Strange Robby (23 page)

"By 'common,' I'm assuming that you mean 'stupid,' and I by no means believe that the voters of Shea City are stupid. Which is why they'll all be voting for me on Election Day."

"So are you saying that anyone who doesn't vote for you is stupid?" Barns screamed. He was losing it—both the debate and his temper.

"What's next, Barns? Are you going to scream 'I'm rubber and you're glue'? Come on. Tell us what you're going to do as DA instead of pointing fingers at me. The people can look up my record. I've got five years of experience working as a prosecuting attorney in the DA's office, three in LA and two here. Richards didn't make me assistant DA because he thought I couldn't handle the job. He didn't ask his supporters to vote for me because he thought I was inept. What can you bring to the DA's office that I can't? That's all the people want to know."

"Family values for one thing. I've been married for fifteen years and have three kids. We go to church every Sunday."

"So do you deal with a lot of murderers there? Because I think what the people want to know is whether you can convict criminals and get them off the street."

"I want to get them off the street. I know how, and I have a family to protect which gives me a little more incentive than you," Barns countered.

"The citizens of this city are my main concern. My partner is a police detective, so it's in my best interest to make sure that I don't put killers back on the street."

"Did you hear that, people? She said
she
. Now do we really want our city represented by a lesbian?"

"I'm not running for mayor, I'm running for DA. It isn't the DA's job to represent the city. If you think that being DA is a really glitzy job, then you're going to be mightily disappointed. You get pulled out in the middle of the night to look at bloody crime scenes, and dragged to the morgue to look at bodies. You spend most of your working hours dealing with the scum of the city. There is nothing at all glamorous about being DA. You have to be dedicated to your work and to the people of this city. You aren't above them, you are their employee, and you have to be able to get the job done. I know I can; I've done it; I'm currently doing it. I don't even think you know what the DA's job actually is, since you seem to think that the only real qualification you need is to be heterosexual."

"You are monopolizing all of the time." He looked at the moderator. "She is monopolizing all of the time."

The moderator shrugged. "Sorry, it's an open topic, one-on-one debate, which is what you asked for, Sir."

"If you can't hold your own in a friendly debate, how do you expect to hold your own in the courtroom day after day?"

Barns had stormed off the stage and out of the building. When a wall of reporters had tried to talk to him he had shoved through them without a word.

The rest of his campaign was one giant homo-hating spread after another.

Carrie had countered by continuing to show the public that she knew what the job was and how to do it.

When a trashy looking hooker went to the news media and claimed that she was the "Family man's" mistress, 'hypocrite' was added to the list of his shortcomings.

Carrie won by a landslide.

At her campaign headquarters the noise was deafening as the final tally came in. There were congratulations from everyone. She gave her acceptance speech, and then Carrie went off to find Spider.

She hadn't seen her much at all the entire evening. Or the last few weeks for that matter. Spider was still very uncomfortable being "out" in front of anyone, and now she had instantly become one of the most celebrated lesbians in the city. Carrie found Spider in the corner talking to Tommy and Laura. They were all talking and laughing and swilling champagne. She wished she had found Spider talking to some total stranger—as long as it wasn't a beautiful woman stranger. Spider really seemed to have a hard time making friends, and it was mostly because she didn't try.

People moved out of Carrie's way to let her through without being asked. It was then that it really sank in. She had just won the election. From now on people were going to be treating her differently, and she wasn't sure that she liked that idea. Wasn't sure that she liked it at all.

Suddenly there were too many people in the room. The walls seemed to be closing in. From now on, like it or not, she was a public figure. Mikes in her face whenever she turned around, very little personal time, no fucking privacy. What the hell had she been thinking?

Spider pushed her way through the crowd. Carrie felt Spider's hand at her elbow, steadying her.

"It will be OK, Carrie." Spider whispered in her ear. "It's nothing that you haven't been doing all along. Next week the campaign, the election, and everything else will be old news, and you can get back to being DA."

Carrie nodded, took a deep breath and found that she could breath again. Just having Spider there made her feel better. "I'm exhausted. I really just want to go home."

"Then that's what we're doing," Spider said.

They started out of the building, and the press was all over them. Carrie answered as well as her tired brain would let her . . . Yes, she was thrilled about the election . . . No, she would not be taking the congratulations call from Barns because she had never been as phony as he was and didn't plan to start now . . . No, she didn't plan to run for any other public office in the future, she was a prosecuting attorney, and she was very happy being DA.

Spider found a mike in her face.

"Detective Webb! What roll will you play now that your partner is DA?"

Spider stared at the mike for a minute, but realized it wouldn't look good for Carrie if she took the mike and shoved it up the reporter's ass. "Well," she stammered, "I guess I'll support her like we support each other in everything. As far as playing any roll in the DA's office . . . decisions or stuff . . . the answer is none. She's the DA; I'm a cop. There's no reason for our paths to cross anymore at work than they ever have. The people voted for her, not me. And I would appreciate it if everyone would just leave me out of the politics." With that said, she physically pulled Carrie through the crowd and out of the building.

"That's big trouble," Jason said through a mouthful of sandwich as he watched the TV screen.

Kirk nodded. "Just what we fucking needed. All the damned publicity doesn't make our job any easier. I really didn't think she'd win the election."

"No one did, or they would have made sure she didn't. Guess people really are becoming more tolerant," Jason said, then washed his sandwich down with some stale beer.

"Or the other guy was just so fucking incompetent that the people would rather vote for a queer," Kirk snarled. "Either way it throws a big fucking monkey wrench into our plans. We're going to have to be a whole lot more cautious. Like Deacon said, we need to reevaluate our methods."

Jason shrugged. "I'd just like to go home. I haven't seen my old lady or the kids in three months now."

"There is a reason why the agency discourages such emotional attachments," Kirk said.

"Because they don't want us to have any heart, any compassion." Jason threw his sandwich wrapper into the trash hard. "Hell, I was bled out a long time ago, Kirk. I thought that I could get my humanity back by having a family. It didn't take me long to realize that by having something that I cared about so much, I had finished selling my soul to the agency. By having a family I'd given the fucking agency absolute leverage over me. That's why I hate your guts, Kirk. Because I know that on the day that I didn't do the agency's bidding you'd be only too happy to hang my little girl up by the hair of her head and torture her until I gave in."

"You never have understood, Jason. This is bigger than any one person. More important than one family. The future of the free world . . . "

Jason jumped up and glared down at Kirk. "Who the fuck are you trying to sell! Don't give me that 'future of the free world' shit. We're playing with people's lives. A few assholes have decided what is right for everybody. They have created something that has gotten out of control. And the fucking Fed we iced—he was right. We created something that's going to kill us. Between you and me, it can't come fast enough. I was in too deep when I realized just how fucking far around the bend the SWTF is. Now I keep doing shit I know is wrong. I don't have any soul left, but unlike you I still have a conscience, and when we plug some poor fuck like that Fed I don't sleep. I have guilt. But I keep doing it because the agency owns my fucking soul. They got your soul, too, Kirk. You're just too dead to know it."

"If you're quite done psychoanalyzing me, you can run along and set up the equipment. See if we're picking anything up."

"Yessir, Massa. What evah ya say, Massa," Jason said sarcastically as he bowed all the way out of the room.

"She didn't look very happy about winning the election," Tommy said as he started slipping out of his monkey suit.

"She wants to do the job, but she doesn't really want the title. She's been worried about the publicity all along. Apparently the campaign has been something of a strain on she and Spider's relationship," Laura said. She stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel. Whenever she was in big crowds of people she always felt filthy until she showered and washed her hair. "It has to be a really weird time for her. New relationship, new job, new duties."

"Really?" Tommy asked, curious. "Spider didn't say anything about it."

"Well she wouldn't, would she?" Laura said. "From what Carrie says that's most of the problem. Spider would really rather stay in the closet, and now—like it or not—she's out. Everywhere she goes people know who she is and that she's gay. She's having a lot of trouble with it." Laura combed her hair. She started to blow it dry and decided it was too much like work.

Tommy walked into the bathroom to brush his teeth. "A few weeks ago, the lieutenant got smart with Spider—made some crack about Carrie. I've never seen her so mad. I don't blame her. It's nobody's business, and now everybody knows. For a lot of people that's all the reason they need to hate her. It's not fair."

"But it's the way things are." Laura slapped him on the ass and left the bathroom for the welcome comfort of their bed.

Laura smiled and squashed into her pillow. For her, being in their bed was like being in the only really safe place in the world. Safe from the outside world. A place she and Tommy shared alone with no intrusions. The last few weeks with the campaign had been hell for Laura, so she could only imagine how it must have been for Carrie.

Tommy spit the toothpaste out. "Do you mean that Spider and Carrie are having trouble, like they're going to break up?"

Laura waited till he stopped gargling to answer. "No, not at all. Carrie hasn't said anything like that. They're in love, and I think it would take a lot to break them up. It's just been tough, that's all."

Tommy walked in and crawled into bed. He wrapped himself around Laura and she snuggled against him.

"Are you tired?" Tommy whispered in her ear.

"Not at all," Laura breathed, and started crawling all over him.

Spider and Tommy had pulled a late night stake out waiting for a little weasel-faced creep named Freddy Brown. They had reason to believe that he might have witnessed the recent murder of a hooker.

"At first the fuckers were everywhere," Spider was saying. "Even found one hiding in that God awful hedge on the west side of the house. A son of a bitchen gnat couldn't squeeze through, so this dick head took battery powered hedge clippers and cut a hole in the fucking thing. He had a fucking camp stool there and had been sitting there God only knows how long filming the house."

"What the hell for?" Tommy asked.

Spider shrugged. "Who fucking knows? Waiting for us to do it in the yard or something I guess."

"How'd you find him?" Tommy asked.

"Well, as you know I've been a little squirrelly lately. I was looking around before we went in the house, and I saw the sunlight reflecting off his lens. I thought he was SWTF, so I freaked out, right? I go back out the gate and sneak around behind him, grab him and start kicking his ass. Carrie is of course having a conniption fit, 'You're going to kill him! You're going to kill him!' so I wasn't listening to her. Then I realize she's yelling out that the guy is trying to show his press card."

"What did you do then?" Tommy asked, laughing.

"I punched him in the face one more time and let him go. Carrie called the cops and had him arrested for trespassing. He's threatening to sue me for his injuries, but Carrie says he can't. She was pissed off at me anyway. Said I over reacted."

"Not
you
," Tommy said sarcastically. He took the binoculars and looked at the building as if seeing better would make a person who wasn't there appear.

"So, you think this dick head is ever going to show?"

"He has to come home some time," Spider said.

"Of course it doesn't have to be till after we give up staking out his fucking building," Tommy mumbled. "Wait a minute!" Tommy removed his binoculars.