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When the kid had come into the precinct, he’d first not said exactly where the crime was going down.“I need to speak to the Captain,” the kid had said. In his early twenties, give or take, he stuck out like a sore thumb in this neighborhood; he affected a scruffy beard as if he’d grown up in the ghettos on the South Side, but his bougie accent had given him away. Detective (2nd Class) Javert studied the impostor, who was slumming it either to impress his lower-life buddies or out of existential angst. This wasn’t something he’d put up with at the best of times — and definitely not after lunch on a freezing Tuesday afternoon, with the goddamn heat in the building on the fritz again, and the officers in the squad room downstairs pushing paper and pretending to be busy until their shift was over. “What is it?” The Texas State Police instructional manual recommended that the officers call civilians Sir or Ma’am, but a recommendation wasn’t the same thing as a strict requirement. Maybe he could get this over with quickly, and move on to more important business.As a reminder of such business, he felt a constricting pang below his belt. Javert was aware that parts of his uniform today weren’t strictly regulation, but again there was no prohibition against items that couldn’t be seen by members of the public. The kid ran a hand through the high fade of his hair. His fingers looked as soft as if they hadn’t seen a day of hard work. "Are you the Captain of this precinct?"The Captain was, as usual, MIA. Javert leaned forward in the man’s chair, and then adjusted his position when he felt the constriction again. Firmly, he put such non-regulation thoughts from his mind. "Captain’s out. I’m covering for him.”The kid looked doubtful. "It’s a very private matter."'"Then talk," Javert said, with great patience."And we need to move fast," the idiot said, even more doubtful.Javert rolled his eyes. "Then I suggest you talk very quickly."The kid’s name was Marius Pontmercy, a bougie name if Javert ever heard one. He said he was an attorney, though he was clearly the bleeding-heart kind who wouldn’t’ve known a billing target if it bit him on the behind. He lived in the seamier part of the old town. He wanted to report a crime-in-progress. It seemed that an older man, a do-gooder Marius’d seen from time to time in the neighborhood, was about to be lured by criminals into a trap at six o’clock that evening. Marius had been renting the room next door, and he’d heard the whole plot through the hole in their common wall. There was no way of warning the threatened man, since Marius didn’t even know his name, though he’d noted the names of some of the would-be perps — the boss who’d planned the trap was called Jondrette, and there were accomplices named Pancho and possibly Big Rennie.Javert frowned. The names were known to him: members of a notorious gang who’d thus far managed to escape arrest. Maybe it wasn’t a false alarm fueled by a bad acid trip or America’s Most Wanted re-runs, maybe the kid was actually on to something."Did you hear the name Patron-Minette?"Marius looked thunderstruck. "Patron-Minette," he repeated. "In fact, I did hear that word. Not from Jondrette. On my way here, I saw a long-haired man and a bearded man lurking in the snow behind the wall of Banker’s Street, and they mentioned that name.”Despite himself, Javert’s pulse rate started to speed up — at last, this might be the chance to bring down the infamous Patron-Minette gang. "A long-haired man, you say? That must be Brujon, and his friend Two-Lizards." He got to his feet, leaning across the Captain’s desk to eyeball the attorney. "Did you see anyone else? A pretty-boy, maybe, and a big guy who looked like he belonged in a zoo?”"No," stammered Marius. Javert crossed the room and paced back and forth, trying to contain his excitement. “And where is this trap happening?”“At the most deserted point of Boulevard Hospitale, in house No. 50-52.”At the sound of this number, Javert raised his head. For a moment, he couldn’t put his finger on why that address sounded familiar. And then — no, impossible. It was too much of a coincidence. “50-52? Tenement owned by Gorbeau?”“Yes. On the second floor. Over a deli, and a, ah, that is to say, a personal goods store…”Javert narrowly bit back a curse. Just when he thought he was going to really enjoy a good, meaty crime bust, Fate had to turn everything around and throw it back in Javert’s face.Javert had discovered Pussy Boss’s Den of Desire a year and a half ago, when online browsing on his new apartment’s dial-up connection had stopped hitting the spot for him. The Den's main draw was its ready stock of leather that actually fit — he’d discovered the hard way that guys his height usually had a somewhat larger waist measurement, and if things fit on the rest of him they rode up much shorter than was comfortable. Another benefit was its inventory of sex aids, which was much more extensive than what was available online. Javert had found out first-hand that nothing beat being able to physically touch things before deciding to make an investment.Plus, the lady that ran the store, Ma’am Bourgon, seemed a reasonable sort — he’d run a background check on her and it had come up clean, and all the paperwork was in order. And it was close enough to his regular beat that he could stop by on his way home from work. Now, thanks to this damn bust, it looked like he would never get to patronize the Den ever again.Marius squirmed under Javert’s glare as he tried to stammer out a description of the personal goods sold in this particular store. When he gave up, Javert spoke severely, ignoring the non-regulation part of his uniform that had suddenly gotten much too tight."So the room overlooks the back alley of Banker’s Street?""That’s right." Marius mopped his forehead, looking relieved after his reprieve from the sex store conversation. "Do you know the neighborhood?""Yes,” Javert said, grimly. “Unfortunately.” He’d never asked Ma’am Burgon who her upstairs tenants were, or if it was possible to access the second floor via the Den. What he knew was this: the place would be crawling with skittish, suspicious customers, and the walls seemed paper-thin. It wouldn’t be easy to station undercover cops inside the building without tipping off the criminals themselves.He ended up agreeing with the attorney as follows: one, his squad would stake out the building from the front and the back alley. Two, the kid would pretend to be all business as usual and keep watch from his spy-hole. Then, when the gang was all in place and poised to strike, three, Marius would give a signal, and the police would move in.“How do I give the signal?” Marius asked. His eyes had gotten impossibly wider. “Ma’am Burgon downstairs doesn’t let the lodgers use the store phone, and the nearest pay phone’s a block away.”Javert rolled his eyes again and reached into the desk drawers. “They don’t pay legal aid lawyers enough to buy a cell phone? Take this.” He shoved the snub-nosed standard department issue GSM brick at the kid, who gaped at it as if Javert had handed him a Sig 229. Which was ridiculous: there was no way Javert would lend the kid a firearm, it was against regulations. “If there’s trouble, text me at this number, then lie low. Leave the gang to us.”After the kid had sloped off, Javert went into action. He assembled an undercover team of officers and gave them their assignments. Duchamp and a couple of the other officers would stake out the alley in plainclothes, Marcel and Philippe would take turns in the deli and watch the main door and the fire escape, and Javert himself would station himself in an unmarked car at the front of the Den. At five o’clock, the squad set out from the station with only a minimum of grumbling. It didn’t take long before Marius’s intel demonstrably hit paydirt. Various Patron-Minette affiliates began to arrive in twos and threes, converging on the Gorbeau tenement. Javert himself watched Big Rennie and Brujon pull up in a Dodge with missing tail-lights that was a traffic violation on wheels. Blending in with the regular clientele, they vanished through the grille doors of the Den. Sitting in an anonymous Buick with the heater turned up to the max, Javert’s palms itched fiercely. For the tenth time that hour, he resisted the urge to enter the Den to wait for Marius’s text. Ma’am Burgon knew him as that nice Mr. Edward, but the members of Patron-Minette would know him on sight and wouldn’t be fooled by his off-duty persona. Especially since he’d decided to wear his uniform coat over the street clothes. The black leather coat was undercover for the area, as it wouldn’t’ve been anyplace else. It had been a gift from his patron when Javert had graduated from the Academy. Javert had taken it on his first assignment upstate — which was the first and last time he’d ever let a criminal get away — and had been wearing it ever since. They didn’t make leather like they used to a decade ago; these days the department-issue coat was plastic, and ill-fitting. This old coat fit him like a glove, the years of wear moulding the soft leather to his body like second skin. The only other leather items that fit as well — like the leather gloves he was wearing now as part of his uniform — he’d bought from the Den. Along with certain other non-regulation uniform items, it had to be said. Javert had been wearing his new cock-ring to work this week so that he could road-test it under more challenging conditions. The results he’d had at home had so far been good — the cock-ring had been helping him keep it together, and he’d been lasting much longer when he jerked off at night to fantasies of re-arresting the criminal mayor. Unlike the last, too-small cock-ring, this one was pleasingly cool to the touch and fit comfortably against his dick, even when it was half-hard. He’d trained himself not to think about the cock-ring while he was at work, although there’d been some lapses, notably earlier that afternoon when Marius had made his report. But he’d completely forgotten about the cock-ring in making the urgent arrangements for the bust, and he’d only remembered it again when he’d gotten into the Buick, by which time it had been too late to take it off without causing even more delay.Again there was the itch, which Javert shoved to the back of his mind. He needed to focus on the stake-out. He needed to not think about the criminal mayor, or the cock-ring, and definitely not about how, thanks to this bust, he might never be able to show his face in the Den ever again. His phone buzzed with a text. It was Jacques, stationed at the start of the Boulevard Hospitale. Jondrette car sighted, it read, and thirty seconds later an ancient Cadillac Eldorado pulled up, all spoilers and extreme tail-fins. It parked itself illegally two lots down from Javert. Jondrette got out, and with him a slight, well-dressed man in a dark coat. This must be Patron-Minette’s mark. They, too, disappeared into the Den. There was definitely an internal staircase. Be on the alert, Javert sent to his team, and the office cell he’d given Marius.He received affirmative responses from everyone except the attorney. Javert frowned: maybe the kid had needed to take a leak. Pontmercy: respond when you get this.When Marius didn’t text back after five minutes, Javert wondered whether he should place a call. But then the gang might hear the phone ringing through the hole in the wall, and then the operation would go to shit.
Where are you? Respond now!
It agitated him even more when still other Patron-Minette members began to arrive ten minutes later: the pretty-boy Montparnasse, and tall, thin Claquesous, and long-haired Baby. All of them vanished into the Den.
Respond NOW
Fifteen minutes. Twenty. Still no Marius. Fuck.At the twenty-five minute mark, Javert couldn’t stand it any longer. He texted AM GOING IN, got out of the car and crossed the freezing street with rapid strides. His pulse beating in his ears, he pushed open the grille doors to the Den.The Den was as dark and welcoming as it always was, busy with the usual crowd of male patrons despite — or maybe because of — the cold night. Racks and racks of sex toys lined up neatly across the open space. There were dildos and butt-plugs in different colors, handheld and battery-operated, ranging in size from starter size to the Incredible Hulk; there were sparkly floggers and silk ropes and velvet-lined handcuffs that looked more decorative than functional; on the other end of the spectrum there were canes and whips that looked like they could do serious damage. In a nod to the new era of safe sex, there was a large rack of condoms and dental dams and other plastic barriers in different flavors.The leather goods were in the back, together with the other costumes, and the shelves of porn videos. Javert remembered seeing the door beside the changing area; presumably this led upstairs.“Hey, darlin’,” Ma’am Burgon drawled from her place behind the counter. She corrected herself when she saw who it was. “Oh, Mr. Edward! Haven’t seen you down here in a while.”Heads turned in his direction. Javert winced — he had picked this fake ID because of the running joke that in this town, all cops and criminals had French names, but it wasn’t really helping in this instance.He rapidly cased the joint. No familiar Patron-Minette faces; mostly honest citizens out to get up close and personal with the vanilla or kinky porn of their choice. One or two glances were assessing — it took a moment for Javert to realize they weren’t assessing whether he was going to arrest them, but whether he’d welcome an advance.“We’ve got a new stock of convict videos in back,” Ma’am Burgon said in a stage whisper. “Sam Abdul’s new anal scene in maximum-security penitentiary! I remembered you were a fan.”Javert glared at her. “In the back?” he asked. “Together with the door that leads upstairs?”“Yes?” She leaned in even closer. “But you don’t want to go upstairs. Nothing up there but a bunch of lowlifes who’re always behind on their rent. Old man Gorbeau says he’s gonna evict them, but one of them’s an attorney who says he’ll fight the eviction notice, who knows.”Javert sighed, then took out his badge. “Keep it down,” he said warningly, as Ma’am Burgon examined it closely. In an undertone, he said, “Did those men come through here?”“Huh,” Ma’am Burgon said. She didn’t sound particularly surprised. She handed his badge back. “So you’re really a cop? I guess cops have needs too. How’s the new cock-ring working out for you?”“Not so loud,” Javert said fiercely. Said cock-ring chafed against his inner thigh. “The stairs are back there, are they?”“Yes, right beside the daddy porn. If it’s still too tight, Detective, I have an even bigger one in stock.”Javert was spared from having to respond to this by Marcel’s belated arrival. The rookie didn’t blink an eye at the vast pornucopia spread before him; like most kids his age, he probably got his kicks from the internet.“Detective, seems two of the guys and then the lawyer just ran off down the fire stairs! Jacques went after them, and Duchamp is keeping watch, but I’ve got Philippe and the others headed in here.”Marius had run off? Damn it, he should have known the attorney was unreliable. Javert said grimly, “Take control of the room, and then watch my back. I’m going up.”He left his Sig holstered as he crossed the store, so as not to tip off the patrons, but they started to raise the alarm anyway. One of the guys tried to hit him with a purple butt-plug. Adrenaline surging through him, Javert pulled the nearest dildo off the shelf and clubbed the perp across the head.Another guy, arms full of merchandise, tried to run. On automatic, Javert grabbed the purloined items from the would-be thief and sent him sprawling to the ground.Behind him, Marcel had taken out his piece, and was yelling, “Police! Everybody on the ground, now!” There was the sound of the other men pounding into the store, and Ma’am Burgon saying, brightly, “Ten per cent off everything for the officers of the Paris police department!”Javert shoved the merch into his coat pocket, yanked open the door, and took the stairs two at a time. *** When the thugs grabbed him, Valjean’s first thought was: Cosette would be mortified.He’d only gone into Paris’ red light district because Jondrette had told him they’d rescued some women and children from a porn smuggling ring that the local police had been bribed off about. It had been a trap, and Jondrette had revealed himself to be Thenardier, the owner from the motel in Mount Fermeil so many years ago.Now Thenardier’s gang was demanding that he call Cosette to lure her down here, and all Valjean could think about was how horrified Cosette would be if she suspected he’d actually come here intending to purchase … goods … of the kind that were in fact on sale at Pussy Boss’s Den of Desire.Valjean was no innocent — no one who’d spent nineteen years in prison could be — but he had in fact never been inside a sex shop. He understood the general premise, of course. Many men, and women too, were sexual creatures. Some of them wanted to liven up their relationships with their partners. And then there were those men who were solitary in nature, who preferred to get off by themselves, with a little help from the goods that were sold in places like these.Valjean was himself a solitary man, by nature and now by circumstance; even his beloved daughter had no clue who he really was. Maybe it was a habit from prison, or from his time behind the guise of a public official, but he’d never been able to risk abandoning himself to sexual feeling. The few times the urge had taken him were always furtive and solitary — he hadn’t let himself think of anything other than relieving himself quickly and quietly so he could get to sleep. He’d never imagined indulging his sexual preferences with store-purchased sex toys.He’d also never imagined sex toys could be used as weapons, but he supposed anything could be a weapon in the wrong hands. He’d managed to fight off three men, but the fourth had been too much for him; they’d secured his wrists and ankles to the pallet in the room with handcuffs and something one of them had said was a spreader.“I don’t care what it is! Just tie him down,” Thenardier said, harshly.The fourth man, a big fellow, was leaning on his chest and holding him down as Valjean tried frantically to buck him off. “These fucking sex handcuffs are no good. We need rope!”Thenardier threw some over, and Valjean struggled even more as the ropes were bound around his body. He’d taken off his coat when he’d gotten into the stinking room, and his shirt and jacket had come loose in the fight; the ropes were unexpectedly silky as they pressed insistently into his bare skin. Something was forced onto his head — it was like a rubbery stocking mask, with perforations at the eyes and nowhere else. Valjean tried to suck in air and couldn’t. He felt the fight leaching out of him together with his breath. “Finally,” Thenardier said, his voice coming as if from very far away. “Maybe now he’ll be good and call that girl of his. Who knew latex hoods could be used for other things?”
A latex hood? Oh God. Cosette would be mortified.
Dimly, he felt fingers work at the side of the hood, and then a flap came loose and Valjean could breathe again. He sucked in a great gasp of fetid air, wondering if Cosette even knew what a latex hood was. He hoped not, anyway.“Had enough, old man? You ready now to do what we want, or we gotta go again?”Valjean was silent, and Thenardier said, “Close it up, Brujon — or, I know, someone bring that butt-plug over and give it to him good —”“No,” Valjean said, coughing. His body had gone rigid. He’d managed to keep himself untouched during his nineteen years inside, and and the years since; he’d do anything to keep Cosette safe, but the notion of his first time as being this violation, by a massive purple toy that money could buy, rather than the loving touch of another human — he could hardly stand it. Besides, if they did that, they might find what he’d hidden there, where no lover and no toy had ever reached.He fought to keep the desperation from his voice. “No, there’s no need. I’ll do it. But I can’t call her now. She’s at a night class, her phone’ll be off until eight o’clock.” “Eight o’clock? That’s too long. Maybe I should send Baby and my wife to go pick her up from school, huh?”Valjean could have sworn he heard a gasp that seemed to come from the wall. He turned his head; maybe the hood was blocking his vision, but he couldn’t see anything unusual. “She wouldn’t go with any of you without word from me,” he muttered. “I’ll give you the address, but you’ll have to wait.”He wasn’t going to do anything of the sort, of course; the address he gave was fake. When the thugs’ attentions turned toward the new mission, he set about trying to discreetly work loose of the sex handcuffs and the rope. Thank God, one of the lock-picks was still lodged in his sleeve, and when he worked his right hand past the ropes and down his trousers, he found his edged coin still in its hiding place. He was freeing himself when sudden, urgent noises could be heard from downstairs, and then the shout of: “Police! Everybody on the ground, now!”“Oh, fuck,” said Brujon. Someone else said, tightly, “Boss, what do we do, they’re coming up the stairs!” Thenardier exclaimed, “The window, you morons!”“But it’s a ten-foot drop!”“You wanna stay here and take on the cops? Anyway, we can use the rope to get down, right?”“We used up all the rope tying up the old man,” Brujon said.“Are you kidding me? We’re in a sex shop, what do you mean, there’s no more rope?”"Maybe you’d like my rope," remarked a familiar voice on the threshold.Everyone wheeled round. Valjean hadn’t seen Detective Javert in years, but he looked just the same: as tall and broad as he’d been almost a decade ago. He was wearing that terrifying leather coat that still haunted Valjean’s nightmares. The coat flared around him as he strode into the room, gun in one big, gloved hand, looking like an avenging avatar of extreme kink, as if he belonged in this sex shop crime bust as much as he belonged anywhere in the world. Javert had a fistful of what looked like decorative rope in his other hand, and was holding it out to the thugs with an even more terrifying smile.The thugs shivered, and Valjean shivered with them when he realized the rope Javert was holding was made of anal beads. “Hands where I can see them,” Javert was saying. “Nobody’s going out through the window, rope or no rope. The door’s much healthier for you, and I’ll even let you try on real police handcuffs for kicks, not this dime store trash.”Brujon said, “It’s Detective Javert! He stopped a bullet the other day, I swear!”Thenardier took a step toward Javert and then thought the better of it. “Fine. We surrender. Don’t shoot, Detective.”“That’s right. That’s good boys.” Javert motioned urgently, and a squad of policemen rushed into the room, guns out. Valjean had managed to free himself in the commotion; he sat up, and then he froze as he came face to face with Javert.For a heart-stopping moment, the world stood still. Valjean felt Javert’s gaze rake over his body, still circled by the coils of silken rope. He thought he saw something flare in Javert’s eyes, and the detective’s face turned bright red; his free hand made a groping movement toward the front of his trousers, as if his off-duty pants had become suddenly uncomfortable. Valjean’s gaze followed the clenching movement of Javert’s hand. Maybe it was a trick of light, but Javert’s trousers seemed to be sporting a massive bulge that looked, alarmingly, like one of the sex toys with which Valjean had unfortunately just become familiar.Valjean didn’t know whether to stare at Javert’s face or Javert’s huge package. The last time they’d faced off against each other had been over Fantine’s deathbed. He couldn’t quite believe they were meeting again at this faintly ridiculous crime scene, and that for some reason, instead of the expected look of vicious triumph, the detective now looked strangely mortified. Then, even more astoundingly, Javert turned away. It took Valjean a moment to process why. He was still wearing the latex hood. Javert didn’t recognize him. “You’re safe now, sir.” Javert was addressing him, but for some reason, he was still facing away, as if too embarrassed to keep looking at Valjean. Absently, he shoved the anal beads into the pocket of his coat. “Marcel! Get over here and help this man get out of — just help this man.”A plainclothes officer hastened over to Valjean and started to assist him with the ropes. Javert strode away to check on the criminals without a backward glance. His posture was even more unnaturally stiff than Valjean remembered, and so was the bulge in his pants, which Valjean could still see in profile. It was as if the sight of the latex hood and bondage ropes was somehow profoundly disturbing to the detective.Maybe it was the adrenaline, or the reaction from being so near to Javert and to re-arrest, but Valjean wondered what Javert would have done if he’d known it was Valjean in the latex hood. Would he have been even more disturbed, or embarrassed? Would that large bulge have abated in horror, or done quite the opposite? He’d never thought of Javert in this way before — he’d certainly never considered that stoic, single-minded cop having sexual needs, let alone needs that he indulged in such an environment. And yet here the detective was, entirely in his element in this kinky milieu, and it was only now that Valjean realized how much that black uniform coat looked like fetish gear. The thought made him shiver again.He was spared from these troubling new thoughts by one of the gang members deciding, unwisely, to fight back. As Javert put the man in a headlock, Marcel pulled out his own weapon and rushed over to back him up, and Valjean took his chance.It was indeed a ten-foot drop, but fortunately the bondage ropes had some give to them. Valjean was out in the street in no time. There were no members of the Paris, Texas’s police department in the alley, but he left the hood on just in case — in this neighborhood, no one was going to judge his kink.No one except Javert, of course, but the detective clearly had issues of his own that Valjean didn’t want to think about at all. No, he needed to focus on getting as far away as he could from this sex store bust and criminals and this policeman whom God kept putting into his path.But even as he fled, Valjean was aware of the bone-deep certainty that he had not seen the last of Detective Javert and his fetish coat and unmistakable kinks, and that this new and even more disturbing chapter to their story was just getting underway.