An orphaned niece moves in with her LAPD detective uncle.
Enjoy..
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Today started like any other day. My internal alarm clock woke me at 5:00 AM. I hit the bathroom and then the kitchen and by 5:15 I was on the back patio doing naked calisthenics on the mat while my coffee brewed. As I finished basic body punishment and moved into Wing Chun forms, Mary Beth came out of her half of the house and joined me on the patio. An avowed lesbian, Mary Beth nevertheless seems to enjoy watching me shadow box in the nude. Or maybe she just enjoys the company.
“Kind of humid to be exercising outdoors today, isn’t it?” she said. True, sweat was already streaming down my body.
“Yeah, but there are always excuses not to work out,” I said, launching a kick and spinning away from the ghostly counterattack. “Nobody said life would be easy. If I get soft it’s gonna bite me in the ass pretty quickly.”
“Such a nice ass, too,” she said. “You could almost get me to bat for the other team. Almost.”
My amorphous opponent was getting the better of me so I moved in and launched a salvo of punches to his neck, then grappled him to the ground and finished him. This wasn’t part of the form, but I was inspired. I stood up panting, grabbed my bottle of water, and sat down next to Mary Beth. Breathing hard, I said “I wouldn’t want to lead you astray. I could put up that fence…” When I’d moved in and met Mary Beth I’d told her about my nudist tendencies and offered to put a fence up dividing the duplex backyard so that she wouldn’t have to see me in all my glory. She’d laughed and refused, and she laughed again now.
“My mornings would be pretty dull if I couldn’t watch you swing your cock all around battling bad guys,” she said. “Saves me lots of money on DVD rentals.”
“And why in the hell is it that you want to see cocks in action when you’re only into women?” I said.
“Shit, I can’t explain it,” she said. “Guys have power that we don’t have. There’s that sense of being taken… just taken. Some women can muster that power, but not many. I kind of fantasize about being taken that way. Just… being unable to control it.”
I grabbed my cock and swung it around while I wiggled my eyebrows, Groucho Marx style. She laughed out loud.
“Okay, maybe there needs to be an element of subtlety,” she said.
“Coffee?” I said.
“As always, you bet,” she said.
I walked to my kitchen and did the thing with the French press and made Mary Beth’s coffee the way she likes it. Three sugars, too much cream, and Kaluha.
In the light of the kitchen she examined me. “You’re almost too perfect,” she said. “Your body has no flaws. Nicely in shape, muscular, no hair, great ass, nice big cock… Why don’t you have straight girls over all the time?”
“I work hard to stay in shape, yeah,” I said. “Average cock — six inches. And as for relationships… I’m not going to date other cops, and I’m not going to date girls we pick up or citizens we deal with, so…”
Mary Beth was still staring at my cock. “It’s not the length, it’s the thickness. And yours is nice and thick and has a sweet fat head on it.”
I stared at her until we both started laughing. I walked over to her and hugged her and she hugged me back. I sat down.
“I just want you to be happy,” she said. “I love you, Johnny, and I want you to be happy.”
“I love you too, Sweetie,” I said, stroking her hair. “And I want me to be happy, too.”
It was Monday so at 7:30 AM I brought in donuts for my Robbery-Homicide compadres at the Pacific Area Division. As a lowly Detective 1 I felt it was my duty.
“Johnny Cakes all around!” Nelson said. Nelson was the station’s fairly old, very experienced, very black Sergeant II.
“Here we go,” said Meyer, a Detective III and my boss. He rooted around in the box until he found the unglazed buttermilk bar. I always get one just for Meyer. He’s hypoglycemic.
My specialty is Robbery-Homicide crimes. When we’re light in that area I help the beat cops with whatever. In certain special circumstances I get pulled away from general duty to my adjunct posting with Metropolitan Division, D Platoon: Special Weapons and Tactics team. The SWAT team is usually a permanent and full-time assignment for officers but my background in Army Special Forces and my experience leading guys into battle convinced the SWAT Deputy Captain that I was an asset, if only a contingency asset. It meant I got to train with the team at least twice a month, an opportunity for which I was grateful.
“Dear Jesus, we thank you for giving my little yellow friend the opportunity to bring us donuts since he has no detecting talents and can’t hit the broadside of a barn with an MP5. Amen.” Meyer bit into his buttermilk bar.
“Meyer, I thought you were Jewish,” I said.
He favored me with a glance while he chewed. “Yeah, so? Jesus was a cool guy. Just another Jew gone astray.”
The phone rang. Meyer picked up. “Robbery-Homicide.”
He listened for a long time. “20 minutes,” he said and hung up the phone. He looked at me.
“What?” I said.
“It’s Manny. It’s finally happened.”
I sat back in my chair and let out a long breath. “Who?”
“We don’t know, at least not officially” said Meyer. “Beat cops got a call from his daughter early this morning. Guys broke into the house last night and took him out. He hid her in the attic. Lucky, or they would have taken her out, too.”
I thought about that. Yeah, they wouldn’t have wanted to leave witnesses. My brother had been the money man for the Los Angeles branch of one of the biggest Mexican drug cartels for years until one day, just a few months ago, he had walked away from it all. Since then both the Feds and the city cops had been working him, trying to get him to turn and testify on his former employers. I don’t think he ever would have, but somebody didn’t want to take a chance that he might.
Meyer finished his buttermilk bar and stood up. “Off we go, Johnny. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“No big deal. We were close once but haven’t been for a long time.” I got up and we headed out to the parking lot and got into the Crown Vic.
———-
Fifteen minutes later we were at the crime scene, my brother’s beach house in Playa del Rey. With the money he had, why he never moved farther away from LAX was a mystery to me. The street was packed with black & whites and a medical examiner’s van. Curious neighborhood residents milled around on the sidewalk. We parked in the middle of the street and walked to the house. We didn’t recognize the big cop blocking the door so Meyer badged him and he let us through.
The cute ME looked up at us and grinned at Meyer. “Hoo, the big boys are here. We didn’t know to expect royalty. How you doing, Meyer? Sorry to bring you out so early for a shot-up scumbag.”
“Shut the fuck up, Sherry” he told her mildly. “The vic was my partner’s brother.”
She looked at me and blanched. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I…”
“Forget it,” I said. “He was a scumbag, like you said. When I was growing up he raised me and he was just my brother. I didn’t know what he was into.”
She looked away from me and busied herself with some technical thing.
My brother lay on the floor in a small pool of blood. They hadn’t killed him quickly. All of his fingers were broken and the nails were gone and as best I could tell, his legs had been sledge hammered at the knees. He’d been tortured before he’d been shot in an attempt to determine what he’d told the Feds. I knew, because I’d kept track, that he hadn’t told them anything.
“Where’s Dawn?” I said.
The ME looked back up at me. “The daughter? In the backyard with a female cop. She’s pretty shaken up. Hey, look… I’m really sorry. We get kind of jaded, you know? I had no idea this guy was your family.” She looked like she might be about to cry.
I kneeled down next to her and put my hand on the back of her head, ruffling her hair. “It’s okay. Really. Not a problem. He raised me but it turns out he was dirty. Buy me a drink and we’ll talk about it.”
She brightened at that. “You got it. Any time. Here’s my number.” She handed me a card and I pocketed it and stood up.
Meyer and I walked to the patio door. “Do you want me to do this?” he said.
“Nah, I know Dawn pretty well,” I said. “I’ll have to talk to her sooner or later.” We walked into the backyard.
Dawn was huddled on a chaise lounge chair with a big burly female officer keeping watch. I looked at her. Even in grief, she was stunning. Her mother’s genes had given her blonde hair, blue eyes, and an incredible body. Given my Asian heritage it would be hard for anyone to make us as family.
“Dawn?” I said.
She jumped up and literally threw herself into my arms. “Johnny,” she said. “Thank God. Oh, my God.” She started crying. I just held her. Meyer signaled to the cop who had been watching over her and they both walked back into the house.
She was gripping me so tightly that it was a little hard to breathe. I held her just as tight. “Dawn, I’m so sorry,” I said. And meant it.
“I killed him,” she said. “Johnny, I killed him. I talked Dad into leaving them and they just wouldn’t let him go. They killed him because of me.”
“No,” I said. “No. Whatever the reason he left was, leaving was the right thing to do. It’s on him for being part of it and it’s on those assholes that killed him. It’s not on you. You were the best part of his life.”
She started sobbing hard into my chest and I just held her. Meyer and the female cop came back out and watched us for a moment, and Meyer made sign language to tell me that the medical examiner was done with the body.
“I have to go inside now, Sweetie,” I said. I held her at arm’s length. “Where are you staying tonight?”
“I… I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t stay here. I’ll get a hotel room, I guess.”
“You’re staying with me,” I said firmly. “And no, you can’t stay here ever again. If they figure out that you live here and might have been here when your father was killed, they might come back for you.”
She shivered. “Thanks Johnny,” she said. “I’ll go pack up some things.” She walked back inside with the woman cop in tow.
Meyer and I did our cop thing. There was nothing of note on my brother’s person and no obvious evidence around him or in the surrounding rooms. No messages on the house phone. We would take his cell phone in and have it analyzed. There were no signs of forced entry. My best initial guess was that they had pounded on the door and my brother had hidden Dawn and then let them in.
I said, “Meyer, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to take some time off. Dawn is going to stay with me and she really needs somebody to be with her right now.”
“You go be with her,” he said. “This one’s pretty cut and dried anyway. We know who did it; we just need to prove it. Do you need any help with her?” I knew he meant the department shrinks.
“Nah. I’ll stay with her and see how it goes. You know, my brother really was a good guy and I know he was good to her, too. This is going to be hard on her, but she’ll get through it.”