[b]The Handlebar
Gotham City
1:34 AM[/b]


Marcus Driver pounded the shot glass against the bar. Booze coursed through his body. It tingled. Mark it: his third shot since getting off duty. The shots supplemented two beers. He was halfway to getting good and shitfaced. He caught the eye of a woman down the bar. Redhead, late 40's and dumpy. Might have been a looker twenty years, sixty pounds, and thousands of beers ago. What caught his eye was the shiner. Purple and yellow around her left eye. On the verge of healing. Ther shiner beckoned his interest. The shiner got his dander up. He made eyes at the man beside the redhead. Big and burly and with a long beard.

Driver's hard-on for wife beaters was GCPD lore. As a patrolman he would give parole violators with domestic violence beefs a choice: Be run in for their crime and go to jail no muss or fuss, or fight him one and one and walk away if they won. They always took the chance to fight, they always came away spitting blood and teeth. He topped out at 6'3 and 230 pounds. An all-state linebacker that got a football helmet in the knee his first year in college and had to drop out. GCPD after that. His size and strength made him a terror. He rose quickly, from patrol to plainclothes to detective. CID Robbery was where he made his name. He killed two men in the line of duty. Armed heist gone bad, the both of them. One bank robber he put a bullet right under his left eye from twenty yards out. The second, a shitbird that robbed a grocery store and took hostages, he blew his brains out from up close. Now he was in the MCU, working for Bullock and Whiskey Jim and given the chance to be something more than an enforcer. Flass wanted him for the mob squad. He said "Join me, I'll make the Underworld fear you like they should." Bullock offered something else. He said "Join me, I'll make you an honest to god detective." Slowly but surely he was learning how to use more than his fist to put people behind bars.

The anger and violence stemmed from the Old Man. The Old Man beat his momma like a dog day in and day out. Too small, he could never properly fight back. Driver was twelve when he decided he was going to kill the Old Man once and for all. Right after that he went splitsville, headed to parts unknown. Twenty years since then and now every woman beater he encountered was an ersatz Old Man. He took all his shit out on them, one beating at a time. 

"You got a problem, pal?"

The bearded man sized Driver up from across the bar. Driver stood and ambled over. The beer and booze warmed him, keyed him up and fueled his anger. He promised Bullock no more provocation of woman beaters. He kept his word for over three months. This was a tipping point. He felt close. He back down right now and keep his promise. The spirit was willing... but the flesh was weak.

"He beat on you, ma'am?"

"What business is it of yours what me and my old lady do?"

He made eye contact with he redhead and saw something in her eyes. Rather, a lack of something. It was a vacuum. An empty spot where something should be. The eyes told a story no amount of lying could. It revealed a lifetime of poor decisions that had been paid for in triplicate. 

Driver smiled. "How about we step outside?"

The man shrugged and stood. He was older than Driver, but they were almost the same height and weight. Driver had him beat barely.

The man flexed and said, "We can go that way if you want to, pal."

Outside in the parking lot, Driver put on a clinic. He one-two-three'd the man with left and right hooks. He drove the man's head against a car door. He kicked him in the side and left him on the ground as a whimpering heap. He bent down and got in close to the beaten man's ear.

"Touch her again and I will come back and kill you."

The man rolled onto his side and looked up at Driver, blood leaking from his mouth.

"You know who I run with, you piece of shit?! Jesters MC, the baddest biker gang in this goddamn city!"

"I run with a gang, too." He flashed his badge at the biker. "And we're badder."

He stood and walked towards his car. The redhead made eyes at him and thanked him. He ignored it. Women threw themselves at him after he beat the shit out of their abusive significant others, but he always turned them down. He didn't do it to get laid. He didn't do it because it was right or even because it was wrong. He did it because it was the only way he could get back what the Old Man took from him all those years ago: closure. A voice in the back of his head asked that if this was closure, then why did he keep doing it?

The phone in his pocket went off. A text from Charlie. Multiple 187's, MCU had the case and they were meeting in a few hours. Driver sat behind the wheel of his car and shook his head to sober up and get ready to get back to work.


[center]*****[/center]


[b]Gotham Central
2:10 AM[/b]


Jim's office on the top floor. Photos of Barbara on the desk. Everything else spartan and bare. Gone were Loeb's nicknacks and Grogan's hunting trophies. The message: A transient's office, a temporary way station. No matter the future, he would not be here permanently. Kane's conversation made that clear. 

"Sounds like you're screwed."

Sarah Essen flashed a wry smile. Jim felt his heart skip a bit at the sight of that smile. He and Sarah came up together in the PD. She was fresh out of the academy when he arrived from Chi-Town. They were drawn to each other. The spark between them always felt like it could be something more. He was a detective when those sparks turned out to be kindling, igniting a raging inferno that caused Jim his marriage and gave Sarah a reputation as a girl who slept around. The affair led to a fifteen years self-imposed exile from each other after that. They were dangerous together. Passions could not be contained. Just like the booze, Jim had the Thirst for Sarah. The years had tempered their passions. They could stand to be in a room alone together without ending up on the floor naked. Jim learned self-control and Sarah made her way in the department on her own merits. The spark still sat there between them. He was afraid to acknowledge it. So was she.

"Astute observation. You should try being a detective, you might make a good one."

He lit up two cigarettes and passed her one. They smoked in silence. Jim replayed the conversation with Kane over in his head. Threats, implied and real, came to the forefront. He relayed the scene to Sarah. Politics was not his milieu. Sarah acted as his guide and advisor on all related matters.

"You did good from what I could see," she finally said. "You impressed Kane with your summations, and you resisted to throw in with him. If you went along with it right away he wouldn't respect you. Guys like that... they kind of like being rejected at first. They're used to having everything handed to them, it turns them on to work for it."

"That's... disturbing, but insightful."

"Just remember to tread carefully from here on out. Kane acts as chairman of the Public Safety Committee. He controls the purse strings of the PD. He can make us all hurt."

Jim blew smoke and frowned and said, "I know. I just have trouble with this. I'm not a politician."

Sarah smiled. "Don't give me that. Every cop above patrol is a politician. You have to be a politician to make rank. Even being anti-political is being political, Jim. Your end-around with Batman was a political move and look where it got you. You say you're not political, you need to start getting political if you want to stay in this lovely office."

He stubbed his cigarette out in a glass ashtray and looked at her.

"I seem to recall you wanted to see me about something as well."

"There was a triple murder tonight in my district. When everything is shaken out it looks like it'll be drug related. I called up Bullock and requested the MCU take it. Flass wants his squad to take it. He appealed to me directly and, when I said no, when to Burke with a formal request."

"So you went one higher, bypassing the Deputy of Operations, and came right to me?"

Sarah shrugged. "The MCU reports directly to you, and it is a high priority case. Furthermore, I don't trust Flass. He only shows interest in something if there's a payoff. And like I said, you don't rise above patrolman without learning how to play the game."

"And nobody plays it quite like you."


[center]*****[/center]


[b]Major Crimes Squadroom
Northern Gotham
3:54 AM[/b]


"Where are we at on this murder?"

Harvey Bullock sipped coffee. The MCU squadroom: tiny and cluttered with files, photos, and case logs. A small office building smack dab in the middle of the industrial section of the city. The main bullpen held the four cubicles for the four detectives, Bullock's closed off office to the side in its own room. Away from Gotham Central and the Districts gave them breathing room. Walls had ears in the other buildings, here they could investigate in privacy. That led to rumors and innuendo. MCU was a rat squad, MCU was where all the ass-kissers went. Four men and one woman with a simple mandate: solve major cases fast and properly. Investigating any additional municipal corruption springing from the cases was secondary only, though plenty of crimes led that way. The city was so entangled together that cops, criminals, citizens, and politicians all blended int he same shade of grey.

Allen read from a notebook and said, "We've ID'd the three vics from the shooting. Walter, aka Lil Walter, Perkins. Kendrick Taylor. And Tasha Tatum. Perkins was a player in the eastside drug scene, Taylor was one of his dealers, and Tatum was Perkins' girlfriend. Coroners are still doing the autopsy, but time of death is believed to have been sometime between noon and nine PM."

Montoya said, "Cops were called to the scene after neighbors heard gunshots. The few eyewitnesses at the scene seen three men in balaclavas getting into a black SUVs and speeding off. No idea on the car's license plate, got an APB out on any stolen or abandoned black SUVs in the metro area. Best that we can figure is the three armed men came in through the front door and restrained the three victims. They were bound by their wrists and ankles and put on the floor. There are definite signs of torture on Perkins and Taylor's bodies, although Taylor less so. Cris found a hidden compartment in the living room just beneath the mantel. Techs found traces of narcotics inside of it. We're thinking it's Perkins' stash. It was empty."

Bullock said, "So they torture the dealers to get the information about their stash. They get the dope and or cash and then gun them all down."

"Shit," said Charlie Fields. "An eastside drug dealer gets robbed and murdered. That means half the goddamn city is a suspect."

Driver said, "I came up through eastern district and plainclothes units before I got my shield. The name is familiar. I never worked narco, but there were rumors about him. Rumors were that Lil Walter operated with GCPD sanction."

Bullock grunted and took a long sip off his coffee.

"Just what we need. Alright, Montoya is acting as primary on the case. Allen, you're secondary. Driver, Fields, and I will act as runners getting an much information we can about the victims and the drug scene on the eastside in general. This morning the three of us are going to hit central narco and the eastern district for information. Allen, canvass the area around the murder scene while Montoya goes to the morgue for details on the death. Sound good?"

A scatter of grunts and yeahs greeted Bullock. He shrugged.

"Let's get to it."