Part 2 is actually a prequel to part 1 and is narrated by Det. Kevin Brown, not Tim Crane.
My career in law enforcement began after a short stint in the Marine Corps as an MP and embassy guard. When I left the Corps, I advanced up the ranks of the local police force quickly, rising to vice squad detective within three years of graduation from the academy. I wasn't eager to move up, the Marines had taught me patience, but I had always maintained a greater sense of vision in chaos that lent itself to police work.
The rhythms at play in vice are those of lower human behavior. Sex and drugs tend to flow along a matrix: If you bust a crackhead you might solve a robbery; if you roll up a prostitution ring there's a good chance you'll catch the pimp engaged in a variety of pimp mischief including, but not limited to, money laundering, even murder.
Not that my job was always so serious. In fact my favorite pastime was keeping tabs on the one-man crime wave known as Tim Crane Jr. Tim was a verbose Black attorney in corporate practice at his father-in-law's law firm Gaynor, Medved, and Mitchell. He wore a Trotsky beard and silly Prada suits and had the build of a fireplug, but he had charm for miles. I first met him in my days of walking the beat around the Octagon, an eight street party district near downtown. In a one year period the squad caught Tim with no less than six different women (none of them his wife) engaged in some variety of coitus in public. In light of his goatee and sexual proclivities the guys on the squad took to calling him The Goat.
We usually let him go when we caught him, none of the girls were known prostitutes, but the last time I detained Tim I found him drunk behind the wheel of his Mercedes coupe with a naked coed in the passenger seat.
He never struck me as really Black, let alone soul brother number one, but for credibility's sake he addressed us in the appropriate street patois, "You White cops kill me. What's this? A misdemeanor?"
"If it's your first time. Is this your first time Timmy?"
"But the car wasn't even moving, man"
"Doesn't matter, they changed the law. If the keys are in the switch and you're behind the wheel that's good enough. For a lawyer you sure don't you know shit Tim." He developed a nervous sheen of sweat.
"You don't think I'll get it thrown out?"
"I'm sure your father-in-law's firm would love the attention. I'll give him a call, maybe he can post bail?" This broke his spirit. He tried a new attack.
"Now peep this… I let you in on the inner circle of something major…maybe we'll just forget about this…transgression."
I didn't really buy what he was selling but was intrigued. It turned out Tim was for real. With a lot of effort I worked up his inside information to the bust of my career and made my promotion to vice full time. His tip concerned a group of executives for a paper company hiding dozens of stinky crystal methamphetamine labs among the remote acres of their pulp forest. It was a brilliant idea that would have never been uncovered without Tim's assistance.
I couldn't think of a way to thank him though, the paper company had been a client of his firm, and any public acknowledgment would have been career poison. I thought the least I could do for him was to invite him and his wife over to the house for steak and lobster. I figured that his wife, a Pole adopted by a rich American family when she was a teen and my wife, Irena, a Russian beauty, might have something in common.
I told Tim it was supposed to be a casual affair, but he didn't get the memo. It was early autumn so I wore jeans and a black T-shirt while Irena wore a red cable knit sweater and ankle length black plaid skirt. I had to convince Irena that she looked beautiful. Her new haircut and color was supposed to make her a pixie, Jane Wiedlin as a blonde, but there really is no way to diminish the stature of a buxom six-foot, 160-pound straw headed Slav. The Cranes came dressed for a cocktail party. Tim wore a dark linen suit with a short collared electric blue silk shirt. He looked like this year's model of a South Florida Romeo, with a bull neck of course.
Tim Crane's wife, Maria, was an angel of a woman. She wore little makeup and a sheer coral silk dress the color of her skin; her hard puckered nipples proved she wore no bra. Maria was as tall as Irena, but thin and naturally flaxen blonde. In a word, refined, like she had grown up in a castle instead of the streets of Gdansk. I wondered how she had fallen for a rascal like Tim, but as the evening wore on I guessed that whatever hold he had on her was slipping.
Dinner was nice if a little drunken. Tim had brought three spectacular bottles of wine from his own cellar. Between the four of us we finished them all and moved on to champagne cocktails with dessert.
After dinner we flipped for KP and I found myself alone on the glassed-in patio with Maria while Irena and Tim put away the leftovers and washed the pots and pans.
Maria asked how I had come to make a Russian my wife.
"It's a long story," I said. This was not a secret; just something I'd rather have let go unsaid.
"Go ahead, you're among friends." She self-consciously licked her lips.
"OK, I used to be a guard at the embassy in Moscow. Irena worked as a nanny for an American diplomat. We got to know each other as she passed in and out of the gate. One day some fool decided to launch a grenade into the compound. Luckily a Xerox machine took the brunt of the shrapnel, but when they turned out the guard, I was with Irena, and well, lets just say I had to make a choice…Irena or the Corps."
"And you chose love?" she said.
"Yep, I chose the Corps." Maria brightened. "But then Irena kept calling and showing up and the Corps told me to get out. This was only a few years after the Lonetree scandal; they didn't need the exposure. I still got an honorable discharge though." She seemed touched by my fidelity.
"Kevin, how well do you know Tim?" she asked. Her life in America had not erased a very soft accent.
"Pretty well. He works in the tower near headquarters. We eat lunch sometimes," I said.
"I think he's fucking around on me." The wine had made her blunt. "I fuck him on demand. Do you know what that means? If he wants me now, he gets me now. Right here while you and your wife watch. But he doesn't care, it's not enough, he still needs other women. Is this what men do?"
I tried to be as diplomatic as possible, "Tim might have a wild eye, but look at you, you're sexy, passionate, who would need anyone else?"
She didn't seem convinced. She simply reached out and placed my hand inside her blouse over her heart. I detected the stirrings of an erection in my jeans. Trying to remain calm, I removed my hand after a cursory stroke of her small soft breast.
"Listen Maria, any differences between you and Tim won't be solved by fooling around with me." I said. "Besides, Tim might not like the idea of his friend fondling his wife."
"Do you mind if he fondles your Russian tramp?" she said.
Maria's blue eyes peered past me in the direction of the kitchen. I turned to see Tim at the rear of Irena whispering something in her tilted ear. We couldn't see the lower halves of their bodies behind the kitchen counter but she appeared taller as if on her tiptoes, the upper half of her large breasts swelling for a touch beneath her tight red sweater. Tim's hands were locked around her hips. My wife grinned absurdly like Tim was telling her a joke that required his cock inside.
After a moment they realized they were being watched, abruptly separated, and lurched quietly back towards the sofa. I turned away to see Maria's face hot with embarrassment. I looked again and noticed Tim's linen trousers bulging obscenely in front. Irena excused herself and hurried toward the bedroom.
I had mixed feelings about what to do next. I was outraged at Tim for humping my wife right under my nose, yet how could I deny that I hadn't just felt the same lust for his wife? In the bedroom Irena apologized. She said she didn't know what had come over.
"There's something about his voice, his scent, Kevin, I don't know. Maybe it was the wine. I'm sorry." She held her head in her hands. I told her what Maria had done to me. We agreed that this was not the kind of experience we should allow to complicate our lives. Tim was an informant in an investigation and this mixture of business and personal drama was foolish to say the least.