George Pelecanos - Right as Rain

'I already have. And Terry here has given me his version of the event. You don't mind, I'd like for you to do the same.'

Franklin looked at Quinn. Quinn drank off some of his beer and gave Franklin a tight nod. Strange took his voice-activated recorder from his leather, turned on the power, and set the recorder on the table.

Franklin pointed a lazy finger at the unit. 'Uh-uh. Turn that bullshit off, or I walk away.'

Strange made a point of pressing down on the power button but did not press it hard enough to turn it off. He slipped the recorder back into his jacket.

'All right, man,' said Franklin. 'Where you want me to begin?'

Strange told him, then sat back in his chair.

Their beer bottles were empty by the time Franklin was done. Strange had to smile a little, watching Franklin watch him, waiting for some kind of reaction or reply. Because it was almost funny how identical Franklin's account was to Quinn's. And no two recollections of a single event could be that on-the-one, that tight.

'What?' said Franklin.

'Nothin', really,' said Strange. 'Not that it's significant or anything like that… What I was wondering is, if the danger was that imminent, that clear, why didn't you fire down on Wilson, too?'

'Because Terry fired first.'

'You would have shot Wilson if Terry hadn't?'

'I can't say what I would have done.'

'But you're sayin' he was right.'

'He was all the way right. I saw where Wilson's gun was headed. I saw in his eyes what he planned to do. There's no doubt in my mind, if Terry hadn't shot Wilson, Wilson would have shot me. You understand what I'm sayin'? No doubt at all.'

Strange ran his thumb along his jawline. 'You're so sure… and that's what's botherin' me, Eugene. See, I was at MLK, pulling up all the newspaper stories, the ones they did at the time and the follow-ups, too, and there was this one thing I read that I just can't reconcile.'

'Oh, yeah? What's that?'

'After your partner left the force, you joined that group of cops, called itself the Concerned Black Officers. Y'all had flyers put up tellin' the brothers in uniform to stage a protest. I believe you signed the petition your own self, too.'

Franklin's eyes flickered past Quinn's. 'I did.'

'If Quinn was so right-'

'Look here,' said Franklin. 'Terry was right, in that particular case. But since ninety-five, we've had three off-duty African American police officers shot by white cops. It's bad enough, the danger I put myself in every day, without having to be a target for the guys on my own team. So yeah, I was concerned. And anyway, Strange, that's internal police business, understand? It is not any business of yours. It's between me and my fellow cops, and my partner.'

'Your ex-partner, you mean.'

Something passed between Franklin and Quinn. Strange could see that their bond was strong. Maybe it even bordered on affection. But however strong it had been, it was tainted by the shooting, and what had been ruined was most likely beyond repair.

Franklin shook his head and looked down at the table. 'You're somethin', Strange.'

'Just doin' my job.'

'Punch out your time card, then. 'Cause I am done talkin' for today.'

'Yeah, I guess we covered it for now.' Strange stood from his chair. 'I'll leave the two of you alone for a few minutes. This beer goes through me quick.'

As Strange went along the bar toward the head, Franklin watched his walk, the hint of swagger in it, the straight shoulders and back.

'Man walks like a cop,' said Franklin.

'He was one,' said Quinn, 'a long time ago.'

'Wasn't till I saw him move,' said Franklin, 'that it showed.'

Strange stopped at the bar to talk to a cop he knew, now retired, named Al Smith. Smith had been partnered up for years with a guy named Larry Michaels. Smith had gone gray, and his paunch told Strange that this was where he spent his days.

'I buy you one?' said Smith.

'One's my limit in the daytime, Al, and I already had it.'

'Next time. And if I don't see you here, I'll see you, hear?'

Strange chuckled. Al Smith had been using the same cornball expressions for the past thirty years.

Strange nodded to a big man with a high forehead and a flat-bridged, upturned nose, sitting at the bar and smoking a thick cigar, who looked at him dead-eyed as he passed. The man didn't nod back. He moved his gaze into his beer mug, raised it, and took a deep drink. Strange noticed that the MPD T-shirt fit tightly on the man's broad chest, his bulked-up arms stretching the fabric of the sleeves.

In the bathroom, he took a leak into a stand-up urinal, singing along to 'Joy and Pain' as it came trebly through small wall-mounted speakers. He zipped up and turned around as the man in the MPD T-shirt entered, tall and looking like a bear on two feet, pushing the bathroom door so hard it hit the wall.

All right, you're drunk, thought Strange. Tell the world.

'Excuse me, brother,' said Strange, in a friendly way, because the man was blocking his path. 'Can I get by?'

But the man didn't move or react in any way. His expression was dull, and his face was shiny with sweat. Strange was going to ask him again but decided against it. He moved around the man, his back brushing the wall in the cramped space, and went out the door.

Strange had known plenty of uniforms like this one. Guy had a day off from all the bad shit out there, and instead of relaxing, he was in a bar, wearing his MPD shirt, getting meaner with every beer and looking to start a fight. One of those cops who was carrying serious insecurities, always trying to test himself. Well, if he was wantin' to try someone, he'd have to find someone else. Strange had left all that bullshit behind a long time ago.

'How you been makin' out?' said Franklin.

'I'm doin' okay,' said Quinn. 'Working in a used book store over the District line. It's real… quiet.'

'Gives you time to read those cowboys-and-Indians books you like.'

'I do have time.'

'Seein' anyone?'

'I have a girl. You'd like her. She's nice.'

'She fine, too?'

'Uh-huh.'

'Dog like you. Never known you to be with an ugly one.'

'No one could say the same about you.'

'Go ahead and crack on me. But it's one of the reasons I stopped drinkin'. Got tired of waking up next to those fugly- ass girls I was meetin' in the clubs.'

'Wonder how many of them stopped drinkin' when they got a look at you.'

'I guess I did send a few off to church.'

Franklin and Quinn shared a laugh. Franklin's odd looks had always bothered him, along with his inability to make time with attractive women. Quinn had been one of the few who could broach the subject, and joke about it, with Eugene.

Quinn looked around Erika's. He recognized Al Smith, sitting on his usual stool, and a patrolman named Effers he'd played cards with once, and an ugly, friendless cop he knew by sight only, Adonis Delgado, who was pushing away from the bar.

'You miss it,' said Franklin, 'don't you?'

'I do.'

'Listen, Terry…'

'What?'

'That thing Strange was talking about, the group I joined – Concerned Black Officers, I mean.'

'I knew about it already.'

'Didn't have anything to do with how I felt about you, or whether you were right or wrong on the Wilson thing. You understand that, don't you?'

'Sure.'

'We'd been asking for radios for off-duty officers for years, so that if you did get into a situation when you were in street clothes, you could call it in, let the dispatcher know that you were a cop and you were on the scene.'

'I know it.'

'If Chris Wilson had had that radio that night, and we had known who he was when we pulled up on him, he'd be alive today.'