hurt.
“Wednesday!”
“Thursday!”
“You guys talking about last week?” I ask. “You got married last week?”
“Five days ago,” the man says.
“Four, you damn ass turd!” Then cooingly to me, “You like a big ass?” She turns around and pulls up her nightie a little. Amazingly, she has puke on the back of her legs and her bottom. “More cushion to the pushin’,” she says over her shoulder.
I look at the ceiling for a moment to cleanse my eyes. Reluctantly, I look back at her. “How long have you been fighting?”
“All night,” she says, eyeing my package again. I’m starting to feel violated.
“That’s about right,” the man offers. He thinks about it for a moment. “Yup, ‘bout right.”
The woman reaches for me again, but I step around her and move to the center of the debris. Time to take charge. “Okay, here’s how it’s going to go. No one has hit anyone, right?’
“No, we don’t do that,” Bruce says.
“Big ass and big tits, all yours,” Hildie reminds me, sashaying my way.
Tommy isn’t even trying to keep his laughter in.
I thrust my palm toward her. “Hildie, Stop!” Incredibly she does, but with hurt in her eyes. “Okay, thank you. You been married a few days and—”
Hildie nods. “Three. Four, I mean.”
“—aaaaand you are supposedly on your honeymoon.”
“Yeah, we’re on our honeymoon,” she says, looking over at her husband.
“Then you know what you’re supposed to be doing, right?”
They both look at me, then at each other, then back to me again.
“Right?”
She nods first, then he does, both solemn.
“Where’s your bedroom?’
The man smiles and points upstairs.
“You wanna go up there?” Hildie asks me, with a look of anticipation and a nod of her head toward the stairs.
“Hildie, stop talking!”
She makes a zipper motion across her mouth and snaps to attention, which sets her mammoth breasts rolling about.
“Now, listen up you two. I’m going to give you an official police order. Do you understand what I’m saying here?”
They both look at me, their faces serious. They nod. I lift my right hand as if I’m going to administer an oath, which I am.
“By the power vested… lift your right hands, both of you.” They do, both sober as two judges, puke-covered ones. “By the power vested in me, an official of the Portland Police Bureau and an official of this city, I’m ordering you to go upstairs and do what you’re supposed to be doing on your friggin’ honeymoon.”
Tommy looks at me incredulously.
“Partner?” I prompt, nodding my head toward the couple.
“What? Oh, uh, yes.” He turns to Bruce. “He’s right,” Tommy says. “It’s official now.”
“But maybe you and I could—”
“Hildie, stop,” I say, putting my index finger to my lips. “I have just given you and Bruce an official—official—police order to go upstairs and go to bed. Now go!”
“Okay, okay,” Bruce giggles. He looks at Tommy, who gestures that he’s free to go. The groom walks over to his bride.
“Take his hand, Hildie,” I say. She does. “Now go upstairs. And don’t trip over that dinette on the steps. By the way, how did the dinette get… never mind. Just go upstairs.”
“Yes, sir,” Bruce says seriously.
“Yes, sir,” Hildie says, slipping her arm around her husband’s waist. They kiss, and for the third time in ten minutes, my breakfast muffin creeps up the back of my throat. They manage to maneuver around the dinette before stopping to look down at us.
“Go on, you’re doing fine,” I say with a wave of my hand. “We’ll just let ourselves out.” They smile and Hildie gives me a little wave. They stumble about, interlace their arms and head up the stairs.
“Ready?” I say to Tommy, heading toward the door.
“Incredible,” he says, following me. “You ordered them to—”
“You beat them mother fuckers?” the white-haired woman calls out from her porch.
“Within an inch of their life, ma’am,” Tommy says with a salute.
Three minutes later, I skid to a stop at a Shell service station restroom. Tommy bails out before I can and dashes into the restroom to wash every inch of exposed skin. I go in when he returns, though I’d prefer to take a complete shower or, better yet, go to a furniture stripping place and let them hose me down with scalding steam. I spent four years in college so I can communicate with puke-covered newlyweds?
Tommy is talking into the mic as I get back behind the wheel. “Don’t tell me we got a call back to the lovers’ house?” I ask.
He’s scrawling an address down in his notebook. “No, it’s an intruder call, about ten blocks over in that new Argay Park area. Twenty-three seventy-five on Oak.”
“Cars responding. Complainant’s hysterical. We think she’s saying that her son is still inside the house. Intruder kicked through a backdoor, struck the complainant… Okay, we just got this in: Another caller can hear a man yelling on the second floor. Units responding to twenty-three seventy-five southeast Oak, give me your numbers again.”
“Six-Forty, we’re stuck behind a disabled truck on the HawthorneB ridge.”
“Six-Fifty, I’m at least eight minutes away.”
“Six-Five-Five I’m there now.”
“Let’s do it,” I say, guiding our car back out onto the street.
“Four-Forty is close,” Tommy says into the mic.
“We ought to just put on uniforms and start taking calls,” I say over the roar of the accelerating engine.
“This is Six-Five-Five. I’ve got the complainant. A blind woman. Really out of it. What I’m getting is that the suspect, her sense is that he’s white and tall, smashed through her backdoor, kicked her in the stomach and charged up the stairs. Says her seven-year-old son is up there. Don’t know if the man is armed. Don’t know if he’s got the boy. How close is my cover?”
