Chapter 25: Connections
Mike and Johnny sat on the couch, saying nothing, each lost in his own thoughts, until the bag of peas on Mike's knee was a soggy, sodden, room-temperature mess. Despite the duct tape that had nearly replaced the original plastic bag, there was green water dripping from a corner of the bag onto the tiled floor.
"I think it's time to retire our peas," said Johnny. "We can try corn next time; see if it holds up any better."
Mike didn't reply, as Johnny went into the kitchen and disposed of the dripping mess. He pulled the deli drawer out of the refrigerator, and without asking Mike what he wanted, just made one each of his and Mike's favorite sandwiches and took them out to the living room. He returned with a glass of water for Mike, and a glass of milk for himself.
"Just this once, let's eat our lunch on the couch," Johnny suggested.
"Fine," Mike said listlessly, as he took the plate Johnny handed him. "Thanks."
They ate their sandwiches with no conversation. Mike looked out the bay window onto the street. Johnny looked at Mike's knee—he thought the swelling already seemed to be going down. It might have been Johnny's imagination, but, he thought, imagining positive things was nice for a change.
Next, Johnny's eyes were drawn to the few pictures they kept on the side table. One of them was a copy of one of the photos on Mike's wall at work—the last official Station 51 A-Shift photo where they were all still together. Johnny looked at all the faces—Chet, who they'd just seen the previous day; Roy, who they saw at least monthly, either here or at the DeSotos' house; Marco, who Johnny hadn't seen since his last day at 51s; and Hank Stanley, who, along with Marco, still remained at Station 51.
"You know what we should do, Mike?" Johnny said suddenly, mouth full of food.
"What," Mike said tonelessly, not even commenting on Johnny's poor manners.
"We should call Cap'n Stanley."
Finally, Mike sat up taller on the couch. He put his sandwich plate down, and looked at Johnny. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah. That's exactly what we should do."
Johnny put down his unfinished sandwich, picked up the phone, and dialed.
"Hello, Stanley residence," answered a deep voice.
"Hiya Cap, it's John Gage."
"Captain Gage! Haven't heard a peep from you since the DeSoto's barbeque last month. How's everything? How's Mike?"
"Uh, Cap, to be honest, everything's not so good," Johnny admitted right away. "Mike and I just got back from Rampart—he had to get one of the screws in his leg out all of a sudden—won't bore you with the details, but that's kind of a drag."
"Uh-huh, I'll bet. Last time I saw you guys he seemed really good—first time I'd seen him walking totally normally since the accident." He paused. "But I can tell that's not all, is it. What's going on, Johnny?"
Mike listened as Johnny gave Captain Stanley the rundown on the harassment they'd been suffering. After Johnny finished conveying their tale of woe, there was a long silence as Cap spoke for a while.
"You will?" Johnny said. "Wow, thanks!"
Another silence, short this time.
"She would? Really? That's really nice, Cap—that would be great."
This time Johnny's face fell a bit.
"Yeah, I know we do. We did yesterday, and the deputy who came was all right. I was gonna, later today, I promise—" Johnny paused briefly to listen. "Okay, okay, you're right. I'll do it right now. Thanks, Cap. We'll see you soon."
Johnny hung up the phone.
"What'd he say?" Mike asked.
"He's coming over, and Mrs. Stanley is sending us over a casserole to put in the oven for dinner so we have one less thing to worry about. Her words, apparently."
Mike laughed. "I think they have a whole freezer of 'Emergency Food for Hank's Boys' in the basement or something."
"Yeah, probably," said Johnny.
"So what's the part you didn't like? That you're gonna supposedly do right now?"
"He's right, I know," Johnny groaned. "We have to call the sheriff again. I knew we did; that's why I popped those tapes out, 'cause they're gonna want 'em. I just don't feel like it, though. Having that deputy look at that letter was bad enough, but those messages? What I'd really like to do is just unspool the tapes and run them through the garbage disposal."
"Uh, you wanna go to the garage, and I'll call the sheriff?"
"Seriously?" Johnny's face lit up at the prospect of being able to take his aggression out on plates of iron and a punching bag.
"Sure. Uh, unless you think I'm still too mellow to make a phone call, but I'm not, am I? I mean, it seems like that stuff is mostly worn off."
"Naw, I think you're fine. Still not gonna let you drive today, but a phone call? No problem. Especially since it's one I don't wanna do," Johnny admitted.
"Okay. Scram—I'll call the law."
"Damn, Mike. I'm a fortunate man." Mike's leg was still up on the coffee table, so Johnny carefully straddled it as he leaned down to kiss the man who knew him so well. Before he left to work out his aggression in the garage, he helpfully handed Mike the phone, as well as the card the deputy had left yesterday.
Mike appreciated the view as Johnny went through the side door to the garage, and then picked up the phone and dialed.
"L.A. County Sheriff, Deputy Price speaking."
Mike almost sobbed with relief that it was the same person. "Hello, Deputy Price. This is Mike Stoker; you were out at our place yesterday about a letter we got, and you said to call right away if anything else happened. So I'm calling. Because something else happened." Mike cringed at his awkward wording. Yep, that Valium is history, he thought.
"Yes, I remember," said the deputy. "Can you fill me in on what else has happened?"
"Well, we got home after being out all morning, and both of our answering machines had, uh, unpleasant messages that also had specific threats in them. The guy tried to disguise his voice with static, but we're pretty sure it's the same guy on both."
"Did you save the tapes?"
"Yeah, Johnny popped them out of the machines first thing."
"And you said there were specific threats?"
"Yeah, uh, on Johnny's he said to resign on his next shift, and that if he showed up for another shift after that, uh, well, he kind of implied I'd get beat up," Mike said hastily. "And on mine, he said I should pack up my office and get out, and implied Johnny would get beat up if I didn't."
"You say 'implied—' did he use names?"
"If I remember right, he used each of our names in the beginning of the message, but not in the threats. But it was, um, pretty clear who he was talking about."
"All right," said Price. "I'll come out to take your report, and I'll need to pick up the tapes as well. It'll be about an hour—is that convenient?"
Mike's brain screamed loudly, No, you fucking idiot, there's no convenient time for something like this! "Yes, that's fine. Thank you," he said calmly and politely.
Mike hung up the phone gently. He looked at the phone, picked up the receiver again, and this time slammed it down in the cradle. Hard. He sighed, and put the fortunately undamaged phone back on the side table.
"Time for a test drive," he said. He carefully bent his knee, and put his right foot on the floor. Using his practiced technique, he levered himself up using his left leg and the crutches, and swung himself out to the open area of the living room. He took a step with a small percentage of his body weight on his right leg, then another with more, and another, and another. A twinge from the carefully bandaged incision, but from the bone itself—nothing. He put his full body weight on his right leg, and took a normal step. His full weight on the leg sent a zap of cold up his femur, so he knew he'd found a limit. He tested, experimented, with two crutches, then one, until he found he just needed a small amount of support to feel no pain at all.
He hobbled to the hall closet with one crutch, and pulled out the cane he still used occasionally. Even though, in his opinion, it shouted "old man," he preferred it to the crutches, which spoke to him of injury and debility. And, when used properly—which didn't happen most of the time in real life or on TV, but Mike was taught by experts—it didn't bother his wrist or shoulder like the crutches tended to.
"Sorry, guys, but it looks like you're banished to the garage again," Mike said to the crutches. He picked up the crutches with his non-cane-using hand, and exited the side door to the garage.
Johnny was in the middle of a set of bench presses. Mike watched from the doorway, not wanting to startle him. Once Johnny had clanged the weights firmly into the supports on the rack, Mike interrupted without fear of causing injury.
"Can I work in?" he asked, tucking the crutches back into the corner they'd been retrieved from the previous day.
Johnny ducked under the bar and sat up, staring at Mike. "Uh, should you even be off the couch?" Johnny asked.
Mike shrugged. "I did a test drive. Leg seems okay if I only put ninety percent of my weight on it or so. Obviously I'm not going to be doing squats today, but I don't see why I can't do some upper body work."
Johnny looked at him dubiously. "I don't know, Mike; Valium's a muscle relaxant. It doesn't seem like a good idea to push it."
Mike sighed. "Yeah, well, I'm so mad I just about broke the phone when I hung it up, so I've gotta do something. By the way, Deputy Price is coming in an hour or so."
"Goody gumdrops,"Johnny snapped. He immediately smacked his forehead. "Sorry, sorry. Thanks for calling him. I'm just not looking forward to anyone else hearing those messages."
"No. Me neither. But there's nothing we can do about it, except keep on keepin' on, for now."
"Well, we can pump iron, punch the bag, and break shit."
"Break shit?" Mike perked up at that. "What can we break?"
Johnny pointed to the back of the garage bay. "There's that dresser from my old place that's missing two drawers since it fell off the truck when we moved my stuff. I'm not gonna get around to fixing it," Johnny said seriously. "Are you?"
"No way, Gage," Mike grinned.
"And it'd be a pain to take it to the dump," Johnny said, completely straight-faced.
"Definitely. So let's chop it up with an axe—then we can just stuff it in a trash can," Mike suggested. "Actually," he amended, "we might get smaller pieces if we hit it with the 10-pound sledge."
"Very practical of you, Stoker." Johnny took the plates of the barbell and put them on their rack. "C'mon. I'll drag it out back, and we can take turns hitting it."
~!~!~!~!~
A cathartic quarter of an hour later, Mike and Johnny stood sweating and panting in front of a pile of kindling.
"I'm pretty sure that's not what Dr. Hansen had in mind when he said to lay low this afternoon," Mike said, chest heaving, "but damn, that was perfect."
"Better than Valium?" Johnny asked, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his forearm.
"I don't know if it's better, but it's certainly more manly," Mike said. "There's just something about Valium that says 'frustrated middle-aged housewife.'"
"Yeah, and there's something about sledgehammers and a pile of kindling that says, what, exactly?" Johnny asked.
"Uh, pissed-off firemen?" Mike suggested.
"Sweaty, filthy, disgusting, less-pissed-off-than-before firemen," said Johnny, "who really have to get in the shower before the sheriff and their old captain show up."
"I'd say 'race you,' but we both know how that would end," said Mike, picking up the sledgehammer and leaning it against the deck. "So let's just avoid any more trips to Rampart, and walk in like adults, and go get clean." He turned to go in the side door, with Johnny at his heels.
"'kay. Wanna get dirty at the same time as we get clean? 'Cause you, and a sledgehammer, and a head full of mad? Hot. Very, very hot, Stoker," Johnny said as he followed Mike into the house.
~!~!~!~!~
After a possibly even more cathartic half hour, Johnny and Mike were clean, dry, clothed, and feeling an awful lot better. Mike was back on the couch with a bag of frozen corn on his knee, when the doorbell rang.
Mike peered out the bay window, and saw the sheriff's car. "Sheriff's here," he called.
"I'll get it," said Johnny.
"Afternoon, Captain Gage," said Deputy Price. "Sorry we're doing this again."
"Afternoon, Deputy; come on in," said Johnny, showing him to the living room again.
"Mr. Stoker," Price greeted Mike. "Did you get that knee looked at?"
"Yep. Had a screw loose. Got it pulled out this morning," he said matter-of-factly. "Have a seat—Johnny you wanna grab that tape player off the desk?"
"Sure," said Johnny, ducking into the spare room and returning shortly with a portable cassette tape player, and picking up the two tapes from the counter by the answering machines on his way back. "We wish you didn't have to listen to these—we wish we didn't have to hear them again either. They're, um, kinda embarrassing."
"Well, Captain, just like in your job, you see an awful lot of things about people that they wish you hadn't seen, and I'll bet that just like me, you walk away and forget about it. Right?"
"Most of the time," Johnny admitted. "But I'll tell ya, the ones that stick with me are the ones where people have done something so incredibly dumb that you hafta think a long time about how they even managed it. Like this one time? There was this guy who—" Johnny caught Mike's look, and interrupted himself. "Sorry. Not the time to start a rant. But yeah." He popped the first tape in the machine, and pushed 'rewind.' "I get it."
"It's not my job to pass judgment," said Price, to make his point clear. "Someone's threatening you, and our job is to get to the bottom of it and try to keep anything worse from happening."
The tape reached its beginning, and the machine clicked to a stop.
"You mean you're gonna try and do something? Not just take a report?" Mike asked.
"Yes indeed. I spoke to my supervisor after I got off the phone with you today, and he agreed it seems to be escalating. Let's go over the tapes, and then we can talk about what's next."
"All right," said Johnny. He pushed play, and the static and the humiliating message addressed to him played back. Price took some notes, and bagged and labeled the first tape, as Johnny readied the second tape.
Once again, he pushed play, and the hateful words spewed out of the player. Deputy Price took some more notes, and repeated the routine of labeling and bagging the tape. Throughout the ordeal, Mike held his head in his hands, and sank lower and lower into the couch.
When the tapes were packed away, Johnny joined Mike on the couch, but didn't touch him. There would be time for that later, when they weren't both feeling so naked and humiliated. Johnny was keenly aware that it was likely that Deputy Price was not particularly in favor of his and Mike's relationship, but he appreciated that the officer was able to stay professional. Johnny had put aside his own feelings about patients he'd had to treat many a time.
"So what now, Deputy Price?"
"A few things. First, it's up to you, of course, whether or not you choose to follow through with the extortionist's demands. I would highly recommend that you not do so—acceding to his demands is unlikely to stop his harassment. However, because both demands pertain to your place of work, you each need to speak with your immediate supervisors and explain the demands and the threats that have been made against you. I appreciate that this is likely to be awkward, but it is essential. You don't need to explain why you're being harassed, but you need to explain that threats of physical harm have been made. You can have them call my office for confirmation." Price looked at them without blinking, and waited for a response.
"We made pretty sure we haven't violated any written rules of the department by, uh, living together," Johnny said. "But unwritten rules? Hell yes. So yeah, that's gonna be tricky. But, on the other hand, it's a little hard to believe that I'd be telling my battalion chief anything he didn't already know."
"I don't honestly know what my boss knows, or thinks," said Mike. "I'm sure the rumors were already flying about us before I got hired onto the arson unit. But I guess I'll find out tomorrow," he sighed. "God, I hate this bullshit."
"So we'll do our part—what can the sheriff's office do?" Johnny asked.
"We're sending a car down your street once an hour, to start with, at random times. We're going to step up patrols around Station 93 at night, and whenever the C-shift is out on a run. And, we're going to interview people in the personnel office at the department headquarters about who has access to personal information—specifically, your address and phone number, Captain Gage—and try to get a sense for how difficult it would be to get that information outside of normal channels."
"Wow," said Johnny. "I'm not sure about that last one. That seems like it might just stir up more trouble."
"I'm afraid you need to accept that it's a necessary step," said Deputy Price. "The unfortunate fact is that victims of crimes often end up having further discomfort as the result of efforts on their behalf."
"You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs," Mike said quietly. "Yeah, I guess I see that."
"One more thing—it seems likely that this individual has a personal grudge against at least one of you, outside of his objection to your association with each other. Please think about whether there are people within the department who might have some other bone to pick with you, either personal or professional. We're not making accusations, but we would certainly be interested in anyone who had access to personal information and was also someone either of you had had a past conflict with."
"Oh, boy," muttered Johnny. "Considering how old Ted acted today, I might have a pretty long list."
"Ted?" Price asked.
"Uh, okay," Johnny cleared his throat before continuing. "I used to kind of, um, try to go out with a lot of girls at Rampart—my old squad's base hospital—and I kind of realized today that at least one of them is probably personally offended by my having gone out with her and then gotten together with a guy. If you kinda see what I mean," he finished.
"But who's this Ted?" Price repeated.
"He's her boyfriend. He gave us the evil eye big-time today when we were at Rampart," Mike said. "But you know, I don't see how it could be him—Johnny, he checked you out for a long time before I think he figured out who you were. And who I was. And he works at Rampart, not HQ."
"But that's the kind of thing you need to be thinking about—people who may hold a grudge against you for something personal or professional, who might have some connection with the fire department," Pride reinforced.
"All right," said Johnny. "We'll think about it. But I don't really like the idea of getting all, I dunno, suspicious and paranoid."
"The fact is," said Price, "you're going to have to think that way a bit for the time being. Because this isn't going to quietly disappear until we find out who's behind what's been happening."
"Yeah," said Johnny. "Yeah, I guess I kinda know that."
"By the way," Price added, peering out into the yard, "the, uh, destruction in the yard there—is that something I need to look into?"
Johnny snorted. "No, it's just some stress management."
"Sorry?" Price looked back and forth between Johnny and Mike.
"You know—taking out your frustrations on helpless inanimate objects," said Mike.
"Oh—right. I use the shooting range," Price admitted.
"We break stuff with axes and sledgehammers," Mike replied.
"Fair enough," said Price. "One last thing," he added. "Neighbors. I can't stress the importance of talking to your neighbors. If you can, please talk to a few today." He handed them a small stack of business cards. "Give them these—I'm not available all the time, but if they need to call in, they can say I told them to call if there was anything suspicious, and the call will get to the right person."
Johnny took the cards. "Thanks. We will—today."
He showed the deputy out. "Well, I hate to say it, but we'll probably see you again, won't we."
"Unfortunately, it seems that way. Oh—I'll have one of the hourly patrol cars drop off a copy of the reports from yesterday and today. Probably tomorrow some time."
"Great. Thanks."
Johnny closed the door, and joined Mike in the living room again. He sat right next to him, and was relieved when Mike reached out to take his hand.
"I seriously wanted to just disappear when he played those tapes again," Mike admitted.
"And I wanted to disappear when I had to fess up about all the women at Rampart I maybe pissed off. Though," he admitted, "it's not as many as I think most people would assume."
"How many?" Mike asked, curious to hear an actual figure. "I mean, how many women at Rampart did you, say, get beyond second base with?"
"Not as many as people would assume," Johnny repeated vaguely. "Partly because ninety percent of the girls I asked wouldn't go out with me in the first place, and partly 'cause I was always gettin' dumped. C'mon, everyone on our shift always heard my sad stories, right?"
"Tally, Gage. Let's see a scoreboard."
"Fine, fine. Gimme a sec—it was like six years, right?" He scrunched his face up while he was thinking. "One homer, two—no, three third bases, and another handful of second bases. Geez, it sounds terrible when I put it that way, But that's it. I swear. And the weird thing is, they were always the ones that dumped me. Except for this one chick, Lynn, an aide in pediatrics—but man, she was weird. I mean, she seemed fine at first, but then she got real weird, real fast."
"Weird like how?" Mike asked.
"Hard to describe. I guess, weirdly possessive and obsessive. Not jealous—she wasn't worried about other girls or anything—but I guess a good way to put it was she didn't have boundaries. Like for example, one time when the squad was parked in the ambulance entrance, Roy and I came back and there she was, sitting in passenger's seat of the squad, having her coffee."
"That's not so weird," Mike said. "I mean, maybe she just knew you were around, and didn't want to bug you in the ER, so she waited for you there."
"Well, I haven't gotten to the weird part yet—I said 'Hi' to her, and she just up and said somethin' like she just wanted to sit where I was all day, and then she took off. No 'hey, how's your day going,' or 'I just wanted to say hi,' or anything like that—she just plain took off."
"What else?" Mike asked, beginning to get the picture.
"Well, she started just showing up at my place—sometimes she'd be there waiting in the parking lot when I came off a shift. And even when I explained that I'd been up working the whole night, that I just needed to go to sleep, she'd insist on making me breakfast or something. And I didn't like to be rude or anything, but after a coupla times of this I finally had to tell her to lay off, that I didn't want her coming around any more. I mean, I'd've steered clear of picking up any guys that behaved like she started to, that's for sure; so it's not that I don't think women should be assertive. It's just that this was beyond assertive."
"I think I remember you complaining about her—this was in my last year at 51s, right?"
Johnny squinted and looked up at a corner. "Yeah, that's about right."
"She sounded pretty creepy to me even then," Mike said. "What happened after you told her to quit showing up at your place?"
"Man, she got real bad for a while. She stopped showing up in person, but she kept leaving me stuff—she left cookies in the squad once, and she left all sorts of stuff by my front door, and she even brought stuff to the station a couple times. I remember her saying she knew firemen loved it when people brought cookies and stuff, 'cause—" Johnny stopped suddenly. "Huh."
"What?" Mike asked.
"Huh," Johnny said again, staring off into the distance. "I'd forgotten about that."
"What?" Mike asked again.
"Her brother," Johnny said. "Lynn's brother was a mechanic for the department."
TBC