Detective Romeo Jones in Blood Ties Die, Chapter Two

“Damn you, Itchy,” he said. “If I have to come down there and give you a personal kick in the nuts, I will.”

He paused.

“No. You stay on him. Follow him. But I want to know where that shit is coming from. You got me?”

More silence.

“Fine.” Gunselman slammed the phone hard into the cradle

Lean, and shorter than Jones, Andy had thick curly hair, dark eyes, and dark mole nearly the size of a worn pencil eraser, below his left eye. He always wore white short-sleeved shirts. Worn tattoos of Marine Corps insignia, dragons, and buxom women laced his arms. And Andy always seemed perpetually nervous, but it was more kiddish anxiousness. Only the routine cigarette kept him calmed down. Gunselman was assigned to robbery and sex crimes, including Internet related offenses to like child porn and child predators. He loved beating the shit out of the latter when ever possible, whenever he could get away with it. Some predator seduced and raped his niece seven years ago, she was only 14, and Andy has been getting payback ever since.

Desmond Washington, the oldest of the county detectives, squinted at the computer. He was the first black detective in the city department, and first in the DA’s office, now working homocide and gang intervention for the District Attorney’s office. Washington was two years past early retirement age for a police officer, but loved the job too much. He stayed on as Henry’s deputy chief, even taking half pay to keep working.

A tall, impressively slender, sometimes imposing black man, Desmond dressed smartly in plain suits of gray that matched the pepper in his knotted hair. He was strong willed and persuasive when dealing perpatrators, preferring direct confrontation in interrogation, rather than subtley. He was intimadately, but never verbally violent. Over the years he got the nickname Tenacious D, long before Jack Black formed his satirical rock duo, because once he took a case he wouldn’t rest until the case was solved. And he closed 95 percent of his cases.

He was also the best link, a respected liason, to the black and Hispanic communities of the city. When something went down in the First or Fourth Ward, Washington was there whether he needed to be calm or firm. Even the most radical, race baiting, politicians would listen to Washington’s counsel and direction. For Romeo, Washington reminded him Samuel L. Jackson, when he would his mid-Sixties, but with more hair and without the gut. Desmond Washington still worked out too.

“Come on, Gunsel, do you always have to yell,” said Leonard ‘Lenny’ Green, the toughest looking of the bunch.

“Itchy’s so thicked headed and stupid, you got to yell at him.”

“That’s like talking louder to someone who doesn’t speak English and expecting him to understand you better.” Turning back to his computer Lenny said, “You’re a dumbshit.”

Gunsel ignored him.

A pasty faced white man in his mid-fifties, Green was built like a wrestler, broad shoulders, thick in the chest, tree trunks for legs and hands like acatcher’s mitt, bulky, disproportionate to his arms, with thick fingers. But those hands could play some mean blues guitar on any occasion. His riffs were working man thick and heavy, his licks sweet and delicate. He had a small gig with his band The Hornets at the Emerald Shamrock (Is a shamrock not green?) over on Cabbage Hill, where he was a local hero. Green appeared more suited to being a cooler in a low dive tavern, than a respected detective. But he was, since he solved the Cabbage Hill murders only five years ago. His assignment was also homocide, and robbery, and whatever needed to be done. Green had no problem bracing a CI or a perp, for information, in the field when called upon. But, like when speaking to Gunselman, he was always polite and reserved … before he hit you in the gut. Green was our Russell Crowe, only with a crew cut.

The people missing were Madeline Lewis and Chief Detective Henry “Hank” Mullen. The former was the youngest member, but likely the most ambitious, much like Tenacious D; the latter career cop, blue through and through.

Craig Hartranft