Chapter 3: To Catch a Vigilante
"How difficult is it to find crime, anyway?" Skye whined. She and Simmons had spent the last two hours staggering between bars pretending to be tipsy, but no one was giving them a hard time. Most didn't even look twice. "I don't remember Hell's Kitchen being this safe."
"Well I don't remember doing a pub crawl with this little clothing on. I'm freezing and really ready to head back."
"We're not even halfway done with my list." She'd mapped out the seediest route she could find using current crime data and was currently checking it, mostly so she could flash around her expensive new phone between fake giggles. "Come on, somebody, try to mug me. I'm such an easy target." She reapplied her equally-fake smile when a short, dumpy man in a cheap suit approached, looking troubled.
"Hey, are you ladies alright?" he asked.
"Sure, sure," Skye slurred, and Simmons added a little too brightly,
"Never better!"
"I could call you a cab if you need one," the man offered.
"That's really not necessary, but it's sweet of you to offer. Cheerio!"
Skye had never heard Simmons utter the word "cheerio" before, but this was probably another example of her questionable acting abilities. How she'd survived her stint spying on Hydra, Skye had no clue. Why Coulson chose to send her in the first place was an even bigger mystery. He'd spent time undercover with her. He should have known better.
The two of them flounced away, and the man called out, "Or I could walk you home!"
It was nice to know chivalry wasn't dead. Poor guy seemed genuinely concerned about them. "But the night's still young! So much drinking left to do! We love drinking."
"Um, I was just on my way to Josie's. Why don't you join me for a couple drinks, and then I can call you that cab."
They could still be mugged with this guy around, and Josie's was at least a bar, even if it hadn't made their high crime list. Also, they could ditch him when they were done. It did mean they would have to actually drink, but she and Simmons could handle one or two beers. "Great!" she said, stumbling toward him and grabbing his arm to steady herself as she tripped. Simmons latched onto his other arm, and together they made their way to exactly the sort of dive they were looking for. Josie's sported a red neon sign in a dingy window and little else to recommend it, and as the trio approached, they watched a couple of bikers collide as they tried to pass through the door in opposite directions.
The two men tensed and glared reflexively, and Skye hung back with the other two to see what would happen, as did the rest of the biker gang that was just rolling in. However, the bikers in the doorway both forced themselves to take a step back and breathe. Then they rotated their shoulders and started to squeeze past each other under tense scrutiny. This seemed to be resolving itself peacefully, so Skye decided to goad them on. "Come on, you're gonna let him do that to you?"
The men tensed again but forced themselves to finish their trip through the doorway. "Ain't worth it, lady," mumbled the one on the way out. "Not around here."
"Have a good night, Bill," the SHIELD agents' escort said as the man left, getting a quick "See you, Foggy" in return. Foggy (or whatever his name was) tugged the two women inside the bar as quick as he could and dragged them to the back of the room, where they were surprised to see a familiar face.
"Matt!" Skye and Simmons both said together, finding Matt Murdock laughing at a table with a skinny woman, who was fiddling with a long strand of strawberry-blonde hair.
"You guys know each other?" Foggy asked as Matt did a double-take.
He squinted in confusion behind his glasses and said, "Yeah, this is Skye and Jemma, the ones I was telling you about earlier."
"Huh."
Karen's gaze swept their skimpy, shiny outfits. Then she glanced back at Matt before staring at the visitors again. She echoed Foggy's sentiment then said, "Which one of you is, um..."
Skye raised the hand that was in the crook of Foggy's elbow then she released him as she and Simmons worked on "sobering up." "Me. I'm Skye. I'm, uh, here visiting with my friend, and we thought we should have a night on the town. I guess we could join you now. Foggy already invited us. That was your name, right? Foggy?"
Foggy nodded, and Matt supplied the rest of the introductions. "Yeah, this is Foggy Nelson, my partner, and Karen Page, our paralegal."
"We weren't dressed like this at the orphanage," Simmons assured them, blushing, as she took the seat Foggy dragged from a nearby table.
"I would vouch for them..." Matt started, then trailed off with a shrug.
The others smiled a little, and at last Karen tore herself from the pair of strangers and asked, "So, Foggy, is everything okay? Matt finally comes out with us, and you dash off the second he arrives."
"It was because it smells like he came straight from the gym."
It was true that Matt did have a visible sheen of sweat and that it was matting his hair slightly. "That's because I did come straight from the gym. Sorry, the showers were busted. I was headed home when I remembered that appeal."
"Oh, yeah, the appeal." Foggy finally got around to answering Karen's question. "Matt thought I hadn't filed the appeal on the Walker case, and we were supposed to have that in by midnight tonight, so I ran off to get the paperwork, but halfway to the office, I remembered that I submitted it last week, and I just forgot to tell Matt it was done. Everything's fine; I just had one beer too many, I guess." On that note, Skye and Simmons both ordered a couple Pepsis from the irascible older woman who swung by to take their order.
Karen accepted the rambling answer. "Well, we're all here now, and with Matt's friends, too. How do you like being back in New York, Skye?"
"It seems quieter than I remember. Safer." More's the pity. If they wanted to attract a rescuer, they'd clearly need to work harder at it. "Those biker dudes who looked like they wanted to start a fight out front, they backed down pretty fast."
Karen laughed. "Well, this is probably one of the safest bars in Hell's Kitchen, as it took Foggy a while to convince me." Foggy gave a half-bow over the tabletop. "Most of the people who come in here are good, normal people. Plus, it doesn't hurt that Daredevil's seen in this area a lot."
"Thanks, Josie," Foggy said as the older woman plunked two lukewarm beverages in front of .Skye and Simmons.
They thanked her, too, and Simmons asked Karen, "Is that a good thing? A vigilante on the streets punching people?"
She bit her lip and smiled. "Well, he did save my life once, so I'm a little partial."
"Really? What happened?"
"I had some information that could expose some mobsters. They sent a man to kill me, but then he showed up and stopped it. We eventually took down the bad guys in court – me, Matt, and Foggy."
Matt set down his beer with a small clink. "We're not going to be talking about crime all night, are we? I get enough of that in my day job."
"Day job?" she teased. "Did you take a night job? You finally noticed the pitiful state of our finances?"
He cleared his throat. "I just meant, can't we talk about something a little more cheerful?"
Karen reached over to pat his arm. "Sure, Matt, we don't have to talk about the man who runs around the city breaking the law."
While Skye resolved to get Karen alone at some point, she let the issue slide for the time being. Instead, she got caught up with Matt as promised, then she, Foggy, and Karen bonded by swapping embarrassing stories about him. Foggy had the most, but Skye was happy to recount the time he decided to sneak out to meet some girl and ended up getting locked out overnight in the middle of the winter. "He was too cold and wet and miserable to even try to sneak in properly the next morning, just dragged himself in looking really sad and guilty and sat there shivering while Sister Theresa scolded him in front of everyone."
Eventually, they all exchanged numbers and broke up. Skye and Simmons returned to their hotel to get a good night's sleep while Karen asked Matt to walk her home and Foggy made himself scarce.
"We're not doing this tomorrow, are we?" Simmons asked.
Skye unzipped her suitcase and examined its contents. Yes, those clothes would do nicely. "No, tomorrow, we're going to talk to Karen and anyone that the newspapers mention as having seen Daredevil. Tomorrow night, we're going to try a new plan."
"Dare I ask?"
One of her standard black outfits should do the trick, combined with a balaclava and her Quake gauntlets. "Tomorrow night, I'm going to be the criminal."
