Lassiter sat on the leather couch in his living room, drinking a hot cup of coffee and looking across the room at the bottle of scotch on his kitchen counter. He'd never been one of those cops who hit the bottle to make it through the night, but he was suddenly seeing alcohol as a problem. More specifically, as a gateway drug to awkward homosexual encounters. Sure, there had been his attempt to give flowers to the lady in fingerprinting (who had turned out to be a man), and there had been an incident at the departmental picnic, but none of it had been quite this blatant before.
That lost evening with Spencer complicated things. It certainly gave Spencer ammunition he could use if he decided to embarrass him at work. And when did he not do that?
The Popscicle in Lassiter's freezer had been taunting him. It reminded him that he'd assumed he'd done something physical—hell, sexual—with Spencer. As a detective, it was embarrassing to have jumped to such a conclusion based on so little evidence. He ought to have at least looked for clues—used condoms, marks on his skin. He wasn't exactly familiar with the logistics of gay sex, but he could use his imagination. And he had definitely imagined things when he had been thinking the worst that morning. He had thought things in vivid, technicolour detail. It was as if he had assumed himself guilty, rather than innocent—a situation that opened a whole other can of worms.
Maybe this incident with Spencer was what alcoholics meant when they talked about hitting bottom.
If never feeling the smooth burn of scotch again could prevent even one more incident like this it would be worth it, wouldn't it? After all, he would never have been in that situation if he had been sober. He looked sadly at the bottle on the other side of the room and thought briefly of the ending of Old Yeller. He'd hate to see scotch go, but when a dog became dangerous, you had to put him down. Of course maybe he was jumping the gun, so to speak. Maybe this wasn't so much an Old Yeller situation as it was Gremlins. Follow some simple rules, and everything would be okay.
Lassiter wasn't sure that he could trust his own thiought processes at the moment. He needed some face time with someone impartial that he could trust. Former Chief John Fenich had been his boss, but their relationship meant more to him than that. Fenich had always provided invaluable guidance during the most dangerous times of his life. And he had retired just before Shawn arrived on the scene, so he hadn't been tainted by the fake psychic's charm. Not that Fenich would have ever fallen for his act, Lassiter knew. The man had a mind like a bear trap. He didn't go in for new agey mumbo-jumbo. Lassiter grabbed his phone and dialled a number he didn't have to look up.
At 5:30 the next morning Lassiter was sitting on John Fenich's 25-foot fishing boat, as they headed Northwest. It wouldn't be light for another hour, but he enjoyed just sitting in the dark listening to Fenich talk about catches his friends had made recently, and fishing spots they'd recommended. Fenich stopped the boat off the Santa Barbara lighthouse, in about 200 ft of water. The sea was choppy and cloudy, perfect for salmon fishing.
Fenich pulled out a whetting stone and sharpened the hook on Lassiter's line. Lassiter attached an eleven-inch flasher, then grabbed an anchovy from the bait bucket and hooked it on his rotary killer, a clip designed to give the bait the appearance of a struggling fish. He attached his rod to the downrigger, set the depth to 155 and then sat in his chair to wait. As the boat slowly trolled along the two men discussed recently closed cases, old friends from the department, and Fenich's golf game. Shortly after the sun rose they put on their sunglasses and pulled out their breakfast sandwiches.
"What's on your mind, Carlton? You've been distracted since you stepped aboard." Fenich poured himself a coffee and passed the thermos to Lassiter.
"Really? I didn't think so." Lassiter poured himself a cup and held it, allowing the heat to sink into his hands.
"I've known you for over twenty years," Fenich said, rubbing some condensation from his moustache, still cut to police regulation. "Something's eating at you."
"A, uh, friend of mine thinks he might have a drinking problem." Nice, Lassiter thought, go with the classic 'friend' smokescreen. As if John won't see through that in a heartbeat.
"Woke up in the wrong house?" Fenich joked. He had always had a gentle sense of humour. It had come in handy on the job. Cops saw more than their share of ugly, and sometimes you had to choose between laughing or crying. Fenich had chosen laughing, and as a result he had a friendly looking face now filled with laugh lines. It had made his a disarming figure in the SBPD, especially when his big friendly face had chewed someone out.
"No." Lassiter took a sip of coffee, wincing at the lack of milk and sugar, and kept his eyes on the water. "Woke up with the wrong person."
"That can happen," Fenich said.
"My friend," Lassiter went on, continuing the transparent lie, "had been drinking that night, so he figures that maybe the scotch is a problem."
"With all due respect to your friend," Fenich said, "that's a load of crap."
"You think so?" Lassiter raised his eyebrows. It had sounded pretty good to him.
"I've got thirty years of dealing with drunk and disorderlies under my belt," Fenich said. "And let me tell you, booze doesn't change personalities, it only revealed them. It might wash off that thin layer they normally show the world, but who they are when they're drunk is just who they are."
Lassiter frowned. "I don't know if I agree with that," he said.
"Read up on the placebo effect." Fenich pulled a package of jerky from his pocket and opened it. "Men use booze as an excuse to be the kind of guy they're afraid to be when they're sober-more more social, more aggressive, or more of a ladies man." Fenich bit off a chunk of jerky and chewed. The smell of hickory-smoked meat wafted on the air.
So what did it say about me, Lassiter wondered, that I'd actually believed, if only for a few panic-stricken minutes, that I'd slept with Spencer? He was glad that his sunglasses shaded his eyes from his friend's scrutiny.
"Well," he said. "That doesn't bode very well for my friend then."
"Did something he's not too proud of, did he?" Fenich laughed.
"Oh yeah." Lassiter took another sip of coffee. "Or he thought he did, anyway." He was pretty sure that Fenich wouldn't be laughing if he had any idea what this conversation was actually about. The subject of homosexuality had never come up during his time under Fenich's command, but he'd always thought of Fenich as old school. And old school cops didn't tend to be particularly liberal on issues like that. The two men finished their coffee in silence.
Lassiter's thoughts were interrupted by a king salmon, which after a few exploratory snaps at the tail of the anchovy on his hook had swallowed it headfirst.
Fenich sood and peered excitedly into the water. "Easy, Carlton. Let him run, tire him out," he advised.
"Thanks, I got it." Lassiter had been fishing since his grandfather had first taken him out over thirty years ago. He knew that a fighting fish on a tight line would lead to a broken line, lost catch and lost equipment. After twenty minutes of play, the Salmon's head broke the surface and Fenich stepped toward the stern to net him. The fish was easily two and a half feet long.
"That's one for the frying pan," Fenich said. He hooked it on the fish scale. "That's a nineteen pounder." He put the salmon in the fish box and pulled two beers from the cooler. "Nicely done, Carlton."
"Thanks," Carlton sipped the beer and removed his jacket. The air was heating up now. By the time they finished for the day they'd be wearing t-shirts and sunscreen.
Three hours later the fish had been cleaned and their gear stowed, and Lassiter and Fenich headed back to the marina. Along the way Lassiter found his mind wandering. Things with his dad had always been complicated. So it was natural that he'd gravitated to father substitutes, and those men had shaped the man he was today. Hank Mandel had inspired his love of justice, and of firearms. John Fenich was the reason he'd become a cop. Yet he couldn't talk to either of them about his current problem. Although to be fair, he hadn't tried. He looked at Fenich and allowed himself to feel the affection and admiration he felt for his mentor and friend. He owed it to him to at least broach the subject.
"Interesting situation came up at work recently," he began. Fenich nodded. He always loved shop talk, leading Lassiter to conclude that cops, as much as they talk about it, never really retire. "I overheard one of the consultants we work with talking to a friend of his," he went on. There was no way he was even going to mention the word 'psychic.' "And the consultant claimed he was bisexual." He looked at Fenich with his best poker face, as if this was just a topic that happened to drift across his mind, and not something he'd been dwelling on for days now.
"Bi-sexual?" Fenich said the word as if he'd never heard it before. "You mean like Elton John?"
"Actually, I think Elton John is homosexual." Lassiter said. "Bisexual is more like, uh," he combed his brain for the name of a famous bisexual. "Alexander The Great."
"All those Greeks were like that back then." Fenich scoffed. "Is the guy any good at his job?"
Lassiter sighed. "Yeah. He is." Lassiter didn't get into exactly how good Spencer was, but given Lasister's high standards for police work, his unqualified yes would tell Fenich exactly what he needed to know. "Then I say don't ask, don't tell." Fenich shifted in his seat and looked at Lassiter out of the corner of his eye. "The job's the job, Carlton. If he does the job the rest don't matter." Fenich shrugged and shook his big head. "All the years I spent on the force, there must have been some." Fenich didn't say more. As Lassiter was packing up his fish it occurred to him that he may have been worrying over nothing. It was possible that Spencer and Guster had been playacting the whole time he was in their closet. Was he like the salmon, he wondered, being given just enough line to tire himself out for Spencer's benefit? Was he, to use a parlance he'd heard on Saturday Night Live once, being fished in?
He couldn't very well call and ask for clarification on the Popsicle, but there was no point in working himself up into a lather over something that might just be a joke on Spencer's part. After all, he reasoned. Spencer didn't fit any of the gay stereotypes. Sure, the man used more hair product than half the female officers in the department, but he dressed like an unmade bed. Weren't gay men supposed to be stylish? And while he had no sense of personal space, and seemed to speak innuendo as a second language, he also went through girlfriends like Lassiter went through ammunition. He'd taken O'Hara for manicures or facials or something, but that didn't mean he liked men. It could just as easily mean that he liked O'hara. Spencer could be metrosexual, which an article from a four-year old copy of Cosmo that Lassiter had read in his dentist's office assured him wasn't a sexual category.
In order to figure out a plan of action he needed facts, not guesses. Lassiter pulled out his cellphone and called up his list of informants. There was someone who owed him a favour, and it was time to collect.
His informant's mother had named him Wallace, but everyone called him Spud. Lassiter didn't want to know how he'd gotten that nickname, and he didn't care to know. All their informants seemed to have street names. It was how you could tell they were criminals. Honest citizens didn't have names like Spud. Spud had become known to the department due to some low-level arrests for drug possession and solicitation. Lassiter met him outside the low-rent apartment where Spud lived with the man who was currently paying his bills. But sugar-daddy or no, Spud was always interested in extra cash.
"I ain't got time for this, officer," Spud said, looking anxiously over his shoulder.
"I'm waiting on a friend." Lassiter held up a bill with a picture of Alexander Hamilton on it. "Are you listening now?" Spud looked at Lassiter as if he were crazy. "What if he also had a little brother?" Lassiter asked, adding a bill bearing the likeness of Abraham Lincoln.
Spud let out a long-suffering sigh. "You're the cheapest cop I know. Don't they give you guys a petty cash budget?"
"Take it or leave it. Fifteen bucks for three or five minutes work. Hell, at that scale you're getting paid more than I do."
Spud rolled his eyes, but pocketed the cash. "What I haffa do?"
"It's simple," he explained. "Just go up to the subject, flirt with him, and report back. It's not rocket science."
"You want me to make a date? You tryin' to entrap the guy?"
Lassiter kept his face frozen. There was no reason for Spud to know this was a personal issue, rather than a work one.
"I just need to know if he responds to the flirting. Drop a few secret codes and see if he recognizes them."
"Secret codes?" Spud wrinkled his nose, confused. "What kinda codes?"
"You know." Lassiter gestured vaguely. "Secret gay codes. Lingo. I don't know. You're supposed to be the expert here."
Spud rolled his eyes. "I ain't got no secret codes. I ain't the CIA."
Lassiter sighed and ran a hand down his face. "I just need to know if he likes men."
Spud smiled and gave Lassiter a lascivious look. "That all? Hell, for that I won't even need three minutes."
It was approaching dinner time. Lassiter circled the blocks around the Psych office until he spotted Spencer making his run for take-out food. It was usually to one of four places. Today it was pizza.
Lassiter turned to Spud. "This is perfect. Just get in there and while he's waiting on the pizza, do your thing."
"Okay," Spud left the car and shuffled toward the pizza joint. Lassiter pulled the Crown Vic behind a flowering shrub and used his binoculars from his hiding place. Within seconds of entering the restaurant, Spud was throwing himself at Spencer.
So much for subtle recon, Lassiter thought bitterly. It was like watching a bad movie. Although from his vantage point it was difficult to tell if the smile on Spencer's face was from enjoyment or embarrassment, even with the binoculars. The general anxious lump in Lassiter's gut was quickly replaced by a tighter, angrier sensation. He took a deep breath and reminded himself that this was an intelligence-gathering operation. He was not jealous.
After ten minutes Spud emerged from the pizza place and joined Lassiter in the Crown Vic, a steaming pizza box on his lap. Lassiter pulled away and was half a block towards Spud's house before the skinny young man spoke.
"You owe me another fifteen," he said. "I had to buy a pizza."
Lassiter glanced at him, his brow furrowed in annoyance.
"For cover," Spud explained. "It's a pizza place, they sell pizza."
Lassiter pulled into the parking lot of Spud's apartment building, removed his wallet and took out another two bills.
"So what did you learn?" he asked, holding them just out of reach. One of the first lessons he'd learned with informants was to get the information first.
"He weren't interested in me," Spud said. "I pushed hard, but he wasn't having it."
Lassiter felt his whole body relax and he passed Spud the money. Spencer wasn't into men. The whole thing had been a con. He'd known he was in the office closet and he and Guster had just strung him along.
Well played, Mr. Spencer.
Lassiter began plotting his revenge. Ideally, something that would have the fake psychic wetting himself in front of O'Hara. He was so intent on his fantasy that he almost missed it when Spud spoke again.
"He's a weirdo," Spud said. "Said he prefers his men in unmarked cars, off-the-rack suits, and obvious hiding places. That don't even make no sense. What's 'off the rack' mean?"
Suddenly the smell of the pizza made Lassiter felt sick. Spencer knew. Had known. Still knew. He ushered Spud out of the car, deaf to his question, and drove away, wishing he could outpace his own boiling brain.