Quintic (6 page)

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 close, 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

“H
ow 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

B
ridget 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 o
n 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
Bridget 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.

B
y 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.

Chris read
his messages and the files left on his desk standing up, studying
them from his office window. The women’s animated conversation
resumed in-between each phone call.

Patricia had
a simple white blouse and fitted pants on. The cut emphasised her
waist, making her look thinner. Her wavy hair was loose, a simple
headband pulling it away from her face. When she turned her face to
look at Bridget’s computer, he saw she was wearing her glasses. The
brainy look disguise today, was it? She looked softer, more
delicate with all the hair. He knew how unruly her hair could get
if he got her to bed. He liked her hair unruly. Maybe he could
finish work early and take her home. They probably wouldn’t make it
to the bed. He cursed under his breath; he was getting fucking
distracted again.