aFireFist
A Life in DC
Chapter 14 - Part 2
Sawyer stood and stretched. The blouse pulled tight across her heavy D-cup tits. She grabbed her jacket.
"Car's ours. You driving or am I?"
"You drive. I'll take the book."
"Good. I hate your left turns."
They signed out at the board. Montoya did not look up. The captain's door stayed shut. The bullpen kept humming like a day that might actually stay boring.
The unmarked was damp inside from the drizzle. Sawyer dropped into the driver's seat, adjusted the mirror, and pulled out of the lot with the confidence of someone who had driven worse cities than this one. Vieri rode shotgun with the call log open on his thigh.
Radio chatter was small.
"Unit 22, fender-bender on the edge of the Narrows, no injuries, traffic only."
"Shop owner on Third already has a shoplift in custody. Waiting on transport."
Nothing with capes. Nothing with vines. Nothing with a woman in a half-zipped catsuit standing in a warehouse telling him to say it out loud.
Sawyer took them through the East End grid at patrol speed. Kane Street. A side block with the same three bodegas. A stretch of the Bowery that always looked like it was one bad night from falling into the street.
"You eat?" she asked, eyes on the road.
"Coffee."
"That's not food."
"It's morning."
"It's almost eleven. We're stopping after the next call or you're going to get mean."
"I'm not mean."
"You're quiet. On you that's the same thing."
He let that sit. The wipers ticked. A bus threw dirty water up the side of the car. Sawyer's blouse pulled across her heavy tits when she reached to change the channel. She didn't comment on it. Neither did he.
The radio clicked.
"Task force unit, 10-16, domestic, third-floor walk-up, 48 Binder off Bowery. Neighbor reports shouting, glass or plate breaking, child crying, then it went quiet. No weapons mentioned. Anonymous caller. Handle it."
Sawyer's mouth flattened. She hit the lights without the siren and turned.
"Binder," she said. "I know that block. Walk-ups with the mailboxes hanging off the wall."
"Yeah."
"You take the man if there's a man. I take her and the kid. We don't let them stay in the same room."
"Copy."
Binder was a narrow side street that smelled like wet trash and old grease even with the windows up. Sawyer parked behind a dented Civic and they both sat for one second looking at the building. Brick the color of dried blood. Fire escape rusted to the wall. Third-floor window had a sheet hung instead of a curtain.
They got out. Drizzle on the shoulders of their jackets. The front door was propped with a brick. The stairwell smelled like boiled cabbage and bleach that had lost the fight. Vieri took the lead up. Sawyer behind him, boots on the worn wood, one hand near her belt.
Third floor. Door on the left had a cracked jamb and a fist-sized dent near the knob. Voices inside, low now. A TV doing cartoon voices with the sound almost off.
Vieri knocked. Hard, official.
"GCPD. Open the door."
Movement. A man's voice, thick. "The fuck do you want?"
"Open the door."
A chain slid. The door opened four inches. Man in a stained undershirt, beer gut, eyes too clear for how loud he had been an hour ago. Drunk enough to be stupid. Not drunk enough to miss.
"We got a call," Vieri said. "Need to check on everyone inside."
"Nobody called you."
"Neighbor did. Open it or I open it."
The man looked at Sawyer over Vieri's shoulder. Looked at her chest first, then her face. Sawyer's expression did not change.
He opened the door.
The apartment was one room pretending to be three. Broken plate on the floor near the sink. Hole in the drywall the size of a fist. Woman standing by the fridge with a split lip she kept touching like she could press it closed. Little boy on the couch, maybe six, cartoon on mute, not looking at anyone. His shoes were on the wrong feet.
Sawyer moved past Vieri without waiting.
"Ma'am. Why don't you and him come with me into the hall for a minute."
The woman glanced at the man. The man started to say something. Vieri stepped into his space just enough to cut the line.
"You stay here with me," Vieri said. "They're going in the hall."
"That's my kid."
"He's going in the hall."
Sawyer already had the woman by the elbow, gentle, and the boy by the shoulder. She walked them out. The door stayed open. Vieri kept his body between the man and the doorway.
The man pointed at the plate. "She dropped it. That's it. You people show up for a plate now?"
"Turn around. Hands where I can see them."
"I'm not—"
He stepped in. Not a swing. A step that said he still thought this was his room. Vieri took the wrist, turned him, and had the cuffs on before the man finished the sentence. Metal clicked. The man cursed, loud, ugly, the kind of talk that filled a small apartment and made the cartoon on mute feel louder.
Vieri didn't answer it. He walked him to the wall, patted him down, found a cheap folding knife in the pocket and a set of keys. Knife on the counter. Keys next to it.
"Name."
"Fuck you."
"Name for the report."
The man gave it, spit through his teeth. Vieri wrote it in the book. Then the woman's name from the mailbox slot, and the boy's first name the woman had said in the hall, small.
He photographed the plate. The hole in the drywall. The undershirt. The cuffs. He did it without making a show of the camera. The man kept talking the whole time.
"She fell. She always falls when she drinks. You gonna arrest a plate? You gonna arrest me because some bitch downstairs don't like noise?"
Vieri checked the boy when Sawyer brought them back in long enough for that. Arms, face, neck, the way you check without turning it into a performance. No marks he could see. The boy looked at his shoes. Sawyer's hand stayed on the back of the woman's shoulder.
"Ambulance and advocate," Vieri said to Sawyer, quiet.
"Already on the radio."
The woman kept calling the lip an accident. She would not say the rest. Vieri did not push her for a story she was not going to give in front of the man. He gave her the card, the shelter number, the case number. He said it plain.
"You don't have to sign anything right now. If you want to later, this number works. If you want to leave tonight, the advocate can ride with you."
She nodded once. The boy did not look up.
They walked the man down the stairs. He talked the whole way. Vieri put him in the back of the car. The door shut on the last of it.
Sawyer got in the driver's seat. Vieri rode up front. The cage glass was scratched. The man kept going until they pulled away from the curb, then got quieter, like the motion of the car had finally caught up to the beer.
Two blocks out, when the back seat had gone to muttering, Sawyer spoke without taking her eyes off the road.
"Nights like this are why I transferred," she said. "And why I hate that I transferred. Metropolis has the same apartments. Different brick. Same plate on the floor."
Vieri watched the wet street.
"Yeah."
She glanced at his hands on the call log, not his lap, and did not make it about last night.
"Kid's shoes were on the wrong feet," she said.
"I saw."
"Advocate's meeting us at booking. Woman still won't sign a full complaint."
"I'm not going to make her."
"Good." Sawyer's jaw worked once. Heavy D-cup tits rose under the blouse with a breath she was trying to keep even. "Write it straight. Don't dress it up. Those are the ones IA actually reads when they want to see if we're human or just a unit that got lucky with villains."
The wipers ticked. Binder Street fell behind them. The city stayed small and ugly and ordinary all the way to central booking.
Central booking smelled like floor wax and wet coats. The intake bench was already half full — a kid with a bloody nose from a fight that had ended before anyone called it in, a woman arguing with a public defender about a bench warrant she swore she had paid, a man asleep sitting up with his chin on his chest. Vieri walked their guy to the window, handed over the knife in an evidence bag, and gave the short version to the sergeant behind the glass.
"Domestic. Binder off Bowery. Cuffed after he closed distance. Folding knife in the pocket, no swing. Photos of the plate and the wall. Ambulance and advocate already rolling to the residence."
The sergeant took the bag without looking impressed. "Name?"
Vieri read it off the book. The man behind him started up again, louder now that there were other people to hear it.
"I didn't touch her. She fell. You people always take the woman's side. That's my kid in that apartment."
"Sit," Vieri said.
The man sat. The chair scraped. Sawyer stood a half step off Vieri's shoulder with her arms folded under her heavy D-cup tits, blouse still tight from the rain that had followed them in, blue eyes on the man like she was counting how many times he was going to say the word fell.
The advocate arrived before the prints were done. Mid-thirties, badge on a lanyard, a folder already open. She pulled Sawyer aside first. Vieri stayed with the man until intake took him through the door. The talking got smaller once the door shut. That was how it usually went. The performance needed an audience.
Sawyer came back with the advocate's card added to the ones they already had.
"She's going to the apartment from here," Sawyer said. "Wants us to meet her there after he's booked. Woman still hasn't asked for a full complaint. Advocate wants a second try while the kid's in the other room."
"We'll go."
"Yeah." Sawyer rubbed her thumb along the edge of the card. "I hate this part."
"Which part."
"The part where we do everything right and it still might not change the night."
Vieri signed the booking sheet. The sergeant stamped it. They walked back out into the drizzle.
The unmarked had started to smell like the back seat. Sawyer cracked both front windows and pulled into traffic without talking for three lights. Radio gave them a fender-bender update and a shoplift that already had a unit on scene. Still nothing on the Queens channels. Still no names Vieri could not put in a log.
Binder looked the same as when they had left it. Brick, rusted fire escape, sheet in the third-floor window. The advocate's small blue sedan was already at the curb. They took the stairs again. Boiled cabbage. Bleach. The cracked jamb.
The woman opened the door herself this time. Split lip darker now. She had put a sweater over the shirt. The boy was at the table with a bowl of cereal he was not eating. Cartoon still on mute.
Sawyer took the woman to the kitchenette. Vieri stayed near the table with the boy long enough to ask if he wanted to show him a drawing on the fridge. The boy shook his head and looked at his shoes. The shoes were on the right feet now. Someone had fixed that while they were gone.
The advocate did the talking. Quiet, even, no pressure in the voice. Options. Shelter bed. Follow-up in the morning. A number that worked after midnight. The woman listened. She nodded. She did not sign the complaint.
Vieri did not ask her to. He set his card on the table next to the advocate's, wrote the case number on the back in block letters, and left it there.
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