Now You See Me...

[Polly Smithson]

MILLER-SMITHSON #2, 11/2/96 FROM ? TO 10:28 AM

Error in recording. Tape begins at 10:07 AM.

MILLER: [indistinct] and in exchange you can tell me something about your mother.

SMITHSON: What about my mother?

MILLER: Anything you like.

SMITHSON: What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

MILLER: What do you think it means?

SMITHSON: I think it means you’re a freak who thinks he’s a real wise guy.

MILLER: That’s what you think it means.

SMITHSON: Yeah. [silence] Anything I want?

MILLER: Anything you want.

SMITHSON: Ma always wore green.

MILLER: Was green her favorite color?

SMITHSON: What kind of stupid fucking question is that? Why the hell else would she wear it all the time, asshole?

MILLER: People do a lot of things for a lot of reasons.

SMITHSON: Yeah, it was her favorite color. You’re a real smart guy, anyone ever tell you that? They payin’ you real good? ‘Cause you’re worth every penny, man. ‘Was green her favorite color?’.

MILLER: So your mother wore green a lot.

SMITHSON: Every fuckin’ day of the week. She had just about anything worth havin’, and everythin’ not, in the same ass ugly shade; dresses, sweaters, knickers, shoes. Shoulda seen her on Saint Patrick’s Day. Patron Saint of who-the-fuck-cares and there’s Ma in all her glory, decked out like astroturf. That goddamn kelly green. Said she always did wanna be Irish and that it brought out her eyes, which is horseshit - exactly the same color as Ma’s eyes, incidentally.

You know what brings out horseshit? Jack shit, that’s what.

MILLER: Ireland.

SMITHSON: Huh?

MILLER: Saint Patrick is the Patron Saint of Ireland.

SMITHSON: Christ almighty. Who the fuck wants to be a fuckin’ mick, anyhow?


***

Everybody wore sunglasses on Sunset Boulevard. It was like being surrounded by the world’s worst secret club whose members all walked around with directions to headquarters taped to their faces, smug in the possession of their Ray Bans and Cavallis that guaranteed them a place in the pecking order of plasticized facades that passed for lives here. It wasn’t even really sunny out; the sky was a canvas of mottled bruises, cloud cover riding in from offshore and bulked up by the exhaust fumes of obnoxious SUVs that rolled on through the streets with pretentious music reverberating from their sound systems. It had gotten a little better once she’d hooked the bus out of downtown, but not by much.

Why couldn’t they just squint and scowl like normal people?

Polly Smithson screwed her eyes into slits against the muted brightness of the afternoon, backpack hanging low off of one shoulder as she stepped off the sagging city A-line onto the sidewalk. Everything she owned worth keeping was in that backpack and maybe it wasn’t much but it was heavy. After a week and a half of hauling it around, anything got to be heavy, especially if it got in the way of why you were hauling it around in the first place.

Out of habit her hand delved into the back pocket of her jeans, fingers rubbing the worn edge of a photograph that lived there. It was fitting, she thought, that it had taken up permanent residence against her ass. The subject in the snapshot was certainly a pain in hers and she was going to kick his. As soon as she found him, that was.

And she would find him. Polly was sure of that. Los Angeles was big but it wasn’t that big. There wasn’t enough space in all the world to keep her from Micah. Not enough space in the entire universe.

“Uh-uhn, I know a fine thing like yourself isn’t out here baggin’ it alone,” came a gravelly voice ripe with opportunity, off to her left.

Polly stopped and looked over. A grinning black man was eyeing her up with a wolfish smile, warmth in his eyes and cheer in his stance as he leaned against a shop front, tinted windows behind him plastered with glittery red lip cutouts and Marilyn Monroe posters. He had a blazer on over top a ribbed grey wifebeater, the pinstriped sleeves folded up and bunched around his elbows in proposed casualty. His teeth were impressively, blindingly white.

“You talkin’ to me?” Polly asked. “You know me?”

The man nodded, tongue flicking out in a flash of wet pink. He winked. “Yeah, I know you.”

“You do?”

“I know all a-bout you, sweetheart.”

“You do? Oh, I see,” Polly grinned and took a few steps closer to him, hips angled invitingly. “You think ‘cause you a brother that you’n me got an understanding.” her shoulder came to rest against Marilyn’s face, their knees brushing against one another. Smiles leaned over, all sparkling eyes, taking their proximity as a win.

“Yeah, that’s right. An understanding.”

“Lemme tell you something,” Polly said sweetly. Her eyes went hard. “You ain’t my fuckin’ brother.”

She didn’t wait for the satisfaction of watching his face freeze into narrow-eyed anger at her rejection, just pushed off the wall and started walking again. There was a convenience mart on the corner of the next block, faded Lotto tickets displayed in the window, and there were only two smokes left in the crumpled pack in her jacket pocket. For a moment Polly considered just skipping past, waiting until she got a little further in her trek. She had a lot of ground to cover and so many daylight hours had been capped as she wasted time figuring out the layout of the city that she wasn’t sure even a quick stop was worth it.

Then again, she had a lot of ground to cover and only two smokes.

The lesser necessity won out and Polly pushed into the market with a jangle of bells and a searching eye, backpack swinging around to tuck underneath her arm as she eyed the selection and list prices behind the counter.

“Jesus,” she gawked, unable to reconcile the chunky numbers above a row of Marlboro Reds. There were way too many nines. “Do they coat ‘em in fuckin’ gold here in California?”

[Jim Lewinski]

"Only when they smoke 'em."

The voice came from behind. It was the latest addition to the counter congregation, and it came in the form of a scruffy teenager cradling a Mountain Dew multipack. From behind a pair of thick-rimmed glasses, bulging eyes beamed, and he invited himself closer - his head sort of bobbed, pulling the rest of his body forward.

"You know," he continued, practically forcing the words through a half-cocked grin, "Because everyone around these parts be pimpin' with da grills, yo!"

The grin exploded into a glaring display of teeth to emphasise the boy's point. His entire body appeared to be electrified, and the loose-fitting clothes clung desperately to his limbs from every gawkish jerk and twitch. In the following silence, a few lonely dance beats sounded from the hulking banana-coloured headphones wrapped around his neck. First, he cleared his throat, then a slice of nervous laughter escaped, punctuated by a piercing cuckoo whistle. The dam burst:

"Course it goes without sayin' that mixing gold-plated teeth with a smoking habit is just asking for trouble. It's your classic triple-threat deal, you know? On one hand you got your risk of lung disease, and I'm talkin' that thick black goopy shit that oozes out of your alveoli, I'm not kiddin', it looks like the pathologist is dissecting a treacle-soaked spongecake down there. And then there's the combined risk of dermatitis and scepticemia - now how's that for a double-whammy? I mean, even the American Contact Dermatitis Society named nickel as its 2008 Allergen of the Year. Do you know why they're called the 3-11's, huh? Because that's the odds those chumps got of contracting gum disease. Ha! The jokes on them anyway because smokin' just makes your breath smell like ass! Nice to meet you, I'm Jim!"

His open hand sprung forth like a piston.

[Polly Smithson]

Polly stared blankly at the little shit bouncing in front of her, trying to thread through the mass exodus of language that spewed out of his mouth. A glance at the weathered clerk behind the counter, who was taking it all in with crossed arms, and then:

"You got fuckin' cancer police here, too?" Polly turned to the kid, her face twisting into an incredulous scowl as she glanced down between them. "What the fuck you got your hand out for, Energizer Bunny, you want a fuckin' tip or something? Fuck off."

[Jim Lewinski]

"Energizer Bunny!" he declared brightly, and turned briefly to the clerk, inviting his appraisal, "Oh, you know, that takes me back, I ain't kiddin'! Buh-BIG BUNNY! Ha!"

He wore a pair of brand new Nike Lunar Eclipse running shoes, which squeaked at regular intervals as he shifted his weight, scuffing his feet upon the tiled floor. The weight of the clerk's gaze did not go unnoticed and he gestured to him with a sychronised nod-shrug.

"Hate to be rude, lady, but can you move it along? I got people behind me here who are startin' to sound like a bunch o' Yankees fans on a good day. Brrrrp!"

[Polly Smithson]

This state was full of loonies. It had to be the sun. Baked them so dry that they walked around with empty heads and not a single one of them could tell the difference because it was a universal malady; how else did you explain the gas prices or the influx of vegans or Bottle Eyes, there?

"You're cracked, you know that?" Polly turned her back on Constable Jim, smoothly pulled a rolled wad of cash from her pocket with two fingers and jerked her chin at the plastic-wrapped packs of cigarettes. "Lucky Strikes. Jesus, twelve fuckin' dollars..."

She peeled a twenty from the roll, tossing it onto the counter in disgust and irritation. Bunny was buzzing behind her like some manic bottle rocket about to go off, close enough that she could feel wafts of disturbed air pecking at her skin. It set her teeth on edge. In a supreme display of self-control, Polly ignored him and pulled out the photo from her back pocket, flashing it to the clerk.

"You seen this kid around? He look familiar to you?" she asked, watching his face as he looked at it. There was no reaction, not even a flicker of recognition. He shrugged and shook his head. "Take another look. Real close. You know this kid?"

This time the scrub actually paused and leaned closer, dragged his disinterested eyes over the captured features and made an effort at studying it. The answer was another shake of his head.

Polly nodded and tucked the creased snapshot back into her pocket, snagging her smokes and her change as she went. "Yeah, a'ight. Thanks anyway. Consider lowerin' your fuckin' prices."

Of course, the kid was rightthefuckthere when she turned around, jostling and squeaking all over the place, and this time Polly snapped, arms splaying out to either side, "You got any concept of personal space or are you one of those freaks who gets his rocks off bein' slapped around?"

The question didn't require an answer but he looked about two seconds away from giving one anyway. Polly didn't want to be held responsible for what would happen if she did so she again yanked out the photo and was saved the trouble of having to shove it in the kid's face by his being mere inches from her anyway. "What about you, spazzo? You know this guy?"

[Jim Lewinski]

"Oh, you guys must be related!" he blurted immediately, his head weaving to appreciate the photograph from numerous angles, "Would you look at that! Sombody call the cops, we got an identity theft on our hands here, people! This guy's got your jaw, your lips, your eyes, and the same cute little button nose - lookit!"

He gave the photograph a delicate prod and beamed, as though it were an infant. The man in the photograph was anything but a bubbly baby boy. He had a strong jaw and full lips framed by a thin goatee, his hair was shaved, and he wore the expression of a man who wished every ill fortune upon his unsuspecting photographer. Deep in thought, Jim rolled his tongue, purring like a moped that's delivered one-too-many pizzas.

"I'm afraid this don't ring any bells, lady. How long's he been missin'? A day? A week? You know there's a police station just round the corner from here. Maybe-maybe-maybe-maybe we-could-go-speak-to-Mike? Good guy! Collects cookie jars!"

[Polly Smithson]

Of over eight thousand days spent walking and breathing on the earth, only one of them had ever tasted Polly's blood spilled by gunfire. It was an innocuous Wednesday, the day that they had lived for back then because it marked a halfway point to one more week of survival. Halfway was more than most people they knew got in near enough anything, let alone something as important as drawing breath after breath in a city that was a dedicated vacuum.

They went for pizza to celebrate, as usual. Two slices of cheese and a half-dozen games of snooker. Congratulations, you're not dead yet.

When it happened it felt like liquid heat. Like those pictures in the National Geographic of iron-hot molten rock spilling out over the lips of ashy mountains. Slumped over the pool table with blood seeping from her leg, Polly wondered why she was feeling anything at all. Weren't trauma victims supposed to go into shock? But there was no absence, only the fierceness of honey-thick fire throbbing deep beneath denim and Micah's hands, Micah's strong, angry, terrified hands holding her up. That's what you did when you got shot: you held on to what you had left.

Just a graze. That's what the doctor said in the ER later. You're very lucky.

Polly roughly jerked the photograph away from Jim. Yeah, she was one lucky penny, alright. Graze after graze after graze after graze; for once it would have been nice for it to be a straight shot instead of the constant stinging fire of a near miss that faded into an ache so deep it killed small and vital bits of you slowly.

Micah was here. He was here, in this neighborhood painted in warmer shades of the same palette that colored the streets they'd raised up from. She knew it with a certainty that was rock solid, bone-true. There were few things that Polly understood so intimately as her brother. What was that? Instinct, genetic ESP? Maybe it didn't even have a name, that sort of connection.

"The police?" Polly pressed her face into Jim's. Her mouth curled into a stiff and nasty grin, slow chuckle issuing forth as she lifted her arm and rubbed away a smudge from one thick lens with her coat sleeve. "That's fuckin' funny, Bunny Rabbit. You're a real comedian. Maybe you oughtta get your ass on Letterman."

With a sneer she turned away, tearing into the pack of overpriced Lucky Strikes with a hunger that seemed misplaced.

"Hey," the clerk interrupted. Polly shot him a glance with hands that were cupped instinctively around the factory-rolled cigarette held loosely between her lips, throwaway lighter at the ready. He jerked a thumb at a sign on the wall.

No smoking on premises.

"You gotta be shitting me," it was just another example of the baffling hypocrisy that she was coming to expect from LA. Shaking her head, Polly finished lighting up and then stalked outside, saluting Jim with two fingers as she went. It had been her intention to move on right away but now there was a point at stake and so she settled outside, slouching against a newspaper box covered in graffiti as she inhaled long and deep.

"Where you at, Micah boy?" she muttered, tapping ash onto the pavement in time with the bouncing of her knees. "All you gotta do is talk, man. I'm listenin'."

[José Luis Flores]

This time, he hadn’t stolen anything. This time.

As his feet pounded against the concrete, José wondered exactly why he’d been given what he’d been given. It wasn’t as if he were somebody who knew what to do with it anyway. Three months later, and he was getting the hang of... whatever the hell it was he did.

He heard another shout from behind him, and he hauled ass down the strip. The 3-11s were far too close for his comfort, and there were too many people to pull whatever the hell what he did was called. He sure as shit didn’t know.

He could hear his sister’s birthday present bouncing around in his bag and swore under his breath. That thing was a collectible and was worth some good damn money. He needed to get some distance and some privacy.

He turned a corner, and blew past a hot celebrity pushing her kid out of a store that sold clothes that were far too expensive to be worth anything. Thankfully this part of the boulevard was more open, and so there was less chance of the gang-bangers pulling out some heat and filling his ass with lead.

His eyes widened as he saw the familiar horrifying colours of the 3-11s in a car, and turned again; they’d seen him and two of them jumped out. He didn’t think they’d have been this fucking angry. And then came sirens; even the goddamn police were getting in on this.

He looked back for a second to see how far they were behind him and looking forward, saw a black chick and a white dude standing in his way, and his momentum kept him from changing course.

“Shit!” was all he managed to gasp out before colliding with the woman, his skateboard flying from underneath his arm.

[Jim Lewinski]

Jim's eyes followed her outside. There was something profoundly sad about the way human beings weave in and out of each other's lives without taking a moment to stop, and look. Seconds ago, the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. Jim never wore a watch; the days were long and leisure was his albatross, and if there was anything in this world that he had to offer in abundance, it was time. The scientific mind rejects fate, so perhaps he was a fledgling masochist, but either way, he had a new project. The trick was to find a common ground...

"Four dollars for a few cans of Mountain Dew? You fuckin' kiddin' me!? No wonder this country's goin' to shit! Yeah-yeah, I hope your mother rots her fuckin' teeth on 'em, you crook!"

Jim stormed outside, flipping the bird to a rather dumbfounded counter clerk, and zeroed in on the hostile stranger. Intent on playing it cool, he hooked his thumbs into his jeans, and just as he was about to sedate the proverbial sabertooth, she was flattened by Speedy Gonzales.

"Holy shit!" he cried out, leaping away from the wreckage. And once the skateboard ceased clattering at his feet, Jim plucked up the courage to attempt some damage control:

"Heh-hey-hey, lady, are- are you okay?"

[Polly Smithson]

Polly went down swinging.

"Motherfucker goddamn what the-" the pavement sandpapered against her jeans, chewing through the thinned denim knees that gave way without a fight as though they'd decided enough was enough, it was time to bow out. Something in the front pouch of the struggling woman's knapsack burst, a hollow pop of sound that melted into a soundtrack of crackling as Polly's crooked arms and closed fists flew around it, battering at the biological cannonball that had been stupid enough to knock her off her feet.

Finally she got her knees up and pushed hard, knocking the unfortunate soul off to the side as he scrambled akimbo to right himself. Boy was wild with adrenaline and his sloppy, frantic dance was proof of the fact that it was always the ones who couldn't keep a steady hand when hell broke loose who ended up getting caught with their pants down.

"I'm fine," Polly snapped as she got to her feet with Jim's help, crushed cigarette miraculously still in her mouth though it was bent double and swinging like a lead pipe. She tore it out and tossed it aside, breathing heavy. "Which is more than I can say for this fool. What the fuck -"

"There he is! With his little hombres!"

"We got you now, ese!"

Hammering footfalls, a stampede, sounded from up the block, echoing from a pair of grinning Hispanics in loose jeans and foul temper. They were bearing down at top speed and behind them came a terrific screech as an early model Crown Vic deviled around the corner, filled with their hollering support.

Jesus Christ. This was about as bad a scene as it got at three o'clock in the afternoon.

That was when the siren wails drifted in, adding their voices to the symphony of You Are Fucked.

"Oh hell no," Polly snatched her backpack up with one hand and a fistful of shirt of the bonehead who'd smashed into her, jerking him around so he could see her face and the flat promise that lived there. "I don't know what kind of fucking mess you're in but I ain't getting shot or booked today! Move!"

She let him go, glancing back over her shoulder at the rampaging gangbangers . "That means you too, Bunny, haul ass!"

[José Luis Flores]

‘Weird accent,’ was his first, completely irrelevant thought. The second, ‘Shit!’, was much more on topic; the 3-11s were getting closer.

He tore himself from the black chick’s grasp, picked up his board, and started legging it without saying a word. His fucking life was on the line, and every sweet breath was needed to fuel his aching legs, not play nice with some tourist. A damn fine tourist with a nice rack, but one could never say that José was confused about his priorities at the moment.

The sirens were closer, and it seemed that the Onces weren’t unaware of the pigs’ entrance into this little chase. The main problem seemed to be that the police were coming towards them in the direction they were running, meaning that the three mutants were rapidly running out of time to get out of the way of Ground Zero. The Crown Vic had turned a corner and José was sure that they’d be trying to cut them off from any escapes off the boulevard. All he needed was a few seconds though.

A crowd passed between them and the 3-11s, giving the trio a moment’s respite. José turned once more, dodging behind a line of people waiting outside of a shop and pulling into a small space between two buildings. The chick and dude followed him in, and a few moments later, the police cars blurred past, sirens wailing.

His legs felt like rubber, and he managed to get over to the corner, his head poking out to check out the area. Seeing nothing, he collapsed against the wall, his breath coming out of him in deep, heaving breaths.

“Goddamn it,” he gasped. “Goddamn it goddamn it goddamn it.”

[Jim Lewinski]

If there was one lesson his father had taught him growing up, it was that the one thing more important than becoming a man was becoming a gentleman. It was not a good day to be Joe Lewinski. While there was some chivalry in allowing his angry new friend to go first, all that went right out the window as he unceremoniously pushed her between the buildings, barreling in behind. It seemed, however, that despite their frantic dash for survival, his capacity to speak had not diminished.

"Ohhh my Gooood! We're so dead! We're so dead! Three-fuckin'-Elevens! Where did they come from, huh? What do they want!? I was kiddin' about the gum disease! Ohhh..."

[Polly Smithson]

A rough hand clapped over Jim's mouth, the smell of almond oil and gasoline rising to his nose as intent fingers pressed down, pulling at his cheeks until taut hollows formed. It looked uncomfortable - but only marginally more so than being shoved into a stack of discarded packing crates had been.

"Keep it the fuck down or you'll be dead 'cause I killed you, got it?" Polly hissed, lip blood-speckled from biting back a shout when her shin had made friends with an angled pallet. Helpless sincerity danced in Jim's eyes and it steadied her purposeful grip because if the trade off in the corner store was any kind of indication, guy couldn't keep his mouth shut if his life depended on it. At the moment, her life depended on it, too, and there were far too many wild cards flying around for the risk to be enticing.

They were in a bad spot. Polly glanced around with a flickering eye that cataloged their position in record time, absorbing details in as natural a rhythm as her heart pumping oxygen through her veins. The walkway between the buildings was narrow, not wide enough to even have a dumpster for refuse and backed by a high brick wall that offered no hope of scaling. There were no fire escapes, one of her trusted backups whose presence she missed with an alarming fierceness in that moment, and the only doorway leading into the alley opened from the inside. One way. There was one way in, and one way out.

What kind of idiot ran his back up against a wall? Even more important and pressing, why wasn't she just leaving the fucker to work himself out of the mire?

"Hey, now ain't the time to take a fucking water break, QB," Polly toed viciously at the gasping kid. He had no idea what he was doing. "Those guys might be pricks but they ain't stupid. In case you don't remember, the police are coming this way and our buddies there don't strike me as the sort to be cooperative, which means they'll be makin' a u-ey real fuckin' fast. I give it two minutes, tops, before they're crawlin' right up our asses and that shit hurts, pretty boy."

[José Luis Flores]

“You think I don’t fuckin’ know that?” he said, braving another look down the street. The cops had managed to stall the Onces for a little bit, but it wouldn’t last long. He’d actually been planning on doing that thing he did once he got some cover, but the addition of the tourist and the white dude messed that up.

He leaned back against the wall, his mind focused on getting himself and these two out of the pile of shit that had just landed on them. He’d vaguely heard the Onces lumping the two with him, meaning that they couldn’t pass off the matter as a coincidence until the danger of the gang had dimmed.

“Can’t run now, or the cops’ll get curious,” he murmured. He looked up at the chick. “You got a strong stomach?”

[Polly Smithson]

"Boy, you better watch your fuckin' mouth," Polly's eyes narrowed. "And what the hell does my stomach got to do with anything? If you're gonna be sick you damn well better do it over there, these are new shoes. K-Swiss."

If that was his way of handling things, more power to him. He wasn't the first scrub to get a little queasy when the ship started to pitch and they were knocking around just two knots shy of a squall. There had been a very distinctive stiffness in the way their unexpected pursuers ran, torsos thrust forward in the leering slope of men who were packing heat. Anyone who knew how to hide it through that kind of frenzy knew how to use it, and knew how to use it in the way they didn't teach at firearms classes, i.e. , the right way.

Frothy wetness against her palm reminded Polly that there was still a personal gag order on Constable Jim. With a hard warning look, she pulled back her hand and grimaced, wiping it down the length of his shirt before she kicked José's foot again. Hard.

"I don't know if you noticed, since we already established you got shit vision, but this is a dead end," Polly said. Just in case José didn't understand the concept, she waved a hand majestically at the solid wall behind them. Never let it be said that Polly Smithson wasn't sensitive to language barriers. "There ain't nothin' to do but run."

[José Luis Flores]

‘Watch my mouth?’

José frowned, and looked back over the corner one more time. The crowds had grown, and the Onces seemed a bit stalled, especially with the police having stopped only a light or two down. The car was still a wild card, but they’d have to contend with the cops too. Not a good situation, but not completely undoable. His first run-in with the Onces had been much, much worse in terms of escape routes.

“Fine fine,” he grumbled. “You haven’t been running half as long as me, so start shouting about my stupid ass when you start hyperventilating and feel sick.”

He tossed a short glance at the white dude and the black chick, and stood up, a soreness in his legs. Settling his backpack on his shoulder and his skateboard under his arm, he waited for the next large group of people to walk past.

[Jim Lewinski]

"Hey- hey, guys. I got a place we can go," Jim blurted, anxious to stop the pissing contest unfolding between his fellow fugitives. He bounced on his feet and eyed the crowds suspiciously, ready to take off like a rocket at the first sign of trouble. It pained him to take his eyes off their only escape route.

"It's on La Raza's turf. The Elevens won't follow us there. You see, it's sorta-like-a-kinda-place-you-can-go-but-not-like-the-YMCA-we-don't-wear-silly-hats but, uh... it's a safe house..." his gaze fell on the skateboarder dude, he gave a nod of encouragement, "For mutants. That's why you're on the run, right?"

[José Luis Flores]

José stopped, and glanced back at the hyperactive white guy.

“Nah,” he finally said, smirking. “I’m running ‘cause I pissed ‘em off. Stole something.”

He’d actually never once called what he did a mutation; the thought hit him once or twice, but he’d shut it down and continued on his merry way. The thought that he’d be a mutant wasn’t scary in itself, but all the shit that went with it was what he didn’t want to deal with. It was kinda like the way his mom explained marriage: you got the best thing you could get, and all the shit you couldn’t see for the glitter. All the shit didn’t make it not worth it, but if you weren’t expecting it, you were fucked. His plan was to just keep his head down, and hopefully it’d go down like those hobbits said on Lord of the Rings: ‘Keep your nose out of trouble, and trouble won’t come to you.’

Or some shit like that.

So then he’d gone and decided that he needed some stuff he didn’t want to pay for. So much for keeping his nose out of trouble.

“‘Bout a month ago or something. Went down there and grabbed myself a new board and all the hardware. One of ‘em worked at the place, or was just there, or whatever. He saw me, decided I shouldn’t be stealing from his store or whatever and called up his friends. They chased me, I got away. Didn’t think I pissed ‘em off this much though. Something else must’ve gone down.”

[Polly Smithson]

"Christ's sake, where did you grow up, Pasa-fucking-dena?"

As far as Polly could tell, no matter which way you cut it, everything boiled down to the fact that this kid didn't know what the hell he was doing and thought he did, a volatile combination within the confines of clapboard neighborhoods that sang with cocaine blues and urban warfare, razor-shaved knucklers skulking around five-a-penny. Shoplifting was small beans and a month was a long time; that kind of trail shouldn't even have existed.

And that was the real kisser, that it did and was so well-cut that they were wedged in a tight trench, forced to try pull a Hilt out of this mess. With building frustration, all bright and simmering somewhere low in her belly, Polly scoured the scant view to freedom, all the while ticking off the seconds as people trickled past. The window was getting smaller and smaller.

Two seconds more and she would have just washed her hands of it and gone rogue, leaving José and Bunny to their McQueen and Garner antics. But two seconds didn't come soon enough and the long-suffering Honda Civic that cruised past didn't have much going for it except it's stereo system, a diamond on a corner whore, blasting Mercy, Mercy Me loud enough to slingshot the entire street back to 1971.

It was a slap. Polly's heart thumped sickly and -

- here, I'm here! I-

***

Casefile PS0809-MA.

Content stored in security box 182-08.

#4 CASSETTE TAPES 1-4, circa 20??, origins unknown (see also: projected psychometry? Audio telepathy? (Ventriloquism?)):

Cassette tape #1, labelled ‘What’s Going On?’’:

Polly, don’t freak out. This is real, okay? I’m not shittin’ you, you’re not going crazy. I can talk to you through this thing and uh, sorry about your tape, but it’s-

Cassette tape #2, labelled ‘Nevermind’’:

Jesus fucking Christ, don’t turn this off-

Cassette tape #3, labelled ‘Master of Puppets’:

Look, we can go through every damn tape in the box, Polly, I don’t give a flying fuck. It’s your goddamn collection we’re fucking up.

Sorry. It didn’t have to be like this but I gotta talk to you, I need you to listen to me. I’m not gonna do anything, Polly, I swear to fucking god, I swear on Ma’s grave when she fucking gets there. This wasn’t the way things were supposed to go down. I didn’t want. For shit to go this way. This fucking city, I swear to God.

Look, this is me, a’right? It’s still me, it’s still your brother. I’ll be back soon. Look, get outta here, okay? It doesn’t matter where, go to fuckin’ Canada if you have to but get out of Boston. Get out of the fucking state. I’ll find you. I will find you.

Cassette tape #4, labelled ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’:

All this is for you, okay? Whatever you... Whatever you hear. From that fucker Miller or whoever. Whatever happens. I’m doing this for you. For us.

***


There was only a little bit of consolation in the fact that she wasn't so desperate yet that she'd believe the bullshit her mind sometimes tried to pass off as reality. Polly followed the shrinking digits of the plates, memorizing the string of numbers and letters even though she knew that it hadn't been his voice. Micah almost never did that anymore.

But Jim's voice, that was real. And it carried a promising lead, not some suspended hope wrapped up in a honey-smooth Motown wrapper.

"Knew somethin' was fucking weird about you, Bunny," she said, jerking her chin at him. Tick-tock, tick-tock. "This place is legit, it's prob'ly our best shot at burying our scent. How far?"

[Jim Lewinski]

"W-what? Oh, uh... five minutes? By car," he added weakly.

Something was troubling him, other than the fact there were about half a dozen gangbangers scouring the streets who wanted to spill his young mutant blood, he pointed an apprehensive finger at smirky skateboarder dude. A nervous laugh escaped through chattering teeth.

"Don't take this the wrong way, bud-bud-buddy, but did you just say stole something? You stole something from the Three Elevens? You did? Ohhh, isn't that- er... yeah, isn't that- that's- that's something. Heh heh! I'm on the run with a skateboard thief and an angry black woman and-I-only-wanted-some-Mountain-Dew. Mmmhmhmmm!"

[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.

[Jim Lewinski]

"...and then we were runnin'... again! Except this time me and fuckin' what's-'is-name are on our own, and that's when you show up, all pistols and Ray Bans. The Crown Vic we were runnin' from turns out to be a po-po-po- cop car. And we get apprehended while the gangbangers on our ass go untouched, that is prior to the attack of the invisible fuckin' woman, o' course. I mean, you'd have thought she'd have said suttin', ghostin' round the fuckin' place, nearly scared me half to death. Did you see that shit!?"

Jim had been allowed to remain seated in the passenger seat of the squad car while he gave his statement. His hands trembled as he recalled his harrowing misadventure, still wired on the copious amounts of adrenaline rocketing through his veins. He gave Veronica a dramatically puzzled shrug.

"I-I- don't know how you do it, ma'am. It was like the O.K. Corral here a minute ago. I ain't been in no gunfight before, it's not natural, and with all due respect, I think y'all outta your goddamn minds. FUZZINIT! All I wanted was some freakin' Mountain Dew. God damn..."

[Stern]

Stern chuckled at Jim. It was entirely possible he thought faster than his mouth could move.

"I like Mountain Dew, too."

Stern nodded at Jose as he came over. "You all right there? Don't worry about the Tres Onces. I can find them in a heartbeat once I take their pal here back to the precinct."

The MCU Captain motioned for the other two cops to take the gang member away.

"Hu, Let me know when they're where they were going."

He turned to the girl last of all. "I didn't mean to offend you. I hope you all manage to enjoy the rest of the day."

Then Stern disappeared in a flash of light.

[Polly Smithson]

Good goddamn day to you too, Ward.

On principle alone Polly was ready to knuckle up and throwdown because all this city slicker bullshit was starting to flake against the rough of her skin like a grater on a carrot's end. Hip propositioning the Charger's rear quarter panel, she leaned with arms crossed over her chest and drew a greedy suckle from the giving end of a new cigarette, the warm smooth heat of smoke slipping down her throat in a way that tugged just right, swelling into the space of her lungs raw and briar-sweet. Her exhalations when they came were an attack, bursting forth in jet streams that gave way to malingering curls, an assault on the very air that nourished the shortsighted dickheads currently playing Cowboys and Indians.

With Hollywood a solar flare of the past and Jimmy filling in the gaps for the female suit - and oh something dangerous and grinning inside Polly wanted to push, pick at the exposed edges of the wound and exacerbate it if only to see what the broad was like in a cage; not the type to sit behind two-way glass, for damn sure - Polly was left to offer a flat stare at the two humps standing with their pads next to José . They'd already taken their statements but it didn't stop their mouths from moving.

"Did you know your pursuers?"

Jesus fucking Christ. Polly gave the blond twink who'd asked the question an out and waited a full fifteen seconds for a punchline before she nodded.

"Oh, sure. Yeah we're all tight, man, we were going out for fucking tacos." she lifted her brows and glowered at his pen as it skated across his notepad, and flicked ash from the end of her Lucky Strike with a vicious jerk of her wrist. "Of course we don't fuckin' know 'em, what are you, retarded?" Polly glanced between the man and his equally wholesome-looking partner, all straight-parted hair and brass buttons. "Is he retarded? 'Cause I'll feel less bad for him if he's legally counted a fucking moron."

Whatever the retort was she didn't extend the hospitality of listening. With a shake of her head, Polly glanced from José to Jim and snorted in an offer of shared contempt. This was so typical of the police; too nearsighted to find an asshole in a nudist colony, all of them.

The cigarette butt turned elegantly in the air to land on the pockmarked asphalt below, released from Polly's fingers with a frustrated kick that looked involuntary, as though the muscles themselves had ceased to be biological levers and instead transformed into the solid manifestation of stiff irritation.

She locked glimmering brown eyes on Veronica and sighed. "Look, there ain't nothing else to this story. They chased, we ran: end of. If you're looking for a goddamn Scorsese flick, cough up the fifteen bucks for a cineplex ticket. Fuck, I'll even spot you the green."

[José Luis Flores]

“Can I get these damn things off please?” José asked, slipping into Polly’s angry eastern seaboard accented rambling rant as soon as he could. He turned around and wiggled his fingers. “Ya don’t need me in cuffs to take my statement, do ya?”

The black chick and the Officer Gorgeous were in one of the most epic pissing matches he’d ever seen, and he wasn’t sure he was all that eager to see it unfold. She was a cop, after all.

[Veronica]

"All yours, Hu." Rodriquez gave Jose a nudge toward Veronica. She sighed and pulled out her cuff keys. Jose turned around, and found his wrists free a moment later.

Veronica's nostrils flared, not because she was especially put out, but because she wanted a smoke like fire wanted oxygen. She took a deep breath and felt the nicotine hit her bloodstream a few seconds later. Rodriquez rolled his eyes during Polly's tirade. Veronica knew that look. Comé pinga, puta. He knew they'd gotten all they could, and he moved back to check on Thomas.

"Yeah, the 3-11s are chasing anythin' that looks like a doable mark." She sighed.

"You three have had a shit day. I'll give you guys a ride wherever." Veronica popped the driver's door open and hit the automatic lock button for other doors, which unlocked with a simultaneous click.

[Jim Lewinski]

"You for real?" he asked, when she rounded the Charger and slipped inside his disbelief became delight, "Yes!"

In one smooth motion, he swung his feet inside and shut the door beside him, claiming shotgun for himself. His entire body unfolded like a cat on a sofa, back arched, arms stretched, a long satisfied sigh. The air was stale in the afternoon heat but crackled with electric promise and the low buzz of radio chatter. Behind, he heard his fellow would-be fugitives climb in, the car dipped under the weight of their reluctance. All aboard, he looked to the driver in breathless anticipation, and found nothing but his own reflection warped in her mirrored shades. His seatbelt fastened with a snap and he looked up again wearing an eager-to-please grin. The Charger rumbled to life, giving his innards the most glorious jostling, and prompted from him a helpless squeak of excitement.

"Oh, man, I knew it! That's the sound of a five-point-seven litre V8 monster under the hood!" he glanced over his shoulder at his new friends, and elaborated: "You see, the new police Chargers have been upgraded with a Hemi engine, complete with Chrysler's Multi-Displacement System, which means at constant speeds half the cylinders are deactivated to conserve fuel. In-hot-pursuit-we're-talkin'-a-twenty-percent-economy-boost, right?"

The question, loosed like an arrow, sailed past Officer Hu and out the open window. Jim was undeterred, burning with enough enthusiasm to keep conversation strong across several states, and probed the hot plastic dashboard with dancing fingers. It was a lackluster, economic design that was compensated with all the high-tech trimmings of the average squad car; there was a laptop, a two-way radio, a mobile data terminal, a vehicle tracking system, GPS, and a couple of cup holders.

"You-you-you- you know what I heard? State troopers prefer the Crown Vic. Can you believe that? Somethin' to do with the extra volume for emergency gear and shit. Donuts, anyone? No offense, lady. O' course, in terms of dimensions, the Charger's one advantage over the Vic is its long wheelbase. Enjoyin' your legroom back there? Yeah, I betcha! Shit! Three hundred and sixty-eight horsepower. Nought to sixty in six-point-five-two seconds. Gobbles up them lowriders like a motherfucker!"

The seat squealed in protest as he twisted again to address the backseat passengers, his face aglow with nerdish glee:

"It's my first time in a police car!"

[José Luis Flores]

José weathered the verbal assault with a calm that could have been due to shock, but he turned an incredulous look at the black chick, his brows raised as if to ask “Are you fucking kidding me?” but he kept silent, waiting for the white dude to finish before saying anything.

"It's my first time in a police car!"

“No shit?” he asked, settling his board between his legs, and his backpack on the seat next to him. It wasn’t his first time in the back of a cop car; he’d seen the back of a cop’s head through the grate separating the back from the front about five times to count. All those were curfew violations, truancy, and skateboarding on private property.

“Yo, tell her where we’re heading or whatever, man. You can gush all ya want on the way.”

[Polly Smithson]

A mechanical shutter crunched in the brief lapse of voices, chased by a plume of grey-blue smoke. Polly squinted at the tiny screen of a month-by-month disposable cell phone, cheap plastic molded around a silicone keypad, and studied the blurred white smudge captured there, mouth agape in orgasmic satisfaction. It was a strange picture, an in-between shot that had grabbed hold of a few precious seconds that weren't meant to be noticed, the connective tissue-tension of a building athletic feat or the held breath before a shout.

She raised her hips from the seat cushion, slid the phone back into the weary pocket of her thrift store jeans that fit like an old friend, casually intimate in their woven embrace.

"Preservin' the moment, Bunny," Polly blew a short blast of air through her teeth, hint of a whistle skating across the enamel. "Fuckin' show your grandkids one day, what a goddamn boss."

And there was a barely contained flicker of tension in the fingers that held the cigarette, a Parkinson's tremble hostage in her hand as the window rolled down to let in the cooking grease and orange oil scent of the outside air. Her eyes darkened, the silty river uprising of a flash flood, and swept over the intersection slow and fluid and so focused that the street would have wailed beneath it's weight if alive, reduced to a flailing casualty caught in the overflow.

Fucking cop cars. Like a bad uncle that just kept coming 'round to snake a feel when momma wasn't looking, handsy bastard of a thing. The drive couldn't be over fast enough.

[Veronica]

Motormouth knew more about the car than she did. Veronica had promptly forgotten all the "specifications" of the car. She knew how to drive it, how to use it, and that was it. She also knew how to hate it. As a New Yorker, she was suspicious of cars. As an experienced mercenary, she knew all to well how quickly a car could be disabled. She had learned long ago how to focus her ability directionally, which made navigation of busy traffic less difficult, but Veronica was happiest on foot.

"Oh yeah!" Jim started up excitedly, and gave the address to Redencion House, on Banyon, and started to ramble about routes to get there.

"It's a funny thing," Veronica remarked, and pulled out into the road with a firm foot, "but I hate cars."

[Jim Lewinski]

"I suppose they're not for everyone," Jim said dreamily, studying the edges of the windshield, "Environmentally, they're a ball ache. Did you know that, annually, the average passenger car emits over eleven thousand pounds of carbon dioxide? A year ago, there were an estimated two hundred and fifty-four million passenger vehicles on American roads. That's... over one point four billion tons of CO2 pumped into our air every year! Or- or think of it like this, it's the equivalent of roughly seven million blue whales floating around in the sky. I'm tellin' you, guys, that's heavy, plus it would be murder on the radar - ha! On the plus side, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced a 'significant decline' in motor vehicle-related fatalities last year, only thirty-seven thousand, two hundred aaand sixty-one, I think. Not bad, eh?"

The response from the rest of the passengers was somewhat underwhelming, and finding himself quickly bored with such one-way conversation, Jim started to work out how many other wild animals were potentially floating over their heads. His tongue rolled so fast it sounded like a helicopter rotor firing up. Soon enough, they were turning into Banyon Street and rolled up to the largest rundown house in the neighbourhood. Jim sighed happily.

"Home sweet home, guys!" he gave their driver an uncertain sideways glance, "A-yo, Officer Hu, I can't tell ya how much I appreciate the lift and the whole not-gettin'-shot thing today. You're welcome to come in for twinkies and coffee, you know."

[José Luis Flores]

The house looked huge for a place in Los Santos, in a neighbourhood like this. The only other places like it were on the outskirts, the compounds where the Mexicans with their huge multi-generational families started to degrade, and the whites with their huge empty mansions pretended they were happy. This one managed to look like a Mexican house, which, to José’s senses, seemed to have more soul, whether for good or bad.

A huge ass dog was lying on the front porch, panting heavily. It perked its head up at the sound of the car, and watched them curiously.

“Damn man,” he whistled. “This place is huge.”

[Polly Smithson]

Before the car came to a full stop, half-caught in the lurch of slowing down, Polly slid forward and leaned an arm out the open window to pop the door open from the outside. Her legs slid out with a sigh against the seats, feet scuffing on the asphalt as her cigarette burned and her backpack sang through the air with an anxious skip, weary strap perching on her shoulder like a faithful peregrine. It was a dance the way she moved away from the prison of the vehicle, a coordinated retreat in shades of economical streamlining and for a moment as she stood with her sneakers kissing the curb, there was a near-visible stream of relief ribboning out of Polly, cascading into the sun-warmed air to mix with the faint echoes of a heavy boombox anthem.

It faded into stiff watchfulness with a razor-quick snap. There was something to be said about bred alertness; there was an unforgiving vigilance to that sort of caution, a steady fear that thrummed through veins and cast a cold shadow of appraisal over everything - because nothing was insignificant when it meant the difference between there being a tomorrow. When that kind of law ruled the land, there was little time for rest. It was a fair trade, Polly figured. There was no get without a little give.

Largely ignoring Veronica - a little flickering gaze as she turned to take in the sprawling debacle of their stop, not quite condemning in their hardness but certainly without a trace of thankful sheen - Polly ran deep, murky-water brown eyes over the house. They pierced the tired front, in need of a good pressure washing, and the broad front porch, searching for a signal or a sign. Location didn’t much matter, there were tell-tale giveaways of institutionalism that lingered whether beneath a suntan horizon or a reaching eastern sky: anemic colour palettes in sterilized hospital parody; plastic, no-bullshit blinds without a speck of dust as though somehow shielded by a containment field; stickers in the windows, broadcasting security systems and state approval and good old-fashioned hope.

But there was none of that here. There were fucking lace curtains hanging on what Polly could only assume was the den window, a herd of shoes scattered across the porch by the front door in a comfortably confused spread that would have sent a government floozie into fits of hysteria. An orange frisbee lay forgotten on the lawn.

And then there was the goddamn fucking honest-to-God Jack London Call of the Wild wolf. Polly’d watched enough Animal Planet and lived in enough shitty neighborhoods with snarling dogs behind bloated chain-link to know that the animal lounging on the wood planking wasn’t from the local humane society. Fuck kind of place was this?

She tossed her Lucky Strike to the pavement and ground it out with a heel, twisting a look at Jim and emphasizing it with pointed finger. “That thing tries to bite me and I swear to God, Jimmy, I will fucking boot it back to the Great White North.”

[Veronica]

She processed much of the same detail Polly did, but through different lenses. Veronica had never been in any sort of institution, really. She'd been a thief or a hired gun almost her entire life. and instead saw the house through those lenses. Points of entrance, structural strengths and weaknesses, angles.

Veronica followed them to the porch, where a wolf sat. Veronica had seen wolves the wild before, while on assignment. They were wary creatures, and never got closer than 20 yards. Veronica respected them.

"I don't eat cop garbage, but I'll have some coffee. I'm going to have a damn mountain of paperwork later." She said. It came out wrong, but after gunplay and no other cops to look over her shoulder, some old habits were bound to come out.

Veronica ate more like a professional athlete than a cop. It wasn't incredibly difficult to eat clean, but she still had a vice for low-grade stimulants like caffeine and nicotine. Goddamn nicotine. Polly's cigarette had been near-torture, and she'd almost asked the Boston Bitch for one. Part of her was still high on combat, the bark of the AR-15 against the AK, brass clinking against metal, street and concrete, the recoil against her body. Fucking cigarettes. It used to be her preferred way to come down.

Coffee would have to do.

[Jim Lewinski]

“That thing tries to bite me and I swear to God, Jimmy, I will fucking boot it back to the Great White North.”

"What, Julian?" Jim asked, his head snapped from the wolf back to Polly, wearing a look of disbelief, "You're very violent, lady. Julian's a big softy. Hey, buddy."

He gave the wolf a friendly scratch behind the ear as he passed to emphasise his point. It was difficult to think of him as just another guy when he prefered to walk on all fours, and while Anna frowned upon Julian being treated like the house pet, try telling that to the kid who'd always wanted a dog and one day got a badass wolf instead. The front door jerked open with a nudge and Jim stepped inside, inviting the others to follow while he called out to the house at large:

"Anna! Jake? Hope you don't mind but I brought some new friends o' mine fresh from a gun fight!"

[Anna Fernandez]

Wrestling with her budget in the kitchen, Anna heard Jim talking, but it was the last two words that made her head come up. "A what?"

She stuck her pencil in her ledger and got up, walking to where she could see down the hallway. Jim stood there, Julian at his side getting another absent scratch behind the ears, another teen she didn't know and two adult women. "New friends? What's going on, Jim?"

She smiled a little uncertainly.

[Jim Lewinski]

Jim pulled the beanie from his head in a gesture of sincerity and from a thick tangle of hair sprouted a pair of small ears, protruding outwards at dramatic angles. He had to bolster himself against the concern in Anna's voice, and it took everything in him to stop the rumbling guilt in his stomach from taking over, lest he be overcome by a fit of nervous convulsions.

"Well, the thing is... look... feh-feh-funny story... you know ha-ha-ha- how sometimes things can get a little WOW and EEE- no-"

He cut himself off, positively shaking like a leaf, and recalled an old technique from his days of speech therapy. Staring at his feet, he helped himself to a couple of deep breaths, paused, then said:

"Went for Mountain Dew. Met black chick. Skaterboy bumped into black chick. Three Elevens chasing skaterboy. We ran. Police-turned-up-big-shoot-out-gave-statements-no-harm-done-brought-home-in-police-car. And here we are! Anna, this is Officer Hu, black chick, and skaterboy. And-you-two-really-oughta-get-into-the-habit-of-introducing-yourselves-to-people. Do we have any twinkies?"

He was already peering over Anna's shoulder, ogling the kitchen with hungry eyes.

[Polly Smithson]

"It`s Polly."

Polly glanced up from where she was crouched in the doorway, hands pausing in their act of stuffing her shoes into her backpack. As well-tread as the carpet looked it was still clean and manners were important. Just like making sure nothing got left behind or left out for jackasses who might take a shine to a new pair of sneaks.

She stood and took care to keep the backpack between her body and Julian, which was, by the way, a fucking weird name for a wolf. Jesus, go with something more dignified. Killer. Fang. Kujo.

A quick snap to take in the room and then Polly turned a measured look on the hispanic woman, jaw working right and left like she were grinding walnuts between her teeth to a fine pulp. "You state?"

[Anna Fernandez]

Anna blinked a bit, trying to process Jim's stream of consciousness storytelling, and then Polly's strange question. She finally managed to parse it, and shook her head. "Ah, no, this is an independent non-profit."

Jim zipped past her to the kitchen, finding some Hostess chocolate cupcakes instead of Twinkies, and Anna turned toward the policewoman. "Thank you for giving Jim a ride home, I do appreciate it, Officer Hu. Coffee... for everyone? It sounds like you all had quite an adventure."

[José Luis Flores]

Something seemed weird about the wolf, Julian, but José let it be as he was shown inside the house; he didn’t know anything about wolves anyway, so it could have just been the fact that it was a motherfucking wolf just standing there, watching and listening to them warily that gave him his weird feeling. Julian mostly ignored him, keeping Polly (Polly? Weird for a black chick to have a non-retarded name) fully in front of him, though he stayed quiet.

He stayed as quiet as the wolf through most of the introductions, as he’d like to remain as inconspicuous as possible to Officer Hu. She seemed more real than the other cops he’d met, but she was still a cop, and if he’d learned anything in his time in LA, it was to only trust the cops so much.

“Ah, you got iced tea or something?” he asked, when the subject of drinks was brought up. “‘M parched, and coffee won’t quench. Name’s José by the way.”

[Veronica]

Veronica forced a smile and nodded. Unlike Polly, Veronica didn't talk very much. Her thumbs settled into her belt, hands over her pelvis like a gunslinger.

"Please." she said at the mention of coffee. Veronica stumbled over her own thoughts as she tried to sort the feel of the place out. Anna was different. Her concern and reaction was genuine, but controlled. The place was huge, and Veronica had nearly looked through all of it. The place felt different than the rest of the neighborhood, and it was more than just the horde of kids and the garden in back.

[Anna Fernandez]

Anna nodded politely at Office Hu, and collared Jim as he went by her again. "You were being chased by Tres Once? And involved in a shoot out?" She would have taken the cupcake away from him except he quickly moved his hand and the treat out of reach. She narrowed her eyes at the manic youth.

"This is muy serio, Jim."

[Jim Lewinski]

"Involved in a... W- C'mon Anna! It's-it's not like I did it on purpose; prowlin' the barrio, packin' heat, pop-pop-poppin' caps in asses. I went fo' some Mountain Dew and everythin' just- it's this neighbourhood. It's the people. Everyone's fu- no- godda- no!- everyone's outta their minds."

He finished weakly, shoulders slumped under the weight of his exasperation. It wasn't the first time Anna gave him that sort of look, and in all likelihood it wouldn't be the last, but this was one time in which Jim was certain he was completely innocent, almost. The store- the photograph- José- the gangbangers- in the alley- on the run- Polly's gun... Ah. There was the snag. Maybe he should've dropped the weapon right away, but then it would've been a danger to the public and he would've potentially provided the Elevens with another weapon, and lost Polly's property in the process. When they were on the run this had all been considered, of course, and it worked out alright, in the end it had been probably the right choice. Polly's photograph. He'd have to ask her about that sometime. Again. He circled the kitchen island and wheeled on the house matriarch, his face twisting itself into a desperate plea.

"A shoot out, Anna. Think about it for a second. It's Jim you're talkin' to here! Ask the guys!"

Here, he poked the untouched cupcake in the direction of his new friends, and gave them an enthusiastic nod which told them, in no uncertain terms, that they were indeed The Guys.

[José Luis Flores]

José blinked, and looked uncertainly at Polly and Officer Hu, idly wondering what sort of scene they projected as the Guys: a skater kid, a black chick from Boston, and a cop. Weird shit.

The Elevens had been chasing him first off, but thankfully that had been glossed over, and truthfully, he wasn’t quite sure why they’d been chasing him this time either. Sure he’d been in their territory last week stealing skateboard stuff, but that didn’t warrant an AK, or even running down half the freaking city for all he knew. Something else was up, and José was worried he’d painted a target on himself.

“Nah, he wasn’t looking for nothing like that, uh, Ma’am,” he said. “‘Sorta fell on alla us unexpectedly, ya know?”

[Anna Fernandez]

Anna took a deep breath. Jim had been living at Redencion House for a while now, and she knew he was not the type to go looking for trouble. Trouble had, apparently, found him. She looked at the three visitors, and realized they were all standing around in the hallway still. "Lets all sit down and straighten this out, why don't we?"

She gave Jim a little push back into the kitchen. "Why don't you get Officer Hu some coffee, Jim. Here, everyone, just around the table. I'm sorry, we have just had a lot of recent trouble with the local gangs..." She pulled a chair out for herself and settled at the table in the breakfast nook while Jim busied himself finding a mug for Office Hu.

Anna smoothed her shirt over her belly, and looked at the Asian woman. "Perhaps you can tell me what happened..?"

[Polly Smithson]

In defiance of the suburban freakshow coffee klatch, Polly remained standing beneath the arching entry to the kitchen with a growing sense of disbelief siphoning over her skin like the gentle tremors of a soon-to-shift tectonic plate. Rather than the pursuit of making some kind of obstinate point, the woman's hesitance was born from a fascination with the calendar tacked onto the corkboard half of a mini-whiteboard, handily mounted on the wall. Each tiny square was a present, wrapped in colourful text and shorthand abbreviations, little codes that instantly reminded Polly of ward logs in looney bins. There was no space left unscathed - in fact, where cramming had become an impossibility, Post-It notes filled with additional notes had been neatly stuck on. It looked like the ambitious schedule of a time-defying overlord.

At the upper corner in diagonal salute a paperclip held a business card, an advertisement for a poison control hotline. Christ, make that an evil overlord.

Finally Anna's voice pierced through the shroud of suburban phobia and Polly cast her gaze over to the collection at the table. She frowned.

"Why you wanna ask her about it? Baryshnikov already told you what happened. Those cocksuckers were canvasing," Polly confirmed, her shoulders jerking up in a violent, dismissive shrug. "Bunny here ain't guilty of anything other'n being..." she waved a hand in front of her, as though the all of Jim's character could be summoned by a vague gathering of air, "himself. Which, granted, could drive Mother fucking Theresa nuts, but that's no crime."

Her eyes made a casual dive away to sail across the little room, absorbing every nook and cranny of the kitchen with a calculated hunger. The room was missing something, the feeling of the smell of deep spice and summer nights and a warm snap of laughter that followed her brother as closely as a shadow. Polly felt a ragged line of desperation claw at her windpipe as certainty settled in: Micah had never been here. There was nothing of him in the folds of the house, no clue or through-line to follow. If he'd stopped by, even for an instant, there would have been some sort of mark - hovering against the ceiling, rising up from the floor, leeching out of the quaintly warped countertops. He always left something of himself behind.

And there was no doubt about it, this was exactly the sort of place that Micah would have made a layover at if he'd been running on his own steam. Polly didn't know how the hell to qualify this independent non-profit, but it sure as fuck wasn't the sort of place that Lands End harpies made fat donations to so that they could boast casually at the country club as they nibbled on overpriced salads. Wasn't state, wasn't prep, wasn't nothin'.

In spite of the despair roiling in her belly, Polly remained impassive. The sick fear didn't even brush against the surface, even the faintest of ripples held down deep where the light couldn't filter through. There was a tragedy in the fact that Polly wasn't a gambler at heart because her poker face was a thing of beauty. She glanced idly out the window above the sink, a picture of grimly intent appraisal. There was a dizzy feeling lurking at the edge of her awareness, a furious inclination to just fly apart, burst at the seams and send darts of frustration stabbing into anything and everything that stood as a wall between her and answers.

A cigarette, goddamn. She wanted another one so badly it hurt in a marrow-deep way, all itch across the skin and jerk in the nerves. Instead, she settled for digging the nail of her right ring finger into the flesh of her palm, drawing a keen focus from the biting pain.

[Veronica]

Veronica gratefully accepted the cup of coffee from Jim, added a half packet of sugar to cut the bitterness. She took a sip, the warm brew filtered downward into her stomach.

She took a deep breath, and enjoyed the warm sensation and caffeine drip.

"I'm a little surprised that this sort of thing hasn't happened sooner." She said, hopefully putting things in context for Anna.

[Jim Lewinski]

It was of real comfort to Jim, as he pottered about the kitchen delivering coffee and iced tea, that he and the guys formed a united front on the small matter of their life-or-death misadventure. He was particularly pleased with Polly's stabbing interjection, which cut through the stagnant gloom of the conversation like a breath of frosty air, ruffling feathers, upsetting apple carts; she was stoic and statuesque, and yet managed to stir everything around her into constant motion. He loved that. And, at the dubious honour of being capable of driving Mother Teresa crazy, his chest swelled with pride.

Iced tea was new territory for Jim, but with no Mountain Dew in the fridge and coffee being a big no-no, he'd decided to dip his toes into the flowery teacup of metrosexuality, taking his cue from the latino skateboarder. His throat was still hoarse from all the unflattering screams, the memory of which he found strangely amusing - now so far removed from danger, wrapped up in the comfort of home, with new friends, drinking iced tea. Perched against the counter, he took a single gulp from his glass and it was instantly regurgitated into the sink in the elegant fashion of a water-spitting cherub. It was like ashtray water.

"You know, I've been thinkin'."

And it was true, he had been thinking, about a lot of things. Always a lot of things. While his new friends spoke, an army of ideas took shape in his head, desperate to be unleashed. First, there was The Lightning Bolt and Mister Unstoppable, alternate nicknames for himself he was to propose to Polly in the very immediate future. He had also considered the story of how he and his new friends met, its anecdotal potential, and invaluable phrases such as "caught up in a maelstrom of conflicting emotions" and "shitting bricks as it showered bullets." Then there was Anna, and the cloud of gloom bubbling overhead, it simply wouldn't do to pursue the sore topic of gang warfare under her roof any longer. And once the good officer had contributed her own pragmatic, and remarkably dispiriting, view, the general mood in the kitchen was in real danger of taking a nose dive.

"Polly is new to town," he said, it was an accurate assumption, "An' I was thinkin', what with her bein' one of us an' all, maybe she could stay a while?"

He glanced at Polly, looking hopeful, "You'd like that, right?"

[Anna Fernandez]

Anna's attention flicked from Polly, the sullen woman standing in the corner, to Officer Hu who was enjoying her coffee, and then to Jim who was doing his best to muddle the issues at hand by changing the subject. Granted, it was difficult for him to slow his mind down and not constantly change the subject, but Anna put up a hand toward him. "One of us? Hold that thought please, Jim."

She turned back to the police officer. "You are surprised this hasn't happened sooner? That Jim gets accosted by a gang and the police have to bring him home?" She rubbed her temples with slim fingers. "We had a shoot out on our street just a few weeks ago. My home was attacked by Tres Once members almost two months ago, and they haven't forgotten about us, the mutantes in the neighborhood.

"And that isn't even bringing into account La Raza or the Barrio Boneyard who seem to be trying to tear each other to pieces. So, si, perhaps this sort of thing should happen all the time, but it hasn't." Frustrated, Anna was starting to feel like she was going into free fall. "But still - what happened? And no, Jim, I cannot talk about anyone else staying here right now. Stop spitting your drink all over the sink."

[José Luis Flores]

Damn. She's flippin' out, ain't she?

José stayed quiet and unobtrusive as... Anna (that's her name!) rounded on the cop-lady with a vengeance. La Raza worked around here? It seemed he wouldn't be pulling any stunts around here then (neither at the house, nor around the neighborhood, or the general area). He actually felt bad for the woman, but he sure as hell wasn't sticking his neck out to be chopped off when Whitey and Polly remembered that the Elevens had been chasing him first.

Best just to stay quiet and let the whole thing blow over.

He sipped his tea, and reveled. After running as much as he did today, he didn't care much what he was drinking as long as it was wet.

[Veronica]

Veronica paused. She didn't like to talk very much, so her mind slowly put words into sentences and put it through her Professional Police Persona Filter.

"The Tres Onces were in pursuit of these three individuals. Jim simply walked out into the street at the wrong time. They were flushed into alleys and back streets, set up for a drive-by. We had officers in the area who noticed the pursuit and I managed to head them off before the hit squad got there. I disabled the driver and passengers of the hit squad. One of our officers was injured in the exchange."

Kill was not a word to use until everything had been vetted through command, so disable would have to do for now.

"But the report hasn't been filed yet." She took another sip of the still-hot brew.