The new partner stirred. Glancing at green numbers on the bedside clock he noted it was two, must be AM as it was still full dark. The other side of the bed was empty. That brush on his forehead must have been Jack’s kiss before leaving. The partner brushed fingers over the sheets, not cool but cooling, on the other side of the bed. He hated waking up alone at such an hour after a wonderful week but private detectives, soon to again be cops worked when the cases did. He snuggled back down into the bed with a smile on his face, thinking of forever was a dream. He was obviously returning to those as clocks did not run backward.
“Get up!” The voice of the zealot was rough, like the kick he delivered to the partner’s ribs. “Yeah, you with the queer face. GET UP!”
The partner roused himself groggily, fighting against the ropes binding his wrists and ankles behind his back. Trying to look at the clock he realized from the rough carpet under his bare belly that it was on the other side. His eyes landed first on the zealot in his pristine church clothes. The knife made the partner wonder if this man was a jealous ex-lover, but he was too clean cut for that. When the partner saw the green numbers, now at 0:05 he realized the clock was a bomb.
The partner should do something about that but couldn’t. Instead he wept. Not due to impending death, and not over the hatred he saw in the zealot’s face. He wept for a lifetime with the man he loved lost so soon. In a small part his tears came from knowing he would die with the smell of a bigot’s gas station cologne stinging his nose.
“Why?”
“Your lifestyle is enough.” The zealot smiled with the cruel vengeance supposedly reserved for God alone. “In this case? A message must be sent.”
The partner struggled. The zealot laughed at the thought of the sodomite before him dying with rug burns on his stomach and junk. Didn’t they all go out that way though? The partner realized his only hope. He was unlikely to diffuse a bomb, but if he could free himself after the zealot left he could at least try.
“Four minutes is cutting it close for your escape don’t you think? The junior fascist league would be lost without a man of your moral caliber.”
“Shut it cock smoker. Something your kind will never understand is there are some causes worth dying for, and some things you don’t leave to chance.”
The zealot fell into hate filled silence. The partner let his tears flow again, looking the man in the eye. Men like him could never understand those tears were not shame or regret. The partner could be proud of his tears, but he would not beg or revile the man more. Let him die better than his oppressor would. Both waited for rewards they were unsure of.
____________________________________________________________________
Jack sat at the desk in his now defunct office with a bottle or what could be paint thinner and his revolver in front of him. He swallowed his pain with chasers of dime store Scotch. It was the gun he spoke to.
“I’m sorry loving me caused this. I know the message the preacher meant to send. I promise you though, I won’t forget or fail you. His tactics won’t work this time. His God has hardened my heart.” Jack refused to cry as he followed this toast to his lost with another shot.
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