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Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Liv parked the unmarked on Courtlandt Avenue in the South Bronx, squeezing into a spot on the one-way street and cursing the snow for the tenth time that day as she stepped out and was sprayed with slush by a passing delivery van.

"Goddamnit," she yelled, and then quickly looked at Nick, smug and dry on the curb. "What the hell's so funny, partner?"

"Not a thing," he said, knowing better than to mess with Benson when she was pissed, especially near the end of a long, cold day of re-interviewing victims and witnesses all over the city. They were on their last visit for the day-Marisol Ortiz, a Puerto Rican girl who'd been attacked in the most recent of the rapes they were working in Chelsea. She'd been lucky, if you could call it that-someone or something had scared the guy off before he could rape her, so they were hopeful she'd have some more details for them now that a few days had passed.

Olivia had joined Nick under the scaffolding straddling the sidewalk, and looked at her notebook for Ortiz's address. Her ire was quickly redirected from the van that had splashed her to the burly man who ran into her, his arms full of pizzas, knocking her into the blue metal supports.

Nick reached out a hand to steady her, calling after the offender. "Watch where you're going, buddy."

The guy kept moving, never even turned around as he called over his shoulder, "Ver dónde estás parado, pendejos. Sólo hay tanto espacio."

"What was that?" Liv asked.

"Just a friendly New Yorker saying hello to a couple of assholes," Nick laughed. "But if we hope to talk to this girl alone, we should have come sooner. It's dinner time."

"It's 4:30, Nick." They walked on through the scaffolding, emerging into the weak afternoon sunlight in front of a barber shop and deli. Their vic lived upstairs. Olivia noticed there were no kids running around. People were hustling home, some carrying groceries or takeout like the Welcome Wagon representative they'd just encountered.

"This is a working-class neighborhood, Benson. Hotel maids and line cooks, off work in mid-afternoon, or heading out later for a night shift. Her house is gonna be crawling with the same huge family we dealt with at the hospital."

"Damn," Olivia said, cursing her poor planning. She looked at Nick, wondering once again about his upbringing. He didn't say much-like her, he'd grown up with a single mom, but she sensed that his life had been a bit more hardscrabble than her own.

Serena Benson was an intellectual, and she prided herself on providing her daughter a cultured upbringing, at least when she was sober. Their house was often full of colleagues and students, gathered around the table or the living room for a late dinner and hours of discussion about literature, politics and university gossip, all of it fueled and lubricated by copious amounts of alcohol. She knew that many of the grad students who attended these salons envied her; they might have come from working-class families themselves, and the idea of growing up in a household awash in literature and discourse seemed both foreign and ideal to them. They never got to know her, though, and they had no idea that the alcohol fueled other types of conversations once the guests had left.

She shook off the memories. They came less frequently these days. Time was a great healer, but she also credited Alex for the peace she'd come to know. Security and stability had been two benefits of their marriage that she hadn't even known she needed.

"Let's do this." Nick interrupted her thoughts.

"What's that?" Olivia asked.

"We're here. Day's almost over, and I sure as hell don't wanna trek back out here tomorrow. Let's give it a go. You never know what we might get." He covered the distance to the apartment entrance in two steps, and pushed the door open, pressing the buzzer for 3D. Olivia followed reluctantly, tired of these interviews that led nowhere, and feeling like she had far more excuses than she had results these days.

Alex heard them before she saw them, chancing onto the tail end of a conversation that was clearly about her, but which she had most definitely not been meant to hear. She was approaching her own office, returning from an end-of-day meeting, when she heard a familiar voice and a familiar acronym: WITSEC. She paused a moment before her final turn into the office announced her presence.

"Hey, I know it's compelling. You know it's compelling. Hell, she knows it's compelling. But she won't go for it, Pam. She made that perfectly clear at the outset."

"She's wrong, Joel. She has to be made to see that. If you don't have the balls to tell her..."

Alex had been waiting so near the door that there weren't even two tell-tale clicks of her stilettos on the marble to give them any warning. "Who doesn't have the balls to tell me what?"

Ellen hid a smile. Her office was always full of people waiting to gain access to the inner sanctum, and to EADA Cabot. When they were young attorneys, ink still drying on their JD diplomas, she sympathized with them. Their nervousness was readily apparent as they waited to meet with the bureau chief. Whether it was a job well done or a lesson learned, hubris or humility which that brought them here, they were all anxious as their appointments neared. Ellen tried to put them at ease, but usually had little success. She'd mentioned it once to her boss.

"I don't know what they're like in there, Ms. Cabot, but out here it's all quivering chins and knocking knees."

Alex laughed. "I was like that once, Ellen."

"That surprises me," the secretary replied.

"Why? You can't imagine I was ever a scared young ADA, wet behind the ears and terrified of putting a foot wrong?"

"No," Ellen countered. "That I can see. Anyone as concerned as you are about doing well would certainly feel that way. What I can't imagine is that you ever showed any outward sign of it."

"Well, I admit, I may have tried to hide it from my bosses. Not sure how successful I was, though."

Now it was Ellen's turn to laugh. "Tried to hide it?" she replied. "I've known you a long time, and I can read you pretty well. But let's put it this way: I'd still never play poker with you, Ms. Cabot."

"Your confidence in me is boundless, but I assure you, while I was all bravado around those detectives, being called on the carpet was another story entirely."

Ellen's brief reverie brought a smile to her face even as her boss prepared to deal with the two unpleasant creatures occupying the leather sofa at this very moment. She greatly preferred an office full of young attorneys and tough detectives to the parade of strategists & sycophants she'd hosted lately, and she didn't attempt to hide her joy now as she saw the flustered campaign staffers react to the candidate's unanticipated entrance.

"Alex, sorry, that was inappropriate," Joel Ingram apologized, concluding with a pointed look at his less-abashed companion.

"What was, Joel? The fact the you don't have the balls to tell me something, or the fact that Pam does have the balls to suggest that I use my time away for political gain? It's all pretty fucking inappropriate, if you ask me, which is presumably what you're here to do."

There was a stunned silence. Crude words from a beautiful woman often had that effect, and ten seconds seemed to take two hours to tick by before Pam spoke.

"Alex, we were just thinking..."

"One moment, Pam," Alex cut her off, and turned to Ellen. "I'll be in my office with these two for a few minutes. Did I have any messages?"

"Detective Benson called, please call her later and let her know what time you're meeting your uncle for dinner," Ellen answered, handing over a white message slip. "And James Bailey called to see if he can get some time with you this afternoon about the Skolnik case."

"Thanks," Alex replied. "I'll call Olivia later, and let James know..." She glanced at her watch. "5:15, I can manage 15 or 20 minutes. Tops."

She turned now, facing Joel and Pam, and gestured to her office door. "After you two."

Once the trio were in the office, and Alex had closed the door behind her, she told them both to take a seat in the chairs facing her desk. But rather than ensconcing herself behind the large wooden barrier, as they were used to, she walked to the front of her desk and leaned back against the edge, crossing her legs at the ankle and her arms over her chest. This was an old tactic, designed either to intimidate or seduce, depending on who was occupying the space in front of her. Today, there would be no seduction.

Joel couldn't have told you right away what she was doing, but he knew it was working. His face was reddening a bit, and his heart rate seemed faster than normal. He felt like a little boy called to the principal's office. He tried to defuse the tension again. "Alex, we were just discussing the fact that..."

She held up her hand, silencing him. "There is no just here. That issue is absolutely not relevant to this election, and I thought I made it quite clear when I hired you both that there was nothing to discuss. This is my not my resume you're discussing. It's my life, and I will not use that in my campaign, neither the time in witness protection, nor the events that precipitated it."

"Use what?" Pam interrupted. Joel glanced sideways at her, wondering if she had a death wish, or just an unemployment wish. She had to know she was treading on dangerous ground here, but she continued talking as Cabot focused exclusively on her. "Use the fact that you did everything you could to put away some very bad people? Or the fact that you were shot for doing your job? Is that what you won't use, Alex? Maybe it's just the fact that you gave up two years of your life for the people of New York."

"Pam..." Joel said, reaching a hand over and putting it on her arm, trying to rein her in.

"Listen to me, both of you," Alex said. "And listen closely. This is none of your business, and it's damn sure not for public consumption." She expected that would end the matter, but she had clearly underestimated the fearlessness of her Director of Communications.

"You listen to me," Pam responded, her voice steady and calm but her words full of fight. "You did all of that for the public. And you hired me to get you elected. So let me do my job, Alex, and tell your story."

"That's not my story." Alex's eyes were blazing, and her posture now seemed defensive rather than intimidating.

"It sure as hell is," Pam said. "That experience changed you, Alex. I know that, even if you won't talk about it. You lost everything in service to the people of this city, and they should know that. I joined your campaign because I thought you could win. But more importantly, I signed on because I want you to win. You are the best person for this job, for a lot of reasons. I refuse to believe that what you went through hasn't made you who you are today."

Alex regarded her for a moment, absorbing what she'd said. Both women were fired up, and seemed to have forgotten the campaign director sitting to Pam's right. When she spoke, her voice was much quieter, less forceful. "That was a very difficult time for me, Pam. It's not a story I want told."

"But that's the point," Pam replied, her own voice quieter but still insistent. "The story is going to be told, Alex. People are already talking about it, and if you don't tell it yourself, it's like a game of goddamn Telephone. It'll get garbled and mythologized and permutated. You have to control the narrative on this. Trust me."

Alex looked up at her. "Control the narrative?"

"Yes," Pam replied. "Own the story, just like you own the story in court. Your story, Alex. Told your way, from your mouth. It may or may not help you get elected, but either way, don't let someone else write this chapter for you."

Alex pushed up from the desk's edge, and walked around her two guests to the door, opening it for them. "We're done talking," she said. "I'll call you later, Joel." They left, and she closed the door behind them, lost in thought.

After they passed Ellen's desk and entered the hall, Joel looked incredulously at Pam, putting a hand on her arm to stop her progress toward the elevators. "What the hell were you thinking in there?" he asked. "You're going to be out of a job by tomorrow."

Pam, though, didn't look worried. "We'll see," she replied. "But I don't think so. She knows that I'm right. Just give her a little time, Joel."

She walked on toward the elevator, and pressed the down button as he joined her. Both were silent as they waited, and they entered an empty car. As the doors slid shut, Pam gave her colleague a knowing smile.

"When she calls you, Joel, it'll be to tell you she's taking the gloves off," she said confidently. "She's going to let us do our jobs now, and if we unleash the real Alex Cabot, no one else will stand a chance."