Disclaimer & etc: please see Chapter 1
FINNESSE
Chapter 3
In the end, Blair decided to come into the precinct first as Jim was going in for six-thirty in the morning. He would have to leave at ten, but as he said, three and a half hours of work would make him feel less wretched about losing the afternoon to the Preston-Edwards circus.
Jim waited until he heard the Volvo pull out of the parking garage and then went into Simon and asked for permission to take an hour or so of personal time which the Captain, in an expansive mood over the cracking of two big drug rings, happily granted.
In Sweetheart, Jim made his way across town to the Cascade address of the medical charity that had reproduced the poster of Blair preparatory to running a new campaign. He entered the big warehouse building and found large numbers of people dashing about like disturbed ants. By the time he'd drawn breath to ask a question, half a dozen people had shot past at speeds liable to induce whiplash.
Cautiously Jim made his way through the chaos. Over in the far corner was a large cordoned off area that had been painted ivory with a huge fur-covered bed and very expensive photography equipment all round it; nearby there was a long line of young men about Daryl Banks' age who, despite being of all ethnic groups, had handsome features and "ripped" physiques. Over in another corner, an earnest-looking man in his late thirties wearing a white lab coat was practising an interview with a TV crew whose equipment sported the logo of Cascade's most popular regional station; he recognised Molly Stone, their eye-candy interviewer. Jim tuned in and just as quickly lost interest. The guy was reeling off stats and using words like "co-efficient" and had clearly lost Molly if her glazed expression was anything to go by.
Standing nearby to King of the Nerds was another guy who looked vaguely doctorish, who kept wincing every time Nerd-guy launched into another recitation of facts and figures. Since this man, who looked to be somewhat younger, say about thirty, was also the only guy who had stayed in one place for longer than ten seconds, Jim homed in.
"Excuse me," Jim approached, "Are you the one in charge here?"
"Apparently," the man replied dryly. "I'm Doctor Madsen. Can I help you?"
"I'm detective Ellison from Cascade PD -"
Dr Madsen frowned. "All our paperwork's in order, Detective, we've used this warehouse to produce our cancer awareness calendars without –"
"No, it's okay. It's just that…I know Blair Sandburg, I work with him… He told me what he went through at the time, and I wanted to make a donation."
"Oh. That's great." Dr Madsen smiled. "I knew Blair too, in Finland. It was very courageous of him to do the poster. It's that desk over there; thank you."
Jim nodded and headed in the direction indicated. He'd never been a big spender and was prudent with his money, so could afford to make a generous donation. He did support some charities, mostly police and military, but was very particular about where he gave his money, as a lot of charities spent inordinate amounts of money on administrative costs and political lobbying and so forth and little on the people they claimed to be trying to help. Although Blair would never know about what he'd done, it would make Jim feel as if he'd somehow done something to make up for not being there when Blair had been so alone and distressed those years before, illogical as that was.
He waited for the harassed woman to notice him as she was trying to deal with a mound of paperwork and six phone calls all at once. Idly he cast his sight and hearing out carefully, aware Blair wasn't present to haul him out of a zone, just to make sure the warehouse was structurally sound and there were no problems.
One of the men interviewing the long line of presumably would-be calendar models stood up and took a bunch of what looked like portfolios over to Dr Madsen, who flicked through them and then looked at the waiting line with what, to Jim's surprise, was a mixture of resignation and disappointment rather than gratitude for getting so many young studs willing to bare all.
Curiously Jim listened as the first man said, "These are the top candidates so far. We've got eight definite ones and four probables, unless any of these others turn out to be the next Brad Pitt in disguise."
"Are any of them not students?" Dr Madsen asked wearily.
"Sorry." The first man shrugged, "I promise that's the first question I ask – what is your occupation? But there's not a cop, fireman, soldier, sailor, scientist, doctor or Fed amongst the lot of them."
"Damn. Thanks anyway." As the first man left to go back to his interviewing, Dr Madsen pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger in the universal gesture of weariness-with-stress-headache.
"What's wrong with none of them being cops?"
Madsen jerked his head up and blinked at Jim's question, fortunately too startled to realise that the other man must somehow have done the 'impossible' and heard him over the cacophony from the other side of the room. "I'm sorry?"
"I heard you say that you want police officers, fire fighters and military men. What's wrong with these guys?" Jim asked indicating the line of hunks behind him.
"They're not real men." Dr Madsen blurted and then sighed as Jim frowned.
Stepping back out of the way of the various people scurrying past to give himself and Jim a modicum of privacy, Dr Madsen said, "Sorry that wasn't what I meant. You said you know Blair?"
"Yes, we work together; he's my partner at the PD." Jim didn't go into the extraneous details.
"I was a med student in Helsinki, studying under Dr Haakala. He's one of the world's foremost consultants on male cancers, which get a loss less publicity than female cancers have much lower diagnosis and survival rates. Anyway, I met Blair when he was referred to Dr Haakala. What he did was very brave in doing that poster, and I have to admit it was our best selling calendar campaign ever at the time, but the problem was that Blair was a student, just like all these guys."
"So what?"
"So the impact of what we're trying to achieve is lost." Dr Madsen shrugged. "We include a brief three-line tag at the bottom of each month's photograph. But after the purchaser has read, 'Joe Bloggs is a twenty-one year old student at X University studying X' for the third time they know that the models are just college students making a little extra cash and they stop taking the reason for the calendar seriously. They buy it, make a donation, but the calendar is bought for the hunk factor, and not because it's made them more aware of the dangers of male cancers, such as Well's cancer, penis or testicular cancer."
"So what good would having cops and firemen and soldiers as models do?" Jim enquired.
"Detective, did you ever work in Vice?" Dr Madsen asked.
"Yes, for a year before I joined the Major Crimes Unit." Jim admitted.
"Well, maybe you'll understand then when I say that testicular and other reproductive organ cancers in men are the HIV and AIDS of the cancer world." Dr Madsen said with the passion of sincere conviction and some obvious frustration.
"How so?"
"All over the world thousands of young, heterosexual men are dying slowly and painfully of AIDS because they were convinced that HIV was a fag disease that real men were immune to." Dr Madsen continued earnestly, "As far as most men are concerned, testicular and the thankfully much rarer penile cancers are the same. Guys are convinced that testicular cancer or cancer of the penis is something that red-blooded males and real men don't get. When anything does go wrong 'down there' they react exactly as your friend Blair Sandburg initially did – with blind panic and total denial. They're so terrified at the nightmare of having to have something surgically removed and being not a 'real man' anymore that the notion they could actually die doesn't occur until it's too late and that's the tragedy, because if they go to a doctor straight away, what they have is usually curable and treatable with the minimum of invasive procedures."
"I think I get where you're coming from," Jim acknowledged.
"I hope so." Dr Madsen sighed. "Just one photograph on one month of a ripped U.S. Navy Seal or a macho fireman or an Elliot Ness type FBI agent or James Bond CIA spook would be worth a dozen of these calendars in making the point that any man can get these types of cancer, up to and including Medal of Honour recipients, 9/11 fire-fighter heroes, members of the thin blue line and so forth. Just one steely-eyed, square-jawed U.S. Marine Gunnery Sergeant on our calendar would make it cool to go to the doctor instead of being viewed as a wimp act."
Jim Ellison wasn't an impulsive man, or an exhibitionist; however, he looked at the line of laughing, preening, cash-hungry college students and thought that if he was responsible for just one terrified youth going to a doctor in time to save his life, then it would be worth it. "How about an Army Ranger Medal of Honour recipient and three-time Cop-of-the-Year winner?"
Madsen did a passable impression of a goldfish as his eyes bugged out and his jaw dropped. "Are you kidding?"
"Like I said, Blair Sandburg is my best friend. If he can do it, I can." Jim replied firmly, and then paused as inspiration struck with a double-whammy. "In fact, if you are able to delay the shoot a few days I can ask some more suitable candidates if they'd be willing to pose?" As he'd once admitted to Simon and Blair, the worth of his 'resignation' from Special Forces Black Ops depended on the price of the paper – he would enjoy chivvying a few old-buddy-old-pals into a worthy cause.
Taking Dr Madsen's wide-eyed expression of hope for the desperate 'yes' it was, he finished off, "Oh, and if you're willing to bump Mr Speaking-By-Numbers over there, I'll do the interview segment for you too."
Dr Madsen closed his eyes and drew in a shuddering breath. "We need to go to Canada." He intoned.
"Why?" Jim was nonplussed by this non sequitar.
"Because I can marry you there," Dr Madsen answered with a grin the Cheshire Cat would have been proud of. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you're a beautiful man, detective. Wait right there."
Dr Madsen shot off like he was rocket-propelled and Jim grinned despite the butterflies that had suddenly hatched in his stomach as he absorbed the import of what he was about to do. However, he would never have survived his Army career or his stint in the Vice Division if he'd been the shy type. Besides, whilst he may not quite have the sculpted six-pack abs of the young Turks in the queue over there, Jim was confident in his pleasing physical appearance. He did his Army PT callisthenics every morning for thirty minutes before hitting the shower, used the PD gym every other day and (okay, thanks largely to Blair 'Champion Nagger' Sandburg) ate healthily with low fat, sugar and salt intake. Without boasting he knew he had a body that men who were a good decade younger than himself envied.
"Detective Ellison?"
Jim looked up as the TV interviewer, Molly Stone, came over with her crew. He bit back a grin as he saw the glazed look dissolve as she finally realised he was going to be photographed in the buff and then do an interview with her. Dr Madsen was coming back also with the photograph and the lighting people, so Jim turned up the charm as he saw several ladies checking out the package. Blair was always telling him he would enjoy stuff if he relaxed and stopped fretting, so this would be as much fun as he made it…
© 2005 & 2011, The Cat's Whiskers