The Teeth of the Hydra	The Teeth of the Hydra

 by Resonant

  

 Author's website: http://trickster.org/res

 Disclaimer: 

 Author's Notes: A million thanks to a million people. Te for telling me
what it feels like to get a tattoo. Alanna for helping me break down Ray's
wall of denial. Gearbox for fixing a point-of-view problem. Beth, Fox, and
Mia for betas. And Ces for all that and more.

 Story Notes: 

 

 

 The Teeth of the Hydra 

 by Resonant 

 Part 1: You Dance When You Walk  Well, you dance when you walk, So let's
dance, Take a chance, Understand me. T Rex, "Bang a Gong"  

 1971 

 Stanley Kowalski's father could loosen a lugnut with his bare hands. Or
so he said, anyway. Mainly he used a wrench, just to be safe. 

 Stanley liked to sit on the kitchen stoop and watch his father take an
engine apart, hairy arms smeared with grease to the elbow. "Feel that?"
his father would say say, tossing a socket wrench at him. "Feel the
balance? Feel the weight? Never skimp on your tools, Stanley," while
Stanley scrambled to catch the wrench before it either hit the concrete or
broke his arm. 

 Stanley's father wore a long-sleeved shirt to work, whatever the weather.
But he did car work in his T-shirt. An anchor peeked out under his right
sleeve, faded navy blue. 

 "Don't even think about it, Stanley," he said. "I made one bad decision
when I was young and drunk and stupid. And now anyone who sees it, I have
to prove that they can take me seriously." 

 "Can't you take it off?" Even the dirt on his elbows came off when his
mother went at them with a pot scrubber. 

 "Doesn't come off," his father said. "They do it with needles, and
afterwards it's there even when you're dead."  

 1997 

 When Shannon Reynolds limped into the station on a Sunday morning, Ray
and Fraser were next up to take a walk-in. But they had to turn her right
over to Elaine, even though Elaine was up to her armpits in Martians,
because it was pretty obvious that Shannon wasn't going to be able to
handle going into an interrogation room with two guys. 

 She talked so quiet it was just about impossible to hear her from the
other side of the two-way mirror. Ray listened to Fraser breathing beside
him and hoped he had his bat ears on. Dief was probably listening, since
it was none of his business, but unfortunately he couldn't tell them a
whole lot about what he heard. 

 "And when you regained consciousness," Elaine was saying, "the man was no
longer in your apartment?" 

 Shannon shook her head. 

 Fraser leaned toward Ray and murmured, "I understand Jenny and Mike have
two wine glasses down in the lab." 

 Elaine was speaking again. " ... were undressed when you awoke. Was there
any sign that he hurt you or assaulted you sexually while you were
unconscious?" 

 Shannon made an ambiguous head gesture, neither a nod nor a shake. " ...
didn't hurt anywhere else," she murmured, "except for the --" 

 Whatever it was, it made Elaine sit up a little straighter. "Can you show
me?" 

 Awkwardly, Shannon stood up and hauled down her sweats on one side. And
then he spotted the little blot of color on her hip. 

 "That bastard," he breathed. "He tattooed her."  

 1971 

 Stanley Kowalski was nobody in particular, just another kid, until the
day he started sixth grade. When Mrs. Bates was handing out cards to fill
out, the cute girl beside him looked straight at him for the first time.
She had the prettiest eyes he'd ever seen. 

 "I'm Stella Kirkman," she said. "What's your name?" 

 And that was the day Ray Kowalski was born.  

 1997 

 The doctor didn't find any sign that Shannon Reynolds had been sexually
assaulted, but they sent her to a rape counselor anyway, because that was
what she seemed like she needed. 

 The lab report on the wine glasses came back inconclusive . A team went
back to the apartment to dust more thoroughly, but nobody really expected
to find anything useful. 

 Elaine took as many pictures of the tattoo as she could manage before the
girl started shaking too bad to hold still. The perp was obviously using
the real deal, not straight-pin-and-ballpoint-ink stuff. They took the
pictures to the copy center up the street, and the kid there cleaned them
up a little and bumped up the contrast, but they still couldn't make out a
lot of detail. 

 Fraser, Ray, and Elaine squinted at the print of the tattoo. It was
roughly circular, with one end tapering off in a horizontal line at the
top and the other fanning out in a complicated tangle in the center. 

 "It looks like a really sloppy peace sign," Ray said. 

 "That bit in the middle," Elaine said, "that's more like a Celtic knot." 

 Fraser nodded. "Yes, I can see a resemblance. It's really quite
beautiful, despite its unfortunate --" 

 Ray sat up suddenly. "Snakes. It's a bunch of snakes, see -- no. It's one
snake with a bunch of heads. Six heads."  

 1972 

 In the spring a kid named Kornbluth moved away, so Stella and Ray sat
together in third-period history as well as homeroom. 

 Ray'd never had a girl for a friend before. He couldn't exactly wrestle
with her and call her names, like he did with Chip Szujewska up the
street, who'd been his buddy since second grade. But when he remembered
some story of his mom's and offered to carry her books for her, she looked
at him like he had three heads and said, "What for?" 

 She had lots of friends, but she seemed perfectly happy to add him to the
crowd. 

 There was a record store called the Pit a couple of blocks from school.
Some days Ray and Stella would stop in with the other kids after school,
killing a little time before she walked north and he walked south. 

 One day she pulled an album out of the bin and handed it to him. He
flipped it over and -- 

 It was a girl. It was a guy? It was a guy with stuff on his eyelashes and
a smear of something greasy on his lips. Ray felt his cheeks grow hot. 

 "Looks like a fairy," he said. 

 Stella laughed lightly and took the album out of his hands. "If Marc
Bolan is a fairy, then you're Charles Atlas." She brushed her fingertips
over the shiny lips, ran a thumb over the cheek, and put the album back in
the bin. 

 "Bye, Ray," she said, and he went home and got five dollars of his
birthday money and went back to buy the album.	

 1997 

 There were tons of great bars in Rogers Park, so Ray had no clue why
Shannon Reynolds would have wasted her time picking up guys at a plastic
fake-Irish place like O'Malley's. "Jeez," he told Fraser, "I bet they get
these places in a kit. Pictures and tables and beer and bartender all in
one big box." Fraser didn't laugh, but his eyes crinkled, so Ray counted
that as a win. 

 Bars were weird in the morning, with all the lights on and everything
smelling like bleach and Pine-Sol. Dief made himself right at home, even
scored a Danish from one of the cleaners, but Fraser wandered around,
touching the vinyl pad in front of the bar, frowning at the foozball
table, like he was in an art museum. 

 All the places they'd gone together on cases -- a kindergarten, a strip
club, the back room of a Korean grocery, the back room of a place that
sold wedding dresses -- and Fraser always looked exactly the same, like
some student from outer space who'd come to learn all about the people of
Earth and their strange ways. 

 The only thing he learned at O'Malley's was that the bartender saw
nothing and the owner saw nothing and the DJ might have seen something but
he left an hour ago for a week in Florida. Big surprise there.	

 1973 

 Every time they went to the Pit now, "Daniel" was playing over the
speakers. "That's the prettiest song I ever heard," Stella said, and Ray
said, "Yeah." 

 Russell Dunn, who was in Ray's bio class, was over at the next bin
looking at Elvis albums. "I don't see how you can like that faggot music,"
he said. 

 "What?" Ray said, and at the same time Stella said, "It's about his
brother, Russell. Don't you even listen to the words?" 

 Russell smirked at them. "Sure it is," he said. "You do what you like,
but I don't listen to faggot music." 

 Ray thumped the album Russell was holding. "Better than old people
music," he said, and Stella giggled and gave him an admiring look. 

 After Russell huffed out the door, Ray turned to Stella. "It's not about
his brother?" 

 "Oh, Ray," she said.  

 1997 

 Fraser pulled open the door and held it, and Ray almost walked right into
a pair of muscular calves. 

 "Whoops," said a voice from over his head, and a guy climbed down from a
ladder carrying a bucket of soapsuds. 

 A window washer could see lots of useful things. "CPD," Ray told him.
"Can we talk to you a minute?" 

 The guy looked at Fraser and Ray could almost see his eyes popping out,
like in a cartoon. "David Bruce," he said. "I would be more than happy to
do anything I can to help." 

 Every time Ray asked David a question, David answered to Fraser, which
was starting to piss Ray off. Plus the guy looked like Peter Frampton, and
he was wearing cutoffs when it wasn't even hot out, and Ray really didn't
like the way he was eyefucking poor Fraser, who was probably not going to
tell him to cut it out because that wouldn't be courteous. 

 "OK, well, if you're not here at night you won't be able to help us," Ray
interrupted in the middle of some long pointless story, and David was so
surprised he actually looked at Ray for the first time since Fraser came
into view. "So whatever, fine, take his number, Fraser. We gotta motor." 

 As he started the car, he told Fraser, "Sorry you had to put up with
being ogled like that." 

 Fraser gave him a well-rehearsed expression of mild surprise. "I noticed
nothing untoward in Mr. Bruce's behavior, Ray." 

 "Fine, Fraser, he was a perfect gentleman and you should invite him to
tea with your grandmother." 

 "Well, in point of fact, Ray, my grandmother ..." 

 Ray put the car in gear, not exactly gently. Not his fault if he didn't
like people to look at his partner like he was a piece of Grade A Prime,
even if his partner didn't seem to mind too much.  

 1973 

 Chip Szujewska would do any stupid thing if you dared him. In the fourth
grade he ate a caterpillar -- said it made his tongue numb. In the sixth
grade he broke his arm trying to jump his bike over three garbage cans at
the bottom of his driveway, and a week after the cast came off he broke
his leg trying to do it again. Which was why he didn't have a bike any
more, and also why his mother took those pills. 

 So naturally he was the one that could pinch his sister's Salems, two at
a time, and bring them to smoke with Ray behind the gym before school. Ray
only coughed a little now. 

 There was a spring dance coming up at Holy Family, and Chip had decided
Ray needed to ask Stella. So when she came up the walk with her pals the
Beths, Chip gave Ray a hard shove, and Ray staggered out into their path,
and then he had no choice. 

 "Uh, Stella, you, uh --" The Beths wouldn't take the hint and leave, they
just stood there looking at him like it was any of their business. Behind
him he could hear Chip making chicken noises. 

 "You, uh, you don't wanna go to the dance with me, right?" 

 She looked totally shocked. "I'm going with Mike Levine." 

 Shit. Mike was a junior. With a car. 

 "You should ask Kim Ashe," Beth Hunt put in. "She likes you." 

 "She totally does," Beth Burke said. 

 Kim Ashe was a foot taller than him. "OK, well, see ya," he said, and
shrank back into the cloud of minty smoke. The five-minute bell rang, and
the three girls took off. 

 "Loser," Chip said comfortingly.  

 1997 

 "Guess the next thing is to check my sources and see if anybody saw our
guy buying roofies," Ray said in the car. "Wish we had a better
description." Shortish guy with longish hair, they had from Shannon --
otherwise all she could say was "average" or "I didn't notice." 

 "Is it possible that our culprit was using some form of topical
anesthetic in addition?" Fraser said. "Or is rohypnol powerful enough to
assure unconsciousness even through the pain of tattooing?" 

 "I'm sure the ro would be enough," Ray said. "It don't hurt that much
while it's happening. But the next couple days are a bitch." 

 He hadn't really been sure whether Fraser knew he had a tat or not. From
the slight change of posture beside him, he guessed not. Good. Surprise
the guy for once. "I'll show you mine sometime," he said. "Got too many
clothes on now." 

 "That," Fraser said cautiously, "sounds fascinating."	

 1974 

 Dried pee was probably the worst smell in the world, but it was hardly
noticeable now, and nobody could smell it but him. He hoped. God, he hoped
they couldn't. 

 Sitting in the police station, with phones ringing and people yelling all
around him, Ray felt like he was in some kind of tunnel, looking through a
thick plate of glass at himself. A little skinny kid with crooked glasses
and a jacket spread out over his lap, shivering a little in the hard
plastic chair. 

 A couple chairs down, Stella was telling the story to her parents. He saw
her point at him, giving him a look full of admiration, and he sent up a
silent prayer to whoever was listening that she wouldn't tell her parents
exactly how he'd distracted the robber. And that she would, please, God,
stay where she was and not come any closer. 

 Stella's dad had moved out earlier in the year -- "Whatever. He was never
home anyway," she said -- and even now he and Mrs. Kirkman wouldn't sit
together, but kept Stella in between them like a wall. 

 Ray'd called his mom to let her know he was OK, but his dad couldn't
leave work and they only had the one car and the bus schedule was iffy
this time of day, so it was going to take her a while to get to the
station. He didn't need to have his mother there, anyway. He wasn't a
baby. 

 There was something kind of soothing about all the craziness and noise.
Ray slid down in the chair, trying not to move too much so nobody would
get a whiff of him, and waited for somebody to call his name.  

 1997 

 When they went back to the station to fax a notice to all the districts,
Stella was there, waiting to see Welsh about some kind of warrant. 

 Stella seemed to make Fraser really nervous. Ray had never figured out
whether it had anything to do with him or whether it was just a
personality conflict. Anyway, he made sure he got in between them while he
told Stella about Shannon Reynolds. 

 Stella raised her eyebrows. "Every time I begin to think there's nothing
new in the criminal world ..." 

 "Hope this doesn't mean they're smarter than us," Ray said. "Bad enough
they outnumber us." 

 "Want to get a picture on the news?" she said. "I've got contacts at WGN
and ABC, and I think Maria knows a guy at Fox." 

 He shook his head fast. "No, no, no. Don't want to spook the guy." Fraser
was being awfully quiet over there. Worried him a little. 

 "You still have that bracelet," Stella said, and he realized he was
twisting it around one finger. "The way you live, I can't believe it
lasted twenty minutes." 

 "You kidding? I break it all the time. They're like three bucks, though,
so I always get another one," and then Welsh's door opened and she said,
"See you around," and went in.	

 1974 

 There was always something different by the cash register at the Pit --
keychains, buttons, lighters with band logos on them. One day Ray was
ambling up the glass display cases, looking at T-shirts he didn't have the
money for, when his hand bumped a rack of heavy silver ball-chain
bracelets. 

 Ray had never worn jewelry in his life. He didn't even own a wristwatch
yet, though sometimes he put on his father's, which hung loose from his
wrist, heavy and warm. His hands were big and clumsy -- his feet, too. His
mother said it meant he was going to be tall. He hoped it would happen
soon. 

 He took down one of the bracelets. It was strung through a cardboard
hanging tag, so he couldn't put it on, but he laid it over the back of his
wrist -- 

 It looked great. 

 He paid his three bucks and tore it out of its cardboard right there at
the counter, moving down absently when the kid behind him nudged him. He
had to tuck his thumb in to make his hand small enough to squeeze through.


 It felt distracting, dangling and shifting, making him aware of his hand,
his wrist, his forearm. 

 He held up his hand. It looked like a man's hand now.	

 1997 

 "Your bracelet was a gift from Stella?" Fraser said in that bland
just-making-conversation voice. Whenever he used that voice, he was hiding
something -- Ray could feel it, even if he hadn't yet figured out what. 

 "Naw," he said. "I just bought one when I was a kid. Thought it looked
cool." He thumped the fax. "Come on, you stupid thing, send." 

 "If I may?" Fraser hit a couple of buttons at blinding speed, and the fax
squealed happily and started to suck down the sheet of paper. "And you've
kept replacing it?" 

 He didn't know why himself. "Sort of my trademark by now," he said. 

 One of the guys from the motor pool went by, and Ray took a deep happy
sniff of grease and lava soap. "Smells like a weekend," he said. 

 "Oh?" 

 "My dad had this old shirt he used for car work. Used to say it was more
10W-30 than cotton. I'd smell that shirt and know it was time to go to
work." 

 "I remember my father's uniform," Fraser said. "It was what he put on to
go away." 

 Ray grimaced sympathetically. "Uniform have a smell?" he asked, and took
a sniff of Fraser's shoulder. 

 Sweatery wool smell, leather, something sulfurous that was probably some
kind of polish. Sweat, too. He didn't know why that should surprise him.
Thing was probably hot as hell, and you couldn't clean it every time you
were in it. 

 Now he registered that he was standing in the hallway smelling his
partner, like he was the wolf or something. Fraser was frozen, hardly even
breathing. Jeez, that's me, Ray thought: always pushing. 

 "Not Evening in Paris, but not bad," he said, clapping Fraser on the
shoulder and easing back to give him a little air. 

 Fraser thawed out one muscle at a time. "I'm happy to hear it," he
murmured.  

 1974 

 David Bowie was Stella's favorite singer. Her face was subtly different
when they played "Moonage Daydream" at the Pit, and she liked to stare at
the photo on the back cover, where you could see his nipple if you looked
close. She had the album at home, and she said the pictures in the liner
notes were even wilder. 

 "I'd let him," she said dreamily. 

 "Like you'd ever meet him." Ray looked down at the photo, at the pale
vulnerable body. "Anyway, he doesn't do girls." 

 "Yes, he does, too, sometimes. He does both." She leaned back on the
record bin and hugged the album. "I could meet him if he played in Chicago
again." 

 Ray pictured it -- Stella and Bowie intertwined in poses imperfectly
remembered from Penthouse. It squeezed his belly in a strange way, the
white fragile limbs, the pale hair. 

 Of course he'd thought about himself with Stella, doing things he could
only half imagine. But that was a little different from picturing her with
another guy. 

 There was probably something wrong with him.  

 1997 

 Monday morning there was a pink memo on Ray's chair: The two-four had
just had a call from a girl who got tattooed. Ray called Fraser at the
Consulate and said, "Hope you didn't start on anything yet." 

 Where Shannon Reynolds was tall, white, and terrified, Amanda Jackson was
short, black, and matter-of-fact. She arrived at the station straight from
the hospital where she was a surgical resident, still wearing her white
uniform. 

 "I'm not hurt," she said. "I am angry, and I am confused, and I feel like
a fool for making myself vulnerable, but I suppose I was lucky I wasn't
harmed -- only decorated." 

 She'd met the guy at an acoustic blues show. "I don't know what made me
invite him home," she said. "I know better. He just seemed completely
harmless somehow -- not anything he did, just something about him." 

 "Once you got back to your apartment, did you have drinks?" 

 She made a disgusted noise. "Yes, fool that I am," she said. "But I
figured, my wine, my glasses, what harm, do you see?" The people at the
two-four hadn't had any luck getting prints off the glasses, either. 

 "You'll probably need to see it?" She tucked down the white pants to show
them. 

 The snake had seven heads. 

 "What is it?" she asked when she saw them exchanging glances. Without a
word, Fraser showed her the picture of Shannon's six-headed snake. She bit
her lip. "You think he's keeping count?" 

 "I'm afraid," Fraser said, "that it's all too real a possibility." 

 Ray sighed. "OK, we get some kind of serial tattooer out there, and
evidently there's five victims we don't know about yet. We better get a
composite drawing out to the departments. When's Cecil coming in next,
what, Thursday?" 

 "Perhaps I could work out a sketch and spare Ms. Jackson a return trip,"
Fraser said. 

 Ray nodded; the department artist had a pretty irregular schedule. And
Fraser, of course, just happened to have a sketchpad on him. Ray had no
clue where he'd had it hidden. Maybe in his pants again. 

 Fraser drew, Ray watched, and Amanda critiqued. "Not such a heavy jaw.
No, no stubble at all." 

 They looked good together, Ray thought. Fraser seemed to like tough,
self-reliant girls. Maybe they'd hit it off. 

 "That's a pretty good likeness," Amanda said at last. Ray looked. 

 "That is the least suspicious suspect I ever saw," he said. The face was
almost pretty, with longish hair and full lips and a kind of a weak chin.
"No wonder girls felt safe to take him home." 

 "That must have been what made me drop my guard," she said. "You're a
good artist, Constable." 

 "Thank you kindly," Fraser said. "If it wouldn't make you too
uncomfortable, it would be helpful if we could get a better likeness of
the tattoo as well." 

 "Yes, of course." She stood up, which put her hip just about at Fraser's
eye level, and held down her pants on one side again. 

 There was a long, awkward silence while Fraser drew and Amanda tried to
find something to look at. 

 She was doing good. Ray doubted he'd be able to stand around with his
pants half down while some handsome weirdo in a red coat stared at a spot
two inches from his crotch. Her skin was dark enough he couldn't tell if
she was blushing, but it seemed like she was breathing kind of fast. 

 "I know all this, it can't be easy," he said, softly so he wouldn't spook
her. 

 "I want to help any way I can," she said, kind of tense. 

 "You are." 

 "Yes," Fraser said warmly, putting down his pencil and standing up. "Your
help will be invaluable." 

 "Fraser, give the lady your phone number," Ray said. "She might remember
something later on." Fraser would never get on the clue bus by himself.
Maybe Amanda would give him a little push. 

 Fraser tore off a sheet of paper and wrote his name, including middle
initial. He thought for a moment, and then wrote down a phone number. Ray
looked over his shoulder and saw that it was his own cell phone number.
Good idea. You really wanted to make sure that the path of justice didn't
go anywhere near Turnbull's desk. 

 "Let me give you mine, too." She wrote down three numbers. "I'm happy to
help in any way I can." 

 Fraser took the paper. "I appreciate your civic-mindedness." 

 Ray shook his head. Not like he was any great Romeo himself, but even he
could do better than that.  

 Part 2: The Mystery Dance  Well, I remember when the lights went out, And
I was trying to make it look like it was never in doubt. She thought that
I knew, and I thought that she knew, So both of us were willing but we
didn't know how to do it. Elvis Costello, "The Mystery Dance"  

 1975 

 Stella's mom was dating an English professor from Loyola University.
Stella said she'd marry him except she didn't want to lose the house, but
he was over there pretty much all the time, and sometimes Stella called
him "my dad." 

 Professor Adler had a daughter named Nancy who was a college junior.
Nancy came to Stella's house a lot because it was bigger than her dad's
apartment and quieter than her dorm, and she seemed to think Stella was a
Barbie or something. Stella was all the time coming to school with her
fingernails painted gold or a row of silver studs hammered around the
cuffs of her jeans because she and Nancy had been doing girl stuff the
night before. 

 Ray saw Nancy sometimes when she came to the Pit to meet Stella after
school: a tall plumpish college girl with big tinted glasses and her hair
frosted in four or five shades of blonde. She was OK, though he never
quite knew what to say to her and she always looked at him like she was
trying not to laugh. 

 She was useful, though. She had friends in New York and would go visit
and come back with wild records, which Stella would sometimes lend him.
And when Stella complained about not being able to get into any of the
live music shows, Nancy's boyfriend Knox got her a fake ID. Then he got
Ray one, too. It gave his birthdate as 1957, which was weird. Ray's
parents hadn't even been married then. 

 Stella went out a lot with Nancy and Knox, and most of the time she
brought Ray along, even though there were a couple of other guys she was
actually dating. "They have no taste," she explained. "It's all Led
Zeppelin with them." 

 Knox never said a word to Ray. "He thinks you're, you know." Nancy held
out her arm and let her hand drop limply from her wrist. Ray stared at
her, and she added hastily, "Because of the bracelet. Guys don't wear
bracelets." 

 "Lots of guys wear bracelets," he mumbled. Knox must have some weird
ideas about fashion. 

 "You know what, though," Stella put in. "you know who had on a bracelet
-- the bank robber guy did." 

 Ray felt a hot bloom of humiliation he always got when he remembered that
day. "Shut up," he said. If she still thought he'd done it on purpose, why
should he tell her any different? 

 "You shut up." She poked him with her sharp little elbow. "He did. I
remember. You notice stuff like that on a hand with a gun in it. 

 "Besides --" She slipped her hand into his back pocket and out so fast he
could almost believe he'd imagined it. "Ray likes girls. Don't you, Ray?" 

 "He likes you," Nancy said.  

 1997 

 "So," Ray said when they had seen Amanda out. "Any idea about our next
move?" 

 "Unfortunately, it appears that we can't expect any consistency in either
the victims or the venues." 

 "I was thinking," Ray said. "Tattoo equipment is not something you can
buy at Kmart." 

 "Perhaps it would be useful to try to locate his supplier, then," Fraser
said. 

 There were probably a hundred tattoo parlors in greater Chicago, but that
was where some of Ray's shadier contacts came in handy: He and Fraser went
straight over to Belmont and Clark to the Double Dragon. 

 Fat Len was in the back on the typewriter like he always was between
customers. "Hey, Hemingway," Ray called through the office door, "quit
working on your novel and be a good citizen for a minute." 

 At Fraser's raised eyebrows, Ray said, "Len and I go way back." 

 "I do Ray's arm." Len could actually speak perfect English when it suited
him, but evidently he thought it would be a good idea to let Fraser
underestimate him. "In seventy-seven, first year I open shop." 

 Ray could see Fraser doing the math in his head. 

 "He look young, yes, have baby face, but he have a card, it say he's
twenty. I come from China one year, never know Americans such liars." He
looked down. "Is that a wolf?" 

 Len raised his eyebrows when Ray showed him the drawing of Amanda's
tattoo and then the polaroid of Shannon's. "Not bad," he said.
"Professional, yes?" 

 "Involuntary," Ray told him. 

 "Son of a bitch," Len said, all trace of accent gone. Ray sneaked a look
at Fraser and was insanely pleased to see no surprise at all on his face.
"City hassles us even when we only ink people who want ink." 

 Ray showed Len the drawing of the suspect. Len shook his head. "I'd like
to wring his neck," he said. 

 "Yeah, well, we gotta find him first," Ray told him. "You couldn't do
this with stuff just anybody would have, right? So I'm wondering, maybe we
can track him by his supplies." 

 Len nodded. "I'm not really plugged in," he said. "You ask Silver. Silver
will know."  

 1975 

 The person at the door of La Mere Vipere, a skinny brown-haired guy in
torn jeans, a lace bra, and some kind of dog collar, examined Ray's fake
ID, pursing his magenta lips. The cups of the bra were crumpled and
deflated on the narrow chest. Ray didn't know where to look. 

 Finally he handed the ID back to Ray, wordlessly shaking his head. 

 But a couple of blocks over was a place called the Fallout Shelter that
would take anybody that had two bucks. Ray followed Stella and Nancy and
Knox down a narrow flight of stairs into a room so full of smoke that the
beam of the spotlight looked like something solid. 

 Knox and Nancy were looking for some guy named Carter, but since they
didn't know what he looked like, they were just going to wander around.
Ray and Stella pushed their way through the crowd, and Ray handed the big
bald guy at the keg a dollar and got back two plastic cups of beer that
had probably been cold last night. 

 The band was called the Crave. Stella knew the lead singer, who had
written a song for her, or so she claimed -- it was called Garbage Baby,
and the chorus was more or less "Don't waste your time, she's too young to
fuck." 

 Even with the jackhammer beat and the screaming, there were still some
couples slow dancing, or else making out standing up. Ray squinted at two
really tall people in the corner. 

 "Hey, hey, Stel." He grabbed her elbow. "Get a load of those --" 

 "Ray, if you're going to be a moron and embarrass me, you can just go
home." 

 The whole place gave him a weird feeling in the back of his neck, like
when he was getting ready to do something humiliating. "I'm staying," he
said.  

 1997 

 Len went to call this Silver person and say they were coming, and Fraser
started looking at the work samples on the wall. There was your basic
stuff -- Mother and Polish Princess and Born To Lose, roses and skulls --
but most of them were Chinese characters. For all Ray knew, he was reading
them. 

 "Does yours resemble these?" 

 "Naw, mine's one of a kind, Fraser." He was just wearing a T-shirt, so he
pushed up the sleeve to show him. 

 Fraser was quiet for a while, long enough to make Ray edgy. "The ink
coverage is very heavy," he said finally. "It must have hurt a great
deal." 

 "I don't remember much." Ray gave Fraser a quick glance. "I woke up with
a pounding hangover and something stuck to my face, which turned out to be
the flap I tore off the spark plug box to show Len what I wanted --" 

 Fraser touched it gently, like it might still hurt, all these decades
later. "Why Champion?" 

 "Everybody asks that, and I never been able to say, exactly." His
shoulder tingled. "It just said something. Lotta things." He put his hand
over the mark. "My mom always said I did everything for shock value and
don't encourage him, Damian, but my dad was so pissed he could hardly
speak. Figured I'd, like, branded myself low-class forever. If I'd mouthed
off at him like I usually did, I probably would have gotten thrown out of
the house." 

 "Well, it isn't as if it said Born To Lose," Fraser said. 

 Ray gave him a wry grin. "Don't kid yourself, Fraser. In those days every
tattoo said Born To Lose."  

 1975 

 The drummer from Yeast claimed to have played with Johnny Thunders.
Frankly, Ray had his doubts, but there was no question Yeast fans were
hardcore. 

 Ray had pawed through his closet for half an hour looking for an outfit
that would get him out the door past his parents, but not get him called a
poseur once he got to the Fallout Shelter. He didn't rip up his clothes
because he hated to make his mom waste money. So maybe he was a poseur. 

 Stella could probably show up in a ball gown and a tiara and not get
called a poseur. Maybe girls couldn't be poseurs. With a girl, you knew
she wasn't just doing it to get laid. Girl wanted to get laid, all she had
to do was show up. 

 Stella could dance, though. She'd been at it for hours, cheeks pink, hair
a little sweaty -- when she lifted it up to cool the back of her neck, the
scent made Ray lightheaded. He didn't think it was the beer. You burned
through a lot of beer, dancing. 

 About one o'clock in the morning, she pulled him off the dance floor and
kissed him. 

 Kissed him for so long he nearly passed out, her little mouth slippery
with purple lipstick and tasting like cheap beer. He'd been imagining it
for so many years, but now that it was really happening, he was only half
there because where was he going to put his hands, and would Nancy tell
Mrs. Kirkman, who really didn't approve of him, and his nose was smashed
up against her cheek so he couldn't breathe -- 

 It was incredible. 

 But on the way home, she rode up front with Nancy. And the next day at
school she was holding hands with Brian Swensen like nothing was
different, and something in the look on her face made him think she'd
laugh at him if he said anything about it. 

 He must have been paying more attention than he thought while it was
happening, because afterwards he could relive it in every detail. He
failed two vocab tests and missed the bell three times before the memory
wore thin and real life came back.  

 1997 

 He figured he'd be able to think clearer at home than at a restaurant, so
they picked up Chinese on the way. He tossed Fraser the remote while he
was pulling all the boxes out of the bag, tossing a piece or two to Dief
in the process. He wasn't paying attention to the screen till a familiar
face caught his eye. 

 "Hang on, Fraser, go back a couple -- I thought so! That's Frank
Constantine, my old partner from the one-nine." 

 Same eyes that turned down at the outer corners, same sloppy oversized
cardigan -- it was Frank all right, even with all that extra gray in his
hair. 

 The sound kicked in. " ... not only a little more sympathy for people
that get victimized for being gay," Frank was saying, "but also a little
more support for officers of the law who are gay themselves, which god
knows they need ..." 

 Ray went hot all over. He could feel Fraser looking at him, and he made a
shushing gesture. 

 "And in fact," the interviewer chick was saying, "it was just such an
experience that led you to found the task force, isn't that right,
detective?" 

 "No way," Ray muttered, sitting down blindly. "No way Frank was queer." 

 It was a girl's voice that answered. "That's right." The camera pulled
back to show a young woman sitting next to Frank. Khakis, black T-shirt.
Those same sad Constantine eyes. "As one of the city's first openly
lesbian detectives, I found myself the victim of everything from --" 

 Ray sagged. "It's Jessica," he said to Fraser. "It ain't Frank. It's his
daughter." 

 "And, you know, pretending to be something you're not -- it takes a lot
out of you. My dad always said, 'Life's too short, kiddo,'" Jessica said,
grinning at Frank. 

 "Jeez, she looks just like her mother," Ray muttered. "She was just a
little kid the last time I saw her." Fraser was giving him a funny look.
"Sorry. Just freaked me out a little to think about Frank being --" 

 "I understand," Fraser said soothingly. 

 "I mean, nothing wrong with it, but you know, you think you know
somebody, and then --" 

 "I understand." 

 On TV, the interviewer girl was saying, "Does it bother you that some
Chicago officers are referring to your group as the Queer Corps?" 

 Jessica grinned again. "Believe me, Amy, we've all heard much worse."	

 1976 

 "Oh, hey, the Runaways album is in!" She elbowed Ray and handed him the
album. "You think they're sexy?" 

 There they all were, with their soft-hard baby-punk sneers. "They look
like they could kick my ass." It was a compliment. 

 "Yeah." She gave him a mischievous look out from under her eyelashes. "If
you didn't want to, they could make you." She pointed to the dark-haired
one. "She could pin your hands --" 

 Jesus. Why did she do this shit to him? In a record store? Sometimes he
thought she just liked to mess with him, see how much crap he'd take and
keep coming back. 

 But in his dreams that night, as tough little mystery girls climbed on
top of him, it was Stella who pinned his hands, laughing so close he could
feel her breath on his face.  

 1997 

 Silver's studio was a light-washed, green-tea-scented space at the far
end of the student shopping district in Evanston. Silver herself was
soft-spoken as only a six-foot woman can be, with close-cropped gray hair,
a ring in her nose, and her tank riding low to show an acrobat and a bull
tattooed on her bony chest. 

 Metal glinted from her fingers, eyebrows, wrists, and ears. Ray had a
momentary desire to show her his tattoo, but that was stupid. He had
nothing to prove. Plus, whether they were talking hipness or pain
threshold, she had him beat hands down. 

 They'd told about two sentences of their story when a brass bell signaled
a customer. "Take a look around the gallery," Silver said. "I'll be right
with you." 

 The first picture Ray stopped at was a woman's face, beautiful and
distant, with a swirling mass of snakes for hair. Obviously they were a
long, long way from roses and bleeding hearts. 

 Next up were two women who looked a lot like Silver herself, holding bows
and arrows -- each, shockingly, with only a lump of scar tissue where her
right breast would be. Then a guy chained to a rock, with a big bird
tearing chunks of flesh out of his belly and an expression of ecstasy and
pain on his face. Then a skeleton warrior like in that movie about the
Argonauts. 

 "These are extraordinarily powerful," Fraser said. 

 Ray followed his eyes and saw a bearded guy chained to a pole. He was
trying to get away -- you could almost see his muscles moving as he
strained. And a couple of feet away, a woman sat, with her mouth open like
she was talking or singing, and her eyes crinkled like he was funny. 

 "Silver appears to specialize in mythological themes. This one is
Odysseus and the siren," Fraser said. 

 "She tie him up?" 

 "No," Fraser said. "The siren's song was reputed to be irresistible.
Odysseus wanted to be the only man who heard it and lived, but he didn't
rely on being able to remember his duty when he heard the song. He had his
men chain him to the mast." 

 Dief gave a little whine and leaned up against the back of Fraser's
calves. "Not well enough, apparently," Fraser answered.  

 1976 

 Girls liked to play with each other's hair, Ray had noticed. One of his
science teachers actually took away hairbrushes and rubber bands, same as
he would gum. "Ladies," he'd say sharply, "you will please refrain from
primate bonding behavior while in my classroom." 

 "He's just jealous because he's bald," Ray whispered, and Stella got her
first lunchtime detention because she couldn't stop laughing. 

 Before they went to the Fallout Shelter, Knox and whatever friends he'd
brought would usually hang out downstairs playing pool or raiding Mrs.
Kirkman's fridge, but Ray liked to go up and watch Stella and Nancy do
each other's makeup and fix each other's hair. Sexy as it was to watch a
girl put lipstick on herself, it was even sexier to watch her putting it
on another girl. 

 Ray had long ago given up trying to understand why things turned him on.
Sometimes he wished he had somebody like Stella had Nancy, an older
brother to tell him he was normal. 

 The night the Crave came back from New York with a new bass player, Nancy
had a new hair gel she wanted Stella to try. It smelled like a giant
strawberry, even across the room. "You're gonna attract bees," Ray said. 

 "Shut up," Stella told him as Nancy expertly worked the pale-pink stuff
into her hair. 

 "Whatcha want, sweetie? Elvis hair?" Nancy lifted Stella's bangs up with
a comb. They stayed up. 

 Stella made a face over Ray's shoulder into the mirror. "God, no," she
said. 

 "Close your eyes and trust me," Nancy said. "Ray, tell me if she peeks."
She slicked back Stella's hair on the sides and flopped it over in front.
"If we had some jello we could put some color in." 

 "Ooh," Stella said, opening her eyes. "I look tough." Then she got a
wicked look and grabbed the gel. "Now let me do Ray." 

 "Me?" 

 Stella hustled him into her chair and squeezed a big smelly glop into his
hair before he could say anything. 

 Stella's fingers were cool in his hair. It was nothing at all like being
in Mr. Demetrios' barber chair. Nancy pulled her folding chair closer and
pushed his hair back at the temples. God, it felt incredible. He didn't
dare breathe for fear he'd embarrass himself. 

 "Wow," Stella said, and he saw that she'd made his hair stand up all over
the top of his head. Jesus, he looked nineteen. "You should let me bleach
it sometime." 

 Nancy grabbed a comb and started smoothing down the hair on the back of
his neck, which gave him goosebumps. "Girls do this to each other in
school?" he said. 

 Stella and Nancy exchanged an amused glance in the mirror over his head.
"So?" Stella said. 

 "Girls get away with murder."	

 1997 

 Ray was so busy looking at a man turning into a pig that he almost bumped
into Fraser, who'd stopped short in front of a picture of two warrior guys
with swords and shields, shaking hands. The nearer guy, who was throwing
his shield on the ground, had snakes tattooed over both arms. A tat within
a tat. Cool. 

 OK, not shaking hands. They had a grip on each other's forearms, so tight
it almost looked like a hug, and they were standing so close that one of
them had a thigh stuck between the other one's legs. Not dirty, but
definitely suggestive, especially with the looks on their faces, which
were hard to read as anything but love. It was like something off an album
cover from the seventies, except that Ray didn't think Fraser'd been
looking at a lot of David Bowie albums up in Yucktuck. 

 Ray glanced at him. He was completely riveted by it. 

 "Pirithous and Theseus," Fraser said, almost to himself. "Throwing down
their arms and choosing friendship over combat. One of the greatest
partnerships in mythology." 

 "Yeah? How'd it end?" 

 "Ah ... well, with one of them abandoning the other in the underworld,
actually, but nevertheless ..." 

 "Sorry about that." Silver appeared at his elbow. "Now. You were saying
... rape by tattoo? You hear rumors, but this is the first confirmed case
I've heard of." She looked at the drawing of the suspect and shook her
head. "Nobody I know." 

 "So you think we could track the guy based on where he gets his stuff?" 

 She smiled sympathetically. "There are hundreds of mail-order sources. I
buy nearly everything I use through mail order from New York." 

 "Damn." 

 "You couldn't just do a stakeout or whatever it is you people do?" 

 "Hard to do when he never uses the same bar twice." 

 "And his victims?" 

 "Pretty. Other than that, nothing. Different races, ages, everything." 

 "How many?" 

 "We've met two," Fraser said. "We have reason to believe there are at
least five others." He showed her the drawing of Amanda's snake. "Do you
know of artists who specialize in snakes or in this sort of Celtic
knotwork?" 

 "Really just about every artist is going to do some of both. They're very
popular themes." She tapped her lower lip with two fingertips. "But then
again, these aren't prefab designs. That narrows it down." 

 "Would you be able to give us the names of artists who would be capable
of doing work on this level?" 

 Silver dragged over a big rolodex and started paging through it. "I
couldn't," she said. "But my photographer could. She's sort of the center
of a whole tattoo community -- it's a big thing for her." She found the
number and wrote it down on the back of one of her business cards. 

 Ray rubbed his chin. "You think you could maybe call her, put in a good
word for us? Because these people are her clients, and she doesn't know us
from Santa and Rudolph." 

 "You tell her the guy's an ink rapist," Silver said, "and she'll help you
string him up herself."  

 1976 

 Chip Szujewska was never exactly what you'd call a good-looking guy -- he
was scrawny and bucktoothed and pizza-faced -- but one thing you could say
for him, he didn't mind being stared at. 

 In tenth grade he shaved all his hair off, and when it grew back in, he
shaved it off again except for a floppy strip down the middle. He had a
bunch of bandannas, and he used to tie a couple of them around one thigh
-- which in Ray's opinion would have been more impressive if his thighs
hadn't been skinny as arms. 

 And then one day he came to school with a big A in a circle tattooed on
his arm. 

 "Is that the real thing?" Ray asked. "You must have had to lie like hell
to get that." It was like Chip was walking around with proof that somebody
believed he was eighteen, which was cool. "Did it hurt?" 

 "Like a mofo," Chip said. 

 One of the first things that happened was that the social studies teacher
made Chip do a paper on anarchy. Which was probably proof that it was a
stupid, poseur thing to put on your arm. 

 But it was still the real thing.  

 1997 

 "So," Ray said as they walked to the car. "Looks like I missed a bet when
I blew off all the myths in tenth-grade English." 

 "Some of them are very powerful," Fraser said. "Perhaps more to me than
to others. My social and ... romantic development occurred in isolation
from popular culture. So rather than being under social pressure to map my
desires onto Raquel Welch or a succession of interchangeable centerfolds,
I ..." And he fell silent, just when things were getting interesting. 

 Ray waited a minute or so, till he could be sure he wasn't going to go
on. "So you went in for the, what do you call it, the sirens, or what?" 

 There was another long moment of silence, and then Fraser said,
"Something like that."	

 1976 

 Ray was beginning to think they weren't lying when they said smoking
stunted your growth. His dad was pretty average height, and his mother's
father had been over six feet, but he was one of the shortest guys in
school. 

 Half the tenth-graders were tall as men now, with deep growly voices and
big chests. Some of the ones who'd been shrimps last year liked to use
their size to hassle the ones who hadn't grown yet. They didn't hassle
Ray, though, because Ray knew the way to walk. 

 It was easy for a guy who'd sneaked in to see "Bullitt" five times in the
third grade. You didn't walk like you were going to beat the other guy up.
You walked like you'd already beaten him up, and it never crossed your
mind that he wouldn't stand back and give you some room when you went by. 

 Ray's dad had taught him a few moves where a little guy could knock down
a bigger one if he caught him off guard. But mostly he didn't need them. A
guy who could walk like Bullitt didn't get in a lot of fights. 

 Stella liked it, too. If he put on a full-scale strut in the lunchroom,
she'd look right past whatever Gold Coast guy she was sitting with and
give him a long, hot smile. 

 He made her mom nervous, and that was exactly why she'd haul him out to
the Fallout Shelter every week, exactly why after midnight she'd forget
whatever boyfriend she'd said no to that night and let Ray kiss her in the
dark corners or in the gravel parking lot, let him put his hands under her
T-shirt and touch her through the little scraps of satin and lace until
she was breathing even harder than when she danced. 

 "Ray, don't," she'd whisper, and then lick his ear, which was the kind of
mixed message that made him sure he was never going to understand girls. 

 Stella blew away her PSAT even though she'd been out dancing and making
out with Ray until two o'clock in the morning. She was going to be a
lawyer like her dad, she said: "My real dad." Ray opened his mouth to say,
"Girls don't --" and then changed his mind.  

 1997 

 Dana Phillips Fine Photography was two rooms of a four-room apartment on
the near north side. There was a shoot in progress when she buzzed them
in, but there were photo albums, a huge hardcover book, and a bunch of
photocopied articles on the coffee table to keep them occupied while they
waited. 

 Dief immediately dragged down a photo album and nosed the pages over
until he found a family of wolves baying at the moon, which he studied
carefully. "Somebody you know?" Ray asked him, and he made a little
whuffing noise like he was actually answering the question. So Ray
shrugged and turned his attention to the clippings. 

 Looked like Phillips was a big shot. There was a Newsweek article on the
table that called her "the voice of the radical feminine in tattoo
culture," whatever that meant. She'd been interviewed in Chicago Magazine,
too, and had done a big essay for the free weekly on "Ink and Sisterhood:
The Tattoo As Community Building Among Women." 

 It was amazing the variety of work Phillips had shot -- from native
Hawaiian tribal tattoos to male models with barbed wire around their
biceps. There were the usual skulls, flags, and centerfolds. There were
weird things -- a woman with flaming suns circling both nipples, a guy
with his calf ringed with what looked like red tooth marks as if he'd
narrowly escaped having his foot bitten off by a shark. 

 They recognized Silver's work and a couple of Chinese characters that
were probably Fat Len, but as Silver had predicted, there were so many
snakes and Celtic knots that they couldn't begin to guess which, if any,
might be done by their mystery artist. 

 There was a big, glossy hardcover book on the table. "Hey, she did that
one, too," Ray said. 

 "Tattoo Culture," Fraser read. "Dana Phillips, with an essay by Michael
Tobias." 

 Ray paged through it, reading the large-print blocks on every page.
"Pharaohs blah blah, Greek pottery blah blah, mark slaves as their
master's property -- there's what our guy wants. Bestow magical powers
blah blah -- identify members of a secret society, prove physical prowess
and pain tolerance --" 

 "Stop a moment." Fraser turned back a page. There were two old vases, red
and black. One had a naked woman with a little spiral marked on her upper
arm. The other had a naked guy with a sword, fighting -- 

 "Hey." 

 Fraser nodded. "Hercules fighting the Hydra." 

 Ray counted the snake monster's heads. "Nine," he said. "How many we got
so far?" 

 "Shannon Reynolds' snake had six," Fraser said. "And Amanda Jackson's had
seven." 

 "You think he'll stop at nine?" 

 "Or go on to something else. A second phase," Fraser said grimly.  

 1977 

 Eleventh grade was the first time Stella ever went to two school dances
with the same guy. 

 Jonathan Greer was pretty much your classic example of a Stella
boyfriend. Tall, clean-cut, sober, responsible, boring as hell. 

 He was a big guy, already looked like a man. Athlete -- track, not
football. Kind of a loner, like they all were. Stella wanted respect, and
she knew better than to try to get that from the locker room dogs. 

 He was respectful to Ray, too, so Ray didn't even have the satisfaction
of hating him. 

 Ray just happened to be riding his new motorbike on the basketball court
the night of the homecoming dance, and when he looked in the window, he
saw Stella and Jonathan slow-dancing to the faintly heard strains of
Queen's "Somebody to Love." 

 They weren't really dancing, just doing this kind of loose swaying hug.
Stella's cheeks were pink, and then they made a turn and he could see that
Jonathan's were, too, and Jonathan's eyes were closed. His mouth was
almost touching her hair. 

 Ray felt pumped up with anger and jealousy, like a balloon full of air.
Not ten days ago she'd let him -- and now she was -- 

 He shook it off. Got to learn from it, that was the main thing. 

 He knew enough about girls to know that if you thought you weren't worth
their notice, they'd think so, too. So he went over it in detail, putting
himself in the picture: his own hands spanning her waist, his own mouth on
her hair. 

 He was going to have her someday. She belonged to him.  

 1997 

 Phillips showed her model to the door -- a muscular guy with ink peeking
out the cuffs of his white dress shirt -- and sat down in an armchair
across the coffee table. Silver must have warned her about the wolf,
because she didn't even give him a second glance. 

 Fraser handed over the polaroids and the drawings of Amanda's tattoo.
Phillips looked at them for a long moment. "I hate to say it," she said at
last, "but these are beautiful." She had a voice like a radio DJ. 

 They showed her the drawing of the suspect next. She looked at that for
so long that Ray started to think maybe she was critiquing the artwork. 

 Eventually Fraser gave her a little verbal nudge: "Silver said you'd know
all the artists in the area. How many would you say were capable of work
on this level?" 

 Phillips chewed her lip. She had kind of striking eyes, very dark brown,
and they always looked like she was about to smile, even though she
wasn't. She was dressed way down, Bulls baseball cap turned around
backwards. "The workmanship is ... journeyman level," she said, pointing
to a ragged edge. "Not bad, mind you, but most any well-trained,
experienced artist could equal it. Silver's work, now, is far superior
technically." 

 She spread the prints over the books and photo albums on the coffee
table. "The design, now," she said. "That's what sets it apart. Unless
he's copying the art from some other source -- but no, that's not likely,
is it? Because of the heads. I suppose you could check some antique art
collections or perhaps --" 

 "Let's assume, for the moment, that the tattooist is designing his own
art," Fraser interrupted. "What artists in this area could create
something like this?" 

 Through the open studio door, Ray could see a table cluttered with stuff
-- lights, piles of cardboard, rolls of gauze and surgical tape, coffee
mugs and pop cans, a tin of the same loose face powder Stella used to use.
More of the same kinds of stuff were spilling out of a backpack on the
floor in there. 

 "Silver herself, of course," Phillips said. No help there -- even if she
wanted to dress up like a guy, Silver was a good six inches taller than
their suspect. 

 "Now, Jamie McDonough, way out in Aurora," she went on, and flipped the
album open to a woman's back covered with what looked like a page from an
old book. A dragon was swallowing the first letter, and all around the
edges was that same complicated braiding. "He does a lot of
custom-designed Celtic work." 

 She flipped the page again. "Eddie Graves could have done it, now." There
was a snake swallowing its tail. "He left the business because he kept
getting harassed for underage. Oak Park sets its own age limit, and they
set it higher and higher until they basically put him out of business." 

 Ray and Fraser exchanged glances. "Oh, that's a clue, isn't it?" She
sounded delighted. Ray sighed internally. He just hoped she didn't decide
to get in their way playing amateur detective.	

 1977 

 Ray's seventeenth birthday was the day after Homecoming. After his
parents took him out for Italian and gave him fifty dollars and a
wristwatch, Chip came over, wearing the denim jacket with the upside-down
American flag that had gotten him suspended from school and carrying a
six-pack of Hamm's under each arm, and the two of them sat in the driveway
and drank beer and smoked. 

 "Chainsaw's doing an outdoor show at Sarkow Park," Chip said. 

 Ray thought about Jonathan Greer's hands clasped in the small of Stella's
back. "No music," he said. 

 "We could go over to Diversey and watch the queers." 

 "Not all of us are so easily amused." 

 Chip stuck four beers in the inside pockets of his jacket, and Ray did
the same, and they took the El over to Clark and drank them in the parking
lot of the Punkin' Donuts. After a while they walked up the street,
looking in the windows of the stores and restaurants, until they came to a
place that was still open. 

 "It's that Chinese guy that did my tattoo," Chip said. 

 "Yeah?" Ray stuck his hand in his pocket. The piece of cardboard he'd
been carrying around for a couple of months was still there. He went in
and handed it to the big guy behind the counter. "How much for that on my
shoulder?" 

 "You not have money. And you just little boy," the guy said. 

 Ray just grinned and threw down his birthday money and his fake ID.
"Shows what you know," he said.  

 1997 

 The door buzzer went off, and Phillips jumped to her feet to let in her
next appointment, which turned out to be a skinny little guy with a band
of stars and stripes around each wrist. 

 "Hey, that's what you need," Ray told Fraser as they went down the
stairs. "Go get Silver to do you some maple leaves." 

 "Perhaps not," Fraser said in his schoolteacher voice, "though once in
the line of duty I very nearly ... well, it's not important." Ray felt
like an idiot. He got in the car and leaned over to unlock the passenger
door. Fraser was frowning when he buckled himself in. 

 "When I was growing up," Fraser said, "I saw tattoos only on old women
rumored to be witches. Inuit women have tattoos sewn onto their hands and
faces using a needle and a caribou tendon soaked in oil and soot." 

 "Ow," Ray said, starting the car. 

 "Years later I learned that most tattoos were simply an expression of
what you might term the artistic instinct, but due to my upbringing, I
still continue to think of them not as something one chooses but as
something that must be bestowed upon one." 

 "So it'd be like buying yourself a Harvard diploma or something." 

 "Yes, that's it exactly." 

 Ray grinned at him. "OK, then, I'll get you one," he said. "You can be in
my club." 

 Fraser blinked at him. 

 "You know. The Most Likely To Die Strangely Club. Whaddaya say? We'll
put, you know, like a nuclear warhead and a tossed salad, and, like, some
guy who strangles people with guitar strings and some kind of
Anti-Canadian League ..." 

 Fraser was smiling, too. "I'm touched, Ray," he said. 

 "I think we already established that," Ray said, giving him a tap in the
middle of his forehead. "Now. If we put it on your face, it might serve as
a warning to others ..."  

 1977 

 The first morning, it felt like raw hamburger. He could hardly move his
arm. 

 The second morning, it felt like somebody had jabbed him over and over
with knives, like his dad did to tenderize steak. He cut school because it
hurt so bad to write, but it was a waste because it hurt to do everything
else, too. 

 He managed to keep it hidden from his dad for almost a week. But then
Saturday morning he came out of the bathroom at the wrong time and his dad
spotted it. 

 He went white first and then red. Ray could only stand there with his
longish hair, which his dad hated, dripping on his shoulders, heart
pounding, waiting for a word or maybe a fist. 

 At last his father spoke. "Champion," he spat, and in a couple of minutes
Ray heard the front door slam hard enough to rattle the china shepherdess
on the shelf. 

 "Damian?" came his mother's voice from the kitchen. "Stanley?" Ray fled
down the back steps and rode his motorbike, steering left-handed, to
Stella's house. 

 Stella came to the door with her toenails half painted. She grinned when
she saw it was him. "Come up to the rec room," she said. "Got a birthday
present for you." 

 It was an album by some group called the Clash. The music was somehow
rough and polished at the same time, and Ray sat gingerly on the beanbag
chair and looked at the album cover. 

 "You hurt your arm?" 

 He was afraid she'd think it was gross, but he pushed his sleeve up and
showed her. 

 "Oh," she said. 

 He looked up at the ceiling. 

 "Oh, wow," she said. 

 She touched it gently. It was still tender, and her fingers felt cool
against the reddened skin. He looked down on the part in her hair. 

 "Did it hurt a lot?" She was a little flushed when she lifted her face. 

 "Some." 

 "Why Champion?" 

 "You sayin' I'm not?" 

 She smiled. "Take your shirt off and let me see it," she said. 

 He felt his face get hot, struggled to keep his breathing slow. "OK." It
was still awkward to get a shirt off using only one hand, but there was no
way his right arm would bend like that yet. When he had the shirt off, he
just sat there. He'd been lifting weights and stuff, but Jonathan Greer
was a track star, and he knew he couldn't compete with that. 

 But her eyes on him were hot. "Wow," she said. "It really makes you look
... different." 

 She cupped her cool hand over it, and he bent quickly, before he could
change his mind, and kissed her. It was the first time they'd ever kissed
in a private place without Nancy keeping an eye on them. 

 Her mouth came alive under his, and she pulled him down on the floor on
top of her. They kissed and kissed and kissed. He put his hand under her
shirt and she let him, and then he put it down her shorts and she let him
do that too. 

 She was slippery and complicated there, and everything he did made her
gasp or flinch or press forward or pull back, until he had no idea which
way to move. He pulled the shorts and underpants off her, and she let him,
but when he tried to get where he could maybe see how everything worked,
she pulled him back down on top of her, hiding her face in his neck. 

 "I want you to," she said. She tugged at the back of his jeans. 

 "I don't have any -- anything." 

 "I just finished on Wednesday," whatever the hell that meant. "I'm safe.
I want to." 

 He scrambled off her and took the rest of his clothes off as fast as he
could. She lay there and watched him without moving -- rugby shirt pushed
up to her ribs, narrow hips and skinny legs and little triangle of
dark-gold hair. He wanted to smell his fingers, or maybe taste them, but
he didn't want to gross her out, so he didn't. 

 When he was naked, he hauled her shirt awkwardly off and got back on top
of her. 

 Nothing seemed to fit where it was supposed to, and she really didn't
look like it felt good to her, and getting in was hard work. Every time he
took his weight on his arms, the pain in his shoulder was sudden and
sickening. But she kept pulling at him like she didn't want him to stop. 

 He got all the way in, and then while he was still wondering what to do
now, his body made him pull back and drive deep. Her eyes widened, and her
knees came up on either side of his hips. 

 The second time, she pushed up to meet him, and he turned his head to the
side and gritted his teeth, but it was no good -- he was coming and it was
too late to stop it. 

 The record was over and he could hear the hiss-bump of the needle hitting
the end of the groove, over and over. He shifted over beside her -- jesus,
he had no idea it would be this messy -- and wrapped his arms gingerly
around her and pressed an awkward kiss to the side of her hair. "Did I
hurt you?" 

 "I'm OK," she said, eyes closed, still breathing a little hard. 

 There was a rumble in the floor as the garage door opened below them. She
sat up like somebody'd poked her with a pin. "Mom," she said, looking at
him with wide eyes, and pulled her shirt on. 

 He threw on his clothes fast as he could. There was a little blood on
him, not much. 

 She opened the door to the back stairs. "I'll see you Monday," she said,
and it helped a little. 

 His dad was home by the time he got back. He yanked Ray into the kitchen
by the collar and hauled up his sleeve. His mom made some peacemaking
noises. Ray's hands were cold, and their voices seemed to be coming from
far away. He just listened to his dad like somebody on TV until his dad
wound down and said something about making your bed and lying in it, and
walked off with a puzzled look on his face.  

 1997 

 Next day Ray got a couple of calls about people buying ro, but none of
them turned out to be very helpful. 

 He was just pulling all the stuff together and getting ready to call
Fraser and see if he could make any sense of it when Stella came in with
one of the other ADAs, both of them looking like they were going to crack
up any second. 

 "Ray," she said, "oh, I have to tell somebody," and she grabbed his
jacket and pulled him backwards into one of the conference rooms, which
thank god turned out not to have an actual conference going on in it. 

 "Oh, you are going to laugh. The new paralegal? Nick? Tall skinny guy
with the glare?" 

 Ray nodded -- he hadn't known the guy was a paralegal, but there's no
mistaking that glare, like he disapproved of the whole world. 

 "Well, he's out at some nightclub, right, and Maria is there?" Yet
another of Stella's co-workers, four-foot-eleven with the filthiest mouth
he'd ever heard; he nodded again. "And she's got Alexa with her, and
they're, you know, making out -- and then Monday morning he got her alone
and tried to blackmail her." 

 "Oh, jesus." Ray tried to imagine Maria responding to that. Most
Spanish-to-English dictionaries didn't even have those words in them. 

 "And she just said, 'Pay you off? What for?' and laughed at him, because
she's one of those people like you who've been bi forever and never had
any great soul-searching about -- what? Oh, don't worry, she turned him
in, he won't be getting any more paralegal jobs for a while --" 

 "I'm not." The words sounded too loud in the deserted conference room. 

 She blinked at him for a second, coming down from the laughter, and then
figured out what he was saying. "Oh, Ray." She was still smiling, but the
familiar exasperated look was creeping up. "I was there. David Bowie?
Lipstick? Ringing a bell?" 

 She looked so knowing. It pissed him off. "That was --" His voice sounded
like it wanted to be twelve again. "That was all about you. All that was
about you." 

 And when he couldn't look at the smirk one second longer, he slammed out
of the conference room, feeling for cigarettes that weren't there any
more, and he got in the car and just drove.  

 1977 

 He saw her Monday, all right. Sitting on a bench in the lunchroom, all
but engulfed in Jonathan Greer's jacket, not to mention Jonathan Greer's
arm around her. She gave him a pointed look across the room, just daring
him to come up to her, and then she snuggled back into Jonathan,
whispering in his ear. 

 Ray went to the boys' room, threw up, and smoked a cigarette. Then he
walked back into the lunchroom and walked right up to the two of them.
Jonathan looked up at him, wide-eyed with shock. 

 Ray took hold of Stella's arm, not hard. "Come on," he said. 

 She stood up fast. Jonathan's coat slid off her shoulders onto the floor.


 He didn't have to pull her across the room. She went as fast as he did,
taking little running steps to keep up. They went out the side door to the
parking lot, and when she got on the motorcycle behind him, she wrapped
herself around his back and put her chin on his shoulder. 

 What a rush. 

 He had no idea where to go, but she put her mouth right on his ear and
said, "Mom's at a Red Cross meeting," and he hung a hard right and headed
for her house. She hauled him up to the rec room by the hand and threw her
bookbag down and dragged him onto the floor, kissing him like she was
going to eat him. 

 Afterwards, she looked at him and said, "Jeez, Ray" and fished a compact
and a kleenex out of her bag. Squinting in the mirror, he saw his own face
with a smear of Stella's maroon lipstick over his mouth.  

 1997 

 Ray didn't remember going to Milwaukee, but when he came to himself, he
was coming back, with an almost-empty mega-cup of coffee from some gas
station with an unfamiliar name. 

 He was thinking, for some reason, about Jonathan. Funny how he'd
forgotten the guy. There'd been a time when he was on Ray's mind all the
time. Every Saturday morning on the rec-room floor, every little drama in
the cafeteria -- he'd spent most of his adolescence trying to win Stella
from Jonathan Greer. 

 He was a physics professor somewhere in Minnesota now. They'd -- oh,
shit, they'd invited him to the wedding, how could Ray have been so stupid
as to say OK to that? And he didn't come, but he sent them a nice set of
pottery bowls, which Stella still had, all but the biggest one that the
movers broke. She kept them, and maybe there was some sort of message of
forgiveness there that Ray'd been too oblivious to see. 

 Jonathan Greer. Ray hadn't thought about him in years. He remembered one
afternoon idling his motorcycle outside the chain-link fence while Stella
cheered for Jonathan at a track meet, how the track was laid out so that
when Jonathan crossed the finish line he was looking right at Ray. And Ray
had aimed all his hatred and envy into one long stare, and then flicked
away his cigarette and roared off without ever looking back to see if
Stella was watching. 

 She wanted to make it something dirty, but he'd been jealous, that was
all, jealous and mad because he loved Stella and she wouldn't love him
back, and there she always was at lunch with Jonathan's big hand cupped
protectively over her shoulder, Jonathan's gray eyes looking at Ray over
the top of Stella's head -- 

 Shit. 

 He almost started laughing. Jonathan Greer. 

 Well, shit.  

 1978 

 For a long time Ray had suspected that teachers just liked messing with
kids for fun. Like when his tenth-grade chem teacher had made Kim Ashe his
lab partner, even though everybody knew she liked him and he wasn't
interested in her. They had to do that stuff just for entertainment. 

 Though Kim had turned out to have a knack for blowing things up, so
there'd been a bright side to that one. 

 But to look over a whole gym class and end up making Ray run laps with
Jonathan Greer -- Jonathan, who was going out with the girl Ray loved --
there was no explanation for that but pure sadism. 

 Two laps in and Ray was already out of breath. Jonathan jogged along
easily beside him, making small talk about the weather and the White Sox,
quite obviously not using half of what he had. But if he wanted a
challenge, he could have asked to be paired up with one of the other track
guys. Jim Sawin was in the same period, and Mary Katherine O'Reilly, too,
who was damn fast for a girl. 

 Fourth lap, and Ray started coughing bad enough that they had to stop,
other kids jogging past them two by two. Ray bent over and grabbed his
knees, breathing slow and easy, 

 Jonathan squatted down beside him. "You should really think about giving
up smoking," he said. 

 Ray raised his head. "You should really shut the fuck up," he said. 

 "Just saying." Jonathan stood up, did some calf stretches. The waistband
of his gray shorts was just starting to darken with sweat. 

 The more pissed off Ray got, the harder it was to catch his breath. "You
wanna keep those teeth, now that you don't got the metal on them any
more?" Jonathan could probably pound him through the wall, but he thought
he could get in a couple good ones first. 

 "Kowalski! Greer!" Coach yelled from the foot of the folded-up bleachers.
"Is there a problem, gentlemen?" 

 Jonathan looked at Ray out of the corner of his eye and dropped his foot
out of his quad stretch. "No problem," he called, and then he said,
"Ready?" and started up again.	

 1997 

 It was getting on for evening when he walked back into the bullpen.
Fraser was sitting on Ray's chair, reading something. He had a new
haircut, and the back of his bent neck was cut close with the trimmer. 

 He looked up as Ray came down the stairs, and for a moment Ray looked at
him like he'd never seen him before, catalogued him like he would a
witness or a suspect: He's stiff, restless, been sitting all day long.
He's happy to see me. He was worried about me. 

 "I'm OK," he said, and realized he hadn't talked to anybody for hours. He
cleared his throat. "Sorry. Had to take a drive, clear my head." 

 "Did Stella come to give you bad news?" 

 Fraser's hair was combed sharply off his forehead. They'd cut all the
curl out of it. How long had he known Fraser's hair that well? "Weird
news," he said. "Bad, I dunno. Definitely weird."  

 1979 

 Ray stuck it out at UIC for a whole year. He narrowly passed speech and
remedial math and freshman comp, and he would have done pretty well in
sociology except for getting downgraded for what he called going with his
gut and the professor called theorizing in advance of the evidence. 

 His mom had probably already figured out that this college thing wasn't
gonna last. But every night at dinner his dad would have some speech about
the college experience, and how Ray ought to join the debate team or go
out for baseball or something, until Ray started wondering if maybe his
dad thought he was some other person entirely. And then after his mom
wiped off the table, he'd pile up his books and study just like he didn't
know that it was all going to squish out of his head in two days, and
after 45 minutes he'd stomp out on the back step and have a smoke so he
could stay awake. 

 Stella actually got into Stanford, but after putting Ray through a couple
months of agony, she picked Northwestern. She moved into a sorority at
Christmastime, and she actually lived in a stone-and-ivy building on
something called "the quad." Maybe she was having the college life his dad
had in mind. 

 She was all the time going to formals, buying fancy dresses and dancing
with guys whose families owned more than one house. It was cool, though,
because when he'd lean the bike on the stone steps of the Tri-Delt house
and stride up in his boots and leather jacket, she'd get that hot look in
her eyes. And she'd put her hand in his back pocket and tug him the long
way around, by the back steps, so all the girls could look out their open
doors and see. 

 She liked him to be a little bit rough -- not hurt her, but push her
around a little. He thought, sometimes, that he would have turned her on
even more if she didn't know he loved her.  

 1997 

 Fraser had been looking at Dana's list of tattoo artists while he waited.
Ray took it out of his hands (square thumbs, a voice in his head reported)
and pulled up a chair to sit beside him (Fraser must have gotten a
shampoo, because he didn't usually smell like coconuts), and when he sat
down, Fraser's knee touched his for a long moment before Fraser moved
away, and Ray squeezed his eyes shut and silently begged all these voices
in his head, shut up shut up just shut the fuck up already -- 

 "Ray? Are you well?" There was a little roughness in Fraser's voice, like
he hadn't talked for a couple of hours either. Shut up. 

 Ray sighed. "I'm OK," he said. "I'm just going to think about work for a
minute, if nobody has any objection, all right?" 

 Fraser gave him a curious look, but he didn't push. 

 Dana Phillips had given them a list of eight names, but Fraser had
already crossed off one that was Korean, one that was black, and three
that were women. 

 "Huh, so we only got --" He counted the names, and then he counted them
again. "Three." He shook his head hard, and a thought finally clicked into
place. "Think it might be a team, Fraser? One guy picks them up, somebody
else inks them?" 

 "It's possible." Fraser was still frowning at him, like he'd like to ask
if he was OK again. He looked back down at the list. "But it would be
logistically complicated, as the actual tattooing is done at each woman's
apartment." He rubbed at the back of his neck. Always itchy after a
haircut until you could take a shower. Shut up. "It's possible that the
tattooist is working from art provided by someone else." 

 "Except that would be somebody else that could give him away," Ray said.
"Stupid risk. Plus I don't think this would even occur to somebody if they
didn't do the art themselves, you know?" 

 Fraser brushed back the hair over his ears, and Ray discovered that he
had his hand in Fraser's hair only when his fingers started reporting
"soft soft soft." He cleared his throat and went for a save: "Who, uh,
does your hair?" 

 "Cuts it, you mean? There's a barbershop under the el station at
Roosevelt that's quite speedy and economical, as well as tolerant of
wolves on the premises." 

 "I should give you Kim's number," Ray said. "She gives great scalp
massages." 

 Fraser frowned. "What for?"  

 1979 

 When classes ended for the summer, Ray stayed in bed for most of a week,
reading car mags and listening to the hum of his mom's vacuum cleaner. And
then one day he got up and told her, "I'm gonna go look for a job." 

 He found a place in the mailroom of one of the downtown office buildings.
It was mindless, but at least it didn't require a lot of sitting. His dad
was so happy he wasn't flipping burgers or working down at the plant that
he pulled out half a dozen stories about various guys who started out in
the mailroom and ended up running the company, all of which had probably
been in mothballs since 1955. 

 In a tie but no jacket, Ray spent half the day pushing a mail cart, and
the other half sorting incoming and sealing outgoing in the company of a
Jheri-curled guy from South Carolina named Jermaine. Ray never figured out
if Jermaine was queer or just Southern, but he was a bottomless well of
gossip, which made up for the way he kept calling Ray "child" and winking
at him. 

 Stella spent most of June with her roommate's family on some Caribbean
island Ray had never heard of. She sent him a postcard the first week, and
then he didn't hear from her again until she came back and went to work as
a secretary for a couple of lawyers in Glen Ellyn, in which role she
planned most of one partner's 20th high school reunion and did the papers
for the other one's divorce. Civil law bored her, she said; she didn't
know whether she wanted corporate or criminal, but there was no way she
was going to spend her life writing up how people were going to split up
their gardening tools. 

 When August came and the air started to cool off, Ray started waking up
sick to his stomach. Class registration week came closer and closer, and
he couldn't even make himself go down to school and pick up a catalog. His
adviser left a message with his mom about getting together so Ray could
pick a major, but he never called back. 

 The first day of registration week, Ray went out after dinner and just
kept walking. Past his old high school, past the Pit, past the fire
station. The streets became unfamiliar and then familiar again, and he
looked up and realized he was at the police station where they'd taken the
kids after the bank robbery. The waiting area looked and smelled exactly
the same, except for the dried pee. 

 The girl at the front desk blinked up at him through glasses thick enough
to be bulletproof. "Help you?" 

 "How do you get to be a cop?" 

 "I'm not paying for you to play at being a hero on television," his
father said when he came home with the brochure. 

 Ray looked at him steadily. "I got savings." He'd banked most of his
paychecks to pay some of his tuition. 

 "You have enough to live on your own? Because you're not living here
unless you give up this ridiculous --" 

 "Damian," his mother said soothingly. "Every young man needs to find
himself." 

 "Well, when he finds an adult in there somewhere who's ready to face the
real world, he's welcome to come home." He tossed his newspaper on the
table and stalked out. 

 Ray's mother gave him a sympathetic look. "Don't mind him, Stanley," she
said. "He'll cool down, you'll see." 

 Ray picked up the paper. "Did you throw away the classifieds?"  

 1997 

 The car was the worst. Ray'd always been prone to run off at the mouth
while he was concentrating on something else, and there was a serious
danger that one of these days he was going to stop at a traffic light and
say, "You know, evidently I been bent since the sixth grade and never
noticed, Fraser, what do you think about that?" 

 Fortunately it was annual inventory time at the Consulate, so Thatcher
had both her Mounties crawling around behind all the equipment looking for
serial numbers. Fraser may have noticed that Ray was doing most of his
investigating by himself, but he didn't say anything. 

 Anyway, he didn't need anybody else along when he went to interview Eddie
Graves, because Eddie Graves talked enough for three and a wolf all by
himself. 

 "There's no respect for freedom of expression in this country any more,"
he said. "The village board is all stuck in the forties. Tattoos are for
punks and cons and losers, tattoo artists are corrupting our children,
blah blah blah. " 

 He was one of those short muscular bearded guys that looked like they
could wrestle with bears. His hands were big as paws, and looked way too
clumsy for the delicate work he did. 

 "They can't outlaw it outright, so they harass us with the zoning code
and keep raising the age limit -- twenty-one! Sixty percent of my business
was between eighteen and twenty-one. I can't make a living without them." 

 "Chicago age limit's eighteen now," Ray said. 

 "My customers can go there, but I can't. My mother's in a home in town." 

 Ray showed him the drawings. "I know all the artists in Chicago, and none
of them would do something like this," Graves said. "It's a community. We
have a code of ethics. People think we're just a bunch of outlaws, but --"


 "Could an amateur do this, you think?" 

 "Probably not," Graves admitted. "But whoever he is, he's from out of
town or he's trained but not practicing professionally. I know these
people, Detective. This is my community."  

 1980 

 To Ray's shock, the academy was a breeze. Once he got his eyes fixed, it
was actually easier to do well than to screw up. They didn't seem to have
any problem with theorizing in advance of the evidence; they called it
thinking fast. 

 And then in January he woke up one morning and said, "Holy shit, I'm a
cop." 

 The only weird thing about the job was how easy it was. The Bullitt strut
that had kept the high school guys from messing with him because he was
five foot two turned out to be just as good for stopping the grown-up
bullies for messing with him because he was nineteen. 

 He walked his beat every night until he knew every block, every stone,
every Laotian grocery smelling like five-spice and Lysol, every alley that
might be full of rats or young lovers or old gummy-eyed winos. He broke
his ugly shoes in and got used to the weight of the gun. 

 And after sleeping through the morning, he'd drive up to Evanston and his
boots would ring on the stairs as he walked up to where Stella was waiting
for him in an honest-to-god dorm room, with a dresser full of
sherbet-colored sweaters and a teddy bear on the bed and little paperback
Shakespeares all over the floor. 

 By this time he'd figured out she wasn't the only high-class girl who had
a thing for a guy with a tattoo and a motorcycle and a South Chicago
accent. But he never wanted any girl but her. He believed her when she
said that wasn't normal, though, because all his friends said so too, even
the girls. 

 Stella and her roommate liked to put makeup on him sometimes. He let
them, since it seemed to amuse them, and to be honest he liked the
attention. But he didn't care how many times they said he looked just like
Peter Gabriel, he drew the line at going out in public like that. 

 "You wanna go to bed with girls?" he asked Stella as she licked her
finger and rubbed a stray fleck of something off his cheek. 

 "No, you moron," she said, "I want to go to bed with Peter Gabriel." 

 She dabbed some lip gloss on his mouth with her fingertip. "I think I
could do it with Chrissie Hynde," she said. 

 Stella's grades started slipping in the middle of junior year. She had to
drop an econ class for fear it would ruin her GPA. She started getting
lavender circles under her eyes. 

 Sometimes she'd come hang out with Ray and the couple of friends he'd
made at the station. The older guys loved to tell cop stories, competing
to try to gross her out, but she held her own. She made Ray proud. 

 They'd be hanging out at Mike Hadfield's apartment when they'd hear her
little tan Toyota sputter up. "Here comes Ray's girl," Mike said. 

 "She ain't my girl." 

 "That's right." Bri Olutzky would elbow him approvingly. "Kowalski knows
how to pick 'em. She'll fuck him but she won't date him." 

 "Sounds like the perfect girl to me."	

 1997 

 Ray was still arguing that they'd scare the guy off if they went public,
but Fraser and Welsh double-teamed him until finally he gave in. Welsh
didn't issue press releases, but he wasn't above slipping something to the
news crews if he thought it was to his advantage. 

 So one night the Nightwatch News ran Fraser's sketches, and the next day
Ray got a call from a Sue Truman, way out on the northwest side. "I went
to the local police at the time," she said, "but I had no idea there was a
pattern." 

 He picked up Fraser and the wolf on the way, and he actually managed to
make an hour's worth of small talk to fill up the trip to her house. 

 "It's been several weeks, but I'll tell you what I remember," she said,
sitting forward on her denim-covered sofa -- a small, curvy, fortyish
woman in a flowered skirt. "Little on the short side, average build,
average everything -- helpful, huh?" She gave a high laugh. "Sandy hair,
long. Really, really blue eyes -- like yours, boy, hmm?" she said to Dief,
who laid his head on her lap and looked at her adoringly. Fraser glanced
at Ray and pursed his lips. 

 She looked critically at the composite drawing. "It's not wrong exactly,"
she said, "but it's not right, exactly, either. There's something off
around the jaw, the shape of the face ..." She trailed off. "I can't put
my finger on it." She shook her head. 

 "You want to see the tattoo?" She stood up and hauled down her waistband,
grinning at Ray's startled look. "People who know me are used to this. I
like to show off my art." And she turned around and showed them a
dragonfly on her butt. "The snake is actually better work." 

 It only had three heads. It was, what, three weeks from Sue's three to
Amanda's seven? The guy was working his way up the numbers pretty fast. 

 "Who did your bug?" 

 She shrugged. "Some woman in Union Square in San Francisco." 

 "How long ago was this?" 

 "Ninety-two." She didn't even have to think about it. 

 "What made you --" 

 "My divorce was final May first," she said, counting off on her fingers.
"My fortieth birthday was May twelfth. On May twenty-first, my ex-husband
married his business partner's daughter ... shall I go on?" 

 Ray grinned at her. "Gotcha."	

 1981 

 "I ain't done nothing!" 

 It had been a really stressful morning, and Ray was in no mood to be
gentle with an underaged kid drinking beer and tagging stores in his
neighborhood. 

 "Shut it." He tightened his grip on the filthy shirt collar. The kid's
right thumb and forefinger were stained fluorescent orange, highlighting
the gnawed fingernails. "Think you're a tough guy, huh?" 

 He got right up in the kid's face, crowding him back. "You know what I
did today, tough guy? You see that bank over there? I walked into that
bank, and another little moron like you pointed a gun at me, and I shot it
right out of his hand. Bank robber points a gun at you, you'd probably
pass out." 

 He gave the collar a shake and let go. "Get the fuck outta here. I see
your face again during school hours, you're under arrest for willful
destruction, got it?" 

 Back at the station, he went down to where Bridget was typing on the new
computer. "Need everything you can find on a bank robbery," he said. "It's
an old one." 

 "We have everything back to the sixties now," she said proudly, patting
the computer like it was her baby, which it basically was. 

 "Good, then," he told her. "I'm looking for First City Bank, somewhere in
the 500 block of South Wabash." 

 "You know the year?" she said as she typed. 

 "February fourth, nineteen-seventy-four."  

 1997 

 "Three heads, six heads, seven heads," he said in the elevator. "Where
the hell are those other girls?" 

 "That's a good question. We can only hope others will come forward now
that the pictures have been made public." 

 Fraser was silent as they got in the car. "Ms. Truman seems to have
gotten her tattoo -- her other tattoo -- as a sort of declaration of
independence," he said at last. 

 "Pretty common," Ray said. 

 "Is that why you got yours?" 

 "Hard to say why you do anything when you're seventeen and drunk," he
said, and it was the truth, but he could see from Fraser's posture that he
thought it was a brush-off. 

 "What it is," he said at last, "see, people look at you and they think
they know what they're seeing. Pissed me off. You know?" 

 He could feel the weight of Fraser's eyes on him, and it had seemed like
a safe thing to say, but now that it was said, he wanted to take it back. 

 "Oh, yes," Fraser said. And then he didn't say anything else. He didn't
push. 

 Didn't he want to know? Why the fuck didn't he push?  

 1982 

 "I want to try something," Stella said to his belly button. 

 Her roommate had a boyfriend with an apartment, so they had the whole
night. "Yeah, yeah, anything." 

 She lapped at him a little, clumsily, and pushed his legs apart, and then
he felt her fingertips brushing down and back and back -- 

 "Aah!" How could she -- there was no reason in the world for that to feel
so good -- and he probably wasn't clean enough, a shower probably didn't
get you clean enough -- and he really ought to make her stop now -- 

 And her fingertip went in. 

 "Stel -- what --" he gasped. 

 She nuzzled his cock with her cheek. "You like that?" Deeper. 

 "Ohfuck. It's --" 

 "Dirty," she murmured, and twisted her finger.  

 1997 

 "So, Fraser. Did Amanda ever call you?" 

 Fraser looked puzzled for a moment. "Ah. The witness, you mean?" 

 Jeez, it was like he didn't even see the possibilities. "The knockout med
student with the crush on you, I mean." 

 "Ah." Fraser took another bite of noodles. "No." 

 "You gonna call her?" 

 "Do we have need of further information from her?" 

 "Fraser, are you interested in her at all?" 

 Fraser gave up the clueless act. "She's an admirable woman," he said,
"and a very engaging one." 

 Oh. "No chemistry, huh." Then he had a thought. "Or is it just that she
scares you?" 

 Fraser's head came up. "Ray?" 

 Ray sighed. "Forget it. Not my business."  

 1982 

 Stella made it into Northwestern Law by the skin of her teeth. It was
easier for Ray to see her now that she was living downtown, but she had
less and less time. 

 "I know I'm smarter than these morons," she said. "Why are they doing
better than I am?" 

 "Duh," said Tracy Paretsky, her roommate, who worked at the courthouse.
"They study, princess." 

 "Don't call me that," Stella said, and threw a pen at her.  

 1997 

 The next tattoo girl, Jennifer Kojima, was a real knockout. The girl was
beautiful even in a white-hot rage. 

 "Look, I'm a dancer," she said. "I mean a stripper, you know, and how the
fuck am I supposed to dance? I can hardly fucking walk. I've lost a whole
weekend to this asshole." She took a drag from her cigarette. "When you
catch him, I'm going to sue for lost income, you'd better believe it." She
smoked furiously, like she'd rather be pacing if she could. 

 "At first I thought he'd stabbed me, till I looked under the gauze. You
know what, I'm gonna sue him for more than just this weekend. My body's my
livelihood. And the Doll House will take you if you have body mod, but
some clubs won't. He's fucked up my career choices, dude." 

 "I gotta ask if we can see it, take a picture of it," Ray said. 

 She stood up carefully and hauled down her leggings. Underneath she was
wearing a bright-red thong. "Enjoy yourselves, guys," she said. "That's a
hundred-dollar view there." She picked at the edge of the tape, wincing,
and peeled up the gauze. 

 Ray counted eight snake heads. 

 After a minute, she said, "Grab me that mirror over there, will you? I
haven't even gotten a good look at it." 

 Fraser brought it to her, and for a moment they all looked at the tattoo.


 "Actually it's kind of pretty," she said.  

 1983 

 When Stella came to him in the middle of her first year at law school and
said, "Ray, I'm pregnant," he didn't ask her any questions. He was her
protector, so he knew what was the right thing to do. 

 "Sh, sh, Stel," he whispered into her hair. "We'll get married. It's OK."


 She lifted her tear-swollen face from his shoulder. "I -- maybe. I need
to sleep. Shit, I can't think, I have finals. Maybe." And he curled up
around her in his skimpy little bed and watched her while she slept. 

 When he didn't hear from her for a week, he wrote it off to finals. When
another week went by, he drove over to her apartment. Tracy let him in
with a look he couldn't read. 

 Stella was in bed with a heating pad, like when her cramps were really
bad. Did morning sickness do that? He'd never known anybody pregnant. 

 He sat down on the bed beside her. "You doing OK?" he said. "You need
anything?" 

 "I had an abortion." 

 For a minute all he could do was stare at his hands. 

 "This morning." She pushed back her pillow-flattened hair. "Ray, I'm a
law student. This is a terrible time for me to have a baby," she said,
pleadingly, like he was arguing with her. He looked at her pale hand in
his, at her grandmother's engagement ring that she always wore. Her nail
polish was chipped. 

 "You need medicine?" he asked her. 

 Her hand tightened. "Would you really have married me?" 

 He nodded. 

 "Would you still?"  

 Part 3: If I Didn't Love You  Would you sit and glow By the fire, If I
didn't love you, Would you make me feel so -- Maybe love me, If I, if I,
if I, if I, if I -- Squeeze, "If I Didn't Love You (I'd Hate You)"  

 1997 

 Before Ray was partnered up with Fraser, he'd pretty much quit doing
anything dramatic with his hair. Something about hanging out with the
Mountie, though, made him want to make it wilder and wilder every time.
Kim said he was a lot more fun than her other guy clients. Some of them
would keep the same haircut for thirty years. 

 "Do something crazy. Whatever you want," he told her now, leaning back in
the chair and closing her eyes. "I don't gotta be anywhere for two and a
half hours, and I wanna be somebody else by then." 

 Give the Mountie credit for being open-minded: Ray showed up blonder than
a Swede and he never batted an eye. "We have another tattoo victim.
Near-victim, rather," he said. And then he reached out for a lock of Ray's
hair, rubbed it between his thumb and his finger, and then leaned over and
sniffed it, which was weird. 

 "Hey, Vecchio," Dewey called as they walked into the station. "Nice hair.
Bet they love that down at Club Man." 

 "Yeah, well, if I see your mama there, I'll tell her to take off the fake
mustache and go on home." 

 Huey laughed. Dewey glared at him. "That was pretty good," he explained. 


 1984 

 Stella made some noises about waiting until she passed the bar before
they got married, but when Ray said, "No, let's don't," she actually
looked kind of grateful. In the end it was still longer than he wanted to
wait, but she swore that ten months was as fast as anybody could plan a
wedding. 

 Stella's mom drank too much champagne at the rehearsal dinner and cried
in her chocolate mousse, squeezing Ray's hand in her bony fingers. "Look
after her," she said in a loud voice. "You've always looked after her.
Ever since you were children." Ray patted her hand awkwardly and glanced
at Stella, who grimaced in apology. She was sitting with his mom, who was
being calm and cheerful and everything a mom should be, instead of acting
like a kid who needed somebody to take care of her. 

 He'd wondered how he was going to undo those millions of buttons on the
back of the wedding dress, but after the pictures were done, she
disappeared and came back in a suit the color of celery leaves, and that
was what she was wearing when he opened their hotel room for the first
time. 

 They were almost too tired for sex, and they had a long flight tomorrow
morning, but it had to be bad luck to skip it. Ray kicked off his shoes
and started to take off the gray tux Stella's dad had bought him, but
Stella, already down to her slip and her bare feet, looked up at him from
under her lashes and said, "Let me." 

 She pushed the jacket off and tugged the suspenders down, face strangely
serious. Her hair divided over the back of her neck as she bent her head
to work at the tiny buttons. 

 When the shirt and the suspenders were hanging from the back of his
pants, she ran her hand back up his bare arm and under the sleeves of his
T-shirt. Her fingers rubbed back and forth over his shoulder, like she was
trying to find the tattoo by feel. 

 "Oh, Ray," she said, and he pulled her into his arms, and she buried her
face in his shoulder and said again, "Oh, Ray."  

 1997 

 A dark-haired guy with glasses opened the hallway door. 

 "We're looking for C.J. Keynes," Ray told him, flashing a badge. 

 "Yeah, come on in. I couldn't believe it when I saw your thing on TV."
The apartment had a single-guy look, newspapers all over the coffee table,
pizza box on the floor. 

 "You're C.J. Keynes, then," Fraser said in a puzzled voice. While Ray was
still trying to catch up, Fraser said, "You see, thus far, all our victims
have been women." 

 "Yeah, well, that night I was." He looked at them, amused. "You didn't
know what kind of place Mal's was? I don't know why I'm surprised. She
didn't, either, apparently." 

 "She?" Ray was still a couple of chapters behind. 

 Fraser said, "Perhaps you'd better start at the beginning." 

 Keynes tossed a couple of sweaters off the couch so they could sit down.
"I don't do that really serious drag," he said. "I mean, I don't perform,
I don't tuck, I don't do the wigs and corsets and that. I just, you know,
put on a dress and curl my hair and go down to Mal's and be a girl for the
night." 

 There was a practiced pause, like he was waiting for an objection. Ray
drew breath to say something reassuring, but Fraser was saying in a
soothing voice, "Yes, of course. It's not uncommon." 

 He had leaned until Keynes was blocked from Ray's view. Protecting one of
them, though Ray wasn't sure which. Ray leaned forward. "So you met
somebody at Mal's -- can you describe ... them?" 

 "A girl in guy drag," Keynes said. "About my height, hair a little
lighter than mine and slicked back, longish. She wasn't doing that great
of a job as a guy, really, but she was a girl in a tie with her hair
slicked back, which was just what I was in the mood for." He shot them a
challenging look. 

 "And then?" Fraser said blandly. Keynes looked at Ray to see if he was
going to get the argument there, then shrugged. 

 "Brought her back here -- it looked better than this. She wanted a drink.
I thought maybe she was nervous, like she hadn't done a lot of this
before. So I got both of us beers, and then I guess she put something in
mine, because the next thing I know it's morning and I'm alone. So, you
know, nothing happened to call the police about, and I didn't think any
more about it until I saw the drawing on the news." 

 "You were unharmed?" Fraser said, and Ray said, "Where were you when you
woke up?" 

 "I was in my bed, on top of the covers, and my skirt was hiked up and my
underwear half off." 

 "Like maybe she got outta there in a hurry when she saw you weren't a
girl." 

 "Yes, yes, Detective, we've all seen the movie." He got up and went to
the kitchen, still speaking. "So I'm not the best housekeeper in the
world. It was quite a while later when I found this under the nightstand."
He came out with a plastic grocery bag. "I'm sorry -- I didn't really
treat it like evidence or anything. I've had my hands all over it." 

 It was an art transfer of a snake with four heads. And with any luck it
would have some prints on it other than Keynes's. 

 "If I may ask," Fraser said, "the other witnesses have all described the
culprit as male." 

 "They were all pretty much straight women, no drag experience? They're
not gonna know what to look for. It's wearing a tie, you don't even
wonder."  

 1984 

 Stella liked to take long bubble baths. She liked to pad around the
apartment in nothing but her candy-colored underpants, shooting him
teasing looks from under her eyelashes. 

 If he touched her, she'd twist out of his grasp, giggling, "Don't, Ray, I
have to study," and she'd pull on a little T-shirt and lounge on the couch
with a law book propped on her stomach. 

 But if Ray grabbed her and growled, "Fuck studying," she'd melt into him
suddenly, biting his mouth and scratching him. She wouldn't give him
anything, but she loved it when he took it.  

 1997 

 "We're looking for a woman." Ray started the car, and then he shut it
off. Dief barked happily in the back seat. "C'mon, Fraser, I need to walk.
I'm not gonna be able to think unless I can walk. You mind?" 

 "Not at all." 

 Ray needed to move pretty fast to think his way through something like
this, but Fraser had no trouble keeping up. 

 "We ain't looking for a man, we're looking for a woman," he said again.
"This changes everything." He unfocused his eyes, letting Fraser watch for
obstacles so he could picture things in his head. "I don't get it, Fraser.
How could a bunch of straight girls pick up a girl at a bar and take her
home thinking she's a guy?" 

 Fraser nudged him gently and he detoured around a flower cart. 

 "Most people," Fraser said, "are more than willing to accept the message
conveyed by another person's surface appearance, and never look more
deeply." 

 Ray glanced at his face, and then he looked down at the uniform, and
raised his eyebrows. And Fraser looked up at his hair, and back down at
the shoulder where the tat was hidden under his T-shirt, and said, "Yes.
Exactly."  

 1985 

 It wouldn't have occurred to Ray to put in for detective for another
couple of years, but his lieu sent him to the in-service training, and
would take no argument. 

 They partnered him up with a veteran detective named Frank, one of those
deceptively gentle guys who could take down three gang members without
raising his voice. When Ray asked him about his record, Frank said, "I got
two daughters, sport. Street psychos can't even begin to compete." 

 Frank treated him like a kid, but he was cheerful about it, so Ray
couldn't get too pissed. Besides, Frank knew a hell of a lot. He'd already
done most of what Ray wanted to do. 

 "You ain't had a smoke since Vietnam," Ray said one day, turning his pen
over and over in his fingers. "When do you stop missing it?" 

 Frank switched his gum from one cheek to the other. "Who says you do?"  

 1997 

 "Listen," Ray said as they came back to the car. He'd been thinking about
seeing if Fraser would go for Ethiopian for dinner, but all this new
information was squirming around in his brain until he wasn't sure he
could really do anything difficult like relate to humans. "I gotta -- I
got a thing. Tonight. Can I drop you at the Consulate? Maybe you come by
the apartment tomorrow afternoon?" 

 "Certainly." He knew Fraser was curious, but he didn't know how he knew
-- the guy gave no sign. "Is there anything I can --" 

 The phone rang, and he grabbed it. "Vecchio," he said, and a woman's
voice said, "Oh, Detective. Do you know where I could reach Benton
Fraser?" 

 "Oh, yeah. He's with me." He didn't know what made him put it like that
-- only as soon as he thought that, he did know. "Hang on," he said
absently, and dropped the phone on Fraser. 

 Fraser was watching Ray's face, and he caught the phone without looking
at it. Ray looked away before his face could tell any stories he wasn't
ready to share. Fraser didn't push, but he had good instincts. 

 "Constable Benton Fraser," he said beside Ray, and then, "Of course, yes.
How are you?" 

 Nice voice. Not that Ray'd never noticed, but it was strange to put it
together like this. Nice voice, nice face, good partner, good friend. So
close the best way to reach him was to call Ray's phone. 

 "That sounds like an excellent idea ... No, that's correct, but if you'll
give me the details, I'll be happy to pass them on to the others." 

 Fraser hung up the phone, and Ray blanked his face. "Amanda Jackson would
like to start a support group for the victims," he said. "One of the
hospital psychologists has volunteered to help." 

 "Good idea." 

 "I'm afraid she was rejected as a blood donor, which was rather upsetting
for her." 

 "I'll bet." Ray scratched the back of his neck. "Fraser, you ever feel
like you got a total stranger in your head?" 

 Fraser regarded him for a long moment. "Frequently," he said.	

 1985 

 It took Stella six months to study for the bar exam, and she was such a
bitch with it that Ray started hanging around after shift so he wouldn't
have to go home and get in another fight. 

 After a while, Frank smacked him in the back of the head. "Come on,
Kowalski," he said. "Bev'll feed you, and the girls'll scream in your ear,
and you'll feel right at home." 

 Bev Constantine had long curly dark hair, a comfortable wide-hipped body,
and a sharp tongue. "Hey, you finally brought the kid home," she said. She
was wearing a big oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and her hands
were mostly covered with something whitish. "Get him a beer, Frank. I left
a plate half-finished." 

 "Pottery," Frank explained. Everything in the house was covered in a fine
layer of clay dust. 

 Jessica and Heather were perpetual-motion machines in pigtails. It seemed
to Ray that they never stopped fighting even while they were eating. Bev
mostly ignored them through supper and then shooed them off to the den to
watch Miami Vice while the adults did the dishes. 

 Frank and Bev seemed to argue all the time, but not like Ray and Stella
did. Not like there was anything serious at stake. Watching them bicker
was more like watching a one-on-one basketball game -- both sides going
all out to win, but no hard feelings. After a couple of minutes Frank
noticed him watching and winked at him. "The well-oiled Constantine
Machine," he said, and Bev snorted and snapped him with a dishtowel. 

 Ray called home, and Stella basically told him to fuck off because she
had to study. Frank was looking at him knowingly. 

 "Two years we been married, and sometimes I still feel like I'm playing a
husband on TV," Ray said. 

 "Yeah," Frank said. "I remember that." 

 "When did it seem real to you?" 

 "Not till we had the kids."  

 1997 

 It took a minute for Ray to realize that only part of that noise was the
electric guitar; the other part was a knock on the door. Jesus, was it two
already? 

 "Hey, Fraser. Come on in. Hey, furball." 

 Fraser looked curiously at the turntable on the coffee table. "I haven't
seen one of those for quite some time." 

 "Spent all yesterday afternoon running all over town looking for one." On
the record, the muttering broke into singing: "And I feel like a beetle on
its back, and there's no way for me to get up." Ray turned the volume
down. 

 "Is there a reason why you needed to obtain a turntable in such haste?" 

 "Because those who don't remember the past have gotta go through all that
bullshit twice, Fraser." 

 "You're using these to re-examine your past?" Fraser sorted through the
albums. Velvet Underground, Sweet, Wire, Pete Townshend, the Effigies, the
Pretenders. 

 "Love'll get you like a case of anthrax," Ray sang back at him, "and
that's something I don't want to catch. -- Hey, you got your dad's
journals, I got my old record collection." 

 "I see." Fraser looked curiously at the cowboy and Indian on the Gang of
Four cover. "And have you had any great insights so far?" 

 "You ever get any great insights from your dad's journals?" 

 Fraser blinked for a moment. "I did once discover a very fine recipe for
a tenderizing marinade suitable for all varieties of game." 

 "Uh-huh." Ray scooted over on the couch. "Sit down, grasshopper," he
said. "You might as well see if the Gang has anything to teach you."  

 1986 

 When Stella went to work for a big downtown law firm, Ray was proud as
hell. And then one day she came home late and said, "The goddamned Yip
case is falling apart." 

 "Ferdie Yip?" Even in Chicago there couldn't be more than one felon named
Yip. "That was Frank's collar." 

 They stared at each other while the significance of that sank in. 

 "OK, OK," Ray said. "Equal representation, even scumbags get a fair
trial, I'm OK with that." 

 "I think," she said, "that if we're not going to compromise justice
somewhere down the line, we've got to stop talking to each other about
work." 

 It was just another thing on the list of things they couldn't talk about.
No big deal.  

 1997 

 Ray put down the albums and picked up the drawing of the suspect. "You
think you could draw this again, same vital stats but a woman?" 

 "I could try." Fraser flipped over a takeout menu and started drawing
again. 

 It was weird. Back when he used to let Stella and that other girl put
makeup on him, he never used to come out looking like a girl, just like a
guy with makeup on. But Fraser was making these really subtle changes --
hairline lower, forehead shallower, jaw finer -- and just turning a guy
into a girl, just like that. 

 The final face was familiar, like somebody he might have seen on TV with
a different hairdo. 

 He put the two drawings side by side. "From this, you'd think anybody
could just switch sexes." 

 "It's less difficult than you might suppose," Fraser said. "The task is
of course made simpler by people's expectations. I once impersonated a
woman for a case," he clarified. 

 He'd mentioned that once before. "Hard to picture." 

 Fraser smiled a little. "I was a spectacularly ill-favored woman, I'm
afraid. Which in itself was useful for the case," he went on thoughtfully.
"To many people, there's nothing so invisible as an unattractive woman." 

 Ray looked at him. "You liked it," he said. "Not having everybody looking
at you for a change." 

 Fraser's lips parted for a moment. "Yes." The pencil still hung loosely
from his fingers, but he seemed to have forgotten about it. "In reality,"
he said, "when people look at me, they don't see me at all, but the
uniform." 

 Ray narrowed his eyes. "You make them," he said. Fraser looked up. "You
got a face like a mask, Fraser." 

 "Point taken," Fraser said, very precisely, "Detective Vecchio." 

 "Not the same thing." 

 "I had to commit fraud and subterfuge to find out who you were." Strange
emphasis on those last three words. 

 And that just pissed Ray off, because it wasn't like he was trying to
keep Fraser at a distance. You didn't have to try. Distance was the guy's
middle name. "I would have told you if you'd ever bothered to ask." 

 He didn't ask. He didn't push. 

 Ray, though -- Ray pushed. 

 He leaned over Fraser, hands on the back of the couch. "Tell me who you
are," he said softly. "Please," he added. 

 Fraser swallowed, and for a minute it seemed like he wouldn't answer. And
then he said softly, "Benton." 

 "Benton," Ray said. And then he kissed him.  

 1987 

 "Look, Ray, I work hard every day. I think I deserve to be able to relax
without having my every move under scrutiny." 

 "A goddamned phone call when you're out after midnight, Stel. It ain't
like being under house arrest or nothing -- Stella? Goddamn it." He
slammed down the phone. 

 After a minute he looked up to see Bev leaning on the door. "She's having
an affair," she said. It wasn't a question. 

 "Hell, no." He stared her down. "She belongs to me." 

 They neither one of them could apologize. Stella didn't because she
couldn't stand to lose, and Ray didn't because he didn't want her to think
he was a loser. So all they could do was be mad till they weren't mad any
more, and then he'd do something dramatic and win her back, just like
always. But in the meantime he knew better than to hang around the
apartment like a big target, so he spent a lot of time at Frank and Bev's.
Even if Frank was out doing house stuff for his mom in Aurora, Bev would
let Ray in, let him pace around the studio while she worked on a mug or
platter. 

 Eventually he slept on the couch so many times that Frank just gave him a
pair of his sweats to sleep in. They smelled like cloves and clay slip and
garlic. It was kind of comforting. 

 After another couple of nights, Frank finally said, "Leave a goddamned
overnight bag at the house, will you, Kowalski? You keep coming out the
door in yesterday's clothes, people are gonna think you're fucking my
wife."	

 1997 

 Fraser jerked away from the kiss, face flushed. "Ray, what --?" 

 Ray leaned forward, trying to catch his mouth again, because what he
could do and what he could talk about were two different things. But
Fraser eluded him, held him off with a hand on his shoulder. All that
effortless strength. Ray stood up fast, and then he collapsed onto the
couch, looking up at the ceiling. There were cobwebs in the corners.
"Sorry," he said. 

 "Ray?" He turned his head without raising it from the back of the couch.
Fraser looked more confused than mad. "I -- you -- you never said anything
about this." He smoothed down the uniform like he didn't know he was doing
it. "I thought you were doing it unconsciously." 

 Then he turned and gave Ray a longer look. "Or perhaps you were." 

 Ray shrugged. "How do I know? I don't know what I want till I see what I
do." 

 Fraser looked away, the way he did when something pissed him off but he
wasn't going to say anything. "Oh, no," Ray said, and he looked back
again. "No way. We're way past this bullshit now, Fraser. You think it,
you say it." 

 Fraser looked down. "It isn't any of my business --" 

 "Fraser, don't you get it? Everything is your business now." 

 That got him a look of such naked hope that he had to put his hand on
Fraser's. Fraser looked down, then turned his hand over, slowly. 

 "Please understand," he said a little roughly, "that I don't intend any
insult by saying this. But this --" he shook their joined hands -- "is a
place at which I've arrived after many years of soul searching, and even
so it's not a place where I feel entirely ... at home. And now you -- you
have an instinct, an impulse --" 

 "A hunch," Ray said. "Don't devalue the hunch, Fraser. The hunch has
never led me wrong." And Fraser wanted more words, but this wasn't
something he could say with words. 

 He tucked his fingers behind the belt across Fraser's chest. "Say yes." 

 Fraser's eyes fluttered, but his voice when he spoke was firm. "Yes."	

 1988 

 She came home smelling like somebody else's shampoo, still all wound up
from whoever she'd been doing after work while he was arresting a guy for
taking out a hit on his mother. Used to, they'd fight and then fuck, but
lately it seemed like they were doing both at the same time, kisses
turning to bites in the heat of it. 

 And afterwards she was all kitten-playful, like she always was when he'd
won, when he'd proved once again that he was more man than whoever she put
him up against. And he lay there, staring at the ceiling, while she
drifted off. 

 It was easy to come in her, but impossible to sleep beside her. 

 Frank's car was gone, but the light was still on in Bev's studio. She
came to the door in shorts and a long CPD T-shirt powdered white with
clay. "Jesus, don't you people ever sleep?" she said, voice scratchy from
singing along to the radio as she worked, and then, catching sight of his
face under the hall light, "Ray? Are you all right?" 

 "Tired," he said, "just so fucking tired, Bevvie," and to his dismay his
eyes were prickling. Without another word Bev wrapped him up in her
freckled arms. 

 She had that homey Constantine smell, garlic and clay and cloves and
Irish Spring. He couldn't lean into her, but he clung to her hard, fisting
the T-shirt in back, closing his hot eyes and lowering his head to her
shoulder. She murmured something meaningless, the same kind of sound he'd
heard her make when Heather skinned her knee, and the sound that came out
of his mouth was a creaky sort of laugh. 

 He gathered up a handful of her springy hair, feeling the hot skin of her
neck against his thumb, and her eyelids went heavy. He waited for her eyes
to open again, and then he kissed her. 

 It was incredibly weird to kiss somebody other than Stella. Her lips were
more pillowy, her kisses slower and softer. She and Frank probably kissed
like this, like comfortable married people, no hurry, all the time in the
world. He closed his eyes and pressed closer. 

 She inhaled hard through her nose -- he could feel her chest inflating
against him -- and then, slowly, like giving permission, she opened her
mouth for him. 

 He let loose of the shirt and stroked his hands down her back, stopping
just below her waist and spreading his hands over the unfamiliar swell of
her hips, and he went on kissing her slowly, as though he was hypnotized,
rubbing his thumb against her spine. 

 He opened his eyes and looked past her glossy dark hair to the couch
behind her, one of Jessica's sneakers on its side underneath it, Frank's
sloppy green cardigan draped over one arm. He suddenly felt hollow, almost
sick with how not-right it all was, and he straightened up just as she
started shaking her head and saying, "Ray, we can't." 

 "Sorry, that was stupid, don't know where that came from," he said, but
she went right on talking. 

 " ... about it, I mean, hell, I think about it all the time. But god,
Ray, there's no future in it, you know?" They were still standing very
close, but not touching, and her hair brushed his face as she shook her
head. "I could have a fling, maybe. But that's not what I'd want with
you." 

 He met her eyes dumbly, and she put her hand out and touched his cheek,
very gently. "I'm not stupid," she said, and then bit her lip and gave a
little huff of laughter. "OK, but I'm not that stupid." 

 He could feel that there was a smile plastered on his face. He couldn't
imagine what kind of awful-looking smile it must be. "Uh, I'll just -- I'd
better --" He gestured stupidly toward the door, and then gathered himself
up and jerkily made his way out. 

 Behind him, he heard the deadbolt click shut.	

 Part 4: Never A Next Time  No argument on do I love you or not. No
argument: You have the love that I see as mine. Pull back your cover. I
could love you for all time. But do it now. You know there's never a next
time. The English Beat, "The End of the Party"	

 1997 

 Ray sank down into the kiss like going under and never having to come up
again. Fraser's mouth was big, his tongue was aggressive, his arm around
Ray's shoulders was strong and sure. And the familiar scent of Fraser
surrounded him: wool and leather and polish and sweat. He remembered
sniffing Fraser's shoulder in the hallway, remembered the tightness in his
chest, and felt it again, and knew it. 

 He released Fraser's mouth and ran his lips down over his strong jaw,
down the muscle twitching in his neck. Struggled with the fastenings and
got the collar partway open, far enough to get the scent of the body under
the uniform, different, indescribable, good, so good -- and Fraser's hands
were there, undoing the cord and loosening the belts and undoing the
buttons, letting him in. 

 White cotton over smooth hard muscle and pounding heartbeat. Ray nuzzled
for a nipple in mid-pectoral, and then remembered and went off to the
side, searching for it with lips and fingers, knowing he'd found it from
Fraser's sudden gasp and curl long before it rose to his tongue under the
heavy knit fabric. 

 "Ray," Fraser whispered on a sigh, "wait, let me --" and Ray sat back to
wait for him to struggle out of the jacket, pull the undershirt over his
head. 

 Ray kissed him again, traced his cheek and jaw and ear -- but he couldn't
keep his hands away from Fraser's broad, smooth chest, had to pull back to
watch his fingers tracing the muscles and stroking the sparse hair over
Fraser's breastbone. 

 "Ray," and Fraser's eyes were full of wonder as Ray raised his hot face,
"you've never --" Ray shook his head, and Fraser's eyelids fluttered.
"Please," he said, "in bed." 

 Ray couldn't resist a grin. "Happens I've got a bed right in the other
room." 

 Fraser had the boots unlaced so fast that Ray couldn't swear the laces
hadn't moved by themselves. The pants looked even stupider over bare feet,
but Fraser was watching him, and he had to go to work on his own clothes
to hide the flush. 

 As soon as he got the T-shirt off over his head, Fraser was there, down
to his shorts, moving like a guy who's mapped out the territory in
advance: fingers dipping under the bracelet to stroke inside his wrist,
mouth brushing down cheek and jaw and neck to land a surprisingly sharp
bite on his shoulder, right on the tattoo. 

 "Yeah?" he said, and Fraser nodded, and Ray couldn't think of any other
response but to drop his pants. 

 He collapsed on the bed and Fraser crawled up over him, still in those
stupid white shorts but thrillingly feral all the same, and Ray said,
"Bite me again" before he could stop himself. And Fraser did, hard. 

 After a while, Ray got tired of the shorts always being there to
interrupt the sweep of his hands, and so he pushed till they were on their
sides and took them off -- carefully, because Fraser was hard enough to
get tangled up in the waistband, and that could be incredibly awkward. And
then he moved down Fraser's body, and Fraser rolled on his back and went
very still. 

 He'd been half afraid he was going to freak out at this point, but Fraser
smelled so good that he found himself pressing his nose to the dark hair,
breathing deeply. "God, Fraser," he said, and before he knew it he had a
mouthful of Fraser's cock, blood-hot and silky smooth, like nothing he'd
been able to imagine with three of his own fingers in his mouth. 

 Fraser was breathing loud, letting a little whimper escape every now and
then, and Ray suddenly needed to kiss him. And from there it was easy to
curl around behind him and look down the length of his body. 

 Ray pressed the back of his hand into Fraser's palm. "Show me," he
breathed into Fraser's ear. "I want to do it how you like it," and Fraser
said, "Oh," and guided Ray's hand. 

 Slow, slower than Ray could stand it, and Fraser pushed Ray's thumb down
into the notch and pressed down with every downstroke. "Yeah, let me
watch," Ray said, and Fraser whimpered a little and began to move faster,
and his hips started to snap up into every stroke. It always turned Ray on
to watch himself come, but it was nothing compared to watching Fraser. 

 After a while he loosened his grip, and then he brought his hand up to
his mouth. Fraser's spunk was a little sweeter than his own, and he'd
hardly tasted it before Fraser was rubbing his own hand in it, enclosing
Ray's cock in a slippery grip and just letting Ray push his hips into it,
panting out Fraser's name and coming like crazy. 

 He lay there stunned for a moment, and then he turned to see Fraser
watching him cautiously, and suddenly he felt like laughing from pure
giddy relief, because he'd seen what he'd done, and now he knew what he
wanted. 

 "Stay," he said. 

 Fraser was looking at him, and for once there was no mask on there, and
jesus. Wanting so much. 

 "Yeah," he said. "I mean it like that. Stay."	

 1988 

 "You and Bev have a fight or something?" Frank said, never taking his
eyes off the Sox on the breakroom TV. 

 Ray nearly choked on his hoagie. "What?" he mumbled, scrambling for a
napkin. Frank handed him one. 

 "Just seems like you don't come around any more, and she got kinda weird
when I said you should come to dinner, is all." He tipped back his head
and funneled a handful of corn chips into his mouth. 

 Ray didn't look at him. "What the hell would I have a fight with Bev
about?" 

 Frank shrugged. "Want to come for dinner tonight, then? Jessica's got a
new trumpet solo, and you've probably done something bad enough to deserve
that." 

 "Not tonight." Ray took a drink of his root beer. "Another time maybe." 

 That worked for about two weeks, and then Frank said, "I done something
to tick you off, Kowalski? Because I thought we were buddies here." 

 "Naw, nothing like that. Lot on my mind, you know?" 

 "Beer after work?" 

 "Sorry." 

 Frank seemed to veer between puzzled and pissed, and Ray felt like shit,
because he really had been a good friend, better than a friend. But he
really couldn't see sitting around the Constantine dinner table, listening
to the girls squabble, watching Frank and Bev argue and laugh. And he was
running out of excuses. 

 Finally one day he just said, "Look, Frank, me and Stella, we been having
some problems. You know that, right?" 

 Frank went serious right away. "I know," he said. "I'm sorry." 

 "Yeah, well, thanks. Thing is, we're trying to work things out now, so I
don't want to be out at night, you know?" 

 Jesus, a truth and a lie together worked so much better than a lie by
itself. Frank was all sympathy and good wishes. And the invitations
stopped. 

 They were still partners, but that was all they were. Ray tried not to
think less of Frank for being taken in like that, but shit, the guy was a
detective. 

 He probably thought he knew Ray really well.  

 1997 

 Ray woke up just like he always did when the newspaper delivery truck
started backing into the alley. Fraser's chest, rising and falling under
his cheek, told him Fraser was already awake. 

 He kept his eyes shut just to revel in the moment: He was naked, and
Fraser was naked, and Fraser was looking at him, and Fraser's body was
warm and strong and relaxed. 

 After a moment, the hand that had been lying still on the back of his
neck began to move, gently stroking his back. 

 "How'd you know I was awake?" he said without lifting his head. 

 He felt the vibration under his cheek as Fraser answered, "You were
smiling." 

 He was still smiling when they arrived at the station, but then, Fraser
was whistling, so at least he wasn't the only freak in the room. 

 It was pretty typical morning pandemonium -- there'd been a robbery at
the flower show, and the waiting room was full of anxious women clutching
houseplants -- and after a few minutes Ray stopped feeling like there was
a sign on his chest and started focusing on his actual job, which was
plenty enough to keep him occupied. 

 It did come back to him at unexpected moments -- not just the memories
that raised his pulse but also the same feeling he got when a case was on
a roll, like he couldn't fail, couldn't go wrong, every step was going to
fall just where it needed to fall. 

 He heard Stella's voice at midmorning, arguing with Welsh about some
suspect whose lawyer hadn't shown up yet, but by that time he was
following a hunch through the mugshots in search of the guy who'd robbed
the flower show, and he barely glanced up from the computer. 

 Then Fraser came back from the interrogation room, brushing potting soil
off his hands, and when he saw Ray he got this little cautious smile on
his face, and Ray just grinned at him and whacked him on the chest and
said, "Let's get some work done, huh?" 

 And Fraser hauled out his drawing of Tattoo Woman, and somehow he and Ray
ended up sitting on Ray's desk, grabbing notes and throwing them back on
the pile and arguing cheerfully about whether some new direction was
called for or whether they could just go on the same way -- and it was in
the middle of this conversation that Ray looked up and saw Stella
watching. 

 He hadn't even been thinking X-rated thoughts, just working like always
-- seemed like always to him, anyway. But he could see it on her face. 

 "What is it?" Fraser said, and then followed his eyes. 

 She was too far away to hear them. "She knows," Ray said. 

 Fraser turned his eyes slowly from Stella to Ray. His face was blank.
"Ah," he said. 

 Stella had face control. A good trial lawyer had to. But Ray had played
poker with her, so he knew her tells. And she was struggling with it, and
she was going to need somebody to comfort her like he'd needed somebody to
comfort him after Orsini. But that wasn't his job any more. 

 After a while she met his eyes, and then she gave him the kind of smile
you give somebody who's going on vacation while you stay in the office. He
nodded like he'd heard the words. 

 Leaning toward Fraser, he said under his breath, "She wishes us luck."  

 1990 

 Ray was happy that Rodney Wayne Keenan's arrest wasn't out of his
division, because it was like a Christmas present for the defense with a
big red bow on top. Defendant with unexplained bruises on his arms and
face, key witnesses complaining of intimidation, crime scene photos shot
with a malfunctioning flash, miranda irregularities worse than in the
movies. 

 Ray heard all this through the department grapevine. It was Stella's
case, and they couldn't talk about it. 

 In the end, a weapons misdemeanor was all that stuck. It was Stella's
first case as lead attorney, and Ray took her out to celebrate -- she'd
done good work, and the cops had deserved to lose that one. But she picked
at her rack of lamb and messed with the candle on the table until she
nearly drove him nuts. 

 "Ray," she said at last, "you know how he killed that kid? He stabbed him
seven times with a steak knife." 

 "You got him a fair trial," Ray said. 

 "The state's case was so clumsy the judge disallowed four prior assault
convictions and any discussion of his alcoholism," she said. "That little
weasel is going to do it again." She held up her fork, examining the way
the candlelight reflected off the silver. "Ray, how much have we got in
savings?" 

 Ray banked most of his salary while Stella paid the bills with hers.
"Nine, ten thou," he said, "not counting our retirement stuff. Why, you
need a vacation?" 

 "I want to be a prosecutor."  

 1997 

 "I suppose," Fraser said, "that we'll need to review the list of artists
and interview the women whom we -- Ray?" 

 "Yeah, hang on --" Ray closed his eyes. There was something bugging him.
Something he'd seen on a table someplace, and it wasn't right, and if he
could just remember -- 

 "The list, as I was saying, that we got from Ms. Phillips --" 

 Ray smacked the desk. "Tape," he said, and stood up. "Come on, Fraser." 

 "Where are we going?" 

 "To arrest Dana Phillips." 

 "Dana -- what?" Fraser was hurrying along behind him, still talking. "Our
suspect has longer hair --" 

 "Which hers would be if she combed the curls out, plus what counts as
'long' on a guy isn't that long on a girl." 

 "Our suspect has quite striking blue eyes --" 

 "Which are obviously color contacts, since ninety-nine percent of the
normal blue eyes in the world aren't striking at all -- they're just
regular eyes, like mine." 

 Fraser slowed down to look at the composite drawing, then picked up the
pace again. "May I ask how you --" 

 "Surgical tape." It was her, they had her, and the rush was the same as
always only now he had a strong desire to just grab Fraser and kiss him
right there in the stairwell from sheer joy. He settled for grabbing the
back of his neck, a sort of public half-hug. "She had a backpack in the
office, remember, all that stuff spilling out, and what does a
photographer need with surgical tape?"	

 1994 

 The week after Stella got promoted to ADA, she was home every night,
laughing at his jokes and trembling in his arms just like the old days.
That was when he knew it was really over. 

 "You know you're my oldest friend?" she said as she lay with her head on
his bare chest. 

 "Watch who you're calling old, garbage baby," he said, and she gave this
little hiccup of a laugh, and after a second he felt a tear drop on his
skin. 

 He stroked her hair. "I love you." 

 "I know." She sat up and wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands. "I
don't think I can love you the good way, Ray, I don't think I can -- and I
can't go on loving you the bad way." 

 He sat up, too, suddenly panic-stricken, because he'd thought he was
ready for this, but it hurt like dry ice in his belly. "Please." And fuck
the Bullitt act, because this was Stella. "You're my whole life.
Everything. Twenty-three years, Stel, you can't --" 

 "Don't make this harder." Her voice wasn't harsh but pleading. "Ray, it
hurts, it hurts, but I can't be good for you, I can only be bad for you.
You can only be bad for me. You see that, don't you? Please say you see
it." 

 He looked at her, sex-rumpled and tearstained and beautiful, his Gold
Coast girl. 

 "You're the only thing I ever wanted." It didn't sound passionate when he
said it, just whiny, and she evidently didn't think it required an answer.
 

 1997 

 "Ah -- hello, again, detective." She was smooth, he'd have to give her
that. There was nothing on her face but curiosity. "You've come at a bad
time. I was just on my way to a shoot." She had her Bulls cap on, and the
backpack was slung over one shoulder. 

 "I don't think so," Ray said. "Cause you have a conflict now on account
of being under arrest and all." 

 "Arrest?" She was *smiling,* swear to god. "You have a charge and
everything?" 

 "If you want to hear the whole rigmarole, you'll have to ask Fraser, but
in the meantime we got a warrant on that backpack, too." Dief was nudging
it with his nose. "We're starting with assault with a little bitty needle
and going on from there." 

 She gave him a pitying look. "Now, detective, you tell me. The women who
have been marked -- are they strangers to one another now? Are they alone
in the world, as they were before? Or are they a community now? A
community that will only grow faster the more you try to cut it off." 

 "Community?" There was a bunch of camera stuff at the top of the
backpack, and then, underneath, Ray hit pay dirt. Gauze, surgical tape,
disinfectant ointment. And a padded case that Ray was willing to bet would
be full of tattooing equipment. "You're talking about drugs and assault
and rape by tattoo for the sake of a community?" 

 "Oh, it's not rape, detective." She stood quite still while Fraser cuffed
her. "I'm sure they'll come to understand. It's precisely the opposite of
rape."	

 1995 

 Ray could have mailed the divorce papers after he signed them, but he
ignored his lawyer's advice and took them to her in person. 

 By habit he walked up the driveway to the kitchen door instead of going
around front to ring the doorbell. She opened her mouth to tell him off
for that, and then she saw the papers and shut it again and came over and
dragged him into a tight hug. 

 She smelled same as she always did, like almond conditioner and expensive
perfume and the underlying Stella smell that hadn't changed since he first
smelled it in the dark corner of the Fallout Shelter. His throat tightened
dangerously, and he buried his face in her hair, and when her mouth came
up she tasted just like she always did. 

 He pressed her back against the kitchen table, careful of the one leg
that always wobbled no matter how often he tightened it, and they kissed
and kissed. After a while she pulled his shirt loose from his pants, and
he broke off long enough to shed the holster, and her fingers sought out
the sweaty place it left on his back, and she wrapped one leg around the
back of his legs and pulled him closer -- 

 The mail popped through the slot in the door with an explosive noise, and
she sprang back like a scared rabbit. 

 She stood there staring at him while the pile of envelopes and catalogs
slithered to the floor and the slot swung shut with a soft scrape. He
looked at her red mouth, her wide eyes, the papers on the table. 

 "I'll go," he said, and picked up his holster off the floor.  

 1997 

 "Weirdest thing," Ray said, turning around in Fat Len's rolling chair,
"is that she's actually sort of right. She did sort of make a community. I
mean, these girls, they're meeting every month now, they're getting
together." He'd told Fraser he wanted to drop by and give Len the news in
person. If he had his eye on a couple of apartments in the neighborhood,
that was just a coincidence. 

 "It's more than that," Fraser said, "Amanda Jackson's support group is
combing the city for the remaining victims. Ms. Jackson and Jennifer
Kojima seem to have put together a whole wellness package for adult
entertainers -- drug treatment, self-defense classes, even collective
bargaining. And I understand that Shannon Reynolds has moved into Sue
Truman's spare room because she feels safer not living alone." 

 Silver was walking around looking at Len's gallery. "I just don't
understand how Dana could do something like this," she said. "She seemed
so normal." 

 "Appearances," Fraser began, and that was so obvious that even he didn't
feel the need to finish the proverb. 

 "She really did give them common ground?" Len said. 

 "Well, in a sense," Fraser said. "Though their primary goal seems to be
to secure her conviction." 

 "Except the guy and the stripper," Ray put in. "They voted to knock her
out and tattoo their names all over her." 

 "You're really branching out, aren't you, Len?" Silver said, looking at a
wall section with a label that said Feng Shui Designs. "Seems like just
yesterday you were working on little underage kids ..." She smiled at Ray.


 "I can see," Len said, "that I'm going to have to do some more work on
you, Ray. You're not a very good advertisement for me." 

 "You know, I been thinking about getting another one," Ray said. He
leaned over backwards, his head nearly touching Fraser's stomach. Fraser
smiled down at him. 

 "Well, I imagine nearly any artist in the city would work on either of
you for free," Silver said. "I would. You're quite the heroes in the
community." 

 "You got anything about, uh, you know, like a telescope? No, like a
microscope, like, you look at stuff and see it for real?" 

 "Perhaps Perseus' shield?" Silver suggested. "He used that to see the
Gorgon, who turned men to stone if they looked directly at her." 

 "Yeah? And when he saw the real thing, what did he do?" 

 "Cut her head off." 

 "That's no good. Don't you got any stories about somebody that saw
something good?" 

 "Well, you see, Ray," Fraser said, "in mythology the lifting of an
illusion is rarely a good thing. Oedipus, for instance, when he learned
the truth, put his own eyes out." 

 "Would you consider something a little less Western?" Len flipped up the
page he'd been drawing on. There were two complicated Chinese characters. 

 "Ah, very nice," Fraser said. 

 "What's it say?" Ray said suspiciously. 

 "Enlightenment," Fraser said.	

 1996 

 So. New apartment, new job, new name, new partner. The apartment was
pathetically empty and the partner was apparently unhinged, but that
probably wouldn't matter for very much longer. Because Marcus Ellery was
coming back to Chicago. And when he did -- 

 Well, Ray wasn't entirely clear on that. But everything, somehow, was
going to change. 

 It was warm outside, but chilly and damp in the crypt. He was glad he'd
layered up. He glanced over at his new partner. 

 He'd met more nutcases in one week with the Mountie than in sixteen years
on the force, and Fraser was the nuttiest of them all, or else he was sane
in some way that was indistinguishable from nuts. Or else there was
somebody else in there behind the Superhero of Justice mask. 

 Well, hell, not like Ray had room to talk there. Fraser was doing Dudley
Do-Right, but Ray'd been doing Bullitt for years. 

 Only somehow he wasn't. Somehow when Fraser started asking him questions
about Ellery, Ray actually found that he wanted to answer. Even if it
ended up making him look pathetic. 

 Not that it mattered. Ray wasn't sure what he was going to do when Ellery
showed up, but he was pretty sure that when he was done doing it, he
wasn't going to be a cop any more. And that was if he didn't go down for
whatever Vecchio had done. 

 So what did it matter if Fraser thought he was nuts, anyway? 

 "Listen," he said to Fraser. "Can I ask you something?"  

 1997 

 "I been thinking, Fraser." He still felt giddy from the needle. Pain
endorphins, Fraser'd said. He'd get a tat every day if it wasn't for
knowing he was going to feel like shit tomorrow. 

 "Always a risky pursuit." 

 "Ha ha. You're real funny." He made a wrong turn just so he could drive
by the Consulate and not stop, because Fraser was coming home with him.
From now on, if he had anything to say about it. "No, what I been thinking
-- when Vecchio comes back, I won't be Vecchio any more, right?" 

 "Presumably." 

 "So what I thought -- you wanna go join Jessica's Pink Patrol with me?" 

 Fraser almost seemed to stop breathing for a moment. "You're talking
about a public relationship." 

 "I'm talking outing us in a way that may get us on TV, yeah, Fraser. I'm
talking about --" and then it occurred to him and he grinned -- "about
putting you in the position of being liaison to the Queer Corps, how's
that for an offer?" He absolutely was not giggling. 

 Fraser let out a breath, then grabbed his good shoulder in a grip that
was almost painful. 

 Ray grinned. "That a yes?" 

 "Yes." Fraser was quiet for a few moments. "And in the meantime?" 

 Ray sighed. "Vecchio's sake, we gotta keep it quiet for now," he said.
"But you know. And I know. That's probably enough." 

 -end- 

End The Teeth of the Hydra by Resonant: resonant8@sbcglobal.net

Author and story notes above.