______________________
CHAPTER ONE
______________________
FALCO
November 3, 2018
This was the day I’d been waiting for—it had finally arrived. I was now officially a Metro Police Officer for the Nashville PD. I walked into the conference room for the morning briefing, feeling like a fish out of water. I knew no one, really, except my new partner, Angie Hicks. Hicks and I had gone through the police academy together. We hooked up for a while. The sex was hot, but not as hot as her disposition. The sexual relationship didn’t last long, but we somehow managed to remain friends.
After a period of awkwardness, our relationship became business as usual. Our friendship grew. We complimented each other well and always teamed up for the physical exercises in the academy. We made a great team. I still lusted after her body every now and then and caught her checking me out on many occasions, but I somehow managed to keep it in my pants from then on out. After graduation we went our separate ways . . . until now.
Hicks was an amazing cop from everything I was told, and I didn’t mind at all that the captain had put us together. She was a five-foot-five stick of dynamite, not classically beautiful in the physical sense, but pretty hot nonetheless, in an earthy sort of way. Time since the academy had treated her kindly. She was still solidly built with great tits and a tight-looking ass. She wore no makeup and her hair was a curly, moppy mess, tied high on her head.
She had a reputation for being a good cop, a tough cop. I’d been told by the captain she had become a no-nonsense, no bullshit enforcer of the law, one who sometimes got a little rough with the perps, especially those that gave her lip or indications they thought less of her because she was a female cop.
Barely anyone seemed to notice me sitting quietly in the back row as the captain went through his laundry list of shit that had gone down the day before; i.e. B and E’s, assault’s, car boosts, domestic violence cases—nothing too major, just the usual shit we needed to be on the lookout for. At least my first day appeared to be a normal one without too much going on.
Captain Dick Paulson was just finishing his morning briefing. He led the South Precinct of the Nashville Police Department. Paulson was a wily veteran who’d been Captain of the precinct for over ten years. He was tall with a gray crew cut, a paunch on his belly and smelled like cigarettes.
He concluded the meeting with, “One final thing. Everyone knows we are three officers down, but we are working on it. I’d like to introduce a new face this morning. Officer John Falco is the newest member of the South Precinct. He’ll be taking over for Will Gillispie, who all of you know has been transferred into VICE as a detective. Officer Falco comes to us from the Franklin PD with three years of experience on the street. He’ll be reporting in to Nico Mayson, who is on loan to us while we are getting our ranks back up to speed. Falco will be working a beat right away with his new partner, Officer Angie Hicks.”
“Lucky me,” Hicks jibed. “I get the new guy.”
The rest of the room had a chuckle at my expense.
“Falco and Hicks will be covering Brentwood to Global and north to Nolensville Road. That’s all. Let’s move people.”
Only a couple of the men in the room came up to me as the meeting broke up, introducing themselves. Most of them just left. I sat back, waiting for my new partner to shake free. I noticed a black female officer was heading for her. I decided to hang back but didn’t take my eyes off Hicks. She looked hotter today than she did yesterday.
“You don’t want to fuck her,” I heard a voice calling from behind. It was Nico Mayson, the man assigned to be my mentor. The first time I saw Nico I was blown away. He was not real tall but was built powerfully and looked like he could make short work of any man twice his size. He had even more tattoos than I did, and I was pretty well tatted out on my arms, back and chest. Still, when I wore a blue uniform, they were pretty much unnoticeable. Nico was tatted pretty much all over. He was good at his job, damn good. His reputation preceded him and I knew it well, all the way to Franklin.
I decided not to share the fact that Hicks and I had already been there and done that in the whole fucking department, “Oh yeah, is that so?” I replied. “You’ve never slept with your partner before?”
“That’s not the point,” Nico said. “Unless Hicks turns out to be your boom, leave it be, man. If you fuck her and dump her she’ll make your life miserable. That particular woman takes no shit from anyone.”
“My boom?” I asked. “What is that?”
“That one woman you meet who you can’t live without,” he said. “The one you think about morning, noon and night—who changes you forever. You know . . . your boom.”
“I’ll never have a boom. I like my variety,” I told him. I’d fucked a dozen women this past year alone. Two dozen in the years before that. I never stayed with any one woman for very long—six months, tops. The idea of one woman for me reminded me of that guy in the movie, The Martian, who was forced to live on only white potatoes. That was not for me.
“You have a boom, boss?” I asked.
“I do indeed,” he said.
I chuckled.
“You think that’s funny?”
“Sort of.”
“Well, I won’t be riding along with you,” he told me, getting back to business. “You have three years on the street and there’s another new guy coming on with much less experience. I’ll need to hold his hand for a while. Your boss said great things about you. I will be reviewing your day with you at the beginning of each morning and of course, I’ll be getting reports from Officer Hicks.”
“Sounds good, boss,” I said.
“Don’t call me boss, Falco,” he said. “I work for a living.”