BEST DEFENSE
JoJo Martinez sat beside his lawyer in a sad grey room at Rikers. There were shades of Christ in his features, shades of the devil in his disposition and shades of an Andean herder in his woolen South American garb. The last was draped over his unfashionable orange prison jumpsuit.
Peru must be so proud. Alex snarked silently.
"They're playing you. Gary Burke is dead." Martinez snapped at his lawyer.
"How do you know that?" Alex shot out.
"PNN - Prison News Network." JoJo sat back with the smarmy look of someone on higher ground.
"That's the same place we get our news from." Bobby chimed in. "One of their reporters heard you a couple of weeks ago putting out a contract on Bonham."
"S- s- s screw that." The prisoner stuttered. "Why would I want to hurt that man?"
Goren turned to his partner and as he did his eye hung on Carver's arm. The lawyer's limb had ventured out and bridged the gap between his chair and Eames'. Eames who was sitting quietly over there beside the ADA instead of standing in solidarity (and rhetoric) with her partner. Robert Goren read bodies like books, that was an alpha move, that arm was territorial. Oh it was meant to seem innocuous, a perch for a weary limb but it had layers of meaning. Subliminally it showed protection, sympathy, attraction. And in the same instance Goren saw that Eames leaned in. She actually leaned in. What the hell was this? They were being sloppy. Were they getting serious? Goren (barely) managed to stay focused on JoJo the thug. Ever present in his mind, in his periphery, was Carver claiming mastery over Eames and her chair again and again and again.
"Because he's about to put you away for life." Eames got in the game." You're facing your third felony drug conviction."
And Carver backed her up like a partner, "Bonham told us he turned you down for a plea bargain."
Bobby roiled.
Do I even need to be here? He was starting to feel like a third wheel on his own case.
By the time JoJo had stomped off, their fingers (Carver's and Eames') rested inches apart on the table top. Goren's heart rate spiked and he knew that it had nothing to do with this criminal or this case.
He was grappling with the basest of human emotions.
He was jealous.
By the time the accused's lawyer left as well Goren was feeling hot and uncomfortable. He was nothing more then a big body without bounds. He immediately seized the high ground. He shunned the 3 empty chairs, planted his butt on the tabletop and gazed down on the couple. In psychological vernacular this was called peacocking: making himself bigger, unavoidable, obvious. And he hated that. He hated that he was doing it and hated even more that he knew he was doing it. He was no better then any other jealous loser.
"It begs the question where is Mr. Martinez getting the money to pay for better representation." Carver asked looking up, his arm still on her chair.
"Same place Gary Burke got his money?" Eames suggested blissfully unaware of the silent power play storming about her.
"Jojo's mom might know." Goren replied looking deeply, inscrutably into the pages of his portfolio.
He couldn't take much more of this crap.
And so it seemed ingenious and perfectly right that two days later Goren and Eames started their collusion. They sat at their desks and he sold her on the merit of excluding Carver from the rest of this case. This was about a corrupt ADA after all, a man with all of the rights and access of every ADA. They couldn't risk giving him their case through Carver or through the District Attorneys Office intranet. They needed to move together in secret. Bobby took great pleasure in convincing Eames to deceive her lover.
"Avoid him, it's the only way." He told her with schooled innocence. "Let Deakins do his briefings until we can bring ADA Bonham down." Goren fully intended for that takedown to take at least a week. A week of late nights and ordering in food with Eames. A Carver free week.
Her brow furrowed.
He imagined her mentally cancelling their date for tonight (and many nights after). And he was struck by waves of pure pleasure. Goren knew he shouldn't be so fuckin' happy, but he was. A perfect storm. And so he took Alex by the hand and lead her away from Ronald Carver.
Carver swung in on the door frame surveying their little 1PP paper party. The detectives sat tucked into a table pouring over mounds of files. Ron hadn't seen Alex in a week. He was here under the guise of the Bonham case but really because he had the jones, the love jones. His lawyer personna looked expectantly at the detectives while primal man looked longingly at Alex.
But she was clipped and short and all about the case. Her professionalism hurt him.
"Martinez said he got $20,000 to arrange the hit on Peter Bonham, we just need to trace it to Linda Bonham." She gestured at all their open files.
"Just dotting all the i's." Goren added .
Carver's inclined ear heard a ring of smugness in those words. He looked from Goren to Eames then to Goren again and a wave of futility washed over him "Let me know what you come up with." He said then vanished into the squad room.
"How long are we keeping him in the dark?" Eames asked and the conflict was there in her eyes. Carver was twice as invested as usual in this case, which meant he was twice as aggressive in his phone calls and pop bys. It was stressful for her. Two worlds were colliding, work and sex were catching up in the worst way.
"As soon as we have an incontrovertible case against Peter Bonham. Starting with tracing the $20,000 back to him" Goren was a broken record out loud but inside he said things like: Suck on that Carver and once (even more surprising) She's mine. It'd taken a glass of Glenlivet to wash that particular thought down, to reconcile his deep possessiveness with their platonic relationship.
Their conspiracy was delicious. Watching her snub Carver was delicious. It wasn't often that a device threw itself so cleanly in Goren's lap. It wasn't often that he played the wedge so legitimately.
Because he cared. Deeply.
He had her back.
Ronald Carver needed to go.
"We're all going for drinks, live a little," Bobby cajoled at quitting time. Partly because he wanted his eye on 'off hours' Eames, partly because they needed to become joiners. They both had lone wolf tendencies.
"Who all is going?" She tidied her desk.
"Stoke, Jeffries, Luftisa, Goldblat, Donovan and a few girls from HR."
She caught his eye. "Oh, now I see what's in it for you."
He lowered his head a little, she read it as bashful. But then gave her his softest look "Come on." he urged.
And she did, come on that was. She dragged her heels all the way down to the shiny marble lobby of 1PP and then 2 blocks over (by foot) to "Flannigans' a cop bar if ever there was one. The atmosphere was 'any weeknight' stuff. Low lighting, a jukebox cranking out retro tunes - the 80's mostly. A lot of guys whose butts probably hadn't fit on a barstool since the 80's, darts, pool and a thick crowd - standing room only.
"Let me buy you a drink." She felt Goren's hot breath on her cheek and it was an odd comfort. This was not her natural habitat.
"No. I'll give you some cash."
He shrugged. And she dug deep into her purse for some money and came up with a ten. "Get me a margarita."
He smirked.
"What? It has to be beer?" She stepped to him scrappily, "What I need a whiskey to be hard enough?"
"No, no." Goren smiled "Just let me see if this guy even knows what a margarita is." He turned and elbowed himself a spot at the bar.
Alex slowly looked around the room and the crew they came with waved her in. They sat at two '4 seaters' slapped haphazardly together. On one side was a long red pleather banquet the other side a line of chairs. Oh God she groaned this was going to be tight. 8 seats for 10 people. All she wanted was a cup of tea, her couch and some footie pajamas. Being smushed up against Bobby's last administrative conquest was not her idea of a fun night out.
"Squeeze in here detective." Jeffries called from the booth side, small mercies Alex thought. She actually liked Jefferies. She shimmied in. This was the truth about offices, but moreover about policing, it lived and died by camaraderie. Their Major hazing had never really ended, it probably never would. Rookies (which she and Bobby still were, as the last arrivals) couldn't just abruptly withdraw from interaction, they had to be joiners. They had to network. So Alex nestled in against her co-worker's thigh panning the throngs for Bobby.
"I hear you're in the bad books." Donovan launched in right away yelling a little over the noise.
Alex leaned in to show interest, then saw her partner on the periphery. Two drinks in hand with no seat, she supposed he could shimmy in on the end beside her, let his long legs hang into the aisle.
"Hey Bobby!" Susanna called trumping her, Alex glared, Susanna Voigt of HR fame. "I'll sit on your knee." The woman was obviously joking (and judging by the extra button she'd undone on her satin blouse) also not. Alex couldn't believe it when Bobby set her margarita down with only a cursory glance and turned to the auburn haired vixen.
"If the offer's good let's do it."
The whole table erupted and that started a round of banging and cat calling and urging until Alex watched that Human Resources slut stand, blush and then plop her ample derriere into the centre of her partner's lap. Accounts on that may have varied: on the size of Susanna's behind and her proclivity for the opposite sex. It was quite possible that the light was a little more unforgiving from Alex's place at the table.
They all watched Bobby adjust those lap dancing hips suggestively. Should we leave you perverts alone. Alex went on a tear inside her head. Until at last she couldn't bear another second of her own hostility. She turned sharply to Donovan.
"Bad books?" she picked up an old conversation.
"With Deakins."
"Oh yeah he'll get over it, we're already creating our next wave of enemies." She quipped. Everyone at this table knew the score. Bobby was a stone in the shoe of the brass. Their big victories came with big risks and even bigger fallout.
"How you doin' under there partner?" Alex asked with a very merry falsetto. Then she slammed back her drink, she was going to need a few more of these.
Susanna swiveled grinding on him. "He's just great." Her voice had layers of innuendo.
Everyone snickered because they all got it but Goldblat just had to cross the finish line. "Got wood Goren?" He asked to ruckus approval.
And that was how it went after hours, someone got blitzed, someone got punched and someone got laid. Emotions ran the gamut and in this world they were always on high.
"Get a room," Alex heckled just to keep up with the Joneses, even though she wanted to get a room, her bedroom far from this maddening crowd. Far from her horny partner. Far from her stinging jealousy.
Her cell rang.
She glanced down. Carver. Shit.
If he wasn't currently public enemy number one she might have worked out some of this tension with him. Or maybe not. She hit the 'end' button because she was starting to see that Ron was a means to an end. She was using him. He was a crutch. A bad habit she was ready to break. Alex deliberately turned her body away from Bobby's inappropriate tableau and looked straight into Detective Chris Donovan's eyes. He wasn't half bad - tallish, blond, a bit thin but that certainly wasn't a deal breaker.
"Let's dance." she commanded.
He looked around. "No one else is dancing."
"Ya chicken?" Alex asked with a light in her eye and a suggestive twist of her lips, because he liked her and she knew it. She could feel Bobby's eyes on them. She spared him a glance and watched his jaw clench. Donovan took that challenge to his manhood and grabbed her hand. He lead her away. Alex gratefully put 5 tables and 17 drunks between her and Bobby then she curled onto her co-worker (maybe a little too close) but she was feeling reckless tonight.
Her partner was making her crazy.
A couple of hours later the floor was littered with peanut shells and fragile egos. Wives and boyfriends had started calling errant partners home. Pissed patrons paired off, pitching and lurching toward the door and the bar's population started to thin, save a handful of hardcores and regulars. Alex couldn't believe she was still here. She'd danced a bit, drank a bit and generally lost track of time and now she'd tucked herself into a tiny two seater in the corner and debated the luxury of taxi all the way to Queens.
"Hey there."
She looked up way up into Bobby's eyes. "Oh. You're still here. Shouldn't you be in Susanna's pants right about now?" Too much drink. She was being loose with her words. "Sorry." She slurred a little. "Shouldn't have said that."
"Come on partner." He smiled down, "Let's share a cab."
"I'm fine here." She let her head rest against the faded doodle of a labia on a 'seen better days' wall.
"You can't sleep in the bar." Bobby thought she looked small and pretty there, her jacket shed, the strong thin slant of her shoulders glowing under a knockoff Tiffany ceiling lamp.
"I'm not gonna sleep in the bar." She screwed up her face but made no move.
"You are such a cheap drunk." He laughed filing that important knowledge away.
"I resent that. I'm five foot nothing and I drank 5 margaritas." She held up 5 diminutive fingers.
"What?!" Clearly Donovan had wanted to get lucky. He would kill that sonofabitch. Bobby took her arm and got her to her feet and out the door, piling on layers of autumn gear as they went. Outside in the unseasonable cold and bluster they stood shivering, tucked into the crook of several hundred glowing office buildings that truly never slept. He flagged a cab on that street and once they settled into the vehicle her phone rang.
Carver, again.
This time Bobby saw.
This time, in the tight midnight hue of the backseat it was impossible to hide the neon green box screaming the ADA's name.
"Carver." he said.
"Carver." she repeated.
"Bit late for case talk." His sharp tone belied the dull warmth of his body an inch away.
She shrugged and let her head fall back. In the moonlight he tracked the sweep of her pale exposed neck.
"You haven't told him about Bonham?"
"I said I wouldn't. I don't sabotage cases." Alex had all but quit Ronald Carver, save two booty calls in the last two months. She didn't have any lingering emotion, but still it was hard to deliberately keep him out of the loop.
All of her private considerations must have played cryptically across her eyes because when she finally looked at Bobby he wasn't leaning back, he wasn't mirroring her easy late night stuporous pose, he was so invested. He looked like he was trying to pry back her skull with a mental retractor. He looked like he was trying to delve into her mind.
She looked at him with quizzical eyes. There was no way Bobby suspected, she told herself. She and Ron had covered. They'd barely been within touching distance ever.
His next words let her know how wrong she was.
"You have to quit him." Bobby said abruptly. And all of the air rushed out of the cabin with a hiss.
"Pardon me?"
"You heard me."
"I can't believe what I heard."
"Well let me spell it out." The double scotch neat and 3 beers he'd had were making him just as loose with his words. Maybe too loose for such a delicate conversation. "You have to stop fuck-ing Carver." He annunciated.
Holy shit. Alex was reeling. She pulled up straight, the haze gone, her mouth slack.
"Maybe you need to mind your own fuck-ing business." She mimicked him in tone and intensity her cheeks went flush and it wasn't from the margaritas. There wasn't a margarita in the world that could make her head whirl this way.
"You are my business." his voice was brash and unrepentant.
"Did you hear me say a word when you were screwing around with Denise? Hickey's above the collar? Really Goren? Or what about tonight? Letting Susanna ride you like something at the carnival?"
"So you noticed." His eyes narrowed on her. "I wondered if you'd noticed."
"I have more class then to call you out." She hit low.
"Yeah well Carver is in our faces at least 4 days a week. I can't deal with that much sexual tension in one room anymore. Figure out your loyalties!"
Alex felt like she'd been transported to another dimension. The one with a crazed jealous Goren, who wasn't her work partner at all, suddenly he was her boyfriend or her husband.
"Figure out yours!" She shot. "You think you can bang any skirt that casts a shadow over our desks and then call me out for easing my ache!" Wow. This was getting dirty. This was going somewhere that was over 13 months in the making.
"Are you working your way through the office alphabet? Donovan? Really? Cs are done so tonight it's onto Ds. I guess I won't have to wait too long…" He bit out and immediately regretted what he'd just revealed.
"Wait? Ha! What a joke." She lampooned him "You're too busy to wait for me. You have a new lay for every day of the week."
And it was that simple phrase that cast the light of realization cast over her.
No wonder she'd wanted to escape him.
Almost from the moment she'd met him she had been clawing and scratching and pushing him away.
Alex wasn't used to being so obtuse about her own feelings. But she had feelings. Did she ever. There was no mistaking that now and he definitely had feelings too.
"If you'd said something, showed even the slightest interest maybe I wouldn't have..." He fired out. "But you were too busy on your knees for Carver, weren't you?"
They both sat back at angles to each other, panting like they'd run a marathon.
The staring took on ridiculous proportions. The staring carried them through six Bollywood ballads and 25 miles.
"We shouldn't be doing this." She said at last, the whites of his eyes flickered like a Super 8 with each passing street light.
"What coming clean?"
"No, going out together." Ever again.
"Scared?" He taunted. "You've tried mean, you've tried to get away, you tried to butch it up" He parted and clipped a section of her short hair between two long fingers, this was the shortest her hair had ever been "and I still want you." His fingers on her scalp were heavy and warm. She almost purred with the simple pleasure of being touched by him.
It was all so honest.
So intimate.
She wanted to stay. She wanted to flee. But she drew the line at doing a tuck and roll on the interstate. So instead she pulled away and made her face as hard as that asphalt.
He seized her hand in his, he need to touch her. "That's it," he mocked softly, "Game face on, that's how you do it in the bullpen, don't let the brass see it."
"What?"
"How much we want each other." He said.
"How much you want me you mean." It was a vicious hail mary, a hope in hell that she could stop what was happening here.
He leaned in.
He smelled like alcohol. So did she.
Oh God, he's going to kiss me. She couldn't fake indifference in a kiss.
But he didn't. Instead he touched her hair again. This time tucking a short errant lock behind her ear smoothing, caressing.
"Nice try." He was completely unphased by her cruelty. He got her game, especially tonight when her tricks were so booze laced and facile.
They sat for so long in that simple pose.
Until their cheeks collapsed wearily against the seat.
Until his hand felt as though it had grown fixed to her head.
Their eyes locked.
Their bodies curved toward.
Their knees rubbed.
Their mouths sighed.
It was so simple, it was so complicated.
They rolled to a stop in front of her apartment door.
He moved closer. His breath was hot on her lips. He whispered "When you're done with him, we'll both get what we want."
And then he let her go.