by Robbi McCoy
She tossed her phone back on the shelf where it bounced off the edge of a picture frame, a five-by-seven of herself and Molina standing side by side in uniform, leaning into one another so their shoulders touched. They were the same height, five eight. His hair was thick, almost black, cut short. He had a thin mustache, a feature Stef had never seen him without. Even in photos from his younger days, before he was a cop, he’d still had that same little mustache.
He’d signed the photo near the bottom: Next time, Hot Stuff!
This had been taken five months ago, just after the famous pepper-eating contest. One of their many impromptu competitions and one of the loonier ones. She smiled to herself, remembering, then pulled a stool out from under the shelf and sat down. She touched the picture frame tentatively. She loved this photo. It captured the two of them so perfectly, how they were then, their swagger and vitality, their affection and playful antagonism. He had been a brother to her in every way but blood. She especially loved the expression on her own face, so carefree and confident, like she had the world in the palm of her hand. Maybe because in hindsight she had.
Was that only five months ago? she marveled, counting the months back to a mild winter day on a patch of lawn behind the police department building.
One of those much-loved Friday cookouts was underway. A big barrel barbecue was loaded with hunks of tri-tip. They were carving it up for sandwiches and tacos. One of the guys, Womack, had brought a tub of pepper spread, his special mix of roasted jalapeños, serranos and habaneros. The usual taunting and posturing was going on, but there weren’t too many who would venture more than a dab of that fiery condiment.
“No problem,” boasted Molina, spreading a brave portion of it in his taco. “Peppers are like mama’s milk to me.”
“Hey, Byers,” called Womack as Stef put two tacos on her plate. “You wanna try some of this pepper mania?”
“Sure,” she said. “Why not? Peppers don’t scare me. But put it on the side. I want to taste the meat.”
“Put it on the side!” Molina croaked. “So she can pretend she ate it.” He raised his eyebrows at her in that way he had, a challenging look in his eye.
“I’ll eat it,” she assured her colleagues, then faced Molina, who was still grinning. “You think I can’t?”
He shrugged. “Maybe you can eat that much. If you’re trying to prove something.”
“You think you have an advantage because you’re Mexican?” Stef glanced around at the mostly male complement of police officers. “Or because you’re a man?”
As she expected, that comment elicited a round of groans and whistles. Then, predictably, someone yelled, “Throw down!”
A few others chimed in. Molina held up a calming hand. “Now, come on, fellas. Don’t egg her on. She has no chance against me eating peppers. Nothing she can do about it. It’s just genetic. You set us both down with a pile of spaghetti and she’d have a fair chance. She’d still lose, but at least it’d be a contest.”
Everybody went quiet then as Stef stood facing Molina’s self-satisfied grin. There was probably no one present who thought she would back down, but the moment was tense anyway as they waited for her response. It was a perpetual struggle for dominance between them, two alpha dog personalities who were constantly trying to get the upper hand in any situation.
It was never easy being a woman on the force. Guys expected you to be weaker, to cry or succumb to emotional stress. To lose your cool under pressure. All those jokes about female officers on the rag. So you overcompensated a little. Most of the women did. Tried to be like one of the guys. Man up! Don’t let anything get to you. Be even tougher than they are. If you break, you break only on the inside. If you cry, you cry only when you’re alone. You don’t let them know you’re hurt. You don’t ask for help. You can take it as well as they can and sometimes better. That’s the person Stef had learned to be around these guys. She didn’t make any distinction between an ugly situation on the street and an off-duty pepper-eating contest. In some ways, she was always on duty.
“Bring it on!” she shouted.
Everybody cheered. Molina laughed, casting her an admiring glance. Two places were set on either side of a picnic table with plates, glasses of water, bottles of beer, a pan full of tacos, and two equal containers of pepper spread, two full cups apiece. Anybody who had tasted the stuff knew there was no chance of anyone finishing anywhere near that much of it. Molina and Stef sat down facing one another. Everyone else crowded around to watch.
“You’re going down, Byers!” Molina snarled, playing his role well.
“In your dreams, Molina.”
They each spooned a heap of peppers into a taco. With her first bite, Stef tasted a nice, spicy flavor, perfectly edible with a hint of burn on the tip of her tongue, and wondered what the fuss was about. A few seconds after she swallowed, the heat began to spread through her mouth like a wildfire, gaining in intensity. Oh, shit! she thought. This is crazy!
“Whooeee!” breathed Molina. “Fire in the hole!”
Stef glanced around at her co-workers, catching sight of Womack’s long, horse-like face, full of concern. As the mother of this stuff, he knew how dangerous it was. She took another bite and swallowed fast. Then she drank a mouthful of beer as a burn spread through her stomach. Molina was chomping through his taco like he was enjoying it. By the fourth bite, Stef couldn’t taste the taco shell or the beef. Just pain.
“Come on, Byers,” someone shouted.
Molina finished his first taco and drank some beer. Stef noticed the sweat on his upper lip, making his mustache sparkle.
“Don’t kill yourself,” he advised quietly. “I’ll be a gracious victor. Just walk away and nobody will think any less of you.”
She shoved the rest of the taco in her mouth and finished it, chewing defiantly at him. They each piled peppers onto another taco. As Molina ate this one, he made crazy faces, bulging his eyes out, wagging his head, baring his teeth. Finally, Stef had to stop eating to laugh.
“What the hell?” she complained. “Are you trying to make me choke?”
He stopped with the faces and they both grew quiet. Stef’s eyes teared up and her nose ran. Somebody gave them both a towel. She stopped eating to catch her breath and blow her nose. Three-quarters of the second taco lay in her plate, taunting her. Molina’s face was flushed and covered in sweat. His mouth hung open as if he were trying to leave an escape route for the heat.
“Can somebody get me one of those sandwich rolls?” he asked, his voice elevated slightly.
Stef took this as encouragement and quickly finished the second taco. She couldn’t taste anything and her entire lower face was numb. Molina tore hunks off the piece of bread and stuffed them in his mouth, trying to soak up the pain.
“You got him, Byers!” said somebody behind her.
She secretly cursed whoever it was, knowing that would give renewed determination to Molina. He picked up the rest of his taco and shoved it in his mouth, swallowing it practically without chewing.
They had both eaten two tacos. They had finished the same amount of the hellish pepper spread. They sat looking at one another, both of them waiting for the other to make a move. Clearly, neither of them wanted to concede and neither wanted to go on.
Finally, Molina asked, “How are you doing?”
“Okay,” she said as the sweat from her forehead mingled with the tears running down the side of her nose. “How about you?”
“Okay.” He wiped his face again with the towel. “You had enough?”
“Have you?”
“We’re dead even. It’d be a tie if we stop now.”
Stef stared across the table at him. He appeared to be suffering. No sign of arrogance on his face now.
“I’ve had enough of these tacos,” she said, pushing the pan aside.
Molina’s poker face melted into a tableau of relief.
Stef reached for her pepper jar, picked it up, dipped in a spoon and took out a big spoon
ful. She shoved it in her mouth. Several people watching burst into hoots of appreciation. She watched Molina defiantly as she swallowed.
With renewed resolve, he grabbed his own jar, stuck his spoon in and pulled out a heaping tablespoon, which he held in front of his face for a few seconds before eating it, his eyes full of fear. The crowd was going wild now as they both ate directly out of their jars. Unexpectedly, Molina abruptly put his down, grabbed his stomach and cried out in agony, then rolled off the bench onto the grass, belching loudly.
Stef put her jar down as someone lifted her arm in victory. Then she took a beer in each hand and crawled to a shady spot under a tree, feeling like she wanted to die. Molina joined her there a few minutes later and they lay under the tree together, nursing their distress for the next hour while the rest of the crew continued their party.
The undesirable effects of that contest had stayed with them both for two days afterward. But it had been worth it, she decided. Everybody had loved it, and every time hot peppers showed up in their midst after that, they’d both laughed themselves silly.
Stef looked again at the photo in front of her. Molina sported his characteristic grin on a mischievous, handsome face. On his left cheek, a prominent scar testified to his violent youth. He’d been cut, shot and beaten by the time he was an adult. Even before his troubled teenage years, his childhood had been the sort that would have turned most kids hard. That he had survived to adulthood was an accomplishment in itself. He had no father. His mother was a prostitute and drug addict. His home was a squalid apartment he, his brother and his mother shared with others who came and went, sleeping on mattresses on the floors, eating whenever someone bothered to bring food into the place. In that apartment, night and day blurred. There were no set hours for meals or sleeping, but the landlady, a strange ogre of a woman who scared Joe nearly to death, came up to the apartment each weekday morning and dragged him and his brother, Roberto, downstairs and put them on a school bus. At the time, he said, he thought of her as a hideous old monster he didn’t dare disobey, but as he got older, he realized she was the only person in that building who had cared what happened to him. Her name was Mrs. Avila. The tenants, including Molina’s mother, never referred to her in any other way than “Bitch!” That he had hated and feared her through several years of his childhood had preyed on his conscience in recent years. According to his memory, she was neither kind nor honest, but she had played a critical role in saving him.
It had become a more and more common refrain of his in the last year that he “should look her up.” He had wanted to thank her and let her know she did some good. “Wouldn’t she be surprised,” he had said, “that I became a cop? A worthless little shit like me.”
Deuce came up and let his head rest heavily on her thigh. She put a hand on him and turned from the photo, but the image remained in her mind.
Next time, Hot Stuff! Those two young police officers with their brash grins had had no idea there would be no next time for Joe Molina.
Stef leaned over and pressed herself against the dog’s body, closing her eyes and whispering close to his ear. “You miss him too, don’t you, boy?”
CHAPTER FOUR
“A woman walks into a vet’s office,” Niko started, appearing in the doorway of Jackie’s office.
She put down her pen and swiveled her desk chair to face him where he stood with his face full of anticipation, feet firmly planted, knees flexed, both hands out in front of him like a basketball player waiting for a pass. A skinny basketball player. A stunted, skinny basketball player wearing a long-sleeved plaid shirt unbuttoned over a plain white T-shirt. Okay, Jackie thought, he looks nothing like a basketball player. He looks like a goofy kid about to tell a joke he expects will make her fall out of her chair.
Once he had her full attention, he began again. “A woman walks into a vet’s office. She sits down next to a man with a dog at his feet. ‘Does your dog bite?’ she asks. ‘No,’ he says. A few minutes later the dog bites her leg. ‘I thought you said your dog doesn’t bite!’ the woman complains. ‘He doesn’t,’ the man says. ‘That’s not my dog.’”
Niko, her receptionist and assistant, fancied himself the Henny Youngman of the veterinary world, though Jackie doubted he knew who Henny Youngman was. Jackie herself only knew because he was one of Granny’s all-time favorite entertainers. Niko took every old joke he could find and transformed it into a veterinary setting, even going so far as to mangle Youngman’s signature line into, “Take my dog…please!” It was a peculiar type of humor from a twenty-year-old male, but he kept her customers entertained. The old women especially liked it. Every once in a while, even Jackie had to admit, he came up with a hit. This time, the joke was so well-worn that she mouthed the punch line along with him.
His face fell. “You know it.”
She stood and put a hand on his shoulder. “Everybody knows it. It’s like this one.” She faced him, commanding his attention. “A guy walks into a bar. ‘Ouch!’ he says.”
Niko burst out laughing, slapped his thigh, and stumbled down the hallway. She followed him to the reception area, at the moment empty of customers. Bud the parakeet perched on a wooden dowel in his cage, singing quietly to himself.
“Have you looked in on Max lately?” she asked.
Niko fell into his chair at the reception desk. “He’s starting to wake up. I checked on him a minute ago.” He opened a Styrofoam box and picked up a huge, luscious looking hamburger and took a bite so big his face filled out when he closed his mouth around it. A trail of juice ran down his chin.
“Where’d you get that?” she demanded. “Did you go out? Did you get me one?”
He shook his head, unable to speak, and rapidly chewed until he could say, “I didn’t go out.” He swallowed, then wiped his chin with a napkin. “Mrs. Peterson brought this in a half hour ago.”
While Jackie stared at him, uncomprehending, he took another bite even more juicy than the last, so much so he had to hold the burger over its box so it wouldn’t drip all over the counter.
“You mean to tell me Mrs. Peterson, our old Mrs. Peterson with the walker, brought you lunch? Why would she do that? I’m the one who operated on Max. What gives?”
“She didn’t bring it for me. She brought it for Max. She felt sorry for him, having the operation.”
“But Max can’t eat something like that today. He may not be able to eat anything at all until tomorrow.”
“I know that, but what was I gonna do? She said, ‘This is Max’s favorite meal, a double cheeseburger with the works. You give it to him when he wakes up.’ And I said, ‘Okay, Mrs. Peterson, I’ll do that. Don’t you worry. He’ll love it.’”
Jackie stood speechless, watching him eat. He shrugged.
“You could have at least cut it in half and shared it. When you’re done with that, give Spooky her bath. Mike’s coming in to get her this afternoon.”
Niko winced. “She’ll skin me alive.”
Jackie shrugged in imitation of Niko’s recent gesture, then went back toward her office just as the phone rang.
“You should take this,” Niko called from the front. “Mrs. Chen.”
Jackie slid into her desk chair and took the call. “Hello, Mrs. Chen, how are you?”
Mrs. Chen was frantic. Her dog, Mr. Wiggles, was listless and vomiting. She was afraid he was dying.
Fifteen minutes later, Mrs. Chen arrived, her wide face constricted into a field of worry, and Jackie took her and her dog into an examining room.
Mr. Wiggles, an adorable white bulldog with one black ear, had an elevated temperature and appeared weak and wobbly. That he wasn’t his usual perky self was evident.
“It was that horrible Anthony Agnolotti that did this,” Mrs. Chen said. “He’s poisoned Mr. Wiggles, I know it.”
Anthony Agnolotti was Mrs. Chen’s neighbor and the owner of three exquisite Abyssinian cats: Huey, Dewey and Louie. Although Agnolotti wasn’t a dog guy, Jackie couldn’t imagine him doing anyt
hing so evil as poisoning someone’s pet. “Why do you think that?” she asked.
“Because Mr. Wiggles digs under the fence. He’s warned me before to keep him out of his yard because of the cats. I try, but it’s not easy. Besides, Mr. Wiggles wouldn’t hurt those cats. And they’re not afraid of him. They parade along the top of the fence, taunting him.” Mrs. Chen frowned. “They’re temptresses, those cats.”
Jackie decided to sidestep the issue of Anthony Agnolotti’s cats. “When did the symptoms begin?”
“Sometime last night. This morning I saw he’d thrown up. Then he threw up again about eight o’clock. After that, he just curled up in his bed and didn’t move.”
“Any chance he could have eaten something unusual? Some medicine left lying about? Do you have any new houseplants?”
Mrs. Chen shook her head thoughtfully.
“What have you been feeding him?”
“Just dog food.” She looked strangely defiant, her eyebrows arched and her chin tilted up, as if someone had accused her of an impropriety.
Jackie was used to this routine. “Good. That’s the best thing, but a little treat now and then won’t hurt, as long as he doesn’t get anything dangerous, like chocolate.”
“Oh, no! I would never give him chocolate. That can kill a dog, I know.”
Jackie nodded, laying a hand on the sad-looking Mr. Wiggles. “He’s such a sweet little guy. What’s his favorite food?”
Mrs. Chen brightened. “He loves tacos! Whenever we have them, we give him one of his own, but no hot sauce. He gobbles them up like...” She stopped suddenly, looking contrite as she realized she’d given herself away.
