Undercover 7

When we woke up the next morning, I reminded myself that I had 5 days to get ready for Joe leaving. Who knows when I'd really see him again? Life seldom goes as planned. What if our child was 5 years old before Joe came home? I needed to figure some things out.

The doctor had given us February 26th as my preliminary due date. He'd also reminded me that I needed to eat better than I had been for my entire life to this point and I also needed to exercise more. I hate that.

I had told Vinnie, Connie and Lula about the baby and the due date yesterday. They were all thrilled for us and equally thrilled that someone would be able to relieve each of them for their vacations this year. They each had chosen a week between October and January so that I could take over their responsibilities after we all figured I'd need to stop chasing skips for a while. I told them that I would need to take off a few days in October and in December probably but I'd have to wait to get things clarified before I knew exactly what dates.

I think that was the first time I faced the fact that it was highly likely that Joe was going to still be gone at Christmas. It would be our first Christmas as a married couple and our only one before we would have children in the house and he would be gone. This was a sobering thought. However, I realized I was so lucky to have such wonderful friends and family members. As sad as I was to know that Joe was getting ready to leave, I just didn't feel sad. I felt, sorry, maybe that he would have to miss all of this, but I was too happy to be sad.

Joe had suggested a number of people for my birthing coach in case he wasn't here for the big event, all the while insisting that he would be. His list included my sister, Valerie, his sister, Mary (as hard as it would be for her, she would be honored, he insisted), either of our mothers (yeah, right, I said – that was WAY too much information for me to share with either of our mothers), Mary Lou (my first choice) and, surprisingly, his buddy, Dunphy. Joe said that he and Dunphy had both been involved in a number of births while they were in uniform, but that Dunphy, while a father of two, had never hung around long enough to actually be there for the birth. Dunphy still hasn't owned up to the fact that there's more to being a father than just sending a check in the mail every month.

I'm not entirely convinced I even want Joe to be there for the childbirth. I don't want him to see any of that stuff happen with me. I'm the one who doesn't like to share a bathroom. I couldn't imagine wanting anyone else there to see me at my worst. At least it was Joe's fault. Why punish anyone else for Joe's inability to control himself?

Yet I was going to go with Mary Lou. I'd use Valerie as a last resort, just in case. At least neither of them needed to learn much about it. They had each been there.

I went to work and found a couple of new files on Connie's desk. Both of them were relatively benign offenders and I was able to apprehend them with only a little bit of verbal wrangling. News had reached the criminal community that I was pregnant and I even got a couple of 'congratulations' out of my regulars when I ran into them that morning.

As much as I tried not to think about my husband and Terri in Detroit, I just couldn't leave it alone. I broached the subject again. "Okay, Joe." I said, over lunch at home, "I have asked you and you have tried everything to divert my attention. What 'exactly' does 'look and act like a couple' mean?" My eyes found his and he looked away.

He sighed and looked at his hands on the table. "Well, it means Terri and I will live together in a one-bedroom place. And we will have to go out together and, while we are in public, we'll need to look like a couple. You know, probably holding hands and looking chummy. Not a big thing. We'll share a bed, I will clarify since I can see your eyes. We will each stay on our own side, of the bed and just sleep there together but," now he was searching my eyes again, "you have to believe me and trust me. I won't be having sex with her. Okay? We really feel that Takata's gang will bug our little hacienda, especially the bedroom because they will expect to learn a lot from pillow talk. We'll have scripts to follow to feed them information and to try to bait them into action. If we need to tell each other something that we don't need them to hear, we'll write messages. Terri and I have done this before. It's nothing new to us. I just wasn't married to you the last time."

I was looking back into those brown eyes that I loved and trusted. "Joe, if they are listening to pillow talk, won't they be listening, or noticing if they don't hear…..you know….more than pillow talk?" He knew what I meant. Terri Gilman was pretty. Those guys would be straining their ears to hear if Joe was making her scream like a banshee.

"Yeah. I'm sure they will. Here's the thing. Drug addicts often have a hard time 'performing', you know, sexually? Sometimes it just doesn't work." He was looking at me with sexy eyes and I knew he was fully functional. "Often, they need to resort to outside stimuli to try to get it all together. That being the case we'll have a nicely stocked DVD collection of porn for Terri's full solo enjoyment and our friend's listening pleasure. They won't know what sounds are on the TV and what sounds are live." I didn't like where this was heading.

"And where will you be during this performance?" I'd seen Joe's response to video porn. It wasn't like he didn't notice it was playing.

"I'll go in the other room."

"Okay, I'm not stupid. You are a horn dog. You are not going to convince me that you are going to be hearing porn and knowing that Terri is taking care of business in there and not get a bit….needy." I was starting to panic again. I was aware that Joe's needs came often. Like multiple times a day.

"Well, I'd like you to meet my good friend, Jennie." He said, holding up his right hand. "Jennie and I have been together since you were 6 and playing choo-choo with me in my garage. She has served me well over the years and is always in a friendly mood. She is never on the rag and never wants much from me other than maybe a little lotion periodically." Okay, he still didn't look embarrassed. I certainly was embarrassed. And I was livid.

"Are you telling me that you and Terri Gilman are going to both masturbate to porn together every day and that I am supposed to believe that nothing else is going to happen for months on end?" As usual, where Terri is concerned, this question was asked at the very top of my vocal capacity.

"Honey, Terri and I have been 'friends' for a long time. A helluva lot longer than you and I have been together. We're pretty damn comfortable with each other. I guarantee you she can't show me anything I haven't seen before unless she's had some sort of freakish surgery. I'm not Bill Clinton. I know what is considered sex. And I won't do it with Gilman, okay?"

"WHAT? Are you serious? Is the fact that you've seen it all supposed to make me feel better? You've seen it on me, too, but it doesn't stop you from wanting to touch it again." However, I had no other alternative to suggest. "That is obviously cheating. Especially if she helps you, which I'm sure she will. She knows you. She knows which buttons to push to turn you on, off and inside out. If you know she's in their doing that, and she knows you are in the other room doing that, well, I don't want to talk about it."

Okay, he found this conversation amusing. He was laughing now. "I was trying not to talk about it. She isn't going to help me. I have Jennie, remember? I don't exactly need help. I'm just telling you the answer to your question. Okay? Don't ask me if you don't want to know."

My mind was running amuck. I had another question but I wasn't sure if I wanted to know. "How 'comfortable' are you with Terri?"

"Huh? What do you mean?" He said, now trying to unhook my bra. Obviously, our conversation had started his engine. The funny part was he must have a meeting or something after lunch so he was watching the clock and trying to multitask. He was still eating a sandwich with his right hand and he was trying to use his left hand on my bra. He obviously wasn't practiced in the left handed technique and he was fumbling a bit. Joe was sort of like Fonzie from Happy Days. He just looked at a bra and it was supposed to fall off.

"You said that you and Terri have been friends for a long time and that you are comfortable with each other. How comfortable are you?" I thought this was a reasonable question.

He looked pained. It was like I had started another one of those conversations without understanding what I was doing. I knew. I just didn't care at this point. "Cupcake, I don't know if you had a friend like Terri was to me when you were growing up. Today, the teenagers call them 'friends with benefits'. That sort of means 'no strings'. You know, we just sort of grew up together, sexually, and everything else. We experimented on each other and we learned a lot about the opposite sex from each other. I don't remember a time when Terri wasn't around. Our dads were friends. Her and her sisters were always at our house. When I had sex with Terri, it was almost like incest. I just didn't think of her as a girlfriend. She was more of a sister or a cousin or something."

This was a bizarre confession. I'd always thought of them as a couple. I'm positive that Terri thought of them as a couple, even now. She always wanted to marry Joe. She'd as much as said so a hundred times. Joe must have seen the doubt on my face.

Joe said by way of explanation, "Honey, I know Terri feels differently. I'm just telling you about how I feel about her. Terri's always just been convenient. She's just always sort of been there. If I wasn't dating anyone else and I didn't want to invite Jennie out to dinner, I took Terri. I feel about as close to her as I do to my brother Tony. It's about the same. I'm a little protective and a little curious in the sort of way you are curious about a train wreck and that's it. I don't know how to make it any clearer to you than that."

"A little protective and a little curious." I repeated, like they were words I was unfamiliar with. "That's interesting." My eyebrows were knitted together and I was trying to make sense of this.

"If it makes you feel any better, she says I was an idiot for not picking out or giving you an engagement ring. I asked her this morning. She said I was stupid and should have done it right." By now, my bra was off, along with my shirt and Joe was trying to lead me up the stairs. I really didn't want to go up there as long as we were still talking about Gilman, so I stopped moving.

"You talked to her about it?" I said. "Why?"

"Well, like I just said, we're friends. I can usually get a woman's point of view from her."

"Uh, Joe, just a minute ago you were comparing her to your brother Tony. Why is she suddenly a woman?" I felt a prick of jealousy at the base of my stiffened spine.

"Oh, crap. This isn't going to happen, is it? I may as well go on back to work." He pulled me back to the kitchen by my hand, skipped the bra but dumped my t-shirt back over my head and gave me a dismissive kiss as he walked out the back door. He started the Duc and left the yard without another look back at me. I guess it's a good think he had Jennie with him.

I'd wanted to ask him when the last time was that he and Terri were 'friendly' but he said that if I didn't want to know the answers to questions that I shouldn't ask.

I spent the rest of the afternoon upstair in our home office trying to assess my own financial situation. I wanted to try to get as many of my personal bills paid off before I had to stop working skips due to my pregnancy. Most of the cases that I worked netted me in the hundreds of dollars, and not the thousands, so it would still take a lot of luck and hard work to get me in the black. Joe had told me that all the regular monthly bills could come from his paycheck so that meant I could apply what I made to my own bills guilt free.

I was working on a sort of a payment schedule for everything when the doorbell rang. It was Jerry Joanasin. He was a skip I'd been looking for but not having much luck. "Hello, Jerry." I said, when I cautiously opened the door. "What's up? Why are you here?" I was suspicious. Skips don't usually track me down.

Jerry replied, "I come to turn myself in. My wife is all PMS and I figure jail is better than home. Maybe she be better by the time I get out."

I couldn't argue with that logic. I left him at my front door and ran to get my purse. Today was looking up. Jerry's bond was set at $5000 for aggravated kidnapping of an adult. He basically had kept a hooker tied up (literally) in a hotel room longer than her pimp appreciated for the money he'd paid. This apprehension would gain me $500 to start on my payment schedule. Bob had his nose buried in Jerry's crotch when I got back to the door. Jerry didn't look particularly upset by it. It was probably the most action he'd had in a while.

Jerry was docile. All was going so well, until I met up with a guy I'd hauled in a year ago. He was going up the same stairs that Jerry and I were going down at the Police Department. I didn't really even remember his name. I don't think he meant to hurt me, but he just wanted to make me look stupid. He tripped me as I was walking Jerry down the stairs to get my body receipt. I tumbled down a full flight and whacked my head against the cinder block wall at the bottom. On the way down, I had tried everything to break my fall and ended up with, not only a concussion, but a severely strained right wrist. A couple of guys I knew saw it happen and one grabbed the guy who caused it while the other told me to lay still and called Joe, who was upstairs in his office. I was pretty shaken up and was happy to see Joe thundering down the stairs to see if I was okay. I was lucky he was in the office at that moment.

I passed Jerry off to Carl, a cop buddy of mine and before Joe carefully put me in the car to drive me to the hospital Carl brought me my body receipt for Jerry. Joe was terrified about the baby. I really felt like everything down there was okay. My wrist hurt like a son of a bitch and my head wasn't much better, but I'd landed on my butt for the most part and there's plenty of padding there to absorb the shock.

Two hours later, the ER doctor confirmed my suspicions. I had a mild concussion, a badly sprained wrist, and a perfectly healthy baby in my uterus. Joe was starting to get the color back in his face. He, once again, said he didn't think he could go on the undercover operation. I chose to ignore him and hope he would chill out about it.

I felt bad about the way lunch had gone, so I asked him to stop on the way home. We picked up Joe's favorite bread and some cookies for dessert. We also got some fresh vegetables and pork chops. However, this meant Joe would have to cook, but he seemed to like doing it.

I hung out with him in the kitchen while he busied himself cutting up vegetables and marinating the meat. I set the table with one hand and asked him about baby names. He was in a happy mood, probably glad that our conversation was on a lighter subject than it had been in the last couple of days. He said he didn't have any favorite names or any that he hated, so I should maybe come up with a list of the ones I liked and we'd talk about it when I came to apprehend him in October. It was August now so that was two months away. It seemed like an eternity.

He asked me, "Which of the upstairs rooms do you want to give the baby?" He commented on the fact that he had been able to spend a little more time at home since setting up his home office. I definitely wanted to keep it, so I opted to give up the spare bedroom. Besides, if you don't have a spare bedroom, chances are you won't have spare people coming to stay with you very much. He thought this was a smart observation and agreed. "I'll get the bed out of the spare room tonight so that you'll have room to get it set up the way you want it for the baby while I'm gone. If you need someone to carry furniture upstairs, call Dunphy."

He went outside to start the grill. Upon coming back in, he said, "If you find any other furniture you like, you know, for the living room or something while you are looking for baby furniture, you should get it. What we have now is just hand-me-downs from my family. I never really tried to decorate and nothing matches."

I was not a decorator by any stretch of the imagination. If I decided to do anything, I would take my sister Valerie with me. She was good at that kind of stuff.

"So," I started a new conversation, "tell me what you know about Takata. What type of vice purveyor is he? Drugs, guns, illegal gambling, what?"

Joe was used to me being curious about his cases. He shifted easily into the subject. "From what I can tell, he underwrites a number of methamphetamine labs and then performs extortion on any high brow users that his pushers sell to. Tommy's not exactly a businessman. I think his common law wife, Sara Genieve, is really the brains of the family. I haven't been able to get a good bead on what threat they are imposing if they try to move into Trenton. That's what prompted Terri to want to be involved. She wants to protect her family's territory, but I don't know what the connection is. Her family doesn't seem to worry about the drug runners in Trenton, so Takata must have his hand in some business I am unaware of."

"I found a common thread, though. There is a guy serving a life sentence for killing a cop in Oregon. He was, at one point, with the Grizolli's and then it was rumored that he was either Tommy Takata's right hand man or vice versa. I think he ties in somehow but I don't know exactly how. I think Terri does, so I hope that's part of the information she wants to trade me for being her cover and protection in Detroit."

Joe brought all the food in off of the grill and put it on the table in front of us. It looked and smelled great. So did Joe. He was cutting my meat up for me because my right hand was useless. He pushed my plate over to me and started eating himself. I took one bite and it tasted good, but then it turned on me and I spent the next half hour in the bathroom losing my lunch.

I ended up eating strawberry ice cream for dinner. Joe said that Bob felt very fortunate to get my pork chop as well as his own. The way I felt, I'd never even consider eating a pork chop for the rest of my life as long as I lived.

As we climbed into bed, Joe eyed the splint on my right hand, which would be between us if we slept on the sides we usually do. He got up and walked around to the other side of the bed and motioned for me to move to his side so that he wouldn't accidentally roll on to my arm or hurt me.

I do not know when I am going to learn my lesson. I guess the day was just catching up with me. I couldn't sleep on this side of the bed. I couldn't get comfortable because my arm hurt and I was sore from the fall. My mind wanted to have sex but my body didn't feel like it and besides, Joe was already almost asleep. So, I picked a fight.

"What side of the bed does Terri sleep on?" He opened one eye and sat up using his elbow for a prop.

"She used to sleep on whatever side I was on. Do you really want to do this? Do you really want to spend our last few days together fighting? Dammit! I told you if you didn't want me to go, all you have to do is say so." He was mad. He was more than mad. He was furious. He continued, "Do you know what it is like to be accused of something you didn't do? I have never, I mean NEVER, cheated on you or anybody else." He was out of the bed now and getting dressed.

"Where are you going? Come on, get back in bed." I said, laying back down.

"No. I need to get out of here. I am so damn mad. You want me to screw around on you? Fine. I guarantee you I can. It isn't a problem for me to find someone who will happily lead me to her bed." He paused for effect, I guess. "I won't do that, but I could. At least then you would be justified to accuse me." I could see the neighbor's lights flipping on because he was bellowing by now. He saw it, too, and lowered his voice, but it was still trembling with anger. "I know it's hard for you. I know that Dickie screwed around on you. I'm not Dickie. Give me some credit. I haven't been with anyone else since the first time you moved in here with me. You moved out and then in and then out but I stayed faithful to you, even when we were broken up." I guess the surprise was registering on my face. He had stayed faithful. I hadn't. "Surprised? Yeah? Well, don't be. I keep telling you I love you. I don't know what I'd do if I screwed it up and lost you, but I don't have to hang around here and have you accuse me of doing something that you know damn well I wouldn't do. I'll call you every couple of hours to wake you up to check on your concussion." He grabbed the orange t-shirt off the bathroom floor and stalked down the stairs. I was in hot pursuit.

"Joe, I'm sorry. Come back. I promise I won't bring it up again. I trust you." I wasn't crying but I was scared. I didn't want him to leave. Where would he go? What would he do? "C'mon, Joe. Please?"

I was answered in the form of the back door slamming shut and the Ducati starting. I sat down on the stairs. We had never fought like this before. Joe never left. I was always the one who took off to avoid facing my troubles. I knew what this was. Joe's family had been marred for generations by domestic violence. Joe said that both of his brothers had hit their wives from time to time, Marc more often than Tony. Kathy had married a batterer, but Mike got help early on and their marriage had stabilized. I had to deal with the fact that tonight I found Joe's limit. I'm sure he was protecting me by leaving. Joe was a strong man, mentally even more than physically and he had overcome so many of the demons in his life. He loved me enough to leave me instead of hitting me. I owed him a real apology. I hadn't been easy to live with lately. I'd been feeling sorry for myself and maybe I thought it was easier to send him away if I didn't love him so much.

Unfortunately, I love him with all my heart and soul. Or maybe that is 'fortunately'. I hung out on the sofa downstairs, hoping he'd come home. The phone rang, as promised, in 2 hours. I jumped at the telephone. "Joe?" I answered.

"Sorry, friend, just me. Are you okay, having pains in your neck or back?" Dunphy.

"No, not okay, not having pains in my neck or back. Where's Joe?" I demanded.

"I need you to go to a mirror and check your pupils to see if they are equally dilated." He was ignoring my question.

"Is Joe okay? Just tell me that." I pleaded.

"Do I have to come check your eyes myself, or are you going to cooperate?" This man had no patience for me.

"Okay. Yes, they are fine." I hadn't moved a muscle.

"Okay, now get up and go look at them in the mirror and then tell me if they are fine. Don't play with me. It's late and we have to do this again in two hours." I did as he told me to do.

"Yes, they are really fine. Seriously, tell Joe to come home." I was so sorry I did this.

"No can do, friend. He's incommunicado right now. He's fine. He mumbled something like I should tell you he's at Terri Gilman's house if you asked, but he's really not. Talk to you in a couple of hours."

I am such a dope. I can't believe this. 3 days left before he goes undercover and I pick the fight of the century.

Dunphy called again in two hours. I'd fallen asleep on the sofa. I looked at my eyes and they were fine. They were equally bloodshot.

The next time I woke, Joe was hauling me up the stairs to put me in our bed. The way Dunphy had talked, I thought Joe may have been drunk and passed out at his place, but he was showing no signs of it if that was the case.

"Hey, do you remember what used to be built on the lot where the Duncan Donuts on Clark is now?" He asked.

"Are you assessing my concussion or just checking some facts?" I smiled at him. I'm so glad he was home. I grabbed his neck and pulled him to me for a kiss. He asked his question again.

So much for make up sex. I blew out a sigh. "No, I don't remember. What was it?"

"I can't remember either. I was reading through an old file on Tommy Takata's wifey-poo and I found that address as a contact point for her. It was in 1980. Duncan Donuts went in there in 1990, don't ask me how I know that. You don't want to know. I don't have any recollection of what was there. I'll call my mom once the sun comes up." He was pulling his shirt off over his head and I thought my chances for make up sex were looking better, until he headed to the bathroom and turned on the shower.

I followed him in there. He took the opportunity to check my pupils and then stepped into the shower. I pulled off the t-shirt I was sleeping in, and followed him. "Joe, I'm really sorry. It was really unfair of me to do that to you. You are right. You didn't deserve it and I had no reason to do it."

His eyes were locked on mine. "You're right." He smiled. "I accept your apology. If you bring it up again, I'm canceling the operation and getting a marriage counselor and making you go every day until you feel better about us."

He bent to remove the splint from my wrist, so it wouldn't get wet. He reminded me to try not to flex my wrist much. He didn't need to remind me. It hurt like hell.

He turned me around and gently washed, rinsed and conditioned my hair for me. He lathered my entire body up with my little fluffy pink scrubby puff and rinsed me off. He paid particular attention to the spots that made me breathe more deeply. To further our foreplay in a new way, I reminded him that I had never had to shave left-handed and he may need to help me out there. He did so happily and with great enthusiasm, paying particular attention to his favorite haunts. The hot water was running out so he washed his own hair and body quickly and then he dried us both off, wrapped my hair in a towel and began to kiss me. I was responding enthusiastically. I was relatively useless with my left hand, but I managed to wrap it around him and found that I could use that part of him as a handle to pull him into our bedroom with me.

He put the splint back on my wrist and I willingly surrendered the ever-coveted top position to him. Soon, he moved his body down to the foot of the bed. He began to make love to me by kissing the soles of my feet. Continuing up my ankles, calves, and being diverted to my knees for a moment. My hands were tangled in his damp hair and I was anticipating the path he would take to eventually reach my mouth with his.

He spread my legs and nibbled up the insides of my thighs. I was so ready to receive him. I ached to feel his touch. He didn't disappoint. First his hands and fingers, then his lips and tongue, played me like an instrument. I came hard against his face. He continued his ascent up my body, stopping wordlessly at my swelling bosom. He kissed, tongued, suckled and nipped at my nipples. By the time he reached my neck, I was frantic to feel him inside me. I tried to guide him into me, but he resisted by moving away and working those slow kisses down my arms to my elbows and eventually to my palms and the fingertips of my left hand – the one without the splint.

He was throbbing and I could see the urgency on his face. This time when I captured him with my left hand, he didn't resist. I was so ready for him, he slid in to the hilt effortlessly. He froze in that position, his breath ragged and his eyes closed. I knew that one hip muscle twitch from me and it would all be over. I wasn't ready for it to be over, so I remained frozen in place as well. Once he started moving his body against mine I matched his rhythm. "Do it, Baby," I whispered in his ear, sinking my teeth into his shoulder and sucking at his neck and lips. "I wanna feel you come inside me." He could never resist my talking to him like this. I wrapped both legs around his waist and ground my hips hard into his groin.

A low growl started from deep inside him. He moaned and bucked hard against me before arching his back and allowing his release. He fell against me on the bed, his head on my shoulder. We lay intertwined for quite some time, and then he rose off of me, unhooked my legs from behind his waist and rolled to the side. He was still breathing hard and adoring me with his eyes.

Damn, I love makeup sex.