Page 92 of Hesi-Dating
"What's wrong with him? I thought you rode with him last year."
He compressed his lips. "You know what he does to all his partners, right? Last year he made us sit on one bogus stakeout after another. He claimed they were drug deal hotspots. Then he'd leave to say he was talking to an informant when he was off smoking weed or getting blown by a girl. I could smell their skanky perfume when he got back in the car."
I blinked at him. "What?"
"Fuck…you didn't know?" He covered his face. "I thought this was old news."
"I'll take care of it. You do understand that is unacceptable behavior when on duty, right?" I waited for him to nod. "Go sort your car situation."
I pulled my hat over my face and silently screamed into it.
"What's wrong, man?" Walt asked from the doorway.
Crap. I thought he'd left.
"My head's not in it today. Talking about Clara pushed me over the edge. Fucking fart car now got skunked on the inside."
Walt chuckled.
"Did you know about Chester doing fake stakeouts so he can solicit hookers?"
Walt dropped his gaze.
I repeated, "Did. You. Know?"
He nodded. "He's an asshole, but at least he's not owned by a gang."
"Hookers while on duty? That's going to get his ass owned by a gang pretty quick." I stared at the ceiling and sighed. "So stupid." I didn't have time to deal with that kind of idiocy, but I'd alert Internal Affairs later.
I gathered items for the press conference. My phone. My favorite pen.What else do I need?
"The mayor's been on your ass before and it never bothered you. Clara's a pain but not important. Chester's a dick, but that's old news. What's the problem?"
Walt followed me down the hallway to my secretary's desk where I grabbed the speech he'd printed for me. It'd be on the teleprompter, but I liked to review it on paper first. James used to be a cop until he got in a horrendous car crash. Now he ran my schedule and kept me organized. He wasn't at the desk. It was his 10 o'clock break. He'd informed me if he took this desk job, his breaks were sacred him-time.
"I ran into Joley the other night at the Foster Fund Gala." Felt good to say it out loud.
"What? Really?" He scratched his head. "TheJoley?"
"I got angry at her and blew it." I shouldn't have charged off to her house to confront Bruno. I'd been so furious and needed Bruno to realize he'd overstepped. I didn't doubt he'd be grilled by Joley too.
"How'd you blow it?"
"I did what every lovestruck fool does when I found out everything I thought kept us apart had been a lie. I got angry and almost fucked her against a wall in the hallway."
"Whoa. Really? You lost control?You?You're the master of never losing your shit." He grinned like I'd become his hero.
I held up both hands in a silentso what?
"I thought you said she was old news a few months ago. She drove a stake into your relationship. As in killed it. You've been seeing other people and moving on."
"Turns out her brother was the one who killed us. Not her. She wasn't the one who refused to see me at the hospital. He did." I perused my speech while heading to the press room. "Then she asked me out."
"After everything that happened, she asked you out? What are you going to do?"
The makeup artist rushed me and removed my hat while she started applying dabs of this and that. Then she was smoothing out my hair and replacing my hat. We did this dance so often that I barely noticed.
"I don't know, man," I said.
