Chapter Text
There’s a spider in the corner.
I notice it as soon as I walk into the office, scurrying in my peripheral vision like a floater or a cockroach across the drywall. I always turn my head in its direction to look at it, sometimes hard enough to make my neck hurt. Usually it’s nothing—just some spot in my vision, a pale reflection of the light, something that’s not a bug settling into place. Sometimes it is a cockroach, though. Sometimes it’s a spider in the corner, weaving its web or rolling up its meal in a silken blanket.
“Take a seat,” Chuck says. He’s already sitting at his desk after leading me inside. It takes a moment for my brain to adjust to the situation, looking away from the spider to him and then the chair. Finally, I take my hat from my head to hang off the back of the first chair, sitting down in the second. I hold my messenger bag comfortably on my lap and cross my left ankle over my right knee, polite and demure as can be. Doesn’t matter if pain slices its way across my backside. My comfort is of little relevance here.
The way the Inspectorate General works is you kill someone one too many times, and they send you here for some kind of pep talk to put you back in order before usually sending you on your way. Or you’re racist. Or you’re too sexist for the RCM to turn its back on you because you’ve received too many complaints. It used to be Helen I saw whenever I came here. The Inspectorate General likes giving first offenders to women, probably because they think that women can stroke the sense of morality and ethics that a lot of officers tend to lack. Gentle disappointment, like you’ve upset your own mother. It probably works for some people.
That was way back in the day for me, though. I don’t see Helen anymore—not often—except for sometimes when I come in and she’s chatting with a coworker, or moving around the office to deliver some paperwork to a supervisor. We smile at each other—oh, my god, Helen, I say, it’s been so long. We shake hands and chat, she asks about life, I ask about hers, oh, you got promoted, that’s amazing, I’m so proud of you. We say things we don’t mean like we should get brunch together at some point—both of us are too poor for brunch—and then my handler gets impatient enough to roll his eyes, grabbing my elbow to pull me along. Bye, Helen, I say, tipping my head, can’t stay long, I’m in trouble again.
Now I’ve got a man sitting across the desk from me—a goddamn man, because apparently the rat squad gives their more serious cases to men when it becomes clear that the feminine wiles of a lady don’t do it for people like me, it’s a man’s job to take the load off her hands and put me in my proper place. What they don’t know is I don’t care if the person sitting across the desk from me is a man or a woman. The only thing it means is they took away someone I like for someone who hates me, and that just incentivizes me more to make his life a living hell.
Chuck stares at me, beady eyes watery and sad, having mastered the look of a disappointed father. He’s an old man. Grey hairs, worn-leather skin, his face so attracted to gravity that his cheeks sag with ancient rivers. One of the oldest men that I’ve ever met, and one of his ears is missing from what I can only assume to be the Revolution way back in the day. I always wonder if it was something similar that happened with Damian Latrec, one of my subordinates, though I’ve never asked. There’s a photo of his dead wife facing him on the desk.
I stare back at him until I get bored, turning my head back to the spider in the corner.
“John,” he starts, but I cut him off, turning back to face him.
“Can we just get this over with? I’ve been on my feet all day and I have a report to write at the station.”
It’s a lie, in that it’s an understatement. I’ve barely gotten any sleep since the night before last. Barely had the time to eat anything, either. The most shut-eye I’ve been able to find was about four hours of gentle reprieve at my desk nearly ten hours ago, and that was rudely interrupted somewhere early enough in the second sleep cycle that I woke up feeling worse. But it’s the high point of summer after being freshly transferred back over to criminal investigations, so it’s not like I didn’t expect this.
Chuck sighs and pinches his eyes between ancient fingers. Scars are splattered over his knuckles like the pale shards of a hundred mirrors. If I squint and tilt my head the right way, I might be able to see tiny bits of reflective glass, melded and merged into his skin, shining like glitter. “...Okay. So tell me why you thought it was a good idea to shoot a teenager.”
He had a gun. Pointed it at me when I went to chase after his adult friends. Fired, missed. He would’ve gotten the opportunity to fire again if I hadn’t, and by that point, the Madre cronies got the message that if I wasn’t afraid to shoot a kid, then I wasn’t afraid to kill them, either.
I wasn’t, by the way. Three dead. Two in the hospital, including the kid. They didn’t find a gun on him, because of course they didn’t. Somebody picked it up while I was shooting at an MC a couple streets down.
That was two days ago.
I shrug. “I don’t know,” I say, leaning back in my chair with a crooked little smile. “I felt evil, I guess.”
Chuck’s gaze darkens and he curses, says something like Goddamn it, McCoy, and after a while turns to write down in his paperwork. I look at the spider. It looks almost like one of those giant red ants, so much so you would be forgiven for mistaking it for one at a distance. Except giant red ants don’t hover in the air like that. Eventually Chuck addresses me again, demands to know what really fucking happened, so I tell him.
He doesn’t believe me, of course. Why would he? There’s no gun on file.
So for a long time, I sit there, like a kid in a principal’s office, getting my ass handed to me by a man old enough to be my father who was a father himself before his children died in the People’s Pile. I pretend like I’m listening but don’t have the gall to pretend like I feel guilty about it. After all, I’m just doing my job, and I’m very good at waiting out shit like this. I’ve had a lot of practice in it. A moth flutters into the web, and the ant-spider shuffles over to it. Somewhere in the middle of wrapping it up all nice and cozy for later, Chuck pushes a sheet of paper across the desk.
I turn to blink at it, then at him. Wordlessly, I take it, not even looking away from his smoldering, wet eyes while it’s folded into a rectangle and then a square and then settled neatly into my denim pocket.
“Get the fuck out, John.”
My lips twitch into a smile I neither expect nor want. It’s a nervous tick—I think—that unfortunately has gotten me into trouble many more times than it’s gotten me out. Man like me, I understand why people tend to take it the wrong way. It does seem like I’m making a joke out of everything important. Based on the way Chuck’s expression darkens further, I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m being smug about it, getting away with my bullshit as easily as I have, as easily as I’ve been. Like I’m laughing in his face.
I’m not, really, but I’m not going to tell him that.
I make myself get up slowly, ignoring the cracking in my hip and the ensuing discomfort that trails its way down my thigh and through my muscles, and put my country hat back on my head. It’s deliberate, this slowness. Something that tells him that he hasn’t won over me, and I haven’t quite lost yet. Have a good day, I tell him with a nod. Then I give another nod to the spider-ant, too, up in the corner. Have a good day, Jerry, I think. Enjoy your food.
I must have really pissed him off, I think. When I check my watch, it reveals to me the sneaky truth in the high sun that only about forty-five minutes have passed. Forty-five minutes spent, wasting my time in the same office I do practically every month, hearing the same bullshit so often that I know all the words by heart and know which ones to tune out. Morality and ethics and law. You can’t just kill people for no reason. He says it like I go out of my way to find excuses to do so when the reality is I don’t. If fewer people pulled guns on me, maybe I wouldn’t be so quick to pull my own first.
It was only forty-five minutes, though, which surprises me. Usually these tirades last about two hours, or one and a half. Forty-five minutes, huh. I think either he was having a particularly rotten day or he got sick of me. Or maybe there are so many other cops losing their shit in the summer heat that his schedule’s too full to deal with me proper.
Either way, I take a few minutes in the washroom, splashing water over my face and scratching antsily at several days’ worth of stubble. It itches against my skin, feels wrong on my fingertips. I wash my hands afterwards, scrubbing dirt and grime. I go so far as to peel off my jacket, roll up my sleeves, and lather myself up to my spot-scarred elbows. The water’s lukewarm and then runs hot. Once that’s done, I run it lukewarm again in preparation for the oppressive heat outside.
I look at myself in the mirror and pause. I always look tired, I think. My eyes more often than not have that half-lidded, vague vibe to them, something that makes it seem like I’m rarely, if ever, paying attention to anything around me. ‘Aloof’ isn’t the right word. ‘Disinterested’ fits the bill more. Right now, though, it looks worse—dark and puffy circles form underneath my eyes, and they feel filmy underneath my fingertips. Forget about the developing scruff of a beard. Even without that, I’d look like shit. This is the kind of face that’d make a man want to punch his own reflection in the mirror.
I don’t punch myself, though. Not because I’m a better man than that, but because I don’t want to spend time picking glass out of my hand and dealing with blood for the rest of the day. Instead I rap my knuckle gently against the mirror, lean in, and look myself dead in my tired, grey-blue eyes.
“Dio del santo,” I scoff. “Fuck happened to you.”
I do it all over again—face, neck, hands, arms. It’s the closest thing to a shower that I’ve had all week. When I’m done, I drink straight from the tap, fill up my flask, and leave to grab some lunch.
There’s a Frittte a couple blocks down on the way back to Precinct 41, close to where a bow collector comes to a screeching halt, sparks falling and settling from the connector rail above. Usually after dealing with the Inspectorate General—or after the Inspectorate General is done dealing with me, depending on your perspective, I guess—this is where I go to grab a quick bite to eat on days where I’m going back to hitting the pavement. The tram’s just too convenient, even if I’m generally not a fan of mechanical transportation.
By the time I reach Frittte, my flask is empty again, I’m sweating like the pig that I am, and my brain feels woozy and muggy. I muddle my way through the shelves, mingling here and there and—oh, God, this is exactly the reason why you don’t send a hungry man to the supermarché. There’s just too many options to choose from, and I find myself stuck between a rock and a hard place because some of them, I know, taste good, some of them are filling, and most of them, I don’t actually have the pocket change to afford.
It’s as I’m deciding between a tuna fish sandwich and a meat-stuffed pumpkin bun that I hear him; slick sidewinder voice winding its way toward me after a faint commercial break in the otherwise-empty Frittte. I haven’t heard more than a few words out of him in years, but it’s imprinted in the back of my brain, knowledge awoken like some zombified sleeper agent built to kill when all the memory wants to do is rot in some long-forgotten corner.
“Welcome back to Channel 8, the only radio station in Revachol that gives you the news as it actually is without any beating around the bush. I’m Guillaume Bevy…”
“And I’m Gareth Morrand,” says Gareth Morrand, but I don’t care about him one bit, already tilting my head away, already pressing my fingers against the back of my ear and massaging to ease the staticky ache.
“And today, we’ve got a couple of breaking news stories that I’m sure everyone will be interested in—some of them in the papers, most of them not. As usual, we’ll be taking phone calls at the end of each segment to hear from our listeners. So, if you’re interested in that, keep this number in mind…”
I glance up at the counter, where the Frittte clerk, a teenage girl enjoying her summer vacation slaving away at the register, doesn’t even look up from the magazine she’s surely paid to read. She’s not paying attention to me in the very least.
But I’m hesitant—my hands don’t want to work like I want them to, even though it’d be easy to unclip my bag, slip a packet of food in, then just go up there and buy a pack of cigarettes. Didn’t find anything else? she’d ask, and I’d say no even though I can hear the plastic crinkling against my side. Aren’t you hot? she’d ask, looking at my jacket; Yeah, a little, but. I point at the rectangle stitched on my shoulder and smile. You know. The uniform.
“...heard that McCoy’s in with Internal Affairs again soon,” Bevy continues (I glare at the ingredient list in my hands, squinting through my headache), “because of his most recent shoot-out.”
“What’s the news about that kid, by the way?” Morrand asks after a moment. “Is he still in critical care?”
“Yeah.” I can almost see Bevy nodding along to it now, sunglasses blurred and polluted with the cheapest cigarettes you can get your hands on. Bevy and Morrand, alone in some kind of room, with a window open to let out the smoke. Or maybe not, maybe that’s not good soundproofing practice. “The shot just narrowly missed his femoral artery. According to the medical records, though, just a couple millimeters up, he probably would’ve bled out by the time paramedics came to the scene. He’ll be fine. One less notch under the Archetype’s belt.”
Morrand barks out a laugh while I shake my head. Typical of them to even think that I care about those notches. I never do—never did. I’ve long outgrown them, stopped dotting my ID with the number after I lost it the first time and had to get a replacement. Now the only thing I count is years. Cases. That’s the only thing that matters anymore in any line of work, I think. The only reason to take pride in the number of deaths you’re directly responsible for is to boast about how little blood you have on your hands.
I can’t boast about that. So I don’t really say anything, unless it’s to insinuate that I’m a danger to those around me. Unless I’m asked. Then it’s, oh, sixteen-oh-two, or something, I don’t know. It just feels like a nice number. I like how it forms on my mouth, don’t give a fuck how accurate it actually is. It’s been sixteen-oh-two for a while, according to me.
And then they talk about the Inspectorate General, about how the most I’ll probably get is a slap on the wrist and a send-off, about how the Inspectorate General is really just a stern, parental talking-to that just sends ne’er-do-well cops along their way. They’re kind of right, but it isn’t for lack of trying, I want to correct, some cops don’t care and the rat squad’s just tired of dealing with them. But I don’t because it’s not my place to say. It’s not as if they’d even hear me if I did. It’d just fall on deaf ears.
Besides, I wouldn’t want to give Bevy the privilege of inviting conversation.
They’re talking about donations, now, for one of their programs—the one that’s for people struggling with medical bills caused by the RCM’s weaponized incompetence. The kind of money that goes to people like that gangster kid I shot two days ago. I put down the pumpkin bun and fish out the folded piece of paper, unwrapping it carefully. How much of a slap on the wrist is it this time? Community service, or…
I huff out a laugh, stomach clenching, and shake my head down at it. It’s equal parts shock and dismay and the slow, steady crawl of this-may-as-well-happen. Resignation. With careful fingers, I fold up the paper into a rectangle, and then a neat little square, then slide it back as calmly as I would if I were putting away a grocery list. As calmly as a hungry man can stow a three hundred reál fine away in his pocket.
To help pay for the gang kid’s medical bills. As if it’s my fault the gangster kid had a gun and, magically, it disappeared.
I don’t know what to do.
Leave, I guess. Steal something from the work fridge. Go to sleep for a couple more hours before writing out a report, going home, and scrounging for shit to sell off to pawn shops or neighbors. Three hundred reál. I can’t afford this.
I stare at the shelves for a while like I’m looking for anything in particular, pick up the pumpkin bun again, and glance over at the cashier. She still isn’t looking at me, too busy nodding off to whatever her magazine is. And I could so easily slide this into my bag—again, there’s nothing stopping me—but I can’t because there is.
It’s G-Bevy, radio-show voice smooth over the sound waves, saying my name and broadcasting my existence for the world to see. And it’s like he’s speaking to me directly, expecting me to respond, like we’re in a recording booth and I’m sitting across from him. Next to him. Whatever. Like he’ll call me out, right here and now, the second I put this food in my bag, and half of Revachol will have another crime to attribute to me. Not just the resident serial killer of the bloody murder station, but a petty thief, too. Call security to see me out. Have you no pride as a cop? And on and on it goes.
I can imagine Bevy saying, and oh, look, the first donation is 300 reál from John McCoy! Guess he felt guilty about it, after all. Guess what, McCoy, it’s not enough. What about the other people you injured? What about the people you killed?
God, that’s the last thing I want to deal with right now.
I put the pumpkin bun back where I got it and limp my way back to the counter, careful not to let my hip roll too badly or else it’ll pop, pop, pop. It might even be painful. I don’t know. I’d like to take some drouamine to numb out the fuzzy edges of it. Numb out the fuzzy edges of my nerves, too. Smooth it all out like uneven beach sand. But I don’t like taking painkillers when I haven’t eaten recently, too concerned about fucking up my liver or my stomach for something like that. So when she asks if there’s anything I need, I point out my cigarettes instead.
These ones? she asks. No, I say, leaning over, the ones next to it. And as I do, I can see that stupid little radio, tinny cheap speaker settled next to where her ankle had been mere moments ago. Distinct voice, the knowledge of what the voices are speaking through—it makes it difficult to drown it out. Shootout outside an abandoned warehouse by the pier, nice, cool, fucking whatever. These? she asks. I nod, leaning back. Yes, those.
I take out a fiver, toss it onto the counter, and it’s just after the loud rattling of a cash register that I hear Bevy’s voice say, “Two thousand guns don’t just go missing along with two officers.”
Oh.
No.
No, I suppose they don’t.
I stare at the space above the radio, static crackling in my brain, trying to listen for more info. But the register closes just as loudly, and Bevy waves it off with a chuckle, like he’s fully aware that he’s got my attention and is teasing me for it. I’m not getting anything else out of him, goddamn it, piece of shit.
“Here’s your change,” she says, then glances over her shoulder; hears the radio and chuckles. “Oh, yeah, Bevy. I like him. Don’t you think he has such a sex-y voice?” She playfully draws out the word with the shuffling of her shoulders, leaning her arms back against the counter. I blink and glance at her. Try for a smile.
“Yeah,” I say, taking my cigarettes. “I guess. Have a nice day.”
I light a cigarette before I round the corner and duck into the shallow part of this Frittte’s neighboring alleyway to take out my gun, making sure that it’s loaded. When it is, I count out the bullets—one, two, three—then slide it back into my shoulder holster, where it’s safe and hidden under my jacket. I don’t realize that I forgot my change until I’m already walking to the tram. Don’t realize how badly my hip hurts until I’ve boarded.