Giles Blunt - No Such Creature

“God,” Sabrina said. “I don’t think I would have recovered from something like that.”

“It turned out Max was the only relative I had. When he heard about my situation, he applied for guardianship and I’ve been with him ever since.”

“Pretty eccentric guy.”

“Oh, you don’t know the half of it.”

“Well, if he loves my dad, he’s got to be a crook. Made you part of the life, right?”

Owen looked at her, her green eyes bright, daring him to admit it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. You’re forgetting how I grew up.” She touched his knee, warm palm through denim, quickly gone. “It’s okay. You don’t have to pretend around me. You do these, uh, road trips every year?”

“This is the last one. I mean, I like to see the country and all-it’s been a real education-but I’d like to spend at least one summer just hanging out.”

“Listen, don’t you have a girlfriend back in New York? She must hate it when you take off like this.”

“No girlfriend. Not at the moment. What about you? You said Bill was not a boyfriend.”

“Nope. Haven’t had one of those in years, and I don’t want one. Boys are just too … too everything. Personally, I find females a lot easier to take. Which is why I’m a total lesbian.”

“Get outta here,” Owen said. “You are not.”

“How the hell would you know?” A sudden deep furrow between her eyebrows hinted at an as yet unexpressed temper.

“Because there’s nothing about you that says lesbian. Everything about you says guys, guys, guys.”

“Oh, really. Here you are driving across country in a trailer with an old man who’s not your father, you want to be onstage, and you’ve got no girlfriend. Do you ever have just the tiniest suspicion that you might be gay?”

“No, actually, I don’t.”

“Uh-huh. And tell me how exactly it is you know you’re not gay?”

“Very simple.” Owen sat up straight and looked out at the highway. He cleared his throat, thinking how best to put this. Finally he said, “I know I’m not gay, Sabrina, and I’ll tell you exactly why: if you were to disappear right now, this instant-if I was to never see you again for the rest of my life, never hear from you, never again have any contact with you whatsoever-no matter how many girls-women-I might meet and be friends with over the years, no matter how pretty they might be, how smart or how sexy, I will never, ever forget how you look in that red tank top right now.”

Sabrina looked down and shook her head slowly from side to side, but Owen could see the dimple of a smile in her cheek.

“I’m not exaggerating, Sabrina. You and your red tank top are in my head for all eternity.”

“And that’s how you know you’re not gay.”

“That’s how I know I’m not gay.”

“Well,” Sabrina said, “despite how I may or may not look to you, I personally find women a whole lot more attractive than men. Men are such lunks, so completely insensitive. All they want to do is drink beer and watch sports. And let me tell you, despite what the movies might have you believe, they are perfectly terrible in bed.”

“And how’d old Preacher Bill take the lesbian news? Bible-thumpers aren’t usually too forgiving when it comes to loving your gay neighbour.”

“I never discussed my sexual preferences with Bill.”

“Good choice. Not worth getting stoned to death.”

“The reason I didn’t tell him was because he was so obsessed with me, and obsession just gets worse the more obstacles you put in the way-or didn’t you ever notice that?”

“I have to tell you the honest truth,” he said.

“What’s the honest truth, Owen?”

“I’ve always had a real soft spot for lesbians.”

“Yes, sir,” Sabrina said. “I bet you have.”

Bill Bullard stood in the dining room of his compact little bungalow and read the note for the fourteenth time. Dear Bill,I’m sorry to leave you like this, especially with such a nasty bump on your head, but it’s time for me to go. You’ve been kind, but you’re just too nuts about me, too nuts in general, and too fond of hitting people.Please don’t try to find me. Let’s just remember the good times, okay?I wish you nothing but the best,Sabrina

Bill set the note down on the dining room table. He was a security man, for Pete’s sake, he carried a gun, he was good at hitting people, he used to be a cop. In short, he wasn’t supposed to cry. But he wanted to, he wanted to bawl like a baby. He rubbed a hand over his scalp and felt the gauze taped around his skull. In the mirror he didn’t look as bad as he felt. The bandage sat at an almost jaunty angle, and it made his eyes look bigger and more sensitive. Noble even. The total effect was kind of war veteran, though he had never been in the armed forces.

Feeling dizzy, he went over to his blue leather couch and lay down, the TV remote digging into his back until he pulled it out and tossed it onto a matching blue leather armchair. His head throbbed and a wave of nausea travelled up to his throat; the room, blue and white as a china plate, spun around him until the white bits stretched and thinned into cirrus. Lying on his back provided no comfort. He turned, ever so slowly, onto his side and curled up with his hands pressed between his knees like a child.

That reminded him to pray. He hoped that Jesus would forgive his not getting onto his knees in his current state. He wanted to avoid the likely blasphemy of vomiting in mid-prayer.

“Oh, Jesus, who suffered for my sins and the sins of mankind and who bought with your blood our everlasting redemption and salvation, I beg you, please bring Sabrina back unto me. Please bring her back, and I will do anything, anything at all, you may see fit to demand of your lowliest, most miserable servant.”

Servant.

He was so tired of being a servant. Fifteen years a cop, five of those a detective with the LVPD, and he was still a servant. He’d been working for Baxter Secure Solutions for four years now, making hardly more than half what he had earned as a detective. Between alimony and child support for kids he got to see twice a year, his financial future filled him with dread.

His plan had been to stay a cop for twenty years, then take his pension and open a private business-possibly as a PI, possibly in security-and hire a bunch of guys to do the actual dirty work. But the chief and the mayor had apparently had different plans for him. They didn’t like his methods, even though his methods got results-great results, in fact.

There is an essential truth about working Robbery: you can’t be a nice guy. Nice guyism is a definite no-no. You work Robbery, you’re trucking with scum from daybreak to nightfall. Yes, there are victims to deal with, and yes, they are upset, but once you’ve extracted descriptions of the stolen items and ruled out insurance fraud, an investigator doesn’t have a lot to do with the victims. In Homicide you have to hold hands, you have to walk on eggs, you have to be half social worker. Not in Robbery.

Bill Bullard modelled his detective work after the foreign policy of the presidents he loved, Reagan, Bush I and the much-misunderstood, much-maligned George Bush II. You are merciless with your enemies, generous to your allies, and if you have to befriend a bad guy to get a worse guy, you do it. And so he had developed a stable of very dependable, very helpful hard cases as his CIs. You didn’t want to have dinner with them, you didn’t necessarily want them in your home, but you did want them on your side when it came to catching bigger fish. That entailed ignoring a lot of crimes not directly relevant to your investigation. You don’t nail the guy for what you have on him-you get him to give you information on other, badder asses, guys on whom you had nothing, nada, zip.