“Oh, you know how the department is. Sons and daughters work there. Cousins work there. They get married and their spouse works there.” Calvin took his time cutting across the paths, toward the fountain but also clearly just taking a shortcut to the other side of the plaza. “Even the ones who leave early hear things. Or did you mean, do any of them still talk to me?” He stopped, then exhaled. “Yeah. But only the older ones. And that indirectly, like when I bump into them at the store and they have to. It was different, before.” He gave Ray a wry look. “Not that different. But some were willing to believe I retired early for my health, at least for a while. That shake up with Ross…. The damage from that took a while to come to the surface. At first, I think they were too busy dealing with the mess he left behind, and they were grateful you came out clean. But then there was a trial, lawsuits from the families, and you… happily mat—sort of married—to a fairy. A male fairy, which still matters to many. They had to blame somebody. They certainly weren’t going to blame one of their own, or themselves, for encouraging the sort of talk and behavior that leads to people like Ross doing what he did and thinking it was okay.”
“You were guilty by association.” Ray had allowed that too.
“Look, I wasn’t surprised by then—no, that’s not true. I still was. When you join something, even if your reasons for that were good, or hopelessly naïve, you want to believe the best of it. I thought things would be different if I helped you. If they worked with more minority voices, more being voices. I was wrong. Very wrong.” Calvin frowned, first at the fountain, then at Ray. “Is no one speaking to you?”
“I don’t think they have for a while now.” Cal wasn’t there, so Ray said it. “I think I was hiding it from him.”
Calvin arched an eyebrow but didn’t remark upon Ray’s ability—inability—to keep a secret from Cal.
Ray shook his head. “They turned on you, then Cal, and then me. I don’t think they’re sure about Penn. Conditional, you said.” Ray stared hard at the distant cars, toward the buildings he’d seen the other day and the alley where he’d been attacked. “I knew it was. When I came here, I wanted…” He could barely remember that now, and had blamed his rising cynicism on what he did, what he saw in his work. But that included what he saw when he was there, among them. And what he did. “To be one of them, I let them make dog jokes.” By the time Cal had met him and apparently made them too, Ray wouldn’t have even noticed. “I sneered at fairies. I didn’t really discuss who I dated while I was at work, not in detail. Only with Penn. I knew all of that, anyone does when they’re doing it, even if they don’t say or think about it.”
He was probably glaring, scaring those passing by. “He chose me anyway.” Ray paused. “I don’t think I’m on the softball team anymore, either.”
“Changed rules. Something about player safety,” Calvin explained. “Bullshit to keep you out, but I think you’d quit before then. You never said why.”
And since Ray couldn’t remember, he could guess it had something to do with Cal.
He hadn’t done any good. Nothing Ray had done had mattered. Nothing he and Penn had worked for had mattered. For every person, being or human, they had fought to investigate and clear if they could, there had been dozens, hundreds more, doing the opposite. They had done the same to Calvin, worn him down year after year even though Calvin should have been more acceptable to them, despite loving a fairy.
But the belief would have made him stand out, even if he’d never had doggie treats left on the seat of his patrol car.
“Here.”
Ray looked down to see Calvin’s hand at his elbow as Calvin led him to an unoccupied bench.
“Except for when you were in the hospital, after Ross and all that, I’ve never seen you look unwell.” Calvin made Ray sit and then bent down to peer into his face.
“I have a headache,” Ray admitted.
Calvin’s eyebrows flew up, but thankfully, he accepted that with a nod and then sat down next to Ray.
“We can sit for a while. The fountain sounds nice, anyway. It’s the one improvement I didn’t mind.”
“Not the plexiglass?” Ray glanced behind them, toward the looming Beast.
“I suppose it’s all right.” Calvin shrugged. “In my day, it wouldn’t have been needed.” Ray regarded him doubtfully. Calvin shrugged again. “No one who lived here would have dared, and any angry tourists or troublemakers who came in to cause harm quickly discovered their mistake. By then, the larger or tougher humans and beings who lived here had formed groups for safety, and they would walk the streets at night to protect the gay men in the clubs and the crowd coming out of Mami’s, that sort of thing.” He fiddled with the cuffs of his cardigan. “It was an ugly time, and it was… just me, here. Me and few beat officers from the old days who hadn’t retired yet, and one or two patrol cars. The beings who had joined the force as part of the city’s move to be inclusive had been forced out almost immediately. The beings and humans of the village and the surrounding neighborhoods had to take care of their own… and keep away from any of the other cops.”
If Ray had been in the city then, he might have joined those patrol groups. But he’d been a child out in the suburbs.
“No Beast of the Village?” Ray had assumed the story was older than that anyway. “How long has that mural been there?”
“Since before I got here.” Calvin turned to look at it, the snarling beast on its hind legs, the feathers, or what could have been feathers, at the head on a crown, the extended claws. “I don’t speak enough Spanish to know the original name but I believe it has one. Supposedly, it used to take care of neighborhood bullies or cruel landlords, that sort of thing. Not quite in the Wild West days, but definitely before someone imposed a different law and order on the area.Ourlaw and order.”
“Wild West legends are true, sometimes.” Ray had a bunch of dusty history books that said so. “Or partly true. Like the stories about werewolves.”
Calvin gave Ray a measuring look. “And there is no reason to think this one wasn’t,” he said at last. “People choose heroes to fit the times they’re in.”
Unlike his son, Calvin could leave a lot unsaid.
Ray stared at him and momentarily forgot his headache.”Wasthere a Beast?”
Calvin noisily cleared his throat. “I only everperhapssaw certain trolls or groups of visiting weres handling their own problems. Maybe… a few times… there was something else. I didn’t ask questions, I had enough to do. But if they can’t get justice from the people in charge, then who am I to stop anyone from getting justice for themselves?”
He was, had been, a cop. But of course, that was his point. Calvin almost always had a point, and was generally—though not always—right. It must drive Cal up a wall, since he was used to always being right as well.
“But it’s only a sort of justice. A beast can stop an abusive pimp. A troll can punch a Nazi. But neither of them can take on a corporation, or all of City Hall. Heroes have to match the times. My hopes about all of that took a hit when the first being police hires were forced out. The hope survived when we got—kept—Mr. Sunshine. Then again with Penn, and then you. But now I think… that’s all too much for a few individuals. Cal’s way is better, which I have told him, but he won’t believe me even though he knows for a fact I am being honest. We should get back to him soon, before he starts suspecting the worst.”
“He thinks I’m hiding something,” Ray confessed quietly.
