“Shower,” Matsumoto said as
they came through the precinct house doors. He took off in a hurry and Dante
followed more slowly, Matt in tow.
“I need – ” Dante paused. “I
can’t have a shower, can I? Not with all these bandages on.”
“Shouldn’t think so.” Matt stopped and eyed Dante up
and down. “You could probably get in the bathtub, if you had somebody to wash
your back and round the dressings and so on.”
“Great idea,” Dante said. “What a shame I fired my
personal valet.”
“Don’t you have a friend who’d do it?”
“I have plenty of friends,” Dante said. “They’re all cops,
they all work here and most of them are gay. What are they gonna think, I ask
them round to my place to spend quality time in the bathroom?”
“I see your problem,” Matt said. “I guess you’re not
gay, then?”
“No,” Dante said. “And before you ask, I have no
girlfriend either. Not yet.”
“Oooh, someone in mind?” Matt smiled.
“Maybe,” Dante said. “I don’t wanna talk about it.
What I want to do is get clean but I guess I’ll have to settle for changing my
underwear.”
Dante led the way into the locker rooms,
brooding over his personal hygiene difficulties.
Despite
the fact he couldn’t use the facilities, he was happy to be back in the
precinct house. He liked the 69th. He hadn’t been working there too long but
he’d already got to feel at home. The precinct tended to attract the eccentric,
the unusual and the downright strange but Dante liked that too.
Large gay presence as well,
of course. The precinct was known for it. Officers who’d got tired of hiding
their sexuality from their co-workers. Guys who’d got tired of finding ladies’
panties appearing in their lockers. Women who’d got tired of finding boxers and
jockstraps in theirs. And of course, the perennial haze that everyone
was sick of, finding that somebody who disapproved of your lifestyle had pissed
in your shoes.
Dante went into the detectives’
locker room to find Matsumoto wearing only a towel and about to leave for the
showers. Ryan Giannorino was sitting on one of the benches in a pair of
sweatpants. He was changing his work shoes for trainers.
“Matsumoto’s got his ass wrapped in
a towel,” he was singing, blues-style. “That’s a state of matters that makes me
wanna growell!”
“You should be growling,”
Matsumoto commented. “Since you’re singing doggerel.”
“Man thinks he has a sense of
humor,” Ryan said.
Matsumoto just shook his head and
left for the showers, pulling the towel from around his waist as he went.
Dante heard a sigh from beside him.
He caught the direction of Matt’s gaze and smiled.
“He’s so fine!” Ryan burst into
song again, eyes fixed on Matt. “Wish he were mine! Ooh, someone has a thing
for Matsumoto.”
“Don’t fuck with my driver,” Dante
said. “I need him focused. I can’t drive myself.”
“Okay, big Daddy,” Ryan said. “You
probably wouldn’t like Matsumoto if you got to know him, Lakowski. He’s into
some weird shit. BDSM, stuff like that.”
“Is that me you’re talking about?”
Matsumoto returned. “I think you’re sitting on my shower gel, Ryan.”
“I wondered what that unfamiliar
feeling was.” Ryan discovered the shower gel in the folds of his towel and handed
it over. “We were just scaring the rookie with tales of the Kinkmeister.”
“I’m not scared,” Matt said.
“Oh yeah?” Matsumoto smiled.
“Whatever he’s told you, it’s probably true.”
“How I look at it,” Matt said,
“vanilla is a flavor. But so are strawberry and chocolate.”
Matsumoto laughed.
“What’s your favorite?” he asked.
“Pistachio,” Matt said.
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