Weaver is extremely unhappy with me.

Even after three savagely gulped cups of coffee I feel vague and unfocused and she catches me like that, confused and blinking as I stand staring at the chest of drawers I’ve only just that day felt comfortable enough to put socks inside.

“Why?”

It’s one word. She demands it from the doorway which is black and grimy with the finger print residue they’ve dusted down the immaculate white wood.

I slide my eyes up from their perusal of drawers and let them catch and linger on the big ash-colored splotches marring the wood of the door; palm prints, I know. Probably excellent ones too because Ski Mask the Bat Boy AKA Chago was not wearing gloves.

Word to the wise; don’t pick heroin popping street kids to be hit men.

“Don’t do this,” is what ends up coming out of my mouth, although it isn’t what my brain intended to send to my tongue.

“Don’t do this?” she repeats, making it a question and crutching three feet more into the room, glaring at me, white-faced and exhausted. “How can I not do this?”

I shake my head, feeling miserable and rake the deodorant, cinnamon flavored floss and my toothbrush into my duffel off the top of the chest.

“I don’t know,” I say honestly, my voice thready and cracking with fatigue. “I just know I have to go; I can’t stay here.”

“Yes,” she says furiously, “You can. In fact, it’s what is smart, Cooper. You stay here and we get the door fixed and we install motion detectors and I set the goddamn alarm every night and we go buy a big scary dog and we have police patrol the street~~”

“Kerry,” I start and then realize I’ve addressed her, for the first time, by her given name and stop, consternated at the abrupt onslaught of emotions I have no way of juggling without something buffering the sharp edges that line up between me and the people I care about.

The people I care about.

There.

I take a deep breath and force my eyes up and see that she has not~~of course not~~missed the moment and the name. She’s smiling slightly, but it’s bitter sweet as she shakes her head, lips trembling.

“Kerry,” I say again, levelly, testing it and she nods.

“I have to go. No~~” I throw my head up as she immediately begins to protest. “Just listen, for one minute.

“This~~” and I throw a hand out and wave it at the finger print grime and then swoop it around to point out the window facing the street where the overheads are still flashing panic inducing splashes of red and blue across the dark calm house fronts, then bring it slowly back around to my face and point at the worst of the bruises, “~~is what I do. This is where I live. This is normal to me. This…“ I search for a word in bemusement and shrug slightly, “is what I know.”

“Cooper~~” she begins and I shake my head and cut her off again, throwing open the closet door and point emphatically at the bar inside on which hang my clothes.

“Look,” I tell her, my voice calm and informative. “See how I hang up my clothes? Three pairs of pants and three shirts all on one hanger. You know why?”

She gazes into the open closet space and then when I reach in and jerk out my clothing, enough for a week on two hangers, she sighs.

“So I can leave. So I can leave fast.” My voice is composed as I smoothly fold the clothing into my garment bag. “And here~~” I say, pulling out the top drawer of the night stand next to the bed, producing the ivory handled straight edged razor. “This was my dad’s. I don’t sleep anywhere…anywhere…without it. Because the concept of being attacked in bed is not new to me. This shit tonight? Nothing new.” I slide it into the front pocket of my jeans and then look at her, waiting.

She shakes her head helplessly. “I don’t~~

No,” I say and peer into the half cup of luke-warm straight black coffee, contemplating taking a swallow in spite of the moth inside doing a feeble breast stroke, “You don’t. And you know what? You shouldn’t have to. This is the shit of my world, not yours. I brought it in here and it was wrong. And now I want to take it out. I have to take it out.”

I fish the moth out and it lies panting and agitated on the curve of my forefinger and in the silence I watch it recover. And past it much the same process takes place in human form with only a little less shuddering and fluttering of motions.

There’s a chair near the window, a small wooden ladder back that is the twin to the one down the hall beneath the window in the master bedroom. She lowers herself into it carefully, her expression remote and I’m prepared to argue more, I have the words ready, but she peers up at me from under an untidy wedge of red bangs and then nods.

“You know,” she says after a few moments of silence while I do my version of tidying and packing of my possessions, “I honestly thought…” she drifts off, her voice and expression uncertain and vague and I wait, head cocked, listening until she sighs and scrubs furiously at her face with slim white fingers.

“I thought I could help you, keep you safe, make things better.”

The answer to give her, the one she needs which is thankfully the truth, slips from my lips easily as I heft up the duffel and the garment bag, gazing at her.

“You did.”
 

Bat Boy AKA Chago was officially christened on his day of birth Alphonso Dominguez.

He’s got numerous priors as a juvenile; a rap sheet dating back to his ninth year of life. Shop lifting, petty theft, tampering with city property, criminal mischief, loitering, trespassing… and then he graduated to assaults, terrorist threats, delivery of controlled substance and numerous misdemeanor possession charges.

In other words, in the world of the lawless and chaotic, he’s a peon. A piss ant. A nobody.

I can’t decide if that’s good or bad; did they think I was so pathetic someone like this could take me out?

And since someone like this almost did, shouldn’t I be grateful rather than insulted?

The door doesn’t quite close all the way; that’s how cheap and destitute a motel it is.

I have to call the office and ask they send someone to replace all the light bulbs because every single one of them is burned out.

Every single one.

It boggles the brain until you realize that a motel like this only rents to prostitutes and people waiting on drugs or waiting on drugs to run out and none of these people are big on energy conservation.

The commode flushes backwards too; not like I’ve suddenly been transported to Tasmania, but meaning I have to tug the handle up rather than shove it down.

This can really fuck with your head after a few beers.

Other than S’Phear I haven’t let anyone know exactly where I am although I stay in touch via telephone and email and it’s only been two nights.

Jinny is beyond furious with me.

Weaver is, if possible, angrier.

I can’t let that matter because the shit I have stepped in could get the people I care about hurt, could even get them dead.

Chago the Bat Boy was sent to hand deliver a warning; I got it even if everyone else refused to.

Jase went under that dark water and slid beneath the boat.

I am not losing anyone else.
 

Every time I boot the laptop up I tell myself I should grow some huevos and email Sarge and give him my new addy and let him send me that “suspended pending investigation; administrative leave enforced” letter.

And then I talk myself out of it.

The first hours after Alphonso Dominguez entered my life I told myself to wait because I needed the firepower and I wanted it without Jinny having to lie for me to get it.

Then I told myself it could wait because it was actually irrelevant; I was going on with the investigation into Massey and Chandler and I was going to pursue everything discussed with S’Phear and dragging Sarge and the Department into it was immaterial.

Two days, little sleep and many beers later and I have convinced myself it’s what they deserve anyway for having abandoned me when I got tossed to the big dogs.
 

The clerk came midway through the first day to look at the door after I complained for the fifth time it wouldn’t shut.

He suggested (rather rationally) that I simply let him give me another room. I could see the wheels spinning in his head when I refused; could see him looking at me and trying to figure out if I was a prostitute or an addict and who I was running from, saw him turn to look out and realize that the room I requested affords a full view of the parking lot; is upstairs but at the end so there is no excuse for extra traffic dawdling in my area; is across from the office so I can sit and watch everyone who checks in; is nowhere near any hallway or laundry room or storage closets where someone could hide.

He had no idea how many cheap-ass motels I had to peruse before I found the one with the perfect room set up though or how badly I didn’t want to have to start all over looking for another, so I took the bruises and the obvious paranoia and wove them into a story for him, a Once Upon a Time I know he’ll buy.

I know this because this is my favorite part of under cover work; weaving the story, layering the threads of what is real and what is needed believed into something that will appear whole when I pick it up and shrug it on.

Abusive husband, I told him, letting my hands grab at one another and wring themselves in subdued terror~~ ex husband, I reiterated. Just got out of the hospital, yes, concussion, ribs really banged up but not cracked~~ you know, if he could just stay off the meth… He’s a really nice guy but you know how it is when they’ve been up for six or seven days straight and they’re wired and he~~ fuck! He even hallucinated and maybe that was what happened when he attacked me because I know he wouldn’t do that if he was himself. Yeah, yeah, coke too~~ but more meth. Cocaine is a little better, huh? Maybe because it costs more and you can’t get as crazy or maybe it just doesn’t flare out as many brain cells at a time…

In half an hour I have heard that his sister Rosalinda was married to the same kind of guy and he cut her so bad she had to have over two hundred stitches in her head and she had finally got free of him after she left California altogether and then the next week the asshole bought it in a drive-by; you had to wonder sometimes what God was thinking, huh?

Within forty five minutes I have a door that will shut and which sports two new dead bolts and a little motel fridge he has lugged from another room. Of course I won’t want to go out because my ex has family in this area and as soon as I get some money from my family in Texas I’ll be leaving.

When he came back before his shift ended that first day bearing a hot foil package and tells me it is fresh tamales his abuelita made, I am reminded of why undercover work sucks you in and then sucks you dry.

Everything you do, everything you say is a lie. And even if you know it is your job, even if you know it is necessary for something as essential as survival… It’s still a lie.

It’s a very dubious thing to be good at.

I let him think the tears were because I was so touched and grateful and when he impulsively dug in his pocket and pulled out a cheap garnet and crystal rosary and pressed it into my hand, I didn’t even have the energy to protest.

I clutched it so hard for an hour after he has left that I have Jesus, bas relief in my palm.
 

S’PhearHead: Sounds like a poem to me, Huckleberry.

H_Cooper_Finn: Or a Nine Inch Nails lyric.

S’PhearHead: Same thing.
 

Our strategy and plan has been disrupted due to my unfortunate incarceration and the loss
of my old computer to the enemy, which put S’Phear on the run.

We’re only now barely back on track.

All’s not lost though; he reports to me Massey doesn’t appear to have any idea he was ever hacked and doesn’t seem to realize he is being hacked yet again. There are now entire IM conversations between parties involved in all the multitudes of pure shit that Chandler and he dabble in and the scope, S’Phear says, just keeps widening.

He’d love a dig at Chandler’s cyber world, he hints and I immediately respond with an emphatic, ‘No!” for once choosing discretion and caution over bravado; if we can nail him with what we have, if we can take him down too without risking blowing the whole thing, it would be stupid to chance it. Massey I can buy being this stupid; Chandler I cannot. Chandler will have some trap laid, some firewall loop ready to trace and fire back.

He isn’t happy with me; he’s insulted I doubt his cyber prowess, but reluctantly agrees it’s my call. It was my name on the bat, after all. And, he tells me even his typed words oozing glee, Alphonso Dominguez is in there; not email or IM’s from or to him because he’s a street kid and doesn’t have access. But his name, S’Phear tells me.

I don’t ask for details. I don’t have to ask to know S’Phear will keep digging and will relay anything he thinks I need to know.

He doesn’t have to ask to know that I don’t want to know too much.

 I’ve got serious firepower; that’s one thing.

Jinny’d found, through apparently legal channels, the SIG .357 I asked for; Magda somehow turned up a demure .22 semi automatic Taurus and although rather stunned at the source, I’d taken it. It’s toy size but fires ten rounds of LR’s and despite the low caliber of the ammo, .22’s can be counted on to wreak maximum havoc inside a body after impact.

And McCafferty had startled me by calling out the big dogs; what looks like a brand new government issue Ruger Mark II KMK series.

I’d gone with Jinny and Magda to the Division to give my official statement and peruse Bat Boy’s CCH; McCafferty was notified about the break in and the attempted assault sometime prior to that so I wasn’t surprised shortly after seven a.m. to glance up at the sound of clicking heels and see her bearing down on me, expression calmly grim.

“Here,” she had said casually, setting her purse down and using it and her body to effectively conceal the gun she removed from it. She’d wedged it between her hip and my feet which were propped on top of the desk and I’d rocked the chair forward and slid the weapon beneath my knees and casually under my jacket before clearing my throat uneasily and looking up at her.

“You need to see me?” I’d asked and she had quirked both brows in something like amusement before crossing her arms in their dark gray jacket and shaking her head, red curls swaying.

“No. You’re under investigation. You’re out on bail. You know what all that entails.”

“No spur of the minute trips to Cancun,” De Lorenzo had said warningly, winking as she slid into the chair a few feet away.

“Who’s heading it up?” I asked and managed to keep the eye flick and tremor to a minimum when De Lorenzo had answered, voice sedate and composed.

“Me. Nate. Couple of other guys.” She reached casually for a pencil and turned it end over end in her fingers without looking at me, her voice nonchalant as she asked, “…So, you have email, right?”, following it up with a second wink.

McCafferty had frowned bemusedly, glancing between the two of us, her mouth opening to insert some query before she’d thought better of it and snapped it shut, cocking a brow at me and pointed a meaningful finger at the weapon under my jacket.

“Have C.D. call a cab and walk you out of the Division. I need Exstead and Ramirez in my office now.”

Jinny had looked up from the file she was glaring at, forehead creased from her hands on it and smudged with ink, slid her eyes to meet Magda’s which were rolling as McCafferty’s heels clicked briskly across the tiles into her office.

“You,” Jinny had mouthed to me, finger jab and expression adamant. “Wait.”

The second the door rattled closed I had slid out of the chair, fitting the Ruger into the waist of my jeans, snug against the small of my back, then looked up at De Lorenzo expectantly.

“I need to leave without her following.”

“Gotcha,” she had said, rising smoothly and as easy as that, I was gone.

If you can call any of what I was feeling as I walked away easy.

S’Phearhead: You did what you had to. She’s a cop. She’ll know why.

Even with no more to go by than a keyboard; S’Phear is clearly male.



END OF 48