Disclaimer: I'm not making any money off of this, honest
Part 1
New York City. The bustling metropolis was overwhelming to a young man from manicured suburbs, the rules of life so much more dynamic, gritty, and harsh. A man lived by his wits and his strength in the crime ridden slums of New York's underbelly and a man, who dared to be a cop and a detective in such a place, needed both in overwhelming measure. Randy McLane thought that he had what it took and he was ready for the challenge when he put hand to door and entered the run down precinct station for his first day on the job.
The plaster was cracked, the paint and furniture yellow from years of abuse by smoking officers. Water stained the ceilings, floors were worn and warped, and everything was scuffed, nicked, and scratched from processing thousands of criminals. The computer terminals, glowing at every desk, seemed out of place in a station that probably still looked the same as it had since the fifties.
McLane loved the place on sight, eagerly soaking in the atmosphere of years and years of men and women fighting crime. He smiled gently at the people, some in uniform and some not, who were sitting or moving about the large space intent on their work. Bordering on euphoric, he found the main desk and confronted a pretty woman in uniform on the other side.
The woman hung up a phone, shuffled a file, and then looked up at McLane. She started, mouth opening slightly, stunned for a moment by the handsome man before her. McLane was used to that reaction from women. He was average height, with a slim build, yet tightly muscled from self defense workouts. His fall of honey-brown hair, slightly curled, framed a face that was perfectly poised between masculine and feminine, soft, yet strong, regular, yet shaped with a certain delicacy. It was the eyes though, that tended to make people stop and stare. They were almond shaped, liquid, black pools and they held an almost angelic, gentle, innocence.
"I'm Detective Randy McLane," he introduced himself as he slid a personnel folder over the desk towards her. "I'm starting work today."
The woman blinked and then recovered herself with an effort. Her smile slowly covered her face as her eyes glowed in appreciation, "Well, Detective, welcome to our humble station," she drawled good naturedly. "I'll just have to issue an identification tag and then you can go and report to the Chief."
"Thank you," McLane replied with a bright smile that made her pause again. "I'm sure that I will enjoy working here."
"I'm sure that I will enjoy you working here," the woman quipped under her breath as she recovered again and bent to make an identification tag for McLane. When she was done and sliding tag and file back to McLane, she pointed down a hallway, "That's it then, Detective. Take your file to the Chief. His office is that way."
"Thank you," McLane replied as he put on his I.D. and gathered up his file.
The woman visibly worked up her courage, smiled, and then said suggestively, "You're welcome, but, next time, ask me out to dinner instead of for an I.D. tag, Mr. Randy."
McLane played the game. He always did. He liked friends, especially women friends, and he dreaded being alone and lonely for long in his new home. The woman was nice besides and there wasn't any harm in making her smile. "I'll keep that in mind. " He paused to look at her I.D. tag to see her name, "Ms. Janet," he finished smoothly and went to find his new boss's office.
Here it is, McLane thought, feeling nervous as he faced the door to the Chief's office, yet also strangely certain that his life was about to change for the better, as he lifted a hand and rapped lightly on the door with his knuckles.
No one answered his knock, but McLane could hear someone talking. Cautiously, not wanting to intrude on business, he opened the door and looked into the office, intending only to announce his presence and then to politely wait outside until whatever meeting was going on had concluded.
"You damned jerk!"
McLane started at the deep, gravely shout that erupted from the far end of the office. A short, stocky man, with rolled up sleeves and hairy, burly arms, was confronting another man across a desk, his broken nosed face, cigar chewing, stained teeth, and five o' clock shadow reminiscent of a drill sergeant on a bad day.
"How many times do I have to tell you... Hey! Dee, are you listening to me?!" The Chief snarled in outrage as the man he was shouting at directed a bored expression over the red faced man's head and dug a finger into one ear as if his eardrum was hurting.
Tall, was McLane's first impression of this other man, with rounded shoulders and a slim build. Dressed in dark slacks and a white shirt, his tie didn't lend the outfit the professional touch it should have, since both pants and shirt were wrinkled and looked as if the man had slept in them. Dark hair, a rakish tangle over a pale face and green eyes, almost hid a sullen expression, but not the fact that the man was handsome.
"Sure, I'm listening," the dark haired man replied with a hint of sarcasm and a slight accent that made McLane think of street punks and the poorer sections of the city.
McLane was about to make a speedy exit, embarrassed to have witnessed someone's `chewing out' session, but the Chief suddenly noticed his presence. His cigar moved from one side of his mouth to the other as he grunted, "Huh?" and then angrily, "What do you want?!"
McLane stiffened and came all the way into the room, wondering if he was about to be the next target of the Chief's temper, as he shyly managed to say, "I've been assigned to the criminal investigation department. My name is Randy McLane."
The Chief stared and then grunted as he irritably admitted, "Oh, yeah, I forgot all about it!" He began to say something else, but the attempted retreat of the dark haired man caught his attention suddenly and he turned and barked, "Hey! Where do you think you're going?!"
The dark haired man put on an innocent smile, trying and failing to appear considerate as he replied, "I thought you were going to be busy with him now, so I was going to leave you two alone and go back to work."
The Chief looked as if revenge was going to be suddenly served hot as he said. "Not just yet." Chewing on his unlit cigar, he turned to McLane, "Hey, rookie-"
"You can call me Randy," McLane interrupted nervously, not sure what was going to happen next.
"Okay, Randy," the Chief grunted and jerked a beefy thumb at the dark haired man. "This is your new partner. He'll teach you everything you need to know."
The dark haired man was bristling in protest at once, "What? I'm NOT taking care of a newbie!"
"I'm saying that you will!" The Chief snarled back as both McLane and the dark haired man were abruptly ushered out of his office to negate any further argument.
As McLane walked slowly down the hall with his new partner, he protested with a flush, "Please, don't call me a `newbie'. "
His partner gave him a startled look, obviously confused, as he grunted, "Huh?"
McLane plowed on, sweating nervously under his tailored suit and wondering what had possessed him to make such an oversensitive request. "I'm not a newbie," he told the man. McLane wasn't long out of the academy, but he had already been specially trained in swat team and sharpshooting operations and he was proud of that fact.
The dark haired man understood suddenly and grinned, "Hey, don't worry about it! We call all the new guys, `newbies'." He held out his hand good naturedly, his antagonism in the Chief's office forgotten as he introduced himself, "I'm Dee Latener. You can call me Dee."
"I'm Randy McLane," McLane repeated unnecessarily, unnerved when his new partner suddenly leaned in close and stared at him with open curiosity.
"Hey!" Latener exclaimed. "Are you Japanese-American? Your eyes are so dark!"
McLane blinked self consciously. "Uhm... yes," he managed to reply. His Japanese heritage wasn't that apparent. It startled him that Latener had noticed.
His new partner confused McLane further by asking, "Do you have a Japanese first name?"
It was such an odd thing to ask. McLane was caught off guard again and replied before he had a chance to reconsider. "Ryo."
"Mind if I call you Ryo?" Latener's expression was friendly and his request seemed to be as well.
"It's okay, I guess," McLane replied and then knew at once that he had made a mistake as Latener's demeanor changed abruptly.
"Okay, Ryo!" Latener's tone was suddenly loud, his friendly attitude almost a caricature as he hooked an arm around McLane's neck and all but dragged him the rest of the way down the hallway. It was obvious to McLane that Latener was still angry that he was being forced to take on a `newbie' and was therefore delighting in making him feel embarrassed and uncomfortable.
McLane looked sideways at Latener's smiling face, wondering what might be in store for him next, but, strangely, he discovered that he wasn't too worried. Despite his first impression of the man as being a bit obnoxious, there was something, a general friendliness about the man that was reassuring to McLane.
Latener's desk was situated near a wall of stacked case books. The top of the desk was a battle field of scattered folders, computer disks, empty coffee cups, fast food containers, post it notes, and an assortment of different length pencils all thoroughly chewed on their ends. His computer sat, turned off and almost hidden, on the very corner of that chaos, as if Latener hated it and longed to shove it off into the unused waste basket beside it on the floor.
The desk pushed nose to nose with Latener's was clean in comparison, dust and a slight overflow from Latener's desk attesting to the fact that no one had wanted to sit opposite Latener for some time. McLane slid into the chair behind it while Latener perched on the edge of his chaos, rooted through it, and then pulled out a sheaf of photos.
Tossing the photos on the empty desk top in front of McLane, Latener explained, "This is the case we'll be working on." McLane stared at the graphic gore of the crime scene in the photos as Latener dug into his shirt pocket for a pack of cigarettes, saying, "The victim's name was Dick Goldman. Obviously it's a murder case."
Dee tapped out a single cigarette from his pack, tucked it between his lips, and then lit it with his lighter. Letting out a large puff of white smoke, he added, "There's a problem with the suspects."
McLane looked up, understanding. "Suspects? Do you think it was the syndicate?"
Latener stared and took another puff of his cigarette. McLane's intuitiveness had been unexpected. Dee replied, "Dick was a freelance supplier of drugs. I think he got into trouble and bang!" Dee put a finger on each side of his head and made motions as if he were firing two guns, his cigarette still smoldering in one of those hands.
"You think he was eliminated?" Ryo wondered.
"Yeah, "Dee replied as he lowered his hands and began rooting through chaos again. " I also think the suspects in this murder are the same ones that have been under investigation for a long time."
Latener found what he was looking for. He deposited some more photos in front of Ryo. They showed a rough looking man with a dangerous expression on his face.
"He's Richard Feldman," Dee explained. "His gang isn't very big, but he does have connections with a larger one, so, if we can manage to get him, we might get our foot in the door of the big syndicate."
"Murder and drugs," Ryo said nervously. "It's a difficult case." It was a case that could make or break a new detective, Ryo thought, and he found himself eager to prove himself.
A shout suddenly rang out from an officer at the far end of the station, startling them both. "Catch him, Dee!"
The boy was a flash as he whizzed by Dee and Ryo on in line skates. Ryo had a second in which to note the gang clothes, the turned back baseball cap, a tail of white/blonde hair, and the fact that the boy was hardly in his teens, before he was past him and heading for the front door of the station.
Dee was the first to react. Jamming out his cigarette on the corner of his desk, he flicked it away as he raced to head the boy off. Sailing over two desks, he made it to the door before the boy and swung out an arm. Dee caught the boy neatly in the mid drift, knocking the air and the fight out of him. "It's over, kid!"
It didn't take Dee long afterwards to start feeling that trouble was about to start in the shape of a small, part African-American street kid. Sitting on a stained, well worn, waiting room couch, he faced the officer, who had almost let the boy escape back onto the street, while he nursed a hot cup of coffee between two hands.
"He's Dick's son?" Remembering the carnage of the crime scene, Dee was suddenly sympathetic.
The officer nodded, looking worried. "He came here to identify the body. When he saw his father, he went crazy. Where is he now?"
"He's with our new babysitter," Dee grunted, hooking a thumb towards the employee's break room. If the boy's father had been killed over drugs, he thought, suddenly troubled, then his hunch about the boy was turning out to be right. It was very possible that the boy might be a target too, that the syndicate might wonder what he knew and think it safer to eliminate him.
Looking over at the closed break room door, Dee wondered how his soft spoken, naive looking partner was dealing with a street punk who had cut his teeth amidst his father's drug trade.
"Bicky? Want some hot chocolate?"
The sullen, dark skinned boy ignored Ryo. Sitting in a metal chair, he hunched in on himself, cap pulled down over startling blue eyes. So young, Ryo thought, as he set the two cups of hot chocolate aside on a desk and remembered the day his own family had been ripped away from him by violence. He hadn't been very old either.
Ryo kneeled in front of the boy. They had a bond of sorts between them because of their similarly shattered lives. It was a bond, Ryo thought, that could allow him to understand and help the boy where someone else might not.
Very softly, as he tipped the cap back to see the boy's rigid expression, Ryo said, "I know how you feel. If you want to talk about it...," The boy sniffled and quickly wiped something away from his face with a quick motion of the back of his hand. "You don't have to keep it in," Ryo told him, "You can cry, if you want."
The boy's shoulders shivered ever so slightly, his hands gripping the metal chair tightly, but he remained stubbornly silent.
It wasn't good, Ryo thought, to keep that kind of grief locked up inside. Tears beginning to well up in his own eyes, Ryo confessed, "When my parents died, I was only eighteen. I cried all night long."
"No! I won't cry!" The protest erupted out of the boy, but tears were overflowing from his blue eyes as well. His face became a mask of grief as he suddenly fell forward into Ryo's arms. "I won't..." he sobbed plaintively.
Ryo caught the boy in a protective embrace, one hand catching his cap as it tumbled off of his head. Smiling, yet tears wet on his own cheeks, Ryo reassured him, "It's all right, you're still a tough kid."
It wasn't long before Bicky was recovered enough to answer questions. Ryo didn't approve. In a better world, a social worker would have been called and Bicky would have been taken away to be cared for and comforted. In a better world, though, his father wouldn't have been dealing drugs and he wouldn't have died in such a violent fashion, leaving an only son as the possible lead to the murderers. It was necessary to question him, but Ryo didn't have to like it. The only salve to his guilty conscience was knowing that questioning the boy might keep him from potentially being the next victim.
Dee leaned over a desk, facing the boy, frustration clear in every line of his body. The boy was sitting and looking innocently back at him, choosing to be completely uncooperative. "I need to know what your father was doing the day that he died," Dee repeated, not for the first time. Bicky continued to stare at him. "What are you lookin' at?!" Dee exploded at last. "Just answer the question!"
Bicky slid his eyes from Dee to Ryo in such a way that it managed to convey complete contempt for Dee as he asked Ryo, "What's your name?"
Dee straightened, hands slamming on the desk top as he did so. "I'm asking the questions here!"
Ryo put out restraining hands and held Dee back away from Bicky as he tried to salvage the situation, amazed that Dee would let a child get under his skin that way. Smiling at Bicky reassuringly, Ryo hoped that Dee would take his cue as he replied in a friendly tone, "I'm Randy and he's Dee."
Without missing a beat, Bicky asked, "Do you have a Japanese name?"
As Dee sat down heavily in a chair, still seething, Ryo tried to recover from confusion. It seemed that Bicky was as observant as Dee and had spotted his Japanese ancestry as well. Ryo nodded to Dee, trying to make some sort of bridge between the two as he chuckled, "Dee asked the same question."
Dee wasn't going to cooperate. "His name is Ryo!" he snarled impatiently, intending, Ryo could, see, to get chit chat out of the way and to launch into some harsher questioning.
Bicky bristled at once and shouted furiously at Dee, "I'll talk to Ryo, not you!"
Dee began to surge out of his chair to shout in return, face turning red, but Ryo held him back, snapping, "He's just a kid! Calm down!"
The rest of the questioning didn't go much better. Dee was clearly angry and not only at Bicky. It seemed that he had expected Ryo to support his outrageous actions and was now going to be sullen that Ryo hadn't. That mood carried over to the meeting with the Chief and his assistant as they summed up what little they had learned from Bicky.
"According to Bicky, "Ryo told the Chief, "Dick went out alone and didn't come back that night."
Dee glared at the case folder and then slapped it down on the table as he stood up in disgust, "Which means," he told the Chief irritably, "that we don't know anything more than we did before." Courtesy of Ryo, was the silent insinuation Ryo sensed as Dee gave him a brief glance.
The Chief and his assistant weren't pleased. Hairy arm supporting his chin, the Chief slid the case folder over to himself and then flipped through the pages inside. "We'll have to continue the investigation then. That's all for today." The dismissal was given in the tone of a reprimand. That didn't improve Dee's mood.
Ryo tried to remedy the situation. He didn't want to leave the station on his first day with his new partner angry with him. Besides, he thought, he needed to discuss the case with Dee.
Approaching Dee nervously as the man stood up from his dirty desk, slung a coat over one shoulder, and prepared to leave, Ryo asked, feeling awkward, "Are you free tonight?"
Dee stopped in his tracks and swiveled around to look at Ryo with an unreadable expression on his face, mouth slightly open as if he wasn't sure what to think. "The only things I have to do tonight are get a bite and sleep," he replied simply.
Ryo forged ahead, hoping that his words were getting a good reception, "I'd like you to come to my apartment and have dinner tonight. We should talk."
Dee stared, expression a mixture of surprise and sudden interest as he replied, almost in a stammer, "Yeah.... okay."
Dee's tone was odd. Ryo didn't have long to puzzle over it as Bicky grabbed him around one leg and glared at Dee from Ryo's protection. "What's the matter? Shy, gay boy?" Bicky asked Dee in a voice dripping with sarcasm.
Dee became furious again in an instant. He jabbed a finger at Bicky, demanding, "What are you doing here?!"
Ryo wasn't about to argue again, especially in front of the boy. He said firmly, "We'll talk about this later."
Once they arrived at Ryo's apartment, Ryo immediately started dinner with the expertise of a man who enjoyed cooking. Dee, less enthusiastic, offered his help out of politeness. He didn't expect Ryo to hand him an apron and put him to work cutting vegetables. Dee was uncomfortable with the apron, but he attacked the job of cutting the vegetables with gusto, and a knife far too large for the task, as if he felt the need to reassert his masculinity.
They made small talk as they worked on dinner and then, at Dee's insistence on knowing what was going on concerning Bicky, Ryo admitted at last that he intended to `adopt' the boy.
"What?!' Dee exploded in shock, knife poised in the air as he whipped around to face Ryo. "You're going to be taking care of him?!"
"Yes," Ryo confirmed, wincing at Dee's tone, but remaining calm as he continued to prepare dinner. He added, trying to elicit some compassion from his new partner, "He doesn't have any relatives and he's being forced to leave his apartment." And he's too much like me after I lost my parents, Ryo thought silently. Turning his back on Bicky's need hadn't even been a consideration.
"You know he grew up in the slum," Dee argued as he watched Ryo scoop his cut vegetables into a bowl. "He'll do something bad."
Ryo took the knife out of Dee's hand and handed him the bowl of salad as he replied, "You don't know him."
Dee scowled and shot back, "You don't know him either!"
Ryo turned to finish their dinner, but said over his shoulder with an encouraging smile, "I know more about him than you do. You should talk to him. He's not a bad boy."
Dee grunted irritably in reply as he chewed on a piece of salad. As he turned to take the rest to the kitchen table, he wondered how Ryo could be so naive.
After dinner, they talked mainly about the case until it grew late and then, without much discussion, it was agreed that Dee would stay the night so that, in the morning, he could accompany Ryo to gather more information about the case.
Bicky showered first and then Ryo took his turn. As Bicky sat on the floor drying his hair with a towel, Dee stretched out on the couch beside him amidst oversize cushions, flipping through one of Ryo's books and darting glances at the struggling boy. He didn't want to admit it to himself, and certainly not to Ryo, that the street punk reminded him of himself at that age; street wise and so full of himself, yet harboring pain and sorrow underneath it all.
Suddenly sympathetic, Dee tossed aside his book and slid off of the couch. Crouching behind Bicky, he pulled away the towel with an impatient jerk and then began drying the boy's hair himself. Tugging a little on a lock of the boy's hair, he asked, "Was your mother white? You've got nice blonde hair."
Bicky snarled back, "So what? I hate my hair!"
"Were you made fun of because of your hair?" Dee wondered, knowing too well how people liked to attack anyone who was `different'.
Bicky glared at Dee, as if the very idea was ridiculous. "No. I wasn't," he replied in a tone that was dangerous and self assured. Meaning, Dee understood, that Bicky believed that he could handle anyone who dared to pick on him. Looking down at the small boy, almost lost in one of Ryo's shirts, Dee couldn't help but laugh.
Laughing was the wrong thing to do. Bicky's face twisted in anger as he kicked out a bare foot and caught Dee in the face. Dee jerked back with a cry of pain and then found his arms full of kicking and punching street punk.
Ryo, emerging from the bathroom dressed in a robe, stopped and stared in confusion at the scene of a flailing boy and a grown detective trying to protect himself. Maybe they communicate through fighting rather than talking, Ryo thought to himself with a disgusted sigh, and then waded in to break up the battle.
Dee wasn't sure what to think when Ryo matter of factly led both Bicky and himself into the bedroom with the only bed in the apartment, obviously intending for them to sleep together. Still smarting from Bicky's blows, Dee didn't relish sleeping next to the little street punk. Ryo on the other hand... It made Dee uncomfortably warm imagining sleeping next to that man, even though he was already sure that Ryo was naive enough to treat the whole situation as nothing more than some male slumber party.
When Dee saw the bed, his eyes widened in astonishment. Bicky's exclamation underscored his own surprise. "What a big bed!"
It was big, king size and covered in designer bedding and oversize pillows. Ryo seemed inordinately fond of those. It wasn't a bachelor's bed, certainly not the bed of a man who slept alone. Dee felt the warmth turn to cold disappointment as he wondered, "Is it for your girlfriends?"
It was close to a window. Bicky bounced onto the bed and plastered himself against the glass to look outside at the darkness. Dee sat down on the edge. Wearing a tank top and his black, sweat pants, Ryo fully clothed in pajamas, and Bicky childishly making clouds of breath on the window, the situation had a completely platonic feel to it. Dee found himself wishing it was otherwise, especially when Ryo answered his question in the best way possible.
"No," Ryo said as he sat down and arranged himself comfortably next to Dee. "My parents left it to me. I couldn't throw it away."
Dee was an orphan and he couldn't help the bitterness in his next words, or the envious tone, as he said, "Your parents must have loved you a lot."
Ryo seemed to sense some of what Dee was feeling. He looked almost sad for Dee as he asked softly, "Not your parents?"
Dee put chin on fist and tried to stifle traitor emotions, wondering how Ryo had slipped past his defenses liked that and touched a place deep inside of him that he had locked up long ago. Ryo looked so beautiful and caring. Dee felt a lump in his throat as he replied, "I don't know...," and then, drawn close to Ryo, drowning in Ryo's dark eyes, he accidentally said what he was thinking. "Can you love me?"
Ryo's eyes widened in shock and... fear? he stammered, "W-what?"
Dee knew that a door had slammed in his face. He was used to it. He recovered smoothly, moving away as he said with a chuckle, "Just kidding! Don't take me so seriously!"
Ryo, for his part, was feeling a hot blush through his entire body. Nervously, he glanced at Bicky, but Bicky was watching them with wide eyed innocence. Whether it was faked or sincere, Ryo wasn't sure, just as he wasn't sure about Dee's sincerity.
They slept with Bicky between them. The boy snored and twitched, kicking and rolling. It kept Ryo awake, but Dee fell asleep at once, oblivious, as if he was used to sharing a bed with annoying companions. Sitting up in bed, Ryo looked over at the man. Quiet now, and not being loud or obnoxious, he seemed very peaceful. Peaceful and handsome, Ryo amended and felt uncertainty coil tightly in his belly, not sure why he was having such thoughts.
I don't know his sexual preference, but he doesn't have a girlfriend, Ryo thought to himself, disturbed, Even though I don't know him well, yet, I have a feeling that he wasn't just kidding...
Ryo went to sleep at last, still confused and disturbed, and was unaware that eyes were watching his apartment from the street and that he had more to worry about than his partner's seeming interest in him and the complexities of his decision to take care of Bicky.
"Ryo, we're not playing here," Dee said as they walked through the park the next morning. Dressed in an overcoat and dark sunglasses, Dee looked uncomfortable with nature and the frolicking people all around him. Puffing on his cigarette in agitation, he glared irritably at a smiling, relaxed Ryo.
The man, completely unperturbed by Dee's foul mood, watched Bicky skating in the sunshine and replied, "Since the crime took place close by, don't you think that this is the best place to try and get information?"
Dee scowled and retorted, unable to keep his dislike for Bicky out of his voice, "Then why did we have to bring the kid along?"
A slight frown of worry appeared between Ryo's handsome brows and a shadow marred his smile for just a moment as he replied, "We have to guard him."
Dee understood. He'd seen enough witnesses to crimes get murdered. If the drug dealers were out scouring the city for Bicky, it wouldn't be much leg work for them to find out that he had been taken to the station and released in Ryo's custody. Dee found himself beginning to worry and he caught himself watching Bicky as well.
Ryo suddenly smiled brightly, as if he were refusing to let the seriousness of their situation ruin a beautiful day. He pointed towards Bicky and Dee followed him as he called Bicky's name. When the kid, mismatched clothes flapping, came skating up to them, Ryo asked, "Want a hot dog?"
Dee made a face and uttered a disgusted noise of protest as Bicky, wide eyed and excited replied, "Yeah, sure!"
"Okay," Ryo said, ruffled Bicky's blonde hair, and then strode off to find which of the several vendors throughout the park were selling hot dogs.
Bicky waved goodbye with a childish flair. Dee glared down at the boy, knowing an act when he saw one. Sliding his sunglasses off, he bent to be at Bicky's level. "You act like a good boy in front of him," he said to let the boy know that he was wise to him.
Bicky wasn't daunted. He glared back, replying angrily. "You just don't like me."
Dee sighed irritably as he straightened, saying to himself rather than to Bicky, as he lit up a cigarette, "I guess Ryo's a pushover when it comes to kids."
Part 2
Bicky glared and then bit out sarcastically, "What's the matter? Jealous?"
Dee wasn't listening. He was thinking about Ryo, about how kind and naive the man could be.... and about how very handsome he was. We just met yesterday, he thought, I don't know why I feel so comfortable around him.
"Hey, gay boy!" Bicky suddenly shouted.
Dee started, still not sure how Bicky knew that he was gay, and scowled down at the boy as Bicky jabbed a finger at him and promised furiously, "I'm going to keep Ryo away from you!"
It was such an obnoxious statement, and so close to what Dee feared might be a possibility, that he couldn't help shouting back, "Stop being so mouthy, kid! Ryo doesn't belong to you!"
Bicky's reaction was immediate. With a growled, un-child like curse, he kicked Dee in the shin with his skate and then took off at top speed into the park. Dee was left hopping in pain, clutching his shin as he ineffectually shouted, "Stop, kid!"
Bicky was fast. Dee took off after him at a flat out run, coat flapping behind him and curses streaming from between his lips. As he rounded a stand of trees, Dee was in time to see a car pull up at the curb in front of the park. A door opened. A man in a dark suit stepped out with the cold, efficient air of a professional. As Dee watched, the man snaked out an arm and caught hold of Bicky as he tried to skate by.
Dee was there in an instant, snatching Bicky from danger without thought. He clutched the boy against him as if he were a football, tucked under his arm as he slammed the heel of his hand up into the chin of Bicky's attacker. That man grunted and fell back, but there was another man Dee was unaware of. When the butt of a handgun came crashing down onto the back of his head, Dee's last coherent thought was that Ryo was going to kill him.
Bicky continued to clutch at the unconscious Dee as the two men glared down at them both, guns poised. Bicky knew that trying to run was useless. Instinctively, he continued to clutch at what was familiar in that frightening situation, holding onto Dee as if he were a security blanket as the two men discussed what to do.
"Aw! Come on! What are we supposed to do now?" The one man growled nervously.
The other man answered quickly and simply as he reached down to haul at Dee and Bicky's dead weight. "Take `em both!"
Dee and Bicky were thrown into the back seat of the car, propped between the two men. As they drove off, Bicky clung to Dee and whispered frantically for him to wake up.
Ryo, walking back to where he had left Dee and Bicky and carrying a bag of hotdogs, stepped sideways away from the car as it squealed wheels and sped by him. Looking at them disapprovingly, he had a full view of the back seat. He clearly saw Dee and Bicky.
"What?" Stunned, the bag tumbled from Ryo's hands and hit the dirt, scattering it's contents everywhere. Ryo could have come to several conclusions, but he thought that he knew Dee well enough now to know that he wouldn't simply take off with Bicky in tow. With cold fear gripping his belly, Ryo was absolutely certain that he had just witnessed Dee and Bicky being kidnapped!
Bicky's skates and both Dee and Bicky's coats were flung down on the floor of the posh estate house in anger. Surrounded by armed men, Dee and Bicky sat on the floor with hands tied behind their backs, Dee looking sullen and Bicky looking both scared and defiant.
One of the kidnappers said nervously, "We couldn't find it, Boss! We even looked around his apartment."
A blonde man, with a fat cigar between two fingers, uttered a frustrated curse and gabbed Bicky by the front of his tee shirt. Pulling Bicky close to his face, he shouted, "Listen, kid! Your father stole some expensive drugs from me that were very hard for me to get! Don't tell me you don't know where they are!!"
Bicky's response was predictable. Dee wasn't surprised when Bicky kicked a heel into the blonde man's chin. The man's head was forced back sharply and his cigar went flying from his fingers. Dee felt a moment of respect for the kid, until the Blonde man recovered with a shouted curse, cocked back a fist, and then aimed a blow at Bicky's head with his full weight behind it..
Dee threw himself between Bicky and the blow. He caught hard knuckles across one cheek and his head snapped sideways from the force. Spitting blood, Dee recovered enough to glare and choke out, "Pick on someone your own size!"
The blonde man obliged Dee, beating him thoroughly and seeming to enjoy every moment of it. Afterwards, he had his men dragged Dee and Bicky to a room in the house used for storage. Once there, they were sent sprawling onto the hard wood floor and the door was slammed shut behind them, the men taking up guard duty outside.
Bicky sat up and asked Dee anxiously, "Are you okay?"
"I'm a man!" Dee hissed as he carefully sat up. "Even if they break my arm, I can take it!"
Bicky was looking at Dee's arm with wide eyed nausea. There was a swelling and a gruesome twist to it. "I think they DID break your arm.".
Clutching his arm, teeth gritted in agony, Dee stared at Bicky. When the boy grew uncomfortable and looked away, Dee accused quietly, "You lied to Ryo, didn't you? You have the drugs."
Bicky's suddenly tense look told Dee all he needed to know.
"Did you take the drugs to get back at the people who murdered your father?" Dee wondered. When Bicky looked suddenly miserable and angry, Dee knew he was on the right track. Dee remembered his own rough childhood and the murder of his `foster father'. "I understand how you feel," he said softly, feeling a pain that didn't have anything to do with his broken arm or his livid bruises, "but we can't do anything until we get out of here!"
Bicky began to look frightened. Dee tried to keep his voice confident for the boy's sake as he said reassuring, "I know Ryo looks like an idiot sometimes, but I trust him. He'll save us."
Bicky retorted cynically, "I know Ryo's a guy I can trust, too, but I think he's too much of an idiot to find us."
Dee and Bicky both fell into depression, sighing heavily. Bicky had seen straight through Dee's attempt to sugar coat the situation. The boy had seen too much violence and hopelessness in his life to fall for words that Dee didn't believe himself, not the belief that Ryo was an idiot, but that Ryo would find them. Dee knew that there weren't enough clues for even the best detectives on the force to find them, let alone a rookie almost fresh out of the academy.
"Knock before you come in!" The blonde boss shouted angrily as one of his men came into his quarters unannounced. Sitting on a couch, he was dressed only in his slacks, his shirt half off and a scantily clad woman simpering and clinging to his broad arm.
The man who had been unlucky enough to barge in on his boss during such a delicate moment, turned his back abruptly on the scene and stood stiffly, sweat running down his brow, as he apologized quickly, "Sorry! I was just wondering if we should move the kid some place else?"
The boss thought about it and then nodded, "Yeah, you should. This is my private house, after all."
"There is a problem, " the man informed his boss, sweating even more and wondering what his reaction would be. "There are a lot of cops on the street today. They say it's because they think a terrorist planted a bomb in the neighborhood."
The woman pawed the blonde boss, bored and wanting attention as she nuzzled against him. "Hey, Richard!" she pleaded in a sultry voice.
The boss turned all of his attention to the woman, waving the man off impatiently, "Okay, okay! I'll think about what to do tomorrow. Now, go away!"
Outside in the darkness, Ryo stealthily approached a guard from behind and hit him with a quick karate chop to the neck. The man fell at his feet and Ryo crouched briefly to feel for a pulse. "I think he's still alive," Ryo murmured, relieved that he hadn't killed the man and that security was so lax.
Ryo studied the building carefully. High up on the roof, there were a series of skylights. They must lead to an attic, Ryo thought.
Dressed in a black coat, carrying a pack to hold his equipment, and wearing gloves to protect his hands, Ryo put his swat team training to good use as he climbed up onto the house and crouched by one of the skylights. He made short work of the lock and, after prying the glass up and swinging down inside of the opening, he discovered that his guess had been correct. He was in the attic.
Ryo pulled a bomb, connected to a timer, out of his pack and placed it carefully onto the wooden floor. It was a small charge, meant to make a lot of noise and do some damage, but not enough to endanger the people inside of the house. Ryo hoped that the distraction of the blast would last long enough to allow him to escape with Dee and Bicky.
I need time to find them, Ryo thought, two hours should be more than enough. He set the timer and then felt a bead of sweat roll down the side of his face as the count down began. "I hope I can make it," Ryo breathed to the empty attic and then hurried to begin the search.
"I'm hungry!" Dee shouted and kicked a foot several times against the door to their prison. "Bring me something to eat!"
The guard, who had listened to Dee's shouted demands for some time, shouted back, not for the first time, "Shut up!!! Go to bed!!!"
Bicky watched Dee with chin propped on his hands, depression deepening as he began to question Dee's sanity. The man must have been in a lot of pain, he thought, allowing him that much leeway for his almost lunatic behavior, but Bicky was beginning to doubt that Dee was competent enough to save him.
A hand touched Bicky's shoulder. He flinched expectantly, but fear turned to amazed relief when he turned his head and saw Ryo crouching by him with a finger to his lips. He nodded and obediently kept silent as Ryo quietly moved to Dee.
When Dee felt the hand on his shoulder, he growled irritably as he turned, "What? Bicky?" When he saw Ryo's face so close to his own his heart went into his throat and he could only stare, stunned. In such a short time he had forgotten just how handsome Ryo was. At that moment, an angel from heaven couldn't have been more beautiful or more welcome.
Dee found his tongue all in an instant, questions suddenly flooding his mind as he opened his mouth to shout Ryo's name in amazement. Ryo anxiously slapped a hand over his lips. That hand smelled suspiciously like explosives.
Dee relaxed and Ryo lowered his hand. They sat down next to each other and Ryo said quietly, "I'm glad I found you so easily. We have to get out of here, Dee."
Dee snorted derisively, "I don't think it's going to be that easy."
Part 3
"I'm saying that you will!" The Chief snarled back as both McLane and the dark haired man were abruptly ushered out of his office to negate any further argument.
As McLane walked slowly down the hall with his new partner, he protested with a flush, "Please, don't call me a 'newbie'. "
His partner gave him a startled look, obviously confused, as he grunted, "Huh?"
McLane plowed on, sweating nervously under his tailored suit and wondering what had possessed him to make such an oversensitive request. "I'm not a newbie," he told the man. McLane wasn't long out of the academy, but he had already been specially trained in swat team and sharpshooting operations and he was proud of that fact.
The dark haired man understood suddenly and grinned, "Hey, don't worry about it! We call all the new guys, 'newbies'." He held out his hand good naturedly, his antagonism in the Chief's office forgotten as he introduced himself, "I'm Dee Latener. You can call me Dee."
"I'm Randy McLane," McLane repeated unnecessarily, unnerved when his new partner suddenly leaned in close and stared at him with open curiosity.
"Hey!" Latener exclaimed. "Are you Japanese-American? Your eyes are so dark!"
McLane blinked self consciously. "Uhm... yes," he managed to reply. His Japanese heritage wasn't that apparent. It startled him that Latener had noticed.
His new partner confused McLane further by asking, "Do you have a Japanese first name?"
It was such an odd thing to ask. McLane was caught off guard again and replied before he had a chance to reconsider. "Ryo."
"Mind if I call you Ryo?" Latener's expression was friendly and his request seemed to be as well.
"It's okay, I guess," McLane replied and then knew at once that he had made a mistake as Latener's demeanor changed abruptly.
"Okay, Ryo!" Latener's tone was suddenly loud, his friendly attitude almost a caricature as he hooked an arm around McLane's neck and all but dragged him the rest of the way down the hallway. It was obvious to McLane that Latener was still angry that he was being forced to take on a 'newbie' and was therefore delighting in making him feel embarrassed and uncomfortable.
McLane looked sideways at Latener's smiling face, wondering what might be in store for him next, but, strangely, he discovered that he wasn't too worried. Despite his first impression of the man as being a bit obnoxious, there was something, a general friendliness about the man that was reassuring to McLane.
Part 4
Latener's desk was situated near a wall of stacked case books. The top of the desk was a battle field of scattered folders, computer disks, empty coffee cups, fast food containers, post it notes, and an assortment of different length pencils all thoroughly chewed on their ends. His computer sat, turned off and almost hidden, on the very corner of that chaos, as if Latener hated it and longed to shove it off into the unused waste basket beside it on the floor.
The desk pushed nose to nose with Latener's was clean in comparison, dust and a slight overflow from Latener's desk attesting to the fact that no one had wanted to sit opposite Latener for some time. McLane slid into the chair behind it while Latener perched on the edge of his chaos, rooted through it, and then pulled out a sheaf of photos.
Tossing the photos on the empty desk top in front of McLane, Latener explained, "This is the case we'll be working on." McLane stared at the graphic gore of the crime scene in the photos as Latener dug into his shirt pocket for a pack of cigarettes, saying, "The victim's name was Dick Goldman. Obviously it's a murder case."
Dee tapped out a single cigarette from his pack, tucked it between his lips, and then lit it with his lighter. Letting out a large puff of white smoke, he added, "There's a problem with the suspects."
McLane looked up, understanding. "Suspects? Do you think it was the syndicate?"
Latener stared and took another puff of his cigarette. McLane's intuitiveness had been unexpected. Dee replied, "Dick was a freelance supplier of drugs. I think he got into trouble and bang!" Dee put a finger on each side of his head and made motions as if he were firing two guns, his cigarette still smoldering in one of those hands.
"You think he was eliminated?" Ryo wondered.
"Yeah, "Dee replied as he lowered his hands and began rooting through chaos again. " I also think the suspects in this murder are the same ones that have been under investigation for a long time."
Latener found what he was looking for. He deposited some more photos in front of Ryo. They showed a rough looking man with a dangerous expression on his face.
"He's Richard Feldman," Dee explained. "His gang isn't very big, but he does have connections with a larger one, so, if we can manage to get him, we might get our foot in the door of the big syndicate."
"Murder and drugs," Ryo said nervously. "It's a difficult case." It was a case that could make or break a new detective, Ryo thought, and he found himself eager to prove himself.
A shout suddenly rang out from an officer at the far end of the station, startling them both. "Catch him, Dee!"
The boy was a flash as he whizzed by Dee and Ryo on in line skates. Ryo had a second in which to note the gang clothes, the turned back baseball cap, a tail of white/blonde hair, and the fact that the boy was hardly in his teens, before he was past him and heading for the front door of the station.
Dee was the first to react. Jamming out his cigarette on the corner of his desk, he flicked it away as he raced to head the boy off. Sailing over two desks, he made it to the door before the boy and swung out an arm. Dee caught the boy neatly in the mid drift, knocking the air and the fight out of him. "It's over, kid!"
Part 5
It didn't take Dee long afterwards to start feeling that trouble was about to start in the shape of a small, part African-American street kid. Sitting on a stained, well worn, waiting room couch, he faced the officer, who had almost let the boy escape back onto the street, while he nursed a hot cup of coffee between two hands.
"He's Dick's son?" Remembering the carnage of the crime scene, Dee was suddenly sympathetic.
The officer nodded, looking worried. "He came here to identify the body. When he saw his father, he went crazy. Where is he now?"
"He's with our new babysitter," Dee grunted, hooking a thumb towards the employee's break room. If the boy's father had been killed over drugs, he thought, suddenly troubled, then his hunch about the boy was turning out to be right. It was very possible that the boy might be a target too, that the syndicate might wonder what he knew and think it safer to eliminate him.
Looking over at the closed break room door, Dee wondered how his soft spoken, naive looking partner was dealing with a street punk who had cut his teeth amidst his father's drug trade.
"Bicky? Want some hot chocolate?"
The sullen, dark skinned boy ignored Ryo. Sitting in a metal chair, he hunched in on himself, cap pulled down over startling blue eyes. So young, Ryo thought, as he set the two cups of hot chocolate aside on a desk and remembered the day his own family had been ripped away from him by violence. He hadn't been very old either.
Ryo kneeled in front of the boy. They had a bond of sorts between them because of their similarly shattered lives. It was a bond, Ryo thought, that could allow him to understand and help the boy where someone else might not.
Very softly, as he tipped the cap back to see the boy's rigid expression, Ryo said, "I know how you feel. If you want to talk about it...," The boy sniffled and quickly wiped something away from his face with a quick motion of the back of his hand. "You don't have to keep it in," Ryo told him, "You can cry, if you want."
The boy's shoulders shivered ever so slightly, his hands gripping the metal chair tightly, but he remained stubbornly silent.
It wasn't good, Ryo thought, to keep that kind of grief locked up inside. Tears beginning to well up in his own eyes, Ryo confessed, "When my parents died, I was only eighteen. I cried all night long."
"No! I won't cry!" The protest erupted out of the boy, but tears were overflowing from his blue eyes as well. His face became a mask of grief as he suddenly fell forward into Ryo's arms. "I won't..." he sobbed plaintively.
Ryo caught the boy in a protective embrace, one hand catching his cap as it tumbled off of his head. Smiling, yet tears wet on his own cheeks, Ryo reassured him, "It's all right, you're still a tough kid."
Note: Sorry these parts are so short, but it's very difficult trying to do this from a verbatim translation. This part alone took over an hour to figure out. :(