“That’s right,” Tommy said with wink and a knowing smirk. “If I were you, I’d make sure his report is one hundred percent perfect. Doing it over a time or two or three will be great practice for him, and marking him down will be good for whatever’s ailing you at the moment. Go give him hell.”
Dismissed, I left the smoky haze of the Fishbowl, doing a slow burn. Next to Larry Powell and Watty, I was one of the most senior guys on the squad. It made no sense to stick me with a newbie who would do nothing but hold me back. Rather than go straight to my cubicle, I beat a path to Larry and Watty’s.
“Gee, thanks,” I said, standing in the entrance to their five-foot-by-five-foot cell. Which brings me to something else that provokes me to no end. How come prisoners get more room in their cells than we do in our offices? What’s fair about that?
“For what?” Larry asked.
“For giving me the new guy.”
“He’s not brand-new,” Larry advised. “We’ve had to hold his hand for the better part of a week before you came back, so quit your gritching. Besides, you were new once, too.”
“Sure you were,” Watty said with a grin. “Back when Noah was building that ark, or maybe was it even earlier, back when dinosaurs still roamed the earth?”
“Funny,” I grumbled. “So how did he go about getting moved up from Patrol? The last I heard, the word was out that there weren’t any openings in Homicide.”
“There weren’t until Eddy got promoted,” Watty said, “but I’ve heard some talk from other people about this, too. Beaumont’s former partner from Patrol, Rory MacPherson, was angling to get into Motorcycles. Beaumont wanted Homicide. A week ago Sunday, the two of them took a dead body call. The next thing you know, voilà! Like magic, they both get the promotions they wanted.”
“In other words, something stinks to the high heavens. Are you telling me my new partner is also some bigwig’s fair-haired boy?”
“Can’t say for sure, but it could be,” Larry Powell allowed.
“Sure as hell doesn’t make me like him any better.”
Unable to delay the inevitable any longer, I stomped off and headed for my lair. As I approached my little corner of Homicide, I heard the sound of someone pounding the hell out of our old Underwood. My mother did me a whale of a favor by insisting I take touch typing in high school. When it comes to writing reports, being able to use all my fingers is a huge help. Obviously this guy’s mother hadn’t been that smart. Jonas Beaumont was your basic two-fingered typist, plugging away one slow letter key at a time. When I paused in the entrance, he was frowning at the form in the machine with such purpose and concentration that he didn’t see me standing there. I noticed right off that he was sitting in the wrong chair.
“I’m Detective Gurkey,, your new partner,” I announced by way of introduction. “The desk you’re using happens to be mine.”
He glanced up at me in surprise. “They told me to use this cubicle,” he said. “This is the desk that was empty.”
“Maybe so,” I told him, “but that was Eddy’s desk. He was senior, and he had the window. Eddy’s gone now. I’m senior. You’re junior. I get the window.”
Admittedly, the view from the window is crap. Still, a window is a window. It’s a status symbol kind of thing.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Just let me finish this.”
“No,” I replied. “I don’t think you understand. Like I said, I’m senior. You’re junior. That means I don’t stand around in the hallway waiting while you get your act together, clear your lazy butt out of my chair, and clean your collection of crap off my desk. Once your stuff is gone, I move into this one. Just because Watty held your hand and treated you with kid gloves all last week doesn’t mean I’m going to. Got it?”
“Got it,” he answered promptly, pushing his chair away from the desk. “Right away.”
I knew I was being a first-class jerk, but that was the whole idea. I wanted the guy gone, and making him miserable was the fastest way to get that job accomplished. I stood there tapping my foot with impatience while he gathered up his coat from the chair and emptied everything he had carefully loaded into Eddy’s empty desk drawers back out onto the top of the desk. After that I took my own sweet time about moving my stuff from one desk to the other. I could tell he was steaming about it while he had to wait, but I didn’t let on that I noticed. After all, this was one pissing match I was determined to win.
I left him cooling his heels until I was almost done sorting, then I sent him for coffee. “Two creams, three sugars, and no lectures,” I told him. “I get nutritional advice from my wife. I don’t need any from you. And if you want coffee for yourself, you’d better get it now. Once we start hitting the bricks, we won’t be stopping for coffee and doughnuts. This is Homicide, Jonah; it’s not Patrol.”
The Jonah bit was a deliberate tweak, and he lunged for the bait.
“Jonas,” he corrected. “The name’s Jonas, but my friends call me either J. P. or Beau.”
“I’m your partner not your friend,” I told him. “That means Jonas it is for the foreseeable future.”