Title: Immunity (title will definitely change)
Author: Cipher44
Revision: 3/17/03
Primary Email: ninfan45@hotmail.com
Type: Third Watch/The Stand crossover
Rating: R. Violence, profanity, mature themes.
Summary: c/o with "The Stand" WIP. A Bosco character study mainly. Chapter 1: Bosco and Cruz have a slight disagreement ...
Spoilers: You should be up to date on Third Watch's storyline; this story picks up right after the episode where Cruz is almost strangled in the alley, though you'll have to allow for the fact that we've skipped ahead to summer. I don't think it's necessary to have read the Stand, but needless to say, it would help; there are a TON of small references to the book here.
Disclaimer: The Third Watch characters ain't mine. They belong to somebody else. Don't know if you knew that or not, but just thought I'd say it anyway. Likewise, any characters mentioned from the Stand belong to Stephen King.
Notes
I love crossovers, particularly unlikely ones, and this idea occurred to me as I watched some of the more recent episodes of TW. Also, I remember a few years ago I had a nice, geeky discussion with a friend over what the characters from our favorite shows might do in the aftermath of the plague ...
It's mainly a study of Bosco, his relationships to his each of his partners (Faith Yokas and the other one, you know, the evil one; Cruz) and what really drives him ...
Point of interest: What the hell is Sergeant Cruz' first name? Does she even have one? I seem to remember her junkie sister calling her "Rita," but I could be wrong ...
Immunity
(tentative title)
It's the end of the world as we know it
And I feel fine
- R.E.M
Chapter 1
June 22
Day 1
People come and go. Nothing lasts forever. You make friends and then you move on and make new. It happens. Sometimes you don't necessarily want it to, but it happens.
On some level Maurice Boscorelli understood that these were all just second-rate cliches. He would be the first to admit he was no genius, but that hardly mattered; his newfound philosophical streak pleased him with the simplicity of its truth. He was still young, still finding his place in the world, and it hardly needed to be said that he didn't plan on being a patrol officer for the rest of his career. Never had.
At first he thought the next step would be ESU, the Emergency Services Unit. The shamelessly testosterone-charged atmosphere had appealed to him greatly, at least until he saw what looking down the scope of a sniper rifle did to Glen Hobart. Being a sniper, being the man who has to shoot from the shadows, to take a man's head off without him ever seeing your face. Had such a slimy, cowardly job actually appealed to him, and such a short time ago?
When Hobart deliberately forced another sniper to shoot him, Bosco had been quite sure that Glen had died absolutely relishing the irony of it; suicide not only by cop, but by one of his own breed. No doubt in the hope that someday, that sniper might find himself in exactly in the same twisted, hopeless place Glen had met his end. The cycle continues.
For Maurice Boscorelli, the ESU idea had evaporated.
Then he'd discovered Anti-Crime, the close-knit plainclothes unit which had the dubious honor of working some of the worst neighborhoods in New York. Mostly focused on the drug problem, which was, of course, the root of most of the others. He'd discovered that working Anti-Crime was so much more liberating than being a beat cop, that free of the uniform you at least felt like you were just slightly more in control. You could get away with bending the rules, and quite often you had no choice. You had to think street. You had to meet the enemy on his own terms. Bosco loved it.
Of course, some of it was Cruz.
Okay. A lot of it was Cruz.
Bosco looked over at the woman who slouched in the driver's seat of their unmarked Crown Victoria. Long, sleek, bronze-skinned Sergeant Cruz. Cruz with her dark beauty, the sharp, angular and proudly cruel features that seemed to be set in a permanent scowl. Cruz with her full breasts, long legs, and superb ass. Magnificent ass, Bosco amended with a smile. Cruz who was always Cruz or Sergeant Cruz, one of those people to whom using a first name just seemed somehow wrong, no matter how well you knew her.
No matter how many times you'd slept with her.
Just the one time, so far. If he played his cards right, maybe again. Cruz seemed to want him to believe it had been a one-night stand, something Bosco figured was because Cruz thought he'd only come over to her apartment that night to get laid. The ironic truth was that he had not; he had truly wanted to comfort her after the death of her sister. Now, if it were anyone else ... then yes, he'd have been there to score. But not Cruz; with her it somehow never crossed his mind. He'd figured Cruz would play it too tough to allow such a thing to happen, and it had been a complete surprise when she'd literally jumped him on the spot.
The surprise had worn off fast; if Maurice Boscorelli was nothing else, he was quick on the recovery. And contrary to what even he himself would have thought, he had still respected Cruz in the morning. Bosco found that for perhaps the first time in his life he could see a woman he might really and truly be able to connect with.
Professionally, he believed he already had.
Which wasn't to say he didn't respect Faith Yokas; he did. He and Faith had been partners for years. They'd met at the Academy, and on the first day, no less. But as he compared Faith to Cruz - something which was as uncomfortable as it was inevitable - he was beginning to see that Faith just simply did not understand him.
In fact, unwilling as he may be to admit it, he realized that Faith may never have truly understood him. Faith thought of him as one of her kids. He'd long suspected that; he was getting more and more sure it was true. Old Bosco, headstrong and reckless and obnoxious. Better keep his ass on a leash.
Working with Cruz was something else altogether. Cruz was tough, she was ruthless, and she did not always follow the book. Well, so what? Such was life with Anti-Crime. He knew little about Cruz or her upbringing, but it was obvious she had come up from the streets, that she may well have been raised in one of the same shithole neighborhoods she now worked in. In fact, if you wanted to sound like a recruitment poster, you could say that Cruz herself embodied the spirit of the Anti-Crime unit.
Faith had a problem with that, it seemed. Faith had problems with a lot of what Bosco said and did, and she was rarely shy about making it known, but he suspected that this friction over Cruz might just be the last straw. What was it Faith had said? She's no good, Bosco. Something like that.
Bosco disagreed. When some punk jagoff orders a hit on a twelve-year-old kid, for Christ's sake, you don't sit around moaning and pissing about the finer points of ethics. You nail the son of a bitch, even if it means falsifying a dying declaration. And if you need to strong-arm some asshole, Cruz had the perfect leverage; a small packet of crack cocaine. Don't want to cooperate with the police and be a good little citizen? Sure. Whoops! What have we here?
Faith didn't know about that little trick, and for that Bosco was thankful.
Yes sir, it just might be time for some small adjustments to his career path. Adjustments that may mean leaving Faith behind.
People come and go. You meet new friends. Life goes on. All that jazz.
Next to him, Cruz coughed, hawked juicily, and spat a large wad of green snot out the car's window.
Okay, so Cruz was hot. And she was a killer in bed. But damn, she could quite often be most unladylike.
Tonight she was unusually quiet. Her manner was brusque to begin with - almost to the point of rudeness, in many cases - but she'd said absolutely nothing all evening. Still thinking over the "one-night stand," maybe.
He flipped on the radio just for something to fill the void, twisting the knob just a bit too far. Pop-rock immediately issued from every speaker in the car at a bowel-churning volume, and Cruz jumped in her seat. It was jazzy stuff, vacuous and unoriginal, the kind of one-hit-wonder crap that was good for nothing but setting the mood when you were trying to get laid. A singer who sounded constipated was asking his baby if she could dig her man.
Bosco was aware of Cruz looking at him. Scowling at him. "What are you doing, Boscorelli?"
Bosco winced and turned the volume down. Like Faith, Cruz had this funny way of making him feel about eight years old, but unlike Faith there was a gleefully perverted part of him that got off on it. "Sorry. Just thought we could use some music."
Cruz smiled. Or, at least, offered the kind of half-smirk that was as close as she could ever get to approximating a smile. "You think we're here to make out or something, handsome?" she asked, and though it sounded amiable enough, he'd worked with her long enough to know that the sweeter her tone, the madder she was. "We're here on business. So turn the fucking radio off."
Bosco obeyed, suddenly feeling a bit indignant. "When is this guy ever gonna show up? We've been here for almost an hour. Shouldn't we just go to him?"
Cruz sat back in her seat. "He gets home from work at exactly ten PM. We're better just to wait another fifteen minutes instead of driving all the way across town."
Bosco didn't reply. Dougie Francis was a drug dealer, supposedly now an ex-dealer. Supposedly now clean. Bosco thought that was pure bullshit, but either way, Dougie probably still had a lot of friends. He was low on the food chain, but that didn't matter, especially once Cruz worked her magic; whether he was truly clean or not, with a little persuasion Dougie could become a veritable fountain of knowledge on just who was producing the latest batch of crystal meth to hit the streets.
Fifteen minutes passed; Cruz went quiet again, only pausing at one point to hawk another large wad of phlegm out the window.
Dougie was a punctual little jagoff; at about 9:58 he appeared, hurrying along the street towards his building. He was a moon-faced, pockmarked kid with crewcut black hair who could have been anywhere between twenty-one and forty. Sallow and heavyset and dressed in a heavy, unseasonable bomber jacket, Dougie Francis sure as hell looked his part tonight; rung number one on the ladder.
"There's our boy," Cruz purred.
They allowed him ten minutes to get into his building and up to his apartment. Cruz eased her door open.
"I know this bastard," she said as they crossed the street. "He probably won't give us any trouble. But he's been using as well as dealing. He's probably halfway to junkie. I don't need to say any more than that." She glanced back at Bosco. "Do I, handsome?"
Bosco smiled thinly. "No, ma'am."
"Second floor, apartment 2C. He's Hispanic. Doesn't look it or sound it, but he is. So let me do the talking."
The approached Dougie's apartment, badges around their necks and weapons drawn. Cruz sidled up to his door and knocked lightly.
A small crash from inside, as if something had been knocked over. A muffled curse.
Then: "Who is it?"
"It's Paula!" Cruz whined. Her accent thickened and her voice became a kind of petulant schoolgirl snivel. Bosco never could get over how drastically the woman could change her entire bearing. "Lemme iiiiiinnnn, Dougie!"
"Go 'way!"
She switched to Spanish and cooed something soft and melodic. Bosco curbed a small thrill of excitement. He didn't understand any of it, but he most definitely caught the tone. It was provocative and full of the promise of good and sweet things. A man would have to be either gay or dead to resist it. And he wasn't too sure about gay.
From inside, Dougie cleared his throat nervously. Bosco could relate.
The latch clicked; the moment the door cracked, Cruz shoulder-charged it, breaking the chain and sending Dougie reeling across the room. Cruz was on him half a second later.
"How you doin', Dougie?" she asked sweetly, slamming him face-first up against the wall. Behind her, Bosco closed the door and sauntered over to them, weapon lowered. Christ, he hardly needed to be here at all.
"Ah-heee!" Dougie shrieked; it sounded like some weird birdcall. "Cruz! I didn't do nuthin'!"
Oh Christ, Bosco thought. A nickel for every time they start with that one. Please. Just one nickel and I'd retire.
Cruz swung him around to face her and moved into kissing distance. "We have to talk, Dougie. Can we come in? Maybe you'd like to offer two hardworking cops a cup of coffee, hmm?"
A slavering, idiot grin split his face. "Wh-what do ya wanna know? I'm clean now, you know. Really and truly. I'll tell you whatever I can. What do you wanna know?"
Bosco leaned in over Cruz' shoulder. "Oh, let's forget all the bullshit. Who's your new supplier?"
Dougie became the picture of pie-eyed innocence. "You guys took him out. We're all thankful. It was a wonderful public service. The city is in your debt. And I'm clean now."
Bosco reached around Cruz' outstretched arm and slapped Dougie lightly across the cheek. "You do not want to be a smartass right now. We've seen you dealin' again, dumbass" - a bald-faced lie, of course, but Dougie didn't have to know it - "so where'd you get it from?"
"Drugs are bad for you, you know ..." Dougie Francis said gravely, though he was grinning again. Bosco was genuinely shocked. From a pissant bottom-feeder like this, such a reaction was all wrong. Was Dougie stoned? He thought not. More likely he really was clean and figured it meant he was bulletproof.
Poor ol' Dougie obviously didn't know Sergeant Cruz as well as he seemed to think he did.
"Is that so?" Cruz hissed. "That's funny, because you know, Dougie, I'm betting you have a little something on you right now."
Dougie bit his lip in what he probably thought was a parody of coquettishness. "Well, I don't, not today. I'm straightening up. Flying right. Check me over, baby. If you'd like to strip-search me, I think I could handle that ..."
Cruz' smile somehow managed to become even more predatory, and her voice sweetened. The sweeter the tone, Bosco thought again, the more pissed off she was. The more pissed off she was, the more ruthless she became. He suspected Dougie was about to discover this. It would be a discovery that would prove most amusing to watch.
"Oh, I think you have a little something," she said, withdrawing a small baggie of cocaine from her pocket and holding it under Dougie's nose. "Ah-ah," she crooned. "Look what we have here, Dougie!" She turned to Bosco. "Can you believe this?"
Bosco grinned. "I'm shocked and appalled."
Dougie's eyes widened, and at last, at long last and to Bosco's greatest satisfaction, the jagoff's stupid fucking grin disappeared.
Neither cop ever saw it coming. Here was a man with a nine-millimeter in his face, an unpredictable, hot-headed cop on the other end of it, and all of that was not enough to stop him from taking a shot at her.
Cruz cried out, more in surprise than pain, and lost her grip on Dougie. She stumbled backwards, and Bosco had time to see the long slash across her midsection, the blood already welling up, the glint of silver in Dougie's hand, which neither of them had noticed inching under his jacket the whole time he was babbling.
Dougie emitted another of those odd, screeching birdcall screams, tossed the knife aside, and bolted for the door.
Bosco turned to Cruz, who was doubled over and clutching her stomach.
"I'm fine!" Cruz screamed, waving him away. "Get him! Get him!"
Bosco didn't argue. If she was hurt then she was hurt and he couldn't do a damn thing about it. Letting Dougie get away would only grind some salt into the wound. So to speak.
Priorities, after all, have to be kept straight in a crisis.
Dougie went down the stairs two at a time and on out into the street, apparently thinking he had gotten some kind of lead.
In actuality, Dougie was slow and far too stupid to even know how to run away from cops properly; he ran in a straight line, making no attempts to throw off his pursuer or try to fake him out. When Dougie finally did get a bit creative, he swerved directly into a three-story parking garage.
Bosco, already gloriously high on adrenaline, smiled; they always seemed to go for the fuckin' dead ends.
It was a beautiful tackle, and Bosco was vaguely disappointed that no-one was there to see it. That Cruz wasn't there to see it. Bosco did not so much hear but rather felt the muffled pop as Dougie's arm broke under their combined weight, and the accompanying howl of pain was supremely gratifying.
He got to his feet, hauling the screaming sack of shit up with him and slamming him across the hood of a nearby car. A punch or two, now. Would a few of Dougie's teeth look good spread across the concrete, perhaps? Yes, that would be in order. Work the kidneys? Why, of course! If this little asshole had hurt Cruz, he'd be drinking dinner and pissing blood for the next six months.
"Boscorelli!"
He turned. Cruz had tracked them, probably by the sound of Dougie's shriek alone.
She was perfectly all right. The tight beige blouse she wore was cut across the belly, and there were a few smears of blood around it. But the wound was, he would discover later, little more than a graze.
Cruz was holding Dougie's blade (which wasn't much more than a shitty little pocket jackknife) in one hand and her unholstered gun in the other. She stepped up to him while Bosco cuffed his hands behind his back, leaned in, and with great care she spit directly into Dougie's face.
Dougie howled again, this time in disgust; it wasn't just saliva but another impressive wad of phlegm. It oozed down and began to dangle pendulously from the end of his nose.
"You cut me, you asshole," she snarled, and Bosco picked up the faintest hint of a quiver in her voice. "You know that? You fucking cut me."
Dougie seemed only able to whimper, making strange, idiotic little moo-moo-moo noises with his lips. He was seeing Cruz now, Bosco thought. The real Cruz. The Cruz who was perfectly capable of falsifying a dying declaration, the Cruz who was perfectly capable of planting drugs ...
"Uncuff him," she said tersely.
Bosco looked at her and understood her intentions immediately, aware of their surroundings, aware of the fact that they were basically alone in the garage and out of view of the street. He felt suddenly very uneasy.
Cruz' large, dark eyes were wild and hard and full of black rage.
He knew what she wanted, and he wanted to hear her to say it. "Why?"
Cruz held out the little knife, hilt-first. "Uncuff him and give him his knife."
"Why?"
She inclined her head. "I think you know, Boscorelli."
That he did.
"No," Dougie moaned. It was almost too low to hear.
Bosco clenched his teeth and looked at her. Her lips trembled slightly, but she held his gaze.
Easy. Just too easy. Cruz shoots Dougie, and in the end he didn't even have to be holding the knife. Shit, the weapon itself was barely worth calling a knife, but that didn't matter either. All she would need would be Bosco's testimony backing her up; Dougie pulled a knife, lunged at her, and bang.
The dying declaration she falsified; he could back her up on that. Easily. He was comfortable on that one. And if she really wanted to plant drugs on some jagoff, well, he guessed he could back that up, too ...
But what she was suggesting here ...
She was getting impatient. "Boscorelli," she growled, biting each word out. "Uncuff. Him. Now."
And it hit him; Cruz was scared. Dougie's shitty little pocket knife probably couldn't have really hurt her, not seriously. Nevertheless, she'd made a mistake. She'd been sloppy, she'd let her guard down and become just a bit too complacent, and had gotten a nasty little taste of her own mortality for her trouble. And on their way in, she had warned him about Dougie.
She was scared, but with Cruz, any strong emotion generally translated instantly into anger. Into rage. She wasn't thinking clearly. Simple as that.
It wasn't to say the idea of putting an end to this waste of skin didn't appeal to him. Deep down Bosco believed that the Dougie Francises of the world got what they deserved, that being poor or not having a daddy or getting molested every other night by uncle Bubba didn't give you a license to be a fucking social leech.
But Cruz would be guilty of murder, and he would be an accessory. He had purely selfish reasons at heart and he'd be the first to admit it. If, somehow, it ever came out ...
If Faith found out, a dark little voice said. She'd rat you out. She'd reject you and she'd fuck you over good, buddy. She might even be thinking of doing something right now, about the dying declaration business. Do you think she'd hesitate over murder?
"No," he said, answering both his own internal question and stating his intentions to Cruz.
It was, after all, for Cruz' own good as well as his.
She smiled humorlessly. "No?"
"No. It's going too far."
She feigned shock. "What is going to far, Officer Boscorelli?"
"I won't let you do it. Not that."
Dougie watched this exchange wide-eyed. "Hey, guys, you can stop trying to scare me now, I mean, I'm sorry ... I'm sorry I tried to cut you, Cruz ... I'm sorry ... I didn't mean ..."
"Shut up, jagoff," Bosco said, cuffing him lightly but absently upside the head. He turned to Cruz. "Take a few shots at him. Throw a few punches. Beat the livin' shit out of him, I don't care. I'll even hold him for you. Whatever you want. But I'm not gonna stand here and let you shoot this sack of shit in cold blood."
"Joke's over, guys," Dougie whimpered, beginning to cry.
Cruz laughed bitterly. "What would you do, Boscorelli? Hmm? What would you do if I just went right ahead anyway?"
Bosco didn't answer. He shouldn't need to answer.
He'd stop her. That was what he'd do. By physical force, if necessary.
Wouldn't he?
"Calm down," he said, suddenly just wanting this to be over. "I know that it scared you-"
Cruz did not just grit her teeth; she bared them, like an animal. "Oh, you think that-"
"Shut up and listen to me!" Bosco yelled, and was pleased with the look of genuine surprise he got in response. Christ al-fuckin-mighty, this mess was mostly her fault. "He attacked you with a knife, Cruz! Assault on a police officer! Hell, maybe attempted murder of a police officer! Better to let him face what's ahead of him! Let him get his ass reamed out for the next twenty years!"
Dougie moaned.
Bosco lowered his voice. "I'm not gonna let you throw your career and your life away over such a shitty little thing as this."
Cruz was visibly trembling now, with either lingering shock or rage; probably both. "You listen to me, Boscorelli," she said softly. "I do not need you to protect me. I do not need you. Get that straight right now. Just because I fucked you that night-"
Bosco bristled. "That is not what this is about!"
"Like hell it isn't!" she screamed. Her voice broke on the last syllable, followed by a brief spasm of coughing. "Like hell it isn't," she repeated quietly when the fit passed. "You think we're gonna get settled, get married, turn out a few kids, is that it? Is that how deluded you really are, Boscorelli?"
Bosco shrugged. "Whatever. You're not gonna kill this guy. Let's leave it at that."
Cruz nodded and viciously jammed her pistol back into its clamshell holster. She offered him one last brutal, ferocious smile, and started back to the car.
A fresh series of sobs issued from Dougie. Sweet relief.
Bosco still felt no sympathy for him; the car ride back to the precinct was gonna be nasty. He grabbed Dougie by the collar of his stupid jacket and propelled him forward. "Shut up, jagoff."
"W-w-would she r-really have shot me?" Dougie sobbed. His nose was still coated in mucous.
"Damn straight," Bosco said grimly, knowing it was true. "Damn straight."