The 27

Harding Welsh grimaced after taking a gulp of bitter black coffee.  It was cold and his Jell-O was a warm semi-liquid.  His salad was a dressing-laden, soggy pile of green mush.  He took up his paper dishes, stood and dumped the whole mess in the trash, heaving a disgusted sigh.  Well, that’s what happens when your lunch is interrupted, he thought.  He had left his half-eaten food out on the table in the canteen, having gotten called away by Tom Dewey, and had forgotten all about it until his stomach started growling.

He fished some change out of his pocket for a fresh cup of coffee and a Hershey bar, and walked over to the bank of vending machines.  The doc said lose twenty pounds. To hell with the diet.    He’d been starving himself for four months and he’d lost three pounds.  He’d eaten so many green leafy vegetables, he was surprised he hadn’t sprouted leaves like a tree. 

It had been a bad week.  A bad month.  Two murders so far; one execution-style, a drug deal gone bad, and the other a case of domestic violence.  A man stabbed and killed his cousin when he came home early and caught him in bed with his wife. 

So far in just this week alone, there were two home invasions, a gas station robbery, two stabbings, and three car jackings.  And it was only Tuesday.

And to top it all off, this morning, the diner across the street had been held up.  In broad daylight.  With two cops inside. Oh, the news media was having a field day with this one. His phone had been ringing off the hook.  He’d already been reamed by Captain Miller. Twice.

He marched back to his office, taking large bites of the candy bar with his long strides.

Harding never ceased to be stunned by the level of people’s brazenness these days.  Compared to what was going on now in the streets, the 70’s, when he started walking the beat, was a cake walk. He had been a different man then; rail-thin and optimistic.  He had joined the force to do right.  Nowadays, a lot of these kids joined the force so they could look like a tough guy, a hot shot. Some of them were no different from the criminals they locked away, temperament-wise.  Last month a cop at the 22 had been suspended for shoplifting at Petit’s.  Two months before that, a cop in Aurora had been arrested for child-abuse.  The world was an ugly place.

Harding had finished his candy bar before he even reached his office.  He tossed the wrapper, but it missed the can.  He didn’t even bother picking it up.  He sat down with his hot coffee.

As soon as his ass hit the seat, his phone rang. He cringed.  Every local reporter in the greater Chicago area had already called him about the robbery across the street. Who the hell was left to call him?

He ignored the phone, grabbing the stack of files that someone had dropped into his in box in the last hour.  It was crazy.  As soon as he finished one file, three appeared.  Harding wished he had a good belt of whiskey for his coffee right now. That’d hit the spot.

The phone stopped ringing abruptly.  Looked like Marg grabbed it.  Harding relaxed, sat back, and took a good long whiff of his coffee before taking a sip from the hot liquid.  He closed his eyes, trying to ease the headache that had formed behind them.  He pulled at his neck restlessly, trying to work the kinks out.

The intercom buzzed loudly.  “Damn!” he said softly.  Why couldn’t Marg just handle it, whatever reporter it was? He was tired of answering the same questions.

The intercom buzzed again, longer, insistently.  Annoyed, he snatched the phone.  “What!?” he barked.

“Sorry!” Marg cried.  Harding could practically see her cringing in her seat. “But I have Benton!”

“Oh?”

“Would you like me to have him call back?”

“Oh, no, no. I’ve got it, thanks.”  Well, this bode well.  Welsh picked up the other line. “Hello!”

“Good afternoon, Lef-tenant,” came the warm and pleasant voice.  Somehow, Benton Fraser always sounded like he had all the time in the world.  Not once had Harding seen Fraser’s feathers ruffled.  “I hope I’m not interrupting?”

“Oh no, not at all.  I hope you’re calling to continue our conversation from last week?”

“Yes, I’d like to.  You see, sir, I have a lot of things to sort out.  I’ve been contacted by the K-9 Division and also by the Marine Unit as well and –

My, my, my, thought Welsh.  People sure could talk.  His best pal, Steve Shaw, headed the Marine Unit, and here he was trying to steal Ben Fraser right from under him, the backstabbing, conniving little—

“I’ll tell you what,” Welsh interrupted.  “Are you on duty right now?”

“Actually, I just arrived home.”

“You wanna grab some supper? My treat.”

“Oh! Well, that would be lovely!”

“I’ll grab one of the squad cars.  I’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes.  Deal?”

“Why, sure!  I mean, ‘deal’!”

Welsh could have kissed the man.  He needed an excuse to get the hell out of here for a while, and he needed some real food, not some….rabbit food.  He rolled down his sleeves, grabbed his wool blazer, and headed for his door.

Harding slipped out the back.

VVVVVV

Harding let himself into his apartment, dropped his keys and his mail, and made it as far as the couch before he dropped.  He was exhausted, maybe slightly tipsy.  He was gonna have heartburn, for sure, but his huge meal of filet mignon and buttery mashed potatoes made it worthwhile.

He flipped on the TV, and pulled off his shoes.  He loosened his tie and removed his belt.  He sat back on the couch with a relieved sigh.  God, it felt good to be home.

The dinner with Fraser had been very enlightening.  For starters, when he sat down with Fraser, he realized that in nearly a decade of knowing him, this was the first time that they had broken bread together.  They’d never really had a conversation that was longer than fifteen minutes.  He really, really liked the man. 

They had talked for two hours.  He was struck by how similar they were.  Fraser reminded him of himself.  He supposed that’s why he always liked the young man.  Fraser was himself twenty years ago, and he was Fraser twenty years in the future.  He just hoped Fraser didn’t end up alone like him. 

Twice married, twice divorced, living in a nine-hundred square foot one-bedroom apartment in the wrong part of town was not exactly how his life plan was supposed to go.  Ten years in the Marines, and twenty-five years in the FOP, and what did he have to show for it all?  A bad back, chronic heartburn, and a lousy pension badly eroded by recession. 

Esther had left him for a guy ten years his junior who probably didn’t need Viagra to keep it up, and his father in the nursing home was barely clinging to life, refusing to die, running up bills into the thousands of dollars per month.  Even with his brother kicking in and footing some of the bill, Harding was going to be in the poor house for years to come.

His life had turned into a bad country song.  All he needed now was his hound dog to die and his truck to break down, and his misery would pretty much be complete.

The one good thing was that he believed that tonight, he had convinced Fraser to join them in the spring.  Luckily for them, Major Sherman had the hots for Captain Miller, and would do just about anything for her.  He had all but promised her to go right to Chief Silva to make sure Benton Fraser ended up right at the good old 27. 

The beautiful thing is that their budget increase was approved for the coming fiscal year, and they could hire two more detectives for the bull pen.  He hoped to get Elaine back, make her a detective, too.  That young lady was wiping the floor with everybody over at the 22.  Rumor had it that even when she was eight and a half months pregnant, she had chased a bank robber down the street, tackled and cuffed him.  Probably a bit of a tall tail, but he bet it wasn’t that much of a stretch. Man, that was some woman.   If he could pair up Fraser and Besbriss……my God, St. Jude would write me a ‘go to heaven free’ pass, and I could die peacefully.

As it was, he had a pretty damned good team already.  He wasn’t complaining.  Dewey and Donald got along very well, and were solid. 

Doyle and Kowalski got off to a rough start at first.  Kowalski took Vecchio’s spot after Vecchio went on medical leave.  Kowalski made the mistake of criticizing Vecchio a little too much for Doyle’s comfort.  Kowalski was the asshole who Vecchio got into that bar fight with, once Vecchio and Fraser’s relationship came to light a few years back.  He thought he was just going to waltz in and keep shooting off his mouth with the gay-bashing bullshit, but Doyle was having none of it. 

Doyle had taken Stanley outside and settled the matter in the old-school way.  They both came back inside, a little bloody, but with a newfound respect for one another.  Doyle found out the scrappy blond was a hell of a fighter, despite his lean build, and Kowalski found out that Doyle sure as hell wasn’t anybody’s bitch.  On the record, Welsh had to give them a reprimand, but off the record, he was glad that they hammered out their differences.  Kowalski publicly apologized for talking shit about Vecchio, and the two of them settled down into a decent working relationship.

It was nice to catch up with Fraser, and through him, Vecchio.  Welsh had heard good things about Vecchio in his new position.  He knew he hadn’t made a mistake in getting him there.  Miller thought it was a bad idea.  She had passed him over for promotion to sergeant three times.  She despised the man. 

After Vecchio got sick and it wasn’t looking too good, Welsh hashed out a deal with her. If Vecchio made it back to work, there’d be a promotion waiting for him. For Christ sake, he had told her, have a little compassion, woman! he’d finally yelled, exasperated.  She relented.  She let the promotion through, but only to the less-prestigious FTO position, and only on the shittiest beat in the city.

Harding was proud to see that Vecchio had made the best of it.  Vecchio was not the man that he once was.  The cancer had changed him.  And most importantly, Benton Fraser had changed him.

What a revelation those two were.  He had been surprised and yet not surprised when the word got around that the two of them were sleeping together.  From the get-go, those two were constantly in each other’s back pockets.  Fraser was at the station at some time or another almost everyday, sometimes for hours.  Harding had no idea how he got the rest of his job done.  And if Fraser wasn’t at the precinct, then you could best believe that Ray was at the Canadian Consulate, getting underfoot.  He had fielded a dozen complaining phone calls from that ghastly woman, that Thatcher woman, about his detective and how he was distracting her constable from his duties.  The thing was, she was no more successful in keeping them apart than he was. Unlike her, he accepted the tight-knit duo, and used their close partnership to his advantage.  Vecchio and Fraser together were a dream-team.  An unorthodox one, but a dream-team nonetheless. 

Fraser had told him that he and Vecchio were expecting a baby together; Miss Vecchio was doing them the honor.  Wow.  He guessed those two were the real deal.

Welsh sat, half-dozing until the ten o’clock news started.  The opening story was about the daring diner heist under the noses of Chicago’s finest today.  He turned the channel to the other news.  And there he was fleeing the cameras, pushing one out of his face, and yelling at a reporter.  Great.  Just great. 

The phone suddenly rang.  He sat up and checked his caller ID.  It was Wilson.  He let the machine pick it up.  His brother left him a message stating that he was watching him on the news.  Harding checked the rest of his messages.  His cousin Roosevelt called to tell him he’d seen him on the six o’clock news.  His nephew Kennedy called, and so did his buddy Joe. 

Steve Shaw left him a message telling him what a jackass he looked like today.  (Why was Steve his best friend, again?)  Harding quickly listened to and deleted the other sixteen messages. 

He’d gotten back to the precinct after the long supper break and found two messages from Chief Sutton waiting on his desk.  The big Chief expected to see him in his office first thing in the morning.  “Fuck me,” he had growled, balling up the messages and tossing them in the trash.   

Harding Welsh unplugged the phone, stood, and put a hand to his sore lower back.  He shuffled off to bed.