Special Operations (Badge of Honor 2)

“I don’t suppose you would have any white wine in there?”

“Yeah, I do,” he said, and took a bottle from the refrigerator door.

“How long has that been in there, I wonder?” she asked.

“You want it or not?” he asked.

She nodded. “Please.”

He took a stemmed glass from a cupboard over the sink, filled it nearly full with wine, and handed it to her.

“Make this quick, whatever it is,” he said. “I have to work tonight, and between now and nine, I’ve got to grab a sandwich or something.”

She didn’t respond to that. Instead she raised her glass toward the mantelpiece of the fireplace, which showed evidence of having recently been bricked in.

“What’s this?” she asked. “Your temple of the phallic symbol?”

“What?”

“Firearms are a substitute phallus,” she said.

He saw that she was referring to his pistols, both of which he had placed on the wooden mantelpiece.

“Only for people with performance problems,” Matt snorted. “I don’t have that kind of problem. Not only did I take Psychology 101, too, Amy, but I stayed awake through the parts you missed.”

“That’s why you have two of them, right?” she replied. “I hope they’re not loaded.”

“One of them is,” he said. “Leave them alone.”

“Why two?”

“I bought the little one today; it’s easier to conceal,” he said. “Is that the purpose of your uninvited visit, to lay some of your psychiatric bullshit on me?”

She turned to face him.

“I had lunch with Mother today,” she said. “She worries me.”

“What’s the matter with Mother?” he asked, concern coming quickly into his voice.

“Why you are, of course,” she said. “Don’t tell me that hasn’t run through your mind.”

“Oh, not that again!”

“Yes, that again,” she said. “And she has every reason to feel that way. She’s had a husband killed, and a brother-in-law, and she’d be a fool if she closed her mind to the possibility that could happen to a son, too.”

“Did she say anything?”

“Of course not,” Amy said. “Mother’s not the type to whine.”

“We have, I seem to recall,” Matt said, “been over this before. My position, I seem to recall, was that I had—there was a much greater chance of my getting myself blown away if I had made it into the Marines. I didn’t hear any complaints, I seem to recall, from you about my going in the Marines.”

“You had no choice about that,” she said. “You do about being a policeman.”

“Oh, shit!” he said, disgustedly. “When you get a real complaint about me from Mother, then come to see me, Amy. In the meantime, butt out.”

“You refuse to see, don’t you, that this entire insane notion of yours to be a policeman is nothing more than an attempt to overcome the psychological castration you underwent when you failed the Marine physical.”

“I seem to recall your saying something like that, before, Dr. Strangelove.”