aFireFist
A Life in DC
Chapter 14 - Part 3
The woman opened the door herself this time. Split lip darker now. She had put a sweater over the shirt. The boy was at the table with a bowl of cereal he was not eating. Cartoon still on mute.
Sawyer took the woman to the kitchenette. Vieri stayed near the table with the boy long enough to ask if he wanted to show him a drawing on the fridge. The boy shook his head and looked at his shoes. The shoes were on the right feet now. Someone had fixed that while they were gone.
The advocate did the talking. Quiet, even, no pressure in the voice. Options. Shelter bed. Follow-up in the morning. A number that worked after midnight. The woman listened. She nodded. She did not sign the complaint.
Vieri did not ask her to. He set his card on the table next to the advocate's, wrote the case number on the back in block letters, and left it there.
"If you call, ask for Oronzo or Sawyer," he said. "Either one of us picks up."
The woman said okay. It came out small. The boy turned the cereal spoon in a circle and did not eat.
They went down the stairs without speaking. On the sidewalk Sawyer stopped with her hand on the car door and looked back up at the sheet in the window.
"That's the job," she said.
"Yeah."
"Doesn't get lighter just because the Queens decided to take a week off."
"No."
She got in. He got in. She sat with both hands on the wheel for a second before she started the engine.
"Deli," she said. "If I write that report on an empty stomach I'm going to put my whole mood in the narrative."
They ate in the car two blocks off Kane, parked where they could still see the street. Paper sandwiches. Coffee that had been sitting on a burner since morning. Sawyer unwrapped hers with her nails and took a bite like it had offended her.
"Tastes like the bag," she said.
"It's a deli on Kane."
"I've had worse in Metropolis. That's the sad part." She chewed, swallowed, glanced at the radio. "Still quiet. I keep waiting for Harley to rob a truck just to feel like the city's still itself."
Vieri drank the coffee. It was burnt and lukewarm.
"Captain'll take boring," he said.
"Captain will take anything that keeps IA from sleeping in our conference room." Sawyer wiped mustard off her thumb. The blouse pulled across her heavy D-cup tits when she reached for the napkins on the dash. She didn't fix it. "You going to tell me what actually happened last night, or are we going to keep doing the 'quiet night' thing until I get tired of it?"
"We're working."
"I noticed." She looked at him sideways. Not a smirk this time. Just the look of someone who had already decided she was not going to get the real answer in a parked car with a recorded radio two feet away. "Fine. Eat. Then we take whatever's next and we write it so it looks like a unit that knows how to do the small stuff."
The next call was not a call. It was a man in a doorway on a side street waving both arms at the unmarked like he had been waiting for any car with a spotlight. Landlord. Fifty, gold chain, breath that had already started the argument before they parked.
"She's three months behind and she's got a cousin living in the closet," he said, pointing up at a second-floor window. "I want her out. Today. You're here. Do something."
Sawyer got out first. Vieri followed.
The tenant was a woman in a tank top with a baby on her hip and a tired face that said this was not the first time the landlord had tried to turn a late rent into a police matter. The hallway smelled like fried oil and diapers. No broken furniture. No blood. No raised fists. Just two people who hated each other in a building that leaked.
"This is civil," Vieri said, after he had looked at both rooms and confirmed nobody was hurt. "We don't evict people. That's housing court."
The landlord started loud. Sawyer stepped in with the Metropolis voice — flat, official, no extra heat — and cut him down to a volume the hallway could live with.
"You serve notice the right way," she said. "You don't stand in a hallway and ask two cops to do your paperwork. She stays until a judge says otherwise. You put a hand on her, that's when we come back different."
The landlord called her a few names that were not creative. Sawyer did not blink. The baby made a small sound. The tenant shifted the weight to her other hip. Vieri wrote both names, both sides of the story, and the line that kept it from turning into a crime: no assault, no damage, civil dispute, both parties advised.
They left them on the landing. The landlord was still talking when the stairwell door shut.
In the car Sawyer let out a breath through her nose.
"I miss the days when men like that were afraid of a badge," she said. "Now they just want us to be their collection agency."
"You handled him."
"I handle a lot of him." She pulled into traffic. "Write it thin. If we give that guy a paragraph he will try to turn it into a case."
Back at the precinct the bullpen had the after-lunch sound: more phones, less hope. The pot on the warmer had been dumped and refilled and already smelled burnt again. Vieri sat and opened the domestic file first.
This was the part that took time.
He wrote the narrative straight. Time of call. Condition of the jamb. Plate on the floor. Hole in the drywall. Undershirt. Knife in the pocket. Cuffs after the man closed distance. Woman's lip. Boy on the couch. Shoes. Advocate. Second visit. No signed complaint. Cards left on the table. He did not write how the apartment had felt. He did not write the cartoon on mute. He put the facts in the order a second reader would want them.
Evidence log next. Three photos. Knife. Plate. Wall. Time stamps. Bag numbers from booking.
Booking sheet was already in the system. He attached it.
Follow-up box for the advocate: contacted on scene, second contact at residence, shelter information provided, complainant declined to sign at this time.
He read it twice. Then he sent it.
The Queens log was still sitting at the edge of the desk.
He opened the draft from the morning. Confirmed sightings: none. Tips: none. Video: none. Notes: no confirmed Queens activity in assigned grid. He added one line he could defend — sector patrols completed without incident related to costumed subjects — and left it. Anything else would be speculation. Montoya had been clear about that.
She came by while he was still looking at the screen.
Folder under her arm. White shirt. Ponytail a little looser than it had been at eight. She stopped at the corner of his desk and read the header on the domestic, not the Queens file.
"Good write-up," she said.
From her that was a lot. She did not brush the chair. She did not look at his mouth. She stood like a detective who was trying to keep last week out of the building.
"Advocate follow-up is in there," Vieri said.
"I saw. I'll flag it for morning." Her golden-brown eyes held his for a second. Something raw sat under the professional mask and then she put it away. "Oronzo. Whatever last night was, it stays out of the building. Clear?"
"Clear."
She walked back to her desk. Ass rolling under the slacks. Thick thighs flexing. She sat carefully, like the chair still remembered things the paperwork was not allowed to.
Sawyer was at the copy machine with the landlord-tenant sheet. Vieri went over for the extra copy the captain would want on paper. The machine groaned. Warm dust smell.
Sawyer spoke without turning her head, voice low enough that it died at the tray.
"IA is going to love a day that looks like this," she said. "Keep giving them days that look like this."
"That's the idea."
"I didn't say it was only about the Queens." She took the warm pages off the tray and tapped them even. Heavy D-cup tits shifted under the blouse with the movement. "I said a day that looks like this. Reports. No headlines. Nobody in this building having to explain a warehouse."
He did not answer that. She did not make him. She handed him his copy and went back to her desk.
The captain came out just before they could sign off the day shift. Printout in one hand. Same lighter look around the eyes.
"Still clean," he said to the room. "No Queens through the afternoon. No tips. No noise. Keep it that way." He looked at Vieri and Sawyer. "I want you back out after a short turnaround. Same sector. Bowery gets uglier after dark and I don't want this quiet getting mistaken for empty. Eat something that is not a sandwich out of a bag. Be back at six."
"Yes, sir."
Vieri signed out. The lot was wet. The sky was already going the color of old metal. He drove to the Heights with the radio off and the wipers on intermittent.
The house was the same. Lemon polish. Old wood. The panties still on the counter because he had not decided what to do with them at seven in the morning. He put them in the drawer with the note. That was as far as the thought got.
He changed out of the day shirt, pulled on a clean one, and ate standing at the sink: leftover rice, cold, with hot sauce that did not fix it. He did not open the drawer again. He washed the plate, locked the deadbolt behind him, and went back to the car.
Dusk sat on the East End like it always did, early and dirty. Sawyer was already in the lot, jacket on, hair re-tied, a paper cup of actual coffee this time. She tossed him the keys.
"Your turn," she said. "I did the morning left turns. You can do the night ones."
He drove. She rode with the log on her knee and the window cracked. The city lights came up in smears on the wet asphalt. Radio chatter stayed small.
First stop was a bar on the edge of the East End that called in a fight every other week. By the time they arrived it was already over. Two men sitting on the curb with split knuckles. Bartender tired. No ambulance. No charges anyone wanted to press. Vieri took names. Sawyer told them to walk in different directions. They did.
Second stop was a stolen bike that would never come back. Kid on a stoop, chain cut, empty spot on the railing. Vieri wrote the make and the color and the time last seen. He gave the kid the report number. The kid already knew how this ended.
Third was a welfare check on an old man in a walk-up off Kane. Neighbor said he had not taken his trash down in four days. The man opened the door in a cardigan and invited them in like they were late for tea. The apartment was clean enough. The trash was bagged by the door. He had just not wanted to take it down in the rain. He talked for ten minutes about a bus route that did not exist anymore. Sawyer listened. Vieri listened. They took the bag down for him on the way out because it was sitting there and because the night was still allowing small things.
In the car after that, Sawyer watched the rain on the windshield.
"This is the city when nobody's performing," she said. "I forget what it looks like."
"Don't get used to it."
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