The Good Cop (6 page)

Our drinks arrived, and we settled back to enjoy the music.

During his break, Guy traditionally got up from the piano and moved around the room, exchanging greetings with the regulars and accepting compliments on his talent, which was considerably larger than the venue in which he was playing. I'd often wondered why he seemed happy to stay at one place so long, but was very glad he did.

He worked his way to the platform, and to our table.

“Good to see you, Dick,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “It's been a while.”

“Unfortunately,” I said, then introduced Tom. Guy gave him an appreciative once-over, then turned to me and said: “I'm glad you're getting on with your life, Dick. Still in touch with Chris?”

“Sure. We write a couple times a month and talk on the phone regularly. He's got a new lover, as I think I told you last time I was in. He's doing well, and I'm glad for him.”

Guy nodded. “Well, give him my regards when you talk with him next.” Then, turning to Tom, he said: “Got any requests for the next set?”

“Do you know anything from
Boy Meets Boy
?”

Guy grinned and gave him a wide-eyed, raised-eyebrow look. “Do I know anything from
Boy Meets Boy
?” he asked incredulously. “Honey, I know
everything
from ‘Boy Meets Boy'! What would you like to hear?”

“‘Tell Me, Please'?” Tom said, then gave me a quick look and if I didn't know better, I'd swear he blushed.

“You got it. Well, time to get back. Good to see you, Dick; nice to meet you, Tom. Come back.”

“We will,” we echoed in unison.

Was that a blush?
I wondered.
And if so, why?
Of course, I knew the lyrics by heart, and realized that maybe Tom might be afraid I'd think he meant them to apply to me. But that was hardly likely…even though the die-hard romantic in me gave it a wistful thought.

About ten minutes into his second set, Guy segued into almost the entire score from
Boy Meets Boy
, moving from the rousing ‘It's a Boy's Life!' into the far more…
out with it, Hardesty!
…okay, romantic…‘Tell Me, Please.'

You're a marshmallow, Hardesty,
my mind said, derisively and I immediately got a mental picture of my guardian angel, wings and halo highlighted, responding sweetly:
Fuck thee!

I forced myself not to look at Tom, and to zero in on Guy and the words to the song:

“Tell me, please, does anybody love you?

Do you have a special love affair?

Someone who worries about you,

who's always true and tender too

and waits for you somewhere?”

You're hopeless, Hardesty,
my mind sighed.

*

Guy finished his second set and remained at the piano, engrossed in conversation with a couple of the patrons sitting closest to him. Jim and Cory finished their drinks and got up to leave. We exchanged another wave and smile as they went out the door.

“I'm really glad we came here,” Tom said. “Just what I needed—like this whole weekend has been.”

I thought again of how tough it must be for Tom, really, being in a demanding, dangerous job surrounded by too many homophobes, being in a relationship which, no matter how close friends he and Lisa were, did not and could not supply him with the kind of emotional support he wanted and needed.

“Well, we've still got one more day to go,” I said.

Suddenly the front door burst open and Cory ran into the bar, shirt torn and face bloody.

“Call the police!” he yelled at the bartender. “Jim's hurt!”

Everything started happening at once: the bartender reached for the phone; two guys closest to the door grabbed hold of Cory and led him to a stool. The rest of the bar got to its feet, including Tom and me, and moved toward the door, but Tom pulled out his wallet and flashed his badge. “Stay here!” he said in a voice which commanded attention. He turned to me. “Give me your keys!”

I fumbled for them and handed them to him as he went out into the street, with me at his heels. Ignoring me, Tom raced across the street to my car, and to the car's passenger side door. I meanwhile ran instinctively toward the alley between Griff's and Ruthie's, where probably ten people were roiling around, fighting. I could see someone on the ground—Jim, I guessed—while several guys stood or bent over him, kicking and punching him. One had a pipe or club of some sort in his hand, using the end of it as a battering ram to punch Jim in the side. Jim had managed to curl himself into a fetal position to try to protect himself. I managed to grab one of two guys who had a woman forced against the wall, punching her, while out of the corner of my eye I saw another woman kneeing a guy in the groin. Several other women were coming out of Ruthie's, attracted by the noise, not knowing what was going on. A couple started toward the scuffle, but at that point, I heard Tom yelling: “Police! Knock it off! Now!” and saw him running toward the group, his wallet and badge in one hand, a gun in his other.

The women coming out of Ruthie's backed off immediately, but not the attackers, including the guy I'd pulled off the woman. He punched me, hard, in the stomach, and I came up with an uppercut that snapped his head back sharply and sent him crashing backwards into the wall.

I saw one of the group kicking Jim step back, reach one hand behind his back, and bring out a gun he'd apparently had in his waistband, just as the guy with the pipe standing over Jim raised it over his head with both hands.

I heard Tom yell “Freeze!” and saw the start of the downward swing of the pipe, toward Jim's head. Then there were three quick shots, a couple screams, and the sound of running as four or five of the attackers headed down the alley. The guy I'd been fighting with tried to follow, but I grabbed him and slammed him into the wall again. A couple guys from Griff's and some of the women from Ruthie's appeared and held him to keep him from getting away as the sound of approaching sirens grew closer. I saw Cory running to kneel down beside Jim, trying to turn him over.

When I looked around, there were four people on the ground: Jim, the guy with the pipe, the guy with the gun…and Tom.

Chapter 3

The rest was a blur. I immediately ran over to Tom and was relieved to see him struggling to sit up. He had his right hand against his left shoulder, and blood seeped between his fingers. While I'm sure it hurt like hell, it appeared that it wasn't life threatening. He managed a weak grin and tried to get to his feet, but I told him to stay where he was. I stayed with him until the squad cars started pulling up, and I was pushed back with the crowd. A moment or two later, the ambulances arrived and took Jim and Tom away: Cory and the two women were battered, but did not require an ambulance; the two attackers were beyond needing one, and were covered over with yellow tarps.

Cory had wanted to go immediately to the hospital to be with Jim, but the cops asked him to stay to give his statement. Other cops on the scene started taking the names and addresses of everyone who had seen anything at all, and a couple plainclothes detectives showed up and took Cory and the two women aside to question them. I recognized both the detectives and hoped to hell they wouldn't see me.

I just wanted to get the hell away from there, but a squad car was blocking my car and I couldn't. I wanted to stay as far out of it as I could, for obvious reasons. I knew they'd ask me about Tom, and what we were doing there. I just tried to slowly back myself away, but then Cory looked around and pointed at me and I knew I'd had it.

Shit!

One of the plainclothesmen—Detective Crouch…no, Couch—looked at me, nudged the other—Detective…Carpenter—and they waved me over to them.

“Detectives,” I said by way of acknowledgment. I'd had a minor run in with the two partners on an earlier case, and I'd managed to piss Detective Couch off royally. From the way he looked at me, I could see he hadn't forgotten.

“You know Officer Brady?” Carpenter asked.

“Yes,” I said, “I went to college with him and his wife.”
Sliiide that one right in there, Hardesty,
I thought.

“And what was Officer Brady doing in a gay bar?” Couch asked, scowling at me, then added: “Oh, yes, that's right. You're…
gay
…aren't you?'

One of Chief Black's innovations had been to require every officer in the department to attend classes in dealing with minorities—including gays—, which was widely applauded by the citizenry, but generally regarded as a waste of time by some of the department's old guard.

While I was glad to see Chief Black's sensitivity training program was having some effect, in that Couch didn't use one of the other words he undoubtedly would have preferred, the way this guy said “gay” made it sound like an infectious disease.

“Yes. Your point being…?”

“So what was Officer Brady doing in a gay bar?” Couch repeated.

“Because I invited him to come. His wife is out of town for the weekend, so we decided to spend some time together. Officer Brady puts friendship above passing judgment. And I think we should all be pretty damned glad he
was
in that bar, or it could have been a lot worse for the people whose lives he probably saved.”

“Yeah,” Couch muttered, “two lesbos and a…”

Carpenter shot him a withering look, and Couch abruptly shut up.

“I apologize for my partner,” Carpenter said. “He…”

I turned to Couch and stared at him until he looked at me, defiantly. “Detective Couch,” I said, being very careful not to let my anger show, “I'm sure you're a good detective and a good man, but you have one
hell
of a lot to learn. I might suggest
you
consider spending some time in a gay bar. It might do you good.” Realizing he would undoubtedly take that the wrong way, I looked at his partner, who had always struck me as being a little more open minded.

“You can interpret that for him sometime,” I said.

Carpenter gave me an almost imperceptible nod, then immediately said: “So exactly what happened here?”

And I told him what I knew.

*

While I was really concerned about Tom, I didn't try to go to the hospital. I knew he'd be in deep enough shit without having a known faggot hovering over him. I was pretty sure they would keep him overnight and probably release him in the morning. I'd call him at home then.

*

The shooting was the lead story on the morning news, and made the front page of the Sunday paper. While the newspaper article had obviously been hastily patched together, owing to the relatively short time between the incident and press time:
2 Dead in Gang Attack
, the TV reports did go into a bit more detail, including giving Tom's name. It was interesting for what all the reports didn't say as well as for what they did: Two women had been attacked outside “a bar” on Parker Boulevard, and two men coming to their aid were severely beaten, one of them reported to be in critical condition in City General hospital. When an off-duty policeman arrived on the scene a gunfight ensued in which two of the attackers, believed to be members of the Turf Lords gang, were shot and killed by the officer, who himself sustained a gunshot wound to the shoulder.

One of the TV stations (I flipped back and forth between them) even somehow had managed to show Tom's photo, apparently from the award ceremony after he'd saved the officer trapped in the burning squad car. I had a sneaking suspicion that the fact that not one of the reports mentioned the gay aspect of the story just might have been in response to a request from the department. I somehow found that fact more than a little disturbing.

I also felt guilty about not going to the hospital to see Tom, or to make sure he got home okay if, as I suspected and hoped, they had released him. But I knew it would not be a good idea. I waited until about ten o'clock Sunday morning, then called his apartment. There was no answer, and I began to get worried.

I'd just determined to take a walk over to his place and check when the phone rang.

“Dick Hardesty,” I said, wondering as usual why I always insisted on using my last name when I answered the phone, even at home.

“Dick, hi. It's Tom.”

Well of course it is,
I thought, relieved to hear his voice.

“Tom!” I was mildly surprised by the sound of relief in my own voice. “Where are you?
How
are you?”

His voice sounded tired when he said: “I'm home, and I'm fine. Sore, but fine. I've been here about an hour, but I haven't been answering the phone. Did you try to call?”

“Yeah, I've been worried about you, and I wanted to apologize for bailing out on you last night. But when I realized you were probably going to live, I just felt that discretion was the better part of valor.”

Tom managed a small laugh. “Probably just as well. I had department people all over me most of the night, wanting every detail of the shooting. Luckily they spent more time on the shooting itself than on what I was doing in a gay bar; I gather they'd talked to you at the scene from what one of the detectives said. But I suspect the gay issue will resurface soon. If I hadn't been shot and effectively taken off the duty roster, I'd probably have been suspended as a matter of course while they investigated. There'll be a hearing, of course, which is standard procedure when a police officer is involved in a fatal shooting.”

He paused, then said “You want to come on over? We could talk easier in person, I think.”

“Sure. Did you have breakfast? I could stop at the deli and get something.”

“No, thanks. I had breakfast—at least that's what they called it—at the hospital while I was waiting for them to release me.”

Again I felt guilty for not having been there to bring him home, but forced myself to put it aside.