And The Beat Goes On

Smythe's life was probably rough right now, but he deserved it. I moved through the building and ran into Arnie Chang. "So what did you find out so far?" I asked.

He looked at me and shook his head. "Nothing yet," he said. "We went from door to door and haven't found anyone in the neighborhood who knew her. We're still working on it."

"I'll be back on that case first thing in the morning," I said.

"What about your other case?" he asked.

"That one's all up to the politicians, now," I said. "I'm headed home for some TLC."

Since Melinda had my car, I ended up driving my unmarked police cruiser home. Just before I got to the car another car pulled into our parking lot. It wasn't a police car but I'd recognize the car anywhere.

The car was a one of a kind Mustang. It didn't look like any Mustang that had ever been made and, in fact, it hadn't been made by Ford. An Italian design firm had built the car as a prototype for what Ford's next Mustang might look like back in 2005. What Ford hadn't planned on was how successful their retro redesign of the Mustang would be. That Mustang, the Giugiaro Mustang, was never built and now Ford seemed to be going in another direction for the next iteration of their pony car.

This car was one of the prototypes that the Italians had built. There were three or four of them and only two of them were complete, drivable cars with drive trains and engines. Someone had paid an incredible amount of money to drive a car that no one else could. I knew that someone very well. I'd beaten him up once in an interrogation room, because I'd fallen for his wife. Nowadays he was one of my, if not my only, friend off of the job.

As Tommy pulled up to me, I was immediately on edge. Tommy, after a tour in the war and being wounded severely, then coming home to become a paramedic in one of the worst sectors of the city, was damned near unflappable.

Even when we first met, when I was determined to beat a confession out of him, he just took the blows I rained down on him and looked back at me with an expression that clearly said, "I can take whatever you dish out, and then some."

Seeing Tommy out of sorts was an experience. I knew that only two things could do it. So when he stopped the car and reached into the back seat to check on something, I crossed one of them off of my list. Seeing the three year old sleeping in her car seat, let me know that I was right on that score. Although some would consider the car seat in the back of the Mustang sacrilege, I knew that Tommy didn't care. He loved his Mustangs, but he loved his wife and daughter more.

"What's wrong with Julia?" I asked. "Is someone at the hospital making threats?"

"She didn't come home tonight, John," he said. "She should have been home by eight. She's never late. Julia just enjoys being home with us far too much for that. I went back by the hospital to check on her after waiting for a couple of hours and found her car still in the parking lot. I used the spare key to get in and it started right up. There's nothing wrong with the car so she didn't have car trouble, but she didn't call or anything. It's just not like her. I didn't want to bother you, but when I called the police they told me that there was nothing they could do until she's been missing for twenty four hours. By that time, who knows what could have happened to her?"

Tommy was distraught. He was talking at a mile a minute and looking wild eyed. I've seen this guy drive into sections of the city during gang wars and just walk up to a body and pull it behind his ambulance and start working on stabilizing his patient while bullets are still flying all around him. He also does this not because he has to, but because he believes it's the best way for him to make the city better.

Tommy got over twenty million dollars when his lawyers sued the city over what I did to him. Yeah, that was me. Tommy had saved a bunch of the guys in his platoon after being heavily wounded during the war. He'd been so severely wounded that he was sent home. Once here, he became a paramedic. He had all kinds of medals and awards for his service over there, but what he did over here went largely unnoticed. So yeah, I chained a war hero down and beat him, for something that he'd never done. I did it because I broke the rules.

There's an old joke among cops. "What's the difference between a police officer and a criminal?" the answer is, "One bad decision." Tommy was mine. I jumped to the wrong conclusion and I've always been a hot head. I responded with my then partner to a call on the city's west side. The call came from neighbors who were complaining about noise. My partner and I ran up a couple of flights of stairs and ran into an absolutely beautiful woman banging on a door and screaming at the top of her lungs.

I took one look at her and have belonged to her ever since. Melinda isn't classically beautiful. She's more a modern beauty. She has that short Pat Benatar type of haircut and extremely beautiful eyes. Her lips could launch a thousand ships just by arcing into a smile. She's tiny and has no breasts but somehow still manages to be so sexy that I have trouble understanding how any man can resist her. In fact, to this day, I haven't run into any man that could. No man, except for Tommy that is.

So that day, when I saw her, heavily pregnant and with a black eye, I immediately saw red. Although she was the one banging on the door and screaming, I ASSUMED that she was the victim. When she started screaming about Tommy always hurting her, I jumped to yet another conclusion. And then when Tommy opened the door and it was very obvious that he'd been having sex with someone else, my rage just took over.

I am not attractive. I'm old, gnarled and have a really shitty disposition. My hairline is at least an inch from where it was when I was young. I've eaten far more donuts than I should have and haven't exercised nearly enough. So I have a spare tire around my waist that has taken up permanent residence. Not even an act of congress could get me back into a size 32 waist pants.

In other words, as big and imposing as I appear, I'm invisible to hot women. Here I am one of the men who keep the city's streets safe, but no woman like either of these two would ever piss on me if I was on fire. Meanwhile, this little guy whose hair was too long and who looked like he was high had two of them arguing over him. I assumed that he was either a drug dealer or a pimp. His whole expression just said that he thought what was going on was funny.

One of the problems with being a cop is that most of your time you're surrounded by criminals. You begin to treat everyone who isn't a cop as if they were a criminal. I hate to keep saying this but it's like that old joke about carpenters. "If the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, you treat everything like it's a nail. I took one look at Melinda and assumed that it had been Tommy who beat the shit out of her, when it wasn't.

And like a cop, I used every bit of circumstantial evidence to try him and convict him in my own mind. Melinda's statement, "Why do you keep hurting me?" only added fuel to the fire. The red headed hottie who was only partially dressed and hanging all over him, made me want to kill him or at least put him away for a long time. So by the time I got him downtown and into a holding cell, I was ready to beat the shit out of Tommy. I was sure that he'd gotten Melinda pregnant and ran out on her and was doing it to yet another woman who was too stupid to realize what a piece of shit he was. I was also sure that he'd beaten Melinda up to get her to back off, but with her being true to herself she was determined to fight for her man; whether he deserved her or not.

I took him into one of the cells that we restrain the worst and most hardened criminals and tried to beat a confession out of him. The problem was that Tommy hadn't done anything. Melinda had been his childhood sweetheart. He'd gone off to the war so the army would pay for him to go to college so he could marry her and make a better life for her. He'd come back severely wounded but functional. He was a true war hero. He had his picture in the paper and everything. The problem was that Melinda, I still don't understand how or why, had cheated on him repeatedly with multiple men and Tommy had found out about it. He hadn't laid a finger on her, but it broke his heart. He'd simply left her and started his life over. He tried to do the honorable thing and divorce her but Melinda wouldn't allow it. She'd fought tooth and nail to keep him. She'd nearly bankrupted her parents trying to block the divorce.

Melinda seemingly didn't care about burning through all of the money that it had taken a lifetime for her parents to save. Their retirement be damned; all she wanted was to hold onto Tommy. Tommy didn't want to see her parents ruined financially, so he dropped the divorce petition. Not because he intended to stay with Melinda or go back to her, but because he'd been so destroyed by Melinda's betrayal that he didn't think he'd ever want to be with anyone, so the divorce didn't matter.

Melinda had stalked him and followed him around so when Tommy met Julia, she'd swooped in to try to protect her broken marriage. She'd attempted to threaten Julia at the hospital and had been repelled by the nurse. I never did find out just who it was that beat Melinda's ass but it wasn't Tommy.

When it came out what I'd done to Tommy and why, I was thrown off the force. Tommy later won a multimillion dollar lawsuit against the police. He and Julia settled down together and I don't know how, but Julia convinced Melinda, or as Melinda puts it, tricked her into giving Tommy his divorce. Tommy and Julia got married and Mel and I moved in together. I don't know which one of us is the craziest. Melinda refuses to acknowledge the fact that she and Tommy are divorced. She also refuses to recognize that he has moved on, gotten re-married and even has a child with another woman. Mel is nuttier than a squirrel's pantry. But I might be there with her because I AM there with her. How sane is it after all, to allow a woman who loves another man to the point of obsession to move in with you? How sane is it to hope and dream that one day, she'll take notice of the fact that you've always been there for her when she's always told you that you'll never be a couple and that you're never going to have sex with her? Not fucking very, is it?

(okay, I just recapped most of the beat for you)

Like I was saying, Tommy isn't easily rattled, but I could see that Julia not coming home had him afraid. And suddenly my constant headache, though it didn't go away, was drowned out by a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. It's that thing that cops call a gut feeling. I knew in that moment that something was going on too. I mean, I've seen the two of them together and neither of them would ever think of leaving the other. It was like they were a pair of those love birds. Once they're mated, they're together for life. If one of them dies, the other one passes on soon afterward because they just can't be apart. I'd often hoped that someday Melinda and I would be that way too.

"Tommy, I'll find out what's going on," I said. "I'm going to need to ask you some questions so I'll be by to see you tomorrow. Julia works the day shift at the hospital so we can't question her co-workers until morning. I know that this is a tough thing to ask you to do but I'm going to need you to go home and take care of Tamia. With her mommy not home, she'll need her daddy even more. I will get to the bottom of this and we'll find out where she is." He looked at me as if he was going to say something.

"Tommy, you have to look at this reasonably," I began. "I can't think of anyone who doesn't like Julia. Realistically, the only thing I can think of is the fact that the two of you are known to spread your money around. You're always making donations to this or that. You guys give away more money than people who are far richer do. Remember last year when you paid eight hundred thousand dollars to keep the rec center open for that PAL team that a lot of cops' kids played on. Not only did that help the kids, think about all of the people who worked there and their families."

"You guy are too good to people. But there are a few twisted people out there who probably just look at it and see the money. They figure that you'd probably be willing to pay anything to get Julia back..."

"And I would," he practically yelled.

"Well, what if someone did take her and they can't get in touch with you because you're not at home? Tommy, your job is to stay home and try to review everything you've heard her say lately. Maybe she mentioned someone at work or somewhere else that creeped her out or was too interested in her. Maybe it was someone who made her feel uncomfortable. Maybe there's someone who was even following you around but decided that Julia might be an easier target. Tommy, you need to let the people who do this for a living handle it." He nodded his head and it was like a light bulb lit up.

"Okay Fogerty," he said. "Thanks. And please call me if there's anything I can do or anything comes up."

* * * * * *

Melinda

Puppies are amazing. If a puppy is well trained it will be fiercely loyal to its owner, even when that owner fucks up. Another thing about puppies is that even when they grow up to be the biggest, scariest, fucking dog in the neighborhood, they still think they're puppies and act the same way.

After Lucas fucked me, we talked while he recovered. I made note of the fact that my Tommy never needed a lot of recovery time. He would just continue rubbing me and stroking me and kissing me and then he'd fuck me again. But it was always so natural and so filled with love that I never got enough. We made beautiful, slow yet passionate love. I've never experienced anything like it. I'd do anything...anything to feel that again.

I have so few memories of anything pleasant in my life. And most of them are during my time with Tommy. It also seems like all of those good memories ended when Tommy left me. I don't have a single good memory since the night he walked out on me. All I have left is pain and emptiness. I was thinking about that as Fogerty walked into my room.

I must have fallen into an almost daydream-like state from thinking about Tommy. I looked up at Fogerty and waved my hand at him. "Hey, John," I said casually. His eyes moved past me and settled on the slumbering form of Lucas who slept next to me, still exhausted from the pounding he'd just given me.

I looked up at Fogerty and didn't bother to cover myself up. I figured he deserved some kind of reward or treat for the pain I'd probably caused him. His face went through the gamut of emotions, starting at the smile on his face when he first saw me to shock, pain and finally anger and rage when he noticed that though I was naked and in a bed in his home, I wasn't naked for him. I watched as he controlled the rage and awoke Lucas.

I felt almost sorry for Lucas. It must have been quite a shock waking up with a gun in your mouth and a pissed off man who was bigger than you are on the other end of it. It was especially bad for Lucas being an ex-con who was on parole and knowing that the man on the other end of the gun was a cop.

Lucas also found himself in the cop's home and doing something he knew the cop wouldn't like. "Let me grab a shower while you boys talk," I said. Poor Lucas, his eyes were as big as saucers and he was afraid to breathe. Lucas was muscular and kind of big as I've said but he screamed like a girl when Fogerty snatched the gun out of his mouth suddenly. The site or something on the gun snapped off one of Luke's teeth on its way out. But Fogerty wasn't done. He'd snatched the gun out with his left hand and in a sudden moment just as the gun drew free and the tooth or part of it spiraled through the air, Fogerty's fist pumped piston-like and caught Lucas in his right eye.

Luke's head snapped back so hard I thought his neck would break. His eye started to swell immediately, but realistically, I didn't care much. I was done with him any way. Josh and his partner would handle the rest of the job. I actually kind of liked watching what Fogerty would do for me, or for jealousy over me. I might just need that devotion some day. Lucas was out like a light, so Fogerty just started slapping the shit out of him to wake him up.

"Get the fuck out of my house now," said Fogerty. Lucas didn't need to be told twice. He was up and grabbing his clothes with a speed I'd never seen out of him. "Leave the wallet," said Fogerty. "In case I have to track you down later." Lucas dropped his wallet on the table.

I didn't like the idea of Fogerty being able to track Luke down or identify him. So I spoke up.

"Can't you just let him go, John?" I asked. It was the wrong thing to do. Fogerty was just barely controlling his rage. He turned to me and I smiled at him. His look got even angrier, but not because I smiled. I followed his gaze downwards and noticed a line of semen running down my leg. Fogerty leaped at Luke's retreating back and kicked him in the ass so hard it lifted Luke off the ground. I swear to God I heard something snap. I wouldn't learn for a while what it was, but I'd been right. Fogerty had kicked him so hard he'd broken one of his own toes."

Even as Lucas left the house, Fogerty launched himself after him. "Fogerty, what are you doing?" I yelled. The sound of my voice halted him where he stood.

He turned back to face me, the rage on his face morphing to pain even as he stood there. I thought I could see the fight in him, only it was a different type of fight. The huge man who'd just beaten and humiliated a large muscular career criminal was involved in an even tougher fight to make sure I didn't see him crying. It almost touched me.

"Why?" he screamed. "Why would you do that? Why couldn't you let me have just one thing...just one day of happiness?"

"Why did you chase my friend away?" I countered. "He didn't do anything wrong. I guess I'm not allowed to have friends. You're always telling me that this is our place...our house. You always claim that I can do whatever I want, but the first time I do...you over react. Fuck you Fogerty. Maybe it's time for me to move on. I'll move back in with my parents. I'll go and pack my things now. I'll be out of here in under an hour." Of course, I was bluffing. I'd already arranged to move my parents in with Fogerty and me, so I wasn't going anywhere. I started to walk away slowly counting in my head. One...two...three...four.

"Wait," he said slowly. I could feel the pain in his voice. The similarity between the way Fogerty sounded now and the way Tommy sounded when I first spoke to him after what happened to me was unmistakable. That touched me more than anything else. "Holy shit," I thought. This fool loves me. Maybe even as much as Tommy did. It is such a shame that I'm simply not capable of returning it.

"Melinda, I don't want you to go," he said. Every syllable he uttered was wracked with pain. "Please don't go," he said. "I...I just thought that...you wanted...that we..." his voice broke and he walked away leaving me standing there.

Can I train a puppy or what? Of course I had fucked up this time. Falling into a Tommy induced daydream while that moron Lucas slept off his fuck was a major mistake, but when you came right down to it there'd been no harm done. Of course, I would have to stroke Fogerty's ruffled feathers a bit. I couldn't let him go off and sulk for too long. Though I didn't really need Lucas any more, I still needed Fogerty.

So about thirty minutes later, I went into his room. It was dark and he was sitting there drinking from a bottle. He just looked at me. In a slice of moonlight that came in through the curtains, I could see his eyes following me.