Page 3 of Newly Tied

“Were you not taught sarcasm as a child?” I asked, giving him some water.

“Fuck off, man, I’m hungry. Why can’t we eat just because he’s pissed?”

“He has a point,” I told my partner, who shot me a look of death in the rearview mirror. “Are you gonna be mad all day?”

“I don’t know. Will you be doing any more stupid crap today, or are you done?”

“So done,” I promised him, and finally, I got the grin and the shake of his head that told me I was forgiven.

“Don’t do it again,” he warned me softly, under his breath. “You don’t want me to trade you in.”

No. I really didn’t.

TWO

When I was brand-new in the city, and to the Northern District of Illinois where I’d transferred to, the first two weeks had been riding around, being shown the ropes, getting the lay of the land, and basically being taught where things were and how fast, or slow, one could be expected to get there. I had never lived any place but Texas and had no idea there could be traffic at three in the morning. It was insane.

I had to absorb, fast, where I was going, what streets ran what way, and most importantly, the ins and outs of my new office. It was important to note how to talk to people, what to say when, and to learn that being too comfortable was a bad idea.

My new boss, Supervisory Deputy Chris Becker, seemed like a nice man. The first two days all of us transfers were in the office and he was going through things, he explained about his open-door policy, as well as the dos and don’ts of working there. He stressed that he would always be on our side unless we did something really stupid. It made sense.

“What do you like to be called?” Becker had asked me. “Just McCabe, or do you prefer it shortened to Mac?”

I was partial to Del, since that was my given name, Delroy McCabe, but since he hadn’t added that as an option and I wasn’t about to correct him, I said, “Either is fine, sir.”

“All right, then.”

On my third day there, I got to know a bit better the boss I reported to, Ian Doyle, under Becker. I thought he was brilliant because he was loud, so you didn’t have to guess how he was feeling or what he thought, and then there was the cherry on the top of the cake. He had assigned me to Josiah Redeker. He felt, he told me, like that would be a good fit for my training and evaluation. That day a lot of us met for lunch in the break room. The other new transfers—Banks, Warren, Baylor, Richards, Ross, Hawkins, Collins, and Crosby—were all eating already by the time we got there. Redeker and I were the last ones in because we had driven clear across town to pick up chili-cheese dogs, chili cheeseburgers, and chili-cheese fries. Everyone else was having assorted half sandwiches and soup or salad, but not me and Redeker. It would have felt like a party if we had some beer.

Crosby, who was riding with Pazzi, had a salad for lunch, and I was horrified. Clearly, from the way the others were looking at what was in front of me and Redeker versus what was in front of them, I had been assigned to the baller interim partner.

“You’re gonna die if you eat like that,” Pazzi told me as he dug into a salmon salad.

“You will be healthy but miserable, I can promise you that,” Redeker replied with a wicked grin before biting into his enormous cheeseburger with mustard, jalapeños, and chili.

“He doesn’t eat like this at home,” Callahan chimed in. Ross had been assigned to him and had reported back that he was great. At the moment, Callahan was chuckling, digging into the chicken burrito in front of him that looked like, other than the chicken, the rest was all green, besides the tomato I could see. The only thing I approved of was the guacamole. “Or on the weekends. But lunch, on a weekday, when you know you’re going to run that off?” he said, directing his comments to Pazzi. “Come on. Live a little.”

That was another thing. I’d transferred from Tyler, Texas, because even though I loved a lot about the state—I had been born and raised there, after all—there was also quite a bit that, being a gay man, didn’t work for me. Just being in the same room while Callahan smiled fondly at Redeker and wiped a bit of chili off his chin made my chest hurt.

“You’ve got grilled onions on that thing too?” Ross asked Redeker.

Redeker made a noise that was probably yes, but he was chewing, so it was hard to tell.

“Aw, man, your metabolism must be something,” Ross commented, grinning, and Redeker smiled back. I could already tell that Josiah Redeker favored Ross. They knew a lot of the same people, agreed that some FBI agent named Crouse was a total prick, and that the best place to get hot dogs was Superdawg, no contest. I didn’t question these things, but instead made a mental list every time anyone said anything so I could go try them myself.

The third Monday in February, after all of us had been there three weeks, I was partnered up with Ellery Hawkins. He was a nice guy, easy to be around, but he didn’t want to be friends outside of work. That was fine. He wanted a clear delineation between his job and his friends, but I was sure that bonding helped partners. I didn’t have one when I was in Texas. We had a team, not one specific partner, but Sam Kage, the chief deputy, the highest-ranking marshal in Illinois, liked the idea of partners. He wanted there to be one person, always, looking out for a specific person. I couldn’t really fault his logic.

A week later, this was put to the test when I saw a young woman get pulled behind a dumpster by some crackhead loser and had Hawkins stop the car. I was down the street fast, and lo and behold, there were two other guys holding down the girl—a high school student, as it turned out—while the third one, pants shoved to his knees, got ready to violate her.

I was pissed, they were spindly—meth really takes it out of a body—and I had all three scattered on the ground in seconds.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Hawkins screamed at me, in front of the girl. “That is not our job, and what if you got yourself killed?”

I had no answer for him, as the girl had wrapped herself around me after I zip-tied all three men, and she was currently squeezing my diaphragm. She was a soccer star at her high school and would have been able to put up a better fight, but the first guy punched her in the face and the second banged her head on the pavement, so she had been rendered nearly unconscious. I had already pledged to go to the hospital with her.

Chicago PD came and took custody of the guys, and then I went with Megan to the hospital. While there, I was met by Eli Kohn, our PR guy, and my boss, Ian Doyle.

“You’re gonna be riding with a new partner for the rest of the day,” Doyle told me, pointing to Jeff Crosby, who was jogging down the corridor toward us.