Lennie sighed as he listened to Rey whistling absently. They both stared at the front door of the brownstone. Eight hours they'd been here, their third day on this stakeout. The van's radio was broken and Lennie had forgotten to bring cards. Lennie was sure he'd never, ever forget again.
Lennie blew out his breath and read over their stakeout notes for the millionth time.
9:00AM: Second shift begins stakeout.
9:13AM: Window opens on the second floor.
10:02AM: Window closes.
11:32AM: Postal worker delivers mail.
12:39PM: Subject retrieves mail.
12:43PM: Det. Briscoe leaves van to get lunch.
1:13PM: Det. Briscoe returns, Det. Curtis reports no movement.
1:15PM: Det. Curtis has grilled cheese on rye with milk, Det. Briscoe has an egg salad sandwich, coke (entry scratched out)
2:45PM: Subject exits premises! (exclamation mark scratched out)
2:47PM: Subject picks up newspaper from box two doors away and returns to premises.
3:45PM: Det. Briscoe would like to request an inquiry into Det. Curtis' obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (entry scratched out)
They'd played word games until they got bored, then Lennie had talked about horses which Rey didn't care about in the slightest and Rey had talked about a new computer game which Lennie didn't care about in the slightest. Lennie had asked Rey to teach him Spanish swear words and after picking at his objections for half an hour ("I don't know any", "They don't translate", "Why don't I just teach you verbs") he'd finally worn him down and learned some pretty good ones. Although Rey commented that Lennie's pronunciation of one of them (pendejo) was so atrocious that nobody could possibly understand him and Lennie said it didn't matter since he was pretty sure that Rey made that one up. Who would insult somebody by calling them a pubic hair?
They'd bickered about it for a while, Rey maintaining that it was a legitimate insult in Peru and Lennie claiming he'd never heard of anything so stupid. Rey told Lennie he'd once dated a French girl who said one of the worst swears in French was "blue ritual", and Lennie again accused Rey of making that up. Lennie had tried to remember his grandmother's Yiddish swear words to teach Rey, which was pretty funny because Lennie knew he probably had a horrible Yiddish accent and Rey couldn't even get his mouth around some of the words. Lennie had finally told him to just stick with Oy Vey and Rey had called him a pubic hair.
They had gotten so unbelievably bored they had actually started to gossip about their fellow police officers. Lennie couldn't recall that ever happening with Rey before - Rey really didn't seem to register most of the scuttlebutt that happened in the squad room - but Rey had noticed some goings-on between two of the female unis and one of the men. And Lennie had told Rey about one of the officers who was trying to make Detective but who had the rotten luck to have made a racist joke near Van Buren. He now thought she held a grudge against him. Which was funny chiefly because Van Buren hadn't actually heard the joke, she just thought he was an ass on his own merit.
But now the gossip was all done and for the last half hour they'd been sitting and trying not to think about how monumentally bored they were. And Rey was whistling softly, almost tunelessly. The repetitive non-tune was starting to get on Lennie's nerves, in part because he was sure he recognized it, or he would if he just thought about it long enough. Suddenly he grinned.
"Rey, what are you whistling?"
"Huh?"
"What are you whistling?"
"Uh-"
"You were whistling The Itsy Bitsy Spider, weren't you?"
Rey blushed slightly. Yes, he had been. Hadn't noticed.
"You've been whistling the Itsy Bitsy Spider for the last half hour. You wanna vary the play list a little? Maybe do Mary Had A Little Lamb?" Rey shot him an annoyed look.
"How are the kids?"
"Pretty good."
"How's Deborah?"
"Pretty good."
"You know, you don't talk about your family much lately." Rey shrugged. There was a brief silence. "So how'd you and Deborah meet?"
"What?"
"How'd you and Deborah meet?"
"Why do you wanna know?"
"Because we've been sitting here almost three days and we've got another four hours to go and I'm gonna shoot you if you start to whistle Three Blind Mice."
"OK, OK. We, uh, we met at a friend's house."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
There was a silence.
"Rey, you've gotta be the worst story teller I've ever met."
Rey shrugged again. More silence. Rey thought of something. "How's AA going?" he asked casually.
"OK," Lennie said shortly. Lennie had fallen off the wagon a month before, the day they'd watched Mickey Scott's execution. Afterwards, Van Buren had made Rey agree to check up on him periodically, but neither one of them was very happy about that and they never went into detail.
"Still twice a week?"
"Yeah."
"Good." Silence again. "Uh, you wanna play Cities?"
"No thanks. You always win." Lennie suddenly had an inspiration. He'd been wondering about something for a while now.
"Truth or Dare?" he suggested.
"What are you, twelve?"
"No, no, grownup stakes. Like if you refuse to answer, you have to do up a file."
Rey had an image of the pile of paperwork on his desk. He briefly thought of his partner's checkered and rather long history compared to his own penchant for staying out of trouble for most of his life, and figured this might be an easy way to get rid of some of it. There was only one thing in his past that he really wouldn't want to discuss, and if it came up he'd just plead out and do a file. Besides, it might while away a little bit of time.
"Sure."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"OK. How did you and Deborah meet?"
"We met at a friend's house."
"Come on."
"OK, OK. I had this friend, Harry, and his girlfriend was having a party, and..." Rey launched into the story.
They hadn't played for very long before Rey realized that agreeing to this had been a bad idea. Lennie had no shame whatsoever - he'd answered every question fully, comprehensively, with gusto and with far more detail than Rey really wanted. He doubted he'd be able to get the image of Lennie in drag singing "I Feel Pretty" out of his mind any time soon, Lennie's answer to the question, "What's the most embarrassing thing you ever did in college?"
Lennie's questions had been pretty mild so far. What's the stupidest thing you ever did as a beat cop, what happened with your boss at OCCB, what's the most embarrassing thing you've ever done on public transportation? (The answer to that was wet his pants on a school bus when he was five, which Lennie claimed didn't count because he'd been a little kid and Rey claimed was a legitimate answer since they hadn't set an age limit. Lennie immediately set an age limit of sixteen.)
"What's the worst thing you've ever done?"
"No, come on, that's too vague," Rey said dismissively, privately thinking that it was actually a pretty easy question to answer.
"OK, what's the thing you've done that you feel guiltiest about?"
Rey felt a flicker of alarm. "Nah."
"What?"
"I'm not gonna answer that one. It's too vague."
"No it's not. You just don't wanna answer."
"OK, I don't wanna answer," he admitted.
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"Really, Cardinal Curtis?" Lennie teased.
"Come on, Lennie," Rey said, irritated. "Everybody's got something in their past that they don't wanna talk about. Except you, apparently."
Lennie smiled. "OK, have fun with the D'Onofrio file." Rey grimaced. The D'Onofrio file. That would take a few days. The case was done and closed, but the DA wanted every i dotted and every t crossed.
"When did you do this thing you feel so guilty about?"
"I already told you, I'm not answering that."
"Lowenthal's all yours then."
"Wait a minute-"
"What did you do the day Mickey Scott was executed?" Lennie pushed on, badgering, not giving Rey a chance to regroup between questions. Probably the only way Rey would open up. He could see Rey's body language getting tense.
"What? What's the matter? You gonna take the Fifth on that one too?" Lennie had privately wondered about this ever since the execution. His partner's behaviour had been rather strange afterwards and Lennie had had a few hints that something had gone very wrong for Rey that day. He hadn't gotten anywhere trying to figure out what, but with a detective's penchant for not letting go of a mystery, he'd been picking away at it ever since. And maybe if he picked at it just a little harder right now he might finally figure it out.
"Lennie-"
"You said you did some work, then went to the Park. But you didn't get home till midnight."
"How do you know that?" Rey was really starting to get defensive. Lennie kept pushing.
"That's what Deborah said. So you were at the Park all day? Until midnight, on your day off?"
Suddenly Rey felt a surge of outrage replace his discomfort and had to force himself to keep his voice relatively calm. "Wait a minute, wait a minute, you checked up on me? Checking my whereabouts, like I'm a suspect you're trying to pin down?"
"No, I called you from the hospital after the accident and Deborah said you were out. It was just past midnight."
"I coulda gone home and then gone out again at night."
"You didn't."
"How would you know?"
"'Cause of how you answered me just now," Lennie said with some satisfaction.
"What the hell - where do you get off-"
Lennie saw the anger on Rey's face and a pang of alarm replaced his feeling of victory, of being close to cracking this open. Rey was really, really mad, and Rey wasn't a lot of fun when he lost his temper. OK, he'd gone too far. He backpedaled.
"No, no - Rey, c'mon, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that. I was just curious. Sorry, it's none of my business."
"You're damn right it's not!" Rey forced himself to calm down. Where did that come from? That surge of anger? Lennie had just asked a few simple questions, and he'd nearly taken his head off.
He abruptly realized he'd just pretty much given Lennie proof that something had happened the day of the execution. Damn, Lennie was good at this. Just a couple of questions and he'd given himself away. Just like a suspect in an interrogation room.
Or maybe he just made a lousy suspect. Thank god he'd never pursued a life of crime, because he'd probably crack very easily if he were ever arrested and questioned.
"Something happened, didn't it?" Lennie asked quietly. Rey looked out his window. Yeah, something happened. I committed adultery and never told anyone except my priest and it's been eating away at me ever since and I don't know how much longer I can keep this inside and I'm gonna have to tell Deborah some day and the thought of that scares the hell out of me because I know exactly what she's gonna do when I tell her. Is that what you wanna hear, Lennie?
He wished, not for the first time, that he could say all of that out loud. But he couldn't. Especially not like this, as part of a childish "Truth or Dare" game to while away the hours during a boring stakeout.
"Not everybody likes to air out their dirty laundry in public, Lennie," he finally replied, matching Lennie's quiet tone. Lennie nodded. OK. Back off.
"Some of us don't get a choice," he commented ruefully. He cast about for a change of topic. "OK, what's the dumbest thing you've ever said to impress a girl?"
Rey glanced at him in surprise and met Lennie's apologetic gaze. He swallowed hard, feeling grateful to Lennie for backing off, and accepted the olive branch being held out to him.
"Uh... that would be junior high. Below the age limit."
"OK, forget the age limit then."
"I was about twelve and I told this girl my dad was a nuclear scientist."
"You're kidding. She bought it?"
"Nah. She was fifteen, I think. I didn't stand a chance anyway - hey!" he exclaimed. Lennie looked at the house. Somebody was going up the steps.
"Mr. Tamlin," Lennie said with relief. "Guess nobody warned him that when you say you don't know a murder suspect, you probably shouldn't use your own key to open their front door," Lennie quipped and Rey smiled. They got out of the van to finally make an arrest.