Stripping off his uniform shirt, Vincent felt a squish.
“Awwww, fuck.”
“Smatter?” DuChene Harald asked, knowing it couldn’t be too serious in the relative safety of the 16th Precinct lockerroom.
“Didn’t it feel pretty chilly to you today?” Vincent asked.
“Kind of, at first, I got used to it. It was downright warm by the end.”
“One of the protesters today, really pretty blonde, she gave me a candy bar.”
“You taking gifts from protestors now?” DuChene asked, stern annoyance in his voice.
DuChene bled the rulebook. Some of the guys called him Eliot Ness behind his back. No question he would move to Internal Affairs before his career was over.
“First time I ever got offered anything by a protestor. It was climate change, homey, it wasn’t anything super lefty. Anyway, the damn thing melted in my pocket.”
“Of course your body heat is going to soften a chocolate bar after a few hours. You would have been a fool to eat it anyway, Vincent. Protestors do not like LEO’s.
“It’s fully wrapped.”
DuChene ran a brush over his hair, looked down.
“Yes, it would be utterly impossible to poison a paper-wrapped candy bar.” He shook his head, looked for a second like he might swat Vincent with his brush, though he would never.
“She was harmless, man. Said I looked pale, looked like I could use some sugar. Said there was ginger in it, natural ginger extract, good for the digestion.”
DuChene inhaled and stuck his hand out.
“Give it to me. I’ll take it downtown and have the lab look at it.”
Vincent took his turn to shake his head:
“If you do, you’ll have to introduce it as evidence of an attempted crime against an officer. It will get me in trouble for accepting a gift.”
DuChene grimaced.
“Promise me you’ll either give it to me to destroy or destroy it in front of me.”
“It’s not a bomb, it’s just a really fancy candy bar some really hot girl gave me.”
“What did the woman look like?” DuChene asked. “Every protest has its share of true antigovernment agitators.”
“I don’t know,” Vincent said. “If she was hardcore, she wouldn’t have given a cop a candy bar.”
“Unless of course, she tampered with it,” DuChene said. ”What did she look like?”
Vincent felt guilty. The woman seemed so nice. She was wearing a black sports bra with an unbuttoned flannel. When she raised her sign that said: Climate Action NOW! Vincent noticed a mole or a birthmark on her rib cage. He thought it sort of looked like Bugs Bunny, but he wasn’t going to tell DuChene that.
***
Photo Courtesy of Getty Images
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I liked the story a lot, Jimmy. Also, I don’t know if I’ve ever commented on this, but you always nail your characters’ names. It makes them more complex/more complete, somehow.
DuChene’s a tool.