Reynaldo's eyes flicked down at the ground, "Sorry, boss. I didn't mean it like that."
"I'm not your boss, and I'm just busting your maracas, Rey-Rey. I've got a plan, so don't worry."
"Are you thinking about sending me in undercover?"
Frank shrugged, "I don't see why not. Send you in first, just so he doesn't get a look at me yet."
Reynaldo swallowed dryly and said, "Okay. No problem. I can do that."
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing. It's just, I've never been good at lying."
"It's not lying. It's a covert operation for a good cause. You'll get used to it. In this line of work, if you do the covert stuff enough, it starts becoming second nature."
Reynaldo let out a long, slow breath and said, "I guess everybody's got to start somewhere. I'm not scheduled to work tomorrow. Will anyone get mad if I come in on overtime?"
Frank glanced over his shoulders at the empty desk behind him, "I don't see anybody of higher rank or seniority than me, so I guess I'm the one approving it."
Reynaldo smiled at Frank, "I think that's what tomorrow's meeting is about. You're going to run the department until Iolaus is back."
"Nope. I don't want it. I don't mind doing the administrative stuff just to make sure the place doesn't burn to the ground and everybody gets paid, but I'm not being the Acting-Acting Chief."
"But we need someone in charge, don't we?" Reynaldo said.
"Why? You only think that because you've been conditioned to think it. Everybody here's a professional. We can manage ourselves. We don't need somebody in a white shirt watching over us to make sure we don't shoot anybody in the holding cells. Trust me. Things will run a lot smoother than you think."
"That all sounds very Communist to me."
Frank nodded and said, "You can call me the Karl Marx of policing."
By the time he finished going through the list of telephone numbers to call the guys in the department and let them know about the mandatory meeting, he'd said, "Beats the hell out of me," at least fifty times. With every groan and complaint, his knee ached worse. It's not rain coming, Frank thought. It's an enormous black cloud gathering over the station for the torrential shitstorm Frederick and Jones are about to unleash.
Poor Reynaldo, he thought. The kid still has hope that the people in charge were going to do something positive for the police department. He thought about it for a moment and decided that maybe he could do with a little more positive thinking. Perhaps the supervisors were going to surprise him and do the right thing for once.
The picture of Vic Ajax stared down at him from the wall with increased disapproval and Frank imagined Vic saying, "Why the fuck would they start doing the right thing now, rookie?"
Chuck D's voice suddenly boomed "1989!" as Frank's phone rumbled with the opening verse of Public Enemy's Fight the Power, and Frank unclipped it from his waist and said, "Hello?"
"It's your dad."
"I have caller ID. What's up?"
"What are you doing?"
"Getting ready to go home. It's been a long day."
"Oh. Are you going to the store by any chance?"
"I hadn't planned on it," Frank said. "Why?"
"I just thought you might be."
"Did you need something from the store, Dad?"
"Are you going there?"
"Now I am."
"Forget it. I'll talk to you later."
"Dad! What do you need from the store? I'm already heading that way now."
"Grab me a case of Busch Light. I'll give you the money when you get here."
A half hour later Frank was still muttering to himself as he pulled up the dusty stone driveway to his father's house. There was a small gas grill outside the door with a heavy chain securing it to the hitch. One folding chair sat next to the grill, surrounded by large industrial trash bags stuffed to the point of bursting. Frank knocked as he opened the door and held up the case of beer, "It's one thing to send me on a beer run, but it's another to make me buy this piss water. I was embarrassed to be seen in public with it."
"Hello?" his dad shouted from the living room, raising his voice over the booming television.
Frank set the beer on the counter and sniffed the air, curling his nose instantly. He lifted the trash can and leaned down, smelling only lemon-scented plastic. "What the hell smells like feet in here, Dad?"
Frank O'Ryan Senior appeared at the kitchen doorway and said, "What are you talking about? I don't smell anything."
"Is it your fridge?" Frank said. He went to open the refrigerator door and felt it stick.
Senior smacked his hand against the door to keep it shut and said, "You'll mess up the tape."
Frank looked at the pieces of scotch tape holding the refrigerator and freezer door's shut and then at his father and said, "Do I even want to ask why you have tape on the fridge?"
"I read online that you can turn up the thermometer ten degrees if you seal the doors tight and don't open them as much. The goddamn electric company is trying to put people in the poor house."
"Are you sure about that?" Frank said slowly. He looked around the rest of the kitchen, still sniffing the air, and spied a large cup of vinegar sitting on the counter. "That's what it is. Were you cooking?"
"Did you bring the beer?" Senior said, pushing past his son to get to the case. "Do you want one?"
"No. What's up with the vinegar?"
"It absorbs food odors."
"What the hell is a food odor? You mean from the trash can?"
"No. The smell of food. Fried food, cooked food, all of them."
"That doesn't make any sense, Dad."
"Well, I like how it smells, ok?" Senior said. He cracked the beer can open and took a long, deep drink. "Vinegar's an amazing product. Did you know you can rinse your hair with it and get rid of dandruff?"
"Please tell me you're not bathing in it too."
"And if you wash your clothes with it, it gets them cleaner."
"Are you or are you not the same person who said organic fruit is for pussies and global warming is a bullshit story cooked up by Al Gore to scare people? Now you're suddenly a hippie? Where is all this shit coming from? Dad, did you read this stuff on the Internet? What did I tell you about taking any of that too seriously?"
Senior pulled three more beers out of the case and handed Frank one, "Here, and shut up. Come on and sit down for a minute."
Fox News was on full blast in the living room, a group of people sitting around a table taking turns yelling about an attempt to ban sugary soft drinks in major cities led by a Democratic senator from Ohio. They flashed the Senator's photo and Senior scowled and yelled out, "Asshole! Moron!"
Frank sipped the barley-flavored water in his can and winced at the taste. "What are you yelling about?"
"That dickhead from Ohio."
"Why, because he wants to keep people healthy and not let some big corporations give everybody diabetes?"
Senior scowled, "Because he's an asshole."
"Ok." Frank sat back on the couch, watching as they moved on to a new subject, which was instantly followed by calls of, "What a crock of shit" from his father. "Dad?" Frank said. "Is this what you do all day now? You sit around and yell at your TV?"
Senior sighed and picked up his remote control. He clicked onto the History Channel and said, "How about this, then? Is it okay with you if I watch this?"
Frank shrugged, focusing on the historian on TV as he discussed the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. "You know what's funny about this?"
Senior finished his second can of beer and set it on the table, moving to open the third in the same motion. "About the death of our Lord and Savior? No. Not really."
"In all the paintings of Jesus, all the statues in all the churches, he's this tall, thin white guy. It's total bullshit."
Senior held up his hand and said, "Just stop. I'm not in the mood for your nonsense."
"I'm serious. Think about it. How does a Jewish guy get born in
the middle of a Middle Eastern desert and he's whiter than I am? If Jesus was real, he looked a lot more like Akhbar than Andy, that's for sure. There's nothing about what he looked like in the Bible and it wasn't until Constantine turned the Roman Empire into Christians that we got this whole, beneficent shepherd image, really. Same thing with the Virgin Mary. It's all a crock."
Senior slammed the remote control onto the ground so hard the back snapped and batteries scattered across the floor. "That is enough! I will not hear any more of your blasphemy in this house!"
"Blasphemy?" Frank said, laughing nervously. "Are you serious? Calm down."
Senior bent down to scoop up the pieces of his remote control, "There is something really wrong with you, do you know that? Ever since you were a little kid. Always with the questions and the disobedience. I should have beaten you more, but your mother, God rest her, wouldn't have it. Now I worry about your immortal soul."
"Why, because I don't believe in Santa Claus?"
Senior looked up at him, the veins of his eyes like aerial photos of a twisting river, his voice trembling as he said, "If you don't stop, you have to leave. I'm serious."
"Okay, Dad. Relax," Frank said. "Jesus, you're gonna give yourself a heart attack if you don't relax."
Senior slumped back in his chair, "Who the hell cares."
"There you go," Frank said. "That's the spirit."
Senior clicked back onto Fox News. Now, the focus had turned to crime in the nation, showing images of black men from Florida who'd killed an infant during an armed robbery. "Did you hear about these satanic fuckers?"
Frank squinted at the TV, "They're Satanists?"
"No," Senior said, his voice suddenly falling to a harsh whisper. "But what they did, it can only be described as evil. Like the devil was inside them."
"It was probably a little more complicated than that, Dad."
Senior groaned, "Oh, for Christ's sake. Don't give me that shit about the school systems and opportunity. If we rounded all these fucking animals up and put them to death we wouldn't have any of this bullshit. I dealt with these goddamn jiggaboos for thirty years and it was always the same. They don't work, they don't respect nothing, and now they're out running around killing babies!" Senior patted the arm of his sitting chair and Frank leaned forward to see the molded-plastic grip of a handgun tucked into the cushion, "I got something for them if they show up here. Goddamn, do I."
Frank looked at his father with mounting concern, "Dad, the black people aren't coming to your house. You don't need a gun in your chair. You're gonna sit down on it one day and shoot your nuts off."
"Good. Who cares."
Frank set down his empty beer, "So what else is going on? Anything good?"
"It's Mildred's fifty-second birthday today. It would be nice of you to call her."
Frank snorted derisively, "Yeah, right."
Senior shot him a look, "Call her. She's your mother."
"She is not my mother. She's your ex-wife you forced me to call Mom who left you for the goddamn shift supervisor at Wawa. Fuck her and fuck her birthday."
Senior crumbled a little and his voice lowered, "It would mean a lot to me if you called her."
"I'm sorry, I can't. I've got nothing to say to her."
Senior finished the rest of his beer and stood up to carry it and the rest of the empty cans into the kitchen. His eyes were rimmed red and watery and Frank looked away, trying to spare his father any embarrassment. The old man walked into the kitchen and cracked open a fresh beer. "She's a good woman," he called out, choking on his words. "And she always treated you like a son. Maybe if you'd been a little more appreciative of her instead of pain-in-the-ass teenager, none of this would have happened."
"Right," Frank mumbled under his breath. "It's my fault she's a whore."
"What did you say?"
"Nothing, dad," Frank said. He stood up and walked into the kitchen, standing in the doorway as Senior unraveled a new industrial-sized trash bag and dropped the three empty beer cans into it. He saw the flattened cardboard of three other Busch Light cases stacked behind the trashcan. "Is that what those bags are out front? All beer cans?"
"I save them to sell at the scrap yard."
"How long did it take you to fill up those other bags?"
"What are you asking me?"
"Nothing," Frank said. "I'm just saying, you're hitting it pretty good, it seems."
"So?" Senior said. "Who gives a fuck?"
"Well, I give a fuck. The kids give a fuck. Dawn gives a fuck even though you tell her you'll come over for dinner and then don't show and don't call."
"Yeah, great," Senior muttered. "Lucky me."
"Nice," Frank said. "Well, thanks for inviting me to your pity party. I gotta go now."
"You know what, then? Go. Leave me alone. I don't want to hear this shit anyway. How much was the beer?"
"Forget about it, I got it," Frank said.
After a moment, Senior reached into the case for another one and held it out to his son, "One for the road?"
"No, I can't. I've gotta go home and help Dawn put the kids to bed."
Senior opened his mouth to speak but choked again, watery redness coming fresh into his eyes as he croaked, "Tell the little ones their Pop-Pop loves them."
"Ok, dad," Frank said, turning around suddenly and heading for the door. He felt compelled to flee from the anger and the misery and the drunkenness. "I'll see you around," he called out over his shoulder.
"Okay, sure. Goodnight," Senior grunted, vanishing into the living room. The TV came back on, followed by the sound of yelling from the television.
He checked his phone on the way to the car and saw a missed call from his wife. Probably wondering where the hell I'm at, he thought. At least this time I've got a legitimate excuse. He got into his car and pulled down to the end of his old man's driveway, clicking the turn signal to the right. A long line of cars drove past him, their headlights illuminating the half dozen deer standing by the side of the road, just waiting for the right moment to commit furry brown suicide. Frank took his foot off the brake just as his phone buzzed with another incoming text message, this time from Ophelia: Hey hunny. Can u swing by? I've got somethin 2 sho u that u won want 2 miss.
Frank stopped for a second, looking down the street at the red rear lights of the cars as they vanished into the darkness, going in the same direction he was supposed to be travelling. There are a bunch of deer down there, he thought. He switched the turn signal to the left and turned the wheel the opposite way as he stepped on the gas.
The Stretch's parking lot was packed tight with cars that went from the rear of the bar all the way out to the street. Tired-looking working men slumping toward the door just looking to get a beer. Business-types slumming it in hopes that they'd impress one of the girls with their fancy suits and score an under-the-bar groping. Chumps, Frank thought. These girls will run game on you so fast that you'll wake up tomorrow morning behind the dumpster with nothing but your boxer shorts and ankle socks. They run better undercover ops than I do.
That's why it works between Ophelia and I. I know what she is and she knows what I am. In a world where both of us have to pretend for a living, we found someone we can be completely honest with.
Frank pushed the door open and frowned at the crowd of people surrounding the bar. There were two girls on stage at the same time, their legs intertwined around the pole, locking their lips together to the catcalls and applause from the audience. Frank walked around the bar and reached into his pocket to pull out his wallet, needing to hit the ATM, needing singles to tip the girls.
"Nope!" Ophelia called out as she swung up beside him and grabbed his wallet out of his hands. "You won't be needing that tonight."
He smiled at her, "Why? What's going on?"
She leaned close to his ear and whispered, "I've got something special planned just for you. Come on."
She waved her hand at the bartender and he nodded, waving the riff-raff out o
f the way as he lowered a bucket of ice stuffed with a bottle of champagne. "Oooooh," a few of the patrons called out. "Remember, there's no sex in the champagne room," someone said.
"Of course not," Ophelia said as she grabbed the bucket with one hand and Frank's shirt with the other, "but maybe there's a blowjob."
"Me next!" the guy closest to Frank yelled.
"Just for this guy," Ophelia purred. She smacked Frank's ass and told him to hurry up and get behind the thick black curtain of the private room. The music was muffled to a low thump-thump-thump and Ophelia pointed at the black velour couch for Frank to sit.
"Am I getting a lap dance?" Frank said. "This does sound fun."
Ophelia grinned slyly and said, "Just sit back and get comfortable." She withdrew the thick green bottle from the bucket of ice and popped the cork.
He watched her lick up the white foam as it spilled across her hand and said, "I never thought I'd be jealous of a champagne bottle."
Ophelia took a deep swig from the bottle, then passed it to him. "Sorry, no glasses."
"It's all right," he said. He lifted the bottle and drank from it as well, smiling despite the cheap apple cider quality to it. Ophelia slid onto the couch next to him and lifted her legs, settling in beside him. "I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure this isn't how a lap dance works," Frank said. "Aren't you supposed to take your top off?"
She smiled wickedly and stroked the underside of his chin with her red fingernail, "Your name is Tom and you work in construction."
"Huh?" he said, but his attention was torn from her by the sound of someone whipping the curtain back and standing over them in the private room. The woman's body was silhouetted by the bar lights, but Frank could make out her bright blonde hair and the ridiculous sweep and swell of her figure. She threw the curtain back behind her and planted a high-heeled boot on the sofa between Frank's legs, "Is this him?"
"Yep," Ophelia nodded. "Tom, this is Sapphire. Sapphire, this is my honey."
"Mmm," Sapphire said approvingly. She bent over in front of him and jiggled her massive breasts. She leaned in close to his face and kissed him lightly on the lips, "He's handsome."
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