by Brent Pilkey
But despite how unhurt he felt, there was no sense in pushing his luck. The gun belt and Kevlar vest were enough additional weight and restrictions; no sense throwing driving into the mix as well. Jack knew he was damned lucky to have escaped serious injury. So, he’d gladly accept the sore ribs and a wounded ego and consider himself fortunate.
And even if the barbell had permanently folded him in half, he still would have hobbled in to work. After four months of sitting behind a desk, there was no way he was going to miss out on getting back in the cars. His only disappointment was in being paired up with Connor Lee, Mr. White Magic, instead of Jenny.
Connor must have been reading Jack’s mind. “Thought you’d be working with Jenny, bud.”
“She’s taking off early tonight. Got a bachelorette party or something to go to.” Jack hooked an arm out the passenger window. It was another hot, humid evening but neither Connor nor Jack was in the mood for air conditioning.
“Bachelorette party, eh? Those can get pretty wild, bud.” Connor whistled appreciatively. “Damn, I’d give my left nut to see that Jenny get all nasty. You don’t have any naked pictures of her, do you?”
Jack turned from watching the pedestrians on Sherbourne Street to look unbelievingly at Connor. “What?”
“Hey, bud, no offence,” Connor said with a smile. “I heard you two were pretty tight. Thought you might have taken a few candid pics, that’s all.”
Jack laughed. There was no sense getting mad; Connor wasn’t the first copper to ask about photos. Hell, Jack had once told Jenny he could retire if he had nude pictures of her to sell. Tall and lean with just enough muscle to give her curves under the uniform — even better in civvies — with waist-length, raven-black hair and crystal blue eyes, Jennifer Alton was a magnet for every horny copper and firefighter in the division. When Jack had first met her, she’d been wearing a fake wedding band to discourage come-ons, but apparently a gold ring meant little to men in uniform.
“Sorry, no photos. You’ve been here two weeks and you’re already getting up to date on the station gossip?”
“You bet, bud. Gotta keep my ear to the ground and you two are a pretty hot topic. From the sounds of it, you’re banging her in the scout car whenever you work together.”
Jack burst out laughing, then bit it off as pain flared in his ribs. “Every time we work together, huh?” he asked when his ribs had settled down to a dull ache. “That’s funny, considering we’ve never worked together a single day.”
“No shit?”
“No shit. She only came to the shift after I got shot. After that, I was in 53. When I finally got back down here, I did one day shift then ended up riding the front desk after I threw that mumblee off the bridge. You should know the gossip in a police station is like the gossip back in high school.”
“Damn,” Connor swore, shaking his head. “I was hoping you could tell me what she’s like. Damn.”
“Sorry, man. You’ll just have to use your imagination.”
“That’s cool; I’ve got a good imagination.” After a moment’s silence, he went on. “Hope you don’t mind working with me, bud. I mean, I’m okay working with you ’cause I know if I get killed, you’ll avenge my death.”
“What?” Connor was developing a habit of confusing Jack.
“You’ll avenge me,” he repeated. “I’m working with the Reaper.”
Jack had no answer for that and luckily the dispatcher gave him an excuse not to look for one.
“5103, in 2’s area. The Keg Mansion at 515 Jarvis Street. See the manager. Looks like it started as a dispute with a couple of customers when they tried to leave without paying. Now the complainant’s saying they assaulted him when he called police.”
Jack hooked the mike as Connor swung the car onto Wellesley Street. “10-4, dispatch. We’re just around the corner. We’ll be there in a few seconds.”
The Keg sat on the northeast corner of Wellesley and Jarvis streets. A fancy steakhouse restaurant inside an old Victorian mansion. Jack liked eating there; it gave dinner a Gothic atmosphere. Connor wheeled into the parking lot and their complainant trotted down the front steps to meet them as they got out of the car.
Jack stretched as Connor spoke with the manager. God, it was good to be back on the road.
“They just got up and left without paying,” the manager, a thin man in a stiffly starched white shirt, explained as Jack sauntered over. “Their waitress, Sally, told me and I caught up with them here in the parking lot. I wasn’t about to let them walk out on a three-hundred-dollar bill.”
“Three hundred for two guys?” Jack didn’t know if he should be impressed or disgusted.
“They could eat a lot.”
“They assaulted you?” Connor asked.
“Absolutely. One of them, the shorter one, knocked my cell phone out of my hand and stomped on it.” The manager gestured to a woeful smear of plastic and electronics on the asphalt.
“Anything else?”
“The other one shoved me.” The poor guy turned around and the back of his stiff white shirt was anything but.
Connor pulled out his memo book. “Can you tell me what these guys look like?”
“Actually,” the manager mused, scanning the streets, “I might be able to show them to you. They went into that convenience store over there then, just before you got here, they started walking up Jarvis. They didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry.” He stepped out onto the sidewalk and looked north. “Yup. There they are.”
The two men the manager pointed at were strolling up Jarvis Street and were definitely not in any hurry. Judging from their size, Jack wondered if they could hurry.
Oh, fuck me.
“Should we take the car?”
Jack shook his head. “I think we can catch up to them and besides, I don’t think they’ll fit in the back of the car.”
“How’s your back feeling, Jack?”
“Let’s hope we don’t have to find out.” Jack pulled out his mitre — he’d never found anyone, not even an old timer, who could tell him why the portable radios were called mitres — as he and Connor started hoofing it after their suspects. “5103, call radio.”
“5103, go ahead.”
“The suspects from this dine-and-dash and assault are walking northbound on Jarvis. Looks like they’re almost at Earl. We’re going to catch up with them and have a chat.”
“10-4, 5103. Let me know when you’re with them. Would you like another car to drop by?” The dispatcher was following a basic rule of policing: when possible, the number of coppers should be greater than the number of assholes.
“You read my mind, dispatch.”
The dispatcher voiced out for another unit while Jack and Connor jogged after their delinquent diners.
A scout car pulled up alongside Jack and the passenger window whirred down. “Don’t you know it’s easier to chase someone in a car than on foot?”
“Hey, Jenny. Yeah, I know,” Jack admitted. “Do us a favour and cut those two guys off. It’s too fucking hot to run.”
“You mean the walking roadblock?”
“That would be them. 5103 to radio,” he called as Jenny accelerated away. “Enforcement 51 is on scene and we’ll be speaking with the suspects at the corner of Jarvis and Earl.”
Earl Street was a little side road running east off Jarvis Street with a small patch of grass amid all the concrete and asphalt on the southeast corner. The white scout car, its blue and red striping looking as worn and tired in the heat as Jack felt, came to a quick stop, blocking the sidewalk. Jenny waited in the car, letting Jack and Connor approach the suspects. If the suspects ran — Jack doubted they would be good for anything beyond a short sprint — she’d be ready to chase them down the sensible way.
But the suspects didn’t run. They simply stood and waited for the police to come to them.
/> “Guys,” Jack hailed as he and Connor caught up to the suspects. Jack surreptitiously slipped his can of pepper spray into his left hand. “We need you to come back with us to the Keg. There are some allegations that need to be cleared up.”
As Jack spoke with them, Connor slid off behind the suspects’ line of sight while Jenny exited the car to flank them from the other side.
Great, we’ve got them trapped, but I bet they still outweigh us by a couple hundred pounds.
The two men were staring at Jack with either complete disinterest or mild contempt and, in Jack’s opinion, with good reason. The tall one — he had to go six-three at least — was wearing a blue T-shirt so tight it might as well have been spray-painted onto his massive physique. Veins like garden hoses tracked the length of his arms, coiling about forearms the size of Jack’s upper arms. Slap an Austrian accent on the guy and he could be Arnold’s cousin. His bigger cousin.
Jack had been training at gyms for a long time and this guy was the largest bodybuilder he’d ever seen. And his eating buddy, who was shorter by a good nine inches, made him seem small.
Where Mr. Arnold was sculpted, his friend was a colossal block of human. His shoulders started just beneath his ears and the body below them, from chest to calves, was thick — impossibly thick — with muscle. He could be some sort of monster dwarf or troll out of a video game. A troll wearing a T-shirt that said SHUT UP AND FUCKING SQUAT. Jack figured the weight that had crushed him earlier would be a joke to either of these freaks.
It was no wonder these guys had packed away three hundred dollars’ worth of food. Jack was willing to bet two-fifty of it had been cow.
“What kind of allegations?” Troll-man wanted to know. He went to cross his arms over his chest, couldn’t reach, settled for hooking his thumbs in his jeans. Power-lifters weren’t known for their flexibility.
“An unpaid bill, assault and a crushed cell phone.”
Troll-man shook his head. “Naw, don’t wanna.”
Big fucking surprise there. “Listen, guys. We can’t let you just walk away from this.”
Troll-man looked to his buddy, cocking an eyebrow in question. Mr. Arnold turned to look at Connor then glanced over his shoulder at Jenny. Jack could see it in his eyes, Mr. Arnold had summed up the threat and dismissed it. He crossed his arms — barely — and sneered his opinion to Troll-man.
“Naw, we’re going to a movie,” Troll-man said, challenging Jack.
Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw Jenny tilt her head to the radio microphone clipped to her shoulder. “Enforcement 51, we need some more units here.”
“You come back with us or we arrest you, simple as that.” Jack laid it out, throwing the challenge back.
Troll-man took a step toward Jack. “Then arrest me,” he dared. “If you can.”
Oh, fuck me. One day back on the road and I’m going to spend it in the hospital.
Jack had no illusions of escaping any fight with these two monsters unscathed. If either of them got hold of an arm, they could probably break it as easily as snapping a bread stick. But if Jack was going to the emergency room, then at least one of these guys was going to be there for an extended stay. He had little faith in pepper spray — it always seemed to work so much better on him than the assholes — but if things went bad, and he couldn’t see them going any other way, he was going to shove the can up Troll-man’s nose and empty it. Then he was going to take out his baton and aim for all the spots the defensive-tactics instructors told them not to hit: skull, throat, joints. Everything else had just too much padding on it.
If we can drop the first one fast and hard, maybe his buddy will think twice about acting up.
Jenny keyed her mike again. “Assist PC. Assist PC.”
Good girl, Jenny. Call the troops.
In the distance, sirens began to wail and Jack had never heard a sweeter sound. When a copper called for help, everyone dropped what they were doing and hauled ass.
“You hear that?” Jack asked. “You got a choice. Turn around and put your hands behind your back or start the fight now before our backup gets here. Your choice.”
“Tough guy, eh?” Troll-man scoffed. “Too chicken to fight fair?”
“We don’t get paid to fight fair,” Jack snarled. “We get paid to win.” Anger stirred inside him. Freedom after four months of riding a desk and this asshole thought he could take it away? Fuck him. The anger was growing hotter and suddenly Jack wanted Troll-man to take a swing, to release the rage. “Go ahead and do it. I’m game.”
Whether it was the approaching sirens or something in Jack’s eyes, Troll-man’s resolve wavered. His eyes shifted to Mr. Arnold, the brains — and that wasn’t saying much — of the two. The big bodybuilder hesitated and Jack could see him weighing the odds. In the end, the approaching sirens tipped the scales and he shook his head.
And then the sirens faded away.
Mr. Arnold looked at Jack, smiling. “Fire trucks?”
It took Troll-man a few more seconds to figure out what diminishing sirens meant then he grinned as well. “Looks like you’re on your own, chickenshit.”
“Good,” Jack growled and Troll-man’s grin faltered. Jack pulled out his collapsible baton and snapped it open. Fuck the pepper spray. “How well do you think you’ll be able to train after I cave in the side of your skull?”
Troll-man’s eyes flickered to the side.
“Don’t look at him. Make up your own mind. And hurry up, I’m running out of patience.”
The squat power-lifter paused, his gaze dropping to the baton in Jack’s fist then back to Jack’s face. Jack smiled. It was the deciding factor and Troll-man’s nerve broke. He stepped away from Jack and turned around, hands waiting to be cuffed.
God damn it.
Jack took out his handcuffs.
“Fire trucks, bud. Fucking fire trucks.”
Paul Townsend laughed hard enough he had to sit on the edge of a desk. When he came close to settling down, he glanced at Connor’s grave expression and fell into another fit of giggles. Hearing a man Paul’s size giggle was somewhat disconcerting. Paul was, up until meeting Mr. Arnold, the biggest man Jack knew. Huge, and “black as a midnight’s stolen kiss” as he liked to say, Paul could stop a fight just by stepping into a room.
The two freakazoids had been processed and lodged — no surprise, they were already on charges for assault and intimidation — and now Jack, Connor and Jenny were just finishing their memo books up in the detective office. 51 station was an old, tired building, really too small to hold the division’s uniformed officers and investigative units, and the cib was no exception. A big central island of metal desks and two smaller islands filled the Criminal Investigative Bureau.
Paul had come into the office looking for a quiet place to catch up on some paperwork and Connor had leapt at the chance to recount the tale. Connor was quite the storyteller and although he lacked Manny’s flare for embellishment, he certainly didn’t lack in fervour.
“I’m telling you, bud, I nearly shit when those sirens headed off another way. I thought for sure those guys were going to scrap with us. I mean, they looked at Jenny and me like we didn’t exist. It was just Jack and this — what did you call him? A troll? — this troll going nose to nose. And the troll backed down. Man, it was beautiful.”
“They were really that big?” Paul asked, doubt clear on his face.
“They were,” Jenny confirmed.
“I know I’m not the biggest guy in the world,” Jack admitted, “but I felt small next to them. Really small. The short one was so big he couldn’t get his hands behind his back. We had to use two sets of cuffs linked together.”
“Juicing?” Paul wondered.
Jack snorted. “I hope so. If they got that big naturally, I’d hate to see how big they’d get on ’roids.”
Connor came up behind Jac
k, clapping his hands on Jack’s shoulders. “But juice or no juice, my man the Reaper backed them down. That’s why I like working with him. If I get killed on the job, I know my death will be avenged.”
Jack groaned. Jenny shot him an amused smile. “Well, while the Reaper and his trusty sidekick gloat about their heroics, I have a party to get to.” She headed for the door, pausing to lay a comforting hand on Paul’s arm. “Don’t worry, big fella. I don’t care how big they were, you’ll always be the big man in my dreams.”
“Girl, if I wasn’t married . . .” He made to wrap his arms around her but she skipped out of his reach.
“Promises, promises,” she teased. “See ya, guys.”
“You’re not going to let that Reaper thing die, are you?” Jack asked Connor with an accusing glare.
“Nope.” Connor’s answering grin was very cheery and self-satisfied.
“Well, if I’m the Reaper,” Jack surmised, standing up, “that makes you death’s sidekick. Who would that be?”
“Pestilence?” Paul suggested.
Jack beamed. “I like it. Don’t worry, Connor, I’m not going to call you pestilence,” he assured when he saw the stricken look on his escort’s face. “I’ll call you Pest for short.”
“You’ve never done steroids, have you?”
“What?” Jenny’s question snapped Jack out of a pleasant daze. They were in the back parking lot, Jenny emptying out her car and Jack waiting for Connor, who had made a detour to the bathroom. Jack was leaning against the scout car next to hers and had been staring at her ass as she bent over to pull her duty bag out of the trunk and hadn’t really heard her.
She straightened up. “You were looking at my butt, weren’t you?”
“Absolutely,” he declared.
She slammed the trunk. “You have no shame,” she accused but with a smile.
“Not when it comes to your ass,” he agreed. “Although, as good as it looks in uniform, I prefer it in jeans.”
“Shameless,” she repeated. “Seriously, you don’t take steroids, do you?”
“Where did that come from?” he asked, then added, “no, I don’t use ’roids. And no, I haven’t used them in the past. Why?”