The Good Cop (2 page)

“As long as you're happy,” I said, a little lamely, I'm afraid, then made a valiant effort to save the situation by jumping back into neutral territory. “So what the hell are you doing in Ramón's—not that I'm not delighted that you are, and not that it isn't a great place, but it's a little off the beaten path.”

He nodded. “Kismet! We rented an apartment over on Spring and Warner.”

“No shit?” I said, grinning. “That's only two blocks from my place. We're practically neighbors!”

And any time you want to come by to borrow a cup of sugar…
my crotch volunteered happily….

Luckily, he couldn't hear it.

“As I say: Kismet. I was going to look you up the minute we got settled in…which we're still not, completely. Anyway, as to what I'm doing here, we decided we deserved a night away from unpacking. Lisa and Carol went to a movie; I decided to check out the local action. Sure am glad I did.”

“That makes two of us,” I said, deciding not to pursue the ‘Lisa and Carol' reference at the moment. There would be plenty of time for that later, I hoped. “Now tell me everything that's happened to you since we last saw each other….”

*

I was struck, as we talked, at how two people with such totally different lifestyles can still be good friends—and Tom and I had never stopped being friends, even though we'd not seen each other in a long time. Our lives had taken two very different paths, but the foundations of our friendship remained solid. I've always believed that the mark of a true friend is one with whom you can pick up a conversation in mid sentence after ten or twenty years, and while it hadn't been anywhere near that long for the two of us, the rule certainly seemed to apply.

Tom, I learned, still worked for his father's hotel chain, which had just purchased the Montero here in town. The Montero was a city landmark, a recently restored grandé dame of a hotel that the elder Brady considered to be the crown jewel in his empire. He intended for Tom, who had quickly worked his way up from the smallest hotel in the chain to the biggest, to start out as assistant manager and eventually become manager, but Tom had other ideas which he didn't go into at the moment and I did not interrupt him to ask. One thing that struck me, though, was that a potential assistant manager of the Montero could certainly afford to live in a better location than Spring and Warner, which was a nice enough neighborhood but hardly what one could even charitably call upscale. My mind was piling up questions, but I just shoved them into a mental closet for now, and let him talk.

When he'd arrived back at the point of his moving here, it was my turn, and I filled him in on the intervening years which, in retrospect, seemed like yesterday afternoon.

Tom seemed impressed, but then that was one of the secrets of his charm: He always made whomever he was with feel important.

“The Montero's looking for a new chief of security,” he said. “If you're interested…”

“I really appreciate that, Tom, but I like what I'm doing now, even if it drives me nuts sometimes.”

“You'd have a pass key to all the rooms…” Tom added his face breaking into a very sexy grin. He paused and I waited for the hoped-for punch line, which he delivered: “…which, since I'll be keeping a room there, would include mine.”

My crotch put on a full-volume recording of “Stars and Stripes Forever” and it was only with effort that I got it to tone it down.

I mirrored his grin and he laid his hand on my leg.

“Care to go do a little reliving of old times?”

I reached for my glass and drained it.

“Guess.”

We got up, waved to Bob and Jimmy, and headed for the door.

*

Odd but interesting, going to bed with someone again after many years. Even before we got to my place, I was remembering everything about Tom: what he liked, how he liked it, the incredible things he could do with his tongue. So by the time we walked into my apartment and shut the door there was so much electricity between us it reminded me of those electrode machines in the Frankenstein movies. One thing I definitely remember is that Tom always liked to take the lead, to set the pace. So while I was ready to rip his clothes off and get down to business on the living room floor the second the door closed, Tom had other ideas. After about a three minute rib-cracking, face-melding clench into which we crammed nearly eight years of missed encounters and didn't come up for air, I was
definitely
in a clothes-ripping mood.

But Tom broke it off and stepped back. He didn't say a word, just raised one finger in a cautionary,
ah-ah-ah
gesture. I recognized it immediately.

Okay, Tom,
I thought.
You lead, I'll follow.

The very first time Tom and I ever got together, that night after boxing practice, he'd done the same thing, and I wondered if he was doing it deliberately now, remembering it as I did. It was one of his favorite games, and I came to think of it as “The Tease.” We seemed to play it every time my testosterone level was about to blow the top of my head off. It was excruciating but in the long run…infinitely worth it.

He stepped back, holding me by the shoulders at arms' length, looking at me with that slightly knit-eyebrow, slightly cocked-head expression that I seem to recall seeing on lion tamers' faces when they want their charges to pay close attention. Slowly, still holding my right shoulder with one hand, he inched his other hand down the front of my shirt and, in slow motion, unbuttoned each button. Then he returned his hand to my shoulder and pulled me slowly toward him. When our faces were about three inches apart, he slowly opened his mouth and in what seemed like super-slow motion, closed the gap between us.

When he sensed I was getting a little too eager, he broke the kiss and backed away. Now it was my turn, and I echoed his unbuttoning routine. It took every ounce of self-control I could muster, but I knew it was part of the game, so I did it. My turn to repeat the slow-motion kiss. When he broke it off—
he
had to, because
I
certainly wasn't about to—I took a step forward and he took a step back. It was all part of a symbolic dance which guided us slowly toward the bedroom: one action (shirt-tails pulled out of pants; shirts slid off shoulders and dropped on floor; belt buckles undone, etc.), one step at a time. After eight years, we still timed it perfectly.

And by the time we reached the bed, we were in our shorts and I was about to explode. Neither one of us had said a single word, but we didn't have to. Tom moved in front of me and pushed me gently back onto the bed, then slid my shorts off, then his, and slowly—really slowly, lowered himself on top of me.

He rubbed the side of my face with his chin and I felt the tip of his tongue tracing the outline of my ear. Eight years, and I knew exactly what came next.

“Foreplay over,” he whispered, and the lions came out to play.

*

I'd been invited to Tom and Lisa's for dinner the following Friday, and the intervening week literally flew by. I was working for Glen O'Banyon gathering information on a patent infringement case with possible implications of fraud, which involved tracing down the paper trail of exactly which of the parties had gotten the basic product idea to whom and when. Hardly the kind of stuff that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up, but I never minded working for O'Banyon because it paid pretty damned well.

Tom had started his job at the Montero, but he called me at least three times during the week, which produced a strong teenage-testosterone response every time. I mean, it wasn't as though I'd been exactly celibate for the past eight years—or even the past eight days, for that matter—but maybe there was a large element of reliving a very nice part of the past that made it special. I realized, too, that Tom had probably been the first guy I'd really thought I was in love with. I had no illusions about Tom being Mr. Right—I was afraid our lifestyles were just too different for that—but it was certainly a pleasant interlude.

*

Friday evening finally rolled around, and I left the office a little early so I could stop at the liquor store near home and pick up a really nice bottle of wine as a housewarming gift. A quick shower and change of clothes and I was ready. I was for some strange reason mildly nervous about seeing Lisa—and, I was pretty certain, Carol—again, but….

It was a nice evening, so I decided to walk to their apartment rather than fight trying to find a parking place, and besides, I could use the exercise.

When Tom had said “Spring and Warner” he
meant
Spring and Warner—the building was a relatively new high-rise on the southwest corner. I rang the buzzer, and after a wait of no more than three seconds, was buzzed through to the small lobby. I took the elevator to the sixth floor and found my way to Apartment 6-G. I had my fingertip about half an inch from the buzzer when the door opened to reveal an incredibly handsome, grinning Tom. We shook hands and, as soon as the door had closed behind me, exchanged a bear hug. Over Tom's shoulder, I could see Lisa and Carol coming out of the kitchen, smiling.

If I didn't know better, I would have sworn I'd wandered into a typical heterosexual family scene. Both Lisa and Carol looked great, and both were what my lesbian friend Mollie Marino calls “lipstick lesbians”—very feminine. I doubt very much, had I not known them all before, that if I met them at a straight cocktail party, I'd have any idea they were gay.

I exchanged hugs and cheek-kisses with the women and we all went through the usual mildly awkward confusion that ensues when old friends first see one another again after a long absence. I handed Lisa the wine which she acknowledged with profuse thanks and then insisted that Tom and I sit while she and Carol went into the kitchen.

The apartment, I noticed as Tom and I sat side by side on one of the two love seats facing one another across a glass-topped coffee table, was very comfortable and, again, gave not the slightest hint that the occupants were anything than an average heterosexual couple.

Carol came back into the room carrying a tray of hors d'oeuvres, followed by Lisa with another tray with wine glasses and a bottle of wine, which they set on the coffee table.

“We'll have your wine with dinner,” Lisa said. “This here's chattin' wine,” she added with a smile. Tom poured the wine as the women sat on the opposite love seat, and we all leaned forward to click our glasses together in a toast.

“To old friends,” Tom said.

“And to new beginnings,” Carol added, looking at Tom.

????
I thought.

*

It was a great evening. We talked about our college days and exchanged favorite memories, and caught up on news of classmates and mutual friends, and laughed a lot, and the years melted away and it was another place and another time.

Dinner was excellent—pork roast with garlic-roasted potatoes and some kind of succotash that Lisa's grandmother had taught her to make, and a Bavarian torte for desert. The wine was pretty good, too, I was delighted to discover: I'd just asked the owner of the liquor store what he'd recommend—my knowledge of wine isn't much above the level of Mogen David Port.

Tom and I sat on one side of the table with Lisa and Carol on the other. It was obvious that the two women were lovers, and had been ever since college. We talked a bit about it, and about the inconveniences of Tom and Lisa's arrangement, which meant Carol and Lisa couldn't live together. But they'd apparently worked it out to their mutual satisfaction, and while I couldn't imagine such a situation for myself, it wasn't my place to pass any sort of judgment on it.

“We're
so
glad we found you again, Dick,” Lisa said. “We don't have many gay friends here, and it's going to be even harder now.”

I'm afraid on this yet-another-reference-to-something-apparently-important I couldn't keep my face from reflecting the question I hesitated to ask.

All three apparently noticed my confusion and exchanged smiles.

“Tell him, Tom,” Lisa said, reaching across the table to tap his hand.

Tom turned toward me. “I'm joining the police force. I'm going to be a cop.”

“
Whoa!
” I heard myself say, and then just sat there like someone had just beaned me with a frying pan. The three of them sat quietly, looking at me with identical smiles.

“Are you sure?” I asked, feeling immediately stupid for having done so. “I mean, do you have any idea of what you'd be getting yourself into?”

He nodded. “I know. But it's really what I've wanted all my life.”

“But…” I started, then couldn't remember what I'd intended to come after it.

Fortunately, Lisa stepped in. “My dad was a policeman. You knew that, didn't you, Dick?”

I shook my head. “No, I don't think I ever did.”

She nodded and smiled. “Yes, he was. That was back in Hartford. He took early retirement just about the time I started college. But the interesting thing is that his partner for eighteen years was a man named Kensington Black.”

That
was news! “
Our
Kensington Black?” I asked, as though there were thousands of men named Kensington Black….

She smiled again. “
Our
Kensington Black. He's my godfather. And when he came out here to be chief, and then Tom's dad wanted to send him here to help with the Montero, things just sort of clicked.”

I should have mentioned, when I was talking about the hassles in the police department, that finally, at the urging of the mayor, the Police Commission chose to eliminate the intra-mural hassling by going outside the department—and outside the state—for the new chief. They finally picked one Kensington Black, who had done wonders reducing the crime rate of one of the East Coast's older, deteriorating cities. Chief Black was rumored by his many detractors in and out of the department to be to be a closet liberal. Everyone in the gay community hoped they were right.