Lethal Rage (21 page)

Manny waited for him to get down that all-important first slug before raising his bottle. “To . . . ?”

Jack considered for a moment. He looked about him and back at Manny. “To friends. To friends who understand.”

“I'll drink to that.” They clinked and drank and, wrapped in the warmth of the fire and friends, Jack felt the evening's shit melt away.

“I've got a case of those in the cooler over there by the picnic table,” Manny informed him. “Help yourself. I'm not going to finish them; I've already promised to drive Paul home.”

“Good man.”

“Paul said you're a Batman fan. Guess that makes me Robin, huh?” Manny didn't sound pleased with the sidekick role.

“You sure as fuck ain't Batman.”

Jack let the party flow around him and carry him where it would. He listened to and shared stories, laughed, cried bullshit when some stories grew too fantastical to be real. He was awarded best gross-out of the night with his cockroach-toe man. Sy had been right about that one; it was a keeper.

He kept an eye open for Jenny but never saw her. Surprisingly, he felt a pang of disappointment. He tried to analyze it, figure out why he, a married man and happily at that — most of the time, anyway — was disappointed that a woman, married as well, a woman he barely knew, wasn't there. It wasn't like there were no attractive women on the beach. In fact, 51 had a startlingly high number of good-looking PWs. Either that, or he was drunk already, which he doubted, having just cracked open his second cider.

Sue, Jenny's partner that day, was there, her crimson hair hanging in loose ringlets past her shoulders. She was wearing tight — no, exceptionally tight — jeans and no jacket and her Toronto Police T-shirt was cut off just below her breasts. She certainly was popular, flitting from male to male, but he noted with a critical eye that her belly-baring days were a few six-packs past their prime.

“Looking for another shaggle?”

Jack jumped. “Damn it, Manny. That's the second time you've snuck up on me tonight. How the hell do you do that?”

Manny smiled smugly. “Ninja training. Shh, don't tell anyone. So, does she have a good shaggle?”

Jack laughed. “
Sheuggle
, not shaggle.
Shew-gul
. It's Scottish for swagger, as in the
sheuggle
for a kilt.”

“How do you spell that?”

“I have no freaking idea.”

Manny tipped his bottle, just a Coke, toward Sue. “She has quite the reputation as a party girl.”

“Tsk, tsk, Manny.” Jack waggled his bottle reprovingly at his partner. “I would have thought you of all people would know to look past a person's reputation.”

“There's reputations based on opinions and rumours and then there's Sue. You can ask her and she'll tell you. Hell, she'll show you.”

“I'm married and besides, I like my women a little leaner.”

“Hey, nothing wrong with a little padding.” Manny patted his own padding affectionately. “So, you're saying, even if you were single and the opportunity arose, you'd turn her down.”

Jack gagged on his drink and had to spit some of it back into the bottle. “Hell, no, I'm not saying that.
If
I was single and
if
the opportunity presented itself . . .”

Manny clapped him on the shoulder. “I got news for you, partner.
She
doesn't care if you're married — she actually prefers it — and she's been eyeing you all night.” He released Jack and hurried off, mumbling something about needing to water the lake.

“I'm surprised to see you here.”

Again, Jack jumped, but this time it was Jenny next to him and being startled never felt so good.

“A little jumpy, are we?” she teased.

“You must go to the same ninja school as Manny. Can I get you a drink?”

“One of those would be nice.” She gestured to his cider, then followed him to the cooler.

Jack cracked open a fresh one and passed it to her. “They're actually Manny's, but he told me to help myself. He has to stay sober to drive Paul home.”

“I hope he knows that being Paul's designated driver also means keeping him out of the lake.”

“You're kidding, right?”

“Nope.” She laughed, then sampled the cider. “Mmm, that's good. A lot of people think a beach party isn't a success until the SS Townsend sets sail.”

“I hope he brought a change of clothes,” Jack commented, eyeing the big man across the fire. Whatever Paul was explaining to Boris and a couple of rookies, it involved dramatic arm flailing.

“Oh, not to worry.” Jenny smiled again. “He doesn't need a change of clothes when he goes swimming.”

“Why not? Doesn't — oh, I see. I don't know if I want to be around for that.”

“Take it from someone who has seen Paul skinny-dip on previous occasions: if you have a fragile male ego, you don't want to be here when it happens.” She waited for Jack to tilt his bottle up. “And that's when the water's cold.”

Jack sputtered and lost some cider. He wiped his lips while he laughed. “Okay, my ego may not be fragile, but . . .”

She joined him in the laugh. “Kind of like me standing topless next to Dolly Parton.”

Taking the opportunity, Jack gave her an appraising once-over. Her jeans weren't nearly as tight as Sue's, but they definitely had a comfortable look to them, a look that made Jack wonder what it would feel like to run his hands over the curves hinted at beneath the fabric. Her T-shirt — did all cops wear tees on their off time? — was unaltered and hung loosely on her lean frame, but it couldn't hide the fact that she was small-breasted. Her hair fell in a thick, wavy black mass over her shoulders. His blatant assessment finished where it began, with her wonderful smile.

Jenny was eyeing him expectantly, lips quirked. “Well?”

“I'd take you over a dozen Dolly Partons any day.”

“Why, Mr. Warren, if I didn't know better, I'd say you were flirting with me.”

“I am flirting with you,” he admitted. He tapped his wedding ring against the bottle. “I'm married. I'm allowed to,” he explained earnestly.

“I'm not sure I follow you on that one. You'll have to educate me.” She tilted her head to drain the bottle.

Jack watched the curve of her throat working as she emptied the bottle. God, how he wanted to feel that skin beneath his lips. “Because I'm married, it won't lead to anything, so I'm allowed to flirt. And since you're married —” he indicated her ring “— with children, it makes it doubly, if not triply — is that a word? — allowed. And anyway, there's no way I could flirt with you if I was single. If I thought I had even the slightest chance of succeeding, I'd have embarrassed myself a half dozen times over by now and you'd be walking away thinking I was the world's biggest jerk.”

“Ah, I see now.” She nodded sombrely. “And if I wasn't married? Would you still be allowed to flirt with me?”

He pursed his lips, considering. “Yes,” he decided, “but I would have to flirt with caution.”

“Then you'd better proceed with caution, Jacker —” somehow that sounded so much better coming from her than it did from Paul “— 'cause I'm not married.” Jenny tapped her bottle against his chest and winked.

“And the ring?”

“I got tired of being hit on by horny firemen.”

“And the kids? I heard you say you have kids. Or are they a ruse as well?”

“Nope, they're real. That's why I was late. I had to go home and get them.”

Shocked, he looked around. “They're here? Where are they?”

“Knowing my boys, they're probably swimming right now.”

He cast her a look from the corner of his eye. “We're not talking about human kids, are we?”

“I never said human,” she said in all innocence. “It's not my fault you assumed they were human.”

“I'm a little disappointed.” He hung his head and toed the sand.

She slid up to him and ruffled his hair. “Are you sad 'cause you think I lied to you? I didn't, you know.”

“It's not that,” Jack replied in mock seriousness. “I was going to tell you that you have an amazing and sexy body for a woman who has had children. Now all I get to tell you is that you have an amazing, sexy body.”

She laughed and punched him in the shoulder. “You don't stop, do you?”

He looked up and grinned. “Not really, no.”

“Why are you carrying around gloves? Expecting a cold front to come through?”

“Gloves? Oh, those. I forgot I had them.” Jack pulled the wannabe's gloves out of his back pocket. As he slapped them idly against his hand, he cast a suspicious eye at Jenny. “Were you checking out my ass when I went to get the drinks?”

“Not at all,” she replied, offended. “I just happened to notice them flapping around when you were walking over to the cooler . . . as I checked out your ass.”

“That's better.” He handed her a fresh cider and sat down on the picnic table next to her. The fire had died down some and they had dragged the table close to the flames, but the party was far from dying. If anything, it had grown in size as E platoon, the shift just starting evenings, had joined the party after they had finished for the night. Since this was E's first day back, they had just learned that afternoon that Jack had identified Anthony Charles as Sy's killer. Several officers from the shift, including one of their sergeants, Don Pembleton, had stopped to congratulate Jack on the ID.

“So how is it? My ass, I mean.”

“It's okay, I guess.” That sly smile he was beginning to appreciate belied the casualness of her words. “The gloves? When I asked you about them, you got this amused smile on your face. There a story to go with it?”

“A story or a robbery confession, depending on which way you look at it.”

“Now you definitely have to tell me.” Jenny turned to him on the bench and propped her chin on her hand.

“Well, you know how the shitheads have started wearing the gloves since Sy was killed?”

“Yeah, the little bastards are honouring a fucking cop killer.”

It was easy, looking at her, to forget that Jenny was a cop, but she belonged at this beach party as much as anyone.

Other officers standing nearby heard the comment and added to it. “Yeah, we saw pukes wearing them all over the place tonight.”

“Is that what they mean? Fuck that.”

“No way should we let them get away with that shit.”

“You take those off someone, Warren? Cool. What happened?”

Jack had an audience, and he was suddenly uncomfortable, worried they'd see him as a loose cannon or a nut job, set to explode at any time. He needn't have worried. He finished his story to a rousing cheer and Jenny wrapped him in a delicious, congratulatory hug.

“That's what we should do this week,” one E officer suggested. “Grab every fucking pair of gloves we see. We can burn them all at the next beach party.”

That idea got another round of enthusiastic approval; then Sergeant Pembleton pushed forward and quashed the excitement by yelling for everyone to shut the bleeding fuck up. Pembleton was not a small man and his voice carried, catching the attention of those who had drifted away from the fire. When everyone had wandered in to listen, he raised his voice again. He was a respected sergeant, was seen more as a senior pc who just happened to have stripes on his shoulders than an actual supervisor, and when he spoke, people listened.

“For those of you with cow shit jammed in your bleeding fucked-up ears —” he was also known for a love of profanity “— Jack Warren here identified the soulless motherfucking craven coward who stole our brother from us.”

Another swell of applause and calls of “Jacker! Jacker!”

When the praise faded, Pembleton continued. “Simon Carter was a God-blessed fucking great cop.” More cheers. “Jack lost a partner. We lost a brother. This shithole of a city and its spineless, good-for-fucking-nothing whoresons of politicians lost a good cop.” Pembleton paused and Jack was astounded to see him wipe away a tear, openly and shamelessly. When next he spoke, his voice was choked with emotion. “And the world lost a great man! To Simon!”

“To Simon!” the gathering echoed, and Pembleton was not the only one holding back tears.

The sergeant leaned toward Jack and asked, “May I?” with a quiet politeness Jack never would have guessed he possessed. Jack handed over the gloves and Pembleton held them high. “If we are fucking going to do this, we do it bloody right!” He brandished the gloves like an insane matador waving a red flag to rile up a herd of bulls. “This is not a God-fucking-damned contest to see who can bloody well get the most shit-smeared gloves. This is for Simon and for us! When a motherless, sister-fucking puke wears these, he's bloody well spitting in our fucking faces!”

Veins bulged and throbbed in Pembleton's temples. He scrutinized the pack of officers, a warlord judging if his troops were fit for battle. They were.

“I will talk to the other shifts, you bloody fucking well better believe I will. No fucking tickets, no piss-useless traffic stops. As long as one vile, putrid, shit-smeared, cocksucking puke dares —
dares!
— to wear a motherfucking pair of these, nothing — goddamn
nothing!
— matters. Do you motherless whoresons hear me?”

They did and roared with approval.

While the thunderous cry echoed across the still, dark waters, Pembleton formally returned the gloves to Jack. “Jack, the honour is yours.” He gestured to the fire.

Jack stood and the throng fell silent. All eyes were upon him as he stepped up to the flames. The heat seared his face. He looked at Jenny and wasn't surprised to see tears streaking her face. Others were crying as well, and he finally comprehended that he was not the only one who had suffered a loss when Sy was murdered. As Pembleton had said, they had all lost a brother.