Gatac

  Sean hated bck tea, too. In fact, sitting at his desk and staring at the steaming cup in his hands, Sean seriously attempted to puzzle out what beverages he actually liked. Coming up with answers proved difficult. Tea was just coffee's more pretentious cousin and everything Sean hated about coffee could just as easily be said of tea. Soda was out, too cloying; diet soda was even worse, because Sean was one of the lucky people for whom every new miracle sugar repcement tasted like shit.1Yeah, I’m repping the Aspartame Haters Crew. As a trade-off, I can enjoy cintro. He thought he might like orange juice, in the abstract, but couldn't remember the st time he'd had a gss that wasn't too acidic, or too watery, or too…pulpy. He had no taste for beer or wine or any alcohol. And milk was just gross. So where did that leave him?

  Was he the type of guy who liked drinking water? How fucking sad was that?

  One thing Sean didn't hate so much were files, and with a long blink, he tore his attention from the cup and turned back to the papers spread on his desk. He tried to focus up, concentrate on the job, work the case — to be a good cop. On the menu was Robert Morrison's autopsy report (twice faxed, half read), CSU's workup on the warehouse shoot (which Anne, apparently, had cleaned up quite nicely) and…a DEA report on Venezue? What was that doing there? Sean slid the file out from under the mess and stared at it.

  Sticky note on the front: "CALL ME — Vera"

  "Hey, kid," Berkovitz said, and Sean almost dropped the file when his head whipped around to follow the sound; as it turned out, his partner had just exited Captain Whitton's office and was now on his way to a well-deserved sit-down at his desk. "How are you holding up?""I don't know," Sean said. "I mean, we're…we're good, right?""Yeah, we’re good," Berkovitz said, stealing a gnce at the file in Sean’s hand. "You meeting with Carmen?""Should I?" Sean said.

  Berkovitz shrugged.

  "There are worse ideas," he said."How familiar are you two, anyway?" Sean asked."We've crossed paths," Berkovitz said. "Before your time, kid.""No, no," Sean said, dropping the file back onto the file pile. "Back up. This, I gotta hear. You and Miss Law and Order, there's a past?"

  The phone on Sean's desk rang. It rang again, and it kept on ringing, and Sean kept on trying to not take note of this fact because his mind was not in a conceptual space that allowed for the possibility of someone giving enough of a shit about him to call him at work. But the phone in turn took no note of Sean's frame of mind and just cussedly kept on ringing, because obviously whoever was calling him was being utterly unreasonable about this. You let it ring three, four times, maybe five on the outside. If you didn’t reach someone by then, you fucking got the message that the conversation you wanted was not happening. Staying on the line beyond that just proved you were either entirely unfamiliar with the very basic concept of telephones or a major asshole.

  "Hang on," Sean said.

  He reached for the phone, at least acknowledging it existed and someone was trying to reach him, even if that someone was an asshole. Sean knew a couple of assholes and he wasn't particurly looking forward to talking to any of them. But getting the damn phone to stop ringing involved lifting the receiver anyway, so why not go on and make his day just that bit worse by getting yelled at for making someone wait? What better way to pass the time until the tea was cool enough to drink?2You don’t have to make your tea with boiling water. In fact, having the water too hot or steeping too long leads to overextraction and bitterness, same as it does with coffee. Having the water too cool poses sanitary problems, though. It’s a careful bancing act and if you’re a serious tea guy, you probably have a kettle with adjustable temperature so you can hit the ideal for every blend.

  “Detective Collins,” Sean said into the receiver.“Yeah, hey, it's me,” Ky whispered. “Hey, uh, you know, Ky. So you left your number and all, I’m at this payphone and — ”“Oh!” Sean said. “Oh, yeah, sure. Hey, Ky. What's up? How are you, is everything…you know, is everything okay? Do you need me to come pick you up? I mean, if you just want to talk, that's cool. You know I'm here for you, any time.”“Yeah, listen,” Ky said, “I gotta, like, tell you…I gotta tell you something, man, but I gotta know this is between us, yeah?”“Absolutely,” Sean said, reaching for a notepad and pen. “Absolutely, this is between us.”“Right,” Ky said. “I don't know what happened, but Anne just rolled through here, and man, she was PO'd, she was, like — ”“She’s with you?” Sean asked, while Berkovitz tensed in his chair.“No, she left, like, a couple minutes ago,” Ky said. “I'm scared for her, man. I've never seen her like this, she was hurt, but she was fired up, that look in her eyes like she was gonna, you know, she was all…I don't know. Man, I don't know, but it's not good. It's so not good.”“Ky,” Sean said, “I'm gd you called. You're concerned about her, so am I. You want me to help her, and I will, but I need to find her first.”“Yeah, that's not the problem,” Ky said. “Listen, she told me to call you. Man, I was gonna call you anyway, but she told me to call you and to tell you she was gonna return some files tonight. You…you know what that means. Right?”

  Sean said nothing.

  “Uh, Detective?” Ky asked.“And she just left?” Sean said.“Yeah,” Ky said.“Ky,” Sean said, “is there anything else you can tell me?”“Yeah,” Ky said. “You gotta stop her, man.”

  Sean interpreted that advice as an encouragement to sm the receiver back into the cradle.

  "Bring the car around," Sean said."Kid —" Berkovitz said."Just do it!" Sean said, gathering up the autopsy file and rushing off toward Whitton's office.

  Finally.

  Finally he felt power in him, an idea fit for action more than self-pity, and with that power thumping all the way up into his head he stomped down the length of the office, past coworkers and their stares. The door to Captain Whitton's office might as well not have existed at all for all it did to stop him marching in, and the thin cttering of the pstic blinds on the door was all the announcement he needed. Smming the door closed behind him, then, was overkill. But it certainly got Captain Whitton's attention.

  "I know what's going on," Sean said, having somehow gotten out of breath in twenty steps. "Simmons. I just got a call.""Well, don't keep me in suspense," Whitton said."Sidorov had his offices in the basement of a undromat," Sean said. "It's going down there tonight.""And what exactly is 'it'?" Whitton said."I don't know," Sean said. "I've got a theory, but I don't know. What I know is Simmons wants me there."

  Whitton's face seemed unreadable, existing somewhere in the regions between smirk and scowl, but he nodded.

  "She wants to link up with you again?" Whitton asked. "Turn herself in, maybe? Or maybe you could share your 'theory' with me, Sean.""I mean, Nikoi could be there," Sean said. “That’s a strong possibility.”Whitton exhaled. "Sean," he said, "would you please do me a favor and not go off half-cocked on any more of your adventures? We’ve got enough on our ptes already. Right now I need to know you're here and nothing's happening with you or to you or around you. This is not the time to be led by the nose into another fuckfest.""I get that, Captain," Sean said, "but, right now, what is our pn to catch Simmons? What's our pn to catch Nikoi Dolzhikov?""We don't have one," Whitton said. "You don't seem to have one, either. It’s a little hard to hunt down a criminal only you seem to know about. But you already barged in, I’m listening, so try to convince me.""Well," Sean said, "we can py defense, sure, we can put the fix in, sure, we can lie our asses off about what happened and settle for the couple of bodies already in the morgue. But you know Vera will not settle for that. Best case, she goes around us. Worst case, she goes through us." He took a step closer. "We need to give her something.""And you think we can get that certain something at that certain undromat," Whitton said."Yeah, by walking me into the trap," Sean said. "The phrasing she reyed was too ambiguous to draw a firm conclusion, but it was deliberate. She wants me guessing. She's dangling the possibility of Dolzhikov in front of me to sucker me into an ambush.""She's had plenty of chances to kill you before," Whitton said. "Why now?""Back then, we were working together and I was still useful to her," Sean said. "And when we split, she was trying hard not to let it show, but she’s obviously hurt. She knew it was a bad time and pce to try to take me on. But out there, she's got the advantage. She can arrange an ambush to her liking.""And your pn is to walk right into her ambush," Whitton said. "That's a very special kind of bravery you have there, Sean.""Have you read the Morrison autopsy?" Sean asked."What does that have to do with your argument?" Whitton said."Robert Morrison's body wasn't moved," Sean said, dropping the file on Whitton's desk like a boat anchor. "No bruises, no other signs of violence. And I don’t think he was sleeping on the couch just so. He cooperated.""I still don’t see the relevance," Whitton said. He made no move to pick up the file."It was her, Captain," Sean said. "Simmons killed Morrison.""She may have," Whitton said, “only we can’t prove it. And I don’t care about linking her to Morrison — we already have her on the Bay Harbor kills.”"Not the point!" Sean said. "What matters is how she did it." Sean's eyes widened in rough proportion with his jaw as he expined. "All bets are off when she fights. And God knows what she does with the criminals she goes after. But that's not what's waiting for me, I know it. Morrison's death was as nice as she could make it. Guilt, Captain. If she just wanted him dead, she could have done it without him ever seeing it coming, but she needed to talk to him. She had to figure out what he knew about the cocaine deal with the Colombians. But then she couldn't leave a witness, either. And, to her mind, he didn't deserve to be killed. You haven’t talked to her, you don’t know how wrapped up she is in being…better than the people she works for. So she tried her best. She arranged it as well as she could. Came in at the right time and date when he was alone, made a careful entry, took control of the whole situation. She made it neat and nice, two to the chest for an open casket funeral. She made sure Newark PD was there before his family so they wouldn't come home to a dark house with a dead body. And I'm betting it'll be the same with me. I mean, not quite like that, but…she has to get rid of me, Captain. I'm part of her current problem. She can’t exactly walk in here, can she? Not without, you know, killing a lot of people. She’s not crazy enough to try. But still, the ball’s in her corner. She has to get rid of me. If she can help it, if she can arrange it at all — and that’s what she’s trying to do now, arrange it to her liking — it'll be nice."

  Whitton didn't nod.

  "You said you needed this case closed," Sean said. "I can close this case, Captain. I mean, best case scenario she already wants to turn herself in, but if this is a trap, we can turn her trap around on her.""Can we," Whitton said. "Who's to say you won’t get popped from a rooftop, like Sidorov?""No," Sean said. "No, she won't do that. One, Raikov’s not gonna be backing her up again, I’m pretty sure. She'll want to handle me by herself, see it’s done exactly right. Two, it's not her style. She's up close and personal. Three, she'll want to talk to me first, make a little speech, expin herself, try to convince me of…whatever. While she does that, Joe fnks her. She’s reasonable. She’ll take the out, if we give her one.""That’s not what happened at Bay Harbor," Whitton said.“They were going to kill her,” Sean said. “Not the same situation. Look, I can’t tell you how I know but I know.”“You believe,” Whitton said.“Knowledge is justified true belief,” Sean said. “Well, actually —”3I’m sparing us all Sean’s rambling attempt to expin the Gettier problem. But, basically, it is possible (in a specifically contrived scenario) to hold a belief that is both factually true and also justified by your own observations that, nevertheless, would seem to not count as true knowledge, by arriving at the same result through a different mechanism than you thought via means you did not observe. Edmund Gettier set off a long argument with that in 1963. Some say he’s right and JTB is not a sufficient definition of knowledge, some say his ‘problem’ is so out there that it doesn’t matter, and I imagine most of us don’t care too much either way.“You can’t justify it and we have no idea if it’s true,” Whitton countered. “Here’s the kicker, Sean. You might well be right about her psychology, let’s grant that. But what’s more relevant here is what she’s thinking about you. And that’s where you don’t give yourself a lot of credit. You think she thinks you’ll leave your brain on the desk and come to her all alone.”“Well, we’re about to sell a lot of people on the idea that I don’t know what I’m doing,” Sean grumbled.“Is that the impression you left her with?” Whitton asked. “What makes you think she won’t second-guess you showing up conspicuously alone and blow your whole pn out of the water?”"I can't expin it, okay?" Sean said. "I just…I know her. I know her better than anyone else in this whole damn precinct. You said it yourself, this is as close as anyone has gotten to her. So I know she's not just gonna shoot me in the back and I know she’ll take a chance if it means she gets to talk to me face to face. This isn’t a chess match type of situation. She wants to say goodbye, in person. And if I show up there, by myself, she'll talk to me. Plenty of time for Joe to come in from where she couldn’t have seen him, if I can stall her long enough. I’m pretty good at that. And she’s tired of running. She’s tired of this mess. I know it, too. She’ll flip if we can…expin it to her the right way.""Let's be clear here," Whitton said. "You've gambled your life more than once for this, Sean. It's not that I don't appreciate a hard charger, and you've managed to get through this so far, but you ought to take a hint." Staring down Sean got him nowhere, so he continued. "And even if I buy your read of the situation, which I'm still not sure I do, how exactly do you pn to expin this to Carmen?"Sean shook his head. "After the fact, because we've got jack shit right now, Captain," Sean said. "Nothing except a lot of dead Russians. If there's any chance we can bring in the one person who killed most of them, and bring her in alive, before she realizes she needs to stop 'solving problems' and skip town, then I think we should take the chance. We flip Simmons and that's it, we win, we get everyone involved. I mean, we figured out the warehouse, we figured out Bay Harbor, we'll figure this out. But we've got to have our hands on the prize this time. We've got to have Simmons, or frankly, we're fucked."

  Whitton nodded. He wasn’t agreeing with Sean, per se, just recognizing where things stood.

  "Sean," he said, "what do you want me to do here, huh? Do you want me to pat you on the head and say 'Good speech, Detective, go for it'? Or do you want me to call in a few of your colleagues to wrestle you into a holding cell for your own good? Is this a call to action or a cry for help? You standing here talking at me makes about as much sense either way.""I need this," Sean snarled. "I mean, I need to do this, Captain. I've got this. I can do it." He gathered his breath. "Look, I'm not…I'm not asking your permission here. You don’t have to say ‘yes’ on the record or off the record or whatever. I know it’s out there and not the safe py, but if you think you need to have me detained, you'd better do it quick, because I'll be out of here in a minute. This is on me, not on you. I just thought…I thought I'd run it by you, see what you think.""I think it's the wrong move," Whitton said. "Sure, Simmons is a loose end. But I've got a feeling that's gonna fix itself soon.""No, I'm gonna fix it, Captain, before there are more bodies," Sean said. "I'm gonna fix it. I'm gonna bring her in. We won't have to settle for cleaning up after another bloodbath. We'll have a closed case and all the dirt we could want on what's left of the Thieves.""So that's how it is," Whitton said. "Well, Sean, you go and do what you gotta do, then. I won't waste more of your time trying to talk you out of it. But if there's one piece of advice you ought to take from me —""Sure," Sean said.

  Whitton scooted his chair back from the desk and unlocked a drawer. He pulled it open and looked inside, considering the options again. Then he reached inside and retrieved Sean’s service revolver from within. He weighed it in his hand as Sean looked on, frozen. After a few seconds of that, Whitton put it on the desk and pushed it across to Sean. Sean grabbed it and inspected it - no, not his revolver. Same type. Mutited serial. No way to expin it away, if he got caught with it.

  "Shoot first," Whitton said.

  Sean rushed down the stairs, doing that bent-knee minesweeper walk at fast forward, allowing him to skip down steps instead of stepping on them, all guided by his right hand on the handrail. Good thing he did it, too; if he had taken the elevator, he might have felt tempted to pull the Beretta from the back of his waistband and check on it, and that would have been a very awkward outcome. He spotted Carmen Vera waiting in the lobby, and she turned her head toward the elevator when it pinged open. Was she there to ambush him? For a moment, Sean considered just keeping his momentum going and slipping out past her, but then she turned around, saw him and made it two for two on interceptions.

  "Detective," she said, like she hadn't been waiting for him. "If you could —""Sorry," Sean said, trying to go past her. "Gotta run."

  That just got him an ADA walking beside him.

  "The file, Detective," she said."Huh?" Sean said. "Oh, yeah, the autopsy. Saw that.""The other file," Vera said. "Listen, Detective, I'm willing to overlook certain —"

  Sean pced his hand on the door, even remembered to push the handle all the way down this time, and pulled at the door — only for Vera to push against the door.

  "Do you mind?" Sean said."Two minutes, Detective," Vera said, meeting his eyes. "Two minutes and then you and Joe can — whatever you're it is you're doing.""Sorry," Sean repeated. "No time.""Detective —" Vera said."No time," Sean said.

  Vera stepped back and threw her hands in the air. Sean only noticed the part where she was no longer standing in his way, so he pulled the door open and got the hell out.

  Outside the six-four, Berkovitz had brought the car around and already moved over to the passenger seat. Sean climbed in quickly, reached for the keys out of reflex despite the engine already running, then switched on the headlights and put the car into drive.

  "So, where to?" Berkovitz asked."A pce," Sean said. "I know where Simmons is. We're gonna catch her. Bring her in.""Yeah, sure, the two of us," Berkovitz said. "Maybe tell me before you drag me along, kid. I woulda packed a couple of Marines."“Oh, now you got backup on call?” Sean sniped.“That’d be nice, wouldn’t it,” Berkovitz said. “I don’t know. Could’ve made some calls, at least get the ‘no’s and the ‘fuck you’s on the record. Anything’s a better pn than going after her alone.”"She's expecting me," Sean said. "She's not expecting you.""If you say so," Berkovitz said. "Carmen give you any trouble?""No," Sean said. "Did she try to stop you, too?""Nah," Berkovitz said. "She knows better.""So, you wanna let me in on the story with you two?" Sean asked."Yeah, sure," Berkovitz said. "Tell you all about it, kid — when you're old enough.""Fine," Sean said. "I'm just gonna assume it was wild and passionate.""Why don't you assume some silence, kid?" Berkovitz said."Oh, I'm sorry," Sean said. "I thought our sex lives were fair game now, partner.""Yeah, okay," Berkovitz said. "You and your puppy-dog eyes for Simmons had it coming, but okay, you got me there. Don't think of Carmen that way, though. Bad enough I did. She did nothing wrong. That's all you gotta know.""Really," Sean said."Since when do you care about my private life?" Berkovitz said. “Kid, you don’t even know my birthday.”"You’re right, there’s a lot I don’t know about you," Sean said. "But it doesn’t have to stay that way, Joe. Twenty-minute drive to the scene and here we are, the two of us, in the same car.""Here we are," Berkovitz said. "Story stays in this car. You got it?""I got it," Sean said. "So, you and Vera?""It was all me, no Carmen," Berkovitz said. "If I’m gonna talk about someone, it ought to be Ethel.”“Your ex-wife,” Sean said.“Nothing ex about that,” Berkovitz said. “We’re separated, not divorced. Believe it or not, kid, I'm not so good with women. Ethel and me wasn't right. I wasn't ready to love her. How do you love the most beautiful woman in the world? I didn't know what I was doing. I was just a scrawny Russian kid who stayed up all night practicing to say 'You are pretty' until I sounded like Chuck Connors.""That's not who I would have picked, but okay," Sean said. "You practiced the line a lot, huh?""Still shocks people when I tell them I'm from the mothernd," Berkovitz said. "I guess I just leaned into it, school and movies and everything. I practiced a lot of lines. Hey, I was in America, I wanted to be an American. Russia sure didn't want me, I couldn't go back, no family, no friends, just — I just wanted to forget it. And Ethel was a good way to forget it. She’s a good gal. Made me feel like a good guy.""What is she like?" Sean asked."Ethel?" Berkovitz said. "Well, I guess I can sum her up. Ethel isn't so complicated. Now I don't mean she’s dull, you know! But, she isn't complicated. She loves the rollercoasters, still does. She dragged me up and down Broadway, we had to see every show at least once. And she does 175 words per minute steno, kid, that's nothing to sneeze at.""That's pretty good," Sean said."Yeah, you try that," Berkovitz said. "I don't know, maybe I was a good catch, too, once upon a time. Maybe I was exciting. Young cop, neat blues, right pce right time for a purse snatcher.""Her hero," Sean said."Uh huh," Berkovitz said. "Well, anyway, that’s how we met, she gave me her number, and I didn't exactly have a lot of other things happening in my life, so…I went after her. Man with a pn. I must have impressed her, maybe she wanted to be impressed by me. Maybe she saw it as a sign how we met. Well, I tell you, kid, never marry the ones you save. You both take too much for granted.""Did you fight?" Sean said."Actually, no, but that didn't make it easier," Berkovitz said. "Ethel was — is wonderful. Loveliest woman you'll ever meet, I swear. The only thing she did wrong was being too stubborn to leave me. She stuck it out with me, watched her shining hero turn into a bitter asshole, never spoke up, never compined, no matter how much of her life I wasted. And I wish she had compined, you know? I don't know if I would've taken it well, but…we could have had a chance to try and fix things. But we didn't. We didn't talk. We had nothing nice to say, so…we said nothing. Ripping pages off a calender ain’t no way to run a marriage, kid. But that’s what it turned into, year after year, you feel the love and romance go down the drain, you wonder if you ever really had anything and pissed it away, or if you never should've gone down that road to begin with. But we stuck it out. We had a stubborn streak in common. Fighting, shouting, getting a divorce — we just aren't like that. When you step into the temple and sign the ketubah, it means something. Still does to us.""I'm sorry," Sean said. "And Vera, you —""Carmen, yeah," Berkovitz said. "I don't know how it happened, exactly. I'm saying yeah, she's pretty, was even prettier fresh from w school, but I wasn't looking for pretty girls. Why would I? I had the prettiest already. Wasn't looking at all, or at least I thought I wasn't. Somehow I ended up being the guy she talked to in the department. I was safe, you know? Stable marriage, mid-40s guy, not one of those slick hotshots who wanna py grabass and collect digits. And she was just…well, you ever meet somebody who’s actually alive?"

  Sean nodded. He didn't say anything, but he nodded.

  "That was Carmen," Berkovitz continued. "She was running on a nuclear reactor or something, always on the ball, always in the fight, no matter where or when. You just gotta admire her. It felt amazing just looking at her stepping into the ring again and again to try to get some justice done. You know how she is, that intense thing? She's actually mellowed out since I met her. Back then, she wasn't any good at picking her fights. It pushed a lot of people away from her.""But it attracted you?" Sean asked."I guess," Berkovitz said. "I don’t know. I wouldn’t swear this was it. But you get to a point in life where you feel like you've just used up everything, and then…you see someone who hasn't. And I'm telling you, when I started hanging around more, bringing takeout for those all-nighters, talking about Ethel and Broadway shows on our lunch breaks — I don't know if she clocked me being lonely, or trying to make her feel less lonely. But I must have come across like someone…retable. She didn't push me away." Berkovitz stared ahead. "She didn’t see I was sweet on her. I mean, I didn’t see it! Ethel did, though, and that’s how it all came down on our heads. And after Ethel left…it feels wrong to say we broke it off, because we had nothing going on, but we…we both agreed to keep some distance. And so far we managed to keep it. And that’s the whole story.""Bought the ticket, didn't get to ride," Sean mumbled."Now that's a real asshole thing to say, kid," Berkovitz said."I mean —" Sean said."You mean what?" Berkovitz said. "What's your excuse for saying that? What's your excuse for thinking that?""…I don't know," Sean said. "I just…ugh.""What?" Berkovitz asked."I had to talk down two cops at your house after a little old dy called them on us, you know, after Anne and I went in," Sean said.“Hoohan and Janda,” Berkovitz said. “Well, that’s at least one cop between them.”“You know about them?” Sean asked.“Why do you think I came looking for you?” Berkovitz countered. “They called me right after they left, wanted to make sure you were on the level.”“Then you know what happened,” Sean said. “I’m sorry.”“Maybe I know, maybe I don’t, maybe I wanna hear your side of the story," Berkovitz said. "Words, kid. You're always fpping your gums without getting to the part where you say something. So stop saying ‘sorry’ and tell me what happened.""I mean," Sean said, "I mean I pyed it like you were letting me use your house as a fuckpad, okay? And I said Anne was — you know. Paid bor. That's how I pyed it.""Wow," Berkovitz said."That’s not all," Sean said. "They…they implied — they were jackasses about it. Okay?""No," Berkovitz said. "Not okay. Keep talking.""Look, Joe," Sean said, “you don’t wanna hear this.”“Pretend I do,” Berkovitz said. “Come on.”

  Sean sucked in some air through his teeth. This was his secret breathing technique, his kiai. If done right, no defense.

  “They called you ‘Joe Dickless’,” Sean said.Berkovitz said nothing.“I’m sorry,” Sean said. “I didn’t want to say it, I mean I told you you wouldn’t want to hear it —““That’s all?” Berkovitz asked.“That’s all — what do you mean, that’s all?” Sean said. “I mean, the implication —““Can you do me a favor, kid?” Berkovitz said. “You’re sucking all the air out of this car. And I’d like to keep breathing, if it’s alright with you.”“…okay,” Sean said.“Look, I’m gonna make this simple,” Berkovitz said. “Fuck ‘em for saying that. Guess I’m gonna need a new bar to hang out…after I set these assholes straight.""I'm sorry," Sean said.“That’s never meant less than now,” Berkovitz said. “Actually, I’m gonna need another favor from you, kid. Can you pretty please with a cherry on top stop with the ‘I’m sorry’ crap? It’s starting to hurt.” He exhaled. “You know what beats being sorry? Being better. Like, what’s the deal with the paid bor py? Is that your go-to?”"No!” Sean said. “No, I was…I was pretty fucked up by everything, I wasn't thinking, I just, I went with it, that's what I did!" More sharp breaths. He’d flubbed it but it didn’t mean he’d stop trying. "I just wanted to get rid of them, I didn't…I didn't want to stand up and cause a scene and have Anne — have Simmons decide I'm taking too long or leaving witnesses or whatever fucking excuse she was waiting for to kill them in front of me. Okay? That's what she told me, afterward. I mean, okay, I get being pissed about the prostitute thing, I get being pissed off, but she told me…she told me if I tried to stop her leaving, she'd kill me and she'd kill those two guys and she'd kill anyone else trying to stop her. And I believed her, Joe. I…I believed her, and I let her get away, and now…now I gotta find a way to fix it."

  Berkovitz nodded. Sean did nothing.

  "I’m gonna tell you some secrets, Sean," Berkovitz said. "Real wisdom of ages, so listen good. One, it ain’t even that life isn’t fair. It’s that it ain’t proportionate, either. Sometimes you get into a bad situation and sure enough it’s your fault, you’re fine with it being your fault, but the shit you get for it just keeps piling on. Like not doing what you did was the lynchpin holding your life together and you pulled it and now everything’s falling apart. That can really do a number on a guy.""Yeah," Sean said.“But it’s an expnation, not an excuse,” Berkovitz said. “You get what I mean?”“…yeah,” Sean lied.“It’s okay if you don’t,” Berkovitz continued. “The main thing is, when things are going to shit, you gotta keep your head. The more you feel like you gotta say or do something, the worse an idea it probably is. Take a breath and think real hard before you make your next move.”

  Silence.

  “Two, you always do what you think is right because that’s the best you can do, and if you do it and keep doing it, that’s what matters,” Berkovitz expined. “You give what's yours to give, and when people want to give you something, that's fine, but don't try to take from them what they don't wanna give." He took a breath. "Now what you said about buying a ticket, that is shit, and you ought to realize it's shit, and you don't say it no matter what you thought you meant by it or how angry you are or whatever, you get it out of your head so it never again comes out of your mouth," he expined. “There's no 'do ten nice things for a girl, get one free fuck' rewards card. You get that, right?"4Watch out for falling anvils."Yeah," Sean said. "I'm sorry. I should…I shouldn't have said that." He paused. “Shouldn’t have done a lot of things.”"And that makes three: you are not as smart as you pretend to be," Berkovitz said. “Big whoop. Nobody is. You wanna get to the end of the road without walking it, welcome to the club. The road’s a long slog, believe me, there are plenty of nice vistas if you’re lucky but it’s long any way you walk it. There’s no skipping it. And there’s a difference between the shit the world gives you and the shit you give yourself. You can’t control the first, but you can try to cut down on the second. Get right with yourself, the rest of the world takes care of itself.”

  Sean mulled it over for a few moments.

  “Where’s your wife now?” he asked."Ethel moved to Pittsburgh, she's got family there," Berkovitz said. "I call her, birthdays and Passover, and we…we talk. We talk a lot. More now than we used to, actually. It ain't all tender heart-to-heart, but it's good to hear her voice no matter what she's saying. And I tell her every time, listen, you know if you ever wanna come back to the city, you take the house and I'll move, or I can sell it and send you half, you deserve at least that." He chuckled. "She’s got so many ways of saying 'no'.”“…you still love her,” Sean said.“Yeah, I do,” Berkovitz said. “But that ain’t enough. I didn’t do right by her and it ain’t on her to forgive me for it. And even if she does…she’s better off living her life away from me.”"You know," Sean said, "I don't know how much my opinion is worth these days, but…it sounds like you’re doing the right thing for her. Letting her go.""Yeah, well," Berkovitz said. "It didn't feel like it then. Still doesn't. But what does doing the right thing even feel like, huh? You learn that in college?""I don't know," Sean admitted. "It feels…right?"“Brilliant,” Berkovitz said.“I’m guessing,” Sean said. “I don’t know.”"Maybe it does," Berkovitz said. "Maybe it really does, when you do something really right. I don't know either, I'm still figuring it out. But I know it's easy to confuse it with feeling good. Three shots in on a Friday night at Ludwig's and talking shit with the boys about the creeps we put away that week, I start feeling pretty good, or maybe I just stop feeling bad. But a gss for every fucking time you kept your cool and did your job instead of putting some little shit’s head through the wall, that ain't right.""You ever tried quitting?" Sean said. “Drinking, I mean.”"Said I would, sure, tried, no, if I'm being honest," Berkovitz said. "I'm Russian, kid. Built-in excuse. Guess I’m in the middle of another half-assed attempt. I got rid of all the vodka in my house. Gave it to the Captain, he’s got more use for it. But what I'm saying is, doing the right thing's got nothing to do with how happy or how miserable it makes you. I gotta believe that, I think I've been doing better since I started believing that, since I…since I tried to think more. I don't manage it too often, but I'm getting better. You just gotta…you gotta try to do right by the people in your life, Sean. That's all I'm saying.""Yeah," Sean said. "…thank you for talking some sense, Joe. And, uh, sorry for prying.""Cheaper than therapy," Berkovitz said. "And I'm…for what that's worth, all the crap behind your back was just that. Crap. You know, I've been preaching at you to do the right thing for a good long while and I know I didn't do that here, I just…I thought I was doing the right thing for all of us, figuring the less you know, the less this whole mess is gonna be on you, but now I'm thinking, if I had been straight with you from the start, and not let you do all this on your own — I just let you do it because I thought you might learn something. I thought it'd be a good thing for you to get to see how things work.""So, letting me screw up was 'for my own good'?" Sean said. "Has anything actually good ever come out of that line of thinking?""I got nothing," Berkovitz said. "You read all the books, you tell me.""Nope," Sean said."Well, then I guess I just messed up," Berkovitz said. "I never thought too much about where this might go. I underestimated the situation. And if I hadn't, if I had been there with you and pumped the brakes earlier and talked this through with you and the Captain, you might not have made some of those moves that got you into all that hot water.""Or cold water," Sean said.

  Berkovitz chuckled.

  "You were thinking it," Sean said."Well, you said it, not me," Berkovitz said.

  Silence.

  "Okay," Sean said. "I'm…we're gonna have to work on us. But all that's past, yeah? No use whining about it now.""Yeah," Berkovitz said."I did what I did," Sean said. "I gotta wear it.""Yeah," Berkovitz said."So all we can do now is try our best to fix this mess," Sean concluded."Yeah," Berk said. "That's why I'm here.""Right," Sean said.

  Three blocks away from the undry, they stopped in a supermarket parking lot to prepare. Trunk cracked open, vests on, service shotgun retrieved. Then back into the car, Sean up front, Berkovitz under the bnket in the back seat. They were done talking.

  Same spot across the street from the undry. Sean stopped the car, killed the engine and completely forgot how to get out of the car. He just stared, shoulders straight but head turned, at the undry. The signs were turned off, no light inside, front door locked. Just yesterday — just yesterday they'd been here because he thought he might find a clue in there that would let him win. Now all he had left to look for was closure. The paralysis lifted from him, he opened the car door and stepped out onto the empty street, vest and shotgun on full dispy. The cold evening air made his teeth hurt when he sucked in a breath, and through it all he found himself wondering why he believed this would work. The best and also least reassuring expnation he could muster was that gamblers just kept on gambling. Flip a coin enough times, it has to come up heads eventually, right? He was due for being right, wasn't he?

  He knew it didn't work that way.5Gambler’s Falcy is believing that certain iterated tests have ‘memory’ wherein getting Outcome A in one iteration raises the odds of Outcome B in the next, i.e. that coin was heads five times in a row, it’s due to be tails! Now, the likelihood of certain events (Will this stone break through the window? What about the next one?) does depend on what happened before, but (fair) coins and dice don’t have a memory. Their outcomes are statistically independent and the odds are the same for every iteration. It may not look or feel like it in the short run, as you’ll see local series that look non-random, but the average result of such tests eventually does revert to the expected value in rge numbers of test iterations — as described by the aptly-named Law of Large Numbers.Now, if you’ve just seen a coin flipped 99 times and have it come up tails every time, you may want to question whether the coin toss is actually fair, but assuming it is, there’s no hidden correction factor that tries to break the streak. It’s still 50:50 on heads or tails come next toss. (Bck or red in roulette isn’t — remember there’s 0 and sometimes 00 on the wheel, too, making up the house edge.) However, that’s just in real life. Ever pyed X-COM and have your pns screwed up because one of your soldiers missed a shot that had a 95% chance to hit? It just feels unfair, even though by raw numbers, it should happen every one in twenty shots. And you take a lot of shots, as one does in a tactics game, so it’s just bound to come up. Some videogames actually do work with deliberate Gambler’s Falcy mechanics for this reason, upping the chance of success after several failures without telling the pyer. It’s an attempt to provide a satisfactory feeling of chance to the pyer without inconveniencing them too much.Humans just suck at judging probabilities in general and this is one of the many, many ways this manifests.

  He walked toward the undry one step at a time, but once he got to it, nothing in the world could have stopped him. Shotgun butt applied to the windowed front door shattered the gss easily enough, then a kick colpsed the pane into the shop, enough for him to climb through the hole. Ilya and his crew had never bothered to secure the inviting undry storefront because they had never imagined anyone would be reckless enough to come in through the front, had never imagined there would not be someone to watch their secret base of operations, had never imagined they'd all be fucking dead.

  To be fair, Sean hadn't either. Failures of imagination all around.

  Like the homes of so many recently deceased, the pce was eerily like Sean had st seen it, everything still in its pce. Washed undry in pstic covers hung for pickup, insofar as this establishment had ever had actual regur customers, the damn bead curtain, the cash register locked…the locks! Sean stepped behind the counter and felt for the drawer with the keyring. Well, for once, he was right: the keyring was still in there, including the key to the basement. But if it was still here, then maybe Anne wasn’t down there waiting for him. Maybe she wasn’t here at all. Then again, maybe she was waiting for him to go down there. She had mentioned the files from down there, and Sean wasn’t done grasping at that particur straw. Sean seized the keyring and took one st look at the busted door. The winter air blew in his face from outside, like the city itself spping him awake, and with a grimace, Sean turned to walk into the back. He brought the shotgun up against his shoulder and racked the pump, ker-chunk, one of the few 100% reliable things left to him. With gritted teeth, Sean walked toward the bead curtains. Sidestep to avoid getting too close to the frame where she might ambush him. Take a moment to look into the dark. Then he pushed the gun forward, parting the curtain at the side closer to the wall with the muzzle, and took a single step forward, shotgun pressed right against his shoulder. Another step, bump the light switch with his left elbow.

  Nothing. Nobody. The back was clear.

  Sean swiveled his body to the right, scanning the undry room for hiding pces, but after a few seconds of this he felt himself rex, his guts no longer feeling the danger his brain insisted had to be there. Clearing the back room took about as long as getting through the curtain, and every shadow searched further dropped his guard and sped his steps. Check the back door: locked. Where the hell was she? Sean’s eyes fixed on the door to the stairway. The truth was hiding just behind it. He knew that. He couldn’t avoid it further, had nothing to gain from deying it, and even he was only capable of so much hesitation. He stepped up to it, put the key in the lock and turned it. Door opened, shotgun raised, two deep breaths. Then Sean went for it.

  There’s an art to rushing down stairs without holding onto the rail, and while Sean had been brought down one or two pegs on most of the things he thought he was good at, nobody could take from him the mastery of the quick tactical descent. He all but ran down the steps, sure-footed as a mountain goat, and within two seconds he was at the bottom behind a pilr, shotgun switched to the left shoulder for better cover, scanning the basement. Just the same old tables, the same old lights, the same old room as yesterday.

  The office, maybe?

  Sean had almost rexed entirely when he walked into the room proper. More and more, this was feeling like a distraction, but — would she do it? Just pin lie to him to get him off her back? She might, but then again, maybe she had simply left information in the office for him to find. It was a pce she could be reasonably sure only Sean would go looking, after all. His gut tensed when he thought about what she might have left him, though. Evidence? A couple of bodies? A bomb wired to the office door?

  Whispers. Whispers behind the other door. The door Sean hadn’t gone through, the one that had stayed locked, the one Anne had steered him past without even letting him wonder what was behind it. Back then, it had been quiet. The whispers were new. Deep breath. Sean knew he had to open the door. Sean knew he needed his weapon ready for it. He had already chambered a round upstairs — right? Another deep breath. Sean brought the shotgun up, put his trigger finger well away from the trigger and onto the action release, then pushed it down and brought the pump back. The loading port gave him a gnce at the chamber and the shell inside. Okay, loaded. Sean brought the pump back forward until it locked up again.

  Gasping and chatter from inside the room for a few seconds, then deathly silence.

  “NYPD!” Sean shouted. “Step away from the door and keep your hands where I can see them!” With no further response from inside the room, he tucked the butt of the shotgun into the pit of his right arm, then fished for the keyring and started trying keys against the lock. He got it on the second try — not that many keys on the ring, after all. He took another deep breath and pulled the door open, stepping behind it to stay covered. He hooked his left foot in front of the door to keep it open as his left hand grabbed the shotgun by the pump. He spun on his left foot, putting the shotgun through the door while keeping his body behind the wall.

  There were women inside and none of them had seen fit to shout in arm at the sight of the shotgun. With the light shining in from the big room, Sean could more or less make out a dozen of them at first gnce, sitting on bunk beds with their heads bowed down and their arms up. Sean saw them shiver, saw their dirty clothes, and fucking hell, the stench of it. But nobody moved, nobody cried, nobody looked up. Sean felt his shotgun droop down again. Now the extra light switch on the outside made sense. He reached out to flip it, and with cruel immediacy, the ceiling light turned on, casting a sickly yellow glow over the room, a glow the women flinched away from. Even as a small part of Sean dispassionately confirmed the headcount — 13, actually, didn’t see the small one cowering in the back in the twilight — the bigger part of Sean had to look at them and listen to one of them start to mewl and catch them gncing up at him when he looked away, only to immediately cast their head down and squeeze their eyes shut when he turned to them again.

  He was a man with a gun, and Sean had never felt so bad about it as he did in that moment.

  “It’s okay,” Sean said, clicking the safety of his shotgun on — creating a new round of flinches. Sean lowered the gun, wishing he had a sling for it, and maneuvered it backwards into his waiting left hand, until only his raised right hand and face was showing from behind the door. “It’s okay,” he repeated. “NYPD, I’m a cop.” After a moment’s thought, he added “Politseyskiy.” He stepped into the open, tapping his right hand on his chest. “Ya politseyskiy.” He even reached for his badge and pulled it out for them to see.

  No reaction.

  “Uh,” Sean said, struggling to recall the other half of what little Russian he knew. “Do you speak English?” he asked. He wasn’t sure if it was the line that broke the ice, or if it came down to how he had opened the door and talked to them and nothing bad had happened for a good half minute. One of them — Sean noted she was maybe thirty, and missing a finger on her right hand — rose up.“I speak,” she said.“Okay,” Sean said. “Okay. Ma’am, I’m with the NYPD. I’m a cop.”“You say this,” she said.“I’m here to save you,” Sean lied.

  Not that he didn’t want to save them, but he wasn’t here for them and who he was here for wasn’t, well, here. Or maybe this was still part of some setup? Sean wanted it to be, but as the seconds ticked on, it dawned on Sean she wouldn’t show. He had time to think about this for as long as the women didn’t answer him, but then she spoke what Sean was pretty sure wasn’t Russian, even if it sounded a lot like it. That got the other women murmuring, until one spoke up, to which the transtor nodded. Then, she looked directly at Sean.

  “What happen to boss?” she asked.“He’s dead,” Sean said. More murmuring. “Ilya Sidorov is dead. I saw him die. You’re free now.”

  The transtor transted. The women murmured. Sean kept trying to listen and understand, but he just wasn’t getting anything he recognized. Nobody said what their name was or where they were from, after all.

  “We are free?” the transtor asked Sean.“Yes,” Sean said. “You are free. No more boss. No more Sidorov.”“You let go?” the transtor asked.

  Sean considered it, realizing that however friendly he was acting and whatever he said about the women being free, he was still the man with the gun standing between them and their freedom. Well, if he had to decide their fate, he needed to think about the consequences. Couple of ambunces, couple of squad cars, at minimum, get uniforms down here to secure the scene, medics to check the women and get them treatment — Jesus fucking Christ, how long were they in this room, in darkness, waiting for someone, anyone to let them out? — and INS, of course, plus the witness statements about Sidorov’s criminal organization —

  “You let go?” the transtor asked once again.“I will call help for you,” Sean said. Good, diplomatic. “People are going to come and help you.”“We want not help,” the transtor said. “We want leave.”“I understand,” Sean said. The transtor got to her feet, brushing her hands over her skirt as if that could make the dirt disappear from either. “But please stay here for now,” Sean said. “It won’t be long until help comes. I promise.”“You let go now,” the transtor said. She walked toward Sean, toward the door, toward the only way out. Sean gnced to the sides; the other women were getting up, too.

  Sean had only a few seconds to decide. Let them get to the door, he might as well write them off. The shotgun was useless for anything but straight-up killing maybe half of them, and in a close-quarters brawl, it didn’t matter too much whether it was 13 scared women or 13 Bruce Lee clones — either way, Sean would lose. Maybe a warning shot? But where? The basement had no convenient backstop. Concrete everywhere meant ricochets, plus the deafening muzzle bst. Even if nobody got hurt, they were liable to panic, and then —

  Before Sean was done thinking, he found he had already made his choice. He stepped back from the door, letting it fall closed. He saw the transtor’s face turn to confusion. She broke out into a run. Sean threw himself against the closing door, ramming it back into its lock before anyone could reach it. It was a heavy door and Sean imagined what might have happened if someone had gotten their fingers into it when it closed. That would have crushed those fingers and it would’ve all been his damn fault. Half a second ter, the women banged against the door from inside, to a cacophony of shouting and wailing the likes of which Sean had never heard before. He stumbled back from the door, watching the keyring still dangling from the lock as the door shuddered under the assault from within, but it held. Sean’s grip on the shotgun tightened as he stared and listened to the women screaming for him. Heart racing, he looked down at the shotgun.

  Supposing those women managed to beat down the door — and Sean couldn’t even specute if it was possible, but maybe they just hadn’t been properly motivated to try — what the fuck was he gonna do about it with a shotgun?

  “I’m sorry!” Sean called, loud as he could. “I’m sorry! Help is on the way!”

  Then he stormed back out. Up the stairs and through the back — sucked in a breath that stank of detergent and floor cleaner — through the fucking bead curtain he almost tore out, the front, crunch those gss shards under his shoes, through the broken front door, didn’t even look one way before running across the street, straight to the fucking car. Sean’s left hand almost missed the door handle when he grabbed for it, and when he yanked the door open it felt ready to be ripped off the car entirely. Sean tossed the shotgun in the vague direction of the passenger seat and hauled himself into the car, smming the door shut behind him.

  “Kid?” Berkovitz asked from the back seat. “What’s happening?”

  Sean turned on the engine.

  “Kid?”

  Sean fumbled with the column shifter, wrenched it into Drive by muscle memory, textbook fucking unch as the car bucked backwards from the sudden acceleration. Sean heaved mightily to bring the steering wheel to the left first, then to the right to straighten out, gunning the engine until he heard it upshift.

  “Kid!” Berkovitz shouted.

  Red light. Red light up ahead. Sean stood on the brakes, fighting the steering wheel as the just-accelerated car slid to a screeching, almost-sideways stop. Sean had his fingers dug deep enough into the wheel that they felt glued to the pleather surface.

  “Holy Hannah!” Berkovitz said as he tried to climb through the middle of the car, bumping the shotgun out of the way on his journey into the passenger seat. Having accomplished this part of the acrobatics routine, he settled back, took a breath and fixed his seatbelt. “Warn a fel next time,” he said, then craned his head around. “Coast looks clear. I was just about to follow you in. What happened with Simmons?”“— she wasn’t there,” Sean said.“See, I thought she was chasing you,” Berkovitz said, “or something like that.”“No,” Sean said. He took a breath, taking special care not to void his bdder no matter how enticing it seemed in the moment. “There’s — there are women in the basement. Sves. They kept them locked up down there.”“Those fucking bastards,” Berkovitz said. “So why’d you run?”“— I’m not sure,” Sean said.“You’re not sure,” Berkovitz echoed.

  Sean breathed out. Breathing out was the trick, not just sucking in more and more air. Breathing out required the very minimum amount of faith he would have time to take another breath at some point in the future, a quantum of not-panic. Breathing out was what he hadn’t been doing a lot of in the st ten minutes. It felt great now that he remembered to do it.

  “I told them I would get them help,” Sean said. “You know. We should — we should call in help. Unis, ambunces, the works. There’s — there’s thirteen…at least thirteen women down there and they need to be checked out and maybe taken to a hospital for neglect and, you know.”“Okay,” Berkovitz said.“I — I locked them back in,” Sean said. “Just for the moment, you know. I left the keys, and the fire department can break the doors down anyway. It was just — they wanted to leave. They were just gonna leave, and —”“And you panicked,” Berkovitz said.“I panicked,” Sean said. “Scared them half to death.”“Nobody got hurt?” Berkovitz asked.“…I didn’t hurt anyone,” Sean said.“Okay,” Berkovitz said. “I’m gonna call it in, they’re gonna get the help they need. Locking them back in was…I don’t know if I would’ve gone that way, but I guess it was that or let them run out on you, huh?”“…yeah,” Sean said. He managed to breathe out again. It was getting easier. “I didn’t hurt them, I mean, I hope they’re not trying to beat down the door. Or something.”“I gotta say,” Berkovitz added, “that’s not the kinda trap I expected from Simmons.”“She wasn’t there,” Sean said. “She wasn’t there, she’s — we gotta go find her.”“We will,” Berkovitz said. “Now, like I said, I’m gonna put in the call, you just focus on driving. Can you do that?”“I think,” Sean said. He nodded, more to himself than anyone else in the car. “Yeah, I can do that.”“Then how about you put on your seatbelt,” Berkovitz said, “and maybe keep it to 20, 25 from here on?”“Yeah,” Sean said, releasing the steering wheel to reach for the seatbelt. “Yeah.”“Because I’m writing you a ticket next time,” Berkovitz said. “Green now, by the way. You’re blocking the intersection.”

  Sean looked over to Berkovitz and took in his shit-eating grin. “Fuck you,” Sean said.