CARLA’S BOY, Samuel, starts jogging down the street. There’s a square block of a park just ahead, complete with a baseball diamond where kids are playing. Carla and I walk in lockstep down the sidewalk.
“I should’ve fronted it,” Carla says, her arms crossed in front of her. “You should’ve heard it from me. I should’ve figured it would get to you. It probably got to everyone. So much for confidentiality.”
“Welcome to the CPD,” I say.
She grunts a laugh. “So what did you hear? His side, probably.”
“Probably.”
“Let me take a guess,” she says. “Ron and I were doing the nasty for a long time, just having a grand old time, his place, my place, hotels, the back seat of a squad car, wherever we could. Couldn’t keep our hands off each other. Then he breaks it off. I’m crushed, just absolutely crushed not to have the honor and privilege of screwing that lumpy piece of shit. But he won’t take me back. So I’m hurt, and I retaliate. I’m a ‘woman scorned.’ I make up some BS story about him sexually harassing me. And the department? Well, these days, they can’t have that kind of pub. Doesn’t matter if it’s true. Doesn’t matter if I’m some ‘irrational woman.’ So they give me whatever I want, as long as I’ll keep quiet. They early-retire Franco, and I get a big promotion.” She looks at me. “How’m I doing so far?”
“That’s more or less it,” I say. “How much of that is true?”
“The part about me keeping quiet.”
Samuel, up ahead, joins a pickup game of baseball. Couldn’t be a better day for it. We stand to the side, watching like parents at a Little League game.
“I never touched Ron,” she says to me. “Except when I was pushing him off me. He came at me ten different ways. Always trying to get me to work late or take some special assignment involving only him. Always brushing up against me and making comments. Calling me at home. All that I could handle. You just have to take some of that or you’ll spend all your time complaining.”
Sounds like something my sister would say.
“Anyway, he started getting more forceful. Started talking about lieutenant exams coming up, he could help, but he needed to know I was a ‘team player.’ You get the idea. What am I supposed to do, spit in his face? Knee him in the balls? He’s my boss. I just tried to discourage him without telling him to go jump in a lake.”
“Understood.”
“So one time, we’re in his office late—he kept me late. He calls me in, and I can tell right away he’s been hitting the sauce. I can smell it all over him. He tells me it’s time to stop being such a tease, that kind of thing. He’s all over me, more aggressive than he’s ever been before. First time I’ve actually been, like, scared.”
She sounds scared now, her voice trembling, reliving it.
“You’ve told me more than enough, Carla. I don’t need—”
“So suddenly he’s got his hands halfway up my shirt, he’s pressed up against me, and I’m thinking he’s going to do this, right here in his office—he’s going to rape me. So I fought back. I just—I just went crazy.”
“You kick him in the balls?”
“No, but he walked with a limp for a week. And he had a pretty good shiner.” She glances at me and actually chuckles. “I should’ve kicked him in the nuts.”
“I’m sorry. Sorry about all that. And what I said before—”
“So then I knew that it was every man for himself,” she goes on. “I had to beef him, because he was going to beef me. So yeah, I filed a sex harassment, and that’s when I come to find out how devious he was. He’d been telling people for months that we were sleeping together.” She shakes her head. “So when I beefed him, all his buddies figured they already knew the truth. I was a liar; he was righteous. Nobody believed me. Nobody. I’d lost the game before it even started.”
On the diamond, Samuel fields a ground ball and throws it to first, throwing it like I told him to. He looks over and chicken-arms his elbow at me. I give him the thumbs-up.
“Least you got out of there,” I say. “And you got into SOS.” I turn to her. “Only to get partnered with a burnout like me.”
She laughs, elbows me. “You’re not so bad, Harney. I admit I was worried. I thought they were promoting me and punishing me at the same time. But you seem like a guy that calls it straight. That’s all I care about.”
We watch the game for a bit, some clouds moving in, providing a brief respite from the sun. Samuel can hit better than he fields, driving a ball between the shortstop and third baseman.
“As long as we’re all kumbaya here,” I say, “can I ask you another question?”
She makes a noise like yes.
“Are you pregnant?”
“Pregnant?” She draws back, looks at me like I grew a second head. “Why would you think that?” Unconsciously, she looks down at her stomach, as if I was suggesting she had a belly. She doesn’t. She’s thin as a rail. Hard, too, like she trains.
“I couldn’t help—one day, you spilled…a…”
She rolls her hand over, like get on with it.
I blow out air. “You left a pill on your chair. You take a lot of pills. So yeah, I looked at it, and it was a ginger pill. My wife, when she was pregnant, she took ginger for morning sickness, first trimester. I wasn’t snooping,” I insist, seeing the look of horror on her face. “It just fell out. I just looked at it.”
She puts a hand to her mouth.
“Okay, maybe I was snooping,” I admit.
Ashen, looking violated. I wish I hadn’t said anything. But…she’s not pregnant?
Finally, she shakes her head. “Well, I guess there aren’t going to be any secrets between us, Harney,” she says. “Yes, they’re ginger pills for nausea. But I’m not pregnant, thank you very much.”
I put up my hands. “Okay, sorry I—sorry I asked. Really.”
She pinches the bridge of her nose. “The nausea pills are for chemotherapy,” she says. “I have cancer.”