Now You See Me...

[José Luis Flores]

“Yeah yeah yeah,” José snapped, getting more annoyed by the second. “Stupid, I know.”

Another wave of people passed, and José could feel the time slipping away.

“Listen,” José cut in, before the white dude could start up again. “Can you do... whatever it is you do and get us out of here? ‘Cause if ya can’t, we’re wasting time talking about it here, when we could be moving and talking at the same time.”

I can get us outta here. But I ain’t jumping into that shithole. No way, no how.

José was suddenly struck by the knowledge that the Elevens were hunting him. He’d known it before, but he’d honestly thought they’d get bored and leave, having chased him off; this wasn’t technically their territory anyway... was it?

The knowledge scared him. He wasn’t ready to die. And if he was, well... couldn’t he have had the chance to make Sara a teen mother first?

[Polly Smithson]

Five minutes (by car) meant it was probably fifteen minutes by foot if they traveled at a moderate pace. Since that would just compound the series of slipshod mistakes that had pinned them here in the first place, it was a safer bet to bank on an ETA of twelve minutes or so, hustling, and though it might have seemed uniquely neurotic to be interested in such specifics, they were necessary factors in calculating the success of their little hopalong operation. Polly had never been very good at math but she remembered enough from Algebra I to know you had to balance the equation to solve for X, which in this case was their moment of departure.

Distance (12) + velocity (fast) x the square root of the twisted, hungry expressions on the gangbanger's faces (ugly to the nth degree) to the power of the probability of return (high) = right the fuck now.

"A'right, then. Follow the white rabbit," Polly swung her bag onto an impatient shoulder and looked once more down the street, through the trickling mass of poorly-stylized locals. There was no sign of the cholos and that was anything but reassuring; there was blood in the water and the only thing worse than swimming with sharks in those conditions was losing sight of their grinning maws.

They slid out of the suburban cave, a vaudevillian combination of bodies that looked about as subtle as a gynecologist wearing a gas mask, and fell into step in front of a group of chattering Hoodsies in short skirts and pancake makeup, liner so dark around their eyes they looked like they'd gone three rounds with Ike and liked it. Polly kept her head down and her shoulders hunched, steps brisk and fluid in an old familiar cadence. Maybe the scenery had changed, but this was an old school dance and the steps hadn't changed.

Something ain't right. As they double-timed it down the pavement, Jim's weaving frame guiding the way, she couldn't keep the bubble of ominous anticipation from building in her belly. This was way too easy an out and no matter what anybody said, you always looked a gift horse in the mouth because free or not, rotting teeth were a hell of an expense to take on. Where had the car gone? Why weren't those pedestrian goons bearing up behind them? The sirens had dimmed and as shitty as cops were that was a sure sign that something had shifted the wind and, given their luck, that probably meant they were sailing into dead water.

It was a thing of beauty, really, how well her mind was synchronized with fate.

A leering, low-riding whistle drifted on a curl of hot breeze from their right. Grinning at one end of a cross street stood a trio of bronze-skinned Three Elevens - well, two and a half maybe; one was a pocket-sized wannabe, all of thirteen maybe, with a skinny chest and an eager, initiate smile.

"Ya te chingaste, cucarachas!" the goons started towards them, almost casually, as if savoring the moment. It was the loose-limbed brass of them that pissed Polly off more than anything. In the grand scheme of things, perhaps they were small change, but that didn't make rattling any less annoying.

"Sorry, I don't speak cocksucker," she hollered. "But I'll ask your whore of a mother to translate, she's fluent!"

There was nothing guaranteed to light a fire beneath a body's feet like a jugular slash at good ol' mama. It had a universal capacity to offend and with the certainty of time and truth, the Latinos went from loping wolves to charging bulls in a nanosecond.

"Oh shit," Polly laughed and shoved at Jim and José, needlessly as they were already pounding it and going flat out across the asphalt. A liberating freeness fueled her flying steps and she felt the band around her lungs unclasp: now they were runnin'.

That still left the car and their original pursuers to account for, then. As they tore down unfamiliar streets, quick slaps of determined prey echoed by the thudding anger of their closing predators, her brain raced. There was only one reason why you put new players on the field before the old ones retired. This was a classic herding trap. It might have been unoriginal, but that was because it worked.

Her quads burned in protest as she powered forward faster, lining herself up with Jim and José.

"They gonna try head us off!" without breaking pace, Polly yanked a compact Glock 17 from the waistband of her jeans, the finger grooves shiny from wear and damn near electric as they kissed against her fingertips in intimate embrace. She slapped it against Jim's chest, counting on his shock to bring his hands up and grip it. "Here: act tough!"

And with that parting directive, she veered sharply to the left, down Clinton Ave, and disappeared in a snap of disturbed air.

[Jim Lewinski]

Jim shrieked and fumbled the gun like a hot potato. In his panic, he barely registered Polly's departure, and managed a glance over his shoulder once he had proper purchase on the weapon. Polly was gone. Still fleet-footed, he and his criminal companion managed a bewildered exchange. Now there were two, and the drumming footsteps behind them suggested the pack of hispanic hounds remained in hot pursuit, much to Jim's dismay.

In his hand, the pistol felt heavy, and alien, and cold. So great was his fear of accidentally popping someone, he briefly considered concealing it in his jeans like a real gangbanger, but his fear was only secondary to the innate fear of blasting his fucking nutsack off. The punks started to bark again, their words rolled like automatic rounds, granting their quarry a burst in speed. Up ahead, a young mother herded a small army of infants from a greengrocers, consuming the entire sidewalk.

"Outta the way! I gotta gun! Oh God, I-didn't-mean-it-like-that!"

They passed under armfuls of airborne produce and dodged the scattering crowd, their screams spreading across the street, a pandemic pandemonium. Drunk on a heady cocktail of adrenaline and terror, Jim's mind began to race. His eyes darted, swallowing whole their surroundings and everyone in it, from the angry old woman who battered a convenience store window with her cane to the unconscious dude, cradling a forty ounce bottle of Old Milwaukee on a passing bus. While he scanned for an escape route, he thought about Redención House, and Anna, and what she would think of him harbouring a criminal in her home, and if the cops came to call, what he would say to explain how he became entangled in the story of a skateboarding thief, a disappearing black woman, and the local murderous gangsters. Would they buy his Mountain Dew alibi? Not-that-it-mattered-anyway-because-he-was-presently-busy-terrorizing-the-streets-of-Los-Santos-with-a-fully-loaded-Glock-17. Again, police sirens.

"I've been framed!" he cried out, somehow completely unfatigued by his exertions, "I'm on the run, armed with a semi-automatic weapon, and an alibi that makes me sound like a first-class nut-job! How-did-this-happen!? That double-crossin' bitch!"

[Veronica]

The dark gray unmarked Dodge Charger pulled out in front of the two kids to a chirping, ABS assisted halt and lit up like a Fourth of July finale. Veronica swung herself out of the car and drew her Baretta 92FS, but kept it behind the car's high belt line. At twenty feet it was an easy shot for her. Veronica was clad in LAPD blues and the most hater-blocking gold-rimmed aviators, and she looked like 6' 6" of kicking your ass in a 5' 4" package. She held up her right hand, palm outward in a visual attempt to make the two boys stop.

"Hands in the air, now." She said loudly, but tried to keep from startling the kid, who clearly had no idea what he was doing with a gun.

[José Luis Flores]

“What the hell?!”

José’s was seriously beginning to hate everyone. Even if this one was sexy enough to have him want to do what she wanted.

“Hell no lady!” he said, grabbing Jim and pulling him to the left with a gasped command for the white dude to keep his finger off the trigger or drop it. With Elevens on their ass (sure as hell more than just that sexy police woman, unless she had back-up coming), some crazy black chick who can disappear, and now the po-po’s in on the whole thing, José wasn’t stopping for the fucking President. “We don’t wanna die!”

The gorgeous piece of police ass looked like she was going to stop them even with his eloquent plea and rationalization of their actions. José put on a burst of speed and heard the Elevens coming up on them from behind. As he tried to round the car, the sight of a familiar Crown Victoria brought him up short.

“Well, shit,” he said, summing up all his feelings about the day in two words.

[Polly Smithson]

MILLER-SMITHSON #13, 12/2/2002 FROM 3:09 PM TO 4:05 PM

MILLER: I know it’s early but here. Happy Birthday.

SMITHSON: Aw, you shouldn’t have. What is it?

MILLER: It’s a daybook.

SMITHSON: Just what I always wanted.

MILLER: So, what are your plans? Six more days and you’re a free agent.

SMITHSON: Hey, I heard this joke the other day. Big Johnny told it to me, you know Big Johnny? That fucking guy. I gotta tell you this, you’re gonna love it. So this hospital director is givin’ a tour to a benefactor, right, a real fucking cash cow - paid for the new cancer ward, the whole nine. They’re pulling out all the stops; flowers, coffee with the prestigious brain surgeon, taking her by the wing where they stuff all the terminal kids that they named after her husband - who was a fucking prick, no surprise, but what the fuck does she care ‘cause he’s dead and she’s got his money now.

So they walk into this one room and there’s a guy beating it, I mean really strippin’ his stick in high gear like he’s Mario fucking Andretti or something. This lady, she ain’t used to that. She shops at Land’s End and has a holiday home up in the Vinyard. Real high class broad. This shit is shocking.

“What’s going on here?” she says and the director, he steps up and takes her aside, real assuring.

“Ma’am,” he says, “it’s alright, this man has a very serious condition. His testicles fill up with semen and if he doesn’t do this every hour his balls will explode, likely killing him in the process.”

“That’s terrible!” she says but she feels better, you know, knowing there’s a valid medical reason. So they continue on the tour and everything is fine until they get up to the next floor and fuckin’ A, there’s a nurse giving a guy a handjob, right there in the middle of the ward where anyone can fuckin’ see. The lady flips her shit, totally loses it because what is this, a hospital or a fuckin’ brothel? She demands to know what’s goin on, you know, shouting: “How do you explain this?!”

The director looks at her and shrugs. “Same problem, better health plan.”

MILLER: Why do you do that?

SMITHSON: Do what?

MILLER: Try to shock in an attempt to direct conversation away from subjects that make you uncomfortable?

SMITHSON: Jesus, it was just a fucking joke.

MILLER: Would you like to know what I think?

SMITHSON: Oh, in your expert clinical opinion, you mean?

MILLER: I think you’re scared. You throw punches before the other guy can step up to the plate because that’s worked for you. Bouncing around in the system, you have to find some way to survive. I get it. But that’s become your only coping mechanism and in a week you’ll be on your own, in the real world without a safety net and the game changes; nobody gives a whit about how you feel or what you think out there. You’ll be striking at air and that terrifies you.

[silence]

SMITHSON: Wanna hear what I think?

MILLER: Yes, Polly. I would actually love to hear what you think.

SMITHSON: I think you’re paid by the state and I’m 18 next week so you can go fuck yourself. I ain’t jerking you off anymore.


***


With the sharp piercing of nettles on a threading vine, bony wings seemed to burst from the calloused skin of her heels and for a beautiful moment Polly knew what it was like to be a god, soaring bronzed and unstoppable through beaten California streets, passing mortals totally unaware of her presence as she thundered along as clear and fleeting as the winding Santa Ana offshore breaths. This is what struggle made of a body: all the fighting and the could’ve-been-me lucky escapes and the gripping of small necessities with every ounce of strength in your bones just so they wouldn’t become longed-for luxuries; all the moments of terror so deep it was like being pressed to the bottom of a cistern and drowned in hot lye-water, stripping and fierce in it’s numbness; the rare lulls when you were safe and the oft-born lies when you only thought you were. It all eventually led to a coming together in a blindingly strong sense of who-gives-a-shit. Complete and utter ambivalence, that was the money. That was the golden fleece, right there. That was invincibility.

Her shoulderblades smacked like sharp-edged fins against the side of a cement-block building in desperate need of either a powerwashing or a demolition as she pressed back, chest heaving, and watched Jim and José book it. Six Mississippi and then the Spanish harlem strutters flew by too, either not noticing that their quarry had dropped by one or too stupid to care. Both, in all likelihood.

If it wouldn’t have fouled the entire plan, Polly would have crowed as she launched herself off the wall, retracing her steps with a flat-footed slapping gait that promised shin splints and aching knees later, and dropped into place behind the mouthy assholes. There was a crackling wire of adrenaline rushing through her veins and she rode the high, relishing it’s touch as it stroked her in all the right places, gunning every scrap of survival instinct into high gear so that it became not a matter of getting away but a matter of getting even. Everything shrunk until there was nothing but the two baggy-pantsed mongrels ahead, their tiny tagalong having been abandoned to the dust at some point. Polly was vaguely aware of that being a good thing; she liked to avoid hurting kids as much as possible.

As they crested the slow rise at the edge of the street, she heard notes rising in anticipation of a final movement and she grinned, slipped her backpack off with a fluid shrug and gripped it with a strong hand. It had been heavy with the condensed accumulation of her life stuffed inside; heavier now with a cracked corner of cinder block dragging down it’s weary bottom.

Credit was given where credit was due: Bunny and Twinkle Toes came to a stop at the exact moment that Polly raised her arms, hauling back like good ol’ Ted Williams up at bat ready to bring it home for the city, close it out sweet and smooth. Everything slowed except for her swing and the unfortunate Latino on the right was positioned scientifically right to collect the full impact of the hit. He didn’t even see it coming; one minute he was standing upright with a sneer painted across his ugly face and the next he was crumbling to the ground with blood blossoming at the base of his skull, chasing a satisfying cracking sound like Sam Adams after a fifth of Jack.

His buddy had about three seconds to gawk before knuckles collided with his jaw in an uppercut that brought with it a side of whiplash. For the second time that day the air bunched and snapped, only this time it was the great reveal and Polly suddenly stood there, teeth bared.

“Abracadabra, motherfucker,” she hissed and brought a knee up between his legs in a vicious jackknife, slugging him across the face when he dropped with a tight fist because Polly didn’t give a shit about fighting fair but she could throw a punch that hurt like a mother just as well as she could whip out a dirty play and there was no way she was going to allow any disputes later about whether or not she could have laid him out without busting his balls.

And then she did crow because that had been awesome. And awesome deserved the basest howl of approval.

“Yeah, how ‘bout that for handlin’ it you - oh, the fuck is this?!,” whatever victory there had been drained of it’s vibrant colour the second she turned around. Polly couldn’t believe what she was seeing, Jim and José in mid-bolt, frozen by the oncoming Vic and pinned by a squad car, like every bad scenario in the word had decided now was a good time for a convention. “Jesus motherfucking Christ, are you fuckin’ kidding me?”

[Jim Lewinski]

"Don't sh-sh-sh sh-sh-shoot!"

On command, Jim dropped the weapon so fast it might as well have been aflame. Hands raised, he watched it skitter along the sidewalk and disappear under the squad car, glad to be rid of the sight of it. His insides clenched and knotted, and he panted rapidly, not from fatigue, but from the dawning realisation that he was about to be arrested, and charged with illegal possession of a handgun, and given a criminal record, and put on the mutant register, and kicked out of Redención House, and forced to return home and lay carpets for his father, and never become an astronaut. It was one of those life-flashing-before-your-eyes moments. Then the outburst from his outlaw friend brought him back down to earth, with a crash.

Wheeling around, he caught sight of the vintage sedan in all its gaudy glory, and screamed. In a heartbeat, he was scrambling over the hood of the squad car and crashed unceremoniously at the officer's feer. He pressed himself against the wheel, whimpering feebly.

"Oh, Jesus Christ, it's a fuh-fuckin' pincer movement. It's-like-the-Battle-of-Cannae-all-over-again! I'm too-too-too young to DICKBREAD- Ohhh!"

[Veronica]

From behind reflective, polarized shades, Veronica raised a single eyebrow as the boys pursuers were dropped with a backpack and a series of vicious blows. It wasn't trained martial arts, it was from the School of I've Gotta Knock Harder Than U. They were in no position to retaliate after Polly's work. The two boys, devoid of rational thought, but full of adrenaline, decided to make a run for it. They were clearly bears of very little brain. She wasn't going to fire her gun, that would be a mountain of goddamn paperwork. It took Veronica a moment to figure out what had happened: her eyes hadn't seen Polly at all, but her spacial state, or whatever it was, had perceived the woman. Sometimes the overlap was confusing.

Veronica knew the area was clear, and could see Jose get taken down by one of the officers in the marked Crown Vic squad car and planted onto it's hood. Whitey had just started to babble about the Battle of Cannae, which she hadn't understood, but a pincer movement she understood perfectly. It was an apt summary.

"Stay put." She instructed to the kid, who was on the verge of a full panic. "If you move I'll see it."

She crossed the front of her car slowly, pistol in hand, which she holstered for show. Danger with a Boston accent was in front of her, full of anger and surprise at what was on the other side of the boys: police.

"That was a neat trick." Veronica could already see the gang markings on the thugs Polly had taken down. Polly's chest still heaved from the run and attack.

"I'm pretty sure I've figured out what happened, but I'll need a few minutes of your time to sort the details out." She said while she leaned back casually against the Dodge's fender. This could go very badly. Part of Veronica hoped it would.

[Polly Smithson]

Fucking perfect. There was some strong force out there with a piss poor sense of humor, watching out for Polly, that was it. A real wiseguy. She was caught in that awkward space between aggravated assault and resisting arrest, Jim was losing his shit - literally as well as figuratively, for all she knew - behind the plainclothes broad's car and José was kissing sheet metal with his pretty, stupid face.

Actually that part was kind of wicked cool.

"Yeah, sure. I fuckin' love cops," Polly's jaw was a tight, terse line and she huffed a mean laugh so that the message on just how much she really did love the long arm of the law would be real, real clear. "You let the dynamic duo there go first and then you and I can get real cozy, officer. It'll be fuckin' gabfest. Sangria and everything."

It wasn't a heartfelt sense of loyalty and common kindness that made her say it. Polly didn't give a good hot damn about whether or not Jim and José got hauled in. It would be retarded to think that they wouldn't hesitate to wheel and deal themselves into an easy out by laying this on her and Polly wasn't retarded: were the roles reversed, that was exactly what she would do. Out here, when the cops showed up? Shoot, every man, woman and child for themselves. As soon as the boys got out of the way with their versions of what had happened, she'd be able to pull another disappearing act and leave the suits to their case reports.

[José Luis Flores]

He was still spinning at the sight of a police officer stepping out of the Victoria instead of an Eleven with a gat. And before he knew it, he was being pushed down onto the hood. What were the chances that the police and the Elevens would be using the exact same car? Enough to fuck him over, that’s for sure.

From his vantage point, he could see the black chick and the police woman speaking off to the side, and another familiar Crown Vic sitting on the side of the road some distance down. He looked into the windows and the Elevens inside seemed to be arguing.

“Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law...”

The driver stepped out and pulled his gun. The five other gang bangers followed suit. One had an AK. Where the hell would he have gotten that?

A pair of cuffs slipped around his wrists, and José watched with wide eyes and they brought their guns up to bear.

“SHIT!” he screamed, barely pulling free of the cop and rolling over the hood to the side, as the Elevens started firing. That was the scariest thing to the teen as he pretty much aped Jim’s position; they were firing on the cops. This shit was more serious than he’d ever have imagined.

[Veronica]

She pulled her pistol out reflexively at the sound of gunfire and dropped to a crouch.

"God damn it! Girl, get into the back seat and don't fucking move! There's Kevlar in the doors." She ordered, and popped the passenger side door open. Jim's brain was working well enough for him to get to the front of the car, away from the gunfire. Thomas and Rodriquez were taking cover behind the Crown Vic, along with the kid they had just grabbed.

"Officer Hu reporting Code Purple, 11-99, 10-71, 10-41." Mercifully, she didn't have to report the location: her new radio had a GPS built in, and it tracked her automatically. Dispatch would be able to handle it appropriately. She holstered the pistol and grabbed the AR-15 from the mount between the passenger and driver's seat.

"God damn it." She repeated, and one of the AK-47 rounds took Thomas in the shoulder when he stood to return fire. Veronica made her way around the front of the car. Jim crouched petrified with his hands over his ears.

"Officer down. Get us some fucking back-up!" She heard Rodriquez shout into his mic and then pull Thomas out of the way.

"Get in the car and don't touch anything!" She instructed, and gave him a shove toward the passenger side. She heard the 3-11's old Vic gurgle meanly. Thomas taking a hit had emboldened the gang-bangers. Semi-automatic weapons fire, mostly in 9mm peppered both police cars as they moved closer to finish them off. The bark of the AK from the front passenger seat was a bigger problem, and he would be on her side of the street. Volume of fire was always a higher priority than accuracy. Veronica leaned out, still crouched, around the Charger and put a bullet in each front tire on the old Vic.

"Oh shit!" The driver panicked, and slammed on the brakes. Sparks flew as steel kissed asphalt. Veronica stood. She put a round through the driver's head, and then another the passenger's throat. The projectile over-penetrated, and buried itself into a thug's shoulder.

"Out of the fucking car!" She yelled, AR-15 shouldered.

[Stern]

A bright flash of light suddenly appeared next to Veronica, and when it faded, Officer Michael Stern stood in its place, gun drawn, crouched behind the patrol car.

"You guys needed back up?" He smiled. "Looks like they're pretty well armed for street thugs."

Stern was brought back briefly to his time in Pakistan, fighting terrorists armed with AKs. He'd keep it under control. He couldn't set fire to anyone while he wore the badge.

"Ok, Hu, tell me what we have here." He shone light in the 3-11's eyes and fired intermittent shots in the meantime.

[Jim Lewinski]

Inside the squad car, Jim sat in the passenger seat, tucked into as small a shape as humanly possible. His hands hugged his head into his knees, barely drowning out the appalling din of gunfire ripping through the air. All around were the pings and zings of wayward death metal, cracking concrete, shattering glass, and prompting from Jim horrified shrieks everytime the car clanged from a direct hit. Mortal terror prevented him from thinking straight, but it didn't stop his brain from racing a mile-a-minute, and everything slowed right down. Fear paralysed him to the spot. And the squad car trembled with him.

[Polly Smithson]

Life was dictated by two governing forces: things you did, and things you didn't. These communal laws had risen as civilization sunk it's claws into the earth and had been refined over centuries until the reasons behind them were as basic as blood and stone, solid and vital within any context. They were as much a part of ingrained survival instinct as erector muscles triggering hair to stand on end or the fight-or-flight response.

You never accepted help from strangers with hungry kindness in their eyes because it always ended in a seedy apartment with rope and tears and apologies when that kindness took a left turn down Old Hurt Avenue. You always bought milk from the back of the cooler because the expiration date on the ones up front was never as generous as it said. Sleeping with anyone from The Flats was balancing your health on a knife point but if you did feel the urge for a frisky risk then you sure as hell didn't go back to their place without clean sheets. Don't run with scissors. Don't leave a knife in water. Don't wash towels and clothes together. Never sit down on a public toilet seat without a protective barrier.

And never, ever get in a fucking cop car out of your own free will.

"Fuck this shit," Polly dropped to the ground so fast the air between her body and the pavement didn't have time to process the physics of the act. "This is what I get for mixin' with a fuckin' white boy and a wetback, Jesus Christ!"

The air was snapping with gunfire, rippling hot and wild and heavy with that peculiar burnt ozone, wet cement smell of weapon discharge. It was like a homecoming and a horror show - ah, and wasn't that redundancy at it's finest.

As the western played out against the sad coral-and-faded-ambition hues of downtown Los Santos, Polly drew upon the ace in her hand and vanished from view. Still sprawled on the pavement she gave a grunt and shoved her loaded backpack underneath the car. The nylon scuffed across the asphalt with a groan of protest, it's fibers thinned from years of loyal service that were never shown appreciation through the art of fine handling. Keeping her head ducked, hands clasped over the rise of her skull, Polly commando crawled around the vehicle and kept up a steady stream of violent invectives directed at the saints her mother had so loved, cursing them for even the remotest involvement in bringing this hail of complications down on what had started out as simple neighborhood recon.

"Andate a la mierda, puercos!"

A barrage of bullets hit the ground just to her left, ricocheting and dusting into the police Vic that was beginning to look like an interpretive art piece, all pockmarked metal and shattered glass. Polly flinched and gratefully tucked into a sliver of relative safety behind the Charger, twisting and straining her arm as she felt beneath it's belly for her bag. Her shoulder almost popped out of it's goddamn socket as her fingers closed around one frayed strap and dragged it out, the bulk of it sweeping her gun along. As relieved as she was to shove the Glock into the recesses of the backpack, chucking the crumbling bit of cinder block out in the process, that relief would have been a lot sweeter if the weapon had actually been loaded.

Compulsion drove her to pop open a back door of the Dodge and lean into the cocoon of rattling-boned safety that Jim had lodged himself in. Polly could almost taste the metallic tang of his gut-wrenching terror, sharp and visceral on her tongue.

"Jimmy," she hissed, face glinting into view in ghostlike hover. Her legs were starting to burn from crouching. "Fuckin' cops appearin' out of fuckin' thin air, man. This is crazy. We ain't gonna get another opportunity to fuck off to your hidey-hole so unclench and let's go."

There was nothing but a high whine in response as an earsplitting cascade of fire ripped into the trunk. Polly's glance flicked to Veronica and her magically appearing cohort. Shit, shit, they had to get out of here. Her heart jackknifed and for a moment she wanted to just let go, just punch the shit out of something and whale until her knuckles bled because something was going to break and come tumbling down, just crumble like the walls of Jericho if they didn't get their asses in gear and abandon this dog and pony show.

[Veronica]

"Dunno exactly." Veronica wasn't a woman of many words. Stern had turned the other car into spotlight, and the one uninjured thug couldn't see a thing because he was too busy covering his eyes from the onslaught.

"Thomas and Rodriquez were in the neighborhood when they saw the Tres Onces pulling after a hispanic lookin' kid, and then after two other kids, one male, white, one female, black. I was doing followup from last weeks shooting down the block. Black girl took down the flushing party and..." Veronica was cut off by dispatch.

"...Officer Hu, please confirm area clear for ambulance." Veronica held the carbine steady with one hand, and pushed the radio handset to talk.

"10-23, dispatch." With Stern blinding the opposition, Veronica moved up, and kept her head below the car's belt line. She set the rifle down, yanked the rear driver's side door open, and pulled the remaining gangbanger out by the collar of his shirt. He had already dropped the 9mm Glock into the footwell. Veronica planted him against the trunk, almost face first. She slapped cuffs on before the thought to struggle registered.

Veronica held the shooter's face down against the trunklid.

"Dispatch, area is safe for the ambulance."

[Jim Lewinski]

"We-we-we-we gotta get to Redención House!" he cried, finally swayed by Polly's words, "Anna - shit! - Anna will explain everything. We just gotta get outta-"

Jim froze, staring wide-eyed at his garish new sneakers. There was silence. Everything was still. Somewhere nearby, a woman called out to someone from assistance, but she sounded nothing like a gangbanger. It was over. They were safe. Cautiously, he unfolded, and collapsed into the loving support of the seat with a heavy sigh. He was alive.

"You know, between you and me, lady, I'm not ashamed to admit there's a little pee in my pants," he laughed softly, and turned to face his angry new friend, "Heh! It looks like we got out of this one un-HO! HO! HO!! HOOOOLY SHIIIIT!"

Scrambling violently away from the ghostly apparition, Jim found himself wedged backwards between the driver's seat and steering wheel, kicking and screaming. His brain, by way of a logical triple-jump, had arrived at the conclusion that he was staring at the disembodied head of his angry dead friend, and now she'd returned to haunt him. In a final flourish of manic horror, Jim backed up against the car horn and added to the sound of his own demented cries its long mournful moan.

[Stern]

Stern stood, turning off the searchlight intensity of his light, and turned to the two teens just in time to hear them talk about trying to run away.

"Danger's past, you kids have nothing to worry about. But I wouldn't recommend running away. Might give the impression you were guilty of something."

The officer laughed good-naturedly. "Are you all right? Would you like to tell me what happened here?"

He hoped they would help him. I f they didn't and tried to run anyway, he'd have to light jump to stop them and potentially cuff them. He hoped they would do the right thing.

[Polly Smithson]

Kids. Polly's eyes narrowed and she felt an itch spread across her skin like a bad sunburn, worm it's way underneath flat planes of muscle as persistently as sand and twice as chafing, just settle to grate and grind away at the fleeting composure resting there. That bugged her, that word. Kids. It was a dismissive, Sunday afternoon sort of word for siblings arguing over whether Cornettos or Klondike Bars were the better buy off the jangling Good Humor truck, heat of the day already melting the physical evidence and who cared anyway, ice cream was ice cream, right? A sweet, momentary respite that didn't change much in the long run. Kids - hooligans who rode their pegged-up BMXs across manicured lawns and skidded out, left dirty trenches just to hear the angry epithets of pissed off retirees who had nothing but bingo, the six o'clock news and their Kentucky Blue to get them out of bed in the morning.

But not Polly. She was twenty-fucking-four, a God-honest grownup with unpaid bills and parking tickets and a grim sense of acceptance that this was as good as life was ever going to get to prove it. And even if she hadn't been, was sixteen or twelve, fucking nine, the term didn't apply and never had. It was like unicorns; a pretty idea that sparkled and left warm, fuzzy memories in it's wake but man, you had to be a real desperate sort of loony to believe in that kind of psychedelic garbage.

There was something mean about the way the rest of her body bled into view, filling out the empty space below her head, like a heavy hanging cloud of humid air that snapped with static charge, live electricity building toward a terrible storm. The kind of measured intent there that made people duck back inside, put off their errands for another day.

"Lenses need defogging, huh." Polly said. Her eyes were flinty and she tilted her chin up as she looked at the cop, rolled her shoulders back slow so she was straight and sharp as an arrow. What was this guy, even? Frogman, fresh off of diving homicides? "Ain't fucking anything we got to say that isn't obvious already. Jesus, Jimmy, lay off wouldja?"

Gaze never straying from the suit's, Polly reached into the car and pushed Jim off the horn, foghorn blast of it ghosting in the silence that followed. There was an odd sort of disconnect to it all, a startling lack of action suddenly that seemed illogical and was, Polly knew, the sort of environment where cops thrived. They thought they could sink their hooks in here, streetwise and familiar with the shifting cadence of violent bursts in a way the average citizen wasn't meant to be, heroes with their gold-plated badges and department-issued firearms and smug been-here-before faces.

She snorted, a contemptuous burst of air. "If it ain't too much goddamn trouble, we've had enough harassment for one day. So if you've deduced enough and trust your lady friend over there to fill in whatever gaps you seem to think there are, we'll be on our merry friggin' way."

[Veronica]

Veronica pulled a notepad and a pen off her belt.

"Lemme explain a few... things." Veronica was doubly careful with her language now that Stern was here. She'd normally be happy to toss a few f-bombs into the mix to make the point, especially to this Boston bred bitch. Veronica was from the worst part of the Bronx. Fuck Dorchester, Mattapan and Roxbury. Nothing compared to NYC in the early 90s. Veronica felt twitchy, and it was a good thing she had on the big aviators, or they'd be party to her big genuine murder adrenaline twitch. She took a deep breath.

"We can do this in the pain in the... difficult way, where I take both your behinds down to the station and I ask a lot more questions in front of the cameras, or I can do this here, where I don't need as many details." She pointed at her Beretta, which was out of Stern's field of vision. Or at least she hoped it was. Her task force leader could become light, so what he could and could not see was a bit of a mystery.

"So, if we can have five minutes of your time, I'll be happy to give you both a ride home."

[José Luis Flores]

The firing had stopped, and José knew he’d blown his chance to get away in the commotion. Looking over to the two cops who’d cuffed him, he suppressed the urge to run again; no one in their right mind really trusted the cops around here.

One holstered his pistol and turned to look at the teen.

“Are you all right?” he asked. José nodded, feeling the adrenaline draining out of him quickly; if anything, that was the ultimate sign to himself of his surrender. The older man grabbed him by his shoulder and pulled him up. Once steady on his feet, José was led to Officer Gorgeous and Captain Nightlight. The black chick and white dude were already talking to them.