Another story about Max. I can feel her in my veins now and trying to channel her. I hope you like this story as much as I do.
Please vote... comment... it's catnip for me.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, merchandise, companies, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. All characters in sexual situations are 18 years or older. This includes the fictional "Bearcat Club" in downtown Cincinnati (Go Bearcats!).
Prologue
I'm Maxine "Max" Pemberton. I was a member of the Cincinnati police force for thirty-five years. I'm retired now, and running a café that was owned by my good friend, Nicky, who passed away almost ten years ago and left it to me. When I joined the force, I was a brash, impressionable young woman with a chip on my shoulder and a serious drinking problem.
I was married to a man I met in college, but the hard living and the long hours took its toll, and after many years of ups and downs we called it quits. It wasn't Ron's fault. It wasn't mine. He knew I was going to be a cop. His dad was one. He knew what he was signing up for. What we didn't figure was the I was attracted to women and not to men. I didn't know it for sure during our marriage, but I knew it for sure the first time I went to bed with a woman. My sex life with Ron was practically non-existent at the end, and the intimacy I achieved with my first female lover told me that I would have never found that had I stayed with him.
Back when I started, the force was only about ten percent women, and few at the upper echelons. I had to be scrappy to make it in a testosterone fueled work environment. And make it I did, but not without my share of ups and downs.
I found love (and lost it as well) with a battered wife [Cold Steel], tried my luck again with a police Lieutenant [Hot Steel], and crushed a drug ring [Pink Ice]. I want to tell you about the time that I hit bottom, and managed to pull myself together under a number of unusual circumstances. Here it goes...
Chapter One
A Highly Placed Source
My fucking eyes were glued shut. I tried to open them with my fingers and painfully ripped out a few eyelashes. My mouth was parched and felt like I-75 after half of Cincinnati had driven over it. I was wickedly hung over.
"Alexa, what the fuck is the time?" I growled, trying to sit up in bed, my temples pounding.
The blue ring went around in a circle. "Go fuck yourself Max."
Even Alexa was all the way up my ass.
I pushed two empty vodka bottles off the nightstand and looked at the digital display on the motel's cheap plastic alarm clock. "8:15 a.m."
"Fuck!" I shouted. I was already late for the morning briefing. I was afraid of looking in the mirror.
I staggered to the bathroom and got a washcloth and wetted it, wiping it across my eyes so I could open them. I was staring at the mirror. Horror movie quality. Bloodshot eyes, hair pointing in a thousand directions, lines radiating from the corners of my eyes. The look you get when you need a fifth of vodka just so you can get to sleep.
I performed emergency surgery on my body. A quick shower followed by mouthwash and Visine. Fortunately my uniform was ironed and I was in my car in ten minutes. I rolled into the station a half hour late for the morning meeting. The conference room was full, and everyone in it looked at me as I walked in with a Styrofoam cup full of lukewarm piss that masqueraded as police station coffee.
"Too early for you Max?" Captain Sheehan asked, stopping her briefing mid-sentence.
I found a seat in the back of the room, squeezing in between two burly male officers.
"Sorry Cap, overslept," was the excuse I offered, there not being a snowball's chance in hell that anyone was buying it.
"Not as sorry as you're going to be after this meeting," Cap retorted, already making a mental note of the shit assignment she was going to give me.
There were snickers in the room as I settled into my uncomfortable chair.
The meeting droned on for another half hour. I faded in and out as the talking made my head pound. I'm not sure how I made it. When it ended, everyone filed out, with me pulling up the rear.
"Max... my office... now," Cap barked out.
Cap was pissed. Nice way to start the day.
* * *
Captain Sheehan slammed her door, making the inset glass panel rattle. Her phone was ringing. She ignored it, giving me a death stare.
"Listen Max, you look like shit and you've also been a shit officer lately. You've been hitting the bottle hard. For fuck's sake, I can smell vodka on your breath, and it's only 9:30. What the fuck Max?"
Cap was really pissed. She only swore when she was mad, and I counted at least two "fucks" in her first volley. The only thing that was saving me was the bust I led last year that netted us a major drug ring. But that only got me so far, and it looked like I used up all of my capital. I was about to walk my last mile in the station, and Cap was going to make me do it.
"Sorry Cap," I told her. "It's just that when Rachel broke up with me...". Rachel was my last partner, and ultimately my lover. Everyone knew about it but no one said anything. Rachel was a gorgeous brunette who was much younger than me. Things didn't work out, and she transferred to Narcotics and took up with another woman.
"Cry me a river Max. What the fuck did I say about fishing off the company dock?" Cap took a sip of coffee out of her favorite "Reds" coffee mug. She looked me in the eye, waiting for an apology.
"I know. I fucked up. It seems like I've been doing a lot of that recently."
"Look Max. I can't keep protecting your ass. Chief has seen your most recent performance review. One more black mark on your record and we're going to have to discipline you, which is the first step in letting you go. I'm putting you back out onto the street until further notice. Report to Lieutenant Driscoll. Dismissed."
She turned her chair to face her computer. Our meeting was over. My career was about over.
I left the Captain's office bleary eyed and in dire need of a drink.
* * *
"Lieutenant Driscoll?"
I leaned into his office, wondering what he had in mind with me. Driscoll was hired from the Columbus force earlier in the year. He had closely cropped salt and pepper hair and steely grey eyes. I could sense that he was staring at my tits, which were not insubstantial.
His eyes swept upwards to mine. "Pemberton... what the fuck do you want?"
"Cap sent me over. He told me I'm back in a patrol car."
I was on a special assignment with Vice, but with my excessive tardiness and overall shitty performance I was lucky to get this assignment instead of unpaid administrative leave.
"Oh yeah," he said, as he reached for a pile of paperwork. He sifted through the papers until he found the one he was looking for. "Transfer order signed by the Chief. I guess you really pissed somebody off. I'm going to put you in the West End."
West End was a shit assignment. One of the toughest neighborhoods in Cincinnati. Having grown up in nearby Camp Washington, it was one of my old stomping grounds. I guess I screwed up my face when I heard the good news.
"Don't look at me that way Pemberton. You're lucky you're still on the street," he admonished me. Then he made a peace offering. "I'm going to reassign Lanny to you as your partner."
That was a break. I took on Lanny when he was a rookie. He saved my life and I'd never forgotten it. His eyes wandered lower to take one last look at my tits.
"Like what you see Lieutenant?" I asked him in a smart ass way, which for me was my usual way.
He looked me in the eyes. "I've seen better."
"Fuck you," I said as my witty rejoinder.
