“What was that, thirteen blocks?” I looked to both uniformed men for an answer.
“Seventeen,” Fitzpatrick answered with a chuckle, lifting the suspect onto his feet.
Officers Kelly Fitzpatrick and Jason Dillon were affectionately known as Mick and Dick. The names derived from some very serious racial stereotyping in Mick’s case. And Dick? Dick resembled a walking penis. Not that either of them complained. Dick, a tall, skinny, dark-skinned man with all of seven hairs on his head, clearly won in the nickname department, as far as I was concerned. Mick, by contrast, had a full head of salt and pepper hair and was built like a truck.
“Booyah!” I pumped a fist to my hip, wearing my goofiest grin. This was a good collar, and I was going to milk it.
Luis pulled our unmarked piece-of-shit (read: police issued car) to the curb beside the patrol car and got out shaking his head. The two patrolmen led our suspect to their vehicle. Then Luis smacked me upside the head.
“Knock that shit off,” he said, nodding at my dance of triumph. My dance halted, but my grin didn’t fade.
“Fucking cracker,” Alvarado hissed as he was shoved into the patrol car.
“Aw, that’s discrimination, right there.” I feigned hurt. “See, I see you as scumbag first, Alvarado. Or dick-cheese. Scum-sucking pedophile. Asshole. The fact that you’re Hispanic doesn’t even factor into it.” I aimed my stupid grin at Luis.
“Lawyer,” Alvarado spat as the door slammed shut.
Well, shit.
“Nice bust, kid.” Luis laughed. My grin widened at the compliment.
Still high from my Superpowers of Awesomeness, I pushed off the sidewalk and slid across the hood of our car on my back, landing neatly on the other side. The heat from the car’s metal hood clung to my suit. “Let’s catch some more bad guys.” Throwing open the passenger door, I flopped in the seat, pulling the door shut.
Luis stayed outside, talking to Fitzpatrick and waving happily at Alvarado, who was probably giving us the finger. I scrambled out of my suit jacket and prayed for air conditioning.
“You kids today,” Luis commented as he slipped into the driver’s seat. Neither of us mentioned the way my hands shook as they drummed against my knee. “See what you did? Now we have to go and fill out goddamn paperwork for the rest of the afternoon.”
We turned to each other and chuckled. After a six-hour stakeout and then a manic chase, we were both counting on some mind-numbing paperwork.
At fifty-four, and two hundred and thirty pounds, there weren’t many foot pursuits that ended in arrests for Luis. Which was, I assumed, why they had paired us. Well, that, and the fact that he had the highest closure rate in Vice and Homicide combined, and I needed experience. But, while I was the rookie detective, I could hold my own—especially in situations like today, when one of our arrestees threw himself out the open patio doors and booked it down the street.
In the world of dirtbags, Prisc Alvarado was aiming to be the king. Like most seasoned criminals, Alvarado’s arrest record began small with petty theft, dealing and pandering. It was as a pimp where he found his calling. His arrest, we hoped, would severely slow the expansion of his growing human trafficking business. The case of a lifetime in a city not known for high profile organized crime. It was a good day for Luis and me. Hell, it was a good day for humanity.
“We gotta go back to that dirtbag’s house and watch them complete the search,” Luis told me.
“What’s it look like?”
“It looks like one of Vice’s biggest busts in three years.” He laughed, lighting a cigarette and rolling down the window. I grimaced and rolled mine down, too. To reiterate, I hated smoking. And much as I liked Luis, I didn’t want to be his cigarette. With an extra thirty pounds around his middle, he was definitely no Bunny Slippers.
And now, of course, I was thinking about him.
Luis did a one-eighty, and we were both silent as we headed back to Alvarado’s house. I got lost in thoughts about freckles and hostile youths, while trying to hold my head out the window and avoid the smell of smoke. Luis, I presumed from the silence, was contemplating the mounds of paperwork we were going to be doing until late tonight.
“You bringing Angelica by this Sunday?” Luis said.
“Sunday?”
“Yeah. The barbeque.”
I regarded him blankly for a second and then remembered that he’d invited us to a cookout a few weeks ago. We always had a good time with Luis and his family. But I hadn’t seen my fiancée in two days, since the tux fitting, and I didn’t relish the thought of talking to her anytime soon. My stomach knotted just thinking about it. Better to not think about it. Always better to not think about it.