garrus is busy with (thecalibrations) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-10-29 22:25:00 |
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Entry tags: | eames, garrus vakarian |
Who: Winnie and Joseph
Where: The strip and then around Vegas
When: Recently!
What: Winnie gets reassigned to be Joseph's partner
Warnings: Just a tiny bit of violence.
Winnie O’Hara was still taking Truman’s retirement pretty hard. That kind of circling Catholic guilt she carried on her shoulders told her she should have noticed the old man was getting weaker by the day. Under dim bar lights with her fingers dusted with peanuts and breath scented with beer, she thought about all the signs she had missed. All the cheeseburgers she could have swatted out of his hands. But, really, she was just sulking. This was something the gruff in her head could relate to, apparently. After a couple beers he started murmuring things that were more than just asking for some Shepard. He told her about the Citadel. Some kind of floating city in the future. A future where cops never really changed, did they? There were still rookies and old timers. Crooked cops and brown nosers. Lifers and last resorts. Three or four generations in the same department. Yeah, cops never really changed.
After a couple days, she got better. The first spent in a bar. The second at the gym. The third giving a tour to girl scouts. She visited Truman until he bitched her out. Called her dad and slept at her sister’s apartment. Read this weird journal and talked to gruff in her head. The O’Hara clan was known for their emotions, their fire, but they always got back on their feet. They were always in church on Sunday. They always showed up to work when the chief found them a new partner.
So, here she was. Back in uniform and standing on the strip. She missed Fremont Street already, but this main tourist attraction wasn’t so bad. Crowded as all hell, but that was the charm of Vegas, right? It was like an ant farm where only two or three tunnels were backed up with workers. When she was done here, she could go back to the Willows where everything slowed down and just let it all roll off. Things ever slow down in your sky city, gruff? Nope. Never.
Winnie caught sight of Joseph near the edges of Circus Circus. They dropped her on him after the first couple of hours of patrol. She was better at just jumping into the double dutch than having to get through all the awkward niceties. “Sullivan.” She said once she was close enough, giving a very well trained nod of recognition. “I’ve been reassigned to your patrol after Truman retired. I’m looking forward to working with you.” Very official, very polite. It was best to test the water before letting her real personality shine through. Sure, it’d come out eventually, but Winnie still tried to make a good impression. She knew a couple things about Sullivan. She knew he didn’t talk much. That it was a challenge to get a real laugh out of him. That he was a good cop. A reliable one. That was all she could ask for. After all, no one had the guts to assign the young O’Hara to someone they didn’t trust.
Joseph had been walking a beat long enough to have gotten saddled with a dozen rookies. Kids fresh out of training ended up in his car, until it was sure they wouldn't piss themselves out in the real world. He kept them alive. He handed them a napkin when they puked over their first dead body. He stepped in when they met the first perp that was too tough for them to take. Most of them stayed a little while, then moved onto detective. That's what smarts kids did. Came in. Did their time. Moved up to a desk and a nameplate. Not him. He saw them come and go, and he liked being a stop along the way.
There were other cops like him. Ones that got stuck with rookies, and Truman had been one of them. They'd exchanged non-greetings in passing, which meant Joseph liked the man well enough, but Joseph didn't socialize. That had been that. Until now, when he'd been called in that morning and told about his new partner. He'd only had a few women alongside him during his career, and he didn't have any bias. He'd seen the blonde girl before, mid-twenties at best, and he'd simply shrugged and agreed. Sure. Joseph wasn't one to turn down an assignment, not like he constantly turned down offers for his own shiny nameplate.
That night, found Joseph near his RV and home turf, but it was only coincidence that he could almost hear Salt barking in the distance. There'd been a call about a robbery at one of the smaller souvenir stores on the strip, and he'd been close enough to take it, even though it wasn't his usual beat. He wondered, as he stood there, having waited for a bus to come and drag the injured perp away, if O'Hara would be able to handle the dark back alleys he preferred. If she would give him trouble about letting some kids walk. It was always hard figuring out a new partner that way. And Joseph was as clean as they came, as far as cops went. No dirty connects and no dirty friends, and he intended to stay that way, which could be a challenge with new partners too. He'd seen plenty of them go down that dark road.
"O'Hara," he said, and it was acknowledgement and greeting. Joseph was a man of very few words. Nearly forty and his fair share of grey at the temples, he had enough bulk to be intimidating without needing to flaunt it. He nodded toward his car, parked alongside the street, even as a voice piped out of the radio at his shoulder with a 10-51 at Stratosphere. Simple enough. See how she did with a drunk. "10-4."
Winnie understood this was a test. It was a lot like her first time out with Truman. Out there he didn’t acknowledge the time he gave her a stuffed bunny for Easter or when she interviewed him for a Girl Scouts badge. None of that shit mattered when she was in uniform. Well, it did, that’s why he had to act like it didn’t. The whole thing would have been really confusing if she hadn’t grown up around guys like that.
The Stratosphere was her least favorite place on the strip. Even at night it seemed to cast a long shadow over all of the people milling about outside. Most guests walking in were either clueless tourists who didn’t know the place was a total dump or shady drunks who wanted a place to let loose and feel free from the bright lights of Caesars or the Bellagio. And, for the most part, people were allowed to do that. Vegas wanted tourists to feel welcome, so that meant cops had to carry around a lot of patience when it came to big, drunk blubbering babies. See, being drunk alone wasn’t enough to get in trouble with the police. You had to make other people nervous or look like you were about to jump in a car. Which meant, when they got called in for this kind of shit, it was pretty serious.
In this case, it was some man stumbling around outside of the hotel. He was young, around Winnie’s age, with black pressed dress pants and a nice, shiny button up shirt. In his hand was his blazer, which he seemed happy to drag on the ground as he paced back and forth. He was murmuring something, and as Winnie got closer she recognized the lyrics of Lay, Lady, Lay. Even if it came out as layladydlallladylaaay. She smirked, all the smile put into one side of her face and she walked tall towards him. “Sir? Are you feeling okay?”
“Whhaaaat. OH! Hey officer I’m glad you’re here.” The man stopped pacing, red bloodshot eyes looking at her right in the eyes and then lowered a little. That was typical. “I’m gunna fight-fight Rodney. Where is he we were supposed to fight.”
“I don’t think fighting is in the cards for you tonight, sir.” Winnie kept the smile like she was dealing with a small child. She looked back at Joseph with an arched brow that asked Drunk tank? She thought maybe if there was someone around who knew this guy and could get him to bed, but even that was pretty risky.
Joseph hung back. He was used to dealing with a lot worse than this. Street kids, hookers and dealers, that was his daily business. But he wanted to see what she could do. Had nothing to do with her age or her gender. Some people could do this job, and others couldn't. Came with some kind of certainty, being able to stare people down that might scare you otherwise. Lot of rookies thought they could, only to end up scared when faced with someone pushy. Anyone could be dangerous, so he didn't hang too far back. Just enough to see what he'd ended up with.
The smirk was good, and it made Joseph smile. Kid playing dress up, but lots of rookies were. He wasn't holding it against her. When the man dropped him gaze, Joseph gave her a mental check on the tally he was keeping. It was a lot like watching a new fisherman take a boat out. Sitting back and waiting to see if the sail smacked them in the head when it swung around.
He gave her a noncommittal shrug when she gave him that questioning look. He had an opinion of his own, especially since their friend had just started calling out for Rodney at the top of his lungs, but he wanted to see what her thoughts were. He wasn't worried enough to move forward, though he kept his gaze on that blazer in the man's hand. He didn't like any part of a person's hand obstructed, palm, hand, anything. He slid his own fingers to his holstered gun, and he just disengaged the safety with barely a move. He motioned everyone else in the vicinity inside the sad excuse for a casino.
“This is a matter of-of.” The man’s eyes started to glaze over and Winnie knew she was losing him. Drunks had a way of letting their head spin. One minute they could keep up with a conversation, the next their minds were ticking off brilliant realizations and distractions. He’s not giving up. Gruff grumbled. Yeah, no kidding. Winnie checked the people around them. The valet boys a couple yards down looked nervous. The door bouncers poked their heads around to see what was happening. Tourists made big round paths around them. Any more humoring this guy and it’d look like the LVPD didn’t know what they were doing.
“Okay, buddy. Rodney isn’t showing up. Either you calm down and go home, or I’m-”
“NO. WE’RE- HE OWES ME. HE OWES ME BIG TIME.” The drunk suddenly erupted, blazer dropping to reveal a steak knife he likely swiped from the restaurant inside. He must have been real desperate, real stupid, or a nice mix of both. Winnie let go of the nice girl act, hand going for her pepper spray.
“Drop it!” Winnie shouted in her big girl voice. Something she had been practicing since her days in high school playing soccer. It was meant to bring the boom, you know? When the drunk stabbed the air instead of following orders, she snapped the red safety and hissed a steady stream of foam into his face. The man screamed, whimpered and then crumpled up on the ground in kind of pathetic sobs. She rushed forward, kicking the knife away from the ground below him and pinning him with her knee.
“Fighting gets you a time out.” Winnie let her voice go back down to a medium level. She didn’t like scaring the rest of civilians watching and honestly this guy was just desperate and a little pathetic. He cried out slobbering curses at her, but she kept right to cuffing.
Joseph knew the knife was coming as soon as the drunk's voice rose. Well, not the knife, but something. That kind of bravado usually had something backing it up. Unarmed drunk would have swung by then, but this one hadn't. Cared too much about that blazer too. Regular drunk would have let it fall.
He'd neared, gotten ready to intervene, but hadn't stepped in right away. He'd cleared the perimeter, so no one would get hurt if something got fired, and Joseph would take the guy if it looked like O'Hara couldn't handle it. But it was good, and he moved forward when she pinned and cuffed him, talking into the radio at his shoulder again. "10-24," he said, calling for a car. He rarely hauled them in himself. Not enough patrol, and easier to call a bus. He knelt down a second later, patting as he waited for her to Mirandize, finding a wallet in the side pocket and calling in a check on priors and warrants.
Joseph liked the girl's approach. He tried not to think of her as a girl, but that wasn't going to work. Anyone near his own kid's age was a girl or a boy, and he was just too old to fix that. But he liked her, and that was a good start. He didn't see any excessive violence, and she'd tried the talkdown first, which he always looked for in a good cop. The ones that went for maximum damage right away always worried him.
He waited to see if she would haul him up or leave him down, and he looked down at the license in his hand for a name. "Going to go sleep it off... Carl." He wondered, idly, if Rodney was around, but no one else was screaming or waving anything sharp around. He picked up the knife after slipping on a glove, and he dropped it into one of the rolled plastic bags from his belt. "Truman did good," he told O'Hara, mainly because he wanted to see if she bristled at the implication that she was only good because she'd been taught to be.
Winnie told the guy his rights, sometimes having to say them a little louder over his sobbing. Yeah, pepper spray was a bitch, but he was dumb enough to keep swinging a knife at a cop. She always felt kinda sorry for bastards like this, though. They probably came to Vegas thinking they’d touch a little of the good life, but ended up here. In front of the Stratosphere. Getting thrown into the drunk tank. It was as if he realized how far he had fallen from his own expectations, and as his sobbing quieted down, she imagined he just wanted to go home. Well, that’s what she could hope anyway.
Gruff in her head told her that she took too long to try and calm the guy down. That if she would have just gone straight for the pepper spray or punched his lights out, then she would have saved everyone a lot of time. This isn’t the wild west, cowboy. Winnie silently told him with a firmness that came with someone who really believed in all the rules. Who didn’t think of being a cop as punishing criminals. No, that’s when you got into a whole lot of grey area.
She looked up at Joseph and grinned, but then did her best to flatten it back out to a serious expression. “Don’t let Truman know that. He might try to fight his way back from retirement.” Winnie pulled Carl to his feet and waited for the car to pick him up.
Joseph walked the few feet to the car, keeping an eye on on her out of the corner of his eye as he slid in the seat and typed up the incident on the laptop mounted to the center console. He missed the paper days, the ones where everything was filed in triplicate and there was something soothing about pressing hard enough when he wrote to make sure everything transferred. He was sure she'd never written anything down on the job. Made him feel old.
The bus came, and Joseph hit enter on the report, and then he waited for her to join him. There were things he wanted to know. Some of them weren't questions he was supposed to ask - kids, family, husband - but he still wanted to know. How'd she feel about street kids, young dealers and working kids? Joseph didn't like hitting the young ones hard. Jail only made them worse, but that was something he'd only realized after a while on the job.
"Get in. Need coffee. Tell me about you on the way," he called out to her. He pulled up the list of parole hearings tomorrow, waiting to see which ones he needed to go talk at, the screen turned so she could easily see it as he noted the times on an old post-it that was stuck to the dash.
Winnie remembered how surprised a lot of the Academy dropouts were when they found out how much paperwork, memorizing and codes went into being a cop. They must have thought the job was only chasing down criminals and maybe being followed around by cameras for a tv show. It was always that kind of guy that ended up in security or as bouncers. She wasn’t too crazy about some of the formalities of it all, but records, reports and codes kept everything orderly, right? That sentiment got a good grumble out of Gruff.
Getting in the car, she turned to look at the screen. “Well.” Winnie was a little caught off guard, only because she assumed everyone knew her story by now. “Dad’s a cop. Granddad, too.” She knew he knew that part, but it was always worth mentioning. Family was a big deal to the O’Hara’s. Lineage and all that. “I always wanted to be a cop, so I joined the academy right out of high school.” Shrug, knowing that giving the rundown of the why was always important, though in her case never that interesting. “I’m the one always trying to organize soccer games after work. I don’t know what it is about these guys and their basketball, but I get some of them to give it up for a day if I promise beer afterwards.”
Joseph half-listened to what she said, and he half-listened to how she said it. Anyone could talk. He didn't listen to what people said, not nearly as much as he listened to how they said, how they carried themselves while they said it. Whatever he heard in her voice clearly pleased him, because he grunted approvingly, even though he had no interest in basketball. It was a sound she would be hearing a lot, that approving grunt. Joseph wasn't a big talker (big surprise), and he wasn't free with compliments, but that sound definitely counted as one.
He could have driven just around the block for a coffee. The strip was full of places for late night gamblers to sit at a slot machine and drink a cup. But he turned off the main street instead, and he went two blocks down past Fremont, where the street kids spent their times, and where the average income wasn't enough to do a week's worth of groceries. This was where he usually patrolled. He didn't know what her beat had been with Truman, if it had been safer and brighter, but he thought it might have been.
He slowed as he drove down the street, and he slowed even more when a couple of fighting teenagers came into view. A bully and a smaller boy, and it wasn't anything they needed to stop for. Not violent enough, no weapons, no dealing or sex going on. He looked straight ahead, and he waited to see if she made a sound. The deli was at the end of the street, the sign outside proclaiming that the coffee was hot and the cigarettes cheap.
She offered a small smile and turned to look out the window. Winnie grew up around tough guys, she even had one in her head, and she knew trying to fill silence with blabbing was a waste of breath. If they wanted to know something, they’d ask. If they wanted to say something, they’d just say it. That didn’t keep her from prodding when she got curious, but Joseph was new. She’d go easy on him. Even if Gruff didn’t get that luxury.
He was right about the darkness. Fremont street had its share of weirdos and crime, but it was lit up like a lightning bug family reunion. The only thing she really had to worry about was crowd control. Sometimes Truman would have her walk down alleys towards condemned motels and closed markets, but she could always seen the lights in the distance and Truman behind her like some kind of watch dog. On that old strip, she’d break up all kinds of fights, even ones like those two teenagers. Just to make tourists feel safe. Just to keep the crowds moving and everyone happy.
She made a sound in the back of her throat, one of pity and she tapped the back of her finger on the window subconsciously. Winnie wanted him to stop, but she understood why he wouldn’t. “Once when I was a kid my dad let me go on patrol with him.” Winnie turned away from the window and looked at him. “We saw these two guys arguing and I told my dad to stop. I was twelve, so two guys yelling meant they were obviously going to kill each other, right?” She gave a dry laugh. “I could tell that he considered it, just to make me happy, but he said there’s too many arguments in Vegas to stop for each one.”
Joseph watched that finger tap against the glass, wondered what it meant. Could mean anything at all, if she hadn't followed it up with those words. Before she was done, he'd slowed the car to a quiet stop past the boys, where they'd think they'd gone unnoticed. Didn't want either of them running. He put the car in park, and he turned to look at her in the barely-there light from the console and the laptop screen. "Dad was right. There are too many. Doesn't mean breaking up one doesn't help a little bit." The statement explained, in just a few words, why he was still out here instead of behind a desk. "Help that one kid."
He didn't ask her to come, but he opened his door and walked around the back of the car, step light and approach at the bully's back. The boy, the smaller one, could see him coming, but he didn't say anything. They all knew Joseph too well on this walk to run scared if someone was hurting them, even if they were doing something wrong themselves. "Problem?" he asked over the larger boy's shoulder, towering over him, his voice much more menacing than anything he'd used around Winnie thus far. It carried to the car, that question, and the bully spun around. Just a kid, fear in his own eyes, and then he ran past Joseph, down the sidewalk and in the direction of Winnie and the waiting car.
Well, that was different. Just when she thought she had these strong, silent types figured out, one of them changed the game on her. Not that she didn’t agree with him. Winnie looked at it this way: part of being a beat cop was getting to know the people on your walk. Everyone from the bums to the single-moms. You could either make them afraid of you and make them scared to do anything illegal outside of their homes. Or, you could try and let them get to know you. People who tried the former normally didn’t stay cops for very long or got so used to pushing people around they kind of liked it. That wasn’t the kind of person she wanted to become, even if it probably was a lot easier.
She nodded, letting him take the lead. She didn’t get out of the car until he was in talking distance of the two boys. As it turned out, Joseph knew how to bring the boom, too. In this case, she was happy to play the passive cop. Kids were a lot more willing to stop for a lady cop, anyway. Especially boys. So, as the bully hit the ground running she gave a quick, loud, “Stop!” He didn’t listen to her at first, but when she clearly could outrun him after just a couple yards of chasing, he slowed to a stop. “We were just messing around!” The kid yelled, trying to come up with the best lie on the top of his head.
“He didn’t look like he was playing.” Winnie said firmly, but without any of the menace that Joseph’s voice had. “Get back over there and apologize or I’m going to call his parents and recommend they consider assault charges. I heard Christmas in Juvie is really homey.” The bully gave a nervous sigh of defeat and swallowed hard. She smiled and made a gesture for him to get walking, letting the bully take his time so Joseph could get the full story.
Joseph looked over the bully's head as the kid talked, and he gave Winnie a look that could only be described as approval, slightly fond, a bit of a smile. It only lasted a second, and then he was looking back at the kid, listening to some long winded story about why he was the way he was. The smaller boy, buoyed by having someone bigger at his side, actually got a few verbal jabs in before turning to go, and Joseph sent the bully the other way with a few gruff words that somehow sounded fond.
Once both kids were out of sight, far enough apart that Joseph wasn't worried that they'd come back after each other, Joseph walked back to the car. He still had that grin on his face, understated and slightly rusted from disuse. "Not bad, O'Hara. Coffee's on me."
It was, for Joseph, a very significant complement. This was his walk, and these were his kids, and anyone who wanted to help them instead of immediately throwing cuffs on them or, worse, ignoring them, was alright by him.
Winnie crossed her arms and watched the two boys talk it out. Something, it was either her or Gruff, reminded her that every night wasn’t going to be like this. There wasn’t always going to be someone she actually felt like she helped instead of just arrested or wrote up. But, at least this job had its moments. Even if it was just two boys talking it out and going their separate ways. “Thanks.” She said, looked at Joseph with a youthful smile. She was thankful that they seemed to see eye to eye. Thankful they stopped to help those kids. Maybe her training wheels fell off when Truman retired, but at least they put her with someone that wasn’t going to push her to be someone she wasn’t.