Two Guns - Parting Thoughts

Genesis

I had long intended to show a more vulnerable side to Mark while explaining why he is the way he is. The flashback in Just ‘cause literally came to me when I was listening to the song for that chapter – Things I’ve Seen, by The Spooks. It’s one of my favorite rap songs ever, almost a deconstruction of the gangster rap genre. The first part alone contains the two tidbits that informed the tone of Two Guns:

“There ain’t gon’ be no revolution tonight!” kicks me in the stomach every time I hear it. There’s just so much anger behind this line, so much frustration and desperation. Things were supposed to change, things were supposed to get better – but they never did, and nothing we can do will change it. In fact, we’ll keep on doing what we do, hoping but without the will to get there. This was a picture I wanted to paint – a situation that is hellish in its inevitability, something that breaks the people who try to fight it. In a way, this was served by having the flashback establish even before the story starts that Mark will kill Sharon. It’s something that stays at the back of your mind, that this nice and competent woman is doomed, but how can Mark let this happen? There has to be a trick, a loophole, something to save her.

And then there isn’t.

“And I’ve tasted the bitter tragedy of lives wasted; men who glimpsed the darkness inside, but never faced it.” Lives wasted…there’s a lot of them here. True story: the very first version of Mark I wrote as a sort of deconstruction of the modern action hero. What kind of man can slaughter his way through dozens of people and still come out perfectly fine on the other end? And Mark is still there, in a way, as a guy who just kills and kills and seems like it doesn’t touch him at all – until he has to murder someone he cares about, and realizes just how ‘dark’ he is inside when, despite all this, he’s still standing at the end. When he turns away from Vincent and walks, he’s refusing to explain himself because he can’t. That would require going to that place inside that gives him this strength.

I believe I mentioned the idea of “fading scars” being a central point of Mark’s character before. He’s clearly not tearing himself apart over this in the present, angsting about it night and day. He’s moved on. Is that “healthy”? Should you be able to come back from this? An extension of this is Mark’s recuperative power, he just refuses to stay down. We cheer him on as he staggers out of the hospital, ready to fight again and again. There’s the Hemingway quote from A Farewell to Arms:

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places.” The question is, are there places people aren’t supposed to be strong in?

Now, this is a dark part of Mark’s history. I don’t intend to keep putting him through the wringer like this; in fact, in a way, this is me getting all the bad and evil things out of the way. But while scars fade, they don’t disappear. And the things that happened here might not keep Mark awake any more, but there is no neat closure yet. That’s a different song, though…

You can run on for a long time

Run on for a long time

Run on for a long time

Sooner or later God’ll cut you down

Sooner or later God’s gonna cut you down…

Themes

Loyalty

This is the hamartia of several characters, most notably Mark. The usual Aesop is that loyalty and integrity are good things, but I wanted to subvert that. The obvious route would be to have someone loyal to a bad person, but I think that’s venturing into Idiot Plot territory. So, Alex is worthy of the loyalty Mark has to her – she’s a good person, essentially, and the bad things she does follow from her inexperience and being placed in a situation that sucks. Sharon even helpfully brings up the focus on personal loyalty: all the crooks (Mark, Vincent, Boris) have a very character-focused idea of loyalty. Sharon, Whitton and Ayers are loyal to abstract ideas, namely the law (and in Whitton’s case, the “greater good”). Similarly, we see several characters (Done, Dollar, Berkovitz) whose chief characteristic is the absence of loyalty. Mark’s problem is trying to stay true to all his commitments when they are in conflict.

Violence

Two Guns is even more violent than the other Ultimates stories. Mark ends up fainting from trauma twice. People are killed in horrible ways – explosives, knives, being run over, set on fire or drowned. Mark and Boris absorb incredible amounts of punishment, Boris being made worse by the fact that most of it is deliberate torture. By the end of the story, his right hand is partially paralyzed, making him the first “heroic” character to get permanently crippled in some way. (I suppose one could count Freyr from Just ‘cause, but he got artificial replacement limbs. Boris effectively can’t use his right hand anymore, ever.)

Punishment

Under the agreement with Whitton, the criminals have escaped legal consequences for their actions. Mark’s job involves overseeing the agreement and punishing transgressions. Boris is punished for his disloyalty by Nikolai. Mark doesn’t just kill Nikolai, he makes him suffer. Mark decides not to come down on Alex even though it’d be within his right. Whitton will presumably get what he deserves.

Intruding Reality

Much of the story concerns itself with shattered illusions. Sharon has to ask herself whether she can love Mark when he’s a killer and working for the people who are the enemies of her boss, and little by little the nice little slice of life she and Mark carved out for themselves falls apart under this pressure. Mark has to face what Alfredo couldn’t…they’re the last people in the city playing by the rules. Dreams and plans are constantly laid low by events as everyone tries to hold on and get the now under control, leaving no room to consider the future.

Sic transit gloria mundi

The decay is inevitable. As the Eastern Block dies, so does the agreement. Chaos sweeps the city in the guises of Silvestro (coldly calculating only for his own profit) and Nikolai (who intends to put the Russian criminals back on top and will stop at nothing to do it). Mark sacrifices his health, his love and finally even his family just to hold things together somehow. Whitton overextends himself and is sure to get shot down. Boris is broken in body. Alex is broken in spirit. And the carefree days when Mark and Vincent and Alex were like brothers and sister are over, too.

Recurring Motifs

Footsteps

Apparently, I love writing about footsteps. To me, they have multiple connotations. First, they are somewhat indistinct – you don’t really know who’s making that sound. Consequently, when Vincent recognizes Mark by his footsteps in the last chapter, it shows that he knows him really well. Second, footsteps have a pattern. They are regular, rhythmic, and as such they suggest regularity, order and a touch of the inevitable. Further, footsteps are one of the sound cues I like working with. Sound has interesting properties for humans, who are primarily vision-based animals. As such, there’s a certain awkwardness and imprecision in this. You think it’s something, but you’re not sure.

Pairs of Guns

The most literal reading of “Two Guns” might be Mark’s two-fisted combat style, but pairs are everywhere in the story. Let’s just look at guns for this one. Aside from Mark’s armament, there are Sharon’s Berettas (a symbolic “gift” from Mark), Sharon’s choice of Beretta versus Glock, the contrast between Mark’s suppressed .45 Colt and Nikolai’s Makarov, Vincent’s pairing of pistol and sniper rifle. Done presents a semi-subversion with his assault rifle during The Trooper, wielding a rifle with a second weapon attached. He’s also the most self-sufficient character, not particularly attached to anyone.

The Cold

It’s winter in many characters’ hearts, too, as they choose cold obligations over their emotions. Cold is also professional – note how descriptions of warmth and comfort appear mostly in conjunction with Sharon, who’s not quite as ridiculously competent as the criminals. Mark slips on ice…laid low by his refusal to go with his heart.

Expats

It seems nobody’s really at home in this New York City. Mark’s from West Virginia (I don’t think I officially mentioned that anywhere yet) and came to NYC as a teenager. Sharon’s first-gen American to Irish immigrants. Vincent’s Italian. Nikolai, Boris and Berkovitz managed to get out of the Soviet Union, obviously. Alfredo and Alex are from Colombia, as is Silvestro. Whitton and Karen are more squarely American, though.

Weapons of Choice

Mark

Mark has Browning Hi-Power pistols up his sleeves in this timeframe. This actually presents an upgrade from the earliest rig, which used Colt .45…but then upgraded to the Hi-Power because reloading the sleeve-holstered guns was a hassle and he needed the capacity. He stayed with a Browning design, though – Mark needs reliability and ruggedness in his weapons. The Hi-Power is single-action only and doesn’t qualify for the “Wonder Nine” trend of the 80s, and put together with the age of the design it gives Mark a distinct old-school flavor. Also, Mark doesn’t like double-action pistols because the heavier trigger pull on the first shot throws him off. (Though not heavy trigger pulls in general, just the variation. It would be fairly bad if he couldn’t use a gun with heavy pull, since stock Hi-Power pistols are pretty stiff. And he eventually relents with the USPs, though those go back to .45.) Fortunately for him, the Hi-Power got an update in the 80s to have an ambidextrous safety, among other things, so he didn’t need to go hunting for a custom “lefty”. Also, we see the beginning of a trend here – last generation’s main weapon becomes backup in the next iteration. Hi-Power pistols have a magazine disconnect, which – as we recall from Rising Son – will go on to bite Mark’s “brother” in the ass. On a future note, the Hi-Power uses essentially the same operating principle as the Heckler & Koch USP (which is arguably Mark’s signature weapon), so the Browning legacy lives on in Mark’s choice of handgun.

He still carries the .45 Colt as a suppressed weapon. The Colt’s a fairly good choice for that, on account of being a very common and easy to procure weapon. (Of course, as we find out, Mark didn’t take advantage of that. He didn’t rotate this gun – possibly as a consequence of using it as secondary and simply forgetting about it.) Also, the .45 caliber is good for suppressing since its normal load is subsonic – one of Mark’s great annoyances is keeping separate stockpiles of cold-loaded ammo for suppressed weapons with normally supersonic calibers and the reliability problems that brings. (One of the reasons he doesn’t use a suppressed 9mm.) Added benefit with the Colt: The heavy suppressor keeps the slide from unlocking after firing, reducing sound and not throwing incriminating shell cases all over the place. It does have the disadvantage that you have to rack the slide manually, but hey, this isn’t a gun for an open firefight.

Vincent

Vincent prefers the battlefield ruggedness of Soviet weapons, acquiring them via Boris. He’s got the CZ 85 as his sidearm, which is an update of the more famous CZ 75. That is a double-action, double-stack magazine “Wonder Nine”, all steel and very reliable. The Czechs make good pistols. Understandably, Vincent carries only one in a cross-draw holster with a few spare magazines as he’s not a front-line fighter.

The Dragunov isn’t really a “sniper rifle”, it doesn’t have the range for it. But it’s good for medium-distance “reach out and touch someone” jobs, and as Vincent famously exploits, built like every Russian infantry weapon. The caliber it uses is a relatively old one, the 7.62x54R, which used to be used for machineguns and such. Consequently, while precision loads are the norm for the Dragunov, it’s capable of firing some…interesting bullet types. Like the explosive-tipped bullets that lead to flamethrower KABOOM for Nikolai’s henchman. As the Mythbusters showed, normal bullets don’t have the oomph to set off most flammables, and apparently the result of Done’s shot (hole in the tank, no explosion) was fairly typical for when flamethrowers were actually carried into battle.

Sharon

Sharon packs two the great “Wonder Nine” contenders of the 80s, as a sort of representation of her shaking up the establishment. Her official duty weapon is the Glock 17, which was filtering into the NYPD through the 80s. Glock pistols are double-action only and feature no external safety. Some people love ‘em, some people hate ‘em. It’s not my cup of tea, personally, but you have to admire the resilience of the little buggers.

She also grabs two Beretta 92 pistols from the armory at the hotel and uses those on Silvestro’s yacht, as well as when she confronts Mark. The 92 is kind of a strange weapon, if you ask me. It was obviously good enough to become the US Military sidearm, but it gets a lot of flak over supposed reliability issues. And a lot of people didn’t want to give up their Colts for it. It’s also fairly large and heavy, but that helps the accuracy and recoil. It’s the iconic John Woo weapon. Also of note is that this means both of Sharon’s gun models are European in origin but fairly well “Americanized”, paralleling her character.

Nikolai

Shown with a Makarov PB. If you look at the stats in the 2.0 Core, you might think that it’s just a normal Makarov with a suppressor tacked on to the muzzle, but the pistol was actually significantly reworked. Part of the suppressor is permanently integrated into the body, the other part can be removed. It makes for a pretty good assassin’s weapon, but is far from the only gun the Russians tried to whip up in that mold. Somewhat held back by the low capacity and the fact that it has to slow down a supersonic round, but eh. Nikolai has the finesse to go with it and it makes for a good backup weapon, but in the end it can’t stand up to Mark’s raw firepower.

Two Guns Finale - Brothers in Arms

A thousand ideas bounced through Karen Ayers's head, none of them attached to any significant chance of success. She just hadn't expected Simmons here - who would have? - and now he was reaping the reward of going against expectations. Of course, she figured, if he went out of his way to ambush her, which must have been worth the incredible risk of getting caught. There was only one reasonable inference. He was here to kill her, no doubt because she had proven herself dangerous.

"Relax," he said, reading the tension in her body like an open book. "I don't mean to hurt you."

That kept her from screaming right there, but didn't make her move - or speak. He raised his eyebrows, waiting for a response, then shook his head softly.

"I've got something for you," he said. "Took me a while to get why you thought I killed Berkovitz."
"Come on now," she said, in a death-defying sort of mocking inflection, "you're here to tell me that there's one man you didn't kill? What difference does it make to you?"
"I see I'm not being obvious enough," he said. "Sit down, please. I'll explain."

Inviting her to have a seat in her own home. Great. Karen obeyed, after a fashion, when she sat down on the carpet and crossed her legs, fixing a "Story time?" look at Mark. The hitman crouched down in response, ready to spring up and run for it. Good, good; at least he didn't feel safe.

"A couple of questions," he began, "just to make sure I'm on the right track. First off, Berkovitz's body has been found."
"A week ago, actually. We didn't get a positive ID until after you killed Detective Collins."
"And with that ID came the evidence that I killed him? From Whitton?"
"Yes..."
"Does that strike you as convenient?"
"..."

Mark reached under his coat. He pulled out a plastic bag with a Makarov PB in it, then tossed it onto the floor.

"Nikolai Danko killed Berkovitz," he said. "I have a witness, and this is Danko's gun."
"Where'd you get this? We took the whole BAT apart looking for that."
"Danko dropped it before I killed him. I thought it'd make a good souvenir."
"Alright. And that witness would be..."
"Boris Dolvitch."
"That doesn't help your case at all. Anybody who caught Matlock last Friday could nail Dolvitch with something if he showed up in court," she said, "and the gun..."

A pause. Mark's face showed a slight grin.

"I know it's no good for prints or profile," he explained, "but just how did I get tied to Berkovitz? Let me guess, there was a slug..."
"...a .45 slug, matched the ballistic profile on the Colt you shot Collins with. Whitton must've kept that bullet from one of your earlier targets." She looked at Mark. "That wasn't very smart of you, to keep using the same gun..."
"Call me sentimental," Mark said. "Besides, it's in the evidence room now, so you can sleep soundly knowing that I won't be using that Colt any longer. The point is, Whitton needed a good explanation for Berkovitz and I was an easy target. But he screwed this one up. The gun can prove it."
"No, it can't," Ayers said, sighing. "It can't. ME's report says it was a large-caliber subsonic..."
"Then you have to ask yourself, why is that guy lying?"

Karen considered that for a moment, gears grinding despite the exhaustion. Why wouldn't Whitton have an ME on retainer? He would have to, just to keep the deaths of sanctioned criminals under the radar...

"I'm not saying this is 100%", Mark continued, "but it's a start. You're clever, you can use this. Lean on the examiner. If Whitton could pressure him, he's got dirty laundry. And if you can find that, get him to testify, you've got Whitton on the ropes."

She nodded, finally. He rose from the ground, walking past her.

"This doesn't help you," she said.
"Didn't expect it to," he replied. "See you."

And while she wondered whether that was a parting phrase or a threat, he left her apartment, closing the door behind himself. She listened to his footsteps growing weak with distance. An elevator pinging open, a short delay, then the dull thump of closing doors. She waited until she couldn't hear the whirr of the elevator's winch any longer, then got up, walked over to her phone and called 911. Her eyes never left the pistol on the ground.

If nothing else, it was worth a little head start.

---

Vincent Ratioli stood before the statue of Abraham Lincoln, a heavy fur-lined coat protecting him. It was the morning of the 27th, and Christmas was officially over. The 80s only had a few more days left themselves. Prospect Park was quiet around him, no visitors the concert grove at such a time. The sky was clear, perhaps the best weather New York City had seen in the last few days - no snow, no heavy wind. The footsteps behind him were ponderous, but he knew that they did not belong to Mark.

"A strange man," Boris Dolvitch said, his eyes locked on the Lincoln statue.
"I never understood it myself," Vincent admitted.
"How is your boss?"
"Safe."

And so they waited, with nothing to say. Eventually, the chirping of Vincent's watch broke the silence.

"8?" Boris asked; Vincent nodded. "Perhaps," Boris mused, "Marcus meant 8 in the evening."
"I doubt that," Vincent said.

They waited five minutes, then ten, without moving from their spots; they still stood there when a fresh pair of footsteps approached. These stopped beside Vincent; he chanced a glance to the side and spotted Mark, whose eyes were fixed firmly on the statue.

"I knew you'd come," Vincent said.
"I didn't," Mark said. "But that's how it is. Every step along the way, you hesitate...but you walk it."
"A good man doubts," Boris added, "a good soldier does."
"Boris," Mark said, "if you could give us a minute..."

The old soldier nodded, walking off to his car. It was better this way, he thought, an old man like him shouldn't be standing around in the cold...

"I'm just letting you know that I'm leaving the city," Mark said. "Don't know when I'll be back."
"You're gambling with your life," Vincent said. "You didn't tell Alex that you would be here."
"Did you tell her, then?"
"No," Vince admitted. "Not my place to say. She didn't want to see you, anyway."

Mark bit his lip.

"She didn't want to see me, either. Or anyone, for that matter."
"So who's watching her now?" Mark asked.
"Done's on the job. He's a stranger, so she doesn't mind him so much."
"Did she tell you..." Mark began, then caught himself. "No. She didn't."

Vincent shook his head.

"Tell me what? And why can't you tell me?" he asked wistfully. "Why are we so busy keeping secrets from each other?"
"It wouldn't change anything."
"It would change everything," Vince said quietly. "I'm not stupid, Mark. I think you're running from what you've done, and what she's done. Alex betrayed us, didn't she? That would make you a free man..."
"No," Mark said. "No." He took a deep breath through clenched teeth, all his strength focused on this one point...
"You know how this works, Mark. Either she did it then or you're doing it now."

Mark cried.

It wasn't a wetness, nor dirt in his eyes. Tears streamed down his face, first a few, then a few more. His breathing grew ragged and his shoulders slumped. It was like watching a building, under assault from the elements for decades, finally give in. First a crack, immaterial by itself but growing, then it spread out, grew, until the whole thing began to sag into itself. The terrible inevitability, the moment it breaks so hard to pin down - only knowing when it has passed. This, then, was a broken man: standing like a marionette, every fiber shouting for truth and every fiber shouting for loyalty.

"Protect her," he managed to whisper, "protect her."

And at that, the tears...just stopped. The feeling stayed, but something forced him back up, the same old power dragging him by the strings.

"Goodbye," Mark said, never meeting Vincent's eyes. And as he turned away and walked, Vincent's gaze remained with Lincoln. If he had watched Mark get into Boris's car, that would have been grounds for going to war with Dolvitch; if he had known where Mark was going, it would have been the first target for as many assassins as he could find. More secrets. More looking away at the wrong time. By the time Boris's car left the parking lot, Vincent's stare was burning holes through the statue. And yet, no matter how much he wanted to, there was nothing he could change. He closed his eyes, listened to the nothing around him and shivered. In the end, the winter was all that remained.

New York City was cold.

Two Guns 27 - The Queen & The Soldier

Mark made no move to leave the center of the room or to say anything; in response, Alex slowly rose from her chair, grabbed her cane and walked over to Mark. A brief pause, then she let the cane drop free and embraced him. He returned the hug reluctantly. When she took a step back and their eyes met, Mark spoke.

"There's something I need to ask you."
"Does that have something to do with your dramatic entry?" she asked, a small smile on her lips. "And where's Vincent?"
"Vincent? Haven't seen him yet."
"I thought he was going to put together a few guys to break you out..."
"I'm sure he did," Mark said. "But I got bored waiting for him."
"I was wondering what kept you. Now, first thing, I need to make some phone calls, we have to get you out of the city."
"No," Mark said, and left it at that for five seconds. "The question first."
"Well?" she replied. "Out with it, what's so important?"
"Did you have an agreement with Silvestro?"

Their eyes locked for a second, then Mark turned away and took a few steps towards the south wall of the office. The decor was still mostly the same as in Alfredo's time, warm hardwood floor and a collection of souvenirs and doodads in display cases. Mark's path led him a few steps closer to the weapons of the small collection.

"What do you want to hear?" Alex shot back from behind his back; in times gone by, Mark would've found it immensely rude to turn his back on his boss, but he was focused on other matters.
"I want to hear whatever you're willing to tell me, Alex." He opened one of the display cases, but kept his hands away from the contents. "Ayers showed me a file on Silvestro's activities in Colombia. I've seen photos of you two together, I've heard a confession from his driver that he drove you to his mansion and back to the hospital."

He paused for a second.

"All that proves is that you were at his mansion and talked to him. For all I know, you smuggled yourself in to steal the yacht prints and told him to fuck off. I mean, that's kind of a scenario that makes sense to me. So, was it like that?"

His hand snaked out for the scabbard of a half-forgotten broadsword, so close but not touching it, so close...

"No," Alex admitted. Mark's hand snapped closed around the scabbard like a bear trap.
"Then tell me what happened."
"...I fucked up," she finally said. "I thought I could trick him, but I..." she said, then stopped, biting her lip. The more her hands trembled, the tighter Mark's grip on the scabbard grew. "Between you and Vincent, I thought...I thought we could take an attack. That it would get Daddy to move again. It was only a matter of time until something hit us...yeah, I talked to Silvestro. Fed him enough info that he'd be tempted to risk an attack, and it got me into his house for the blueprints, you know, just as insurance..."
"Clever," Mark conceded, his knuckles turning white.
"And then the Sharon thing happened, and he hired the mercs to hit the hotel and I didn't see it coming until you were out and Vince went to help you and..."

A small creek of tears carved its way down her cheeks, even as she kept the sobs under control. Everything in Mark wanted him to turn around, look her in the eyes, comfort her. Everything else kept him frozen in position.

"They killed everyone, Mark. Everyone. And I was here, holding Daddy's hand. Watching him die."

He turned around, finally. The sword travelled with him.

"I did a bad thing," she whispered, almost choking on her words. "And then you killed Silvestro but the Russians came and you killed Sharon and...I don't know. I don't know anymore. Everything happens so fast now."
"Alex," he said, almost self-consciously moving the sword behind his back when he saw her stare at the ground. "I want you to look at me."

He took a step toward, then another as she involuntarily shrinked back. His left arm shot out, and she closed her eyes. She didn't know what it felt like to be choked, but she called upon every bit of steel in herself. It didn't happen. Instead, she felt his rough hand on the soft skin of her cheeks, lifting her chin. Slowly, she dared to open her eyes, releasing another set of tears.

"I can't forgive you," Mark said, his voice sounding like it was trying to tear itself free from his throat.

A chaste peck on her cheek, a taste of her bitter tears, the heavy breath of his nose wheezing past her ear. When she opened her eyes again, he had already turned away, his footsteps unsteady but aimed for the exit.

"Where are you going?" she asked, still unsure. He froze, a few seconds between him and the door. His hand twisted and turned the scabbard, fidgeting for something to do. But he said nothing.

And just like that, he walked out of her office.

---

It wasn't fair.

Whatever other reasons there were, John Done was the first to try to speak to Mark as he descended the stairs. That was it, in a nutshell. No annoyance, no specific antipathy, no attempt to hold Mark back. Just a "Hey, Mark..."

And then the lightning Mark had bottled inside discharged.

With a wallop that would've impressed Mike Tyson, he bunched his empty left hand into a fist and struck Done's face square in the middle, a hammer blow that sent the hardened mercenary straight to the carpet - conscious, but bleeding profusely from the mass of meat, skin and cartilage that had been his nose two seconds ago. Mark didn't even stop to gloat, his steps growing more confident again. Dollar rushed past him, wordlessly ducking down to help Done; Vincent chanced standing in Mark's way.

"What the hell, Mark? Where are you going?" he asked.
"8 AM tomorrow, Lincoln at Prospect," Mark replied, sidestepping his friend.
"...what?"

Mark rounded the next corner, not looking back. Vincent just stood there, caught in the headlights.

"What the fuck just happened?" he asked nobody in particular.

---

Karen Ayers wasn't having a particularly good day.

She unlocked the front door of her apartment at 11 PM and stepped inside, her handbag dropping from her shoulder like a burden with her eyes half closed. When you don't have a lot, simple things become precious. Karen, at this moment, wanted nothing so much like a warm shower. And maybe to wake up tomorrow before her alarm. Not so much to ask.

Fumbled for switch. Hands. Found switch. Switch. Lights, please?

"Good evening."

Voice. Eyes opened.

Mark Simmons stood in her living room, between her and the telephone. She felt a wave of something rise inside her, at the horizon. Fear, anger, relief, she didn't know.

Simmons. That bastard.

And just like that, Ayers's day got worse.

Two Guns 26 - You Belong to the City

It was the 26th of December, 1989, and the weather was turning for just this night. No snow, no ice, just a clear night - if you looked upwards, you might have caught a glimpse of the stars above. Distant light, cutting through the darkness of the universe - just to be overshadowed by a neon sign for an adult bookstore.

This is worth mentioning insofar as said adult bookstore had made its nest across the street from a hospital, presumably catering to lonely doctors and patients in doing so. As if to thumb its nose at pedestrians with more refined tastes, a hydrant stood in front of the shop, keeping that piece of the sidewalk clear of cars and the store in full view. Its windows were full of gaudy text in harsh competition with the main neon sign, an aquarium of great white sharks in the dangerous business of adult toys. The alpha of the pack, at least momentarily, was a singular ad singing the praises of a pump designed to enlarge a customer's...confidence.

By two to three inches, or your money back.

Combined with the clear air that night, the bookstore's visibility reached a maximum of offensiveness. A maximum of such extent - perhaps comparable with the confidence of the "nubian stallions" advertised in another corner of the window - that a hypothetical passerby would have cheered when a box van risked a hefty traffic fine for stopping on this stretch of the road and blocking the view.

What was inside that box van was, however, decidedly less wholesome than marital aids of any stripe. Witness this fine collection of machines, not of pleasure but of death, both in the human and the metal flavor. Guns, many guns, a rolling arsenal courtesy of the Ingues cartel. Men to handle those guns. And a plan.

"You just keep circling the block, Kyla," Vincent said through the small window between the rear and the driver's cabin. "We'll call you for pickup when we're ready."

The teenage girl nodded, a facade of seriousness covering her face. She wasn't the best driver, just the worst shot of the group, and that didn't sit well with her at all. Mostly because it meant that she'd have to do this while letting Dollar play commando, and that was a thought that troubled her greatly. The good Doctor, by contrast, didn't seem too concerned. With a snappy EMT uniform, a mediocre fake work ID and his attitude, there was no question that he'd be able to do what he had to do. The Colt beneath his shirt was a strange feeling, like hooking up with an old girlfriend after not seeing her for years. He didn't have a problem with that; once a soldier, always a soldier.

Likewise, Boris found himself becoming Lt. Col. Dolvich with frightening ease; now a lefty by default, his grip on the AK might have been steadier once, but he was just there for backup. His right index finger grabbed the handguard as well as it could...so much for the fastest trigger of the East. Stay in the van. Come out blasting if things go wrong.

Vincent was his usual self, classy suit and a bouquet of flowers. Plausible visitor too rich to care about the actual hours. CZ85 under his jacket, lockpicks in his pockets. He fully expected to have to free Mark from something - probably handcuffs, maybe something worse. He had the finesse part covered.

Everything else, it seemed, would be Done's fault. The odd man out with no plausible aliby, Done would just have to stay a few steps behind and keep out of sight. His sports bag held everything from his M16A2 to a large bolt cutter and some explosives. Just to cover the bases; Vincent hoped that this would be a dull night for Done. But better to have it and not need it...

"Everybody ready?"

Nods all around.

"Go," Vince said.

On the negative side, there was nobody there to watch the (quite badass-looking) way the warriors three emerged from the back of the van. On the positive side, there was nobody there to watch three very suspicious-looking men exit a van full of guns, so it balanced out somewhat. Vincent knew it was stupid the second they were doing it, but that couldn't be helped; he set his sights on the front door, Dollar walked towards the ambulance drop-off area, and Done just stuck to the shadows as well as 250 pounds of muscle could.

---

In a way, it was almost ridiculous. Getting to the nurse at the front desk, easy. Getting permission to sneak upstairs and just leave the flowers for his girlfriend, easy. The hard part? Listening to her life story. From her deadbeat dad to her deadbeat boyfriend all the way up to having lost her favorite pen just this day, it was the most overwrought tale of sadness Vince had heard all week.

"And just last Tuesday, I asked Josh, I was totally like, 'Why do you never get me flowers?', you know?" she asked, both angry and close to tears, somehow constantly so for the last five minutes. Vince just stood there, smiling but slightly dumbfounded, desperately trying to end this line of conversation. Attaccabotina, he thought, shut up. Who knew that flowers triggered emotional breakdowns?

"Che coglione, this Josh of yours. I would never treat my girlfriend like that."
"She's a lucky girl, then."
"That's what I hope, at least. See you."

Walk walk walk walk walk...

"Hey, Vincent!" she called after him. Cazzo!
"Yes?"
"What's her name?"
"...her name?"
"Yes, her name." She pointed to her computer's screen. "Or do you know the room number?"
"I can find her," Vince said with a small smile.
"Still, are you going to tell me her name?"
"No, I...uh, I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because if you know, then you will show it when you meet her, and then she'll know."
"Oh."
"Very jealous, she's very jealous," Vince insisted. It was times like these, when he was trying to pass himself off as a normal guy, that all those years of speaking perfectly acceptable English seemed to mean nothing. Every word was a struggle, every sentence a war against the Italian that kept bubbling into his head. He felt like a naive immigrant all over again.

Fortunately, the nurse didn't respond to that; after a short beat, he turned back onto his path, disappearing into the next staircase.

---

"Evenin', Dollar said to the shift supervisor, a man with a widow's peak large enough to park a Volkswagen Beetle on and traces of dull gray running through his black hair. He looked like there'd been a brushfire somewhere along the family tree, an ethnic grab bag with fifty pounds of surplus value tacked to a last-generation chassis. He didn't acknowledge Dollar as a person, just as a procedure, holding out a clipboard that Dollar could've signed with a pawprint for all the man seemed to care. The off-loading area was quiet, that rare night of statistical abberation when there was nothing but nothing going on.

"Holla if ya need me," Dollar said; the supervisor responded with a grunt, turning the page in his book. For his part, Dollar felt like he'd wasted some good preparation but decided to capitalize on the opening anyway; he slipped into the back, unlocked a service door and beckoned for Done to walk in.

"Sumthin' happenin'?" the supervisor called.
"Just lettin' the funk out," Dollar replied, while Done hurried up the stairs to meet with Vince.

---

"You could've asked her for Simmons," Done said as he and Vince climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. "Would have saved us some time."
"Bad idea," Vince countered, still cautious from almost being busted at the front door. "One, she would've known that I wasn't a normal visitor because he's under fuckin' police protection, and two, I'm not going to tell this woman that I brought flowers for a guy."
"You can bring flowers for...a friend."
"Uh huh. Say, nurse, I got those flowers here, can you tell me where my best friend's room is? I'm very straight, by the way."
"Get with the times, Ratioli," Done said. "Nobody cares."
"Besides, we don't need it. The cops like to use the fourth floor, top of the hospital. We just look for the cop, I stun him, you stay back."
"The simple plan," Done said, nodding his assent.

Vince grabbed a stun baton from Done's sports bag, then undid the strap on the bouquet and worked the shocker into the middle before retying it. It wouldn't stand up to a close inspection, but it did place the baton in Vince's hand - all he had to do was walk up to the cop and stick him with the prongs at the tip. Doable.

Well, it would've been, had there been a cop to stun. Vince looked left, right, then left again, dumbfounded.

"Either they're incompetent as all hell," Vince said, "or they moved him."
"We came all the way," Done replied. "Let's check."

Lengthy searching was averted when Done spotted one of the doors creaking from the A/C, not quite closed. On a hunch, Vince drew his CZ 85, keeping the stun baton in his left hand for close combat while Done stayed back, ready to cover their retreat. Vince opened the door carefully, stepping into the room. In this manner, he found the cop lying on the floor, moaning softly; Vince gave him a few seconds of 50,000 volts, just to make sure he wouldn't do anything stupid while Vince searched the room. That, in turn, proved to be wildly unnecessary; the single bed had obviously held Mark not too long ago, and the closet was still open, discarded hangers and all revealing a rather hasty dressing process, though Vince couldn't imagine why they'd keep Mark's clothes in the room - probably didn't have room for those in the evidence room after confiscating all the weapons, Vince thought with a wry grin. Inspecting the bed, he found two pairs of handcuffs fastened to the bed's rails, but both were sprung open. On the floor, a dissembled ballpoint pen sprawled, its point still stuck in the lock of the door.

Vincent's grin deepened. Mark hadn't been moved, he had done the relocation by himself.

---

Half a city away, Mark didn't look very good. In the last few hours, he'd gotten a slap in the face for copping a feel, which was all the more insulting when the bounty of this adventure was a measly ballpoint pen. Then he had spent thirty minutes on picking a lock with the point of said pen, especially difficult when reaching required doing it behind his back and intentionally dislocating his good shoulder. And popping it back in, all the while suppressing the grunts of pain enough not to alert the cop outside. Gotten dressed, found every part of his clothing except for the socks in the closet. (Why the socks? God, why the socks?) Snuck to the door - in boots, without socks, hurting like hell -, picked lock on the door. With a ballpoint. And quietly, again. Surprised cop, put him in blood choke, got elbowed right in the broken rib and stayed quiet. Snuck out, robbed a tourist for cash and felt bad enough to apologize. Grabbed a taxi and felt his wound bleeding through the stitches and bandages, again. A laundry list of small things that all aligned to make his day miserable.

And now he was half a block from the Ingues mansion, and he was walking the last mile, so to speak. He was tired as hell and mad as hell, and somehow this inferno-centric math worked out to letting him stay on his feet without fainting. His gaze was fixed upon his target, locked on with the tenacity of a cruise missile with no taste for the stars above. He took the back entrance, encountering no backtalk from the few mercs that still remained in the house; a sizeable reduction in forces had occurred, it seemed. He was getting tired of all the important things happening without him.

No Vincent, no Done in the house. Took the staircase, mercs let him pass right through. Clear shot to Alexandra's office.

His steps grew plodding, slowed down. It wasn't the exhaustion per se, but his anger was being counter-acted by hesitation. Hadn't all of this started with him being too bold, acting too soon? For a few seconds, he stood and thought, genuine doubt seeping into what seemed like laser-focussed determination on the way here. What had driven him this far, what demanded that he go further, hurtling towards a destination he did not know anymore? There it was, again, the siren song of yielding, giving in for once in his life.

But he pressed on, finally. Like every time he had met one of those little speed-bumps of life, a point of no return, he put the pedal to the metal. And so he stepped forward, through the door, all the way up to her desk. She looked at him all the way through his walk, an expression on her small face that he couldn't identify through the haze of the night, the darkness that followed him into the house.

The door wanted no part of this; what little momentum remained from Mark's charge through was arrested by the coiled spring inside the small lever attached to the door's top edge. It gently drew the door back into the frame, snapping it closed. Outside, the mercs stood in perfect, frozen stances. The stillness of this night had come to an end, finally, the rare, bare glimpses of the starlit sky rapidly fading under a renewed assault of heavy clouds.

No, this night wouldn't be quiet.

Two Guns 25 - Knockin' on Heaven's Door

Mark started breathing again. The blinding pain was slowly fading, shrinking to a background noise quiet enough to unclench his teeth, open his eyes, allow his finger to step off the trigger and let it reset. With a grunt of effort, he rose from the ground, unsteady on his feet. Every breath brought new stabs of pain; he felt the surface of his light Kevlar vest until he found a hole in it. There's something to be said even for a Type IIA vest, in a pinch - but bulletproof this wasn't, and Mark had to fight back the urge to throw up. Deep breaths, focus on the pain, let it keep you awake...fight against the blackness on the edges. The pain was extreme, even by Mark's standards, but the adrenaline rush kept him on his feet, helped him stagger to the door even as the now unbuckled vest slid to the floor.

In a way, Sharon was marginally luckier. Dead before she hit the ground, she was already getting her wings.

After the apartment door, it was the hallway that tortured Mark, made him fight for every inch. Doors were opened just a crack, fearful eyes on the staggering killer. There was a handrail, and Mark used the hell out of it; he relied on his left arm, using muscles away from where his flesh had been graced by a visit from Mr. Hydra-Shok. By contrast, his right arm was rapidly going numb, white knuckles arranged around the cooling Colt. Doors in front of him closed, doors behind him opened. He didn't hear the footsteps, but when he climbed into the elevator and turned around, he saw the faces.

---

Mark slipped on the sidewalk.

In any other context, it might have been funny, a momentary annoyance at best, but this was then and Mark could feel his blood dripping onto the ice as he struggled to keep going. Some traction, that wasn't so much to ask for, but he failed to gain a foothold for what seemed like forever, flopping about like a fish out of water. He wanted to lie down, to accept the calming cool for the fever in his heart. He wanted it like he wanted the last five minutes to be part of that fever, like he wanted to go to sleep and wake up. He'd even talk to her about it, let her mock him...anything but this.

Get up.

To sleep, knowing he'd wake up in her arms. Somewhere.

Get up.

His right arm started shivering, dropping the Colt onto the ground. He brought the arm in, pressing it against his side.

Get up.

Mark gnashed his teeth, and then he did what he always did, he tapped that hideous strength and he got back on his feet. Adrenaline ebbing and determination soaring, he walked with as much dignity as he could muster, still in mortal danger but back in control. He walked to his car and unlocked the driver's door. The seat welcomed him; it was easier to breathe sitting down, driving back the black from this vision once more. He started the car. He drove away.

Three blocks away, a flurry of police cars sped past him on the road, heading for her apartment. Fatal curiosity acted out again, Mark reflexively turned on the police scanner in his glove box.

"Officer down at 163rd and Riverside, I repeat, officer down..."

Enough.

---

A red light, that's what he would remember, a red light. Brake the car, take into account the slippery road. Come to a perfect stop. Play by the rules.

Don't kill cops.

This light wasn't red, it was rather blue, and that's when Mark realized that he was in a hospital. A real hospital, not a back alley meat shop like Dollar's joint. His right side was still protesting with every breath, even though heavy bandages provided support. Probably broke a rib, Mark thought. It was like somebody had turned a page in his book; removed from the injury in time and space, he made a dispassionate, reasonable guess. There were details, like how he'd gotten to the hospital, but that was to be filed away for later consideration. Mostly, he tried to get worked up again, tried to unravel the tapestry enough to pick out a good suspect and extract payment. Hate had taught him what he knew, kept him safe and sane all those years; love had only tortured him this last week. So much for that.

"You're under arrest," she said. At this stage, Mark was happy to hear even that. Then he realized that it wasn't Sharon saying this. He raised his head off the pillow and tilted his chin forward.

Ayers. Karen fuckin' Ayers.

Hello, hate. Good to have you back.

"Do I look like I give a fuck?" he said hoarsely, his head falling back onto the pillow. Okay, so maybe getting even could wait for a few more minutes.
"No. You don't 'give a fuck' that you almost killed yourself. You don't 'give a fuck' that there's good people out there who dial 911 when they see somebody slump over at the wheel. You don't 'give a fuck' that you're now two cops in the hole," Ayers said, pausing for effect. "I'd say you're pretty good at this, at not giving a fuck. That must be a truly awesome gift from the heavens themselves and I hope you enjoy that little feeling of bravado. I'm blessed in different ways, I'm almost kind of a psychic. From that springs my sincere invitation to revel in your stupidity, because I've read your cards and your life is going to be the definition of pain from here on."

Mark's repertoire of snappy comebacks seemed exhausted for the moment, so he stayed quiet.

"Just so we're clear," she continued, "I wasn't screwing with you yesterday. I've been working all week, phone calls and favors, anything I could get my hands on to trade favors with you. Because I thought that this wasn't the time to go for 100%, just take out the acute crisis and leave the rest for people with more endurance than I have. And hey, it's not like this was personal. I wanted to believe that she was getting to you, that you'd be out of my hair soon enough without anybody getting hurt. I thought, let's be reasonable. I talked to Collins, I talked to you..."
"Collins," Mark said forcefully as his mind latched onto that. "How...how is she?"

For a second, he could feel Karen's look trying to bore holes into his face.

"She's dead," she said, matter-of-factly. "Are you playing with me?"
"No..."
"Then quit acting stupid. You shoot people, they die. Maybe my standards are unreasonable, but I learned that before I went to law school."
"I just had to be sure."
"She's dead, Simmons. EMTs got there about ten minutes after you shot her, but they couldn't do anything. If this means anything to you...I'm not going to go after her. She'll get her funeral and a nice eulogy. The sacrifice of deep-cover work for the OCB. And all the dirt is going to disappear. I still don't have anything on Whitton, by the way. All the little secrets I know are about to get buried."

She stifled a hollow laugh.

"It's too bad we only know who the heroes are after they die."
"And if this means anything to you," Mark began, "I wish I hadn't been forced to do this."
"Forced to?" she spat back, anger driving blood into her cheeks. "Forced to?! Who had his hand on the trigger, Simmons? Don't you even start talking about being forced to do anything. You had every opportunity to back down, to save her and yourself. But your much vaunted loyalty took care of all that awful thinking for you. So don't play the victim. All you are is a coward. A running dog."

Mark kept silent, but that didn't slow her down.

"Fuck your omerta. Fuck your friends, fuck your bullets and fuck you. You don't fool me for a second. It's all good, as long as you don't think about it too much, right? Well, here's something to think about," she said, recomposing herself.

She bowed down to open her briefcase; Mark's arm snaked out involuntarily, like he could fix this with more violence - but the cling! of metal on metal was the only sound he heard, as if the handcuffs that chained him to the bed had only just appeared. No matter; she had retrieved a case file and opened it, now she was flipping through the pages upon pages.

"On the 5th of October," she read aloud, "Sr. Rodriguez asked me to drive him to the Our Lady Maria hospital. I waited outside, and like on Wednesday, I expected him to come back out after ten minutes. I remember that it was very hot that day; I rolled down the window and saw Sr. Rodriguez step outside, twenty minutes after he had entered the hospital. Behind him, I saw a young girl, walking about with ungainly crutches. Sr. Rodriguez helped her down the stairs, and then into the car. He told me to drive them to Sr. Rodriguez's mansion. The girl seemed very serious and reserved; I do not recall them speaking one word on the entire drive...later, in the evening, he had me drive her back to the hospital. She said 'Thank you' when I helped her back up the stairs. That's the only time I saw her..."

Karen dumped the file onto Mark's bed.

"The DEA nailed Silvestro Rodriguez's driver in Panama. We got a ten-page confession this morning - that was part of it. I'm going to give you another hint - there was only one patient in the hospital who fit that description. I think we both know who that was. I know you know who Silvestro Rodriguez is. So, what I'm asking myself here is...and maybe you'll indulge me and answer me this question: Did you know? Did you know that your boss was crooked and supported her anyway?"

It's not possible for a man of Mark's build to snap the chain on police-issue handcuffs without tools. Mark's attempt was still quite credible, though. At least strong enough to tear out some stitches.

"I'm wasting my time," Karen said, almost resigned. "I've got better things to do, Simmons. Better than trying to reason with you. Better than sitting here, making you listen when I can't make you understand." She got up, straightened her blouse, then turned back to him, as if she had to fit one more thought into this. "I have work to do," she said, and then she walked out.

Mark just laid there, a bubbling cauldron of feelings in his head ready to boil over at the slightest provocation. Crimson poured into his bandages.

He didn't acknowledge the winter any more. The blood and the hate were there to keep him warm.

Two Guns 24 - Who Wants to Live Forever?

All the way through the taxi ride, Sharon Collins hadn't looked at the driver. She had asked him to turn off the radio, she talked to him - well, mostly he talked and she listened. He was Polish, of all things; they talked about Sunday Mass for fifteen minutes. Sharon didn't ask him where she could find God again. There was nothing Sharon could do to help Mark, but Detective Collins might find a way. Manhattan drove past her, taking her all the way back to her apartment. It seemed like the snow was letting up a little bit now, though the sky was still overcast. Probably too much to ask for good weather at a time like this. The Beretta beneath her jacket tugged on the holster straps, heavier than before. In a perverse kind of way, she longed to feel the grip of her issue Glock again. Surely, she couldn't show up back for duty without it, and that's exactly what she was going to do - back on duty, try to get this mess fixed from the inside.

"I'm going back home soon," the driver said. "Sell my things, my taxi, go back."
"What for?" Sharon asked, not paying attention.
"There are new leaders now," he responded; Sharon couldn't see his smile.
"But it'll still be in shambles."
"Maybe, maybe," he said. "But I will be with my son. He is a man now, big strong man. My wife, my neighbors...letters are not the same. This country...is not my home. I lived here for fifteen years and it is not my home. What did you do, Woytja? What did you do in the free West? I drove a taxi. My apartment smells like cabbage soup, every day."
"Not good for honest people, is it?"
"Hm?"
"This city," Sharon said, with more emphasis. "It's not good for honest people."
"It's not," the driver agreed.

Sharon's foot touched a small duffel bag on the taxi's floor. One of ten she had found in Mark's house, filled with bundles of cash.

A duffel bag. Full of money. And he had ten.

Crime does pay.

It was enough to pull over, get a coffee, buy new clothes, try to call Mark and hang up after ten beeps. The driver waited for her, thanked her for his coffee. She'd barely broken in one bundle of money from the bag. All the way to her apartment, she counted the bundle, again and again, in lieu of putting it back into the duffel. She figured Mark might need it to make his exit, but now that the taxi was pulling to a stop in front of her home, she thought about that.

"This is for you," Sharon said, handing the bundle to the driver. The man turned around as she tried to open the door; she froze when she saw his face.
"Is this...?" he asked, his voice shaking.
"It's plane ticket money," she replied, and he nodded, understanding.

Random acts of kindness, enabled by blood money. Her moral compass was starting to look like a clock.

She shouldered the burden of the duffel bag as she finally got out. Somehow, she had expected her street to look different, but it didn't. She'd left it snowed in and she returned to it snowed in. Here she was, standing in the snow with hot money and a cold gun. She grabbed a different piece of metal from her pocket and unlocked the front door; a grey cat rushed past her for reasons of its own. Her house didn't have an elevator, so she took the stairs. The wood groaned under her steps, which would've been an insult if they weren't old enough to get away with it; keys still dangling from her hand, she tried to unlock the door but found it already open. Stepping into the apartment confirmed her suspicion.

Mark was there. Sitting on her couch, surrounded by dirty plates and sporting a healthy growth on his chin from lack of shaving. He looked at her with tired eyes.

"You look good," he said.
"You look like shit," she gave back, smiling for him.
"So much for my plan, huh?" he asked, forcing a small laugh through his clenched throat. "I'm tired."
"Did you sleep at all?"
"No...not really."
"You should've skipped town."
"This is the only thing I could do," Mark said, monotone again. "Try to draw the heat, give Alex more time to disappear."
"Falling on your sword, then?" she replied with a bitter undercurrent. "They should've called you Samurai."

No reply; Mark just stared at the ground.

"Did you hear the BOLO, Mark?" she asked. "If anybody finds you, they'll shoot first and ask questions later. This isn't just covering for Alex, it's suicide by cop."
"...maybe," he conceded.
"Do you want to die? Do you want to give your life for the cartel? Alex could have left town at any point, why is she still here?"
"I don't know, but..."
"But what?"
"But I have to."
"No, you don't. You've done enough for her, Mark, more than anyone could expect. But you're done. You're out. They'll kill you if you keep fighting. I couldn't live with that...that happening. Please, if not for you then for me...turn yourself in. We can go down to the station, nobody will lay a hand on you, I swear..."

Mark cut her off by standing up. He turned away from her, slumping his shoulders.

"I love you very much, Sharon. I don't know if I ever told you, but I love you with all my heart."

He took off his trench coat; she saw the suppressed .45 in its shoulder holster.

"But I can't do this."
"That doesn't matter anymore," she said. "I wouldn't be a very good person if I didn't try everything to save your life. I wouldn't be a very good cop if I didn't arrest you. Either way, you're coming with me."
"You came here to get your gun," he said. She nodded, and he knew it without seeing it. "So it's settled. You're the cop."
"And you're the killer."
"If that's how it's going to be..." he said, trailing off.

If Mark hadn't been facing away from her, or using a quick-draw holster, or maybe not wrecked with guilt, he might have managed to draw first. But he was, he wasn't and he was, so she had the Beretta out and aimed at him when he was still moving. In a split second, she had to make a choice.

She didn't.

He brought the Colt up, matching her Beretta with a well-oiled equalizer. Their eyes met, for the first time since she'd stepped into the apartment. Her fire was matched by his ice.

"Fancy meeting you here..." he drawled.

---

Two guns. Good versus evil, wrong versus wrong, right versus right.

Two worlds. Old versus new, 9mm versus .45, cop versus criminal.

Two shots. Loud versus suppressed, fire versus ice, love versus calculation, flesh versus Kevlar.

Two guns. Mexican stand-off, duel of will, duel.

One. One look of regret. One last breath.

Not two. Two never again.

Just one.

Last Man Standing.

Two Guns 23 - Der Kommissar

The cold wind that grabbed Queens in general haunted the Flushing Meadows in particular. Mark grabbed the sides of his trench coat, drawing it closer to his body. He didn't need to glance at his watch to know he'd spent ten minutes on this park bench; assassination requires a good sense of timing. All things considered, he had a rather good spot, owing to the largely empty park; his vantage point gave him a direct look at the Unisphere. Just for kicks, Mark looked at the giant globe and tried to mentally place all African countries in their correct positions. It was slow going, especially after South Africa, but he persisted until he heard approaching footsteps.

Captain Paul Whitton sat down on the bench, joining Mark in looking at the gargantuan steel globe.

"Looks like shit now, doesn't it?" Whitton said.
"I appreciate a good piece of steel," Mark replied.
"Yeah, but this used to be a lot better. Did you ever see it lit up?" When Mark confessed that he hadn't, Whitton sighed. "My Dad took me here for the World Fair. The globe looked fantastic. The real sun was slipping behind the Manhattan skyline, and I watched all the capitals light up, the soft shadows...that had to be like the astronauts looked at the world, you know? Awesome...but small."
"We need to talk about Karen Ayers," Mark said, matter-of-factly. Whitton nodded softly, but said nothing. "Can't we get rid of her somehow?"

Whitton clicked his tongue dismissively.

"What do you wanna hear? That you should go out and kill her?"
"Well..."
"Because that's right out," Whitton said sharply. "I like the agreement as much as the next man, but I'm here to save lives, not to cover my ass."
"I appreciate your idealism, Captain," Mark said. "Really, I do. But the way I see it, something's got to give. I've thought about it, and every other way, somebody important gets thrown to the wolves..."
"And you don't think that Ayers lady is important? You figure everything's gonna be fine if I let you be the wolf?" Whitton replied. "Let's say I forget my personal moral standards and nod off on this, what do you think the DA's office is going to do, huh? Tuck their collective tail between their legs and forget that they have dirt on us? You do that - you just touch her, let alone kill her - they'll go nuclear on us. That doesn't help anybody."

Mark didn't say anything. His train of thought kept running into concrete walls, no matter which track he travelled down.

"Well, you watch yourself, Simmons," Whitton said, finally breaking the silence. "I'm going home."
"Have a good day, Captain," Mark replied.
"You too."

Whitton got up and walked, footsteps crunching the snow and gravel below his shoes. Mark sat there, head cocked to the side, watching Whitton leave. He heard the approach of his second appointment in the distance; another figure on that bench, just three minutes after Whitton had gone.

"Did you get anything?" Karen Ayers asked; there was a click from within the pocket of Mark's coat, and then he handed her a small tape recorder.
"He didn't go for it," Mark said. "I can still get you other dirt on him, but I need more time..."
"Time is what we don't have. What you don't have."
"I just need more time," Mark insisted.
"Simmons, let's not forget one thing here: I'm doing you a favor here. You called me. You want to deal, okay, let's deal, but what are you offering me? You want to give me Alfredo Ingues without the cartel or his daughter, and what good is a case against a dead man?"
"I can't..."
"Yeah, that's a fair assessment, you can't. I come here and this is the way you want to get me Paul Whitton?"
"I will get you Whitton."
"That's good. You for Whitton, that's fair."
"That's not the deal we were talking about."
"That's the deal you're getting. You want to protect that little cartel of yours? That's a juicy, obvious target. You're trying to convince me, Simmons, aren't you? Give me something juicy, something I want."

Hesitation.

"Boris Dolvitch," Mark said through clenched teeth. "I can get you Boris Dolvitch and the rest of the Russian Mafia."
"We're going to get them anyway, once the cops finish sifting through your wreckage at the BAT. You do know that you screwed yourself with that one, don't you?"
"That was a different group of Russians, I can get you evidence to nail Dolvitch and everyone he works with."
"What about you?"
"What about me? Do I look like I need protection? If I go down, then that's how it's going to be."
"Tough words, Simmons."
"I'm more than words, Ayers," Mark said, glaring at her.

Then it was his turn to get up and walk away. With every step there was a sting in his belly, his guts churning and twisting into knots. Whitton he could stomach, though it was a crying shame to feed a good man like that to the grinder. Boris, though...Mark felt sick at the thought, but at the end of the day, Boris was just a friend. Boris wasn't family. And Mark was doing this to save his family, he told himself, nothing too extreme to save the family.

He thought about Sharon.

He'd have to tell her after this, about the choices. She...she'd understand, surely. It's not like Whitton was innocent, nobody was getting framed here; she would have to understand eventually that this was for her sake, too. The inevitable fall of Paul Whitton, without dragging her down. And the family, well, that was a no-brainer. With all the other organizations out of the way, the cartel could lay low, play it legit, watch the heat die down. Mark pictured a nice, long vacation in a non-extraditing country with Sharon, all expenses paid by Senora Ingues. A sacrifice, sure, but that's how the family took care of its own.

It wasn't what Jesus would've done, Mark reflected with a bitter smile. But it would do.

---

Captain Paul Whitton drove home, engine purring and smooth jazz pouring out of the radio like a steady stream of sonic nougat crème. Traffic out of Queens was light, but he drove slowly over the slippery roads, not wanting to chance a loss of control. He was considering things, which meant further loss of pressure on the gas pedal, and he wasn't looking forward to the pot roast for dinner at all.

He turned the radio down and reached into the bag on the passenger's seat. His hand snaked past his badge and issue Glock before grabbing onto a small moleskin notebook; he rested it on the steering wheel, flipped it to Page 7, then grabbed the receiver from his dash-mounted car phone and punched in the number on that page. Red light ahead; Whitton stepped on the brake well in advance, accounting for the lack of traction and bringing the car to a gentle stop. The speaker pressed to his ear reproduced a ring tone, the little representation of potentiality: a call neither taken nor denied.

A click, then a voice. The signal went green. Whitton stepped on the gas.

"Chief, the situation is out of control," the Captain said, not bothering with pleasantries. "We need to move fast on this one."

---

Shuffling through Mark's pad, Sharon walked in fur slippers three sizes too big for her, having rapidly exhausted the entertainment possibilities of the place. The doors to the garage and basement were locked, she wasn't in the mood for reading and there was only so much amusement she could glean from Mark's record collection. Fortunately, she had found a police scanner in a cardboard box of fresh surveillance gear Mark had left in the kitchen; it felt comforting to listen to some chatter with familiar lingo while she assembled the turkey sandwich to end all turkey sandwiches. To that end, she had opened a fresh package of sourdough bread and cut off a few slices with the most unintentionally sinister kitchen knife she'd ever seen; now the task was to pile on turkey cuts, cheese and, well, some slices of ham - for flavor. She watched her creation with distrust, not quite certain of its structural integrity, questioning her decision about having six layers of meat. She grabbed the knife to cut the creation in two, but felt the sandwich slipping at the slightest touch.

A ham too far?

Cussing under her breath, she held down the top slice of bread with her left hand. With the knife sinking in, she could see the sandwich's contents trying to spill out to the sides, but they could not, would not escape her. With a final push, the sandwich laid bare before, cleft in twain with a mail-order ginsu knife. Sharon's triumph was dulled momentarily when she realized that she's forgotten to apply the mustard beforehand and would now have to engage in the culinarily suspicious act of flavoring the halves separately.

One minute later and she'd forgotten all about being hungry.

---

"Dispatch to all units, we have a BOLO on a Mark Simmons, aka Marcus Aaron Simmons, Caucasian male, age 46, about six feet, brown hair, described as muscular, probably wearing long black clothing. He was last seen in the Flushing Meadows Park. Simmons is wanted in connection with last night's killing spree at the Brooklyn Army Terminal. If identified, do not approach, I repeat, do not approach. Suspect is considered armed and dangerous, call dispatch if identified. I repeat, we have a BOLO on a Mark Simmons..."

Two Guns 22 - This is not America

Brighton Beach, Mark reflected, didn't really look all that festive.

It wasn't snowing so much as mudding, the flakes already dirty on their way to the ground and not improving the situation down there. Mark walked on the boardwalk with a plodding rhythm, both to reflect on the situation and to avoid making a very undignified slip on the ice - the soles of his boots were stiff like boards, affording him little grip on the slippery sidewalk. Normally, that would've been worth noting (and correcting), but being too deep in thought, the sole thought only bubbled up on occasion, to be immediately pushed back down by heavier deliberations. He turned his head to glance behind him, catching a glimpse of the Coney Island amusements in the distance; he sighed, but kept walking. The streets branching off the boardwalk were growing heavier on kyrillic signs and children in heavy parkas waging snowball wars; Mark picked one with little advance warning and crossed the street into Little Odessa.

It seemed that, with every step, he nodded to someone else; street vendors, young toughs hanging out in entrance ways, the occasional businessman. Mark liked the certainty in that, announcing his presence and being acknowledged as guest in turn. Being a good Enforcer was about more than knowing how to handle yourself with a gun. Being a respectable arbiter between the families, knowing how to behave yourself, speaking a smattering of their languages and knowing their customs...all as useful, if not more so, than a fast trigger finger.

Boris's front was an unassuming store for men's clothing; the old bastard was quite the tailor, and Mark recognized a few of the mannequin suits as hanging in his own closet. Mark did it how things worked there; he politely declined the first offer of help from the employee, looked around for a couple of minutes, then informed the sales clerk that he'd like to have a custom suit tailored. This led to the sales clerk excusing himself for a minute to formally announce Mark's presence to Boris; then he came back and told Mark to step into the back to talk to the boss about what exactly he had in mind. Mark thanked the clerk, then parted the curtains and stepped into the back. One of Boris's bodyguards asked him to remove his coat, for measuring; Mark had always felt like this was a pretty good idea on how to frisk people while staying in character, so to speak. With a nod from the guardian, it was time to hit the office. Another guard stood at the door, nodded to Mark and opened it for him; Mark stepped into a slice of 70s Americana. He always admired the crampedness of the room, all the photos and half-tailored suits and paintings surrounding Boris's desk. The old man was sitting there, skinny glasses riding the bridge of his nose and his right hand on a mug of deep black coffee.

"Hello, Boris," Mark began; the old man indicated a chair in front of the desk, and Mark sat down.
"Welcome once again, Mark. What can I do for you today?"
"Oh, I figured I'd just check in," Mark said nonchalantly. "See how you're doing."
"I'm recovering quite nicely, thank you." Boris held up his hand; the index finger didn't flex when he moved the others. Mark understood what that meant, but gave no further comment. "How are you?" Boris asked.
"Ah, you know me. I'm bulletproof."
Boris chuckled softly. "That's what we all are. Then we get old."
"I'm glad you're okay," Mark said.
"I was a little worried when they set the trailer on fire," Boris said, sipping from his coffee. "And being clinically dead twice in one week...yes, that's a little more excitement than I usually wish for. Would you care for some coffee?"
"Thank you, but..."

Boris fetched a second cup and saucer from a cupboard behind him, then poured coffee for Mark. In the great continuum of coffee from sludge to dishwater, this definitely fell closer to the former. Mark took a sip and impressed Boris by managing to keep a straight face.

"I need to know what happened to Berkovitz," Mark said.
"I have a question for you, first," Boris said thoughtfully. "When the Soviet Union finally decided to let people emigrate...who do you think they let go first?"
"Okay, I'll bite. They kicked out the gangsters in the 60s, right?"
"Early 70s. But yes. People like me. People they didn't want. Berkovitz's parents were Orthodox Jews, hardliners. His father didn't make it past the border, his mother drank herself to death over it. So that little boy grows up here, and his heart is hardened against Russia."
"Oh, I know another complainer..."
"True Russians complain," Boris added. "I defended the Motherland against Hitler's stooges. He hated it, and that's why he's an emigrant. I am merely in exile..."
"Right. Berkovitz?"
"The little boy who hates Russia grows up to be a police officer. He speaks Russian, they put him into Organized Crime. He goes crooked. We come to an arrangement."
"You never mentioned that part before," Mark said.
"Mark, we're friends, not business partners," Boris shot back without the slightest hint of malice. "He was just another piece of small fry until he made his play to kidnap me from Nikolai and kill me. I have to admit, he was pretty good, but he wasn't a professional. And he bored me with his life story...as if I didn't already know it."
"You're fairly relaxed about all the shit they did to you."
"Why get agitated?" Boris says, sipping on his coffee. "With the precision of clockwork, life repays our evil. Berkovitz is dead, you killed Nikolai."
"Are you sure Berkovitz is dead?" Mark asked.
"I saw him sink into the water next to me with a bullet hole in his head, before Nikolai pulled me out again. That would be difficult to fake."

Mark leaned back in his chair and let out a sigh.

"At least one loose end tied up," he said.
"Make that two," Boris said; Mark looked up to find the Russian pulling the cork from a bottle of wine. "I owe you this much, at least."
"Only one glass," Mark said defensively while Boris poured. "I've got some things to do today."
"Good things?"
"...no."
"Then enjoy the wine," Boris replied.

Mark rose from his chair, grabbed the glass and raised it to a toast.

"To old friendships," Boris said.
"To old friendships," Mark replied with a slight smile.

---

Mark's footsteps were quiet against the gravel that made up the walkway between the plots of the small Brooklyn cemetery; new shoes, a new black suit, all fresh off the shelves at Boris's shop. After that, a visit to the barbershop nearby, haircut and a shave that still tingled on his cheeks. Mark wanted to look respectable for this.

The cemetery was nearly empty, owing to the cold, which suited the assassin just fine; he slowed his walk as he approached a granite cross, a grave he knew without having seen it before. Alfredo Ingues, the inscription read. 1912 - 1989. Beloved father. Mark looked around, eyes darting from side to side. He twitched in his new jacket against the wind, tried to gather up the right words for an audience of infinite patience.

"I'm sorry," he began, unsure of every syllable. "I'm sorry, Alfredo. There, I said it." He laughed uneasily. "You kept nagging me and I always went for Sir. Well, it's Alfredo now, old man! How do you like them apples?"

Silence.

"I wanted to apologize, I guess I've done that now. Yeah, you know, for not being there...at the funeral. I should've been there. I should've been there and I wasn't. I'm, like I said, I'm sorry. I don't know what else to say. Heh, you're probably smiling now. Stupid old Mark, all torn up over another body."

Silence.

"But that's just it, isn't it? You're not just another body rotting away. You are...you were the boss. You've been part of my life for so long...so long. And I'm all torn up because I wanted to be there for you, the way you were always there for me. That's part of why I'm here now, you know how I am. I don't like leaving my debts unpaid. And I owe you this, Alfredo. I owe you the respect to come here and honor you. I don't...I didn't talk to Alex about this, but I figured you wouldn't have wanted this to be a big old group hug kind of thing. So..."

Silence.

"So I also want to thank you. For being there. For taking an angry teenager off the streets. For all the things you gave me and taught me. I know it was just business, it's hard to go for the heartwarming stuff when I was your tool for so long. But I believe that, in the end, I was more than a weapon for you. And you're dead and can't tell me I'm full of shit, so that's how I'll remember it."

Silence.

"I'm just that kind of guy, you know...yes, you know. My bad. I take care of things. And the last thing you ordered me to do, to protect Sharon Collins...I've done that. You would've liked her, if you'd seen her...not just the frightened cop that evening. The woman she is. The warrior she is. The way she walks and doesn't know how crazy it makes me. The way she doesn't back down. The way she just...she just loves me. And the way I love her."

Silence.

"And that's what makes this so damn hard."

Silence.

"You don't see it? Well, let me spell it out for you, Alfredo. She's going to take down the family. I know that. So you see, this is all your fault."

Silence.

"We believed in it, didn't we? You had me convinced, all those years, that we're gangsters with good hearts. That there's honor among thieves. But now I look at it and it's just about survival. Where's the honor now, Alfredo? Is it in the things we do or the things we say?"

Silence.

"You're laughing now, you old bastard, aren't you?" Mark said, the first hint of a tear in his left eye. "Silly old Mark. Getting so worked up over nothing. Why don't you tell me how to puzzle this out, Alfredo? Why don't you just say, 'Mark, there's things a man has to do'?"

Silence.

"Because I know that!" Mark said, anger creeping into his voice. "I know that! But this isn't that easy!"

Silence.

Silence.

"No. I'm being unfair. I know what you'd say."

Silence. Mark sighed and wiped some tears from his cheeks.

"You're talking to two people here, you know that, Alfredo, don't you? Only one is going to leave this place. For every one who wins...somebody loses."

Silence.

Mark breathed out with all his might, the way one might to drive poison from the lungs. His muscles tensed, his face hardened, and he turned away from the grave, purpose in the beat of his steps. No more cold, no more confessions. One Mark left behind at the grave, mourning his losses. Another Mark walking away to do what he lived to do.

---

When he passed the gates of the cemetery, he reached into the pocket of his pants and grabbed the keys to his car. With efficient movements, he unlocked the door, sat down in the driver's seat and started the engine. With a bit more force than necessary, he accelerated out of the parking lot, back into the city. His cell phone rang, right on cue.

"Simmons."
"It's me," Sharon's voice came from the other end. "I'm at the station right now."
"Why are you..."
"Listen, this is important. Ayers sent me a little file the DEA built on Silvestro. One of the photos shows him entering the general hospital in Bogota...and I'll bet you dollars to pesos that he went to see Alex there."
"I'll ask her about it, I'm heading her way now."
"Ask her? Mark, this proves that there's something going on here."
"No, it proves that he was at the hospital. It's not much use as evidence for anything else."
"If you'd just ask her the right questions..."
"Don't worry about that," Mark said, his voice flat. "I have a plan."

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.