“We gotta make this quick, bro.”
“They’re brothers,” little Jessica had proclaimed to her cousin Hernan, who was also watching from the auto shop break room doorway, but with the feigned disinterest of a twelve-year-old.
“No they’re not,” Hernan had replied.
“Yes they are. I heard him say it.”
“Okay. Sure.” He’d rolled his eyes. “They’re brothers. All cops are brothers. They’re one big happy family.”
Jessica had taken the boy literally, had believed from that day on that all police officers were biologically related, that an enormous family encompassing thousands of people of different races composed the city’s uniformed law enforcement. She’d learned the truth with quiet embarrassment at twelve, when a newspaper article about a Mother’s Day picnic with the moms of police officers from the local station had appeared in the newspaper. Though she’d felt like an idiot for believing all cops were actually brothers and sisters for so long, an excitement had stirred in her chest, a door formerly closed now wide open. Her destiny didn’t have to be spark-plug replacements and wheel-alignment deals. It could be the uniforms, guns, and flashing lights she had so admired of the police who came into the shops and those on TV. Jessica didn’t have to be born a cop. She could become one.
She’d signed up to the force at nineteen, sitting in the recruitment center looking at posters of cadets standing in lines in ceremonial uniform. The men and women in the pictures had all looked the same. Shining buckles. Sharp, peaked caps. Stern faces. Jessica had assumed donning the uniform would allow her to slot right in with her fellow officers. She’d felt a yearning to be a part of something so large, so welcoming. A perfect fit, the snug and warm hole in which she’d always belonged.
It was at the academy that she realized her new family would require her to earn her place. She’d found her room in the featureless brick accommodation block on her first day and noticed right away that the entire floor was populated by other Hispanic recruits. They were being segregated from the rest of the intake. She wasn’t pure cop blood after all. That blood was white. There were cops, and then there were Hispanic cops. Above the bathroom door of the dorms, someone had nailed a sombrero, and apparently nobody had ever been defiant enough to tear it down.
It had taken her reaching detective rank for the jokes about wetbacks, taco trucks, and siestas to fade out. Snide remarks about ethnic quotas and questions about her quinceañera. Had she worn a huge dress with big balloon sleeves? Were there pictures? When she made detective, she’d finally been let in, and all the racist bullshit had stopped.
And now she was out again, just like that, over a stupid house. Wallert and Vizchen were white. They were male. They were older than her. Card-carrying boys club members. “Bros.” Of course her colleagues were going to side with them over the Beauvoir inheritance. Jessica should have seen this coming. Should have known she was always a foster sister, and never a real part of the family.
Goren met her in the doorway of the second-floor bedroom now, filling most of it with his muscular frame. He was wearing a black T-shirt and jeans. She’d never seen him this way. It was usually suits, tailored Hugo Boss, sometimes a bare chest if he was running clients back to back. Jessica thought for a moment that perhaps she’d caught him on a day off.
“Jessica.” He smiled warmly. The corner of his mouth twitched a little as he took in the bandages, the bruises. He never asked. It was part of his policy. You brought to him what you wanted him to see, and he probed no further. “You know I need you to make an appointment.”
“I was hoping you’d make an exception, just this once.” She heaved a sigh. “Everything is … Everything is so completely…”
“Come in.” He led her into the bedroom. She sat on an overstuffed leather ottoman at the end of the bed and he stood behind her. The view out of the windows was blocked by foliage, gentle afternoon light illuminating some of his equipment. A massage table was set in one corner of the room with its candles, oils, and bottles of aromatherapy ingredients. On the wall by the door hung the stuff of very different experiences: a rack of chains, straps, belts, and buckles. Another rack of whips, paddles, knives. A glass cabinet full of masks, both cloth and leather, ball gags, blindfolds. There was a long trunk against the wall filled with things she had explored with him more than once, devices of pleasure in every conceivable shape and color. Goren took the back of her neck in his big hand and she let her weight fall there while he gently slid the tie from her hair. He worked the fingers of both hands into the soft recesses between the hard cords and bones at the back of her neck.
Jessica had met Goren Donnovich more than fifteen years earlier. She’d been a patrol cop, participating in an unsuccessful raid of his property for drugs. She’d come down the stairs and locked eyes with the man in the foyer as he was questioned by a detective. They’d held each other’s gaze for mere seconds, but when she’d arrived a month later for an appointment, he hadn’t been surprised to see her.
“You’re injured,” he said now. She explained, as vaguely as she could.
“Have you been tested for the bug?” he asked.
“Got the text this afternoon. We’re all good.”
“Text.” He laughed. “They’re doing texts now? Well, that’s going to save me some time, at least.”
“Mmm.”
“What kind of experience are you seeking today, Jessica?” he asked.
“Gentle,” she said. “I’m hurting.”
He peeled off her T-shirt, lifted it over her head, and folded it neatly, placed it on the ottoman beside her.
“My whole world is
