by Paul Bishop
Colby came back from the bathroom and pulled another chair into the group. To catch up, he quickly knocked back two beers and started a third.
The promotion party sported thirty detectives, a dozen faces from uniformed patrol, four off-duty record clerks, and couple of well-liked DAs. Several younger station volunteers were prowling for husbands—even if they currently belonged to someone else. There were also the requisite cop groupies who knew there was a price for inclusion.
A couple were hard-core cop whores who only wanted to get it fast and dirty in a patrol car. Most groupies, however, were good-hearted straights who enjoyed flirting with a world outside their staid existence. They gained fringe access by providing cops a variety of services cost or gratis—meals at restaurants, computer equipment or service to cops who didn't know a RAM from a byte, private vehicle mechanic work. These were valuable barter for cops stretching paychecks to cover alimony-hungry spouses and L.A. area mortgages.
En masse, the gathering was large enough to take over the bar. Tilly's regulars tolerated this because management liked the free—if inebriated—security. For their part, cops could let their defenses down due to the safety of numbers. At Tilly’s they were the biggest fish in a small pond. If anybody challenged them, there was instant backup. Gang mentality as applied by the good guys.
Jake came over and whirled Fey out onto the dance floor. With five beers under her belt and no food to speak of since breakfast, she was feeling a slight buzz and was glad for the movement. They joined the circle of dancers and broke into a fairly smooth Texas two-step.
“You doing okay?” Jake asked.
“Ask me again after another couple of beers.”
After one turn around the dance floor, Jake felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to see Colby standing behind him. Colby's eyes were bright with too much alcohol consumed too fast.
“Do you mind?” Colby asked. The challenge was clear in his voice.
Jake stepped back with a shrug to Fey, letting Colby cut in. He knew Fey could fend for herself.
“This is a surprise,” Fey said as Colby guided her away. “Are all the groupies on to you already?”
“This was the easiest way I could get my arms around you.”
“Get off it, Colby. I'm a fat old broad.”
“You're not fat and you're not old.”
Fey sneered. “The only reason you want me is because the unattainable is always desirable.”
“Are you unattainable?” Colby ran a hand lightly across Fey's breasts.
“Where you're concerned.” Fey twirled out of Colby's grasp, shot him a mocking look, and walked off the dance floor.
Taking another beer off the bar, she sat down next to Jake.
“You've developed a fan club,” Jake said, teasing her.
“Colby is a walking hormone with an asshole. He thinks he can stab me in the back and get me into bed.”
Jake laughed.
“I'm serious,” Fey said. “It's typical warped male logic. He knows I'm his boss, but because I'm a woman, he figures if he can find a way into my shorts, he can control me.”
“One good tumble and you'll be jelly at his feet.” Jake was still laughing.
Fey threw a pretzel at Jake.
“It worked for me,” Jake teased.
“Screw you, counselor. You can sleep alone tonight.” Fey sat back and crossed her arms over her breasts.
“Hey, let's not go overboard.”
Fey shook her head in resignation. “What is it with men? It's bonding stuff, right? Something to do with Monday night football and beer commercials?”
“Right,” Jake agreed. “Also lots of tree hugging and chanting. Rediscovering our essential maleness squelched by years of sensitivity training.”
“Good-bye, Alan Alda. Welcome back, Grog the Caveman.”
“Ugg…Ogga ogga…”
“Scrape your knuckles over to the bar, Grog, and get me another drink before dragging me by the hair back to your cave.”
“Beer?”
“No. It's time to switch to the real stuff.”
Fey watched Jake move off, carrying their empty glasses. The West L.A. lightweights were all gone. The station brass had left before Fey and Colby arrived – paying their respects, sipping one drink, and then leaving the troops to enjoy themselves. It was the politically correct thing to do. Also, if the party got out of hand, they wouldn't be hit by anything the fan threw off.
Still, a number of coppers remained. Even though Paul Trotweiler's money was long gone, the liquor was still flowing. A mixed group of males and females anchored a corner booth. There were no sexual overtones beyond one-liners and innuendoes, with everyone giggling like naughty schoolchildren.
The single male-and-female matchups had moved into darkened corners or the intimacy of the dance floor. These couplings were noted, but the sanctity of the open secret would not extend beyond the group to outsiders or spouses. What went on within the police family stayed within the family.
The unspoken justification for infidelity was only a cop could truly understand another cop—a conspiracy of blue silence and acceptance, a bonding beyond marriage vows, church commitments, or blood relations. If you were a cop, you were in. If you weren't a cop, you were out. Volunteers, attached civilians, and groupies could only penetrate so far. The rules were the rules. In or out. Cut and dried. Simple.
Good cop or bad cop, you took the mark of the badge with you to the grave. You weren't one of God's children, or one of God's sheep. The mark of the badge made you a wolf. God's wolves.
Or it could be cops were genetically unfaithful.
Colby sauntered over and leaned on the table next to Fey. He looked at Jake's retreating back.
“What’s with you and the counselor? Screwing your way into another promotion?” His voice was loud enough to be overheard. Across the table, Monk started to stand and intervene before trouble broke out, but Fey’s look stuck him to his chair.
Several female officers sitting were watching intently, as if some secret communication had passed silently and invisibly between them.
Fey smiled at Colby. “You really are pretty good-looking,” Fey said. “Perhaps you're right.” She stood and swayed her body into Colby’s, turning him so his back was to the table.
She kissed him full on the mouth as the cops gathered around the table hooted and hollered.
Colby was completely caught off balance. Leaning back against the table, pinned by Fey's substantial weight, left him no way to maneuver. Through an alcohol haze, he realized he was in trouble.
He tried to brazen his way out.
“Why don't we go somewhere more comfortable?” he asked, his voice husky. Despite himself, he could feel an erection building as Fey straddled his thigh and rubbed against him.
“Smooth talker,” she said. She kissed him again, all tongue and spit, grinding her body into him, pressing her breasts into his chest. She'd learned very early how to turn a man on—about the power it could give her over him. The group at the table roared their approval. They knew Fey had Colby on the hook.
When Fey broke the kiss, she continued to press herself against Colby. She kept one hand wrapped behind his neck, controlling his movements as she would those of a strong stallion she was riding.
“You're heating up, partner,” she said in a sultry bedroom voice full of lust and teasing. Fey waggled her free hand behind Colby’s back. One of the other women at the table, sensing what Fey wanted, placed a freshly opened bottle of beer in her hand.
Fey kissed Colby again, her mouth wide and open on his, her tongue flying between his lips to entwine with his. She brought the hand with the bottle around and rubbed it over the obvious bulge in Colby's groin.
“My, my,” she said admiringly. Staying close to him as she broke the kiss, she took her hand from Colby's neck and grabbed the waist of his loose-cut slacks. She pulled the fabric forward.
Colby struggled slightly, thinking Fey was going to reach her oth
er hand down to grope him, but he was trapped by the table and Fey's weight.
“Not here,” he said, his voice thick.
“Why not?” Fey asked. Still using her body to hide her actions, she placed the open mouth of the beer bottle inside Colby’s pants, letting the liquid pour out, “I can’t think of a better place to cool your jets.”
“What?” Colby said, sounding confused. Then the icy cold wet of the beer hit his skin. “Crap!” he said, trying to push Fey away.
She buried her face in his shoulder and leaned into him, bending him across the table. Colby struggled until his back was flat on the table. Beer glasses, chips, salsa, and ash trays scattered everywhere. The other detectives and their companions stood up, jumping clear of the debris and laughing at the spectacle.
Leaving the beer bottle to empty down his pants, Fey backed off and stood laughing with her hands on her hips. Colby cursed, struggling to pull the bottle out. He eventually removed it by standing up and shaking it down one leg of his pants like a slap-stick comedian. The groin and one leg of his pants were soaked with the beer. Everyone fell into convulsions of laughter.
“You cow,” he said to Fey, looking down at himself. “You'll pay for this.”
“I wouldn't pay you for anything,” Fey said, still laughing. “Especially, not a beer flavored erection.”
The crowd of detectives hooted at the slashing remark.
Colby grabbed a napkin from the floor and began rubbing ineffectually at the stains. He knew everyone was delighted by his discomfort. It pissed him off. All his life, he'd never been able to keep friends. He couldn’t understand what turned people against him.
In school he'd been a top athlete, but he could never rally a team behind him. Somebody else was always voted the captain, even when they weren't as talented as Colby. He could never understand why being the best wasn't good enough.
As a detective, his arrest and conviction record was one of the highest on the department, yet nobody cared. They refused to give him credit, ready to jump at any chance to see him flounder. They were jealous.
“Go ahead, laugh,” he said, storming out of the bar.
“Cute butt,” one of the other female detectives called out loudly. It tripped everyone's laughter button again. Even in the dimmed lighting it was possible to see the flush of red flare up the back of Colby's neck. He turned around and gave everyone the finger.
Fey watched him go. Her initial pleasure was slowly being replaced by a feeling she’d carried the joke too far. She'd fought fire with fire, but she should have risen above schoolyard tactics. Why had she let him make her so mad?
Jake returned to the table. “Did I miss something?” he asked casually, setting off laughter again.
Chapter 28
The party at Tilly's wound down around eleven p.m. A few stragglers hung on until midnight, but Jake and Fey split arm in arm around ten-thirty.
Going home to the threat of Cordell lying in wait did not appeal to Fey. Despite her tough talk, Fey wasn’t ready to act as bait. There were things she needed in place before becoming a staked goat. Another night in Jake's bed sounded like a better idea.
Or it had at first.
Heavy-headed with exhaustion and alcohol consumption, she barely managed to get undressed before falling face-first into Jake's pillows. Several hours later, she was in a dead sleep when something brought her back to the surface of awareness.
A man stood beside the bed looking down at her, his dark outline nothing more than a darker black against the room's interior. Not fully conscious, Fey sensed the man was naked and aroused. She flinched when he reached out to touch her. Memories exploded from deep inside her psyche.
“Get away!” she screamed, drawing her legs to her chest and flailing her arms.
“Easy. It's me.” Jake reached out to grab her wrists as they whirled about.
“Get away! I won't let you! I won't let you!”
“Fey! It's me, Jake.” His words fell on deaf ears.
Fey mentally registered it was Jake in the room with her. The thought it might have been Cordell only briefly flitted through her mind, then disappeared under an avalanche of suppressed emotions sprung by a combination of alcohol and déjà vu—the image of her father standing beside her bed, naked and aroused.
When she was thirteen, she had awoken to the same scene. Her father standing over her in the dark, as he had so many times before. Only this time something was different. The male smell of him was the same. The heat emanating from his groin, where it pressed into her side, was the same. But the atmosphere was different. Anger was there as always, but it was raging.
“You little slut!” Her father's angry whisper reached her ears with the force of a shock wave.
Fey sat up in bed, the blankets falling away from newly forming breasts hidden behind a teddy-bear-motif nightshirt. “Daddy? What?”
He smacked her across the mouth. “You keep your voice down, you evil little slut. Wake your mother up, I'll beat her, too.”
He hit Fey on the side of the head with his closed fist. Her father had been a policeman in a time when corruption ran rampant. He knew how to hit and cripple without leaving marks.
“Daddy!” The thirteen-year-old Fey kept her plea to a vocal level of a whimper.
“I know what you did with the Higgins kid from down the street.”
“No, Daddy. I didn't do anything!”
“Keep your voice down, you filthy little tramp!” Garth Croaker cuffed his daughter roughly across her right ear. Fey's head rocked on her shoulders and she fell back across the bed.
Her father climbed onto the bed, pinning Fey down with his knees. “You let him screw you, didn't you?”
“No, Daddy, no! He only kissed me.”
The flat of Garth's hand flashed out, smacking, left, right. “Liar!”
“No!”
Again the slapping, left, right. “Lying, filthy, little bitch. You'll have to be taught a lesson not to do filthy things with every little boy who comes along.”
The lesson consisted of all the filthy things Fey had never done with anyone, except when forced to do them with her father.
Then, as usual, there was even more anger after he spent himself.
This time it was worse. Much worse.
The sledgehammer of Garth Croaker's fist smashed time and again into the heart of Fey's wide-spread legs and across the soft flesh of her abdomen.
Again. And again. And again. A never-ending nightmare continuing even after the physical act was finished.
The doctor had been a friend of the family. A tame medic. A known abortionist whom Garth Croaker kept out of jail on more than one occasion. There was always a use for a doctor who could keep his mouth shut.
The doctor stopped the bleeding. Saved the life of the poor thirteen-year-old girl on his operating table.
Good old Doc Martin.
He saved the girl, but he couldn't save everything. Fey would never be able to conceive a child. Her life was saved. Wasn't it enough of a miracle?
Good old Doc Martin.
One of dear old Dad's drinking buddies.
Six months after saving Fey's life, he forced himself on her while her father held her down.
Back in the present, in Jake's bedroom, with the man she loved standing beside her, Fey trembled with the fear of old scars torn open. Images flashed through the alcohol her mind and scared her half to death. The nightmare had truly never ended.
“Fey? What is it?” Jake's voice reached her from far away.
She flinched again when she he touched her arm, drawing herself into a protective ball. She felt the damp of tears on her cheek, the ever-suppressed scream stuck in her throat—because you better not wake Mommy. But Mommy was dead, and so was Daddy. He couldn’t hurt her anymore.
He couldn’t hurt her anymore…anymore…anymore…
Jake didn't know what was happening, but had sense not to push. He’d been returning from the bathroom, pausing beside the bed to watch
Fey sleeping. It was a private moment he always found pleasing. When she started to rouse, the thought of making love to her suddenly aroused him. And then she screamed.
He stood back when he saw the effect of his touch and made soothing noises. Calling Fey back from whatever hellish landscape in which her mind was dwelling.
He turned a bedside lamp on and watched as Fey returned to normal. Color seeped back into her face. Her trembling slowed. The visible beating of the carotid artery in her neck subsided. Her eyes focused.
Then she reached out for him. Crushing him to her. Fiercely wrapping her legs tightly around him, as if trying to meld her body with his.
Back in control of the lovemaking, she found the now soft length of him with her hands and stroked him back to erection. With a fevered cry she opened herself and swallowed him into her, tight but determined.
And she rocked. And she cried. And he held her, without asking for explanation. They slept.
Chapter 29
Janice Ryder did not do mornings well. As a result, she was not a happy camper when the phone beside her bed jangled her awake.
“Whatzit?” she inquired, sleep drenching her voice.
“Ms. Ryder, this is Cabo, the night manager. Sorry to disturb you, but an important package has been delivered for you.”
“Package?”
“Si. A large envelope. It is marked urgent.”
“Who delivered it?”
“I don't know. I went into the manager's office to answer the phone. When I came out the envelope was on the reception counter.”
“I'm not expecting any packages or envelopes.”
“But it is marked urgent.”
Janice Ryder looked at her clock and sighed. Six-thirty a.m. “All right, bring it up.” She didn't wait for Cabo's reply before hanging up. She rolled over in the bed and closed her eyes again. After a few seconds, she groaned and tossed the covers off before sitting up slowly. She needed coffee. Strong coffee to kick-start her heart.
