Two Guns 21 - Hunting High And Low

A stray beam of sunlight coaxed Sharon's eyes open. It would have been poignant to say that she woke up with a shock, amazed at the unfamiliar surroundings, but her rise was slow and methodical, as though her consciousness needed a few minutes for pre-flight checklists and spooling up. She was in a well-furnished bedroom, the walls mostly covered by bookshelves. The little beam of light that had woken in came from the room's only door, lazily left half-open. As she righted herself, she felt the consequences of a caffeine crash thump against her skull. Yesterday's underwear was sweaty and had left uncomfortable strips of reddened skin on her, while the rest of her clothes formed a rough pile next to the bed. With deliberate moves, she cast aside the heavy comforter and turned to get up, the mattress's springs aching under the shifting weight. Her naked foot touched the hard ground, and she almost recoiled at the unfamiliar semi-cold of unheated solid parquet.

Time to get up.

Tiptoeing both for silence and to establish a more favorable heat transfer (or rather, lack thereof) with the floor, she snuck towards a nearby bookshelf, as if looking at them would answer her questions. She found a row of technical manuals for firearms of various stripes; their organization was roughly alphabetical, if haphazard in places. As if to counterbalance such cold facts, a collection of crime pulp novels stretched below, some of them worn down to the raw spine and pages with no cover left.

She filed all that away for later consideration, but first things first: You can't case a house when you need to pee.

The bathroom was right next door, the standard issue nightmare of white tiles, sink + mirror to one side and a shower cabin on the other. A towel holder hung from the far wall, while a metal basket filled with shampoo bottles hung from the top edge of the shower cabin. Without looking, she closed the door behind her and locked it, then removed her remaining clothes and stepped into the cabin.

---

Sharon was in the middle of a very long and comfortably hot shower when she heard the front door being unlocked; she could recognize Mark's footsteps by their heavy rhythm, a stomping beat as if he was compensating for all those places where he had to be seen but not heard. She rinsed some foam from her hair - for a macho guy with short hair, Mark sure had a lot of conditioner in his bathroom.

"Shar?" he called, and she heard the door snap closed behind him, then more footsteps. "Enjoying the shower?"
"Did you undress me?"
"Etiquette failed me." Thumping, a fridge being opened. "Dear Miss Manners," he began with a mocking inflection, "my girlfriend fell asleep before she could make it to the bed. Is it okay if I take off her clothes, and if so, to what degree? What if she doesn't like sleeping in her undies but objects to being naked? Can I dress her in a nightie? Do I get to choose which? If she wakes back up, how do I explain myself? And why are sleeping girlfriends so unbearably hot?"
"Thanks for the conversation, Lil' Marcus. Can I talk with Mark now?"
"You wound me, M'lady," he said, slamming the fridge door closed.
"That was Berkovitz's shield, by the way."
"What?"

Sharon rinsed the last of the conditioner from her 'do, then turned off the shower, pushed the curtain aside and grabbed two towels on her way out. The big one she wrapped around herself, the small one around her hair.

"I said, that was Berkovitz's shield."
"In that case, I can definitely say that he wasn't there. Not with the Russians, not otherwise, he wasn't there."
"That's good."
"Yeah, I'd feel really bad if I had killed a cop."
"That's good, too. I called Whitton, he said Berk was undercover. Doesn't really shed any light onto the issue, does it."
"Look, all I know is that one of the Russkies had his badge."
"So they killed him."
"Probably. They're fucking crazy and they don't care."

Sharon rubbed the small towel through her damp hair as her eyes darted about for a blow dryer. No joy; her theory about Mark's mane-related vanity felt slightly shakier.

"But why?" she asked.
"I mentioned the 'crazy' part, right? I'm meeting Boris later today, I'm going to ask him."
"Do you have a spare toothbrush?"
"You can use mine."

Sharon snatched the toothbrush from the glass it was in, filled said glass with half water, half mouthwash and swished it for a good couple of seconds before spitting the result back into the sink. She regarded the toothbrush for a second, then put it back into the glass and set it down on the sink.

Time to play dress up.

---

Unsuitably dressed - what is it with guys and band t-shirts, and why, oh why, did it have to be Journey? -, Sharon limped into the living room. The pair of jeans from Mark was quite a bit too long for her, to say nothing of their tendency to ride down her hips despite using the last hole in the belt. Since everything in nature must have an opposite, the pair of boxer shorts was headed upwards instead. (Small mercy: Sharon had no idea that people were doing this intentionally on the Left Coast. The thought might have shattered her remaining faith in humanity.) Finally, there was the matter of footwear, but she walked al natural - Mark's stockpile of socks (A sockpile?) would never wrap its filthy mojo around her toes, no Sir.

The living room had the windows both bedroom and bathroom lacked, though most of them were shuttered half-closed at the moment. The parquet just stopped a few feet from the fireplace, where the ground abruptly transitioned to stone tiles. In another corner stood a small armchair with a plastic folding table in front of it, opposite a TV with a mess of wires leading down to a brickish VCR. The bookcase theme continued, though those were filled with videocassettes - more than Sharon had ever seen in one place outside a rental shop. In another corner stood a stereo system, topped with a record player and a case of LPs.

Must be nice to have disposable income.

"The guns are in the basement, in case you're wondering," Mark said with a smirk.
"Let me guess: this is not your house."
"Technically, it belongs to a guy named Winston Cooper. Large fella. Looks a lot like me."
"A lot, huh?"
"We could be fuckin' twins. What matters is that Winston paid cash, has all his taxes in order and doesn't do anything the Homeowners' Association frowns upon. Bulletproof ID, social security, all the stops."
"Crime pays, huh?"

Mark smiled, with just a tinge of guilt on his lips. With a few tentative steps, she approached the stereo, her eyes locked on the prize.

"Uh, you can just put some music on," Mark said. "Are you hungry?"

She knelt down next to the LP case and browsed his collection. Stupidly obvious, for the most part, except for...

"You said you can waltz, right?" she said.
"Used to, yeah."
"Slow waltz or Viennese?"
"Slow...I guess."
"Perfect. Do you feel like dancing?"

Before he had a chance to respond, she had the record on the table and the needle on the vinyl. As the music started playing, she turned to look at him.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I could go for that."

---

Journey shirt on the floor.

Spent as much time picking it out as she spent wearing it.

Totally worth it.

---

Mark's fingers hooked into Sharon's reddish hair, slowly rifling through it while she turned her head and snuggled up closer to his chest. They hadn't gotten past the cuddling stage, and Mark desperately wanted that to be okay when his endocrine system put every effort into calling for escalation.

"Am I teasing you again?" she asked playfully.
"God, yes."
"You know..." she began, then thought better of it.
"What?"

After a few precious seconds, she answered.

"Not to kill the mood, but I actually have a serious question."
"Of course you do."
"If you had to leave me...would you do it?"

At least that took care of his erection.

"Have to leave you?"
"You have responsibilities."
"Sure, but..." Mark said, trying and failing to stop this train of thought.
"And as soon as I become a danger to the cartel..."
"Don't talk like that, Shar."
"No matter what I do..." she began to say, but he wrapped his arm around her shoulder and drew her in closer.
"You're not alone, Shar," he said, a tangle of emotions stuck in his throat and bubbling out in a random cadence. "You're not alone."

He drew her closer still, feeling her heartbeat mix with his. Felt her I become a We. Felt what could be, felt what couldn't be.

And he thought about the things he had to do.

Two Guns 20 - I Fought The Law

Sharon's hands rested on the sides of a sink, her head hung low, and the faucet cheerfully splashed water against porcelain, all without her moving. It seemed like she'd sucked out all dynamism from the room; even the overhead light refused to flicker. Through raw will, she summoned the energy to turn the faucet off. She slowly lifted her head and chanced a look at the mirror.

So much for "pretty when you cry". She was a mess.

With plodding steps, she left the restroom, headed for the elevator and pressed the "Lobby" button. On the way down, she rested her forehead against the cool metal of the side panels, as if the touch of technology could suck the fever out of her brain. The elevator car came to a soft stop, the doors opened, and Sharon wouldn't budge. She stayed like this for a minute, trying to calm the storm in her, but finally she gave up, blindly hammered the "Open Door" button and stepped out.

"A moment of your time, Detective..." came a female voice from the side. Sharon didn't have to look to know it was the woman that had left all those calls, obviously none the less motivated for it. Assistant District Attorney Karen Ayers...small, brown hair framing a gaunt face. 28 and already old.
"Do you have a subpoena?" Sharon asked, exhaustion dripping from her words.
"I'm working on it..."

Sharon weighed the legal consequences of punching Ayers versus the amount of satisfaction she'd get out of it and came up short.

"Then there's not a damn thing you're getting from me. 'ta."
"Detective, as part of an official investigation, you will..."
"What?" Sharon asked, stopping her tracks. She turned to face Ayers, who slowly comprehended the magnitude of her misstep. "Official investigation my ass, Ayers. Show me some court orders."
"As I said, I'm in the process of getting them signed off. But it's in your best interest to start cooperating."
"Oh, in the process. So, when can I expect your mythical 'case'?" Sharon said, every breath a step towards Ayers. "When the Yankees make it to the Playoffs? 'cause I gotta tell you, they're not looking good this decade."

Ayers shrunk back from her, almost backing herself into a corner, but when Sharon stopped advancing, she met her stare.

"There's a difference between what I can prove in court and what I know," Ayers said, ratcheting up her own attitude to strike back. "For example, I know that you're dating anIngues hitman. And I can prove in court that Captain Whitton is involved in a criminal conspiracy."
"Oh, that's gonna be a great coup for truth and justice. You want to take down the only decent cop in the whole mess."
"Decent people don't break the law, Detective."
"Yet you're standing here, blackmailing me. Guess the law isn't so great, after all."
"I need results."
"So does Whitton."

Ayers bit her lip.

"I don't exist to fuck with you. Whatever you or Whitton have done in the service of keeping this city safe can be...overlooked. But the situation is out of control, that means people call me, and that means I'm treading on you. Results, Detective. If you don't help me, the only other thing I can do is bring you down - I can't have you running around as a free agent making more trouble."
"I'm sure your superiors would love to hear about your methods."
"Go ahead. You touch me, I go public, we both go down, plus Whitton. The whole thing will blow wide open, and the rest of the office will be all over the rubble."
"..."
"So, I get what I want. How do you get what you want, Detective? What do you want?"

For a second, it looked like Sharon would simply rip out Ayers's throat, but after some deliberation, the beast in her quieted down.

"I want your guarantee that you're not going after Captain Whitton or Mark Simmons."
"Simmons, hm? Is that his name?"
"Can you guarantee that?"
"Can you get me Alexandra Ingues?"

Sharon didn't say another word, but nodded slowly.

"I want evidence that she's involved in organized crime," Ayers said, "whatever you can dig up. I don't care about the cartel rabble, I need her."
"And what do I get?"
"There will be ripples in the water, but I can stall things long enough for Simmons to skip town - and I can lose files if the FBI knocks on my door. If you can getWhitton to step down - health issues or what have you -, then you'd save me the trouble of dealing with him."
"That's not a good deal."
"It's the best deal you're getting. So, what's it going to be?"

---

With heavy steps, Sharon walked through the hallway of her apartment building, fishing for the keys in her jacket. The night outside was getting lighter, it seemed, a blanket slowly withdrawing from the city. The sun wouldn't rise for another hour, no, but the night was retreating.

She found Mark inside the apartment, resting on the couch and watching TV - explosions and aerial combat, at an hour where she would be asleep if things were normal. The back of her mind nagged her about giving the neighbours something unusual to come and investigate, but what she really wanted was a coffee and a hug.

Mark gladly obliged her on both counts.

"What are they doing tonight?" she asked, turning her head and resting it on his shoulder to watch the action on screen.
"Oh, I think they're saving a village in South America."
"Do you think they'll win?"
"Sure. Are you hungry?"
"No, I'm tired."
"Let's go then."

He released her, a bit too abruptly, then went over the switch off the TV just as the theme music started to blare. Sharon stayed in place, tracing his movement with her eyes.

"They'll send someone after us," she said. Mark looked up from his duffel bag. "I mean, there'll be more assassins, right?" she continued.
"I'm not worried about the Russians at this point," Mark replied matter-of-factly. "But we should still move. Wait a couple of days at a safe house, see if this blows over."
"You made a lot of noise."
"That's why we're going to be extra quiet. Come on," he said.

One amusing part of the human condition is layered self-reflection. Sharon observed that, given the amount of emotional dislocation she'd been through, it might have been a logical reaction for her to try to grab some clothes and comfort items. It was a silly little thing to do, and she didn't feel that need at all. On some level, she wanted to feel the need, but on another, more primitive stage, she had already recognized that her old life was done and over with.

She hadn't even fought for it.

She followed Mark in a haze, her faculties less concerned with thinking the situation through but immensely curious about why she felt that way. The raw violence of her entry into this world, her trust in Mark, maybe she'd never been attached to her life at all - all of those seemed plausible at first glance. But how do you tell if you're thinking clearly?

How do you know when you're crazy? Isn't the ability to do that part of not being crazy in the first place?

She took the passenger's seat in Mark's Oldsmobile with the routine of a factory worker, leaned back and closed her eyes. The hard rock soundtrack of her life blared out its final notes, another virtuoso performance finished, another night done. Released from all her duties, she found some rest while the soft thump of the suspension rocked her to sleep.