The Ties That Bind (2 page)

All eyes turned her way as she entered Sherry's, the DC
cops' coffee shop of choice, a battered and bruised relic of the fifties, just
two blocks from headquarters. Even Sherry, used to all conceivable sights and
foibles, paused in mid-sentence to take her in.

Fiona eyeballed her at six-three or six-four. She seemed to
have been sculpted from dark Tennessee stone by an artist with a sensualist's
eye for the monumental. Her ample breasts, which seemed in proportion for her,
would have been considered gross on a smaller woman.

Yet, she moved as gracefully as a cattail with a curl in
its upper stem lightly bent by a soft breeze. Her hair, cut short, fit like an
old-fashioned swimming cap. Small pendant earrings swung from well-shaped ears.
Her face was all bones and angles with yellow-flecked brown eyes peering out
over milk-chocolate skin.

Her legs, moving on shoes with moderate-length heels that
probably gave her an extra inch, were well turned with muscular calves. This
was a woman whose appearance alone demanded both attention and respect. Nobody,
but nobody messes with me, her persona seemed to shout to anyone within hearing
distance.

Fiona could not help but notice the closely observing eyes
that followed this formidable woman as she moved toward the booth in the back
where Fiona was seated. She speculated what the males might be thinking or
feeling, perhaps an erotic tug or some nervous joking reference to her
proportions. Beware, Fiona thought, all those who dared to express such
observations within hearing distance of woman.

There were some facts about her that Fiona already knew
from the Eggplant. She had worked in homicide in Los Angeles for three years,
where she had an impeccable record, which meant an excellent closing
percentage. She had reluctantly sought this transfer to Washington because she
needed to be near her ailing father. And she had a B.A. and M.A. from UCLA in
Criminology.

"I'm Gail Prentiss," the woman said, ignoring the
gauntlet of eyes as she reached the booth where Fiona was waiting. "You're
Fiona FitzGerald, I suspect." She offered an incredible, white-toothed,
girlish smile.

"Your suspicions are well founded, Prentiss,"
Fiona said, trying for her own version of a girlish smile. She was, in fact,
stunned by the woman's effect on her. She had expected, she admitted to
herself, something lesser, much lesser. Prentiss commanded the room like an
extraordinary work of art.

There was also no question in Fiona's mind that the woman
knew her effect on others and had probably developed her own method of using it
to her advantage. Fiona found herself resisting intimidation, attempts at which
rarely made the slightest dent in her confidence. Who would be the junior in
this relationship, Fiona wondered, already seeing her expected place usurped by
Prentiss's sense of physical authority.

Prentiss had barely sat down when Sherry arrived with a
coffee mug that she set in front of Prentiss and, without asking preference,
poured strong, steaming, no-nonsense black coffee into it. Then she waddled
away, dispensing coffee as she went down the line.

"Breakfast?" Fiona asked.

"I'm fine," Prentiss said, fixing her inspecting
glance on Fiona.

"Seems like the Eggplant has put us in the soup
together."

"Eggplant?"

"Our good Captain Luther Greene's moniker," Fiona
explained pleasantly. "He knows we call him that. Probably hates it."

"We all have our cross to bear," Prentiss said,
flashing her girlish smile. Fiona noted that her breasts formed a protruding
ledge over the table's edge. Prentiss's sharply inspecting eyes seemed to take
in the astonishment of Fiona's gaze. "I've lived with a lot worse
appellations."

"I'll bet you have."

It occurred to Fiona that her very awesomeness might have
suggested to the Eggplant his idea of female pairing to investigate female
homicides. Perhaps, too, it was a private joke. Pair the white queen with the
black queen and see how the cards fell. She rebuked herself for the racial
reference, but then race was the dominating motif in this environment, with
gender a close second, especially among the black men and especially in the
Eggplant's gender-and-race-tortured mind.

As to what she believed was the Eggplant's truer motive,
the elimination of the possibility of sexual harassment, this amazon carried
immunity from such activities in her genes. No male would dare risk even the
tiniest castrating look from this female, no less make an attempt to bed her.

"You like the idea of a woman partner?" Fiona
asked, noting the uncommon humility displayed by her question.

"I like the idea of an intelligent partner,"
Prentiss said. "I can tell by their resentment that you must be one
helluva detective."

"As you said, we all have our cross to bear,"
Fiona said, regretting the natural sarcasm that the remark implied. She'd have
to stop that with this woman, she cautioned herself. It was the side of her
that she showed most around the department, a kind of shield against revealing
any soft edges. Soft edges had to be carefully disguised, even if it was only
to ward off the pain of the vocation, that steady drumbeat of horror that
permeated the life of a homicide cop.

"I don't see it as a cross," Prentiss said.
"Our gender belongs in this business."

"So you think the captain has a point?"

"It's an interesting experiment," Prentiss said,
noncommitally. Of course, Fiona reasoned, she was new. It would be
self-defeating to be less than a diplomat at this stage. This woman, so
startlingly noticeable, must have long ago devised a coping system to react to
any new situation.

"Experiment?" Fiona said. "Yes. I guess
that's what it is. Although the chances are, we'll be getting mostly domestics,
where the perpetrator is hardly a mystery."

"Maybe he thinks we'll be more tenacious,"
Prentiss said. "More zealous in closing cases where the perp is a
male."

"The castrating female syndrome. That's one way of
looking at it," Fiona agreed. The woman had insight, which was a superb
trait to have in a partner. Oddly, even the Eggplant had not expressed his
goals in that way. His version was that women better understood women, who
invariably were the victims, not the perpetrators. Prentiss had quickly seen
the other side, the push to discovery and judgment, an idea that reflected the
Eggplant's fear and, perhaps, ultimate belief in the idea that women hated men.

Fiona felt the power of Prentiss's probing glance as the
woman studied her over the lip of the coffee mug as she sipped. Not to be
outdone, Fiona picked up her mug and stared her down, neither woman giving way.
A man, Fiona knew, would have flinched. Not this baby.

"So what do you see?" Prentiss asked pleasantly.
This, Fiona speculated, was her most congenial side.

"Intelligence. Someone in full control of herself. A
lady who knows where she's going."

Prentiss smiled again and shook her head from side to side.

"I'm glad you feel that way," Prentiss said.
"However inaccurate."

"Not for one moment do I believe your
self-effacement," Fiona laughed.

"Fair enough. I won't believe yours either. I've done
my research. Fact is, we're both damned good."

"Not much humility at this table," Fiona said.

"Why should there be?" Prentiss chuckled.

"When you got it, flaunt it."

"There's truth in those words, woman," Prentiss
said, with just a touch of black street intonation, as if to signal that she could
be at home in whatever coloring her space consisted of.

"You must have been insufferable in LA," Fiona
said without sarcasm or insult.

"I was. I was racing up the ladder until my daddy got
sick. I had to be with him."

"Does he know that it took a career sacrifice?"
Fiona asked.

Prentiss laughed.

"Is that funny?"

"You don't know my daddy. The whole underpinning of
his life is that his daughter is infallible, a perfect specimen, without flaws.
He informed me early on that I would never have trouble making it on my own,
however or wherever. The fact is, he disapproves of my calling. He considers it
beneath me."

"Well, we have something half in common then. I was my
father's sun, moon and solar system. Mother thought my immortal soul had bought
it."

"Of course, Dad would have preferred that I had become
a doctor or a lawyer," Prentiss sighed. For the first time, she let her
eyes look elsewhere than into Fiona's. Her eyelids fluttered as if she were
about to break down in tears. But when her eyes lifted again, they were clear.

"Only you couldn't resist the lure of the cops. My
current significant other believes that people who become cops control nothing
in their lives and are therefore eager to practice enforcement on others."

"Maybe," Prentiss shrugged, and seemed to look
inward for a long moment. "I guess we all have our special reasons."
Fiona wondered what hers were. "I wanted to be a homicide detective."
Her eyes glazed and she looked beyond Fiona, into some private void. "I
suppose it satisfies some deep-seated thirst for vengeance." She sucked in
a deep breath, then offered a smile. "I have self-actualized myself."

Vengeance? Fiona wondered.

It was obvious to Fiona that Gail Prentiss was taking
little risk when it came to her private self. Except that, despite the heavy
guard the woman had erected around herself, there was just enough passive
revelation and hint of vulnerability to suggest an understanding between them.

Sensing this, Fiona realized that there was something
remarkable about the Eggplant's plan. Had this happened when Fiona was paired
with partners of the other gender? There had been a closeness, certainly a
loyalty, but this struck her as different. She wondered if that meant deeper,
more intimate. Was this a fact or merely a wish? She wasn't sure.

"One thing is certain," Fiona said. "It's
the motivation of the bad guys that we have to be concerned with. Not
ours."

"I'll buy that."

"I say we take the leap of faith on the Eggplant's
idea ... Gail." She savored the used of the woman's first name, watching
Prentiss's face for any sign that the first name appellation was unwelcome.
Gail Prentiss smiled.

"I've leaped ... Fiona."

Fiona felt her throat constrict as the blood rushed to heat
her face.

"My father was the first senator to protest the killing
and horror of Vietnam. It flushed his career down the toilet."

It had suddenly seemed necessary for Fiona to offer her new
partner the defining issue of her life.

"Yes," Gail nodded. She would, of course, have
been extra thorough in checking Fiona out, far more thorough than Fiona had
been in researching Gail's past.

"Although very young at the time, the aftermath
created in me a profound hatred of murderers," Fiona said, wondering, as
always when she gave this explanation, if it made any sense at all. She had
heard every argument to the contrary about her being "misplaced" or
in an occupation "beneath her" in this blue-collar and often
thankless occupation that brought her an income but could not begin to pay for
her lifestyle. Thankfully, she had the subsidy of her inheritance.

"I suppose a number of your colleagues think of you as
a hobbyist, slumming in the slime."

"It does require an extra effort on my part to
overcome the bias," Fiona said, studying Gail for a reaction.

Gail performed her girlish laugh and put a bouquet of
graceful, tapered fingers on Fiona's arm.

"I've got the advantage of skin pigment. But I know
the drill, although in LA, few knew my real background."

"Which is?"

"My father is a second-generation surgeon who was the
head of the National Chirulogical Society, which is an organization of
economically comfortable black surgeons. Mother, who died a number of years
ago, was a Ph.D. from Howard, very class conscious. She insisted I come out as
a debutante in our annual ball that makes its white counterpart look like a
bash at Sloppy Joe's. Contrary to accepted stereotypes, I am the daughter of
privilege, a bookend image of yourself."

It was obvious to Fiona that Gail had an elitist view of
herself, typical of Washington's Gold Coast blacks, who saw themselves as
victors in their epic struggle to rise above their humble origins and,
therefore, as inherently superior to their white counterparts. Fiona's insight
told her that it was important for Gail to "equalize" the relationship
before embarking on the commonality of sisterhood.

"Unfortunately, my daddy is dying, Fiona. He is and
will always be the most important man in my life."

For the first time, Fiona caught the emotion in the brief,
very brief crack in Gail's voice. But it explained why she had had to come
home.

It seemed a big enough slice of bonding for a first
occasion and Fiona, as the "old hand," diverted from the personal
stuff to outline how the squad and department worked. She filled Prentiss in on
the politics of the job, the various competing ambitions, including the
Eggplant's desire to be the police chief someday, a job that was as prestigious
as it was politically dangerous in the current climate.

Mostly, she offered as much insight as possible into the
machinations of Captain Luther Greene, his frailties and strengths, his hot-dog
tendencies, his fears and his professional brilliance and courage in the
clutch. She also reiterated what she had learned about the various female
harassments that he was currently enduring and her theory about the resultant
reaction, which was this pairing process. Except for any mention of race and
its implications, Fiona felt she had given Gail a balanced picture, which to
any new staff person seemed necessary, perhaps crucial to their future in the
homicide squad.