Chapter Text
“Look. You can’t just come in here and — Jesus Christ.” Trish had dropped her coat on the chair, then spun on her heels towards the desk; the movement made Jessica wince and raise a hand to block her eyes. “Can you stop — doing that?” she asked, not realizing the futileness of the situation until Trish picked up one of too many empty bottles from the floor.
“Again?” said Trish, hefting it. Jessica winced again. “Jess, I thought you said — ”
“I know what I said,” said Jessica, and didn’t bother to disguise her groan as she hauled herself upright in her chair. “And pardon last night’s French, but fuck what I said.”
Then she shut up as the room took a moment to re-calibrate itself around her. “God,” said Jessica, putting a hand over her eyes; when she took it away, Trish had put the bottle back down on the floor and straightened, crossing her arms over her chest to look Jessica in the face. Jessica waited, but Trish didn’t say anything else, or make any more sudden movements.
“Oh,” said Jessica, and sighed. “I get it. You’re waiting for an explanation. Duh.”
“Duh,” repeated Trish, though a small smile had touched her lips.
Two could play at that game; this time Jessica raised her head to glare at her, but let it slip. “Fine,” she said, rolling her eyes. “This?” Trish inclined her head, as Jessica swept an arm out that was meant to indicate the room and the entirety of the wreckage it held. Then she let her arm drop. “Luke.”
Immediately Trish’s expression changed. “Oh, Jess. Did he call?” she said, dropping her arms and coming forward.
“No,” said Jessica, and suddenly felt bone-tired. “He showed up at three am in person, which is worse — or better. I don’t know. He’s gone for I don’t know how long, now.” There were sounds like heavy metal in her head; she closed her eyes and let herself stew in the pounding for a second before making it go away. “Anyway, it wasn’t a booty call. You can rest assured of that.” She cracked open one eye. “I’m fine, Trish.”
“Is that what all superheroes are supposed to say after they drink themselves into a stupor and trash their own offices beyond repair?” murmured Trish, but when Jessica made to get up from the chair, she put out a hand to steady her and let it stay on Jessica’s arm even after Jessica finished swaying. “Jesus, you have an actual hangover.”
“Not possible. Oh. Damn,” said Jessica, and pressed a hand to her forehead. When Trish looked at her with her eyes wide, she shook her head jerkily and muttered: “No, it’s nothing. There’s this Hero For Hire case due tomorrow that I — forgot about. Until you started going on about superheroes. Shit. Jeri’s going to make hell in the morning.”
“It is the morning, Jess.”
“Was waiting for you to say that,” said Jessica, picking up her jacket and starting for the door. “I gotta go.”
But the world still felt too much like water; she stumbled side-ways on the fifth step. The whiskey had abandoned her system; her head was swimming in its wake. She nearly didn’t register Trish reaching out and putting a hand on Jessica’s elbow. Trish waited. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked quietly. Jessica knew that voice. She knew she should hate how soft it was but didn’t hate at all; she never had.
There was a lump in Jessica’s throat but she ignored it in order to shake her head. Trish said, “Okay. Anytime, Jess.”
Instead of acknowledging it, Jessica looked around at the mess she’d made last night: the broken and unbroken bottles on the ground; the spilled whiskey; the plaster falling down from the ceiling above. God. Her office was a safety hazard for anyone but Trish, who was so used to it by now that she was standing right in the mix of one of the broken bottles, her six-fucking-hundred dollar heels covered in a fine white glass dusting. Jessica briefly closed her eyes. Right: Trish had a show this morning. The clock lay on the floor, crooked, but the minute hand ticked inexorably towards seven o’clock.
Glancing at her, Jessica said, “Come on. I’ll drop you off at the station.”
“What?” said Trish, staring at her. She didn’t make any move towards the door. Jessica frowned back at her. “But — the station’s in the complete opposite direction. You literally could not get any farther from Hogarth’s office.”
Jessica frowned harder. “Yeah, I know. So what? It’s faster if I take you.” She took a step before the fatigue set in once more: she swayed on her feet, just a little.
“Jess, you’re — ” and Trish reached out to steady Jessica’s arm, again.
“I’m fine, Trish. Let’s get you to the station, okay? Your show’s going to start in 5 minutes.” Trish was looking at her. “Okay?” Jessica repeated.
“Jess, you really don’t have to — ”
“Okay?” said Jessica, stubbornly.
Trish was still looking at her.
“Yeah,” she said finally. “Okay.”
“Let’s go,” Jessica said.
○●○●
Jeri Hogarth worked out of a different office these days. Like Trish had warned, it was a 180-degree turn from her station. And though the chill snap of New York autumns fixed whatever hangover she’d been suffering, the walk to Jeri’s office felt even longer because of it. She was too tired to run, or fly; and mid-way through, the subway broke down. Then some genius decided that the best moment to go about pickpocketing the passengers was while the subway was stuck at standstill; so Jessica had to waste time fixing that: rolling her eyes, catching the guy by the hood as he tried to speed away — speed away to where, exactly? The other side of the compartment? — then plucking the handbag from his grip. “Dude,” he protested as Jessica returned it to the girl.
“Listen, I’m not in the mood to listen to you talk,” Jessica told him, then: “Shit.” She examined her fingers: something about the material in the guy’s hood was damn lethal. “That’s a papercut.”
“Cry me a river,” he said.
Throwing him against a window was a fate too good for him. “What did I just say, Justin Timberlake?” she said, then looked up as she felt the subway move beneath her feet again. “Oh. Finally.” When it skated to a stop at the next station, she was right in front of the doors as they slid open.
“Hey,” the guy shouted after her. “You got a problem?”
“Yeah. Ninety-nine,” Jessica called over her shoulder as she headed towards the turnstiles.
Heroes For Hire was a couple blocks farther down the street. Jessica stared down that direction, shading her eyes from the harsh white sun. The buildings were a bit dingier here than the ones back downtown: less glass, more brick. They ate up the sky in a kind of blank stillness, sharing the sidewalk with the leaves that skittered across the pavement with the wind. Jessica looked down the street for a few more seconds. Then she sighed, squared her shoulders, and, putting her hands in the pockets of her jacket, began walking the last couple of blocks.
Jeri Hogarth worked out of one of these crappy buildings. First-floor. The door had a knob but was unlocked, so Jessica pushed her way inside. Jeri was in the side office: Jessica had just about managed to make her figure out at the desk when a monstrous shadow bounded into her line of vision. She nearly started to shout in surprise when a big head appeared by her chin, followed by two paws on her chest, then a ferociously wagging tail.
“Sorry,” said Jeri from behind a pile a papers, though she didn’t look it. The dog leaned forward and gave her a huge wet lick her cheek. Jessica muttered, “God,” while trying to fend him off; then she felt sorry for him and gave him a scratch behind the ears. Living with Jeri wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, after all.
“Security system upgrade?” she asked, jerking her head towards the dog while she made her way to the chair opposite Jeri’s desk. It was a genuine question; and Jeri noticed, her eyes flickering to her, then to the dog.
“Hardly,” she said, without pausing in her writing. “It’s a client’s. She asked if she could leave it for a couple hours while she attended business in the area.”
“Never figured you for a dog person,” said Jessica as she sat down.
“And I never figured you for a person that was in any way punctual,” said Jeri. There it was. Jessica squared her shoulders again as Jeri glanced at the clock on the wall. “But this, Jessica? You’re two hours late this time. You’re pushing it.”
“Subway problems,” said Jessica. She really wasn’t in the mood for banter, so she decided to rip off the bandage and get it over with: “I don’t have anything on tomorrow’s case.”
That made Jeri stop scribbling entirely. Then she put down her pen very delicately upon her desk. She leaned slowly back in her chair, her chin set at an angle that somehow managed to look exceedingly angry. The pen wobbled slightly where it lay on the desk’s uneven wooden surface; Jessica eyed it as an excuse not to look Jeri in the face. She was a damn coward.
“What?” Jeri said slowly, as if she were giving Jessica another chance to revise her answer to the right one.
“I. Don’t. Have. Anything. On. Tomorrow’s. Case,” Jessica said, even slower and clearer. Now she looked up; but Jeri was already closing her eyes, as if consigning herself to the grace of God. “Look, I’m sorry. I really meant to work on this one straightaway, it’s just that you gave it to me four days ago and something came up yesterday night — ”
“Stop.” Jeri had held up a hand. “I don’t want to hear it. Whatever excuse you might have to offer this time, I don’t care for it.” Jessica scoffed and started to retort; but Jeri drew in a breath and talked over her. “Fortunately for you,” she said, glaring at Jessica as though she thought Jessica should know exactly how grateful she should be, “Mr Kasprzak called earlier this morning and withdrew the case I’d given you.” She took up a thick pamphlet laying on the side of the desk, and extended it.
Jessica eyed it, but didn’t reach out to take it; she knew too much about peace offerings to know they weren’t really peace offerings. Jeri raised her eyes heaven-wards again.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” she said, impatient. She gestured the pamphlet towards her again. “It’s not a bomb. It’s your next case. Potentially. He submitted something else.”
Warily, Jessica took it. The pamphlet was weighty; it was printed on a thick, cream-colored kind of parchment that screamed luxury and money. She began flipping through it. “Poker?” she said, trying to hide her surprise. “Seriously?”
Jeri nodded. “He wants someone to investigate some high-stakes poker table. In fact, he wants someone to play in his place. He suspects crookery.”
“Does he now,” Jessica muttered under her breath.
“The good news is that the timeframe is four months. That’s four months. Not four days.” Jessica paused and glanced up from the papers; but Jeri had kept her face very straight as she said it. Jessica looked back down.
“Huh,” she said. “Four games: one each month.”
“And he will provide us the buy-in for all four cases. He doesn’t care if you win or lose with it as long as you solve the case. By the way,” said Jeri, “He doesn’t want any violence at any point in time.” At Jessica’s wide-eyed stare, she said: “Apparently the table is full of high-society people with delicate sensibilities, and talk travels fast in those circles.”
“Then why the hell does he want to hire a superhero?”
Jeri leveled her with a you-know-better look. “I am a lawyer, Jessica. Not a psychologist.” She nodded at the pamphlet in Jessica’s hands. “The details are all in there.”
Jessica resisted the urge to turn around and throw the pamphlet against the window: the glass would break, and Jeri had enough bills to foot these days. Instead she said, “What’s the cut?”
“Just look at it,” said Jeri, looking at her very evenly.
On the sidewalk outside Jeri’s office, Jessica sat on the curb and thumbed through the pamphlet more slowly. The details were sparse: wrong-doing suspected; millions of dollars mysteriously going up in recent months; five hundred thousand dollars buy-in supplied upfront to play into each game starting April. She ran a finger down the thick, luxurious parchment. The case would be an easy one: a couple of hours per month devoted to playing each game, probably, while watching the other players. And she always needed cash.
She had walked all the way back to her own office when she finally pulled out her phone and said, “Hogarth. I’ll take the case.”
○●○●
Returning to her office was a bitch: the floor was sticky; the bottles hadn’t moved since she last touched them; and the lampshade hung crooked, throwing all sorts of wild shapes onto the floor. Even so, Jessica decided she wouldn’t start cleaning up the mess in her office until she closed all her own cases. Malcolm had left a sticky-note on her desk: Nia Garcia — boyfriend, 35-years old, Piermont St, 8-9pm. Daniel Cleaver — bodyguard for Goldman, Fri. Rachel Wertham — missing brother. Robbie King — says thank-you. Jessica got through most of the list before the weekend started, then spent Saturday tracking down Oliver Wertham and depositing him on Rachel Wertham’s doorstep. On her way back to her apartment building, somebody yelled, “Fire!” nearby — and that took another good hour to help put out, though it worked wonders when it came around to taking her mind off things.
Then it was another hour before the fire’s aftermath ended as well; mostly since she had to help what looked like the mother of the household to the hospital — not because Jessica especially wanted to do so, but because she could not pry the lady’s fingers from her shirt. Technically, Jessica could yank them off, but she didn’t want to break any fingers and the lady was already in poor shock.
So she was exiting the hospital doors when Trish called to ask for a favor. “There’s this gala in two months. I know you hate things like this, but you know my management, and . . . ” She hesitated.
The dots connected. “I’m good for publicity,” finished Jessica, wiping sweat off her forehead — then wiping her hand on her shirt. She felt burnt-black and could smell the smoke on herself; the scent was coppery in the crisp night air. “Right.”
“Kind of,” said Trish, and even she sounded apologetic about it. “You’re hot right now and ratings have been falling. If you even just make a thirty-second appearance, just a few minutes popping up by my side — ”
“Trish,” said Jessica gently, as soon as she could get a word in, edge-wise. “Trish, it’s okay. I’ll go.” There was a slight pause on Trish’s end of the line — so slight that it could have been taken as a second of cell interference. Then Trish started talking again. Her thirty-second appearance in two months would be a bitch, but: Jessica thought she could hear the smile in Trish’s voice this time. It was still there by the time she got home, and she fell asleep with the cell to her ear.
Then it was Sunday: she’d closed all of her own open cases, nobody was helpfully screaming, “Fire!” or “Robber!” in any sort of nearby vicinity, and she had nothing to dawdle over anymore.
Jessica sat down against the wall of her office and stared at the wreckage in front of her. Putting out a leg, she nudged aside a broken bottle with her foot. She waited for the heavy metal to return in her head, and the echoing bassline: Luke. Then she got to her feet, walked over all the bottles she was supposed to be cleaning, and went straight to the liquor store down the street. Luke might be gone; but whiskey sure as hell wasn’t.
In the hallway on Monday, on the back of another mini-hangover, she bumped into Malcolm backing out of his apartment. “Hey,” he said. “You got my note?”
“Yeah, thanks,” said Jessica, moving aside to make room for the huge cabinet he was lugging backwards into hallway. “Hey, how was your mom?”
Malcolm made the face that he used to make when people were asking him how the drug-free life was going and he was lying his face off saying things were all right, man, who needed drugs anyway. “She’s holding out.”
Jessica put her hands in her jacket, glancing at him, but didn’t comment on it. Instead she said, “All right.” Malcolm smiled tightly at her and said, “Hey, can you step over there? This is pretty heavy and — ”
Hearing that almost made Jessica breathe out a sigh of relief that would have been cringingly audible: this she could do. “Move over,” she said, and took the cabinet, lifting it with one hand and using her other hand to hold the door open for herself. She heard Malcolm muttering, “show-off,” but Jessica ignored him. “Where do you want this?” she called, over her shoulder.
“Actually, um, it’s for you,” said Malcolm. Jessica stared at him. “You don’t have a good drawer to store files and shit inside,” he explained. “All you have right now are these really tiny — ”
“I know what I have,” interrupted Jessica.
“So what, then?” he said defensively. “It’ll make life easier for me.”
Jessica had to shake her head to stop staring at him. “Your handwriting’s still crap,” she told him, before the weight of the cabinet began wearing on her one arm, and they had to hurry and move it down the hallway into her office. When that was done she said a proper thank-you, but he waved it off while stepping around crunched pieces of glass. Seeing it, Jessica winced. “Just — don’t even bother cleaning it up, Malcolm,” she said. “I’ll do it when I have time.”
“It’s your shit,” he said generously, adding: “By the way,” and then producing a pamphlet that was vaguely familiar-looking from his backpack. “I found this in the hallway when I got back. I don’t think I’ve seen it before, but I’m assuming it’s yours because of the, you know,” he firmly swept his hand horizontally through the air, “confidential sign printed all over it.”
Then Jessica recognized it: the Kasprzak case. “Damnit,” she said, taking it from him. “Thanks,” she added, glancing up at him from the papers, but Malcolm shrugged it off again, and said that he’d be working from his apartment to save his own feet.
She watched Malcolm retreat into his room before turning around. For a minute she surveyed the damage but didn’t make a move to start cleaning it up. A part of her was still tired. Jessica pulled out her phone without thinking about it and called Trish. They’d been playing phone tag since yesterday, anyway; but her call went to voice-mail, so Jessica slipped the phone back into her back-pocket. She looked at the pamphlet in her hands.
○●○●
The casino was well-known in Hell’s Kitchen: east-side; quite posh considering the area; the only one of its kind. The lights that hung upon its outside walls flashed any time during the day, but in daylight they seemed a bit more muted, a bit less hypnotic. But inside it was no less chaotic. Milling around the floor and the entrance were all the deadbeats and addicts with dollar signs in their dead eyes. Jessica brushed past all of them; she didn’t have time for them right now.
In the back of the casino were the VIP rooms where the high-rollers played. They all had fancy codenames. Jessica remembered the room that Peter Kasprzak had named in his memo: Eagle, second from the left of the room. But when she got there, there was a heavy-set man blocking the entrance with his hands crossed loosely in front of his body.
“Shit,” she muttered to herself. She’d only planned to come here this morning to do some scouting. She was caught so off-guard that the damn bodyguard noticed her.
“Mid-game,” said the bodyguard. “Nobody goes in.”
Jessica plastered a smile onto her face and walked forward. It was quick coming. “Hi,” she said, making sure her voice was pitched an octave higher. “I’m here for a game.”
He looked at her. Jessica caught his eyes flicking down, taking in her person: the scuffed up jacket, the scuffed up jeans, the scuffed up shoes. He looked back at her.
“Game’s started. Nobody goes in.”
“But I’m Miss Jones,” said Jessica. “I’m scheduled to play next month.” She moved closer.
He blinked at her. “Nobody goes in.”
“Okay,” said Jessica — then shoved him aside with just a teensy bit of her strength. The guard recovered quickly enough, but in that split second she had managed to catch a glimpse of the room inside. Two tables, one on each side. Low lights. Half-filled glasses of alcohol perched on the table. A hazy feeling of smoke. Men in suits — Armani, maybe some Tom Fords. There had definitely been the glint of some expensive-ass watches under the dark lights. They sat around each table, tapping their chips, gazing at the table — and she realized, with an incredulous, sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, that all of them, down to the weaselly, puniest-looking one in the corner, had a glowing, beautiful girl sat upon their arms.