'I will,' he said. 'Bye, sweetie.'
He pressed the receiver rest button, waited for a dial tone, and then began dialing home.
A RELATIONSHIP CAN settle down into a sort of complacency, you know. You forget the early passion, you forget the heat, you begin to feel comfortable in another sort of intimacy that has nothing to do with sex. Or if it does, it's only because the idea of being loved so completely, of loving someone back so completely, is in itself often sexually exciting. This profound concept did not cross the minds of either Bert Kling or Sharyn Cooke as
they spoke on the telephone at eighteen minutes to four that afternoon. They simply felt snug and cozy with each other, sharing their thoughts as their separate days wound down in separate parts of the city.
Sharyn worked in the police department's Chief Surgeon's Office at 24 Rankin Plaza, over the bridge in Majesta. As the city's only female Deputy Chief, she was also its only black one. A board-certified surgeon with four years of medical school, plus five years of residency as a surgeon, plus four years as the hospital's chief resident, she now earned almost five times as much as Kling did. Today, one of the cops she'd seen on a follow-up had been shot in the face at a street demonstration six months earlier. Blinded in the left eye, he was now fully recovered and wanted to go back to active duty. She had recommended psychiatric consultation first: a seriously wounded cop is often thought of as a jinx by his fellow officers, who sometimes tended to shun him. She told this to Kling now.
'I'm seriously wounded, too,' he said.
'Oh? How's that, hon?'
'We've been on the phone for five minutes, and you haven't yet told me you love me.'
'But I adore you!' she said.
'It's too late to apologize,' he said.
'Where do you want to eat tonight?'
You pick it, Shar.'
'There's a place up in Diamondback serves real down-home soul food. Want to try it?'
'Wherever.'
'Such enthusiasm,' she said.
'I'm not very hungry. Cotton and I were working a burglary over on Mason, we stopped for a couple of late pizzas afterward.'
'Shall we just order in?'
'Whatever,' he said. 'Law and Order is on tonight, you
know.'
'Law and Order is on every night,' she said.
'I thought you liked Law and Order.'
'I adore Law and Order,'
'That's just what I mean,' he said. 'You say you adore me, but you also adore Law and Order.'
'Ahh, yes, but I love you,' she said.
'At last,' he said.
Not exactly hot and heavy.
But they'd been living together for quite a while now.
And neither of them ever once thought trouble might be heading their way.
Had they but known.
THIS WAS STILL the early days of their relationship. Everything was still whispers and heavy breathing. Innu-endos. Promises. Wild expectations. Covert glances around the room to see if the phone conversation was being overheard. Hand cupped over the mouthpiece. Everything hot and heavy.
Honey Blair was in a large, open room at Channel Four News, sitting at a carrel desk, her back to the three other people, two men and a woman, occupying the room at the moment. What they were doing was frantically compiling some last-minute news segments that would go on the air at six P.M. Honey was telling Hawes that before she saw him tonight, she would have to run downtown to do a remote from the Lower Quarter, where some guy had jumped out the window of a twenty-first-floor office. She'd be heading out in half an hour or so.
'I can't wait,' she whispered into the phone.
'To scrape your jumper off the sidewalk?' Hawes asked.
'Yes, that, too. But, actually . . .'
She lowered her voice even further.
'. . . I can't wait to jump on you!'
'Careful,' he warned, and glanced around to where the other detectives all seemed preoccupied with their own phone conversations.
'Tell me what you can't wait to do,' she whispered.
'I'd get arrested,' he whispered.
'You're a cop, tell me, anyway.'
'Do you know that little restaurant we went to the other night?'
Y-e-ess?'
'That very crowded place where everyone turned to look at you when we walked in . . . ?'
'Flatterer.'
'It's true. Because you're so beautiful.'
'Don't stop, sweet talker.'
'I want you ...'
'I want you, too.'
'I'm not finished,' he said.
'Tell me.'
'I want you to go to the ladies room
'Right now?'
'No, in that restaurant.'
'Y-e-ess?'
And take off your panties . . .'
'Oooo.'
And bring them back to the table and stuff them in the breast pocket of my jacket.'
'Then what?'
'Then you'll be sitting there in that crowded room with
everyone knowing you're Honey Blair from Channel Four News . . .'
'Honey Blair, Girl Reporter.'
'Yes, but I'll be the only one who knows you're not wearing panties.'
'Even though they're sticking out of your jacket pocket like a handkerchief ?'
'Even though,' he said.
'And then what?'
'Then we'll see.'
'Oh, I'll just bet we will,' Honey whispered.
Hot and heavy.
Like that.
Not a worry in sight.
Little did they know.
THE BICYCLE C0URIER was a Korean immigrant who not five minutes earlier had almost caused a serious accident when he ran a red light on Culver Avenue and almost smacked into a taxi driven by a Pakistani immigrant whose Dominican immigrant passenger began cursing in Spanish at the sudden brake-squealing stop that hurled her forward into the thick plastic partition separating her from the driver.
Now, safe and sound, and smiling at the desk sergeant, the courier asked in his singsong tongue if there was a Detective Stephen Carella here. Murchison took the slender cardboard envelope, signed for it, and sent it
upstairs.
