Frank Zafiro - Under a Raging Moon

“Hello? Hello?”

“Jimmy. It’s T-Dog.”

“Oh.” A tiny pause hung in the air. “What’s up?”

“I need your car tomorrow night.”

“The brown Chevy?”

“No, the Maserati,” T-dog sneered. Stupid shit. “Of course the Chevy, you idiot. Drive it over about seven.”

There was another, longer pause.

“Did you hear me, bitch?”

“Uh, yeah. I kinda had something going, though.”

“Reschedule.”

Pause. Then, “Okay, T-Dog. You think you could hook me up when I come over? I’m hurting.”

T-Dog grinned at the desperation in Jimmy’s voice. “Yeah, sure. Ten for a twenty-piece, since you’re giving up your car for the night.”

“Thanks, man.”

“Seven o’clock. Don’t forget.” He hung up without waiting for a response.

Dialing, again from memory, he switched gears. He punched the proper buttons and paged Cally. Had to be respectful this time. Cally was no addict. He had some juice.

It took only three minutes for the phone to ring. T-Dog picked it up.

“Cat?”

“No. T-Dog.”

“Unh,” Cally grunted. “’Sup?”

“I need two gatts.”

“Baby nines?”

“That’s fine, unless you got anything bigger?”

“Not here,” Cally told him. “I got the baby nines right now, but anything bigger might take a while.”

“How long?”

“Coupla days.”

“That’s no good,” T-dog said. “I need them before tomorrow night.”

“Then the babies is all I got.”

T-Dog considered. Three-eighties were small pistols, good for concealment, but they lacked a lot in the power department.

“I guess I’ll take ‘em, then. Are the numbers filed off?”

“They can be.”

“Need ’em that way.”

They haggled briefly over price and T-Dog hung up. He turned to Morris, who lounged on the sofa, drinking from a forty-ounce bottle of beer.

“Got the drive and the gatts.”

Morris nodded his approval and licked his top lip. “Thas’ right. Gonna get that lily-ass motherfucker.”

Wednesday, August 24th

0400 hours

Gio lay in the early morning darkness. The red numbers of his clock gave him another thirty minutes of sleep, but Gio wasn’t tired.

He could still feel Marilyn’s presence in his bed. She’d risen at midnight and left. She seemed regretful, but she had to work in the morning and could not wear the same clothes two days in a row. Gio watched her dress in the darkness, admiring the silhouette of her body and head standing and bending like a dance. Her lips radiated warmth when she kissed him wetly and slipped out.

Now, he watched the minutes slip by on his clock and dreamt a waking dream of her. He realized Marilyn was different for him. That difference frightened him.

He couldn’t be falling in love with her.

Could he?

Was this what it was like?

He never expected to feel this way. Never really thought it possible. Now, he felt a pang in his stomach whenever he thought of her.

And what was he afraid of?

Gio took a deep breath and let it out. He knew what he feared. He’d never really cared how the woman felt, as long as she felt like sleeping with him. Now, he found himself worrying about how Marilyn felt. Obsessing about it.

She had to feel the same way. Or at least be starting to. How could she make love to him like she did and not feel it? She must have the same emotions running through her. She had to know he did, too.

But what if she didn’t sense his feelings?

And what if she didn’t feel the same way?

What if she got tired of him? Or doubted him?

Lying in the darkness, watching the crimson bars turn minute by minute, Gio decided there was only one way to know. He had to tell her.

0456 hours

Breakfast usually began around five in the morning. Units started asking if they were clear for a seven, and it was a rare morning when every unit that asked was not cleared. Cops were notoriously poor tippers, but they were generally loyal with their dining business. They arrested too many people who worked as cooks and dishwashers to risk going someplace they didn’t know, unless they wanted to risk someone spitting in the food. Or worse.

Mary’s Cafe was located at Birch and Rowan, both arterial streets. Long established as an officer-friendly restaurant, police cars crowded the small parking lot every morning. Baker sector officers crossed division and drove almost twenty blocks into Adam Sector to take breakfast there. If Hart had been the graveyard lieutenant, this never would have happened, but Saylor allowed it. The only stipulations were unspoken: a couple of units remained in service to shag the occasional call and units cleared to respond to anything that needed a response. The north-side troops happily adhered to these requirements.

Katie MacLeod didn’t care much for breakfast food. Sometimes, though, it felt good to get out of the car and do reports on a nice table with something hot to drink. Besides, there were two schools of thought on doing reports in the car. One held that it was good because you stayed in service and could answer calls quickly. The other held that it was dangerous because you were vulnerable while writing, or that you couldn’t accomplish much writing if you maintained the proper level of alertness.

Katie belonged to the first school, countering the danger factor by backing into a location where she could only be approached from the front or parking in the center of a large, empty parking lot. That way any movement attracted her attention.

Still, the coffee at Mary’s tasted good and there was company, if you wanted it. She didn’t, and signaled that to the others by sitting alone a booth away from the group already present. The stack of reports she was working on answered any questioning glances her direction. But the truth was, she wanted the solitude for other reasons.

Or reason.

Oh, hell, it was Stef.

She’d avoided him since that morning. Confusion flooded her senses whenever she thought of the situation. She paused while writing a burglary report.

Why do I keep coming back to this?

Because she liked him, she knew. He’d been a nice guy and there were some sparks between them, ever since the Academy.

But she was on the rebound. And he…well, who knew where he was on this?

Katie bit her lip. He hadn’t tried too hard to go out of his way to talk to her since that night. Yeah, maybe she’d avoided him a little, but she got the sense that he’d been avoiding her, too.

Maybe that was best. Love on the rebound. Dipping your pen in company ink. Cops working together and sleeping together. None of it sounded too smart to her.

She wondered if dating another cop would make it easier to deal with the stress of the job. After all, you wouldn’t have to describe it to the other person. They’d understand it perfectly. Then again, what if the stress wasn’t relieved but instead doubled? And what if he suddenly became protective, coming on all her calls, worrying about her all the time? Eventually that would happen, she knew. She hesitated, not wanting to acknowledge the next obvious question: What if they broke up? Working around an ex-lover would suck.

Jesus, Katie thought. Why am I worried about this? He’s obviously not. We had our little fling and it’s over with. There’s nothing else to it.

Right?

Katie shut off debate and dug into her report.

0615 hours

Just where everyone wants to be, Kopriva thought. Standing tall in the Lieutenant’s office.

He stood rigidly in front of Lieutenant Saylor’s desk as the shift commander read the complaint to him. He didn’t recognize the complainant until after the lieutenant read her name, then he had some memory of the stop. It was soccer mom in the mini-van, he was pretty sure.