by V. P. Trick
“You are killing me. You know that, right?”
She sighed again, longingly, and she wasn’t faking her desire. “Have a good night, Big guy.”
“You too, Darling of mine. You’re going to pay for this you know.”
“Is that so?”
He laughed. “First chance I get, you can count on it.”
Oh mon amour, I sure hope so. “Christopher? Thank you, mon chéri. I don’t feel groovy anymore.”
“But I do.”
Keeping Busy
So even though Chris did not work that weekend, they did not see each other. He missed her, the smell of her, the way she sauntered as she spoke and laughed. The way she would sometimes suspend her movements just to look at him. The briefest of moments. He missed having her walk up behind him and kiss his nape, rest her lips against his skin and rub the hair on the back of his head. That simple display of affection got to him every fucking time. He missed seeing her smile in her sleep. He missed her breathing. Moaning. Coming.
At the office, when she showed up, he got to see her in action, but they never touched. He got to walk up to her, look over her shoulder as she was reading a file at her desk, even whisper instructions in her ear, and yet they never touched. Hard as hell.
At first, he feared her presence at the precinct would be distracting, but she actually helped. She had helped Reid found her place in the team, not the only female anymore. Still the only female officer, but that fucking significant detail seemed to be lost on Patricia.
The guys were more polite, or cruder but always respectful. Sort of. Even if often he had left her sleeping in bed barely hours before, he liked seeing her breeze in on those mornings when she decided to show up. She always wore a different outfit that reflected her mood. Sleek jeans and a loose top with heels when she felt like the sexy writer that she was. A tailored suit when she was playing the filing clerk, or so her three-days-every-two-week paycheck specified. Boots, fitted jeans, a silky blouse, a jacket, her what she called ‘plain-clothes policeman’ outfit when all was well. Sexy as hell. She even showed up in a pair of Yoga pants and a tight t-shirt once, hair in a ponytail, what he nicknamed her college ingenue look. Attractive too. All outfits were fucking eye-catching, but she did help him think. No stress when she was around, none from the job at least. When she showed up.
Not that he was stressed; he was stoic, always had been. Not much made him flinch or surprised him, but she did, big time, and in a fucking good way. Somehow being around her had given him back part of his empathy, his humanity even. They were a lot alike when it came to relationships; they had no need to see the other all the time or to talk to the other every day. As long as he knew she was safe and happy, he could let her have fucking quality time apart, her words, her fucking idea!
At the beginning of their relationship, they had both been very careful not to let on how much they liked one another, her more than him. Her because of the Joshua jerk, him because of the way he was. Not that he had had feelings to let on in the past, those had just been passing women, fucks only. Patricia was something else. A woman, all woman, not a part of her he didn’t want to love. Touch. Fuck. Kiss. Lick. Bite. Possess. Protect. Taste. Love. Again and again.
But the woman was a runner. She acted as if their fake yet legal marriage, theatrics for his aborted trial during the quartet mess, hadn’t occurred. She had even asked for a divorce. He had not complied. No way in hell, Angel. She had not uttered a word on either marriage or divorce once since their return from the beach. If she asked for a divorce again, he had a cop-out ready: without a signed prenuptial agreement, half of his assets belonged to her. Never in her life would she take any money from him hence he was sure things would remain as they were. They were married or so it said on a paper somewhere in the City’s registry. Good.
First things first, though. He still hadn’t convinced her to move in with him. His plan these days was to avoid the subject. Let her think he was over it then bring it back to the table at the first opportune time. Moving in and relationships thoughts led to thoughts of Joshua. Those fucking thoughts had him pat his pockets for a pack of cigarettes. Like every fucking time he thought of the jerk, Chris got angry. Fuck, he would love to beat the crap out of the guy if he could. But he couldn’t, could he? He took a sip of lousy coffee from the damn shitty coffee machine and cursed out loud.
He should have gone for a coffee with her as she had suggested, instead of waiting around for those tech guys from the special unit. Vitto’s was just down the street; they could have taken a half-hour break and sat on Vitto’s bench, a latte in her hand and a double espresso in his, and talked about the cases the team was investigating. The working of her mind fascinated him. How she made up stories about the murders, turned pieces of evidence into characters and scenes and fiction.
She might have asked one of those silly, seemingly out-of-context questions of hers. And out of her imagination, a piece of information they had overlooked, or a suspect they had underestimated sometimes took a different spin and led to surprisingly tangible results. She did not solve cases per se, and her questions and imagination combined had led them to dead ends but, if he had to give her a score on her investigation skills, she would surely be in the high eighties if not above.
Chris had handpicked the detectives on his team, the best of them getting an eighty percent score on solved cases. Higher than three out of four was great considering the cases they handled. A team effort. They were trained; she was not. They were the best which meant she was excellent in her own, absolutely unique way.
But she was reckless. Delusional. Impatient. In addition to her lack of self-preservation, her stubbornness, her overwhelming sense of obligation toward the people she cared about, and her tendency to follow that crazy imagination of hers, she needed to be protected. Hiring her as a clerk was both his best and his worst decision. Filing clerk my ass. Snooping, that was what she was doing in reality, although he had noticed she was putting less enthusiasm into her cold case research lately. She was not officially back yet.
He could fire her again. Unless he made her quit again. Either way, she would be angry, outraged at what she called his overprotectiveness. Maybe if she had a job at a fucking library, they could try living like regular people? She would like that. Not because she did not like their way of life, they both did, but because he knew of her most secret dream.
A regular life: waking up, getting ready, going to the office, punching in, punching out, going back to a home, having a regular, proper home-cooked meal, going to bed, doing the same thing day after day. No death bodies, no adrenaline rushes, mostly no imagination nagging at her and pushing her to search, no real life events to translate into fiction. To stop writing, such was her dream. To stop writing without going crazy.
He would give it to her if he could yet he knew she couldn’t live her dream out. He didn’t give her more than a month before she dropped everything. Like that downtown office job she had had a while ago. What a fucking mess that had been!
It could be worse, though. She could go back at Archives and start breaking into the police database. Not that she had, not her but them. Joshua then. Mario now. No fucking way, Princess.
Worse still, she could go to work for another police team. Philandering prick from the North District had offered her a job. Not on my watch, Pussycat. Even more disastrous, she could start her private investigation firm, something she had suggested they did once. Fucking scary.
At the beach after the murder thing, she had told about the stories she was working on. One had a female private investigator, a damn PI as the main character. With her tendency to blur the line between fiction and reality, that was not a good story for her to write. Research, she kept calling it. Fucking research my ass, Angel of mine. If she went to the North Precinct or turned PI on him, he’d be back to square one. At least now, his team was aware of her adventurous half-delusions; they knew what he expected of them on such occurrences. Keep her safe, keep her c
lose, and don’t believe a word she says without checking with me face-to-face first. Lessons hard learned. Almost. Fuck he was introspective these days.
Mario in the Past
“How about the Central of Police?” Pattycake asked.
They all looked at her. The woman had ideas. Joshua was crazy about her. Mario was crazy about her. Surely, the others were just as crazy about her. She was crazy too, but Super Mario didn’t care.
She was Joshua’s.
Mario inched closer and put his arm around her waist. She was thin.
“How about the Central of Police?” She asked again. Smiling. She smiled a lot. Big grin. White teeth. Large blue eyes.
When she looked at him, Mario felt he had her all to himself. “Could be a good place kitten,” he said. “Tell me more.”
Joshua was their leader, their king; his code name was J. Mario was one of Joshua’s two knights; Super Mario (as in the game) they called him. The king was the other, a knight even if the jerk baptised himself a king. The kid was a prospect, not there yet but part of the team. Lemieux was the handyman. Lemieux had had sex with her. The man had not confessed, but Mario knew. Joshua knew also. The kitten was with Joshua now thus she was a queen.
At the last game, they did not have her for a queen. They had a trophy woman Lemieux and Joshua had found someplace. They voluntarily lost her at the third event. That was why they had chosen the trophy woman in the first place. Trading chips. Pawn. She had dressed lightly, had acted accordingly. They had paid her for a specific purpose, to be a distraction for the other teams.
Pattycake was their true queen, and as such, she could suggest a trial event in the game to come. The players drew the events from the knights and queens’ propositions. The trophy queen too had suggested an event. Her secret ballot had said: ‘Break into some retail chain and get free clothes.’ Like the players paid her to wear clothes. Joshua had slept but once with the trophy. Lemieux had slept but once with the trophy. Mario’s weight did not permit him to mate with women. He jerked himself in front of his computer or one of Lemieux’s trophies jerked him.
Mario barely slept at all; no need, he had something in his brain. When he did sleep, he slept in his computer chair. Sometimes, Pattycake fell asleep on the couch, and he watched her. Sometimes, for a brief moment, a smile appeared in her sleep. At those times, Mario would find himself smiling back. After Lemieux had caught him in the act of ogling her in her sleep, Mario had feared Joshua’s reaction. Joshua was their leader, the primary player; Mario so liked the game. He so loved the kitten. Lemieux had not snitched on Mario, not then, not ever.
Mario did not sleep with women. He wished she would touch him. He would sprawl on his back if she wanted. She had been Lemieux’s. She was Joshua’s. If she wanted, he would be next. He hoped.
Joshua stood closer to her. “It’s not just the place you have to choose, Babycakes. You have to make the players do something.”
“Like what?”
“Anything.”
“Anything?”
“Anything you want, yes, Pattycake,” Lemieux said.
She smiled back, mischief in her dark-blue eyes.
Lemieux had not said anything to Joshua. Lemieux had slept with her. Lemieux had seen the smile in her sleep. Lemieux still did. They worked late planning their next jobs. Watching them, sketching them, writing them, she fell asleep on the couch.
She was asleep; they murmured. Her hair shielded part of her profile. A sea of long blue and dark-brown waves over her face. She often hid the blue of her eyes in the blue of her hair. The sea of blue and brown draped her breasts over her shirt.
Excerpt from The J-man, by Trica C. Line
Bridget
Bridget got sick. Repeating it was not in her contract, the team’s receptionist-research assistant-surrogate mother never missed work. She had been with the team before Chief Officer MacLaren took over, and before the team even existed, MacLaren’s team at least. She knew the guy in charge before the chief and the one before them.
She thought herself a practical woman, and she was, but she was also very fond of her team, very protective of them, perhaps more than the chief himself. Bridget had been married to a police officer for over thirty years but was now a widow. Working so closely with the team and having been the only woman amongst them for so many years, she knew each detective very well, even the Chief. The few times the team noticed her being sick, she was proud to say she was at work.
The first time she was ill under Chief MacLaren’s leadership (he had only been in charge a few months then), he had threatened to suspend her if she didn’t take a sick day. Merely pneumonia. She had used that day to talk with the big Chief, as in the City’s top Police Officer, an old friend of her late husband. Her husband’s old friend had in turn called MacLaren to clarify who was her boss. From then on, her boss was the Police Chief, not the South District’s Homicide Division Chief Homicide.
Shapiro, the only one already on the team back then, told everyone that would listen that, upon Bridget’s return the next morning, Bridget and Chris spent hours locked in his office. Nobody heard them shout or anything, Bridget never yelled, and the chief certainly never yelled at Bridget. The chief never yelled at anyone else for that matter; he growled. To this day, Bridget’s boss remained the Chief of Police, yet she became one of Chief MacLaren’s most faithful supporters.
“A good chief he is,” Bridget had thought then. She had never again questioned his orders. Unless they were about her health, of course.
Hence, on those rare days like today, Bridget dragged herself to work although suspected the Chief was hoping she would be too weak to come tomorrow. She knew he had asked Reid to talk her into going home, woman to woman. Bridget had no intention of going home. The boys also suggested she left which only made her want to stay more. She, the usual caregiver, would not leave the team’s side even for a day.
Each team member had proven himself first and foremost to the Chief. But she too had certain expectations. Punctuality, respecting one’s word, politeness. Bridget did not tolerate bad words, rude remarks or idle chatters, not when addressed directly to her at least. She scolded each and all when needed, all except Reid, who, for too obvious gender-related reasons, received a free pass. Upon first joining the team, the female officer had de facto become Bridget’s protégé. Some rough beginnings Reid had, with the guys thinking she was too straight and by-the-book to belong.
When the Chief was having second thoughts about hiring her, Bridget took it upon herself to ask Reid for help with research needed on current cases. Bridget’s way of keeping Reid out of the men’s ways, as she put it, giving Reid time to adjust and learn the team’s rules and some social ways.
The three women were friends now, but Bridget had blamed herself for Reid’s initial reluctance bordering on animosity at Patricia working with the team. Had Reid felt she was losing her female ally? Bridget encouraged Reid as a female police officer. She welcomed Reid in the Chief’s team and wanted her to prove to the boys that a woman could do it just as well, smaller muscles but as much brain. Yet, Bridget was never friendly nor familiar with Reid. Bridget was not close to anyone on the team. Yes, she listened to their problems, offered comfort, help, tissues or bandages, but she never went out for a beer with them. Whenever the Chief invited her, whenever the team asked her, she turned them down. Bridget believed in keeping work relationships at work.
Patricia was Bridget’s one exception. As the Chief had not foreseen Reid’s antagonistic reaction to Patricia or their subsequent friendship, he had not predicted Bridget’s liking Patricia so much right from the start. Bridget felt it a blessing that Patricia, the dear child, felt the same. A love at first sight between a dedicated, almost elderly woman and an original thirty-something woman, two very different women in a lot of ways but always in sync.
As Bridget overheard the Chief joked once with LeRoy, “It could have been the other way around. Imagine what hell we would be in if Patricia and Br
idget had not liked each other?”
“Impossible,” Bridget had cut in then. She had read Patricia’s books even before knowing who had written them, and Patricia was just as lovely as her fascinating characters, and even more interesting. Her dear husband, God rest his soul, would have liked her spirit.
Over time, Bridget’s work relationship with Patricia became more intimate, and the older woman sometimes agreed to a coffee at Vitto’s, dinner, a play. Every other two-three weeks, Bridget invited Patricia for an evening of card playing at her home, where she might also welcome the Chief or Reid or both, but mostly only Patricia was summoned. Bridget obviously approved of Patricia for the Chief.
MacLaren’s Newest Employee
By lunch time, Chris decided he had to do something. Bridget needed to go home, or influenza would decimate the team in the coming days. But even a guy like him, not so big on following the rules, could not fire her to force her to go home. He had learned his lesson and wasn’t about to suspend her either. As he saw it, his only option was for her to volunteer for a sick leave. Easier said than done, but he came up with a way to get her to do just that. He made one single phone call and cowardly left with LeRoy in case Bridget was up for a fight. He had some fucking leads to check anyway, didn’t he? I’m not running a fucking health clinic here.
When he returned a little after two, he found Patricia chatting with Bridget. His girlfriend had her back to him, her sweet ass on Bridget’s desk. No one else was allowed to do that. Then again, he remarked to himself, no one else had an ass quite like hers.
Quite a tight little bum she had too, butt cheeks not too high, not too round, not too flat. He couldn’t hear what the two women were saying, but Patricia’s laugh chimed across the room. A good sign. She had her hand on Bridget’s arm, and each time the phone rang, she pushed the buttons on the phone console while Bridget answered, took a note or transferred the call.