"Internal Affairs" by Seuzz

The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike, he mused to himself as the cold drizzle trickled off his cap and down the back of his neck. And which one am I now?

He tugged his uniform tight, but some of collected water slipped down his spine. He squirmed a little. Something didn't fit quite right, but he had to content himself with pulling the heavy coat closer around his shoulders. That did help, though he still wanted to find a changing room someplace, to tighten things. But there wasn't time.

And it wasn't a long wait, either, before a patrol car swam out of the diminishing afternoon murk and growled to a stop in the alley by the river. His eyes lit up when he recognized Danny Vance stepping out from the behind the wheel: Danny the dark; Danny the trim; Danny the panther-like, just out of the academy.

Greg Yarborough was with him, though, and the man waiting by the warehouse carefully composed his features so that the twenty-year street veteran—too smart not to be a detective, but held back from promotion for never-disclosed reasons—wouldn't spot his chagrin.

"Can't handle a punk by yourself, huh?" Danny jeered in his good-natured way.

"There's two of them." The man who'd put in the call for back up jerked his head toward the metal side door into the warehouse. "I knicked one of them, I think. They're unarmed, but I'm not stupid enough to go in alone."

Danny and Yarborough checked their pistols. "Then what are we waiting for?" Yarborough said curtly. Most of the guys at the precinct liked Yarborough for his cool, tough, confident ways.

But at least one of the other two cops in the alley didn't. "I took a look around before calling," he said as he opened the door. "Just long enough to know it was a bigger job than I could handle alone. It's a maze, and the light's bad." He and the others stepped into the gloom, where tall metal shelves, packed closely with anonymous crates and boxes, stretched toward the grimy skylights.

Yarborough found and flicked at an electrical box, but nothing happened. "You and Vance take the north side," he said. "I'll cover the south."

Yarborough and Vance struck out into the gloom, but the third hesitated. He liked the idea of splitting up, and he liked to be paired with Vance. But he didn't like the assignment. He felt in his pocket for the syringe as he followed Danny, hoping he'd get a chance to use it quickly.

But Vance moved swiftly, with cat-like tread, never pausing, swinging around each corner with practiced ease, and cocking his head in every direction; he left no blind spots as he swept along the wall. He left his partner breathing heavily through his nose, but not from exertion. No, he breathed heavily because his gaze was hooked helplessly onto Vance's dark, close-cropped hair and broad shoulders; he wanted to clasp Vance's neck and gnaw on it. Memories that had once belonged to another but now belonged to him swam to the front of his mind, of Vance in the precinct changing room, in his tight gray briefs and their enticing package. There weren't many such memories, for the man whose eyes he now looked out of hadn't the interest to stare, but they were distracting. At least once he missed a chance at Vance because he was concentrating on the gleam off the man's cheek as he stepped briefly through a dim patch of light.

They moved quickly, and Yarborough must have been similarly swift, for they heard a sharp, short bark not long after they had separated from him. For a moment Vance exposed himself, but soon moved out of reach, and his partner hurried along behind, unable to catch up until they found Yarborough standing over a huddled heap on the floor.

"Is this the one you shot?" he asked. The heap resolved itself into a human figure, dressed in dirty jeans and a plaid shirt, propped up limply against the wall. The head, shrouded in darkness, lolled to the side at an unnatural angle.

"I thought I only winged him."

Vance clucked his tongue. "We'll back you up, Bobby, if anyone asks," he said. "You can't see for shit in this place."

Yarborough, however, merely knelt down to examine the suspect, which naturally alarmed the officer that Vance had called "Bobby." "Shouldn't you wait for the detectives?" he asked.

"There's something wrong here," Yarborough said, and the others could see his moustache bristle. He poked at the figure. "Jesus, it's like there's nothing inside the clothes." He reached up to touch the man's face. "Christ, it's a mask. It's like a goddamn latex mask."

"Danny, go get a flashlight from the car," the one called "Bobby" said. Vance nodded grimly and retreated into the darkness. For an instant, the one left standing over Yarborough almost hurried after him. But sense won out over desire after the briefest of struggles, and a moment later he had the syringe out, and jabbed it deep into the back of Yarborough's neck.

The patrolman gasped and gargled, and collapsed. The other quickly shoved him onto the ground face down, then pulled him back by his heels so that the ochre-colored foam that began gushing from his mouth wouldn't wash back and stain his uniform. He jumped a little at the sound of another man dropping lightly onto the concrete floor nearby. "He's not my first choice for you," he said to the newcomer, whose face and form remained shrouded in shadow. "But we gotta take the hands we're dealt."

"He's a fat one," his friend sniggered.

"But smart. There won't be any embarrassing questions if he's the one making the report."

"What about the other one?"

He felt himself die a little as he slowly pulled his gun from its holster. "I know our motto is 'Never leave a body behind,'" he said with vast reluctance, "and that's not a body I want to leave behind. But I think we're gonna have to in this case."

But the other grinned and drew from his pocket the last thing his friend expected to see after they had depleted their most recent stock: a syringe. "Be prepared," he gloated. "That's another motto for us. I took it to heart after we were Boy Scouts last summer."

Impulsively, the cop grasped him about the torso and kissed him deeply.

* * * * *

"Gonna be a shitty few days for awhile," Yarborough said grumpily. "Even I'm gonna have a hard time explaining how Rodriguez disappeared." They had, in fact, found a trap door leading to the river below, into which they'd dropped the clothes and the three skin-suit remnants, the former to eventually wash up and the latter to be devoured by the fish.

"What's gonna be shitty is making love to your fat, bald, middle-aged face for three months while waiting for a new batch of fluid to mature," Vance joshed as he slid behind the patrol car wheel. He closed his eyes and massaged the back of his neck. Everything fit beautifully, and he softly grunted as he swelled with pleasure.

Yarborough gave him a slit-eyed, sidelong glance. "Don't underestimate me, Danny," he said in a mock warning tone. "I know a hell of a lot of tricks, not all of them relating to Internal Affairs. Haven't you and the boys speculated about how come I never married?" He reached over, to grip the younger cop's thigh.