Gatac

  No ice on the water didn't mean it wasn't freezing cold. That much, Sean had been intellectually aware of for quite a while. Sheepshead Bay water in winter: frigid, with the occasional spells of being fucking frigid. Sean had spent some time around water at a variety of shades of cold, from somewhat cold to pretty cold, though the tter in a drysuit. He therefore believed, even as he saw the dark water fill his vision, that he was ready for it.

  Well, he wasn't.

  Diving into water this cold defied human expectation. It wasn’t like jumping into chilly water, just more so. For starters, as Sean found out, getting freezing water all over his face activated a reflex as ancient as it was strong. It was like somebody showing up to the usual town hall debate of his mind with bring airhorns in each hand screaming "TAKE A DEEP BREATH! TAKE IT NOW!" With all due respect to his lizard brain’s contribution to Sean’s continued existence, Sean was pretty sure he would not enjoy sucking in a lungful of freezing cold water while struggling to a) figure out which way was up and b) move in an upwards direction at best speed before c) bcking out and drowning. And so, through some miracle, he managed to not take a breath while underwater, no matter how much that airhorned lunatic at the town hall pleaded his case. Maybe, he would soon reason, he had in him a hidden willpower fund and had cashed it out in this most desperate hour, casting years of bad and impulsive decisions into a rather more self-congratutory light. Good thing you never stood your ground before, Sean! Turns out there was after all a much better use for all that steely resolve further down the line. So Sean, contrary to the very essence of himself, kept his mouth shut for once and gently blew a breath out of his nose, following the bubbles upward.

  He surfaced. He gasped. He started breathing and could not stop. He could hardly move, much less speak. The Sean clock jumped to Hyperventition P.M. and it was all he could do to direct his thrashing into the movement that kept his head above the surface. Between breaths — those infinitesimal periods of time when his body permitted it — he struggled to hold on to anything, while the water quickly sapped his warmth. It was just as well that Anne came up beside him, answering a question he hadn't thought to ask in the midst of his own problems regarding cold-water survival, and the way she gasped for air and filed her arms was maybe the first time Sean had seen her not just in trouble, but actually close to panic. Old rescue drills took over and repced his own problems with purpose. Sean used precious energy to reach out for her and wrestle her into a hold. While she threshed to fight him off, he held tight and kicked them toward the stilts underneath the pier. There, he clung to whatever kept them above water and sucked up air like it was going out of style for a minute. Anne stopped struggling and instead gave him a single tap on the arm. He released her and helped her grab onto the pier’s foundation. Neither of them could muster the ability to speak. All they could do was listen to the screams and shouts from above them while trying not to drown.

  "Go," Anne forced from her quivering lips. "Go." She jerked her head toward the distant shores of Manhattan Beach. 200 yards, maybe? Might as well have been Australia for how far away it looked."Wait," Sean counteroffered. His jaw was stiff. The punch or the cold? "Ten,” he pushed out. “Ten minutes. Not. Not enough."1Without getting into the individual vagaries of cold-water survival, my research indicates that a decent rule of thumb is 1-10-1: one minute you’ll be stuck hyperventiting as your body reacts to the shock of immersion in cold water. Provided you don’t already drown during that, you then have about ten minutes of useful time to move around. After that, you probably won’t be able to keep swimming, but provided you can keep above water — say, by clinging to debris — you have about another hour before you pass out from hypothermia. At that point…well, nice knowing you."Going," Anne said."Don't," Sean gasped. "Sniper.""Going," Anne said, slowing down her breathing.

  Sean realized that arguing with her was wasting breath and time neither of them had, and in any event she had already pushed off from the pier and started swimming. After a moment's hesitation, Sean followed her. It didn't matter if the sniper picked them off in the water or while climbing back into the bloodbath on the pier, if they even still had the strength to climb out of the water. The cold was cutting into his skin, and he wasn't sure whether his submerged body or his wet and exposed head was getting the worst of it. But this was a thought for a ter, dryer and warmer time. Right there, what he had to do was think hot thoughts and get his ass in gear. Though the thermal insution of his light clothing was somewhere in the murky cking-to-nonexistent spectrum, at least it wasn't prone to soaking up a lot of water and dragging him down through the added weight of the same; in fact, all he had to do to swim was to kick off his shoes. If this was part of some sort of confidence course for the college swim team with Sean standing at the edge of a pool and gathering his thoughts before the coach whistled for him to jump in, he would have gotten to the shoe-off-kicking right away, but this was no pool and there was no coach and no whistle either, except the tinnitus.2If you don’t have tinnitus, don’t get it. It sucks. 0/10 would not wreck my ears again His natural inclination, then, was to kick his legs and try to settle into a proper front crawl stroke. Anne spshed in the water in front of him. She was having a go at a breast stroke, Sean thought, or at least hoped. He'd have more crity once they were at the shore. The front crawl was good for not looking precisely ahead, masking the distance, because Sean knew his best chance was to not worry about the distance and to not worry about her. Just put the figurative pedal to the metaphorical metal and go, go, go, for as long as he still had moving limbs with un-congealed bodily fluids inside.

  It took him not quite five minutes to get to the other side, at least according to Sean's watch — Sean couldn't recall when he'd st actually needed a diving watch, but the whole ‘waterproof to fifty meters’ thing was paying off that day. The screaming and shouting from the pier faded pretty quickly into the distance, and when he hit the shore on the other side, Sean heard the first sirens racing down Emmons Avenue, snapping his head around to see Anne trying to catch up with him. His fingers were past numb and the pain in his jaw was finally cutting through the pain in his limbs, plus his skin was taking on a decidedly arming orange tinge. But he was still weathering it better than Anne. She seemed to be outright fighting to keep her head up toward the end there.

  He dithered about swimming back for her. It was enough dithering that he had time to interrogate his reasons. Was he too tired or now genuinely afraid that the skills he had prided himself on were no match for this crisis? Could he not conceive of Anne ever being in genuinely danger? Or was he thinking like her now, weighing the pros and cons of her continued survival?

  When she hit the embankment, she crawled out on her hands and knees for the first few meters before flopping onto her back and sucking in fast, shallow breaths. Her shoes were somewhere in the bay, and there wasn't anything on her that wasn't dripping cold Atntic water, but she had made it out, had survived this, had braved freezing waters and swum the bay like a champ with Sean. Everything was good, everything was fine, almost like they hadn't just killed a half dozen people. Sean thought about Yan, how he had looked at him, how they had even joked about their little hostage situation yesterday — and felt nothing.

  Which was also the precise amount of idea Sean had as to the whereabouts of his Beretta.

  “Fuck,” Sean said.“Yes,” Anne gasped.Sean smiled at that, but he couldn't have articuted why. He crawled over to her, and with each other's help, they fought themselves into an upright position."You okay?" Sean said."Fine," Anne said, holding her side. "Fine. Come on,” she added as they staggered toward the slope leading up to Shore Boulevard. “Get off the street.”“Ideas?” Sean asked. He helped her up the slope, and up at street level, they surveyed the area before them: lots of small houses, many undoubtedly empty with their owners off to work for the day. Somehow, he knew exactly what ideas Anne had, and decided to save her from saying them by going first. “That one,” he said, pointing to a two-story house with a red brick first floor and white vinyl siding around the second. “That's empty.”Anne's eyes followed his point. “No car in the driveway, worth a shot,” she said as she lurched forward without him and assumed her ‘nothing to see here’ face, despite her missing shoes and her drenched hair seeping water all over the colr of her ruined shirt. “Go around the back. Walk casual.”“No need,” Sean said, catching up and trying to match her stride, trying like her to look like a normal person walking down a normal road and not a bay-drenched barefooted maniac. “Front door, there's a key taped under the right flowerpot.”“How do you know?” Anne asked.“Joe's house,” Sean said. “Hey, we know he's not home.”“That works,” Anne admitted.

  Once they were in, they first had to shower, both to get the saltwater off and to warm up, so they took turns. Sean went for a quick rinse, then Anne got a minute longer with the now properly-hot water, then Sean went under again to warm up the rest of the way while Anne went in search of clothes for them. Under the shower, Sean's brain started to thaw, and so the thoughts came, or rather the thought: he had killed, again, and this time with even less justification. Sure, those Russians had been on a course to killing both of them, but nobody had actually made an honest move to hurt them yet, not even when the first shot came out of nowhere and hit Ilya. And despite that, Sean's first instinct had been to draw down and start shooting his way out. What did it mean for him, if it meant anything?

  Well, it meant getting dressed in an oversized shirt the color of nicotine stains, corduroy pants and a waxed jacket old enough to get into a patina contest with the Statue of Liberty. It meant not saying a word as he wandered into the kitchen and helped himself to a gss and some water from the tap. It meant walking into the living room where Anne had turned on the TV set. The set was a full-size monster, instead of Sean's more microwave-sized ‘portable’ set; while a ventited bck pstic shroud contained the back of the tube, the whole middle section of the rge box was wrapped in dark wood, or at least a quite decent veneer of the same. The front of the set was a bck pstic piece again, with a dull brass line running around it to make it pop, then the actual screen was offset to the left, with dull silver knobs, buttons and grilles making up the right fifth of the width. Anne was fiddling with these to little avail. She either hadn't spotted the pstic box that sat to the side of the TV set or dismissed it too early as the solution to her problem. She was dressed in a gray and blue tracksuit, which did nothing to ftter her, but Sean found himself looking with more interest at her hair, now frizzled up from the wetness where it poked out under the towel wrapped around her head. It made her look more…her, a thought Sean tried to dismiss swiftly lest he advertise his ck of colorblindness, but also a thought that lingered just long enough to give Sean another clue about how Anne fought her battles, starting every morning in front of the mirror.

  “What are you looking for?” Sean said. While waiting for Anne's answer, he walked over to the couch, reached in between the cushions and produced the satellite receiver's remote control. It was left of the cushion that had the biggest depression from Berkovitz's — well, his ass, frankly, and Sean knew he had a habit of using the remote with his left so he could grab a beer from the little end table to the right, so the remote would end up on the couch and, logically, sink into the crevice where Sean had found it. Elementary, my dear Simmons.“News channel would be good,” Anne said.“It's hooked to satellite, put it back on channel three,” Sean said.

  With a tap of the power button on the remote, the satellite receiver came to life, lighting up its array of buttons and showing a big red '14' on its three-digit vacuum fluorescent dispy. The living room quickly filled with the sounds of gunfire and galloping horses, while the TV screen showed a bck&white western of dubious vintage. Seven presses of the ‘CH -’ button on the remote ter, Sean figured out he had no way to catch the local news from satellite — and uncomfortable as he was with the situation as a whole, he was pretty sure it hadn't made it to CNN yet. Having realized that, he turned the receiver off again.

  “Forget everything I just said,” Sean said. “We have to pick it up with the set.”“That is what I was trying to accomplish,” Anne said. “Do you want to give it a shot?”“Uh, sure,” Sean said, dumping the remote back onto the couch.“I will be in the kitchen,” Anne said.“Okay,” Sean said. He went to work.

  Well, tried to. Sean had just enough time to realize none of the channel presets on Berkovitz's TV set were usefully tuned, and he was still fiddling with getting a useful signal on channel 11 when Anne switched on a radio in the kitchen and returned, carrying the set with her as he skipped past some televised performance of a Gustav Mahler symphony and a sermon to find a newscast.

  “— all quiet now on Emmons Avenue, where just an hour ago another stunning act of violence occurred. Witnesses close to the scene describe hearing a series of gunshots from the pier — more than that, we do not know at this time. At this time, we can only specute on the identity of the victims and the motives that led to these events. The perpetrator or perpetrators are still at rge, so if you are currently anywhere in Sheepshead Bay, Brighton Beach, Gerritson Beach or Manhattan Beach, we urge you to stay inside, lock your doors and windows and report all unusual happenings to the police. George Stephanopolis for WNYD.”3Pretty tricky finding a station ID that both fits the naming scheme and was never (to my knowledge) used in real life.“Thank you, George. We'll have more on this story as it develops. In foreign news, we're only now getting details of another tragedy that occurred today in Colombia —“4I’m not trying to be ghoulish about this, but December 6th 1989 was not a good day. Early in the morning, a truck bomb exploded in Bogotá, Colombia, killing 52 and injuring over 1000 people. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the école Polytechnique massacre occurred ter that day, the deadliest mass shooting in Canadian history. Eerily enough, it’s also one of the most notable misogynistic spree killings, as the perpetrator explicitly set out to kill as many women as possible. I know, I know, don’t speak ill of the dead and don’t signal-boost assholes, but I just have to say: fuck Marc Lépine in particur.

  Anne clicked the radio back off.

  “They are dead,” she said. “We ought to get moving.” She turned around to carry it back to the kitchen, but then Sean spoke up.“What the fuck, Anne?” he said.“I beg your pardon?” she replied coolly, still walking without turning back.“You didn't have to do that,” he said, and she froze. “I almost had it, you know?” he continued. “The TV? It's not my fucking fault Joe's such a zy bum.” Every moment she didn't turn back around to face him, his voice grew louder. “You ever think that maybe we could have seen something about the scene on the TV, huh? 'cause that's what I was thinking, that — I mean, come on, they obviously wouldn't know anything so soon, so why listen to what they're saying? We need to see it. Well, I need to, anyway, you don't care. Yeah, I get it, you’re real cool, you drop bodies and swim in ice water and it's nothing to you. God I wish it was that easy for me, but it isn't, and it's not getting any fucking easier when I'm talking to the back of your fucking head! Come on! I'm fucking talking to you!”

  He paused to catch his breath, and that was just the opening Anne needed to half-turn and look over her shoulder. Her expression was hard, but her nostrils fred with every sucked-in breath and the corners of her eyes glinted with wetness.

  “What?” Sean barked. “Your eyes are sweating again? God, what a great joke, you got another one like that?”“…you are an ass,” Anne said.“The secret's out!” Sean said. “Now can you fucking look at me and talk to me like we're two grown-up fucking people? Yeah? Can we do that?”“Alright,” Anne said, turning all the way around to face him. She dabbed her eyes with her sleeve and took a breath. “Let's talk like adults. How do you feel?”“What the hell kind of question is that?” Sean growled. “What does it fucking look like?”“Helpless, for one,” Anne said. “And to be clear, I do not believe feeling helpless makes you an ass. Neither does defending your life or being angry about what happened at the pier. My feelings in the matter are quite simir, in fact. What does make you an ass is throwing off on me because it is easier than accepting the situation and thinking about our next steps. Now would you kindly stop shouting?"

  Sean's eyes narrowed. But he did stop shouting and he did take a breath, as if to reassure Anne this was some sort of second chance, on an emotional level.

  “What the fuck happened out there, Anne?” he said.“That seems quite obvious to me,” Anne said. “I saved our lives.”Sean snorted. “Let’s assume I’m interested in details,” he said. “You saved our lives, great, that’s…I mean, that’s vague, even for you.” He paused without giving her the chance to speak. “Last I checked, we were surrounded by half a dozen Russians. Then we weren’t. You made it happen. How?”“Well then,” Anne began.5You’re being told this rather than shown because as it happened, we were on Sean’s point of view, and Sean didn’t see much. And if you haven’t noticed so far, we’re not doing fshbacks to events within the main story's timeframe. I had the whole thing written out, too, but in the end adhering to my own structural rules was more important.That said, if you want a fancier reasoning for your book club discussion, pretend I’m doing a Brecht and using a deliberate epic theatre Verfremdungseffekt to alienate you from the quote-unquote cool action scene for Truffautian reasons. “The sniper’s first shot gave me about five seconds, give or take."“Oh, the ‘sniper’,” Sean cut in almost immediately. “I’m so gd we were saved by the ‘sniper’. Whoever could it be? Could be anyone, this ‘sniper’! Well, I think it was just a concerned citizen who saw a couple of strangers in need and lent us a helping trigger finger.” He snorted. “Get real. You can say ‘Viktor’. I know you fucking pyed me.”“I made no agreement with Viktor to have him actually carry out the contingency we had pnned,” Anne said. “Recall that I insisted on spotting for him in that eventuality. In actual fact I am not anywhere near certain it was him. There are as yet altogether too many questions about everyone’s agenda to commit myself to the notion that anyone killing Ilya’s men must be strictly on our side. Hence, I acted under the premise that the sniper was trying to kill us as well rather than waiting and seeing. Would I have chanced the swim if I had felt saved? What part of pying you was served by my almost drowning in the bay?”“Fine,” Sean said. “The ‘sniper’ shot Ilya. You thought we were next. Convenient, but let’s assume you’re being straight with me. So, why five seconds?”Anne took an equivalent five seconds to just look at Sean, making it clear she would not forget the interruption. “Five seconds to account for the general confusion, readying weapons, impromptu attempts to apply one’s moral principles to intentional acts of violence — all the things that happen before people try to kill each other in earnest. And that is normally how much time I would budget for finishing one target, never mind half a dozen. So I knew from the beginning the numbers were not working in our favor. But I had to start somewhere and I already had my hands near my knives. Right grabbed the cinch, left got the big bde in an icepick grip.6Also called a “reverse” grip, this grip holds the knife with its bde pointed downwards and the thumb on the pommel. You’ve probably seen it a hundred times in movies that want you to believe that yeah, this guy really likes knife-fighting. In Anne’s fighting style, it’s an off-hand grip that trades reach for being easier to disguise and also offering more defensive options. Vasily was right near me but wasn’t anywhere near ready, so chances were as good as they were going to get. I started with him.”“Yeah, okay, with you so far,” Sean said. “Except I don’t know who the fuck Vasily is.”“You wouldn’t know him and neither did I, but I recognized him through a tale about the scar on his neck, where someone else tried to cut his throat years ago,” Anne said. “He guarded the gangway on the right, meaning it was his brother Adrian on the left, but Adrian didn’t look my way so I let him be for a moment. I can’t say I make much room in my work for dramatic symmetry, but considering Vasily’s defense was wide open, cutting his throat with the big knife was the best opening move.” Sean stared bnkly, hadn’t quite processed what those words and the tone she spoke them in meant, but it dawned on him, slowly, while she continued. “So I jumped him, pinned him against the rail with one edge against his neck while I worked the body with the cinch. Couldn’t get it through his leather jacket so I finished the draw across his neck and left it at that. It bled but I knew I didn’t get deep enough. If he is still alive, that is why.7It turns out both your airway and your main blood vessels running through the neck are protected by cartige and muscles, respectively, making it much harder to sever them than you would think. In fact, while it’s a horrific injury all the same, lots of people do survive getting their throat sshed because of this arrangement. Thanks, evolution! Still, at least it preoccupied him for the rest of the fight.”“…fuck,” Sean mumbled.“So Vasily was going to be busy putting pressure on his throat,” Anne said. “That gave me the chance to deal with the men I knew were at my back. I distinctly recalled a little one with a fresh buzzcut who I had made for a potential threat while you and Ilya were talking — someone who shows up ready and spoiling for a fight is not to be taken lightly. Indeed he was winding up for a punch already at that point, so he was next. It was just good sense.”“Yeah,” Sean said. Was it good sense? How would he know?“I brought my left arm vertical to protect the center, then turned his blow,” Anne continued expining. “He was overextended, so I hooked his arm with the back of the big bde and stabbed the cinch into his biceps. Would have gone for his neck but he had his head too low and I didn’t want to chance the bonier parts of his face.” Before Sean could protest, Anne mimed the move. “What I needed was more room. You have to manage your distances, Sean, I don’t know if anyone taught you that. People don’t exactly line up in a fight.8Everyone knows this. Nobody cares, at least as far as fiction goes. In real life, numbers matter, not least because multiple attackers can dogpile on the defender and pin them to the ground. The strategy — assuming that the far more sensible options of deescating, getting help or running away aren’t avaible to you — is to divide and conquer. Keep mobile, maneuver so the attackers are in each other’s way, take the fight to a narrow environment where they can’t fnk you and have to come at you one at a time. Think of the Battle of Thermopye.Mostly think about it because the defenders (most of them actually not Spartans, thank you) achieved a kill ratio of 10:1 and still got fucking sughtered. Some fights are not meant to be won. Now, the third man with the brass knuckles coming from the end of the pier pushed me right up against Buzzcut. Getting caught between them was when it got dicey. I knew I had to finish one of the two and fast, so I stabbed forward with my right and threw my left elbow backwards. I didn’t see it but apparently I got Buzzcut pretty good with a couple of belly shots —”“— so the third guy —” Sean cut in.“— took the elbow on the chest and tried to trap my left,” Anne said. “I snapped my arm out and got him just right, hooked my forearm and the back of the big bde under his chin and pushed up. Buzzcut was fading so I ripped myself free from him. The third man filed but I was stronger. Cinch went in all the way on his left, I think I got his common carotid and the jugur9Carotid artery, jugur vein, in case anyone is confused like I was. with one thrust. He went limp just about instantly. Now I know it sounds like I had this in hand —”“Mostly it sounds like you’re giving me a py-by-py of a killing spree,” Sean cut in.“You wanted to hear details, didn’t you?” Anne said.

  Sean just nodded.

  “I had spun around so much I needed to get my wits about me at that point,” Anne continued. “And seeing Buzzcut still up in the middle of the pier plus everyone around him was when I figured the bdes were not enough. I had to start ying them down a mite faster or they would just overrun us, so I let go of the cinch knife and went for the Colt. I think I kicked the knife into the water but I cannot speak to it with any confidence. In any event, I was just about done drawing down on Buzzcut when I saw the glint off in the distance. Now you see that glint, you move — I ducked and stepped to the side. The sniper’s shot blew Buzzcut’s ribcage my way as high-velocity spatter.”10Yes, it’s blood spatter, not blood sptter. I always get that wrong, too.Sean looked at her. Really looked at her. How could the fine sprinkles of blood all over her face just be gone after a simple shower?“And I don’t even want to think about how that bullet didn’t go right through me, too,” Anne added. “I wish I could say I felt the Lord with me, but I am not apt to disdain whatever it was, miracle or mundane. Anyway, I think that was about when you finally got into the fight and shot Yan.”“Yeah,” Sean said. “Except that was self-defense.”“Do you believe I was at a dance rehearsal?” Anne countered. “I figured it would be all over but the crying if the sniper got a better bead on us. So just when I ran out of moves Adrian blindsided me and bullrushed me against the railing. I can only guess he wasted the opening seconds checking on Vasily before he came after me. That will teach me to lose track of big brothers in a fight. He knocked the wind out of me, but he didn’t follow through, so I aimed the Colt at his side and let fly, one-two.”

  One-two. Not even one, two. Hadn’t taken a second to say. Hell of a way to brush off shooting a guy twice.

  “It was like he had his legs kicked out from under him,” Anne finished. “I must have got him in the spine. One more to the chest to finish him off, just as the sniper shot at me again. I could hear the bullet whistle right past me. That will truly get your blood pumping. But you were on the ground already so I suppose you were the more difficult target. In his pce, I would have tried to shoot me first, too.”“Jesus Christ,” Sean mumbled.“That was when I came for you and I saved you from getting stomped by the man with the sungsses, by the way,” Anne added.“You stabbed him through the neck,” Sean said.“That is where the blood gets to the brain,” Anne said. “The big knife is not as good as penetrating but, well, apply enough force and it will go in. Got some more arterial sprayed on me, not like it mattered at that point. It spared you from a boot to your head and provided me with some cover, too. It was the least bad move I had. Still, we were up the crick11Writing a particur idiolect without descending into parody is always iffy at best, so I tried to transport Anne’s way of speaking more by word choice and grammar than by a funetik aksend. I hope you’ll indulge me on this one. without a paddle,” Anne said. “As long as the sniper still had a clear ne of fire on us, sooner or ter he was going to dial in those shots. That only left the water. You know the rest.”

  Sean had backed away for about two steps when he ran into a bit of wall. Anne seemed, on the whole, unimpressed with his attempt at creating dramatic distance between them.

  “You…you’re serious?” Sean asked. “About all that?”“Every word of it,” Anne said. “What did you expect from asking the question? If you sought to salve your conscience, I could have told you right away the tale would not serve such purposes. Do not think I am making light of your feelings; I should very much like to scream out some anger as well. I am beyond frustrated at this turn. But it is simply that we do not have the luxury to go to pieces. We are here and that must be the whole of our concern at this time. Still, if you are of the mind to think further on it, please do consider that I followed you into a trap and got us both out of it in one piece.” She snorted. “A ‘thank you’ would not go amiss.”“Simple…it really is, for you, isn't it?” Sean said. “You killed five people, but all that matters is we got out. End of story, yeah?”“We did get out, end of story, and it was three, to favor the truth,” Anne replied. “The third man, Adrian and the man about to stomp you. The sniper killed Ilya and finished off Buzzcut. Vasily’s wound was survivable. And let's not forget you killed Yan, while we are keeping score.”“What the fuck, Anne?” Sean snarled. “This isn’t a fucking game. People, Anne, you killed people.”“We killed people, people who had designs on us,” Anne said. “Stone-cold self defense, in your own words, Sean. We did what we had to do.”“Oh really?” Sean said. “Well, that's some fucking comfort right there! Hooray, we're still a shade better than 'just following orders'. We left a half dozen people shot and stabbed to all hell, but it was totally self-defense — now that's something to sleep nice and tight on. Do you even listen to yourself, Anne?”“Do you?” Anne said. “Who wasn't happy with waiting this out in a safe pce? Who wanted to go looking for evidence at Ilya's undry? Who wanted to come to the pier? You tell me, Sean, why do I stick my neck out for you when your response to every narrow escape is to go running off to find some new trouble to get into?”“You,” Sean said, “you and Joe, you…you agreed Ilya was gonna surrender!”“It was a possibility,” Anne said. “It was also possible this was going to be a trap. Did you listen to us discuss possibilities or were you so set on your pet theory that you only saw us nod?”“Oh, I know what it was now,” Sean said. “You didn’t care why he was there. You knew it was your best shot to kill him.”“It was a trap,” Anne said.“Well, even if it hadn't been, you sure made it one!” Sean said. “I saw the look on your face. You were sizing them up for a pine box from the moment we arrived. And the shit-talk! You provoked him. Don’t fucking tell me you weren’t trying to get a rise out of him. That’s what you needed to justify this fucking blood bath.”“Again, Sean, it was a trap, and we wouldn't have made it if I hadn't used the time you spent distracting them to still my heart and pn my way through the situation,” Anne said. “Now let me see if I understand you correctly. Are you saying they were all lining up to get cuffs spped on them until they saw bad old me coming along and figured, well now that Simmons is here we had better just kill them both instead?”“Ilya said —” Sean tried.“He said what he thought would injure us,” Anne cut in. “Why should we take heed of the words of our enemy? If you had gone to him alone, you would be dead now.”Sean rolled his eyes. “Funny how certain you are about that,” he said.“If I hadn’t acted, we both would be dead now,” Anne said. “We were two steps from hell on this one, Sean. I am sorry if that is too aggressive for you. Did you want me to ask for permission first?”“I want this to stop!” Sean said. “Okay? This whole bullshit gang war circus that's been whirling all around me ever since I met you. I don’t even care who started this shit anymore. I'm getting off the ride, Anne. I'm not letting you dump any more bodies on my conscience. I'm done keeping my head down, I'm done following your lead, I'm fucking done pying nice with murderers. The one thing — the only thing I had to do was arrest Sidorov. But thanks to you, he and everyone who ever knew anything about his crimes is in a body bag by now! Amazing how neat and tidy that works out for you, isn't it?”“You have got to be kidding me,” Anne snarled. “Neat and tidy? Thieves are killing each other all because you and Berkovitz had to show up at a sanctioned deal talking about the cocaine —”“Oh, you mean the truth?” Sean said. “Welcome to the real world, Anne! You and your friends are cockroaches.”

  She stared at him, nostrils fring out as her breath sped up. But she didn’t say anything.

  “You heard me!” Sean continued. “Lying and stealing and killing is what you all do for a living. Don't act so fucking surprised Sidorov took it to the next level behind your back! And it's not my fucking fault you went and gunned them all down for it, but you know what, let’s grant you that one, let’s put one on the board for you. Maybe you do just keep walking into pces where people who should be working with you want to kill you. I mean, that’s the best, most charitable read of what you’re passing off as an expnation, or did I miss something that makes sense in there? So maybe you're right and maybe I should've kept my big mouth shut, yeah? I know I’m regretting this, ‘cause it sure would help to have some living suspects! And you could still believe whatever the hell it is you want to believe. Do you think you were better off not having a clue?”“I truly did not set out to kill anyone at the warehouse, Sean,” Anne said. “I just had to ask some questions. But they were dealing behind Mr. Dolzhikov’s back and calcuted their business was worth my death. Now if you and Detective Berkovitz hadn't put them on edge from the beginning, I might have gotten them to see reason and taken them to the council for a judgment. That would have been quiet, that would have been clean, that would have saved us all this trouble.”“Trouble,” Sean muttered. “You heartless —“

  This was not the right moment. Sean was no longer sure if there were any right moments in his life as of te, but in the middle of a shouting match with a professional killer was not even on the same calendar as the right moment. But that didn't stop the knocking on the door, and it didn't help with the call of “NYPD! Open up!” a few seconds ter, either. He had to do something, but what?

  “Keep them busy,” Anne said, turning back to cold calcution on a dime, and Sean's big brain struggled to find a word to express just how much he hated her for it. “Go!” she hissed. “I will clean up.”“We're not done,” Sean hissed back.“We will be if you don't answer the door,” Anne said.

  That settled things for this moment, which still wasn't the right one, but Sean took a deep breath, ran his hands through his damp hair and tried to brush out as much of the anger as he could.

  “Yeah, yeah, keep your shirt on!” he called, loudly. If he couldn't hide all the anger, he'd just have to work it into his performance somehow. The trick wasn't to hide what you were feeling, but to put it into the context of your lie and use it. Sean stomped over to the door with gusto, and opened it with the same, though only to a generous crack. His perp impression reached its first crescendo when he looked at the two cops in their smart leather jackets over their uniforms, clip-on ties and faces whiter than their teeth. “Yeah?” he snorted. “What do you want?”“Sir, I'm Officer Hoohan, that's Officer Janda,” one of them said, with the distinct NYPD cadence that made ‘Sir’ sound a hell of a lot like ‘scumbag’.Sean tried to take in the whole of Hoohan, but got stuck with a handful of disconnected details, like Hoohan’s eyes being too close together for comfort, his neck sporting a few semi-fresh cuts from shaving on top of his Adam's apple that morning and the smell of menthol cigarettes on his breath. Adjusting his scan slightly to the left, Sean got eyes on the other guy, Janda. Janda the panda, Sean thought, fitting for his vacant eyes and broad jowls — plus, that Janda character seemed to be nodding along to every single damn word out of Hoohan’s mouth. “Yeah?” Sean repeated, a little quieter now.“We need to take a look around inside,” Hoohan said while he and Janda already shifted their weight to move forwards, and Sean felt like smming the door in his presumptuous face. Good fodder for the lie he was trying to tell, that.“I don't think so,” Sean said.Hoohan's expression twisted, letting Sean know he'd chosen poorly. Janda's hand was on the grip of his gun. “Leave the thinking to us, pal,” Hoohan said, taking a half step back and putting his hand on his holstered revolver. “You broke into a cop house, genius. Little old dy saw the whole thing, you and some bck piece of ass. Now you open that door, show us your hands and walk out nice and slow, or I guaran-fucking-tee you'll wish you stayed in bed today.”“Okay,” Sean said, not budging. “Okay, let’s get some things straight. I'm Detective Sean Collins with the 64th, badge 4572. And whatever you’re looking for, Officer Hoohan, you won’t find it here.”“— that still doesn't make this your house, Detective,” Hoohan said, though he eased off on the gun.“Yeah, Joe's letting me use his pce,” Sean said. He dangled the spare keys in his hand as if they could substitute for his badge. “I'm entertaining a guest. We were just having a, uh, an animated discussion. Didn't mean to scare anyone.”

  Hoohan's smile exerted nigh-immediate magnetic attraction to Sean's fist, but he kept it in check by clutching at the door handle best as he could.

  “Oh, right, Sean Collins, the one who id down those red bastards yesterday?” Hoohan said, and Janda nodded again, though this was accompanied by him removing his hand from his holstered gun as well. “Making the most of your paid suspension, huh?”“Well, uh,” Sean said. “She’s my…she’s my girlfriend.”“Uh huh,” Hoohan said. “Ah, I know what it is. You’re the college kid Joe’s always talking about. You’re into…foreign cultures?”“I hear they got pretty good exchange rates,” Janda threw in.“Hah!” Hoohan guffawed. “Is that what the shouting is? Little ‘exchange rate’ dispute with your ‘girlfriend’? Man, I thought Detective paid better than all this. That why Joe Dickless is taking pity on you?”

  Janda and Hoohan ughed. Sean didn't.

  “This fucking guy,” Hoohan breathed on the tail-end of his chuckle."This fucking guy," Janda repeated between heaves of ughter.“You're alright, Detective," Hoohan said, "but you gotta css it up a little, yeah? I know you think you've got better things to spend money on, but don't treat your jungle fever in a friend's pce like this, take it to a motel and let the cleanup be their problem, that's what they're paid for. Have some css, you know? Fine line between thrifty and —“ Hoohan's smile widened — “niggardly.”12I felt uncomfortable with the whole exchange despite knowing I’d have to throw in some racist assholes, but specifically went back and forth on including this word. It’s one of those ‘technicalities’ where the word itself has a different etymology than the n-word we’re sadly more familiar with, and the meaning — miserly — is also not obviously racially charged. However, the word has dropped so far out of common usage that it’s pretty much only heard from assholes pying a verbal version of the “I’m not touching you! I’m not touching you!” game. Which is precisely what Hoohan’s doing here.“No, it's —“ Sean said.“Baby?” Anne called, in a passable imitation of a scared little woman, passable enough to raise Sean’s heckles. “What's going on, baby?”“Nothing, sweetcheeks,” Sean called back. He felt his facade and voice slipping. Had he tried to swim out too far? He seemed to be making a habit of that tely.“That her?” Hoohan asked. Sean's head swiveled back to look at him. “Wow, she even sounds ugly — I wouldn't want to bring that to my pce, either,” Hoohan added.“Smart, though,” Janda said. “That college learning saves money. Why pay white girl tax on pussy? They're all pink inside.”“Aw, hell,” Hoohan ughed. “I think we've kept Detective Collins enough.” He winked at Sean. “You've still got the meter running, after all.”“Uh,” Sean said.“Already gone,” Hoohan said.“You have a good one, Detective,” Janda said.“Or two, or three,” Hoohan added. “See ya.”“Yeah, bye,” Sean said, then closed the door as soon as humanly possible.

  He gave a long, hard groan at the end of that motion, leaning his left hand against the wooden frame.

  “Now what exactly was that?” Anne said. Sean turned to find her standing in the door to the kitchen, garbage bag with their wet clothes at her feet.“Damn it,” Sean said. “Do you see what you made me do?”“Well,” Anne began, “despite my being a ‘cockroach’, I am apparently your ‘girlfriend’ and not worth the money at that, either. You certainly didn’t seem to disagree overly much with your esteemed coworkers. My sincerest sympathies for how much all that hurt your feelings.”“Don't even start,” Sean said. “We're not done talking.”“By which you mean you weren't done lecturing me — I suppose I can save you the trouble of crifying yourself for once," Anne said. "Now, as I recall, you were in the middle of compounding your previous insult by calling me a heartless something, the precise nature of which I do not care to specute about,” she added, shouldering the trash bag. “You may talk all you wish. But it is well past time I stopped listening.”“…what?” Sean said.“Everyone for themselves now, Sean,” Anne said, beginning her walk toward the back entrance of the house. “Nevermind you that this particur rollercoaster13Fun fact: the predecessors of modern rollercoasters were called ‘Russian mountains’, having been built in Portugal by Russian refugees to reconstruct the experience of sledding down a snowy hill. I’m footnoting this because it’s entirely too obscure to bring up organically within the narrative, but too cute not to mention. seems to be going uphill still, you said you wanted off this ride and I am quite happy to oblige. Feel free to deal with the news as you may and I shall react in kind.”“You're staying right here, Anne!” Sean said. “You walk out of that door, and I'll — ”“Arrest me without a gun, I don't think so,” Anne said, stopping to face him one more time and backing him away from her just by doing so. “Call your colleagues back, not after you spent all that effort trying to save them from me. Maybe I misread your intentions. Maybe you were not actually desperately trying to save them. Maybe you wish to prove something by taking me on alone. But if you still don't believe that I can take all three of your lives without breaking stride, you haven't been paying attention. I can hardly feel my fingertips, my head is fuzzed up and my side is killing me, but as the Lord is my witness, your two ‘pals’ out there wouldn't st ten seconds going up against me and I don't rate you much higher than them on the threat scale. So whether you realized it or not, right now you are all out of things that will make me do what you want.” She came a half-step closer, and Sean felt himself press up against the wall. “The truly sad part is,” she said, “for a moment there, I truly believed this could work out.”“No,” Sean said. “Wait, just…just…just listen for a goddamn second!““I have heard enough out of you,” Anne said.

  She left him.