Novellas of Broken Romance.

Chapter Seven

[With loads of thanks to Madame Weebles and her 38s and to merlinspielen for his not-so-faulty memory of cheap detective novels]

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The City never changes; just the weather and the people who inhabit it.

The dry spell of hot, sunny days had given way to an unending period of rain, sometimes misty, sometimes drizzly, sometimes heavy and relentless but always cold.  In the same way, the absence of homicides and murders had given way to a rapid succession of one-eighty-sevens, DOAs and gangland wars and Joe Hardcore, First Lieutenant LAPD, found himself in the middle of most of them.

He and his lovely sidekick, Sgt. Lorraine (Lolita) DeSantis, were huddled in confined quarters exchanging gunfire with a notorious gang of east side hoodlums who they had just accidentally stumbled on and who, with the ferocity of a bunch of hornets whose nest had been knocked over, were angrily rewarding them with a hail of bullets.  Normally, pressing flesh with the hottest woman in the department wasn’t too bad if you forgot the circumstances that put you here and the fact that one bad move meant that it was the last piece of flesh you would press against unless you counted your own laid on a slab at the county morgue.

Hardcore remembered the first time they met.  He was sitting at his favorite bar after his regular shift ended and she walked in.  He sensed she was a cop right away and he could tell she was packing heat.  Sweet Jesus, he thought, a cop packing a pair of 38s – and a gun.  She poured herself into the chair beside him.  She smiled at him and he said “Are those loaded?” She laughed and slid a hand up his thigh.  “I could ask the same thing honey – is that loaded?  And do you have the safety on – cause I wouldn’t want it to go off half-cocked.”  She moved her hand to his chin and looked him in the eyes, “My eyes are up here, douche bag, otherwise I’d have a hard time seeing through my blouse.”

He knew she was hot.  She knew he knew.  He knew she knew he knew.  She knew he knew she knew he knew.  He knew … oh, hell with it.

Three double Bourbons later they were splayed across her bed in a jumbled mass of clothes and weaponry – some still loaded; the rest discharged.  Hardcore had been around the world a few times but she took him to places he had never been.  He had met hot women before but she was so hot she could be solely responsible for global warming.  She had curves so severe she could send a race car driver right off the course.  She was 10 pounds of potatoes in a 5 pound sack.  She was …oh, hell with it.

A hot sting across his cheek from a stray ricochet pulled Hardcore out of his daydream and brought him back font-and-center to their current predicament.  He involuntarily pushed away from the bullet and pressed his flank even harder into Lolita’s.  “Ya know, babe” Hardcore muttered  ”after we crush these scumbags, I could use a little rest and relaxation back at your place, if you know what I mean.”

Lolita, still firing, reached slowly behind her with her left hand and dug her beautifully manicured fingernails into Hardcore’s thigh.  She turned her head slightly and whispered into his ear with a throaty voice: “Did you just fart?”