jimmy, who had once again wandered to our end of the bar for something, and again without breaking stride or even looking at us, said: “Jeez, the whole town's goin' to hell in a handbasket. Gangs, unions, organized crime. A girl just isn't safe on the streets anymore.” And, having gotten what he came for, he went back to the front of the bar, leaving me still amazed at how he was able to keep track of our conversation even from that distance.

“Well, not to worry,” I said. “I think that once Chief Black gets it all pulled together, it'll be okay. They do have some good people on the force.”

“Yeah,” Bob said. “And in the meantime we can all just put a deadbolt on our closet door and wait for it to pass over.”

Ah, if only we'd known….

Chapter 2

Tom graduated Number One in his class, and had his picture on the front page of two of the local papers. He did look like a poster boy for police recruitment, and a particularly large amount of attention was given to the graduation of Tom's class by way of assuring the citizens that the department was still functioning.

I took Tom, Lisa, and Carol out to dinner as soon after Tom's graduation as we could arrange it, and Tom and I were able to reestablish at least semi-regular phone calls with promises to get together privately the first chance we had.

*

Never turn your back on time, not even for a minute, because when you do, it disappears. Monday becomes Friday and June becomes January. I kept busy, though don't ask me to give a detailed account of any case I worked on—none of them was sufficiently interesting for me to really remember. The social side of my life kept me from getting too bored, and there were the usual number of tricks coming and going: Nice guys, most of them, of course, or I wouldn't have gone home with them, but no one I was particularly distressed not to see again.

Tom, of course, was on cloud nine. I always looked forward to talking with him on the phone because his enthusiasm and pure joy at doing what he loved always gave me a boost. He was particularly excited when his request to be assigned to the Gang Control Unit was approved. He was the only rookie in the unit, which was obviously an acknowledgment by his superiors of his potential. He always had stories to tell and I enjoyed hearing them.

He was, from everything I could gather, extremely popular with his fellow officers, not one of whom suspected he was gay. He did admit, somewhat embarrassed by what even he referred to as “selling out,” to keeping a photo of Lisa taped to the inside of his locker. At the same time, he kept his eye out for other officers he felt might also be gay. He was willing to bide his time to be sure he was firmly entrenched and accepted by everyone as a “good cop” before he took whatever next step he was considering in reaching out to the other maybe-gays.