Title: Before a Live Studio Audience (Transcripts from an unaired episode of 'US Cops'), Part 3

Author: Harmless One

Summary: A scratched up body in the river is the least of Clark's worries. How's he going to tell his boss that the detective he's following is probably a liar and a crook? The suits alone should get him jail time…

Words: Almost 4000 for this chapter.

Pairings: Matches/Clark, Bruce/Clark, Sir Hemingford Gray/Clark, Dick/Bruce (sorta…). Other characters: Lois Lane, Robbie Malone, Tim Drake, Jim Gordon, Montoya, Bullock.

Warnings: AU. Language, violence, identity nuttiness. I don't even have a beta so read at your own risk. Smut on the way.

Spoilers: Nothing really, but some of the ideas from 52 are in play here. Welcome to one of many Earths.

Rating: R

:

Day Eleven

He was valiantly not thinking about Malone pushed up against a wall with the pretty hustler Robbie kneeling between his thighs. He'd been not thinking about it all morning with the grass beneath him and the wind whipping around him. In fact, he'd been trying so hard not to think about what he saw yesterday (like hopeful, rough-and-tumble Jason) that he'd been avoiding calling Lois.

He knew she was going to have his head when he failed to give her a play-by-play on the filming. He just couldn't make himself call her, tell her that the guy he was shadowing was a criminal with a badge and an over-sexed one with questionable morals at that. And, yes, there were good things about Malone. Clark knew that, had even seen them peek through like that damn groundhog.

They just hid very well. Regardless of the length of winter.

"This your hobby or something? Sitting outside, soaking up sunshine like…I dunno. A fern?"

Clark got the idea. As a journalist, he knew mixed metaphors were supposed to bother him. On Malone, it was kind or charming. The early-spring sunshine just made it all the more so.

He gave Malone a smile because they really had been getting along better since the chat at the coffee machine. Blowjob in the alley aside, things were working out relatively well between them. Even Jimmy wasn't as afraid of Malone anymore.

"Well. I'm a farmboy. Born and raised in Kansas."

"No shit! Who'd have thunk it?" Malone said, staring off into the distance.

"You're being sarcastic."

"Give the boy a fucking medal. Yeah, I'm being sarcastic. You sound like you eat hay for breakfast and have a dog named Lassie or something. You've got Kansas stamped on you so bad I wouldn't be surprised if you pissed sunflower seeds."

Clark sighed inwardly and continued gazing up. Gazing up at the dyed blue silk sky—like blue jeans and swimming pools. Looking up, up, and—

"—away." Malone finished with a laugh.

"Whuh?" Clark said, squinting. He hadn't heard a thing. It got like this for him sometimes: He could sit out in the sun and instantly feel better. Today was no different. He'd been about ready to collapse from frustration and exhaustion not ten minutes ago. A little sunlight later and he was worth much more than a million bucks.

"I said, 'You on another planet, Kent? You seem a little far away.'"

"Oh, no," Clark said and found himself again charmed that Malone would care to notice his daydreaming. "I like sunshine. It makes me feel," more like myself, he didn't say. "Better," he concluded at last. "So I just…relax, zone out."

"Relax, huh?" Malone asked. Today, Malone was in mustard yellow with a tie the color of cranberry juice. His blue eyes were obscured by aviator glasses too large for his square face. Clark wondered if those eyes were trained on him, or somewhere vaguely to his left. He wondered if Malone had ever looked at him seriously, as anything more than just a nuisance that the ambitious mayor of Gotham had forced onto him. "I don't think I've ever seen you relaxed, Hayseed. I think it'd be worth the cost of admission, though."

Was that a leer?

Clark didn't know what the words meant, exactly, and was afraid to ask. And maybe the sunglasses DID hide a leer. So he smiled his blandest smile and tried to look vague. Malone harrumphed and pushed his shades up his nose. Oddly, in full sunshine at a park across from the MCU, the detective still wasn't smoking. Clark zeroed in on the small piece of pink gum being battered by Malone's too large, even, and sparkly white teeth. Catching his gaze, Malone shrugged.

"Trying to quit."

And Clark thought…

Well, Clark thought how odd it was that Malone never ever smelled like tobacco. Had NEVER smelled like tobacco.

"How's it coming?" Clark asked.

"Fucking awful." Malone squinted up (maybe, or maybe he just tilted his head back in thought). "You know how sometimes at Christmas your mom and dad don't fight when your dad's putting up the tree and nobody gets shot down in a parking lot, like, the day before, like an uncle or something, and then you get exactly what you want and maybe get laid by a big tittied girl from upstate and nobody gets so drunk that they puke on the lawn and try to take a swing at you? You know how that can happen like that sometimes?"

"Um…yes…?"

Malone nodded. "Quitting is exactly like the opposite of that."

"Oh," Clark said. "I'm sorry."

Malone looked at Clark like he smelled something wafting off of him that could kill livestock. "Why are you apologizing? You don't have any reason to say that." Malone suddenly narrowed his eyes in mock suspicion. "Unless Clark Kent is some act you play and your name's really Tommy Elliot and you're secretly the fucker who put that cigarette in my hand when I was five and said, 'Hey, Malone, give it a puff, everybody else is doing it, why don't you give it a try? Come on, it'll be cool.' Unless you're really him, don't apologize to me. You apologize too much."

"Uh," Clark said, sagely. "Right."

Malone continued to stare down at him. An awkward, excruciating moment passed this way. Matches smacked his gum; Clark stared at him. Matches' hair glistened like motor oil in the sun. Clark stared at that, swallowed nervously.

After he felt as if he had counted every thick hair on Malone's head, Clark cleared his throat. "So…um…Did you want something?"

"Yep."

Clark felt like he needed a pair of pliers to smooth this conversation. "What is it?"

"You."

A spike of something hot and tangy pierced his body, settled down low. "Excuse me?" Clark gasped. He wanted to tug on his collar. Wanted to shift to the left a little, move things around into a better configuration. It was all so bizarre that he wanted to floss his brain clean. One big piece of string, right through the ears.

"We've got a live one," Malone said, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder. "Or…not really 'live,' if you know what I mean."

To Clark it sounded something like, "Er…not reelly 'laive' if'ya know whuddimean."

He wrapped his mind around it eventually. "You found a body?"

"Got it in one." (Gaat it n'won).

"So…you came to get me. You mean you want me to follow you. Back to the station. So we can film. Not that you…well, ha, ha, of course you didn't mean that!"

Malone's thick eyebrow finally appeared from behind his shades. "You on something?" (You aan summin?)

"No," Clark said soberly. "No. I'll just…get my crew. And we'll get in our van. And we can go."

Malone nodded and then turned to cross the street back to the station. He paused once to stare over his shoulder speculatively at Clark who ignored it all by counting the blades of grass by his feet. They were just fascinating at the moment.

:

With only two other crewmen allowed on the scene for fear of contamination, Clark was at a filming disadvantage. He trusted his cameraman, Jimmy, and his sound tech, Chuck, but he missed the rest of the guys. They could have really helped him out with this awkward, river shooting. The water was muddy, unattractive regardless of the angle. Industrial buildings drooped along the horizon, miserable and grey. Gotham's downtown was a shiny postcard in the distance—close, but not so close that the posh shopping districts and artsy coffee houses had to fight with the smog from the laboring factories. Wedged in between the two vastly different worlds were the dinosaur shapes of cranes and wrecking balls; the rumble, rumble of bulldozers; the ceaseless ratchet, crumble, slam, ratchet, headache noise of the jackhammers.

She was seaweed wet and colored oddly. Her head was turned to the side, body loose and bloated. She'd been a girl once, Clark thought. Alive and maybe not happy, but with the chance to try for it. Now she was just a body in a muddy river. Now her arms were extended before her torso, the skin they could see peeking out of the water white and bruised. The shirt she wore was bleached by age and sunlight and ripped in numerous places. She bobbed in the water like a boat.

"Are we allowed…that is…" Clark winced at what was being towed closer to the shore by the Gotham City Underwater Patrol Recovery Team. "Can we film this?"

Gordon stepped into his peripheral vision, cigar clenched tightly in his teeth. "The Mayor didn't say you couldn't. It's a little gruesome for a soft, Metropolis guy like you." He cast a disdainful look at Clark's elegantly buffed nails. They looked like they'd never been dirty in his life—like maybe they couldn't even get dirty. "Have your editors make it palatable. Have them snip it nice and pretty so nobody knows how ugly life can really be."

Clark had no idea what to say to that, but part of him felt like Gordon was being unfair. Men and women who worked hard everyday, came home to their kids and their mortgage payments…maybe they didn't need to see how ugly life could be. Wasn't it best for someone to protect them from the worst the world could throw?

Matches stood on the bank, mud-smeared grass smashed at his feet. His fingers twitched. "Need a fucking smoke," he said and then rubbed his hands together. Behind his shades, he could have been squinting, staring at the inside of his own eyelids, or wide-eyed and no one would have known. "Bullock!"

The whale of a detective still managed to strut, sixty pounds hindered of healthy. "Detective?" he said. He was already flipping open a small notebook, leaving graphite smudges on his thumb.

"How'd we end up here today?"

Bullock wiped the sweat from his eyes and dropped his eyes to the notebook. "Got a call just after noon. Guy in a fishing boat—Robert Gentry—said something thudded against the bottom of his boat, left a dent. He thought it was a log, but his kid said he saw an…an Inferi?"

Malone raised an eyebrow. "What the fuck is an Inferi?"

Gordon and Clark chuckled simultaneously earning twin looks of "Well?" from Bullock and Malone.

Gordon yanked his cigar out of his mouth just in time to cough a laugh. "Harry Potter," he said. "Creepy undead bodies in the water."

"Book Six," Clark added to clarify.

Bullock frowned, looked down and shuffled his feet uncomfortably. Malone's lip made an interesting twist. "Harry fucking Potter? Commissioner, say it ain't so."

Gordon threw his hands up in surrender. "What? I've got kids."

Malone's sweeping gaze fell on Clark. "What's your excuse, Hayseed?"

Clark gave a weak laugh that he must have thought would divert attention. When the detectives and the commissioner continued to stare at him, he just shrugged. "They're really good," he said lamely. (I keep them on a special shelf, have two sets (one to read and one nobody is allowed to touch), (oh, and I test into Hufflepuff), he didn't say). "So…the boat…?"

He tried not to notice that Gordon was looking at him like maybe he was human after all. Bonding over Harry Potter with a hardened Police Commissioner was something he couldn't explain to Lois. He moved closer to Jimmy. To have an excuse for what was, essentially, cowardly fleeing, he instructed Jimmy on what to shoot, what might look best. Maybe he imagined Gordon's bereft visage. I've got kids, indeed, Clark thought.

Bullock shook his head like a wet dog. "Anyway. Yeah. Instead of freaking his kid out by going back to check, he called us. We got a team out here as soon as possible—not easy with the construction down here…beautify Gotham…who the hell cares?" He cleared his throat, a wet, sickly sound. "And here we are. Currents pushed her down this way. Gentry says he saw her about four miles that way." He jerked his thumb and then flipped a page in his notebook.

"We figure she surfaced this morning."

"Maybe," Malone said. He crossed his arms, mustard suit tugging at his shoulders. The divers had finally reached the shore and were carefully moving the body onto a large piece of plastic. She squished down sloppily and her bloat seemed to roll under the dripping clothes. The tight fitting shirt she wore had rolled up under the strain of he skin's stretch. She'd been young, and maybe pretty once, but the skin of her nose and lips had been nibbled away; cartilage and bone peeked through. Her face, upper arms and belly were almost flesh colored, all the blood having pooled there while she bobbed facedown in the murky water.

"Some of the scratches on her back, they from boats?" Bullock asked, rocking back on his heels.

"Maybe," Malone answered.

"Cause if they ain't, then we've got a serial k—"

"Thank you, Detective," Malone interrupted. "I think I know my job."

Clark listened to the exchange, intrigued. "Don't linger on the body too much," he whispered to Jimmy. "Sweep the shore, show the detectives."

The knowing look Gordon sent his way made his back stiffen.

:

Back at the MCU with Malone, Clark hid behind his notebook and asked questions. Malone had refused to be filmed today. "Not in the fucking mood," he'd said (and so much for the cooperation of the day before). Then he'd settled down at his cluttered desk and gestured for Clark to 'Park it' across the way, at a fastidiously neat and tidy desk. The plaque on the desk said "Bruce Wayne." Clark had never wanted to ask about something so much in his life. About someone. The idea of the ticking clock on his filming schedule made him press on. As long as Matches Malone was cooperating, he knew he had to take advantage of it.

"The autopsy, will it tell us how she died? Did she drown?"

"The autopsy won't really tell us shit," Malone admitted. He leaned back extremely in his chair, long legs crossed at the ankle and propped on the edge of his desk. "With bodies retrieved from water, they never really do. She could have been in the water for a three weeks or a month and a half. And those wounds…they could have happened before or after she took a long swim. The lungs fill with water alive or dead so, who knows? The current and the conditions on the bottom of the river, they could have banged her up, too. For all I know, she got drunk and fell in."

Clark swallowed. "But what if she didn't? What if she was murdered and then dumped?"

Malone squinted at him, his ugly glasses back, still dulling the intensity of his eyes, but only just barely. Hawaii, Clark thought again. It was almost surreal having the full intensity of an entire state's blueness directed at him, the culmination of a million vacations in the sun.

"Then we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

Clark frowned. "Um…I think we've already come to it. They don't call you for just any random thing. Why would a SENIOR detective be required for a regular drowning? Bullock could have handled that."

Malone shifted, one hip out, arms crossed. "You think you're pretty smart, don't you, Kent?"

Clark felt a smile tug at the corner of his lips. "I've been told I'm pretty smart."

"Then I'll answer that…" and Malone hesitated, something he never, ever did. Intrigued didn't even begin to describe what Clark felt. Malone began again, slowly. "When any body of a young girl surfaces in the water, either me, or my partner, will be called immediately."

"Why?" Clark asked but he wanted to say, "Tell me about this partner, now!"

"Because we're the best."

Clark was chasing it, felt almost as if Malone wanted him to chase it. "Why do they need the best on this?"

Malone's lips parted...and….

"Malone!" a voice shouted. Clark looked up to see the pretty Chief, Montoya (she had a first name, had told him not to use it. Ever), standing in the doorway.

"What's up, Chief?"

"Hospital called. They're ready for you to come and have a look at that floater." She cast a quick glance at Kent. "Is he coming, too?"

Malone pulled a face that might as well have said, "Fuck if I know." He shook his head. "Maybe not a good idea. I mean…you think you can stomach this, Kent?"

Clark swallowed. Tapped his pencil. "If I'm allowed to film, I want to be there."

"Allowed? Ha. Well, Mayor Hunt wants to give you carte blanche. Nothing's off limits to your network, it seems," Malone said with a gravely voice, the Jersey subdued. There was something in his tone that made the hair stand up at the back of Clark's neck. He found the somewhat sleepy, end-of-the-day drag fall away, leaving him alert and on-edge. "You wanna be there, you can be there. I can't go against the mayor," Malone added.

Montoya looked resigned. "Then I'll ask the Commissh," she said and disappeared as quickly as she'd come.

When Clark turned back to Malone, he found himself once again pinned by those eyes. He could almost forget what a despicable man he was looking into them.

"So…" Clark tried. "Do we go? Now?" This, he realized, was how he talked to Lois: Like she was some exotic, incomprehensible creature so far above him that the most he could do was put a sentence together and know it was in English.

"We go," Malone intoned mockingly. "Now."

Clark swallowed back some of the snappier retorts he had flying around his head like those damn monkeys from that damn movie.

They worked their way through the building, down to the parking garage. Clark looked to the place where Malone had parked the day before after visiting with Robbie and Jason. There was a Lamborghini the color of sin where the luxury car had been. Thinking maybe he had been blinded by the yellow of Malone's suit (Colonel Mustard, in the Major Crimes Unit, with the Jersey Accent Bat ™), Clark did a 360.

"Uh…where's the Aston Martin?" he asked after the second spin 'round. He'd been excited by the chance to settle heavy and lazy into those seats again; to feel that speed; to hear the purr of the engine. Sure, Malone drove the thing like he thought it was a tank, but nothing killed the beauty of that beast.

The detective fumbled over a new piece of gum, shoved it in his mouth. "What Aston Martin?" he asked. His tone of voice was sincerely confused.

"Y-you drove an Aston Martin yesterday."

"Oh, yeah? What color was it?"

"Black!" Clark shouted. Exasperation made him feel like a soccer mom trying and failing to make it past the Dairy Queen with a car full of kids.

"This one's black," Malone said easily. He even crossed his arms and Clark wondered why he suddenly felt proprietary about that gesture, as if he was the only one allowed to make it.

Strange.

"But it's not the same car!"

Malone raised a bushy brow at him. "You sure? Maybe you were mistaken. You know tractors. You don't know cars."

Clark huffed, felt heat slide up his collar. "These cars," he said slowly, "are the kind of cars," he added after a breath, "that blind people could identify," he finished, knowing his face was turning red with suppressed anger.

"Blind people? Huh. Not exactly Politically Correct of you, is it, Mr. You-Can't-Say-Retarded-on-the-Air?"

"You can't!"

"Whoa! This is priceless: Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle!" Malone exclaimed, arms waving wildly and forming blinding streaks of toxic sunshine in the air around them.

"Look, I'm trying to make a point here," Clark managed at last.

"And what point might that be, Mr. Big City Network Man?"

Clark floundered. What WAS he trying to say? "I'm saying, 'Okay, fine. I get it.' I DO get it! And it's all okay with me. Whatever you get up to when you're not doing your job, fine."

"What exactly is that supposed to mean?" Malone asked in a whisper as he stalked away from Clark with his lupine walk, digging the keys out of his pocket.

"I guess I'm just asking: Where did you get the car, Malone?"

At the door of the (stolen, fenced, gifted by the mafia?) beautiful sports car, Malone turned to Clark, mustache somewhat sinister above his generous mouth. "Enterprise Rent-A-Car. They even came and picked me up."

"Stop lying to me. What are you involved in that you can afford to drive two, very expensive cars? Are you…" Clark flailed, trying to find the right words. "Are you the dirtiest cop in the city, or what?"

Malone wiped his thumb under his nose with the deliberate menace of a boxer. "I ain't dirty."

Instead of contradicting Malone with words, Clark pushed his slick hair off his face with one hand (one lock had fallen into his face, what with all this anger and shaking and such), and waved at the car with the other as if to say, "Hello!? Am I the only one seeing this?"

"There is an explanation for all of this," Malone said, suddenly serious. "Believe me. Just trust me."

And Clark felt a window open. He looked up and Malone's eyes (those damn, troublesome eyes) were imploring him. To ask? To let all his suspicions go? To…to WHAT?

Clark didn't know.

And so he let the moment pass.

A heartbeat later—the span of time it takes for worlds to die and be reborn—and Malone was all carnival barker smiles and guffaws again.

"You crack me up, Kent. You're such a fucking stick in the mud."

Clark sighed. "So I've been told."

Many, many, times. Countless times. Lifetimes worth of times.

He slid into the firm seat of the Lamborghini, smelled the new-car smell and felt another headache starting. He knew he needed to sleep better. Those nauseating green dreams plus the insanity of his job were working in cahoots to drive him nuts. He slumped: Exhaustion had suddenly hit him like a locomotive.

Maybe even more powerful than that.

Malone settled next to him.

"Let's go see the dead girl," he said, tasteless as always.

Clark only nodded and started to think about the weekend. He had just decided that he needed a day off. At least a day away from Malone and Gordon and Robbie and bloody Gotham City.

To be continued…