Beauty Queen

sergeant who was found to be living with a gay man— just a friend, mind you, and the force had quietly busted the sergeant back down to officer. So Danny had his two-room walkup on Lafayette Street and Armando had a basement place on Bedford Street. Sometimes Danny despised himself for still living halfway in the closet. He hungered for more courage. And he knew that someday soon, he would have that courage.
    "Seriously, the Intro Two demonstrations," said Armando. "There's gonna be demonstrations. Do you think you'll get sent to them?"
    "I doubt it," said Danny. "Unless the whole business gets very disorderly and they send out a call for extra officers."
    He hoped not. Using his nightstick on his brothers and sisters was something he never wanted to hear Captain Bader or Lieutenant Mondello order him and Mary Ellen to do. Mary Ellen would wilt at that order too.
    "It might get disorderly," said Armando. "I stand there behind the bar, and I hear the talk. This is the fourth time around for Intro Two. Everybody's getting pretty uptight. Would you believe, there's this dude usually comes in on Tuesday nights who always tries to proposition me, and last night even he was talking about Intro Two."
    Lenny came back with the coffee, so they stopped talking about the police force. Then the bartender started slicing lemons for the afternoon.
    "Danny," said Armando, "do you think it'll pass this time?"
    Danny thought of the talk in the station-house locker room. He thought of his brother (and sister, now) officers out on the streets, pursuing perpetrators, screaming down through traffic, lights on and the yelp going, or bending over to check a wino huddled on the sidewalk. He knew that roughly ten percent of them were gay, and yet the Policemen's Benevolent Association insisted that this was not possible, that there were no gay cops or no good gay cops.
    "No," he said soberly. "I don't think they'll pass it."
    "There's gonna be a lot of unhappy people in this queer's town," said Armando. "Something's gotta give."
    "I know," said Danny. "I'll be one of them."
    Lenny went in the back to get more lemons, and Danny said softly, "Sometimes I'd like to think I could be a gay Serpico. You know, come out, challenge the powers-that-be, change things. Change them just a little. But . . . forget it. They'd squash me like a rotten tomato, and things would stay just the same."
    "In San Francisco they got gay cops out in the open."
    Danny shook his head, mimicking the voice of some mythical Bronx politician. "San Francisco is halfway to the moon. This is New Yawk, man. This is the Big Apple. This is a very moral town, man. Take away the massage parlors and the bookies and whaddayuh got? Ya got lace curtains, man."
    "You're saying that politically New York is lace curtains?" asked Armando.
    "That's right," said Danny.
    Armando scratched his head melodramatically. "Lace curtains. Hard to believe."
    "Lace curtains ?" said Lenny, coming back in with a grocery box of lemons.
    Danny wondered how much Lenny had overheard. But Armando burst out with a perfect roar of laughter.
    "Yeah," he said. "Danny is redecorating his little apartment."
    The three men laughed. For some reason the mention of lace curtains reminded Danny of Mary Ellen and Liv (which was odd, because the two women didn't go in for lace curtains either—maybe some lingering chauvinism made him think it). He dug in his Levi's pocket for a dime to call Mary Ellen, and started to the telephone.
    Armando gripped his arm. "Calling someone I know?"
    "My decorator," said Danny, grinning. Lenny and Armando howled again.
    Mary Ellen answered the telephone. Danny was a little scared of Liv—something spooky about her—but he felt very close to Mary Ellen, even proud of her, and a little protective, which was odd because Mary Ellen didn't need protecting. She was prettier than Farrah Fawcett-Majors, and she worked in uniform instead of plainclothes, and she was a better shot than Danny. Mary Ellen could shoot the eye out of a needle. And why should a regular patrol officer feel protective about a sergeant?
"Hey, partner, see the thing in the paper about In
Chapter 6
Liv was waiting up for them, drained with worry. S
Chapter 12
Chapter 15

"Hey, partner, see the thing in the paper about Intro Two?" he asked.
    "Yeah," she said.
    "Let's hope the demonstrations are not disorderly, huh?" he said.
    "Yeah. You are so right. We definitely don't want to catch any runs to that kind of