Right as Rain

'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.'

'Y'all got your radios now. I read about it, that the issue finally went through.'

'It took that last shooting, and the threat of a protest, to get it done. And Chief Ramsey, he's toughened the firearms instruction requirements, instituted retraining. Got a whole lot of new initiatives drafted, with new hiring standards on the way, too.'

'You tryin' to tell me it was a good thing that Wilson died? Don't go blowin' smoke up my ass, man, 'cause I've known you too long.'

'I'm tellin' you that some good came out of it. Whatever I thought about what happened that night, it was on me to get involved, make sure that somethin' like that couldn't happen again.'

'I bet it was good for your conscience, too.'

'There was that.'

'Don't worry, Gene. I don't blame you for anything. I would have liked to hear from you once in a while, but I don't blame you for a thing.'

'I thought about calling you,' said Franklin. 'And then I thought, Outside of our shift, me and Terry never hung out, anyway. I don't recall us speaking on the phone more than once or twice when we were riding together, do you?'

'You're right. We never hung out.'

'We got different things. Different kinds of lives, interests, different friends. You and me used to talk about it, remember? Ain't no kind of crime for people to want to hang with their own kind.'

'It's a shame,' said Quinn. 'But it's no crime.'

'Anyway,' said Franklin, 'I gotta bounce.'

'Go ahead. Nice seeing you. Gene. Stay away from the fuglies, hear?'

Franklin blushed. 'I'm gonna try.'

They stood, hugged again, and broke apart awkwardly. Franklin did not meet Quinn's eyes before walking away. Franklin passed Strange on his way back from the head but did not acknowledge him at all.

'Friendly place they got here,' said Strange as he arrived at the table. 'Your boy Eugene is a card-carrying member of my fan club, and some Carl Eller-lookin' sucker back in the bathroom was wantin' to take my head off.'

'You know cops,' said Quinn. 'They like to stick to their own kind.'

'I've got a couple more stops today,' said Strange. 'I'd take you home, but it's not on my way.'

'Drop me at the Union Station Metro,' said Quinn. 'I'll catch the Red Line uptown.'

Strange pulled the Caprice away from the curb. 'Nevada Smith is on TNT tonight. You know that one?'

'Uh-huh. That's a good one. McQueen was the real thing.'

'That's the one ends with that old guy from Streets of San Francisco, with the nose-'

'Karl Maiden.'

'Yeah, him. McQueen shoots him a couple of times, but he doesn't kill him. Gets off of that revenge trip he's been on right there, finds his humanity, and leaves Maiden in the river. McQueen's riding away on his horse, and Maiden's yellin' at him to finish him off, screaming, over and over, "You're yella… you haven't got the guts!" I get the chills thinkin' about it, man.'