The first email from her was almost unreadable; so furiously written the typos were rampant and confusing, her fingers not even on the correct keys half the time.

“Id like to know who the fuck you think youare running off like that . You think this is a movie, Cooper? Die Hard or lethal Weapoin or Termintor??? I was tyree second s away from slapping C>D> I( can’t believe you left like that! You nede to be where its safe with people to wacth yur back, this sin’t a goddmna movie! Tell me wher I can come pick you up. Don’t do thjis.”

Three attempted emails later and I still can’t say anything I dare send. So I resolutely hit the delete key on them and move her letter to a new folder in my Opera email program and simply label it “J”.

There’s no point even asking S’Phear to stay out of it; no point in even trying to password the document itself. If he wants in, he’ll get there; if he wants to read it, he will.
 

I sit on the floor to do email and to IM with S’Phear, wedged into a corner of the wall containing the uncomfortably large window; it’s the only draw back to the room. Even with the curtains drawn it makes me feel vulnerable and naked, exposed. So much glass and therefore not good as far as defense positions go but I’ve rearranged the room a bit, to compensate, striving for maximum amount of fiber board between me and potential bullets and assailants and rigged a nice little barricade in one corner for myself.

“Try to think like a bad guy,” Jase had told me. “There are only a couple of steps between cops and crooks anyway; you’ve already got the right brain cells firing. If you were a bad guy after a cop and storming a motel… when would you hit?”

“When least expected, and when easily concealed. After dark. Late,” had been my solemn response, not because I had any inkling of the life experiences ahead of me, but because I had gleaned he liked it when I was attentive and serious about the lessons he dispensed.

“And after dark you would expect the suspect to be where?” he had prodded, leaning forward so I could hear him over the bass beat of the music. We’d been in a club called Flashback that catered to 60’s and early 70’s music on N. Lamar not far from the Academy. Potheads hung out there, now and then someone on low grade blotter acid; it was a good place to sit and drink and talk because the clientele were usually too amnesiac to recall your face even if you had busted them a couple of hours earlier.

“In the bed,” I had said confidently, although a few months later I would have amended that to, “wherever the coke is”.

“Depends on the perp and the drug,” Jase had warned me, but with a smile that told me my answer hadn’t been wrong exactly and he wasn’t displeased with me.

“So if the situation were reversed… Wouldn’t be a good idea to be laying there all sprawled out unconscious, would it? Right where you’d be expected to be.”

That’s one lesson I knew long before I entered the Academy but that conversation had taken place between us in the early 1980’s and my past was not something Jase Hunnicutt was privy to yet.

So I have made myself a fortress in the corner of the room down the wall from the door.

The window is between me and it and to my left as I sit behind the low slung chest of drawers I’ve drug out from the far wall and set facing me; to my right is the bed. The mirror on the wall previously graced by the chest is fortuitously aligned and full length so that if the curtains are cracked open just perfectly I can sit in my little fort with my back against the wall and still monitor the comings and goings at the office across the parking lot from me, not to mention anyone who might decide to walk past my window for whatever reason.

I’ve unscrewed the bulb from the fixture outside my entrance door and strewn the remnants of it and a broken Michelob bottle on the walkway outside ensuring a tell tale crunch on the concrete and no light to avoid the pieces in the dark; this isn’t the type of place where the management takes it upon themselves to do more than pick up the used syringes in front of the office itself so there’s no worry my deliberate mess will be cleaned up any time soon.

If someone were to have reason to climb the stairs which are located a good thirty feet down the walkway, walk down to the last room and pause on the concrete outside my window, attempting to see in, they’d glimpse no more than a small slice of a room apparently half stripped and haphazardly occupied. Even if they have prior knowledge of the motel’s furniture arrangement, even if they turn and fire blindly through the window spraying the room with gunfire, I’ll be under it, up against the wall they’re firing over and through.

And while they may have no more than a thin opening of curtain to peer through, I have cut away the tattered lining of the drapes on the far left nearest the corner of my small fortress and can clearly look out through the rather open loose weave of the material. I’ve got an unobstructed view of everything that passes my window, without rising so much as to my knees.

I’ve left the bedding on the bed, rumpled as if it’s used; a pillow or two lumped under the cheap faded spread so that it looks occupied. Julio has provided me with not only extra bedding and pillows, but a thin foam rubber mattress from a camping cot, so it isn’t like I’m even really uncomfortable.

The most frightening thing about it all is exactly how at home and “normal” I feel.
 

I leave the television on the floor, just to the left of the mirror. The first dayI was too paranoid to turn it on, but the second my curiosity over how the media was handling the events gets the better of me and I pull the top two drawers on the right out so I can watch it through the opening in the chest without leaving my little hidey hole.

My black Dell notebook plugs into the phone jack in the wall behind the bed and I keep it on line and running; open communication with S’Phear who I hear from every couple of hours in email or IM. The SIG I have locked and loaded ready to hand just under the edge of the bed; the Ruger lies inside the middle drawer of the chest; I can pull the drawer out just enough to reach it, then level the barrel on the back side of the drawer and fire out the space created. I’ve peered out the place; squinting my eyes, trying to picture someone just inside the door and figure I can take out at least one knee cap, possibly shatter a whole femur.

The little .22 I keep tucked into the black nylon and Velcro calf holster I haven’t used in years; it lays snug and light against my inner left leg, comforting in spite of it’s diminutive size.

S’Phear has heard my set up out patiently in IM and although he doesn’t tell me he’s seen anything in the files to indicate my hiding out with such firepower is unnecessary, he does comment on it briefly.

S’Phearhead: I think you like playing paranoid cop.

I could argue the fine points between acceptance and necessity and the relish of actual enjoyment, but I glance around the room from within my little safe place; my clothes still inside my garment bag which lies folded and on top of it my duffel, open, ready to catch anything I need to toss in quickly, let my eyes linger on my little arsenal and pat the .22 on my leg with a grim smile.

H_Cooper_Finn: Maybe.

The second email from her is calmer, less scattered and angry. And much easier to
decipher.

“I know what you’re doing and I know why; that doesn’t mean I like it or think you’re right.

“I owe you an apology for the last email. So consider this it.”

I close my eyes briefly, laughing silently. If this is what one gets from a recovered-fully- involved-in-life Exstead, let’s all be relieved she opted for rehab. Christ.

I open them again, skipping down a few lines where McCafferty’s name catches my eye.

“~~Captain’s asking for your email. Can I give it?”


I lean my head against the cinderblocks behind it and bounce my skull off them a few times.

McCafferty. My eyes skip involuntarily to the television which is on, but muted.

“…just let me and Kerry know you’re okay and that you’re reading this. I’m going crazy. I know you think you’re doing the right thing, taking it all on yourself and hiding somewhere, I know you think you’re protecting us, but you’re not doing anyone a favor with the Lone Ranger shit. Please, Cooper.”

That please rips my heart out.

I bounce my head off the wall for another three or four minutes in thought, then type out an email to McCafferty.

“Caught you on the local station with that press conference yesterday. Salmon’s a good color for you. They cut you off mid- sentence with an advertisement for that new female cop show on Lifetime; you gotta appreciate the irony if not the sentiment.”

There. That should relieve her anxieties about me having skipped into Mexico.

“Let the rest of your Division know I appreciate the concern and I’ll be in touch when I can. Tell Dr. Weaver I’m eating semi- normal regular meals, no more than my limit of .05 % alcoholic products and ditto.

“Tell De Lorenzo I’m willing to meet her somewhere when/if necessary for the investigation & could you clarify that a bit for me? Am I under investigation for racking Massey’s balls or for the charges relating to the bullshit Van Zandt laid on me or both? And is that two separate investigations or just one? And have you heard from my Department, anything that sounded like they were sending out an attorney to represent me?”

I stop, listening to miscellaneous voices in the lot below, then relax as car doors slam and an engine revs up, leaving.

“For what it’s worth, I’m okay. I’d appreciate if you would pass that along to anyone interested. Things are rolling now. The scope widened and there were some problems but it’s up & running now.

“I don’t know how to say this for you to believe it after all the stupid shit which I’m not going to excuse or try to duck out of. But~~ thanks. You won’t be disappointed. “
 

My watch says 1:36 a.m. when I’m wakened by raised voices.

I tense for a moment, then relax slightly, realizing they are from the room downstairs. Someone’s partying and it sounds as if someone else is not happy about it. I catch muffled female voices and a deeper, drunk sounding male’s and the soft thump of someone shoved or pushed up against one of the walls.

The carpet’s threadbare, the floor thin. I stretch out and lay my ear to it and listen.

“~~ told you I was not putting up with this shit!” from a female, who sounds anything but doped or drugged or drunken. “Get your clothes on, Maylene.”

“~~said she needed the money~~”

“You just shut the fuck up, buster. Your dick’s got the right idea; why don’t you shrivel up and tremble along with it.”

I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing. The voice is smoky dark and melodic, self- righteously furious and un-cowed.

“You got no right to come in here like this,” the other female voice says angrily, only slightly slurred with alcohol. “You got no right to follow me around spying on me~~”

“Spying on you? Girl, you think I got nothing better to do than follow your sorry sick ass around and spy on it? I don’t give a shit about your love life or your drug habits or any other fucking thing to do with you. But I do care about those babies; the one in your belly and the one there on the floor. Now you get your clothes on and get your ass out of here, now.”

There’s some low rolling grumbles from the male which end in a distinct, “~~paid her.”

“Yeah? And you got to look at her titties, didn’t you? Sounds like a business transaction to me.”

“You cain’t come in here and take her after I paid already. I didn’t pay to look at no sad sack titties. You give me my money back bitch, or I’ll cut both of you into dog meat.”

I can hear some sort of scuffle and I’m cursing every protect, serve and rescue bone in my body as I stick the SIG in the front of my jeans and ease over the chest of drawers, snagging my cuffs out of my duffel and jamming them into a back pocket.

A thin bewildered childish wail rises up to join the voices loud enough now there’s no need to lay on the floor to hear them and from a room or two down the walkway from mine I hear a disgruntled stomping on the floor and a man’s irritated bellow to shut up, or he’ll call the cops.

Great, I think. Do that and hurry up about it and I can stay in here and not risk losing this room and having to start all over looking for another in the middle of the fucking night.

But I know better. People who stay in places like this don’t pick up the phone and call the cops over a disturbance or a scuffle or an argument between a prostitute and her john and some unknown female. People who stay in places like this let their neighbors, however transitory, settle their own disputes over money and drugs and flesh.

There’s the sharp crack of an open palm on skin below me as someone is slapped and the child’s sleepy howl turns into a brief shriek of terror before it’s abruptly cut off.

“Fuck,” I hiss violently to myself as I open the door, then ease it shut and lock it, sticking the ancient heavy brass key into my front pocket where it rattles briefly on the straight razor.

“God fucking damnit,” I spit out throwing one leg over the faded aqua colored metal railing and easing myself over and down the bars with my hands before dropping the three feet onto the pavement below. I don’t want to run pounding down the walkway and take the stairs; not because it’s so much faster this way as because it would mean crossing in front of all those rooms and doors and windows and compromising my safe room even further by exposing myself and where I came from to more people.

The door’s not even shut all the way; I can see light through a section of the knob area and splinters along the jamb and guess it’s been kicked in more than once. I pull the SIG and ease up to the cinderblock to the left of the door, then lay my palm flat on the cheap wood and gently shove the door open, scanning the occupants and the room quickly.

The guy is ridiculously white except for the turkey wattle red of his forearms, neck and the “v” at the top of his chest; he’s somewhere in his mid to late forties, graying and mostly bald, a roll of love handles above thin shanky looking hips and skinny thighs. His skinny white buttocks are sunken in and in stark contrast to the round little beer belly he sports in front. He seems drunk enough a hearty whack ought to put him down, but he is armed alright, with what looks like a serrated edged hunting knife. He’s leaning forward from the middle a bit, making ridiculously off-balanced sweeps of the knife into the air.

One of the women is stripped to her waist, brassiere still fastened around her rather chubby mid section, a shirt clutched to her front, incredibly large breasts swinging gently as she lurches drunkenly from side to side in an attempt to get by the guy to the door. There’s a ten dollar bit clutched in one of her hands and the sort of sleepy, indecisive, harrowed and fitful look I associate with a crack or heroin user that’s jonesing slightly.

The child, thankfully, is in the arms of the second woman who is glowering over the shoulder of the first, and although the baby’s sniffing and sobbing and wailing, he or she does not appear to be injured or harmed. If I had to guess which one of the four would come out of the altercation least mauled I’d have to lay my money on the second woman who spins towards the door when it’s opened and levels a look at me like a Sniper sighting in for the kill.

I’m thinking it’s a good thing for all of us she’s not the one with the blade when I see her eyes widen in surprised recognition. There’s five seconds or so of stunned silence as both our jaws drop and then in stereo we exclaim:

“Cowboy? What the fuck?”

“Jesus Christ, Bad Ass! What the hell are you doing here?”

Turkey Neck swings around unsteadily and I make sure he sees the SIG leveled at his chest, then turn it sideways in a gangster’s aim and slide it slowly down to crotch level.

“Get your clothes and get out.”

“Who the hell are you?” he demands, nearly castrating himself as he reflexively attempts to shield his private parts while still holding the knife.

“Set that down and get your clothes and get out of here,” I repeat, keeping my voice low and patient. There’s another bad moment or two as he wobbles around with the knife before he gets it safely on the bed and again when he goose steps a few times around the corner of the bed after catching his bony feet in the discarded bedspread heaped there, barely avoiding going down face first.

I don’t even try to hide the grin on my face when he looks up uncertainly, clutching his grimy jeans and western style plaid shirt to his penis and testicles.

It’s more than obvious he’s utterly terrified. I’ve never actually seen one… invert itself.

“Who are you?” he practically wails as I move out of the way and gesture at the open door with the SIG.

“Motel security,’ I say solemnly. “I have to ask you to leave, sir.”

“I paid for an hour,” he ventures weakly and I nod, then shrug.

“That’s unfortunate. You also pulled a knife on two unarmed women and an infant and were going to use this room to perpetrate an illegal sexual act, in front of a minor. I can call the police if you’d like them to straighten it out.”

He of course assures me that’s not necessary and limps naked and trembling to his car a few feet away. I memorize the license plate and watch to see which way he turns out of the motel exit, then punch in 9-9-1-1 on the room’s phone and report a naked drunk man driving North on Julian Street towards 14thin the Mission and reel off the plate, careful to do it in civilian-speak and pronounce every letter of the plate separately. All in a thick Spanish accent.

“You’re evil,” Bad Ass tells me when I hang up, grinning appreciatively. “I like that.”

“So… what?” I tuck the SIG back in my waistband and pull my shirt out over it, glancing around the room. “This some more of your vigilante stuff? You steal diapers and baby formula during the day and then at night you break into motels and interrupt sexual transactions?”

“Only when it’s family,” she says, thrusting one hip and the child perched on it under my nose.

“This is my niece, Chloe.” Her voice is butter soft and sweet as she speaks and the baby, clad only in a rather humid smelling Pamper and thumb planted in a soft rose bud of a mouth, leans her head over and tiredly thumps Bad Ass’s exquisite collarbone as she settles into her, eyes drooping.

“And this,” Bad Ass says, half turning but not looking, voice going grim and weary with disgust, “Is my brother’s white trash crank-head ‘ho of a wife, out whorin’ around like the sorry piece of ass she is and cartin’ her child along with her to do it.”

I feel as if a “hi” would be inappropriate and rather anti-climactic after that so I settle for a businesslike nod in the other woman’s direction then helpfully point out she’s not quite got one of her breasts in the restraining mode~~ She looks down perplexed and annoyed as she gathers it up and in laboriously.

I widen my eyes and slide them towards Bad Ass questioningly.

“Yes,” she spits out, voice furious, hand gentle on the baby’s smooth, pudgy back. “Fuckin’ addict.”

The dark almond shaped eyes are furious as she glares at me. “Want to tell me about what programs there are for women addicts?”

Her voice is sarcastic and smoky with disdain and I gather this encompasses not only me and the world at large but her sister in law and the system as well.

I clear my throat and decide to ignore her. She’s spoiling for a fight but it isn’t with me.

“How’d you get here?” I ask and just let it hang there to see which of them will answer and of course it’s Bad Ass because the sister in law is shuffling her way into the bathroom, wiping at her nose and muttering to herself in a low, whiny voice.

“I walked. We live about five blocks down and over and I saw that piece of trash pick her up. I knew she’d come here because it’s cheap and close and they always got a room.”

“”She pregnant?” I ask Bad Ass briefly, jerking my chin at the woman swaying into the smaller room and at her grim nod I take a couple of strides to catch up with her and catch her gently by one arm.

“I can’t let you go do that,” I say, my voice low and soothing and I pry open one clammy hand as she starts crying silently and sags back against the doorway, removing the little triangle of plastic and the rock of crack cocaine from her grasp.

It’s miniscule; not even enough to claim on a seizure because it isn’t enough to weigh out. It’s a “booger flick” in highway patrol terms; too small to bother with the paperwork over and easier to just remove from the plastic and casually flick into the weeds like a booger, while the subject’s knees visibly go wobbly and weak at the casual disinterested disposal.

“Where’s the pipe?” I ask her gently, doing a quick pat of her waist and ribs.

“Please,” she says weakly. “Please,”

I don’t want to look at her.

They’re pitiful; junkies. They’re physically ill when they’re withdrawing and it’s never pretty, never sexy, never anything like the movies. They smell and their breath is rank and their hair is stuck to their head with grease and they’ve clawed at their scalp and skin so that it’s raked up beneath their black finger nails and the little open sores are flaking and oozing. They exude a sort of smell all their own apart from body odor and neglected personal hygiene; a sort of sour metallic scent that twangs into the back of your throat for cocaine and crack addicts, a sickly-sweet, almost lemony vomit scent for the heroin deprived.

None of them ever look like Angelina Jolie.

“Please,” she says again, finger nails scrabbling at my wrist. My stomach rolls looking at them. They’re long and yellowed from nicotine, thick and curved at the ends and filthy, shiny with grease, blue black with filth. “I just need that one little rock. Please. I’m sick.”

She’s not lying there. She is. Her skin is clammy and beaded with sweat, her color a pasty gray yellow under the typical junkie acne, her eyes jaundiced and glassy. Liver damage, I think, maybe hepatitis C. I instinctively look for track marks and see old ones there at the bend of the inner arm.

“I can’t let you,” I tell her, resisting the urge to yank my arm out of her moist grasp and trying not to visibly shudder with revulsion.

“You can’t let me,” she repeats dully, then throws her head back showing blackened teeth and inflamed irritated gums and laughs hysterically. “You can’t let me.”

“No,” I say and to make it clear I lean the scant distance into the toilet area, drop the little bag and flush it. “I can’t.”

From the hair-raising shriek that issues from her throat you’d suppose I had done something injurious to her child; she lurches at me with her hands up and I catch her by the wrists, filthy nails less than five inches from my eye balls which it’s fair to assume she intended to claw out. There’s a momentary weak struggle she has no way of winning and then she collapses and goes limp, holding herself and moaning before staggering past the bed and out the open doorway into the parking lot and the dark beyond.

Bad Ass makes no move to stop her; I turn to the mirror over the sink and check to make sure she didn’t ding me on the face or arms or hands, then look up to see Bad Ass standing just behind me, swaying slightly, patting the child’s back and humming something soft and soothing and low.

“At least she didn’t spit on me,” I tell my reflection and that of Bad Ass. “I hate when they spit on me.”

“Thank you,” she says simply and I snort, eye the soap which has been opened and is grimy and sporting what looks like a pubic hair. I opt for just hot water which I turn on using a wash cloth that looks clean at least.

“For what?” My voice is dull and drops at the end so it’s clear it’s a rhetorical question only. “She’ll go out, find another john and she’ll pipe up at three a.m. instead of two.”

“But she didn’t pipe up in here and she can’t pipe up until she scores again and at least I know that won’t be with Chloe around. And that’s something.”

I lift my brows and eye her for a moment in the mirror and then turn, leaning back against the sink.

“Is it?” I ask. “Hmmm. Something, huh? It’s not much of anything, if you ask me.”

She shakes her head, then lays it gently over on the baby’s and gazes at me calmly.

“It’s something because it’s more and better than half an hour ago. It’s a long hard war but the little battles are important and you got to count every one of them when you win anything at all.”

“Ahh,” I say, “More of the Dali Lama courtesy of Bad Ass.”

“Avery.”

Her voice is quiet and composed and I shake my head, frowning slightly.

“Avery,” she repeats. “My name is Avery.”

“Avery,” I drawl and can’t help grinning back and repeating it with more twang when I see the instant delight on her face at how I butcher and add syllables to it.

“Aaa-aa-vuh-reee,” she attempts and I shake my head.

“No, no, see you got to stretch out the first syllable and then swallow and slur the rest of it up. Like this: Aaaaav’a’ry. Pretend like it’s 107 degrees outside and you just had three cold ones and you’re staring down at a plate of sizzling fajitas and you’re going to eat them with a little bowl of chilipetines . You can do it.”

“Shit, girl, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to be staring down at no plate of sizzlin’ hot fajitas if it was 107 degrees outside. I’d be vegging out under an a/c nursing a big glass of lemonade. And I got no idea what a chilly pet teen is. But it sounds illegal.”

She waves a hand at my waist and the SIG clearly visible under my tee shirt.

“Since you’re armed and dangerous and everything, could you walk me and Chloe home?”

I nod, but scoop the hunting knife off the bed and close it, handing it to her.

“Now you’re armed too. And that’s really scary.”


END OF 49