Black Widower

by Thomas Laird

  “Can’t discuss it,” I tell the balding IA guy.

  “So it’s an ongoing homicide thing.”

  “Never said that.”

  “Okay. I’m asking you for professional courtesy, then.”

  “We’ll make sure he doesn’t see us coming, next time,” I tell him.

  “Is this a pissing contest, Detective Andrews?” Doc queries.

  “It’s an ongoing—“

  “Yeah, we know,” I add. “We’ll do our best not to step on your toes.”

  “I don’t want to have to go to your boss,” the IA man says.

  “Do what you have to do,” I reply.

  “Okay, then. I guess I’ve said what I came to. Thanks for the drink.”

  We watch him depart.

  “There goes one tough little monkey,” Doc says as he crunches his Styrofoam coffee cup. Then he inhales the second of his two Vienna dogs—mustard and relish only, as always.

  “The next voice we’ll hear….”

  “Is the Captain’s.”

  We get up and head back to the Headquarters.

  *

  Captain Gary Todd is recent, in Homicide. He seems like a good guy. Worked his way through the ranks, no political suck- suck that we know about. He was decorated in Vietnam, an Army Ranger. Bronze and silver and a lot of other fruit salad on his uniform. I’ve seen the photos that he keeps on his desk, but I don’t think it’s for show. The guy is genuinely gung-ho patriotic. He actually did bleed for his country, so I don’t smell some ex-GI who did his time in-country hiding by the soda machine in some fucking office in Saigon.

  “Why are you tailing Detective Skotadi?” he asks as our asses hit his hard, wooden chairs opposite his desk.

  “He’s a person of interest in a possible homicide,” I explain.

  Doc groans softly. We’re screwed on this one, and it’s only a matter of time before we’re both violated in our backsides. Figuratively speaking, of course.

  “You mean you like him because you think he’s killed his wife who’s really, at this point, only a missing person and therefore none of your collective fucking businesses.”

  Todd is about five-ten, I’d guess. Stringy and muscular. Wiry. Prototype for all those Special Operators. His face has “do not mess with me” stenciled across his forehead in invisible ink.

  “You are to back off immediately. Do you two read me?”

  “Yessir,” I say, without a hint of wiseass.

  “I hope so. Is there a lack of work that made you proceed with this matter?”

  “We had a talk with the wife’s sister. She’s convinced Derek’s the one who disappeared her,” Doc tells him.

  “Is that so? And you took the sister’s word to begin an investigation on a Chicago police detective without any concrete evidence to corroborate her nutcase opinion?”

  “Yessir,” I answer again.

  “Internal Affairs would request that you stay the fuck out of their business. Is that a clear read, Detectives?”

  We know when we’re being summarily dismissed.

  “Don’t we normally clear all homicide investigations through standard operating procedures, around here?” he asks us both.

  “Indeed, sir,” I tell him.

  “Are you toying with me, Detectives? Because if you are, I require ample petting and foreplay before you start inserting your swinging dicks in any of my apertures. Am I being absolutely and unequivocally clear about this matter?”

  “Yessir, you’re being crystalline.”

  “Jimmy. I know how good you both are, but you can’t just move forward based on intuition, sometimes. The guy’s a cop. He may even be a dirty cop, but that’s IA’s job, not ours. You two do have enough on your plates, I presume?”

  We both nod our assent as we rise from the bone-hard chairs.

  “You get more than the sister’s say-so, and then we’ll talk again. I know Skotadi, and I don’t like that lowlife, either.”

  There is no mirth in the Captain’s eyes as we leave his office.

  *

  She rolls off me, and I feel drained of every ounce of fluid in my frame. It’s like she vampire-fanged me without the teeth marks. I can’t lift my arms or my legs.

  Jackie laughs as she hears me wheeze.

  “Been a while?” she giggles.

  “Christ, you’ve drained my memory, too.”

  She runs her nails across my chest, and I feel a surge replace my fatigue. It’s like the feeling long distance runners get when the endorphins kick in. A physical rapture, without the religious bullshit. I still lie motionlessly as she licks the sweat from around my bellybutton.

  “I thought you Homicide guys were tough.”

  “Nothing in the field ever cold cocked me the way you just did.”

  “Interesting choice of words, Jimmy.”

  Just as I thought I was entirely wasted, she revives me. I look at her stunning torso and everything that goes along with it, and I’m ready to do battle again.

  *

  We meet at her place because I don’t think it appropriate to make primeval sounds in the bedroom at my house when the kids would be around to hear daddy going savage. It isn’t that I don’t want Jackie at the house, though, because I’m in no way ashamed to bring her home to meet the family. It’s just that it’s early going in our relationship, and I don’t want to rush things the way I did with Rita Espinosa. I fell for Rita in a hurry, and it ended in a hurry, and the hurt is still fresh and open, like a wound.

  I think Jackie feels more comfortable on her home turf, too, so things are progressing very well.

  We have a lot more going than the sex. She loves baseball, and I’ve taken her to three Sox games. She doesn’t mind that the White Sox are the antithesis of deodorant. We just like to be together, and she knows the game as well as any man.

  “Are you happy?” she asks as we lie next to each other in exhaustion.

  “Your laundry bill is gonna skyrocket.”

  “I sweat a lot, too.”

  “But you don’t give off this swamp smell that I do.”

  “That’s what showers are for.”

  So we retreat to the bathroom, and when the spray hits us, the cool water only serves to start it all over again.

  When we finally up her water bill by a hundred bucks or so, we put some clothes back on and sit on her couch. She’s a candle person, and I rather like it. Jackie’s lit at least a dozen candles that she’s got strategically placed about her living room with its pasture-like hue of greens and yellows.

  “Are you happy, Jackie?”

  “Yeah. I am. Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. You’ll see the pig in me soon enough.”

  “I don’t think so, Jimmy.”

  She kisses me before I can argue with her.

  “I always knew you were a good man.”

  “And you knew that how? And how did you arrive at that diagnosis?” I smile at her.

  “Women’s freaking intuition, Detective. That’s how.”

  She comes around in front of me and jumps on my lap, her knees on either side of me. She’s in bra and panties only, and I’m clothed only in my Jockies. The briefs, of course.

  “We’re both going to be reduced to ashes, like a couple of thousand-year-old mummies.”

  She laughs and kisses me, and then she wiggles out of the bra. Everything is storming back into motion, and she becomes aware of my situation.

  “You’re insatiable,” I laugh.

  “It’s been a long time for me, too.”

  She looks down at my lap.

  “Oh, my, look what you’ve gone and done! Can I enter your tent, sir?”

  We’re lying on the carpet of her living room floor when the sun rises on this Sunday morning.

  “I wish I could stay, but my mother’s got the kids and I promised to take them to church and out to lunch. You want to come with us?”

  She studies my face, and there’s a real look of surprise on her.

 
“You really mean that, don’t you, Jimmy.”

  “Of course I mean it.”

  She hesitates.

  “I wish you’d asked me sooner because I have plans with my sister this afternoon.”

  “Then it’s an open invitation. I want you to meet my kids. And maybe my mother, too, if it wouldn’t make you too nervous.”

  “It isn’t that. I really do have a thing with my sister, Maryellen. Believe me, I’m not putting you off.”

  “I know you’re not. I know you wouldn’t make stuff up. If you feel uncomfortable about anything between us, I want you to tell me. I want to be upfront with you, Jackie. Always. You know that, don’t you?”

  She buries her face in my chest. I feel the wet, suddenly.

  I edge her face up toward me.

  “Why are you being so good to me, Jimmy?”

  “That’s easy. You deserve it.”

  The face goes back against my flesh, and then she’s sobbing gently.

  “Cut it out, Jackie. I don’t want any of that. Not while you’re on my watch.”

  She snorts and laughs and rolls toward the coffee table where the Kleenex box rests. She tears out two sheets and honks twice and then balls up the tissue in her right fist. For some reason she seems comical, naked and lush with Kleenex balled up in her hand.

  “You do deserve to be happy.”

  I kiss her when she rolls back to me.

  “Got time for one more round?” she smiles coyly at me.

  *

  I feel like I’ve got something to confess as the mass drones on. But I tell myself it isn’t a confession I need to make. I just need to stop with the anxiety about wanting to let go with Jackie. I’ve been beaten up pretty badly in the last few years, with Erin and then Rita. It’s all too hard.

  And now Jackie comes hurtling through the gateway, and I want to say things to her. I want to make things permanent and bonding and cemented and hard and true. In the back of my head it says that I’ll lose her the way I lost the other women I’ve known, and I can’t hack that kind of agony again.

  Then there’s the alternative. I could live the monkish life I’ve lead ever since Rita headed to law school downstate. The nights I woke up at two in the morning in my recliner, not knowing what day it was. And not caring. Just the work to look forward to. Nobody to anticipate. No one.

  I look over at Michael and Mary and the speed with which they’ve grown up gives me another pang of anxiety. They need a mother and I need a wife, I’m thinking.

  I look up at the priest, and his homily has come to an end. He sits back down, and then there is a deafening silence in the church.

  The quiet is brief, and then the mass continues. When it’s over, I walk out to the car, out on the street, and I take the kids home.

  Chapter 6

  I’m working without a partner and that’s fine with me. Eventually they’ll assign another one to me, but I hope it takes a long time because I’d much rather fly solo. It’s more dangerous, of course, especially in Vice, but I don’t like having someone else second guess my calls with these creatures who inhabit the streets.

  They like to carry straight razors in their pantyhose, but they’re too stupid to figure out that it takes a lot of time to hoist up their dresses or blouses and reach for it when some john is about to cut their throats with his own easily accessible blade. I suppose it gives them a sense of security to have a weapon on them, though. I wouldn’t get caught without my two guns, not in this city. One in the shoulder holster and the other on my ankle. I could care less about the other cops who deride the ankle rig as pussy. You always want a piece in reserve.

  I haven’t shot anyone on the job, as yet, but I’m perfectly willing if I have to. Going through the standard temporary suspension and review doesn’t give me any pause, either. Some asshole wants to die, all he has to do is take one step in my direction and I’ll oblige him on his way to hell.

  I’m cruising Old Town, one of the principal hotspots in the city. There have been a lot of reports, lately, about underage cunt wandering this district, and we’ve been assigned to send these young gashes on their way. In other words, it’s a roust.

  I come upon a black ho who could be anywhere from fifteen to forty. It’s hard to tell with niggers. They all wear wigs and they all wear a uniform—high heels, cleavage bearing tops, and tight shorts that show a lot of leg and ass.

  It’s 3:25 A.M. I’m looking forward to going home soon and giving Carrie a jump or three, but I’m on until seven. Stopping this black twat might break up the monotony. It’s been slow as hell.

  She’s prancing on spike heels that make her wobble as she walks toward Kilbourne and Clyde. There’s almost no one else on the sidewalks, and the bars and titty places are going to shut down in a half hour. She’s all by herself. So I roll up next to her in the Fairlane and I reach over and lower the passenger’s side window.

  “Hey, Shaniqua. How’s tricks, bitch?”

  “Y’all a cop, ain’t you.”

  She stops and gives me her baddest street stare.

  “Get over here.”

  “Show me yo mawfuckin’ badge if you the po-lice.”

  I flash her the ID.

  “Get in the car, Princess.”

  She hesitates. Then she opens the passenger’s side door, gets in, and sits down.

  She’s young, but maybe not underage.

  “Why you fuckin’ wid me?”

  “Know why a dog licks himself?”

  “What?”

  “Because he can……Get it?”

  “What the fuck you-”

  I hit her with a straight left. Her head bounces off the window, and she’s stunned. The air conditioning is on full blast because this summer shit just won’t quit.

  There are reflexive tears in her eyes, and she’s pissed, but she knows better than to retaliate.

  “Let’s go for a little ride,” I tell her.

  Maybe she’s eighteen, but she’s not much older than legal. If she’s that old.

  She holds her hand to her mouth, but there’s no blood. I don’t want her gore in the car. I just had it cleaned, inside and out.

  “Where you takin’ me? Jail?”

  “Fuck, no. I’m not going to waste my time. You’d be back out here before dawn.”

  I take her to a forest preserve not far from here, out west on the Stevenson, just off the expressway. I glance over at her from time to time, and she’s still got her hand on her lovely mouth..

  “I didn’t hit you that hard. Cut the shit. You want to file a lawsuit?”

  I laugh out loud.

  “My name ain’t Shaniqua. It be Gail.”

  “Okay, Gail. You got caught hooking and now you have to pay the toll.”

  I pull into the forest preserve out here on 55th Street. It’s deserted. They close at eleven. As soon as I park in one of the spaces, a preserve cop pulls up and shines his light into my Ford. I open the driver’s window, and I wave the badge and ID at him. He could give me some shit anyway, but he doesn’t. His searchlight goes out and he takes off down the parking lot here in front of the slough that appears black through my windshield.

  “Please don’t hurt me,” Gail pleads.

  “First thing you do is show me the blade.”

  “Ain’t got—“

  I pull back with my left, and she puts her hands in front of her face.

  “Show me the goddam knife or whatever the hell you have.”

  She reaches down into the top of her short-shorts and pulls out a buck knife, one of the flip-open kind. I reach over and put it in my glove compartment.

  “There better not be anything else, Gail.”

  “There ain’t. I swear. Just don’t hurt me. Don’t hit me again.”

  “So you want to make love not war, right?”

  She nods. But there are no tears welling up. She knows the drill.

  I open my fly, and she bends toward my crotch.

  “You feel that?” I ask her.


  “Yes.”

  “That’s my own blade, and it’s right at the base of your skull. One little shove and it’ll be tickling your brain, what little there is of it. Use those teeth, and you’re dead. You read me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m grading by performance, too. You don’t want to fail this course, Gail. You hear me?”

  She lowers her head and begins.

  *

  I make it back to the Area Headquarters a few minutes after seven. I’m late because I insisted on a few encores from the black whore who calls herself Gail. She was skilled, but not the best toll I’ve ever taken. They know the drill. Either perform or get arrested for solicitation. My word against hers, and guess who wins that one. Every single time. Perfect record.

  But I don’t get greedy with these gashes because someone will dime me and then there’ll be an IA investigation. So I only drag them out to the reserves maybe once a month. I only take them for a ride when I’m really bored with the white meat I’ve got at home. Carrie’s an above average piece of ass, but anything becomes tiresome if you keep doing it with the same cooze, white or black or pick your favorite flavor. Carrie has a great body, but it’s the same frame, day after day, and I know I’ll become weary of her eventually. She’s already starting to become predictable. I think we ran out of kama sutra poses and positions. It still boils down to part A gets inserted into part B. She still gets me off every time out, but the finish is becoming more difficult to achieve. I mean, they’re taking more time to muster.

  When I get home it’s eight o’clock. She doesn’t leave for her chickenshit job until nine—but then I remember it’s Saturday morning, and as usual she’s still in the rack, out like a light. Until I sit on my side of the bed.

  “Hey, honey,” she says, in a semi-stupor.

  Then I see she’s sleeping topless again, and now I want her.

  She opens her arms, and I tear off my clothes and she giggles. I don’t like broads who giggle, but apparently my junior partner, down below, is unaware of my displeasure with her burbling sounds.

  I don’t require foreplay, and neither does she. She manages to get her feet over my shoulders, and then I descend right at her.

  *

  “Let’s go somewhere,” she moans after we’ve accomplished the trifecta.