Sly Cooper and the Gang in…The Vigilante Police
Chapter 6: So Natural, So Instinctive
Sly and Carmelita were running very low on gas around Vierzon, which was about two hours away from Paris. They were still very anxious about being followed, but Sly had been checking behind him as they had driven. It was very late at night, and there had been no sign of headlights behind them, so they were pretty sure they were not being followed.
It was far too late to check into a motel, and even if they could, it was foolish to be seen anywhere without disguises, as the two of them were internationally famous. They decided it was best to sleep in the car that night, protected by a vast expanse of forestry, and look for disguises in the morning.
In the meanwhile, Carmelita parked her car as deep into a forest area as was reasonable. It was even darker amidst the shadows cast by the leaves of the forest, and when she shut off the engine of the car and turned off the headlights, it was pitch black.
Carmelita clambered into the back of the car and pulled out thick blankets from behind the front seats. She gave one to Sly and kept one for herself. Sly knew why these were available; they had been on numerous stakeouts in the civilian vehicle, some lasting long into the chilly winter nights. These blankets had helped them survive the cold in the past, and they were certainly doing their job now.
And though it was very late, the events of the night had them so worked up that they couldn't even begin to fall asleep. Rather, they sat in the darkness of the forest and started avidly discussing the threat and the subsequent attacks.
"Why would the police come after me?" Sly asked, addressing the first question that was dancing in his head. "They had you cornered in that fire escape and they didn't touch you. What do they want with me?" Carmelita squirmed at the question but chose to respond.
"Sly, I have absolutely no idea," Carmelita said, "except that they might be bitter that a notorious thief such as you could possibly become one of our finest officers. A lot of people at the station feel you got off easy because of me."
"Well, why did they attack so blatantly?" Sly asked. "There's no way somebody didn't hear the gunshots, look out the window, and see nine officers gunning for me. They're going to be arrested."
"Really?" Carmelita asked. "Are you sure about that?"
"What are you talking about? They're going in for attempted murder; the cops wouldn't just let them get off―" But Sly suddenly stopped talking, suddenly alarmed.
"Do you think this was a setup?" he asked, trembling.
"I'm certain this was a setup," Carmelita said grimly. "There's no way nine officers would randomly choose to kill you. This was an inside job."
"How deep do you think it goes?" Sly asked. "Somebody had to authorize this, somebody had to…Barkley!" he suddenly yelled.
"What are you talking about?" Carmelita asked.
"Chief Barkley. Who better to authorize it? He's the head of an international police organization. He's got more power than anyone in Paris short of the president!"
"Sly, that makes no sense. Barkley loves you; he says your one of the finest officers he's ever trained. You saw how reacted about the threat. He was stunned, mortified."
"He could be putting on an act."
"Yeah, but why wait two years? Why not strike earlier, when there was far less reason to trust you? Over the years, you've only proven your loyalty to Interpol more and more, shown more and more that you've rejected your criminal history."
"A history I don't even remember!" Sly cried, a thrill sweeping through his stomach. He suddenly remembered the other thing that was bothering him about tonight, and he quickly relayed it to Carmelita.
"Carmelita, when I was running from the cops, I started doing things I didn't even think possible: running across wires, climbing up pipes, bouncing off of awnings, and landing on small points. How did I know how to do that? It was so natural, so instinctive, but I don't remember ever doing anything like it before." Now it was obvious, even in the darkness blanketing them; Carmelita was shuddering with worry. Inside herself, she was struggling with internal conflict she'd been feeling for two years, which was now surfacing out of her control.
If she told Sly the truth about his amnesia, she was afraid he would leave her. She wouldn't blame him for doing that after she had lied to him for two years about his past. But she would never forgive herself and she would miss Sly fiercely. However, she felt enormously guilty about keeping this secret from Sly, and explaining it to him now would clarify why he had become a target of assassination for the police.
But fear took her, and she decided to reveal only part of the truth.
"Sly, I've spoken to counselors concerning you," she said carefully. This was true; she had accompanied Chief Barkley in meeting with psychological experts before formally employing Sly as an officer. "They think that you feel so guilty about your past that you've repressed your memories of them. That's why you don't remember anything." Sly was looking at her gravely, and she swallowed and took a deep breath.
"Interpol is after me," he said slowly.
"Yes," Carmelita said, wondering what point he was trying to make.
"That means," he said, "that I can trust no one who works at Interpol."
"Um…you're right," she said, cringing, for she knew what Sly meant.
"Then why should I believe you?" he bellowed, and Carmelita cringed.
"Sly, you're joking, right?" she asked, attempting to sound offhand. "I'm your closest colleague."
"Making it all the easier to set me up, because I trusted you!" Sly cried, now looking manic.
"Sly, you're not making sense―"
"NO! YOU'RE NOT MAKING SENSE! WHY WOULD I JUST 'REPRESS' THE FIRST TWENTY-ONE YEARS OF MY LIFE? WHY ARE MY COLLEAGUES TRYING TO KILL ME IF I WAS TRULY 'REFORMED?' WHY DID YOU SUGGEST GOING BACK TO YOUR APARTMENT, ONLY TO HAVE THEM GUN ME DOWN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT? WHY WOULD YOU COME WITH ME ON THE RUN AND THROW AWAY YOUR ENTIRE CAREER? I KNOW WHY! YOU'RE LEADING THEM AFTER ME! YOU'RE GOING TO TELL THEM WHERE I AM! WELL GUESS WHAT? I'M TAKING YOUR CAR AND I'M LEAVING YOU HERE! I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN!" Carmelita had burst into tears, but Sly was so incensed that he felt no sympathy.
"GO ON AND BLUBBER! YOU'RE ONLY SAD THAT YOU GOT CAUGHT!"
"You're an asshole!" she cried miserably.
"WHAT? I'M AN ASSHOLE FOR TRYING TO STAY ALIVE? I'M NOT AN ASSHOLE! YOU'RE JUST A BITCH!"
"You have no fucking idea what you're talking about!" Carmelita cried, and her tear-soaked face was so wrought with frustration that Sly finally stopped to catch his breath.
"How could you even think that I had anything to do with this? Those gunshots could just have easily have killed me! And guess what? While you were fleeing for your life, I had to convince Inspector Dewitt that I was in on the operation so she wouldn't kill me! She was going to kill me, Sly! Does that sound like I'm in on the plot to kill you?"
"Dewitt might not have known you were in on the plot, but that doesn't mean you weren't!" Carmelita clutched her hair and screamed furiously.
"I love you!" she cried, having thought of nothing else to say. Sly now stared at her with such confusion that she almost laughed. Then, she kissed him more passionately than she ever had, clutching him, moving to press against his body, as if physical contact could convey how much love she held for him. When she broke the kiss, all the rage had vanished from Sly's countenance.
"Sly, I've loved you for the longest time, since even before you started to work for Interpol. It was always wrong of me to feel this way, a police officer falling for a criminal. But these past two years have been such a blessing. Being with you has made me a happier person. Why would I want to throw that away? Why? Does that make any sense to you?" Sly was silent for a full minute, his brain numb with shock.
"Why…didn't you tell me?" he asked when his brain had decided to start functioning again.
"I was afraid you didn't feel the same way…" she said, and admitting it made her realize how stupid that fear had been.
"Carmelita, I love you, too." Suddenly, the two were embracing, an enormous wave of relief washing over both of them. There would be no question of trust between them from this point forth. They were in love, and they were in this together.
Bentley, Penelope, and Murray were now flying back across the Pacific Ocean, the broken remains of the Clockwerk parts in tow. As mangled as the parts were, he hoped Sly would remember that they belonged to the hateful owl that had terrorized his ancestors since ancient times. That was too great a part of his past to ignore, as he reminded Murray when he had begun to complain about the whole trip.
The flight was, if anything, even more tiring than the trip down. When they finally arrived at the warehouse, Bentley was just awake enough to check the local time: December 8th, 2:00 in the morning. They'd been gone nearly three days. The three of them went to bed and fell asleep at once, not awakening until 11:00 the next morning.
Once Bentley had risen, he decided that he should check the news now that he had a decent Internet connection. What he found shocked him.
He read the story of the shootout at the apartment complex after midnight on December 5th. Apparently, a group of rogue police officers had attacked Inspector Carmelita Montoya Fox and Inspector Sly Cooper! They had managed to flee the building and their whereabouts were currently unknown.
If he hadn't been wheelchair bound, Bentley would have tripped in his rush to find Murray and Penelope. Quickly, babbling in his panic, he relayed the news to his friends, who greeted it with equal shock and horror. Once the initial reaction of panic had subsided, the three of them finally calmed down enough to discuss their next move.
"So, Sly's not in Paris anymore?" Murray asked.
"Murray," Bentley said, "this was three days ago. He's probably not even in this continent anymore."
"How are we going to find him?" Penelope asked.
"I have no idea!" Bentley cried, and he suddenly felt hopeless. Murray and Penelope were equally dismayed; if Bentley didn't have a plan, then they knew the situation was grim.
"Well, we can't just stay here!" Murray said. "We have to go find him!"
"With what leads?" Bentley asked. "Don't get me wrong, Murray, I absolutely agree that we should find him. But without any leads, the practicality of doing so is so minimal that it is foolish to start looking for him now."
"Bentley's right," Penelope said sadly. "There's not much we can do right now."
"So…we're just going to stay here?" Murray asked, looking so dejected that Bentley was heartbroken.
"No!" he said so forcefully that Murray was taken aback. "We're not going to wait for these rogue cops to shoot us down! We have to get out of here! Pack up!" he cried, already rolling away in his wheelchair. "We're leaving tonight!"
The three thieves set out under the cover of the night sky. They took the team van on the highway, planning to head north to Belgium, but Murray saw someone on the edge of the road that made him hit his brakes and stop suddenly. Bentley nearly fell out of his wheelchair and was scolding Murray, as he had not seen who was on the road.
"I'm sorry, Bentley," he said, "but I just saw Dimitri!"
"What? That's impossible. He's supposed to be skin diving out in the Caribbean!"
"Well then, why's he knocking on your door?" Sure enough, there was a rapping noise, and Bentley turned and stared, nose to nose, at an ugly purple lizard wearing a lime-green suit and smoking a cigarette.
"For Christ's sake," Bentley said, "Penelope, let him in." Penelope opened the side door and Dimitri slithered in.
"My deepest gratitude," he said with such a silky French accent that Penelope nearly blushed.
"Murray! Been too long, bro! What you do to your ride? It's big pimpin'!" This was such a harsh return to his croaky bark of a voice that Penelope remembered she reviled this man.
"Um…thanks, Dimitri," Murray mumbled as he started driving again.
"No worries, my main man," he said in reply, "you just keep cruisin' these mean streets like you were. I need to speaks with Turtle-Dude!"
"Dimitri," Bentley said, turning his head. He had no patience for Dimitri's abhorred speech patterns tonight. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Such dirty lingo from such a suave fellow," Dimitri crooned. "What gets you so addled?"
"Dimitri!" Bentley said.
"Aight, aight, chillax, bro. I 'splain it all to you. See, I be making all kinds of bling and hitting all kinds of tail as a skin diver. But there is a hole in me, one that can't be filled by booze, blow, or bunny-fucking. I ponders this carefully, and then it hits me like a whack job by the Mafia! I am missing old partners in crime. So's I come back to Paris to find Cooper, as he's the only one who I can find!
"I shows up here three days ago, and I hears about the whack job, and I see Sly's bolted clean out of town with lovely vixen! Been envious about that ever since. If I were on the run with that sexy bitch I'd tap that all the way to―"
"Dimitri!" Bentley snapped. "Unless you know something about Sly's whereabouts I'll have to ask you to be quiet."
"Sheesh, you needs to get laid, bro. You're wound tighter than a cokehead who's gone clean. Anyways, I saw them drive south outta here, but I don't follow them because vixen would throw me in the slammer! Can you imagine? All those sex-starved prisoners looking for a good ass-fucking―"
"For crying out loud!" Penelope screamed. "You've gotten even more vulgar, and I didn't think that was possible!"
"Mine apologies," he said with that sultry accent again. "I should show more restraint in front of a lady such as yourself."
"Hold on a minute," Bentley said. "Did you say south? What route were they on?"
"They's were bookin' it down A10 like they was drag-racing, but there's no point now. Like I said, that was three days ago. They could be anywhere now."
"I realize that, Dimitri. Thank you," Bentley said, hope deflating. He had thought Dimitri would have been much more informed. Then he realized that if he had been banking on Dimitri's help, he shouldn't have gotten his hopes up in the first place.
"So how's we tracking down that sexy beast?" Dimitri asked, clearly eager to go chasing after Sly (or, Bentley thought, more likely Carmelita…).
"There's no point trying to find him now," Bentley said. "They could be anywhere in the world by now." Dimitri looked disappointed, which Bentley found quite odd. Three years ago, Sly had been the one to send Dimitri behind bars. Why did he suddenly care about finding him?
"So where is we off to?" Dimitri asked.
"Belgium," Penelope said. "We need to lie low with all the violent cops around." Suddenly, without warning, the four thieves heard sirens blaring behind them.
"Shit…" Murray said, looking at his speedometer.
"It's no good pulling over," Bentley said. "They'll probably shoot us down point-blank."
"OWN THESE MOTHERFUCKERS!" Dimitri cried manically, making Penelope jump.
"Don't be crazy. We need to lose them," Bentley said.
"That's what I was saying," Dimitri said. Bentley sighed.
"Well, you weren't very clear―" But Murray stepped hard on the gas pedal, and the van took off, throwing Bentley off-balance. The tires screeched against the pavement as Dimitri whooped excitedly. Soon, the unmistakable sounds of gunshots cracked through the air. The police were trying to shoot out their tires.
As Murray swerved recklessly, Dimitri tried to stick his head out the window to yell at the police, but Penelope forced him back into his seat. Murray suddenly saw exit signs.
"Fuck this shit," he said as he suddenly veered right to catch the exit. The van careened down the ramp so fast that Bentley thought that Murray would lose control and crash the van. But Murray kept control as he weaved expertly through the town they were in, shooting down streets and narrowly passing parked cars. Soon though, there was nobody behind them, so Murray parked the van and slumped backwards in his seat, exhausted.
"Why didn't they follow us?" Penelope asked.
"They were giving us a warning," Bentley said. "That's why they used the sirens, too. It sounds like they don't want us anywhere near Paris."
"But why?" Murray asked. "Wouldn't that make it easier for them to come after us?"
"It would," Bentley said, thinking. "Unless…they don't want us near Interpol because they're hiding something."
"Like what?" Penelope asked.
"Like the whole conspiracy to kill master thieves!" Bentley cried. There was an uncomfortable silence.
"You're fucking high, dude," Dimitri said.
"I assure you, Dimitri, that I am not high. First Loose-Tongued Larry gets hit, and then Sly Cooper, the greatest thief in the world. The cops aren't stupid; they know we'll stop at nothing to get to the bottom of this conspiracy, so they drove us out of Paris. They're afraid we'll find out what they're up to."
"So…what are we gonna do?" Murray asked.
"We're going back to Paris to find out what Interpol's planning," Bentley said. This was met with a very awkward silence.
"Correction," Dimitri said. "You're not high. You're fucking insane."