“… no hospital, no doctors,” Jen was saying as I came awake. “I don’t know how badly Johnny hurt them, or how hard the department will look for who did it, but Johnny is already a natural suspect and the one thing we can’t do is hand him up on a silver platter.”
I heard both of my girls sobbing so I opened my eyes and opened my arms out to them and they rushed to me and laid down on either side of me and kissed me and held me gently.
“Water,” I croaked, and Jen went off to get some. I looked down at my wound. It had been taped up nicely. I recognized the technique. “Thanks, Buddy,” I said.
“No problemo, Bro,” he said. “It’s not bad at all. You’ve had a lot worse. It’ll heal up without stitches. Just keep the sex gentle for a while, no rough stuff, and you’ll be fine. And Jen is right, ladies, this dude needs to keep as low a profile as he can for as long as he can.”
Jen came back and I sat up and took the water and smiled my thanks.
“How long was I out, Jen?” I said.
“Couple of hours. What the fuck hit your head, Johnny?”
I finished gulping down the water. “Brass knuckles,” I said. “Sucker punch.”
Meyer walked through the bedroom door. “Your garage door was open,” he said. “Security sucks around here.” He looked me over. “You’ve looked better, Johnny.”
“Felt better, too,” I said.
“Tell me everything,” Meyer said.
So I did.
Meyer was thoughtfully silent for several minutes, then said, “Is there anything in that warehouse that could incriminate you?”
“Not that I know of,” I said. “There was nobody else there. I left nothing there, including no prints. Maybe a little blood.”
Meyer said, “There are two ways to go with this, Johnny. One way is to march into Division and tell all. It was self defense, at least at the beginning. There’s no doubt in my mind that they would have tortured you to get everything they could to get at Dawn and then killed you.
“The other way is to lay low and play the innocent citizen.”
Meyer paused.
“I recommend door number 2,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a detective or a beat cop or even a commander who would go after you for this. But there’s no telling what I. A. might do.”
I. A. is Internal Affairs. The cops who police the cops. We hate them with a passion and they hate us right back. Meyer was right; I could see I. A. biting into this like a dog with a bone and never letting go.
Meyer gently examined the side of my head. “You got a concussion?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, the wound is just a scratch, luckily. Scalps bleed like a son of a bitch but once you wash off this blood your hair will cover it. Just keep your shirt on and you’ll look normal. Well, as normal as you ever look.”
“Thanks, Meyer. For everything.”
“Bah,” he said. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to break in a new partner again at my age.” He looked at Jen and Buddy. “You kids okay with this?”
Jen said, “More than okay. He was here with us the whole day.”
Meyer looked at Buddy. Buddy said, “Are you kidding, man? I wanted to be at the warehouse with him.”
Meyer nodded and walked towards the door. He paused.
“By the way, Johnny, they had a video surveillance system running at the warehouse. I was the first detective on the scene so I found it. Unfortunately, when they got the tape to the station house and played it, it was blank.”
He looked at my girls. “Are you ladies interested in action flicks? I’ve got this new one of some little Asian dude in his skivvies, kicking serious ass.”
He turned and walked away.
“I think he likes you, Johnny,” Mary Beth said.
———-
Jen did come over for dinner but as it turned out, she had decided to make a run at Buddy Magellas instead of me. They clicked big time and quickly wound up married, and the five of us all became fast friends. As she told me later, she figured it was only fair since I already had two smoking hot women and Buddy had nobody. And, she’d said, there was just something about him.
“Yes, there is,” I’d said. “He’s a lucky son of a bitch.” I’d hugged her and whispered in her ear my prayer that they’d always be happy together.
The ‘living with the girlfriend and providing a place to stay for the niece’ thing worked like a charm for us. Instead of losing my job, I made the promotion list and then Detective II. I told Meyer that I was gunning for his job now. He said if I was stupid enough to want it, I could have it.
It’s been a year now since my brother was killed. Dawn and Mary Beth and I started off a little wild, often playing the game of seducing one or more women into our beds. But over time, without discussing it, we did that less and less often. Our infatuation turned into a deep love for one another and we became more comfortable and happier just sharing sex with each other.