Read Chapter One here:
THE DEFECTIVE DETECTIVE, A Nick & Dagger Mystery
Dedicated to Cerberus of the Red Zone:
“Park at your own peril, dude”
Chapter One
GETTING TO KNOW YOU
"Have you ever had a female partner?"
"Fuck yeah." He made an obscene gyration with his hips and hands which was internationally recognized as the body language for the bump uglies.
"How many?" Coolly interested, but not arctic.
"About twenty-five if you omit my ex-wife. She chewed raw bacon rinds and spit. A lot. She was a virgin when I married her and a virgin when we divorced. I never knew for sure if she was female. The stuffed moose head she hung over the kitchen sink should of alerted me that something was wrong with this picture."
"I meant a female partner. Like me."
"Oh. That kind. No. You're my first," he said.
"I hope I'm all you've fantasized."
"If you're not, we'll get an annulment. I know all the judges."
"You're a smart-ass."
"Absolutely."
"I'm driving."
Detective Nicholas Parti handed Detective Dagmar Erskine the car keys and maneuvered her to the unmarked police car. Unmarked was a misnomer. The vehicle was beat to shit. Enormous holes had been chewed in the steel doors by rampant rust rats. Dagmar slid behind the wheel and found the crap was only skin deep. Zero to sixty in six seconds.
"Knock yourself out," Nick said. "How old are you anyway, Dagger?"
"Twenty-eight. What's it to you?"
"Dagger. How the fuck you get a name like Dagger?"
"My Daddy was a knife-thrower in the circus. One of his gin-soaked knife tosses wavered off course and impaled his assistant, who happened to be my Mother. They did in-utero surgery to save me."
"Bullshit. You're Dagmar."
"If you knew, why did you ask?"
"Why did you get yourself transferred, Detective Dagmar Irksome?"
"Erskine. Because your reputation under the covers was impossible to resist. I had to see for myself."
"Is that all?"
"No. I heard no one wanted to work with you because you were losing your edge."
"So this constitutes a charitable gesture toward a fellow officer?"
"Yes and no. I had an ulterior motive."
"Aha. A double-edged-dagger. Why did you become a cop?"
"All my life I tried to look like a waif. Then I had an epiphany. I joined the police academy so I could justify eating the occasional doughnut. By the time I graduated from the academy, I knew I'd made a mistake."
"Oh, fuckin' wonderful! Breakfast at Epiphany's."
"I love police work! It was the uniform that got me down. When I put on the baton, the weapon, the dropcases, the portable, the handcuffs, the flashlight, the beeper, and the gas, I waddled. I had to find a niche that allowed me some fashion freedom. Paste-ies, maybe, or a riding habit and custom boots."
"And a crop. Don't forget the crop."
"Calm down. You're thinking S & M. I don't carry a crop when I'm walking around. A crop is used to tactfully remind the horse who's on top."
Really? He hadn't experienced that. Nick's mind locked onto the boots/crop fantasy. Then he whipped himself into the moment and critiqued Dagger's fashion choices: faded jeans, beat-up jogging shoes, and a shabby Hawaiian shirt. He'd read her file when he heard she was going undercover with him. She'd attended some upper-crust academic institution like Ms. Wizened's Country Day School for Rich Girls. Her Dad probably owned vineyards, and Dagmar and Mom doubtless 'hunted to hounds'. Nick wondered how her parents reacted when their precious child left Stanford for the Police Academy.
"Welsh ponies," Dagger said out of the blue. (Perhaps it was stream of consciousness produced by the boot/crop stuff.) "Now there's a breed to be reckoned with," said Dagger. "My Dad wouldn't let me ride through his avocado orchards. It can transfer root rot from infected trees and annihilate the healthy ones," she continued knowledgeably, expecting Nick to care. (Which he should have, if he liked guacamole.) "By the time you notice the trees are bummed, it's all over."
"Okay, so I was wrong about the vineyard," he said.
"What?"
"Never mind."
"For this investigation, are we supposed to be lovers?" Dagger fastened her ice-blue irises on Nick's yellowing eyeballs sizing up his off-hours alcohol consumption. "If you clean up, it won't look too far-fetched for us to be getting it on."
What the hell was happening? He was the one who was in charge of sexual harassment. Didn't she know nothing? Oh well, he didn't really give a rat's ass. He'd carried the macho-predator ball way too long. He was tired. It was somebody else's turn.
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