Title: The Minute After
Author: Me, Alex
Fandom: Due South
Beta'd by: chitown_brit
Rating: NC-17 for the sexy sex (and a little bit of the violent violence, in part 4)
Length: 41,629 words
Summary: Fraser kisses Ray. Ray kisses back. What happens next? Ray struggles with his feelings, confronts homophobia at work, and (in parts 2-4), investigates a gay bashing.
******
So it went like that for a couple of weeks, then a month, then a couple more weeks. Staying the night after they’d just ended a big case got to be their tradition, and when Ray strutted into the station the next day, proud as a banty rooster, everyone else could figure it was just over putting one in the can, and not over having gotten to spend the night with his partner, his best pal, the hottest guy in the entire Midwest, if not the entire world.
And it just happened that it was one of those mornings, one of those post-case, post-sleepover mornings, that he followed Frase into the bullpen to hear Detective O’Brien complaining, “--just because some faggot got his mascara smudged, doesn’t mean I have to--”
Fraser’s back stiffened, and blood rushed in Ray’s ears, drowning out the rest of what O’Brien had to say. Damn it, he’d known something like this would come up sooner or later, and now that it had--
Now that it had, he wasn’t sure which he was more afraid of. That Fraser would jump in with some speech about equal rights for homos, like Ray was sure he’d have done if they weren’t doing the horizontal waltz every chance they got--
Or that he wouldn’t, because Ray had beaten into his head how important it was that nobody know. Because if he didn’t, it would be because his lo--because this thing he and Ray had going, had somehow made him less than he was, and Ray just couldn’t take that. A fragment of a poem, some dumb thing he’d had to read in 11th-grade English, floated through his head. I could not love you half so much, loved I not honor more. Somethin’ like that, anyway. Fraser was honor, shining out through every pore of him, and if Ray had made even a tiny bit of that light go out--
He got his hearing back just in time to hear Fraser say, “--orientation doesn’t make him any less deserving of police protection than any other taxpayer, I’m sure.”
His knees almost went out from under him, with relief that Fraser had made the right choice. The choice that might get ‘em both killed, yeah, if he made it too many times, but the one that meant he was still Fraser. He gave O’Brien’s partner a conspiratorial sort of look, the “Hey, he’s a crazy Canadian Mountie freak, what’re you gonna do?” look, and plodded on to his desk while Fraser was still speechifying.
Sorting through the papers on his desk, he pulled out the forms he was gonna need to get the last case wrapped up. A 47-Z, and a 6791, and, because of the thing with the duck, he was gonna need a whole handful of HP-93’s.
Fraser came over and sat down, pulling his chair a little closer to Ray’s than was usual. Even though he worked here all the time, he still didn’t have a desk of his own. They worked sitting on either side of Ray’s. It was cozy, kind of--he wanted to talk to Fraser, all he had to do was look up. “The young man--he’s a boy, really, he’s nineteen--was beaten in the alley behind a nightclub with a predominantly homosexual clientele,” Fraser said softly, urgently. The pattern of marks indicate at least three assailants. He’s in hospital, in coma. He may not live.”
Ray nodded. “It sucks, Frase. Poor kid.”
Across the room, O’Brien was saying, “--have to go to the actual bar, the same room where guys do stuff to each other every friggin’ night of the week. If my shoes stick to the floor, I’m gonna puke.”
Fraser’s eyes burned into him. “He’s nineteen, Ray. And if he regains consciousness, that’s who he gets to give his statement to.”
Ray glanced at him, and over at O’Brien. “Life’s hard, Frase.”
Fraser kept looking at him.
“We all have to make choices.”
Fraser dropped his eyes, nodded once. “Understood.”
At least Fraser’d tried to talk some sense into him. Maybe when O’Brien was faced with the kid, he’d…. Hell, even Ray knew that wasn’t gonna happen.
He’d been so relieved that being with him hadn’t made Fraser less than he was. What if--
He stopped breathing for a second.
What if it could make him…maybe even both of them…more?
He sighed, and shook his head theatrically, in an “I’m only doing this to indulge the Mountie‘s weird Canadian ethics,” way, and called, “Hey, O’Brien. If you’re so insecure about your masculinity you can’t handle taking statements from a coupla fags, we’ll take the case off your hands.”
O’Brien stopped mid-harangue. “You will?”
“Hey, man, I’ve got nothin’ to prove. I’ll trade ya--” He scrabbled through the open case files on his desk. “Here, I got a coupla muggings and a liquor store holdup.”
Bringing him the folder, O’Brien moved so fast he was just a streak of ugly brown suit. “You sure you’re okay with it? Thanks, man, I owe you one.”
“Check with Welsh, make sure he doesn’t care.” Ray was pretty damn sure he didn’t, or he wouldn’t have given O’Brien the case to begin with.
O’Brien took off with a spring in his step. Like trading three cases for one was a good deal as long as he didn’t have to talk to homos.
Showed what he knew.
He started familiarizing himself with the case file. The victim--the kid--was called Miguel Ramierez. Address, a crummy Puerto Rican neighborhood, where fags probably weren’t any more popular than they were at the 2-7. Kid probably still lived at home. Bet the folks didn’t know where he spent his evenings.
Uniforms had responded when a bar patron called 911. Took the kid to the hospital. And there was the MD’s report. Broken ribs, head trauma, internal bleeding. Boot prints, two different sizes and three styles, how they’d added up the three assailants.
The kid was a little fuck, too. Five-seven, hundred and twenty pounds. Even if he was a scrapper, he’d never had a chance.
Yeah, no wonder Fraser couldn’t hack letting O’Brien stomp all over the poor bastard again.
Uniforms had done a semi-decent job--talked to what witnesses as were left, although none of them had seen a damn thing. Taken a few names and addresses, mostly bar staff who couldn’t very well hightail it out in the middle of a shift when they heard the cops were coming.
O’Brien came out of Welsh’s office. “He wants to see you,” he said, jerking his thumb toward the door.
“Okay. Anybody talk to the kid’s next of kin?”
O’Brien squinted at him. Right, it was stupid of him to think that O’Brien might have done even that much, like the Ramierez kid was human or something. “I sure as hell didn’t. Maybe somebody at the hospital.”
“Okay.” He gathered up the file and the Mountie and went in to Welsh’s office.
“You wanted to see us, sir?” Fraser said brightly.
“Yeah. There some kind of Canadian angle to this gay case that I don’t know about?”
“Not that I’m aware of, sir. I received the impression that Detective O’Brien was uncomfortable with the case, and I felt that his handling of any potential witnesses might be less than--tactful.”
Good Fraser, good man, taking this all on himself, keeping the heat off Ray. Like Ray was gonna sit back and let him do that. “Fraser knows how to be polite to people,” Ray explained, like that was something Welsh might not have noticed about him. “They teach ‘em at Mountie school or something. I think we’ll handle this a little better than O’Brien would.”
Welsh was nodding. “Okay. Go ahead. But Detective?”
Ray turned. “Yeah?”
“This case is not exactly your highest priority. Make sure you get to Allesandroni paperwork--it goes in front of the grand jury next week, and you’ll need to have all the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed by then.”
Ray looked back at the door. “Understood.”
#
They picked up the wolf and headed back out to the car. It was good to be out in the bright sunlight, the fresh-for-Chicago air, after only a few minutes in the bullpen. Police stations were not pretty places. “Where d’you wanna go first?”
Fraser considered as they got into the car. “The hospital, I think. We should see if there’s any change in the young man’s condition, and find out if his family has been informed.” He buckled his seatbelt.
“Sounds good. Hospital, then the family if they don’t know, then we’ll go back around to the bar. If we get there around ten thirty or eleven, the staff’ll probably be getting ready to open.” He started the car and put her into gear.
“Ray.”
Ray turned to look at him. “Yeah?”
“I--you--that was very brave.”
Ray ducked his head. “Stupid, you mean.”
“I meant just what I said. I‘m proud of you.”
No matter what Fraser said, it was stupid, and it was gonna come back and bite them on the ass--but he wasn’t sure anybody’s ever told him he was brave before. At least, not the way Fraser said it. Like it wasn’t a ridiculously corny, cheeseball, dumbass thing to say. So he just said, “Thanks.”
Ramierez’s doctor and nurses clammed right up when he showed them his badge--O’Brien must’ve made one hell of an impression. Ramierez’s main nurse was a guy called Cizowski, who had an earring and a noticeable swish to his step. But Ray couldn’t even point out that they had probably two things in common, since his being a Polack was right now as much of a secret as the other thing, so he just stayed quiet and let Fraser do the talking. “--apologize for the other detective’s behavior. He’s been reassigned. Mr. Ramierez’s case will receive our full attention.”
After a few minutes of Fraser doing his thing, Cizowski agreed to sit down with them and the file, and even bought them a cup of free coffee in the staff lounge.
Cizowski told them a lot of stuff, most of which boiled down to that Ramierez was in bad shape. He’d lived through the night, which was a good sign, but they wouldn’t know if he was gonna get better or die until he did one or the other. “If there’s any improvement in his condition, any sign that he might be able to identify his attackers, notify us right away.” Fraser gave him one of Ray’s cards. “People who do this sort of thing usually don’t just do it once. I’d like to stop them before they do it again.”
Cizowski held on to the card so tight it curled. “I will. If he wakes up, it might not be for long. Should I try to ask him, or--?”
“Normally we prefer to question victims ourselves, but under the circumstances--” Fraser glanced at him; he nodded. “Under the circumstances, if you think he might not remain conscious long enough for us to arrive, find out what you can. A name, a description. Even just confirming the number of assailants may help. Write down anything he says.”
“I can do that.”
Ray jumped in. “Has anybody talked to his folks?”
“Not that I know of. There was no next-of-kin information in his effects.”
Ray nodded. “We’ll go by his address, see what we can find out.”
Cizowski hesitated. “Detective, the circumstances in which he was attacked…I wouldn’t necessarily expect his family to know about his sexual orientation. A lot of Latino youths aren’t out of the closet at home.”
“Yeah, a lotta Italian ones ain’t either.” Or Polish ones, for that matter. “Maybe we’ll say we have reason to believe the assailants thought he was a homosexual. Sound okay?”
Cizowski looked at him measuringly. “That might be for the best.”
Ray realized belatedly that it might have sounded like he just outed Vecchio. All his lecturing Fraser about being discreet, and what did he do? Numbnuts. “They say it’s one in ten, right? And we’re Catholic, I got like forty cousins.” Hopefully he’d re-established his hetero cred, even if it came at the price of outing four of Vecchio’s hypothetical cousins.
“I’m sure they appreciate your support,” Cizowski said, standing up and chucking his paper coffee cup into the trash. “I have other patients to see to, but I’ll let you know as soon as anything changes.”
“Great. See you.”
They clattered on out of the hospital. They hadn’t actually seen Miguel Ramierez, but there wasn’t much of anything that looking at his unconscious body would tell them, and Ray already knew perfectly well what a guy who’d had the shit stomped out of him looked like.
As they got in the car and buckled up, Fraser said, “Ray, do I need to remind you about the need for utmost discretion?”
He shook his head. Didn’t need Fraser rubbing it in how fast he’d gone from brave, proud-of-you guy to a fuckup who didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. “No, I know. I got it, I just…” He blew out through his teeth, lifting his hair off his forehead a little bit. “I wanted to show him I wasn’t an asshole, and I screwed up. I wasn’t thinking.”
“I think you covered it well enough.”
“You think I should stick with the ‘I got a gay cousin’ story?” Would Vecchio care?
“That sounds…prudent.”
“Not at the precinct, I mean. But even if they find that out, thinking that I got some theoretical gay cousin and I don’t think he deserves to die shouldn’t do too much damage.”
Fraser nodded. “Understood. Should we go?” He nodded toward the steering wheel.
“Oh. Yeah.” He cranked the engine.
Ramierez’s neighborhood was about what he expected--lot of people sitting on stoops, standing on corners, talking in Spanish. You couldn’t really tell if they were fighting or discussing the weather--Italians were a lot the same way, except they did it mostly in English, so it was a little easier to tell.
Polacks mostly fought inside, but not always.
Ramierez’s place was on the third floor of a walk-up building. They had Dief wait in the car, and walked on up. A little woman in a flowered dress and plastic slippers opened the door. Ray didn’t have a chance to say anything, he’d just pulled away the lapel of his jacket to show his badge when she lurched forward, wailing. The only words Ray could make out were madre de dios, but that was enough for him to get the general idea. Their kid was gone all night, and then two cops show up at the door--couldn’t possibly be good news.
Fraser caught the woman’s shoulders and patted her back. “Habla Ingles, Senora?” Ray said awkwardly. More people from the household--a couple of guys on either side of Miguel’s age, probably brothers, a girl, maybe in her twenties. Another woman, older--had to be the grandmother. “Hey--anybody here habla ingles?”
The girl took Ramierez’s mom away from Fraser, glaring at Ray over her shoulder. “We all do, Officer. What happened?”
“Uh, are you--this is where Miguel Ramierez lives?”
“Yes,” the woman said, accepting Fraser’s hanky. “My son. What’s happened to my son?”
“I’m sorry to have to tell you. He was attacked last--”
More wailing, more Spanish. Somehow, they ended up inside the apartment, sitting on a plastic-covered living room suite. “Ma’am, your son is alive,” Fraser said as soon as there was a moment he could be heard. “But he’s been very badly injured.” Fraser told them what hospital he was in, and what room. “Do you have a way to get there? No? Allow my partner to call a taxi. At the department’s expense, of course.”
At Ray’s expense, more like--the department didn’t pay for taxis for cops, much less for victims’ families. But he took out his phone and dialed.
“I know it’s intrusive, but I hope you won’t mind giving us a little information before the taxi arrives,” Fraser continued. “Are you aware of anyone who might want to do your son harm?”
They didn’t, of course. Miguel was a good boy, didn’t go with the gangs, didn’t give anyone any trouble, hadn’t fucked anyone’s sister--well, of course he hadn’t. Eventually, Fraser worked his way around to saying, “Ma’am, we have reason to believe that the attackers believed your son was a homosexual.”
Everybody in the house insisted he wasn’t, there was no way, not Miguel, not their boy. Fraser soothed them down, said, he knew, certainly, “Your son was most likely just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But in the absence of any other appreciable motive, we’ll have to pursue that area of inquiry, even though the attackers were obviously mistaken.”
They decided that was okay, even if the idea of Miguel getting the shit kicked out of him on account of a mistake made them start going a mile a minute in Spanish. But by the time the taxi got there, Miguel’s family knew that the Chicago flatfoot and the Mountie were going to be finding out who gay-bashed their kid, and if he woke up, he’d still have a family.
And that was about the best they were gonna do, so after Fraser secured the loan of a small framed photograph of Miguel, they trooped down, and Fraser got everybody settled in the back of the taxi while he found out from the driver how much this was gonna cost, with mileage and pick-up charge and extra passengers charge, and an extra tip to make sure he was nice to them, and handed over a bigger handful of money than he wanted to hand over and have nothing to show for it.
Fraser thumped the top of the taxi to send it off, and they got back in their own car to go to a gay bar.
When they got there, the place was locked up tight, no sign of life. He checked his watch. “Still a little early. Let’s go around the back, check out the scene. If there’s still nobody here, we can grab something to eat while we’re waiting.”
The alley was…an alley. Trash cans, dumpsters, back doors. A lot more condoms on the ground than average. A lot of stains Ray didn’t want to look at too closely, only he had to, on account of needing to figure out which ones are blood.
Nobody bothered to put up any crime scene tape. Somehow, Ray wasn’t too surprised.
“Do me a favor, Frase.”
“Yes, Ray?”
“Don’t lick anything you find back here.”
“Understood.”
There wasn’t a whole lot to see. Blood spatter on the walls, a puddle of it on the ground.
When he was nineteen, he had sex with Stella in her pink-and-lace bedroom, in the backseat of his buddy’s car, in the back room at the store where she had her part-time job.
And Miguel got this fucking alley.
“Lotsa DNA back here, but no way to connect any of it to the crime,” he said, just for something to say.
Fraser nodded. “Dief, don’t you lick anything, either.”
They split up and searched the space, Fraser and Dief starting at one end, him at the other. He bagged a couple of pieces of trash, more for something to do than because there was anything to distinguish them from the rest of the litter. No sign of anything like a weapon. More bloodstains.
“He was standing here when they jumped on him,” Fraser said quietly, indicating a space between two dumpsters. “He kept his back to the wall--that was smart, but it didn’t help him. Once they had him semi-conscious, they dragged him out here--” He indicated a spot in the middle of the alley “--so they’d have more room to…work.”
Fraser went down on one knee to take a closer look at the spot. Even once it was clear that there was nothing to see, he stayed and looked at the spot for a while, Ray standing over him and looking too. Finally, he met Ray’s eyes and they both shrugged. Fraser got to his feet, calling to Dief, and they walked out of the alley.
As they walked back to the car, a man came out of the narrow doorway next to the bar. Guy who lived in the apartment over it, must’ve been. He was wearing a purple bathrobe and carrying a Yorkie. “Can I help you, gentlemen?” he said, blinking a little more often than was strictly necessary.
And oh, Christ, was he--no wonder O’Brien hadn’t wanted to come down here and get hit on by an old dude with a tiny dog.
“Perhaps you can,” Fraser answered. “Did you happen to see the incident in the alley last night?”
“I’ve seen a lot of incidents in a lot of alleys, officer,” he said coyly. “Care to be more specific?”
“Yeah,” Ray broke in. “Incident where a nineteen-year-old kid got beat almost to death. Ring any bells?”
“My dear God, I had no idea.” The man clutched at the neck of his bathrobe in apparent horror.
“Perhaps you saw or heard something important, even if you didn’t understand the significance at the time,” Fraser suggested.
He was shaking his head. “I was at the theatre last night, and then at a private party. I didn’t get home until almost three AM.”
“The incident occurred at about half-past midnight,” Fraser said. “But perhaps you can still be of help. Are you a patron of the, ah, establishment?” He gestured at the gay bar.
“I own the building, but I don’t go into the bar often. It attracts a, er, younger, and somewhat rougher crowd than I prefer.” He held the dog out a little. “Would you mind if I put Duchess down? We only came out because she had to use the facilities.”
“Oh. Be my guest,” Fraser said. The guy put the dog down and let it sniff around the telephone pole. Ray wasn’t too good at wolf facial expressions, but he was pretty sure Dief was laughing. As Duchess went about her business, Fraser continued, “Actually, we came here hoping to speak to the staff who were on duty in the, ah, establishment last night.”
“I have the manager’s telephone number. It’s upstairs in the apartment.” He collected his dog and went back upstairs, doing everything but muttering “Oh dearie me.”
Ray leaned against the car to wait. “You suppose there’s some kind of rule about guys like that and weenie dogs?”
Fraser glanced at Dief, who was pissing over where Duchess had. “I hope not.”
“Maybe we could put a bow on him or somethin’.”
“I don’t think he’d like that.”
“Point.”
Ray was just starting to wonder if the old queer was coming back down or not when he showed up. No dog this time. “Tom--he’s the manager--is on his way, and the rest of his staff should be here in under an hour.”
Ray had thought he was going to bring them the guy’s number, so they could call the guy and demand he show his face, but Fraser just said, “Thank you kindly,” and Ray decided not to make an ass of himself by complaining--it would work out the same way. “Since we have some time, perhaps you could recommend a place nearby where we might get a bite to eat while we’re waiting.”
That rocked the guy back on his heels, and Ray could practically see him wondering if he ought to send them someplace he actually liked, or point out the nearest doughnut shop, or possibly just tell them to go fuck themselves. Finally he said, “There’s a rather nice tea shop about halfway down the block. I’m especially partial to their scones.”
“Sounds delightful. Thank you kindly.” Fraser actually, literally, tipped his actual, literal hat, and set off in the direction of the tea shop.
Inside, there were fewer doilies than he’d expected, and way fewer old ladies. It was one of those places that was set up to look like somebody’s living room, with lots of couches and overstuffed chairs, and a few mismatched little tables. Just about everything that could be purple, was purple. Purple couches, purple pillows, purple walls, purple mugs. Most of the people there were kids--college-age kids--with piercings and hair more experimental than his.
The kind of people Ray always felt like were laughing behind their hands at him.
Fraser exclaimed in delight when he discovered they had something called Lapsang Souchong, which he eventually figured out was a kind of tea. He and the cashier, waitress, whatever you called her were laughing and chatting like old pals, until Ray said, “Yeah, and could I get a coffee?”
All the life went out of her face as she looked down at his badge and said, “Sure, Officer,” in a sort of Eddie-Haskell voice that made Ray want to smack her one.
Except Fraser sure as hell wouldn’t be proud of him if he hit a woman, so he just said, “Detective.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m a Detective.” He was embarrassed now, like he couldn’t quite remember why it mattered.
“Sorry, Detective. Jay, one Lapsang Souchong and one Americano.”
He waited until she turned away to mutter to Fraser, “Americano means coffee, right? Not, like, cup of warm spit?”
“Yes, Ray. Coffee.”
“’kay.” He handed Fraser some money and wandered over to a table to sit down.
Fraser stayed at the counter, chatting up the waitress some more, until he turned to the table with a mug in one hand and a plate in the other. “Ray,” he said, nodding toward the other mug, still on the counter.
Oh, his coffee. Right. Place like this wouldn’t have table service. He got up and got his coffee.
Fraser made appreciative noises about the tea, adding, “I wonder if they’d be willing to sell me a supply to take back to the Consulate. I’m sure Turnbull would appreciate it, too.”
Ray shrugged. “Doesn’t hurt to ask.” If he asked, he’d probably get kicked in the balls, but since it was Fraser, they’d probably send him home with a bag of it for free.
Fraser sipped at his tea, watching him over the top of the mug. “Is something wrong, Ray?”
“No, I just--” He couldn’t really say, I’m annoyed because everybody likes you.
But Fraser nodded encouragingly, and he felt like maybe he could. So he said, “It’s kind of annoying how everybody in the world likes you, that’s all.”
Fraser traced a circle on the mug with his thumb. “I do have a certain--facility with superficial social interactions, I suppose.”
Ray snorted. “You wanna spell that one out for the dumb flatfoot here, buddy?”
Fraser thought. “Most of the people who like me have known me for less than five minutes, and only will ever know me for five minutes.” He looked away. “I find I have more difficulty with--well, with the sixth minute, so to speak.”
And when he put it like that, Ray found that he did understand. It was the Super-Mountie that people liked. Even some of his biggest fans--Frannie, for instance--didn’t really know the real guy underneath. Maybe didn’t even quite know there was a real guy underneath. And maybe Fraser didn’t really know how to let them get to know that guy, or was afraid of what would happen if he did.
Fraser continued, “You, for instance, frequently express a desire to wring my neck.”
He was trying to lighten the mood, and Ray let him. “Yeah, that would be what happens in minutes six through ten.”
“Ah.” Fraser sipped again. “And what about, ah, minute eleven?”
Ray couldn’t really answer that the way he wanted to in the middle of public place, even if it was the kind of public place that would have the rest of the 2-7 clutching their balls as they ran the other way. But he grinned and bumped Fraser’s foot with his own under the table, which he figured oughta get the message across.
Fraser muffled a grin with his mug and said, “Understood.”
And after that, he did feel better. All he needed was that little reminder that Fraser wasn’t Superman, wasn’t some kind of angel or saint, he was just a guy who kept his vulnerabilities in maybe different spots than was the usual. And who didn’t mind showing them to Ray on occasion.
Fraser pushed the plate to the middle of the table. There were two sort of triangular cake-things on it. “Scone? I wasn’t sure which sounded better, the ginger-peach or the cinnamon and chocolate, so I got one of each. You can pick.”
And Ray didn’t care anymore that he had no fucking idea before this very minute what a scone even was. If pressed, he’d have thought it was maybe something like a pancake. “You know me, I’m all about the chocolate. Uh, which one is it?”
“That one, I think.” He pointed.
Ray broke off a piece and popped it in his mouth. It was full of melted bits of bittersweet chocolate, and the cinnamon didn’t really hit his tongue until he’d already swallowed. “Hey, that’s pretty good. We oughta take a bag of those back to the station. Nice change from doughnuts.”
Fraser hesitated. “Perhaps not, Ray.”
Took Ray a minute to catch up, but when he did, he saw what Fraser meant. Two of them came back from investigating a gay bashing, with a bag full of fucking scones and Fraser’s Lapsang Souchong. They’d look like a couple of frigging fairies. “Yeah, maybe not,” he agreed. “But it’s good. Here, try some of this one, and I’ll try some of yours.”
The peach-ginger thing wasn’t half bad either, although not as good as the chocolate one.
A minute or two later, the waitress girl came over. “Hey,” she told Fraser. “That guy who just came in? He’s the one I told you about.”
Fraser nodded. “Thank you. I’ll speak to him in a moment.” After the girl left, he explained to Ray, “I took advantage of the time while our drinks were being prepared to ask Mathilde if any of the regulars here also patronize the, the establishment down the street.”
Ray nodded. “Okay. You go ahead, okay?” He’d let Fraser do the Super-Mountie thing. Less likely to scare off the potential witness that way. “I’ll come over in a minute or two.”
“Understood.”
Fraser waited until the guy was sitting down on one of the couches with a cup of--well, something--before he made his way over. Ray watched--if Fraser’s ability to put people at ease wasn’t supernatural--and he knew damn well it wasn’t--maybe it was something he could learn, if he paid attention.
Fifteen seconds or so after they started talking, the guy jerked away like he was having a half-second or so’s thought about just bolting. Then Fraser opened his hands and said something else, and he was relaxing, leaning forward, nodding.
Ray wondered what he’d said to get that kind of reaction, that kind of openness. Maybe the body language had something to do with it. There was a reason cops liked suspects to show their hands--it proved they weren’t a threat.
There could be something to that. Ray was a fighter, always had been, from little on up. When he met somebody, without even thinking about it he puffed himself up, like a cat trying to look big, carried himself like he was getting ready to throw a punch. Fuck, no wonder nobody liked him.
Fraser looked over his shoulder, then, and Ray got up to join him. As he got into earshot, the kid said, “I don’t know, man, cops….” Ray noticed he was part Chinese or something--some kinda Asian. Shaggy dark hair and just a little bit of a fold to his eyes.
“I understand. But you see, my only official position in this city’s law enforcement structure is as a liaison with the Chicago PD, and Ray is the officer I, well, liaise with.”
Which was Fraser-ese for “He’s cool, man, I’ll vouch for him.” Ray relaxed his shoulders with a conscious effort, turned his open hands just ever-so-slightly outward.
The kid looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “Okay, cool.”
For just a tiny second, Ray felt like he maybe knew what it was like to be the Super-Mountie.
He sat down on another couch and Fraser made introductions. “Ray, this is David. He was at the club last night, and he may have danced with Miguel Ramierez.”
“Great. Greatness. And?”
“And that’s as far as we got, Ray.”
The kid--David--bit his lip. “I don’t even know for sure if it was him. I mean, we didn’t exchange names. But he seemed, you know. Nice. Is he gonna be okay?”
Ray rested his elbows on his knees, and clasped his hands loosely. “We don’t know. He’s in bad shape. Could go either way.”
David shut his eyes. “Fuck. I mean, I didn’t really know him. But….”
“Yeah, I know,” Ray said. “The things people do to each other, huh?”
He nodded gratefully. “Yeah. Yeah, it really sucks.”
“That it does.”
Fraser continued, “Did you notice anyone else Miguel--if it was Miguel--seemed to take a particular interest in?”
David shook his head. “I don’t know, it was crowded, and I wasn’t, like, stalking him or anything. Does it matter? It’s not like somebody from in there was the one who beat him up.”
“Well.” Fraser paused. “The alley where the assault took place doesn’t seem to have been routinely used for entrance or egress to the club.”
David looked puzzled, so Ray translated. “People go in and out, they use the front door, right?”
“Oh. Yeah.” The kid blushed. “The alley, people sometimes go back there to--you know.”
Fraser nodded. “If someone made an acquaintance that he wished to, ah, pursue, they might adjourn to the alley to…pursue it.”
“People go out there to fuck,” Ray supplied.
“Uh--yeah. That.”
“So Miguel probably wouldn’t have gone out into the alley alone, and since he was assaulted alone, it seems reasonable to suppose that whoever he went out there with was one of the assailants.”
David brought his hand up to his mouth. “Oh, shit. Shit, I didn’t think of that. So it was somebody--shit.”
Fraser nodded. “That would seem to be the case, yes.”
“Okay, let me think.” He poured a lot of sugar packets into his drink and stirred it way more than he probably had to. “There was one guy, who looked like he didn’t really--I don’t know. He was dressed right, but he was just kind of…scary. I can’t put my finger on why.”
“Instinct can be a valuable warning sign of danger,” Fraser pointed out. “What did this man look like?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t look at him too much.”
“Do you have any idea of his age? Race? Hair color?”
“Oh, he was white. Almost everybody who goes there is white. That’s why Miguel--why I noticed Miguel, I think we were the only two brown guys in there. Uh, really short hair, kind of military. It was too dark to know the color. Tall--taller than me, anyway. Close to six feet, maybe? And a little bit older than me…twenty five or so.”
Description like that wouldn’t let them pick the guy out of a crowd, but at least it ruled out a good percentage of the male population of Chicago. “Great. That’s a big help.”
David looked over at him. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Fraser was standing up and handing him another one of Ray‘s cards. “Thank you kindly, David.”
Ray got up too. “Yeah, thanks. And listen--be careful, okay?”
David met his eyes and nodded. “Yeah. Thanks. I will.”
They got back to the bar just as the manager was unlocking the front door. He was less of a screaming queen than the guy with the Yorkie--middle height, maybe forty, receding hairline. Built like he spent a lot of time in the gym, and dressed normal--chinos, button-down shirt. “Good morning, sir!” Fraser said heartily. “Constable Benton Fraser, Royal Canadian Mounted Police. And this is my partner, Detective Ray Vecchio, Chicago PD.”
“Yes, Stanley told me--”
“Who?” Ray demanded, before he had a chance to think about it.
The guy--Tom--looked at him like he was unhinged. “Mr. Davenport, who owns the building and lives upstairs. You talked to him this morning?”
“Oh. Guy with the dog. Yeah, okay.”
Tom continued, “Stanley told me you wanted to speak with my staff and I about what happened to that poor boy.”
“Yes, we do,” Fraser agreed. Tom got the door open, and they followed him inside.
Fraser started the rigmarole proving how the attacker must’ve picked Miguel up inside, but this time he hit a roadblock when Tom assured him that the alley was never, ever, used for any kind of indecent behavior. Fraser kept saying things like, “The material evidence suggests that’s just not true,” and “we have it on good authority that,” until Ray had to interrupt. “Look, Tom, we’re not here to arrest anybody for public indecency, or littering, or corrupting the morals of an alley. We’re here to find out who just about killed a nineteen-year-old kid. We do not care what goes on in the alley except in that it relates to our case.”
After that, Tom allowed as how the alley might once in a while be used, by his customers but without his knowledge, to transact some personal business. But he’d been in his office in the back for most of the night, and hadn’t seen Miguel until another alley-user raised the alarm, and he’d gone out there to maintain order until the EMTs came. Hadn’t seen anyone who looked suspicious, either. Didn’t keep track of who was a regular and who wasn’t.
In short, was absolutely no help at all. The rest of the employees started showing up, and most of them weren’t much help either. The bouncer looked at IDs, not faces (and not very closely at either, since they knew Miguel was underage, and David probably was too). He wasn’t paid to pay attention to who danced with who. The bartender had been filling glasses and changing kegs all night. “Sometimes I have time to pay attention to who’s here and what they’re doing, but not last night.”
“Maybe you could tell us if this man was here on some of the other kind of nights,” Fraser suggested, showing Miguel’s picture. It was a high school graduation photo, cap and gown in the colors of one of the big Catholic schools.
“Yeah, he’s been in. A few times. Cute, but not really my type.”
And he was, oh my God, flirting. With Fraser. Fraser just said, “Ah. Well. Do you know if he makes a habit of visiting the, ah, alley?”
The bartender slowly wiped down a glass. “Maybe.”
Fraser nodded. “Did you happen to see who he went into the alley with last night?”
“Like I said, I was busy.”
Ray tried a different tack. “Did you notice anybody in here last night who wasn’t the usual?”
“There were a lot of strangers here. Busy night, lots of out-of-towners. It gets like that on weekends.”
“Not just somebody you hadn’t seen before. Somebody who seemed out of place. Like he didn’t belong?”
The bartender looked him up and down. “You mean like you?”
He made a conscious effort to put that old off-putting aggression into his posture. Shoulders up, hands closed and slightly back. If he reminded the bartender of the mysterious scary guy, playing up the resemblance might jog his memory. “Yeah, whatever.”
The bartender put down the glass. “Now that you mention it, there was a guy who seemed kind of…off. Not sure why. Lots of people are uncomfortable their first time in a place like this, but this was different somehow.”
Ray nodded encouragingly. “What’d he look like?”
The bartender wasn’t as good of a witness as David--he hadn’t been attracted to the suspect, either, and he hadn’t paid much attention--but what description he managed to get, matched.
“Okay, good. Now, you see this guy again, you let us know.” He got one of his cards from Fraser’s stash and added his home and cell numbers to the back. “Any time, day or night. If we’re not in the office, we’ll be at this number, if we’re not at home, we’ll have the cell phone turned on. Just keep goin’ down the list till you get an answer.”
“I get busy--I might not have time to make a lot of calls,” he said doubtfully.
“Sir,” Fraser jumped in. “Protecting the safety of your community must take a higher priority than your other job duties. Detective Vecchio and I will make sure your manager understands.”
“It’s not just Tom; slow service means slow tips.”
“Ah.” Fraser reached inside his hat. “Understood. Perhaps I could--”
Ray took the hat out of his hands. “No, Frase. You’re not paying this guy to make a phone call.”
“Possibly as many as three phone calls,” Fraser pointed out.
“Yeah, and it’s five minutes. He’s gonna do it because it’s the right thing to do.” He jammed the hat onto Fraser’s head and glared at the bartender. “Right?”
He nodded. “Yeah, okay. You’re right, sorry.” He tucked Ray’s business card in his shirt pocket.
As they turned to go, he grinned over at Fraser. Look at that, he’d put the Super-Mountie whammy on a guy, all by himself, practically.
Fraser smoothed an eyebrow with his thumb and shook his head, amused. They rejoined Dief at the car, and Ray said, “Okay, back to the station I guess, unless you got a better idea.”
“No, I don’t think there’s anything further we can accomplish on the street today,” Fraser agreed. Ray had driven a couple of blocks before he continued, “But.”
“Yeah?” Ray glanced over at him.
“It occurs to me that we might be able to locate some of the witnesses that departed the scene before the uniformed officers arrived last night.”
“Yeah? How we gonna do that?” Ray asked, even though he had a pretty good idea.
“Well, we’d have to return to the…establishment…during its normal operating hours.”
“Go to the gay bar when it’s open.”
“For purely professional reasons,” Fraser added.
“Well, yeah.” He thought. If it was just the awkwardness, the embarrassment, the teasing they were gonna be in for at the 2-7, he’d say go for it, couldn’t hurt, might help. But once you added in their…thing…he had to worry about maybe somebody realizing that the teasing was hitting a little close to home. But they couldn’t let that fear--perfectly justified, necessary, and rational fear--keep them from working the case the way it needed to be worked. They didn’t become cops because they wanted to put protecting their own asses first.
Okay, maybe not the best choice of words.
“What for? I mean, what do you think we’re gonna accomplish?”
“Well, we might be able to locate someone who got a better look at the man in question. Someone who was attracted to him might have absorbed the details of his appearance enough to furnish a detailed description.”
Ray nodded. That could be. “Yeah. Maybe we can get ‘em to sit down with a sketch artist. Picture of the guy could really come in handy.’
“I could work up a reasonably accurate sketch myself, so we wouldn’t even need to convince someone to come down to the station.”
“Oh, hey, yeah.” He’d forgotten that was one of the Super Mountie’s talents. “Yeah, unless we get some big break in the case before then, we’ll do it.”
“It’s a date,” Fraser said solemnly.
#
They spent the afternoon on the paperwork for the previous case. With Fraser helping, he got most of it done and delivered to Welsh’s desk by five. While they were in there, Fraser cleared his throat meaningfully.
“You comin’ down with something, Fraser?” Ray asked.
He did it again. “Don’t you think you should inform the Leftenant about our plans for the evening?”
Ray stared at him.
“So he can authorize the expenses?”
Now that Fraser’d brought it up, he pretty much had to. He’d just as soon have paid for their drinks himself. “Oh, yeah, that assault,” he told Welsh. “We thought we’d go back to the bar, see if we can find any witnesses that maybe left the scene without giving their names last night.”
“The gay bar assault?” Welsh asked.
“That’s the one,” Ray said, at the same time that Fraser said, “Yes, sir.”
“All right, if you want to. But keep the expenses to a minimum--you don’t have to send a drink to every pretty boy you see.”
Without batting an eye, Fraser said, “Understood,” which was good, because Ray didn’t have any idea what the hell to say. He knew Welsh was just messing with him, but it hit a little too close to home, giving Ray a half-second of so’s panic that Welsh was on to them.
Finally, he pulled his wits together enough to say, “Funny, sir! I’ll bear that in mind.”
They left. “I should make an appearance back at the Consulate,” Fraser said apologetically. “I suppose we have a few hours?”
“Yeah, a few,” Ray agreed. Damn, he’d hoped to have some downtime with Fraser today. Greedy of him, since Fraser’d spent the night. “I’ll pick you up at ten.”
“Ten? Don’t you think we should attempt to establish a presence before the evening’s, ah, activities, are in full swing?”
“Yeah, I do,” Ray said. “And ten should be about right.”
Fraser squinted at him. “Are you sure?”
“Very sure.” He drove toward the consulate. As they got closer, Fraser started shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “You gotta take a leak or something?”
“Er, no, thank you.”
“Then what’s the matter?”
“Well, I was just wondering…”
Did he want to know what Fraser was wondering? No he did not. “What?”
Fraser’s face had a brief but furious war with itself before he burst out, “What should I wear?”
Ray dropped his forehead onto the steering wheel. Fortunately, they were at a stoplight when he did this. “Your uniform, I guess. The brown one.”
“The brown one? Ray, the light’s changed.”
He picked up his head so he could drive again. “Yeah. It’s not as sexy as the red one.”
#
It wasn’t until an hour before he was due to pick up Fraser that Ray realized he didn’t have the slightest clue what he was gonna wear. Deciding for Fraser was no problem: the man only had three outfits, and he looked like sex on a stick in all of them. Fraser was gonna get hit on--boy, was he gonna get hit on--but Fraser could handle it.
Ray didn’t think he could. He didn’t much care that he was havin’ sex with a guy, plannin’ on spending the rest of his life with a guy. Nervous enough that they hadn’t done any of the real serious stuff yet, but he was okay with knowing it was gonna happen sometime in the future. Bein’ in love and not having it thrown back in his face like trash felt good. Best thing ever, and he wasn’t gonna let the fact that he and Fraser both had dicks mess that up for him.
But he knew how guys got when they were out lookin’ for sex. Times like that, most guys didn’t see a woman as a person. They saw her as a buncha parts--tits, legs, ass, cunt, mouth--movin’ around and talking, maybe, but still not really adding up. He’d never thought of Stella--or Fraser, either--as a bunch of parts. He loved the whole overwhelming package, the gestalt. (One of Fraser’s ten-dollar words.) He’d hated trying to make himself think of women that way when he was single and just wanted to get touched without gettin’ hurt.
And anyway, he didn’t much like the idea of a bunch of guys he didn’t even know looking at him the way straight guys looked at women. He didn’t know which’d be worse, if they liked what they saw or if they didn’t. He had decent muscles, and he moved pretty; he knew that much. Looked like a total Poindexter in his glasses. He could keep them in his pocket, put ‘em on if he felt like he was looking too good.
Okay, so he had the glasses bit figured out. That just left what he was gonna put on the rest of his body. It oughta be something that said, “This here is a totally heterosexual cop who you can trust on account of he’s totally cool with you bein’ gay and is not gonna give you a hard time or lose your report accidentally-on-purpose, despite being 100% heterosexual and, by the way, kinda ugly so stop lookin’.”
Kinda a lot to expect of some jeans and maybe a jacket.
On to part 3!