Jo trained her gaze on her shoe. The heel of the sneaker rested over the top of her left foot. She could feel her captain's glare. She didn't look up to acknowledge it. She heard a large sigh coming from the robust man and the whine of his chair as he sat back. She hadn't made the last few months easy on anyone. She knew it. So it made sense to expect a fall out of her actions didn't it? She sat vaguely resigned, but stubbornness wouldn't let her resolutely submit to whatever punishment her captain meant for her.
"What do you want me to do with you?"
She met Captain Lundy gaze straightening her back for no other reason than to move the limbs that had grown numb from waiting. She wouldn't have a choice of her fate. She knew the question was rhetorical as he contemplated aloud.
"I was doing my job," Jo defended her actions.
"Damn you Polniaczek. I could smell that shit you don't think stink under your shoe before you waltzed in here." He threw a folder on the part of the desk closest to her. She was startled by the action looking from her captain to the folder reaching for it when he encouraged with a nod.
She opened it and for the last the eight months saw what she had become in the file. On paper she looked like a jackass. The type of cop someone from her old neighborhood would have expected her to become. Everything was conjecture , but anyone with eyes and a brain could put two and two together. It wasn't easy to hear you were becoming a mess, but it was worse to see it unfolding in document after document, each one detailing the fall of a promising cop.
"I don't know what you did. I don't care. But ADA Birch has got a hard on making your life a living hell. Your cases seem to always fall short and that doesn't look good for the department."
The department meant him. The blue bloods were forcing his hand and somehow Jo couldn't help thinking that two key players had something to do with that pressure. Jo had a file of misconduct that wasn't has seasoned as some of the veteran cops still employed by the NYPD. Despite the A.C. working on high it felt as if her chair had been especially warmed for this occasion.
"No one wants to work with you. Your team has requested that you be transferred elsewhere."
Kolfee had been the only of her two partners that understood. If he wanted her gone it wasn't personal. He was a black man who wanted to make a career of the law. Jo stood in the way of that if she was within a a hair's breadth away from any of the cases he intended to close. Scott just didn't want her there. He felt as if she betrayed a trust. Whatever it was, they never talked about it. dividing up the work through the buffer Kolfee had become. Now they wanted her gone.
"I bust a couple heads. Bruise a few egos. That's grounds for what?"
"I don't think your understanding the shit that you're in Jo," he leaned forward. His voice controlled. He wanted to yell, but exertions of energy like yelling made him tired. From the look of it his anger lacked passion. He was enjoying this as much as she was. His jacket probably made her look like a girl scout if someone were inclined to look close enough. The part of him that could sympathize was giving her the courtesy of a warning.
"Politics," Jo laughed humorlessly.
"Some bend over more than others. And then some of us are expected to bend over more than others. Marshall…"
"Was a solid case," Jo interrupted.
"When you go after men like that you don't hand over a case your own ADA doesn't think he can win."
Jo scoffed. The rest of the story was too sordid to share. But from time to time she entered a room that went silent when she entered. She met glares that ranged from curious to malicious or lascivious. The department knew what she was. And while they could whisper it behind her back they had no idea what she'd lost. The loss made her bitter. She could remember a time when she was a much more graceful loser. Then again nothing had ever been on the line that could quite measure up to Blair Warner.
"I had the case I underestimated the moral fortitude of the ADA."
"You haven't been listening to a word I've said, Polniaczek," he said as he pinched the bridge of his nose.
"I'm not safe on either end captain. One wants me on my back and the other likes it doggy style. So what should I be listening to?"
"In this world you're either giving it or getting it. I'm giving you this," he handed her a card. The name on the card read Melvin Gladd. She had never heard of him before. Her captain didn't wait for her to ask when he explained why he gave her the card. "If you weren't a damn good cop that card wouldn't be in your hand.
He stood and opened the door. The blind swung as it opened. Jo turned her head before she stood up and let herself be dismissed without definitiveness to her future. The short trek to her office up the stairs took a lot out of her. Work had been her constant. It wasn't the addicts she was trying to save. Her drive was inspired by the dealers she wanted to punish. Marshall Parent hadn't been her mistake, but it was a mistake that haunted her. Now she was obsessed with inflicting pain on others so she could avoid her own. Her collars were arriving in a troubling pattern, bruised by means that didn't coincide with the reports Jo wrote up.
Perhaps she should have taken time off. She sank into a deep depression after Blair had chosen Graham over her and work had seemed like a positive distraction at the time. Driving her, writing reports, making collars seemed to affirm that she was fine. But she wasn't. She was slipping into a dark place she hadn't revisited since childhood. Her hands were still raw from her, but the satisfaction surpassed and in some ways heightened the pain. She enjoyed his fight. She enjoyed the pain of it giving and receiving the hurt. What was so wrong about that? She resigned from social work for a more hands on approach and now they were telling her she was too hands on.
The door to the office opened to Kolfee and Scott meeting her gaze. It was obvious she had interrupted something. She could make a scene. She smiled to herself. If she did make a scene she could make it good. After all, she'd learned from the best. It seemed the women in her life were experts. Blair would have barged in demanding to know what was going on.. Dorothy may have channeled some of Blair, but taken a different approach with the quiet hurt of betrayal masked by rage taking shape with words too eloquent for Jo. Jo didn't do eloquent. She didn't do scenes. At least not since her and Blair stopped living together.
Meeting their gazes Kolfee's fell first. Scott met her eyes waiting. Despite her newfound joy for inflicting pain the people she cared about wouldn't be subject to her violence. Scott hadn't wronged her even if he felt slighted. She went through her desk. There wasn't much that needed to be taken from it. The few objects she wanted to take fit in her hand. Collecting her belongings from her desk she left the way she came. It was an underwhelming ending.
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Joy, it wasn't imagined. She felt it when he held her. She knew that this was right if nothing else in her life would ever be. Marshall stood over her. His bare chest had beads of sweat playing on the ends of his chest hairs. He palmed her legs as he pulled her closer. It was the same strength that frightened her the night he attacked her. Now it excited her. How had she come to this? She knew the answer. The blue box lay open, the bow discarded on the floor somewhere. It sat on her table, no longer holding the gift inside it.
Her addiction made it easy for him to slither around her and choke her into submission. The sex was her idea of a gift to herself. Sex with Jo was a reminder of what she wasn't or rather who she wasn't. She felt her ministrations. She enjoyed the work of pleasure, but in the end it wasn't Boots that Jo saw when she closed her eyes, or even when she opened them. Sex wouldn't let her escape the pain she was determined to keep to herself despite the damage it caused. .
"No one will give you what I can," he sank inside her, taking her while she lost herself in the high and the flesh.
They were both too occupied to hear the apartment door open. They were still too occupied to notice the noise that Jo made as she rummaged through the kitchen to satisfy a hunger she didn't have. But Jo heard them. Work had been her constant, but Boots had become her only friend. The sounds from her bedroom were familiar and couldn't be mistaken for anything other than what it was. A man and a woman having sex.
She could lie to herself and say she was jealous, just for the sake of saying it. She kicked the door wider, hitting the wall behind the door. Jo imagined the crunch she heard after it swung open meant a hole the size of a door handle was now a temporary decoration.
Questions ran through her head, but as she asked each one an answer came after it. There was nothing left to do but to act. She felt her hands fold into a fist and she attacked. Marshall slumped backward into the dresser. Boots scurried away with a sheet over her as if there was decency to redeem. Jo glared at the move. In a fair fight Marshall could have taken her with his size alone, but Jo didn't believe in fair fights. The streets made her familiar with the phrase as a kid, but it was an unpracticed philosophy. She worked on surprise. When that wore off and he regained his footing he landed a right on her temple. She backed away, creating space, but he followed her. His forward movement met by a sneaker between his legs. She knew it was a cheap shot, but she could live with it.
His legs folded as his eyes watered a little in the corners. She slammed her foot into his chest so he couldn't breathe. Jo backed away and Boots recovered, watching Jo with a dazed admiration. Jo wondered what she had saved the heiress from.
"I didn't give you a key so you could interrupt my play time."
Boots' eyes were dilated. The woman was high.
"Get up," she growled to Marshall. She threw his clothes at him as he crawled to the door. She remembered the first time she kicked him out. Boots' fear had driven her to act on instinct. Now she knew who this man was and what he was capable of doing. She didn't want him anywhere near the socialite.
He gathered himself together at the door. He shoved his pants on, then his shirt. He stood obstinately. Jo wasn't impressed. She withdrew her pistol from under her jacket. Boots looked at the gun, barely sobering. However, Marshall wasn't as far gone. She held her weapon steady with an ease that Marshall had yet to master. Still there was part of him unwilling to give up so easily.
"You wouldn't shoot me."
"She'd shoot you," Boots corrected. "And I wouldn't try to stop her," she added with more seriousness as a smile played on her lips.
Jo didn't move, her finger slowly tightening on the trigger, daring him to stay. He shoved off the door, putting on his jacket haphazardly as he was making his way out. The door slammed behind him.
Jo lowered her gun. She placed the safety back on before placing it in the holster. The silence that greeted them after he left didn't sit well with Jo. "What, so you don't have to pay for it now? Or was that how you're paying for it now?"
"Jealous?" the brunette countered, hoping, but already knowing what the answer would be.
Jo shook her head. "You know I'm not," Jo said as she stepped away from the bed. The smell of sex was suffocating her. She stomped down the hall while Boots followed moments later with a shirt to cover herself.
"No, you wouldn't be. My hair's not blonde, is it?"
Jo jumped when fingers began playing with her hair. She didn't know where those fingers had been and rather than let her thoughts wonder about Boots comment, she held on to her anger.
"You're going too far."
Boots laughed.
Jo glared in answer, rising.
If Jo had any question how drastically she'd changed, Boots would happily oblige her with a not so happy truth. Her bruises past and present weren't a result of playing nice. She was used to seeing Jo's hands misshapen and bruised.
Boots smiled dropped when Jo picked up another blue box Marshall left for her. The brunette glared heading for the kitchen ripping the top off too quickly for Boots to react. She found herself hitting her friend hard. Her nails digging into her neck and arms to get to the box or rather its contents. But Jo had already turned the faucet on. Down the white powder fell and the water washed away the residue Boots would have gladly salvaged. Pushing the woman away Jo finally moved, watching Boots hold onto the sink for dear life. As if by pure will the drug wouldn't be gone. But it was.
"If she looks like a addict, acts like a addict, chances are she is a addict." Jo stared at her as the woman's back hunched over, still staring into the wetness in her sink.
Jo expected wit. Quips were easy and her rage expertly wielded by the wealthy brunette Yes, it was rage that prompted a delicately manicured hand to reach for the handle of a knife and lung for the cop. Jo didn't expect it. She was trained to act and adapt to every situation. Boots took advantage of the element of surprise.
She looked at her arm and then at the knife Boots still held with her own red blood on the bend of the blade. The woman lunged again, but this time Jo was prepared. She grabbed the arm coming at her and held the woman close with tears of rage forming in her eyes. Jo gripped her arm tightly, keeping the knife as far away as she could, all the while tightening the hug.
"Boots," she whispered, "this isn't you."
The woman answered with a pained laugh, "this is me Jo. In all my glory," she whispered back harshly, sinking her teeth in the detective's ear.
Jo reacted. The blow was hard and quick and Boots fell back from surprise and the impact. She lost her footing and landed on the threshold that separated the kitchen and her carpeted floor. Her bare legs felt the cold of the kitchen floor. The rest of her felt chilled when her eyes met Jo's. Forgetting the hand with the knife Jo knelt down, not yet ready to apologize, but aware that both of them needed to.
Boots cut her arm again above the elbow, inches from the first cut. Jo looked at her, slapping Boots again. The woman's head jerked back, but she recovered with surprising speed, resting the blade at the nape of Jo's neck. Jo lifted her head, dropping from her haunches to fall on her ass. Boots followed her slight descent straddling the legs with the knife steady. The hand was too steady for Jo to feel comfortable enough to act just yet.
Keeping her grip on the knife, Boots unblinkingly felt for Jo's wrist, demanding the limp hand under her shirt to her center. Jo tried to pull away, but the knife pushed against her flesh, cutting her. Narrowed eyes met Boots daring glare as her fingers came alive. Boots jumped excitedly hitching her breath as Jo played in the wetness soaking her fingers.
Jo pushed forward despite the blade still held at her neck until her lips met in a soft collision of flesh. Jo forgot the pain in the wake of arousal and the urgency to overpower and take.
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"Have I told you lately how proud I am of you?" Blair looked up from her work to greet her father with a modest smile.
David entered her office pushing off the frame of the door. . She has her mother's good looks and I'm grateful for that, but everything else is all me, he thought to himself proudly. He remembered being young and ambitious. He also remembered how often the two made marriage difficult. He worked to make her life easy, but she was loathe to follow the path of luxury her mother couldn't live without.
"You haven't, but it's nice to hear you say it," his daughter put her pen down from the document she'd been perusing.
"Don't you have a husband to run off to?" he asked keeping his timbre light despite the seriousness of neglecting one's other half.
Blair knew the time, but she looked at it again. It read nine thirty two, but the discovery didn't strike urgency in the blonde's movements.
"Both of our jobs are demanding daddy. He's probably not even home yet," but she knew Graham was home. He told her he would be. She ran her fingers across the keyboard typing last minute revisions to complete a contract to be printed tomorrow.
"I don't have many regrets Blair," her fingers stilled as her father spoke, but she didn't lift her fingers from the keyboard or remove her eyes from the screen. "But old age makes one contemplate mistakes. I did so many great things right behind a desk not unlike this one," he nodded to her desk. "But there's more to life than appointments and negotiations. You get too comfortable in the routine and you let the decorum of work seep into your personal life. Then one day you discover you've missed out on your daughter's childhood."
Blair was touched by her father's words. It wasn't often he shed the Warner charm to be genuine and entertain the emotion of remorse. She was used to him placating her sensibilities to avoid responsibility for mistakes he may have made. Now in no uncertain terms he owned up to one mistake going as far to warn her of her path.
The socialite knew her father's intentions were inspired by the husband he felt she may be neglecting. But her thoughts veered to Jo. The night where in the same breath she had professed love and daring in one moment and then she had cowered behind the familiarity of the man she meant to leave in the next. Jo witnessed her at her best and worst, but now where did that leave their friendship? They barely spoke if messages relayed by Boots were any indication of communication. She had been so easily replaced by her former rival and there was nothing she could do about it. Nothing she felt could be done without hurting people, namely Graham.
Happiness was a selfish notion. She supposed that's why so many people were unhappy. Was she happy? If she had to ask then perhaps she wasn't. The strange look from her father reminded her where they started. Graham, not Jo, was the one she shared her life with the only way a man and a wife could. She wondered if the energy he spent on finalizing deals could have saved his and her mother's marriage. Perhaps that was the real lesson. She could have chosen Jo, but she didn't. She chose Graham. The man was waiting for her and she was fighting sleep to finish writing her thoughts unsure if her internal war made sense on paper.
"You can talk to me about anything princess," he said leaning back, illustrating he had all the time in the world if she needed that much.
She shook her head. "I think you're right daddy," she closed out of her document and logged off her computer as she arranged the errant papers on her desk into three stacks.
"About?"
"Life," she picked up her jacket with a renewed purpose. She kissed him on his forehead, leaving him with a smile on his face. After all this time she cared about his opinion; it made an old man feel good.
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"You lost?" a young boy asked Jo when she entered Gladd Arcade. It was quiet due to school, but by the end of the evening she imagined the space would be full of loud, obnoxious kids. The redhead stopping her looked old enough to be in school. Jo wondered why he wasn't.
"Are you?" the brunette countered, pushing passed the kid with little effort.
"I live here," he answered. Jo spared the boy a knowing look. Games filled the one floor of video games and vending machines. This was a kid's paradise. When he said he lived there he probably meant it.
"I'm looking for Melvin Gladd," she eyed the room. If the boy lived here then he would know.
The kid kept a close eye on the stranger. He made it a point to know people. Strange faces weren't always welcomed by Melvin. He looked her up and down from the brown leather bomber to the straight legged jeans and white sneakers.
"Never heard of 'em," the boy leaned against one of the machines. She looked up to the office, but it looked empty.
She pursed her lips, jerking her head toward the outside. "So where's the Gladd come from in Gladd Arcade?"
"We're happy gamers," the boy smiled thinly.
Jo chuckled at the kid. He wasn't giving up anything. He reminded Jo of herself as a kid; a wisecracker with little respect for adults. She could mask the smell of cop, but there was no denying she was a grown up now.
A sound came from the far right corner under another exit sign. The boy jerked his head along with Jo, who was already moving to the sound. The owner of the collection of choice words glared at his finger.
Jo cleared her throat, announcing her arrival. The young boy stood at her side glaring. He took advantage of the distance positioning himself between the stranger and the man she assumed was Melvin Gladd. He wore a denim jacket hung open to reveal a large belly stretching a white t-shirt.
"Who is this?" he asked the boy.
"Don't know. She looks like trouble," the boy crossed his arms. It filled him with pride to be spoken to as an equal. Melvin supplied him with equality and he played his part for the older man.
Jo quirked her brow in response still confused by her captain's suggestion that she come here.
"Yea," he grew out the word glaring at his finger, as he asked, "you the stubborn shit Lundy sent to darken my door?"
Jo nodded her head to the side rubbing her neck for no other reason than to keep from wincing. "If that's the ways you want to put it…sure."
"That's the condensed version. The Cap is a bit longwinded for my taste." Jo's brows hitched in agreement, "but he's a fair man," Gladd finished firmly refusing to be misunderstood. Lundy was as good as they come considering he spoke politician too fluently to be understood at a baser level. Although the only thing Melvin needed to know was that Lundy would take one for the team as long as their work made him look good. Their arrangement provided some leeway for his team. He wasn't looking for a new addition especially one handpicked by the department, but Lundy had called bordering desperate.
He fought tooth and nail for Jo. There were few things the man cared about. It was odd to hear him passionate about a drug cop at odds with an ADA who wouldn't take her cases. It seemed more personal than political, but in a few short words Melvin was convinced. Now the woman stood before him looking like she had everything to prove and he wasn't sure if that made her dangerous in a good or bad way.
"Find a pen and paper for this thing will ya," he glared at the machine still cradling his finger. "She's outta commission til further notice."
Jo smirked at the kid's glare, following Melvin toward the stairs that led up to his office. "What are you doing here?"
"I don't know," Jo's voice echoed in the narrow stairway. She cringed inwardly as the uncertainty of her answer bounced off the walls beating into the part of her psyche that never felt good enough.
He whipped around sharply startling her as she stopped dead barely in the room. "Don't come in here with 'I don't knows' kid. No half ass 'maybes' or 'I'll trys'. I ain't got time for it. What are you doing here?"
He sounded too menacing to be satisfied with nothing less than the heart of her arrival.
"I don't want to stop being a cop."
Graham could end her and she knew it. So did Lundy. Melvin was her last chance for her empathy to matter beyond empty musings.
"Why?" he asked incredulously.
"I've been on hard cases…" she started her memories flooding with crime scene photos.
Melvin interrupted, "My dick gets harder than the cases you've seen so far rookie." Jo hadn't been called rookie in a long time. She hated it back then and she wasn't fond of it now.
"I want to help…." She started again only to be interrupted.
"We don't help old ladies cross streets or save cats from trees. The people here don't want our help. They want to keep shooting themselves up with junk. How you gonna help someone so high and out of it they'd sooner blow you away than give a damn about hearing how you want to help?" The distance between them was small enough for his breath to blow her eye lashes. Most people would have taken a step back. Jo knew that's what he expected her to do.
"One day at a time," Jo answered levelly.
The answer held reason. Her eyes held fire. Melvin knew there was something to this woman, but it wouldn't be figured out now.
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Natalie sipped her coffee as she slowly woke up for the day. An all too chipper visitor dropped on her desk.
"Go away or I'll burn you." Natalie couldn't say for certain that she hated Jennifer Ambry. She couldn't say for certain that she didn't hate Jennifer Ambry. The only certainty of that moment was that it was way too early to deal with the coarse woman.
The woman shook her head tauntingly, "you don't hate me that much to sacrifice your coffee."
Natalie stopped from sipping to think. "This is true," she conceded. The cup nor its mysteriously splendid contents would be going anywhere. She looked at the mess of her desk and the papers getting wrinkled under Jennifer's butt.
"What do you want?" she grumbled. Pastries would have been a nice consolation prize for wrinkling her paper and smiling at her so early in the morning.
"A meeting," she ventured vaguely. She pushed her red glasses up until they were half covered in the curly bangs. Her brown hair was long and curly and Natalie wondered if she could pull off such a look. Then when Jennifer tired of having it up all day and let her hair down she knew she would never be a happy woman with that much hair on her head.
"Earth to Nat," the woman waved her fingers playfully in front of her.
The writer swatted them away indignantly. "What meeting with who?"
"Your eyes are breathtaking when you glare at me like that," she complimented.
The older woman by two months shook her head, "bread is meant to be buttered not humans."
"Depends on how kinky the humans are," the happy woman countered with a sultry delivery.
Natalie rolled her eyes, "who?" in a no-nonsense manner. Jennifer knew Natalie wasn't asking about kinky humans.
"Detective Joanna Polniaczek," she answered sweetly.
Natalie narrowed her eyes putting her cup safely on her desk before training her gaze back on the scheming woman who failed miserably buttering her up.
"What makes you think I can make it happen?"
"I never figured you for a school for girls' type of gal," she shrugged her shoulders answering indirectly.
The blonde leaned forward with a firm grip still on Natalie's desk. There were few people that she found as a threat in their office. The newspaper always had people come and go. Like her other would-be rivals Natalie was given a thorough background check until Jennifer was satisfied she knew enough about the people she worked with. Through happenstances and the tenacity of a viciously inquisitive woman she came across a link to an elusive detective and a coworker.
Natalie frowned, "even if I could," she smiled darkly, "what makes you think I would help you?"
Jennifer pouted before straightening her face to an uncompromising glare from the writer. "What do you want?" she maneuvered the question along her tongue distastefully. Men were so much easier to manipulate than women.
"I'll have to give this some thought," she offered, picking up her cup again. She turned her attention toward files that seemed too random for Jennifer to be convinced that Natalie was focused.
"You do that," she said grimly, thinking of another way to get to the detective. She left the desk feeling the curious gaze of the other writer on her back. She wouldn't share why she wanted to meet Joanna. That jeopardized her story. There were very few cops that got away unscathed going after big money like the detective did almost a year ago with Marshall Parent.
The story was dead now. The media had their fill of the golden boy's fall from grace. The case had been handled out of court, but high profile accusations weren't easily dismissed by the media. Now was a prime time to get the detective's impression on what happened.
Natalie picked up her phone on instinct. She didn't like Jo being under the radar of such a writer. It concerned Natalie when she knew most of Jennifer's pieces felt tailored to win a Pulitzer. Serious works had the potential to be devastating and despite Jo's reticence to return her calls she didn't want her hurt by the eager reporter.
The numbers were dialed from memory. Jo was never at home. She could barely be reached at the office. Boots, however, had become Jo's best friend. If Jo wasn't there she knew a message could be left. She let the phone ring, before it became clear no one was going to answer. She sighed holding the information in her head for further probing later.
She frowned at her papers that she straightened as much as she could considering how her visitor's backside had deformed them.