Gospel Read Free

out of BPD’s Roxbury headquarters and wondering what gem her pain-in-the-ass partner would be coming out with next.
    â€˜Cyclists!’
    â€˜I see them, McKay. They’ve got reflectors on their wheels and it isn’t that dark yet. They’re from Northeastern. They train around here. So what?’
    â€˜They’re rude sons of bitches.’
    â€˜What?’ she said again, turning left into Tremont, heading east towards the Fairmont, and way past hiding her frustration.
    â€˜Rude,’ said Detective Frank McKay.
    â€˜Cyclists are rude.’
    â€˜Yeah.’
    â€˜All of them.’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Okay,’ she said, not sure she had the energy to go ‘there’, wherever ‘there’ was, with her
prone to ridiculous generalisations
partner, but knowing she probably didn’t have any choice.
    â€˜Every morning before my shift,’ said McKay, needing no encouragement to continue. ‘I grab a coffee at Eat This! You know it?’
    â€˜Yeah, I know it,’ said Leigh, and she did, except she figured they made a mistake with the second word on the crappy plastic logo out front. ‘This!’ should read ‘Shit!’ Just got their anagrams shuffled is all.
    â€˜Anyways,’ McKay went on, ‘the cyclists come in early every morning, making all that noise with those taps on their shoes.’
    â€˜Cleats.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜They’re called cleats, not taps. They’re cyclists, Frank, not Vaudeville players.’
    â€˜Right,’ said McKay who was not put off, just annoyed at being interrupted. ‘They push on past everyone in the queue, all sweaty and naked.’
    â€˜Naked?’
    â€˜Well, those fancy clothes they wear are so tight they may as well be.’
    â€˜Right.’
    â€˜They yell out their orders, five of this, four of that, confusin’ Martha behind the counter, pickin’ up the muffins in their clammy hands and then placin’ them back in the bread basket. No “please”, no “thank you”. Can’t understand why Martha puts up with them.’
    â€˜Probably because she charges four bucks a pop for that shit she calls coffee and those rude naked people make her a small fortune in a space of twenty minutes or less and all before eight o’clock in the morning.’
    â€˜Not worth it.’
    â€˜Because they’re rude?’
    â€˜Yep.’
    â€˜And naked.’
    â€˜You got it.’
    â€˜Of course. Don’t know why I bothered asking.’
    Detective Leigh had copped a fair bit of flack for volunteering for this detail. It’s not like her ambition was a secret. Hell, everyone knew she had her sights set on Commissioner as soon as she was out of diapers, but the guys in homicide would not have felt like ‘guys’ if they hadn’t at least pulled her chain a few times over her zealous determination to offerher services as extra security for Vice President Tom Bradshaw’s campaign dinner at the five-star Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel.
    For most of the gang in homicide, Chief Joe Mannix included, details like this were a pain in the butt. But she saw them as ‘opportunities’ and Christ only knows, Susan was not one to miss an opportunity. Never had, never would.
    The truth was, she couldn’t give a shit about the ribbing. She was only twenty-six, the youngest detective in homicide, and a skirt at that. Maybe, if they took a few minutes to work out why she was climbing the ladder at ten times the speed of most of the other penises in the department, they might realise volunteering for jobs like this was a no brainer.
    Mannix would be there. He was even bringing his wife Marie, who Leigh had never met – which was no surprise given Lieutenant Mannix worked 24/7 and had a definite aversion to anything remotely resembling a social gathering. Word had it Marie Mannix was some sort of natural Italian-American beauty