“I am not leaving until they fix my car and that’s final.” The defiant gentleman dressed in a suit that probably would have covered two, if not more, of Jack’s mortgage payments crossed his arms and looked as if he wanted to stamp his feet.
Tired and exasperated, Jack sighed and rubbed his eyes. He’d had a headache most of the day — no doubt thanks to the weather, once again hot and humid — and if the expensively dressed man kept arguing much longer it would surely cross over to migraine status. He and Manny were handling an unwanted-guest call at a BMW dealership on Adelaide Street and they had already been there twice as long as they should have been.
“Sir, the manager has explained to you, repeatedly, that the damage to your car is not covered by the warranty. They will gladly fix it but you’ll have to pay for it.” How many times does this moron need to be told?
Jack and Manny — taking turns so neither of them punched out the idiot from sheer frustration — had laid it out to Mr. BMW several times, but he refused to budge.
“And I have explained it to you, officer, they are going to fix it and it is covered by the warranty. Do you not understand me for some reason?”
Pain throbbed behind Jack’s right eye and he was starting to squint against the bright lights in the showroom, two sure signs his headache was cheerfully on its way to a full-blown migraine. All he wanted to do was get in the car, down some meds and try to forget this condescending prick.
It was Manny’s turn. “Sir, if you have a problem with —”
Mr. BMW threw up his hands, interrupting Manny. “Of course I have a problem! My God! Have you not understood a single word I’ve said? I understand the qualifications to become a police officer are lenient, but I had no idea they were that substandard. It’s no wonder you two ended up as policemen. If you represent the norm for those who serve the rest of us —”
“That’s enough!” It was Jack’s turn to interrupt and he did it like a volcano erupting. Mr. BMW may have stood taller than Jack, but right now he took a tentative step back. “I’ve had enough of your fucking attitude. The manager has asked you to leave, we’ve asked you to leave and now I’m telling you to leave. If you don’t, I will gladly arrest you for trespassing, handcuff you and dump you in the back of my shitty North American–made police car. Do. You. Under. Stand. Me?”
Mr. BMW quickly recovered from his shock. “You, officer, have just bought yourself trouble you cannot handle. Do you know who my lawyer —”
Manny threw his hand up in BMW’s face to silence him as the portables, always kept on at low volume when they were out of the car, crackled with urgency.
“CB51 Bravo in pursuit!” a female officer shouted.
Jack and Manny cranked their radios up.
“CB51 Bravo! We’re chasing a male southbound through north Regent Park on a bicycle. Male black wearing a red shirt and black gloves!”
Sirens erupted across the division; Jack could hear them through the dealership’s fancy glass walls. Every officer in the division knew what the gloves meant.
“Out! Now!”
Jack and Manny grabbed an arm each, wrinkling BMW’s expensive suit, and ran him to the doors, not bothering to slow down when they reached the glass panels. Mr. BMW bore the brunt of the impact when they rammed open the doors. They ran to the scout car, BMW sputtering a tirade of threats and promising legal retribution; they would have dragged him if he hadn’t been able to keep up. At the sidewalk, they released him, and with the abrupt freedom he careened into the side of the scout car. Luckily for his suit, they had managed to get the car washed that morning.
“Don’t go back in there,” Jack yelled as he ran to the passenger side. He slid in and Manny screamed away from the curb as Jack slammed his door.
“Southbound from 605 Whiteside now!”
“Who is that?” Jack wanted to know.
“Jenny, I think.”
The red light at Parliament was coming up fast. Manny braked at the last instant and didn’t hit the gas again until Jack yelled, “Clear!” To cut down on time at red lights — when the sirens were wailing, seconds mattered — two-man cars held the advantage over solo units; the passenger’s responsibility was to check for traffic on his side and the driver had to learn to wait for the “clear” without checking. It took practice and trust. A distinct advantage for permanent partners.
In their four days together, Jack had learned that Manny was one of the best drivers he had ever seen. The guy could squeeze a scout car through a keyhole at unimaginable speeds without scraping either side of the car. Jack had ridden with one officer up in 32 who had enough titanium holding him together to qualify as a cyborg, all as a result of departmental accidents. High-speed manoeuvering seemed as natural to Manny as breathing.
“Where do you think he’s headed?”
“If he was going to bail off the bike and head inside — clear! — he probably would have done it in north Regent. I bet he’s planning on heading into the little streets south of Shuter,” Jack said.
“Male now westbound on Shuter!” came Jenny’s voice again.
“Or not,” Jack admitted.
“10-4, CB Bravo, westbound on Shuter. Bravo, what’s the male wanted for?” Either the dispatcher didn’t understand the significance of the gloves — which Jack found hard to believe — or she was trying to legitimize the bicycle pursuit. Since the warrant for Charles’s arrest had been made public, there had been five foot pursuits of glove-wearing suspects. None of them had been Charles, of course. Overnight, black leather gloves had become a fashion statement in 51.
“Possession cocaine and assault to resist.” Jenny hardly sounded out of breath, evidence that those legs of hers were good for something other than being stared at.
“Any idea — wait, wait, clear! — who she’s working with?”
“I think I saw her riding with Sue earlier.”
“Then this guy’s fucked.”
Officers didn’t like it when one of their own was assaulted; they tended to repay the culprit back twofold or more. When a female officer was assaulted, coppers took it personally.
The scout car screeched around the corner onto Shuter and Manny mashed the gas pedal. The car leapt out of the turn while Jack scanned the road ahead.
“Special 51’s on Shuter. Bravo, where are you?” No answer. “Bravo! What’s your 20?”
“The last location I had for Bravo was westbound on Shuter,” the dispatcher advised.
“They probably came out around Blevins, so they have to be around here somewhere. Slow down.”
Manny eased off the gas and killed the siren, but left the lights on, then drove down the centre of the four-lane road, searching his side of the street. Jack was checking between houses and straining for sounds of a fight. Suddenly, Manny goosed the car ahead.
Jack grabbed the mike. “Special 51, we’ve found them. Front lawn of the Shuter Street school. All appears in order, units can slow down. All in order.”
Manny bounced the car over the curb onto the sidewalk, but there was no need for hurry. The two pws were kneeling on their suspect, who was face down and cuffed on the grass. The male faced away from Jack, but he knew immediately that it wasn’t Charles; the man’s complexion was too light.
“Good afternoon, ladies,” Jack greeted them, walking over. “Nice day for a bike ride.” The two white police bikes and a beaten-up mountain bike were lying nearby.
“Hi, Jack. Nice to see you.” Jenny was kneeling on the man’s back, completely at ease having a friendly conversation from that position. She flashed an enrapturing smile at him. Even with sunglasses and the bulky helmet, she was an incredibly beautiful woman.
Jack’s heart fluttered for a beat or two before he could answer. “Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but —”
“I know, it isn’t Charles. I saw that as soon as we got him cuffed.”
“It isn’t? That fucking sucks.” The second policewoman was kneeling astride the prisoner’s legs. She stood, unclipped her helmet and let it fall at her feet. Not as tall as Jenny, she had dark red hair — the word that popped into Jack’s mind was crimson — and a set of lips so pouty, they had him thinking collagen.
“Sorry, Sue; seems like every sack of shit down here is wearing the gloves now.” Jenny unfolded her legs and, with Manny’s help, heaved her man upright. “I gave him a quick pat-down, Manny, but he could use a thorough search.”
“My pleasure.” He planted the man chest down across the scout car’s trunk.
“Those bitches be lyin’. I ain’t done nothin’ wrong.”
“Then why were you running, or biking, away?” Manny asked as he began his search.
“’Cause they was chasin’ me! I didn’ want to get Rodney Kinged.”
“Isn’t that phrase a little out of date? Besides, you’re just upset because you got caught by two girls.” In Manny’s world, a day wasn’t complete if he couldn’t taunt at least one criminal.
“Do either of you ladies need any physical attention? Any areas of your bodies in need of examination?” Paul Townsend had cruised to a stop and called from the driver’s seat.
“Dark Chocolate! Baby!” Sue lost interest in the arrest and sashayed over to his car. Her legs were nowhere near the quality of Jenny’s, but she certainly put a lot of hip sway into her walk.
“I thought you were married, Officer Warren.” Jenny had caught Jack looking and there was amusement in her voice.
“Actually, I was just comparing her legs with yours,” he admitted truthfully.
“Really? And . . . ?”
Jack smiled at her — it was easy to smile at Jenny — and told her the truth. “No comparison.”
“And don’t you forget it,” she cautioned him with a grin. “It took you that long to come to your verdict?”
“Nope, that was almost instantaneous. I was just thinking that my Scottish grandmother would say she had the sheuggle for a kilt.”
“The what?”
“Sheuggle. Hip sway. If you like,” he offered sincerely, “I can watch you walk for a while and see if you have a good sheuggle. I’m just trying to be fair.”
“I hate to interrupt, but is anyone still involved in this arrest except for me?”
Jack and Jenny looked over their shoulders at Manny. “You’re doing an excellent job, officer. Carry on.”
“Gee, thanks, Jack. That makes me warm and fuzzy all over.”
They loaded Jenny’s prisoner into the back seat and his stolen bike — what anyone caught on a stolen bike called a “community bicycle“— into the trunk for the short trip to the station. In the station’s back lot, they passed prisoner and bike to the ladies and decided to hang around until Jenny and Sue headed inside with him. While the bike officers waited to be called into the booking hall, Manny leaned the prisoner into the wall and planted his hand between the man’s shoulder blades to keep him put. Sue stood on tiptoes to run her hands over Manny’s bare scalp.
“She will flirt with anything male,” Jenny declared, sounding somewhat strained.
“Trust me,” Jack told her, “you’d rather see this than the guy who was feeling up his head a few days ago.” Not wanting to let the conversation end, he added, “I thought you usually worked with Al.” While he asked, he dug his migraine medication out of his duty bag — he tried to never be far from his drugs — and downed a pill with some water.
“Al’s sick and Sue’s partner’s also off. Gee, Jack, that’s rather ballsy of you, doing drugs where the sergeants can see you.”
“It’s all right, just migraine meds. I do the illegal stuff on my way to work in the car.”
“Sensible. Migraines, huh? Is that why your face is all squinted up and you look like you’re going to throw up all over me?”
He nodded. “Pretty much, yup.”
“That’s good to hear. I was beginning to think it was me.”
“Oh, no,” he reassured her. “You have a completely different effect on me.”
“Really? Sy never told me that about you,” she said with a sly smile.
“You talked to Sy about me? Interesting. . . .”
Jenny smiled, then chewed nervously on her lower lip.
If Jack had known her better, he would have said she was stalling. “Something on your mind, Jenny?”
“This may — no, I’m pretty sure it will — sound kind of nuts, but it’s about Manny and you being partners. I like Manny,” she added hastily, “don’t get me wrong, but . . .”
“But it seems pretty soon after Sy . . . dying for me to pair up with someone. Right?”
She looked embarrassed, then nodded. “I guess it seems kind of disrespectful to Sy. I know you weren’t with him for long, but for him to partner up with you said a huge amount about you to the station. I’d hate to see you throw that away inadvertently.”
“Whoa. I never thought about it that way. Believe me when I say I never intended to throw away my time with Sy. It’s just that . . . well, I need some stability in my life right now. I’m not sleeping well and when I do, I have nightmares about Sy. And now my wife and her parents are hounding me to transfer out of 51 to someplace safe.”
He couldn’t believe he was opening up like this to Jenny. Except for saying hello a half dozen times and the odd small talk she was a stranger to him. But that didn’t stop him. There was something about her that made talking to her easy and natural. True, she was a beautiful woman, but that wasn’t it. Talking to her just felt . . . right. He couldn’t explain it, even to himself.
“And something happened on Monday, the first day Manny and I worked together, and it meant so much to me —”
“Jenny! We’re up.”
The sally port door was rumbling open. It was time to parade their prisoner.
“Are you coming out tonight?” Jenny quickly asked Jack.
“No. I should go home and try to smooth things over with Karen. My wife,” he explained.
“Okay, but if you change your mind, we’re going for wings first and then down to Cherry Beach for a bonfire. If you come, we can talk. You sound like you could use a friendly ear.” She staggered his heart for a second time that day with a simple smile, then trotted off to catch up with Sue.
Manny joined him. “Yo, man, you okay?”
Jack shook himself back to reality. “Yeah, I’m good.”
“Enjoying the scenery, were you?”
“Just checking for a sheuggle, that’s all.”
“Special 51, could you head back to Gerrard and Parliament? I’ve got another medical complainant for a collapsed male. Ambulance attending, time 1556.”
“10-4, dispatch,” Jack replied tiredly. “Maybe we should just camp out there with them.”
The dispatcher laughed. “Thanks, Special 51. I appreciate the help.”
“A nice, hot day,” Manny mused, “and the drunks are falling like ten-pins.”
Ten minutes earlier Manny and Jack had loaded a local drunk into an ambulance at the intersection of Parliament and Gerrard streets. Then Manny had headed east on Gerrard. When the second call came in, he pulled into Allan Gardens and eased into the shade of a huge oak, and both officers pulled out their memo books to write down the call and to give the second ambulance a head start.
This was a lesson Jack had learned very quickly in 51: unless it’s a child, don’t rush to a collapse call. Let the ambulance or fire department get there first, which they usually did anyway. People who “collapsed” the most frequently were people you didn’t want to touch, let alone perform artificial resuscitation on. Drunks and drug users were typically not clean people.
Especially in Pigeon Park, at Gerrard and Parliament.
Call written down and ambulance given sufficient time to get there ahead of them, Manny slowly pulled out of the shade. The sky was a blue so clear it was almost white and the sun was merciless in its attack on the city. The park was all but empty. Even the hounds had abandoned it in search of air conditioning.
Traffic was light and the few cars on the road appeared to be affected by the heat as much as the pedestrians, moving sluggishly and without great purpose. Sluggish was just fine with Jack. He was in no rush to reach Pigeon Park, not after their visit there just a few minutes ago, when they had found a Native guy passed out in his own vomit.
“I wonder which one of his drinking buddies has gone down this time.”
“I’m betting it’s the one with the nose that looks like a mound of mashed potatoes shoved in a fishnet stocking. He downed that last bottle pretty quick when he saw us coming.”
“You’re probably right,” Jack agreed. “And thanks for ruining fishnet stockings for me. Karen likes to wear them when she’s feeling frisky.”
“Sorry, dude.”
Pigeon Park — really more of a parkette — was located at the northwest corner of the intersection. A small triangle of concrete and grass, it had a round fountain as its centrepiece. The fountain was dry — a good thing, according to Manny; it had something to do with skinny-dipping homeless alcoholics — but the park was still a favourite watering spot for some local Natives.
The heat didn’t so much hit Jack as crush him when he got out of the car. The air was so thick with humidity that it was hard to breathe. How anyone could sit out in it and drink cooking wine was beyond him. It obviously took years of practice and the Pigeon drinking crew certainly had the experience.
There had been three of them left standing — or relatively upright — when the first guy had been hauled off to the hospital. Now they were down to two. The third one was face down in a flower bed and it wasn’t Mashed Potatoes in Fishnets: he was still upright but tilting dangerously.
The medics had rolled the drunk over and were attempting to wake him up, but consciousness seemed to be at least one bottle beyond reach. Manny plucked an almost empty plastic water bottle from a limp hand and gave it a quick whiff. “The good stuff,” he declared, dumping the last of the liquid and tossing the bottle aside.
“Cooking wine?” one of the medics asked without much interest.
“Nope. He’s moved on to rubbing alcohol. Mixed with a splash of Gatorade for flavour, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Wonderful. Okay, buddy. Time to wake up.” The medic placed a knuckle, safely covered in latex, on the drunk’s breastbone and rubbed hard and deep, grinding bone on bone. A hand twitched, nothing more. “Fuck, this guy’s really out.” The medic leaned forward, putting the weight of his upper body behind his knuckle. A small groan escaped the drunk’s lips and his hands flailed weakly before flopping onto the pavement again.
“Here. Give this a try.” Jack passed his baton to the medic.
“Cool,” the medic said, a mischievous twinkle lighting his eyes. He placed one end of the baton where his knuckle had been and rubbed. Hard. Jack could hear the blunt metal grinding on the bone and he imagined he could feel it in his bones.
This time the drunk woke up or got as close to being awake as he was going to get. He lurched to a sitting position and the medics had to step quickly to avoid the swinging fists. The burst of animation was only that, a burst, and seconds later the guy was folding to the ground again. One medic got a knee between his shoulder blades to prop him up.
Jack took his stick back and while the paramedics tended to their patient, he and Manny tended to the conscious drunks. Both were Natives — Pigeon Park was their preferred place for drinking — and they eyed the approaching officers suspiciously.
“No need to get up, gentlemen,” Manny said. They were both seated on the flower bed’s knee-high wall. “We’re just going to take a little look around since we didn’t have enough time to during our last visit.”
Stashed among the flowers and garbage they found an assortment of bottles and emptied five rubbing alcohol coolers.
Jack looked up to see that the medics had managed to pour the drunk onto the stretcher and were loading him into the ambulance. “You guys want us to tag along?” he asked.
“Nah, we got it. Thanks for the loan of the stick.” The medic slammed shut the ambulance doors, pulled off his latex gloves and turned to Jack and Manny. “Don’t know if you guys would be interested in this, but we were just in 295 Gerrard and there’s a guy dealing in the stairwell. Didn’t even bother to try and hide it when we went by.”
With less than an hour to go on the last day of a very long day shift, Manny perked up like a puppy who had just spotted a squirrel. Jack sighed. In their few days together, Jack had learned that, when Manny saw a squirrel, all Jack could do was make sure the silly little puppy didn’t chase it into traffic and get himself squashed by a car.
“What did he look like?” Manny asked.
Jack could feel him tugging at the leash.
“White guy, lot of acne, green shirt. He was selling rock to some black guys when we went by.”
“Where in the building?”
“East stairwell. About twenty minutes ago.”
“Thanks, man. We’ll check it out.”
In the scout car, Jack cranked the AC the second Manny had the engine running. Manny had the mike in his hand. “You don’t mind, do you, Jack?”
Jack sighed again. “Fine. But if you get me in a foot chase in this heat, I’ll kill you.”
“I’ll do the chasing, dude. Thanks.” He was beaming like a kid with a new toy.
As Manny waited to merge with traffic, Jack watched the drunks. They were up and searching the flower bed, no doubt hoping a bottle had been overlooked. A pigeon near the scout car caught Jack’s attention. It was walking along the curb on rather unsteady legs.
I’d swear the damn thing’s staggering.
As he watched, the bird missed a step and slid off the curb. It hit the asphalt in a flurry of ruffled feathers. After several attempts to jump to the curb, it gave up and staggered off along the street.
Crap, even the pigeons down here are drunk.
295 Gerrard was diagonally across from Pigeon Park, a six-storey building holding down the northwest corner of Regent Park. There was no easy way to sneak up on any of the entrances in daylight, especially in a scout car, so Manny took the direct approach and parked on the grass in front of the building.
“You got something against parking on the street?” Jack asked as they got out of the car.
“It’s rush hour, man,” Manny explained. “Don’t want to mess up traffic. Besides, this way we’ll have shorter to walk with our prisoner.”
“Like he’s still here,” Jack commented as Manny ducked around the building to use the rear entrance. Jack took the front.
From the outside, all the buildings in Regent Park were similar. Same brick colour, same design, same worn-down, despairing appearance. Inside, they were identical, right down to the depressing shade of paint and the stench of old urine. Jack wasn’t looking forward to the smell in this heat. Mounting the front steps, he tried to see into the building, but the door’s glass was reflecting the sun and everything beyond it was hidden.
This guy better be gone, or I’m gonna be pissed.
He yanked open the door and came face to face with the dealer, green shirt, zits and all. There was a split second of shocked immobility; then the dealer bolted, Jack hard on his heels. Who was the puppy now?
The dealer ran with the speed only true fear can inspire and hip-checked open the stairwell door. The door swung closed behind him and through the door’s window Jack could see him pounding up the stairs.
Jack hit the door in full stride, throwing out his left arm to slam it open. His arm passed through the emptiness where the glass should have been and his head rammed the metal edge of the window frame. He crashed through the door into the stairwell and ended up on his ass at the foot of the stairs. He grabbed the railing to haul himself up, but the cinderblock walls were spinning too fast for him to stand, so he eased himself onto the steps and hung his head between his knees. That’s where Manny found him moments later.
“Jack! What’s wrong? You okay?” Manny squatted in front of him.
At least Jack thought the blurred image in front of him was his partner.
“Jack, you’re bleeding. I’ll get an ambulance.”
Jack groped blindly in front of himself and managed to catch Manny’s hand before he could key his radio. “I don’t need an ambulance.” He gingerly touched his eyebrow and felt the sting of a cut. He hoped he wouldn’t need stitches. God, this was embarrassing enough without having to go to the hospital.
Who had to stop whom from running into traffic?
Jack raised his head and was happy to find that the walls were stationary and Manny was in focus. “I’m only going to tell you once what happened and then we are both going to forget it ever happened. . . .”