The Good Cop by Dorien Grey

we were doing there. I just tried to slowly back myself away, but then Cory looked around and pointed at me and I knew I’d had it.
    Shit!
    One of the plainclothesmen—Detective Crouch…no, Couch—looked at me, nudged the other—Detective…Carpenter—and they waved me over to them.
    “Detectives,” I said by way of acknowledgment. I’d had a minor run in with the two partners on an earlier case, and I’d managed to piss Detective Couch off royally. From the way he looked at me, I could see he hadn’t forgotten.
    “You know Officer Brady?” Carpenter asked.
    “Yes,” I said, “I went to college with him and his wife.” Sliiide that one right in there, Hardesty, I thought.
    “And what was Officer Brady doing in a gay bar?” Couch asked, scowling at me, then added: “Oh, yes, that’s right. You’re… gay …aren’t you?’
    One of Chief Black’s innovations had been to require every officer in the department to attend classes in dealing with minorities—including gays—, which was widely applauded by the citizenry, but generally regarded as a waste of time by some of the department’s old guard.
    While I was glad to see Chief Black’s sensitivity training program was having some effect, in that Couch didn’t use one of the other words he undoubtedly would have preferred, the way this guy said “gay” made it sound like an infectious disease.
    “Yes. Your point being…?”
    “So what was Officer Brady doing in a gay bar?” Couch repeated.
    “Because I invited him to come. His wife is out of town for the weekend, so we decided to spend some time together. Officer Brady puts friendship above passing judgment. And I think we should all be pretty damned glad he was in that bar, or it could have been a lot worse for the people whose lives he probably saved.”
    “Yeah,” Couch muttered, “two lesbos and a…”
    Carpenter shot him a withering look, and Couch abruptly shut up.
    “I apologize for my partner,” Carpenter said. “He…”
    I turned to Couch and stared at him until he looked at me, defiantly. “Detective Couch,” I said, being very careful not to let my anger show, “I’m sure you’re a good detective and a good man, but you have one hell of a lot to learn. I might suggest you consider spending some time in a gay bar. It might do you good.” Realizing he would undoubtedly take that the wrong way, I looked at his partner, who had always struck me as being a little more open minded.
    “You can interpret that for him sometime,” I said.
    Carpenter gave me an almost imperceptible nod, then immediately said: “So exactly what happened here?”
    And I told him what I knew.
    *
    While I was really concerned about Tom, I didn’t try to go to the hospital. I knew he’d be in deep enough shit without having a known faggot hovering over him. I was pretty sure they would keep him overnight and probably release him in the morning. I’d call him at home then.
    *
    The shooting was the lead story on the morning news, and made the front page of the Sunday paper. While the newspaper article had obviously been hastily patched together, owing to the relatively short time between the incident and press time: 2 Dead in Gang Attack , the TV reports did go into a bit more detail, including giving Tom’s name. It was interesting for what all the reports didn’t say as well as for what they did: Two women had been attacked outside “a bar” on Parker Boulevard, and two men coming to their aid were severely beaten, one of them reported to be in critical condition in City General hospital. When an off-duty policeman arrived on the scene a gunfight ensued in which two of the attackers, believed to be members of the Turf Lords gang, were shot and killed by the officer, who himself sustained a gunshot wound to the shoulder.
    One of the TV stations (I flipped back and forth between them) even somehow had managed to show Tom’s photo, apparently from the award ceremony after he’d saved the