WARNING: THIS CONTAINS SOME MILDLY FOUL LANGUAGE.
"Earlier a woman was found dead in her apartment near the intersection of 45th and Alvin st. Police have refused to release further details, including the woman's identity," Simon leans in to turn up the radio on the center console. Bruce, who's driving, turns the radio off as soon as Simon's hand is clear.
"When are you going to let this s*** go, anyways?" Bruce asks Simon as they cruise down 65th avenue in their beat-up black 1980s Grand Am.
"I'll let it go when I catch the guy--"
"--or guys, you don't know if there's just one or what, the media's been blastin' that damn case of yers for years now, there hasn't been a related homicide in years, and the skip took you off the damn thing so you could get your head straight and move on." Bruce lights a smoke and takes a long cool drag as he cranks the window down, letting in the crisp autumn air.
"But the connections--"
"--SCREW THE CONNECTIONS!" Bruce exclaims, now swerving the car the side of the busy two-lane bridge, and stops the car completely, cars behind them honking, and drivers yelling. Bruce turns to Simon and grabs the sides of his face with his rough hairy hands (one missing an index finger), looking straight into Simon's working eye. His voice diminishes to a whisper, "You need to move on, Buddy."
Simon, whose one eye is quickly becoming blood-shot, shakes his pale hand down to his pocket to grab a pill, still looking into Bruce's eyes, and pops it into his mouth. Cars line up behind the two detectives, who are quite busy working out their crisis, and a man in the car directly behind them gets out as if to fight the two. Bruce instantly lets go of his partners face with one hand, reaches into his overcoat, pulls out his badge, and holds it out the window without looking. The man backs up slowly and gets back into his car as Bruce returns his hand to Simon's face.
He raises his voice a little. "You need to move on." both men swallow loudly, almost in unison. "It's bad enough you've been putting that poison into your body for more years than you can remember," Bruce says matter-of-factly, speaking slowly as if talking to a dope fiend, "but what's worse is that you've been following some criminal's stench for nearly a decade now and haven't come up with S***."
"You're right." Simon attempts to concede a little, as Bruce lets go, and puts the car in "But how do you explain the feeling I've had that someone's watching me?--"
"--paranoia, pop a few more ah' 'dem pills, pal."
"And the messages left on my car sometimes?"
"Simon," Bruce begins laughing a little. "You're a detective in Petrina City, you're bound to have thugs, hookers--hell, I don't know, even eligible single females--writing you notes and putting them on our car." His laugh becomes a steady arrogant smirk, "and do you remember when you swore that they were written in blood and we took 'em to the lab and they abruptly put the kibosh on that nonsense, do you remember that?" Simon nods and Bruce continues.
"All I'm saying is that in this city, notes and feelings don't mean S*** to anyone with any sort of power." Bruce looks at his phone and back at Simon before looking back to the road, downtown Petrina ahead. "Now get your head in the game, we got a meeting with the skip, and you know how I like to make the best impression." He begins to smirk again. "Plus, he said its important, so maybe its a promotion for me and a demotion for you!" He looks to Simon for re-assurance, but only receives a tremendous lack of amusement, "Cheer up cupcake, I'm sure you're rival, or villain, or whatever you call him is dead in a gutter by now. And even if not, you're one damn fine detective," he changes expressions to mimic a damsel in distress, "so I'm sure you'll figure somethin' out."
"Let's just get to the station," says Simon, now crossing his arms and leaning back, as if forfeiting the conversation, "we're late as it is."
Bruce cups his hand over his mouth and tries to sound like Darth Vader, futilely attempting to get a smile from Simon "As you wish, my lord."
As Simon and Bruce pull into the parking garage at the downtown police station, Bruce turns to Simon and says, "seriously, my one-eyed friend," while reaching over to ruffle Simon's hair as Simon swats his hand away. "Don't blow it in this meeting like you have been lately. This is the homicide bureau chief, buddy,--homicide, the biggest bureau in the city--and although you may know him well--sordid past taken into account, yadda yadda yadda--I was transferred in no more than, what, four years ago now?" He begins to sound sarcastic, and Simon rolls his eye, "And why was it again that I got assigned to this bureau again? You remember, buddy?" He raises his voice, "to keep an eye ON YOU!"
Simon looks at Bruce with a scornful, resentful, and bitter expression as they find a spot, get out of the car and tread up the cement stairway corridor to the 5th floor and a single metal door with the city's police logo, the words "Petrina City Bureau of Homicide" arched over the logo, and the words "Once saved, always saved" spray-painted under the logo. A sick joke, no doubt, but no one has ever known who sprayed the motto on the door or why.
They open the door, go through the metal detector--not a machine, in fact, but a semi-retired gumshoe named Emilio with a metal-detecting wand and a box of donuts that seems to refill itself every two hours. He says "you know the drill, fellas" every time any one enters, without fail.
"We most certainly do." Simon says, somewhat sarcastically, as they take their handguns out, place them on a large metal tray, and raise their hands to make their bodies into lower-case tees.
Once through inspection, the men walk to their spot, two small desks facing each other at the far corner of the large, hanger-style corridor, Simon always taking his sweet time to say "hello" when walking by the receptionist's desk near main the entrance. They put their coats down on their chairs, and Bruce tightens his tie as Simon quickly checks his email on his laptop.
"I got another email from that lead…?" he exclaims, accidentally questioning his own statement halfway through, as his eye widens. Suddenly Bruce slams his laptop shut, startling Simon, and causing him to suddenly reach down to his side, not for a gun but for a pill. "I have to go to the bathroom."
Bruce becomes smug. "Oh, why don't you just take it here and save us the time. Everyone here knows you do FG-5--hell, half the force does it--and even if someone questions you do what everyone else does. Say its for heartburn, or kidney stones, or anxiety, which it sort of is in a way" Simon quickly pops the pill, smells a half-empty (or half-full) cup from his desk with water in it, shrugs, uses it to wash down the pill, tightens his tie a little, and turns confidently to Bruce.
"Alright, Brucie. I get it. Let's go see what the chief wants."
"That's more like it!"As they walk closer to the chief's office, which literally a very large sectioned-off cubical in the center of the corridor with large windows on all its walls (part of internal affairs's attempt at transparency), usually covered with blinds installed by the chief himself, many of the other detectives look up from their desks or briefly pause their conversations to look at the two, before going back to their business.
This doesn't bother either of them, until Simon looks at his wristwatch and exclaims, "Damn! We're late!"
"Whatever, bud, we'll be fine."
"No, we're like really late. about a half hour."
Their faces seise to be casual and quickly turn to troubled excitement as they begin to power-walk to the center office, blinds now open on the window facing them, and the chief--a darker, burley man who looks like he watched Gangs of New York too many times--is standing in the window, arms crossed, staring down the two detectives. He breaks his crossed arms stance to powerfully point at the two with one hand. They put their tails between their legs and knock on his door.
"Come in, you two." Bruce slowly turns the doorknob. "We need to talk."
i like it, excited for more of this story
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