Harvey Bullock hated his life.
He wakes up everyday in his dump of an apartment, and tries to call his landlord to talk to him about the darn leaking faucet and what he thinks is a dead skunk on the floor above him that's making his own house unlivable.
Now this was Gotham, so the skunk could also be the rotting carcass of some crackhead, squatter or the landlord's cheating girlfriend. He wasn't gonna try knocking some doors or calling the cops because he is the cops, and he sure as hell wasn't about to give himself more work.
He didn't make it so long living twelve miles up from hell by giving a fuck when it wasn't his turn to give a fuck.
So he'll keep calling the landlord.
Harvey will fail, curse plenty of people, places and mothers and then down half a bottle of whiskey with his shitty coffee.
He won't move either, because his job gets furloughed every three months and his credit score is only marginally better than that of the people he puts behind bars.
Add in a rather extensive tab at three different police bars, gambling his way into a losing streak he'll no doubt expand before the month's over, and the misfortune of not being able to supplement his income like most cops because then Papa Gordon would be real disappointed.
And nobody serving under the man wanted to disappoint Commissioner Jimbo, and that's only partly because of the colossal asswhooping involved.
'Pity that's only one fourth of the cops in the city,' He grunted into his second doughnut of the day, holding it into his mind while getting dressed in the usual formal suit and trench coat combo that screams 'I'm Murder Police.'
His boasted more grease stains than most, but Detective Bullock was never afraid of getting a lil' dirty, it comes with the home field.
Then it's down the dirty stairways, walking past a newlyweds couple sucking tongue and doing his best to avoid a conversation with the elderly Mr Wildbow from the second floor who swears he saw a bunch of suspicious people creeping into the building.
Said suspicious people were, of course, Doctor DeAndre and his family, who have been living here for nearly three years now.
Mr Wildbow had also been telling him this for nearly three years.
Fucking Gotham.
He squeezed himself into the seat of his beloved chevy cavalier, technically one of the department's rides but he used it so often the clerks clocked it for him at this point and only asked that he sign the slips at the end of month.
Against the rules? Yeah, but when most of the people holding badges in this city were so rotten they shit maggots, nobody gives a fuck.
Not that many cops wanted one of these beauties either, mostly old heads like him who were set in their ways. The kids all vied for the new machines Wayne donated to the departments, probably a thank you for the amount of times they had to deal with his drunk arse.
The new rides were sturdy, but filled with all those tech and computer stuff he couldn't make heads or tails about. He'd much rather use something he understands and can pick apart and put back together if he ever needed it, thank you very much.
He drives his way out of his quaint little neighborhood stuck between the fringes of the East End, the bowery and freaking little Russia.
Last one wasn't called that way, but there was so much vodka flowing through Locust Point it might as well be part of the soviet union.
'Probably the reason why I ended up with a pot belly and a beat up liver,' He thought, taking a bite out of the jelly filled, chocolate donut while driving.
The third one of the day.
He kept on driving till he reached Gotham Heights, an upper middle class district that looked like freaking downtown Metropolis, compared to his hometown.
It also happened to be home to one of the four GCPD buildings in the city, and the one where you could find the most honest man in Gotham who had yet to go insane.
Commissioner James Gordon ran the show, after much trouble and plates of steaming shit being served to various people, in addition to a fair bit of, ugh, internal investigations, which ended with the mother of all purges.
He lived through it, watched the man's hair grow grey so fast it might count as a new superpower.
Oh, sorry, metahuman ability. Gotta use the technical words now, or the paper pushers get real angry.
And Jim didn't need him giving those pencil grinders more reason to serve him new plates of shit, he and everyone in the department ate too much of it to even bear the thought of more.
What with the absolute shit show that is Gotham's legislation, which might as well make it a vassal state rather than a proper city, had so many caveats it made Puerto Rico look fair and balanced, and probably contributed to Harvey Dent losing his mind.
There were technically four different commissioners, two police chiefs, eight deputies and absolutely none of them equipped, willing and able to do any real damage to the real players of the city's underbelly.
Crooks who were, unlike them, equipped, willing and very much able to turn the city into a warzone if only somebody lit a spark.
Add in jurisdictions and territory repartitions that are utterly brainless, and you often need to bring in the commissioner himself to do anything meaningful.
'But hey! Politicians say we're set to beat Metropolis on GDP, and our contribution to the stock market is larger than entire states put together, so it's all gonna be fine, amma right?' He chuckled as he passed by Larry, who once again got stuck on watch duty as a civilian.
Might be a bit unfair, but the man just looked that forgettable, and someone had to make sure the department doesn't get surprise raided again.
He didn't like the feeling of being held hostage by Calendar Man of all people, who demanded they bring the mayor so that he could properly celebrate Guy Fawkes Day, or he'd blow up the whole building.
He really didn't like having to wait for Batman to come and rescue them, again.
And he sure as hell nearly went medieval on the judge when they sent that psycho to the minimal security ward of Arkham Island.
But that was then, and he didn't make enough money to afford thinking about yesterday's bullshit when a new load was about to be dumped on him.
'Nice and warm, just how daddy likes'em,' He whistled some old tune as he parked his beauty into the lot and bid her farewell.
It was a workingman's song, and thus sounded as jolly as possible with the most depressing lyrics available, he continued whistling as he nimbly avoided the grubby hands of his colleagues looking to steal a doughnut.
Gotham's finest, ladies and gentlemen.
He keeps evading all the way up to the third floor, where uniforms disappeared and you started seeing the protectors of the law wearing suits in various states of disrepair, if you were insane enough to keep the job for years on end, you'd be able to tell how the cases were progressing based on their clothing alone.
A cursory glance told him that nothing changed during the night shift, it was still a dumpsterfire held together by absurd amounts of coffee and some creative stat recording.
He expected nothing less.
Bullocks then sits at his desk, looks at a mountain of paperwork, then to the whiteboard filled with red– murder cases they have yet to solve, but didn't work enough to give up and throw it at the bat, then to old Bernie who dragged a thug out of the interrogation room and was trying to convince him that the office copier was in fact a lie detector.
Judging by how low the suspect wore his pants, Bernie would succeed.
Harvey felt at home, and thus utterly depressed.
What followed was mindless grind through three days worth of paperwork, followed by something that made him miss the fucking paperwork, right when his shift was about to end and the night shift people came to take over.
A phone call, on the seventh main line.
The 'it's fucked' line.
The one that told the people supposed to investigate homicides, that they now ought to stop whatever it was they were doing, grab their guns and move their prestigious asses to start preventing homicides.
Something that is both against regulation, and cause for panic.
All hands on deck, red alert, all the shit just hit the biggest fan available.
Gordon himself moves his arse out of the office as every person with a badge and a pair of balls was sent out to Arkham Island. News just came, the Joker was breaking out, and it was getting very ugly very fast.
Well, everyone was breaking out, but the Joker too–and that was way worse.
Dozens of men move about with all the grace of pigs in a slaughterhouse, grabbing guns they seldom use out of their drawers, struggling to put on bulletproof vests over their guts, finding a ride and preparing themselves for the shitshow.
And since bad news never comes alone, the weather shifts into one of those very Gotham middle fingers, clouds stealing what little moonlight got past the towers and cloaking the city in darkness, and then came the downpour.
'Fucking amazing.'
They don't get a full briefing until they all hopped into cars and wagons, and were already halfway through that creepy island, then Harvey wished they never got briefed.
'Who the fuck lets the Joker steal a fucking nuke?' He thought, feeling his stomach turn.
"Who the fuck lets the Joker steal a fucking nuke?" He asked his direct superior, and there was nothing Jim could do but grunt through his cigar as the driver did his best to make him drop it.
"Officially, the Joker manufactured a non-identified dirty bomb on his own while he was out of jail, with the help of a bunch of morons and Harley," The commissioner spoke every word in his media voice, the one he used to deliver bullshit to the news, or when talking to politicians, "Unofficially, the government fucked up."
"No shit, they fucked up," Bullock laughed, it was an ugly thing the ladies hated, but he didn't care right about now.
For the second time in three months, he thought he was probably gonna die.
When they arrived into the island, getting past layers and layers of barrages from the local police, reinforcement from the counties and a good amount of fancy schmucks in black suits who really stood a bit too tall for being the shitstains responsible for this mess, he and his bunkies were greeted with the sight of a bloody warzone.
Mobs of inmates–because there was no way in hell he'd call these fucks patients–storming against the armored security guards, armed with nothing but pipes and stolen weapons from less fortunate men, they struck and threw all they had without regard for their own safety.
Then came the freakshows, dealing with a single monster like Bane or Ivy was a nightmare, but pretty much all of them at the same time? Give him a break.
The commissioner made an attempt at getting the crowd to settle down, shooting promises through a megaphone, but everyone knew it was useless.
They had to start shooting, start killing these pests.
With some luck, maybe one of them will come face to face with the Joker and shoot the clown's head off.
And if he saw a shadow come out of the water and start pummeling one of those freaks before it could tear into his colleagues–well, then he didn't see anything, his job was to deal with the criminal inside the asylum, after all.
Harvey Bullocks hated his life, but he only got the one and he'd be damned if he lost it to one of the worthless, witless, somewhat brainless serial murderin' cuckoos in the asylum.