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25 FEBRUARY 1944 – GOTHAM CITY, NEW JERSEY
Stand, centre, take a breath. Raise the gun; two-handed grip wasn’t ideal but it reduces the kick. Aim, focus. Squeeze. Once. Pull it back! Reset! Again. Back in line! One more. Swing back, open the chamber, place the gun on the shelf. Hands down. Rest. Breathe.
Behind her, she heard someone press a button. The wire rewound, pulling the paper target back towards her. Sergeant Tolman, the range master, studied the paper. “Not bad,” he allowed. “Good grouping, just a little off centre. Drake – you’re Richard’s girl, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sergeant.”
“Did he teach you how to shoot?”
“Some, when I was younger, but mostly just to get me used to it. Only properly learned here.”
“You learn well. Okay, sign the gun back and go get changed, I think we’re done here for now…” Tolman broke off as a bell started ringing in the passageway outside the door to the firing range.
“Fire alarm,” Dinah said.
“No. General quarters. All hands alert.” Tolman picked up the gun. “I’ll clean up here. Get moving!”
Almost on autopilot, Dinah gathered her stuff together and hustled through the academy complex towards the central courtyard, the gathering spot for general quarters calls. The halls were hectic as the all-hands call was answered. Not even time to clean up a bit; Dinah could smell the undischarged powder on her hands. There was a fine drizzle outside; maybe the rain would wipe some of it away.
There was a lot more noise than usual as they mounted up into the two buses – that they were police blue rather than yellow didn’t stop Dinah from thinking of the school buses she’d left behind not all that long ago. Some of the noise was just confusion, but it felt like a fair bit was apprehension as well. Parts of Gotham had been on edge all week; and if places like Detroit could go off – the way it had last year – a dollar would get you a nickel that Gotham would follow.
Not that the real cops who were organising the dispatch were giving anything away. but that they’d been sent into the field with weapons wasn’t a good sign. Dinah could feel a cold lump in her stomach. Putting yourself in harm’s way was one of the defining features of a cop’s life – she knew that much from her dad all these years – but it wasn’t something she’d expected before she’d gotten her badge.
The buses squealed to a halt on Garfield, just in front of Talmadge Park and the roads leading into the Hill. That wasn’t a good sign. Cops weren’t exactly popular anywhere, but on the Hill – Gotham’s main coloured district – it could feel more concentrated. That lump started to feel heavier as Dinah and her fellow cadets stepped out into the rain and lined up.
“All right, listen up, people!” Sergeant Belker was at least a reassuring presence. He’d been on the force since just after World War I – he told the youngsters that “if the Spanish flu couldn’t kill me, then nothing Gotham’s got can do it.” He glanced for a moment at the clipboard in his hands. “You guys are on street clearance and emergency detail only. Get people to safety, steer traffic south out of the Hill wherever you can. Do not engage unless you absolutely have to. Regular cops are further into the Hill handling the tough stuff. Things are hard enough without anybody else going in half-assed. You hear me?”
The cry of “Yes, sarge” sounded a little ragged. Dinah put that down to the wind and the rain.
“All right, move out. Donahue and Paulsen, three blocks west. Chase and Morrison, two blocks west and one north. Drake and Stefanovich, one block west and two north…”
Dinah suppressed a pang of annoyance. Stefanovich was a meathead who thought that women had no place outside the kitchen and the bedroom. She’d try not to need help. As she looked for him, he was checking that his gun was loaded; he quickly holstered it and waved her forward.
The rain was slowing now, slacking off to a faint drizzle which was just enough to make you feel uncomfortable. The quiet surprised Dinah when she acknowledged it. This was a big city; it was always noisy in some ways. This was like Gotham was suddenly holding its breath, waiting for something to happen.
Stefanovich was a few feet ahead of her, taking point and carefully scanning the streets. Dinah fanned out slightly to his left; the windows of the dull brown tenements looked like staring eyes as her gaze swept over them. The Hill had been decent in the past, but since it had became the unofficial coloured part of town, the city seemed to have lost interest in it. The people there worked; how they lived was their own business. Dinah didn’t see herself as exactly a child of privilege, but some things weren’t right no matter how you looked at them.
Ahead of them on the corner of Adams and Fifteenth, the cadets could see a fruit store. It was partly shuttered, looking like it had been abandoned, but some of the displays hadn’t been taken inside. Dinah’s eyes closed on it. There was a light in there, sweeping motions – probably someone swinging a torch.
“Joe.” The monosyllable came out as almost a hiss. “I think we got something. Cover me while I look.”
“Hey, wait!” She ignored him. Chivalry was not dead, it was just dumb. She swept a hand back to be sure she could get to her gun and poshed the storefront door open.
The lights were out – so was the power, she guessed – but a couple of guys were scrabbling around the till and the storeroom behind it. Two skinny-looking black fellows, probably not all that much older than she was. As Dinah stepped forward, her foot landed on a loose floorboard, which groaned under the weight – a noise loud enough to prompt a response of “Who there?” from the robbers.
Dinah ducked behind a shelf for cover. Safer bet to assume that they had guns. “GCPD,” she shouted. “Come out slowly, hands where I can see them, and you won’t get hurt.”
“God damn, they sending baby cops for us?” one of the robbers answered.
“Baby girl cop,” said a second voice. “Damn, I’m insulted.”
“You heard the lady, dick-breath! Move your butts!” Like an idiot, Stefanovich was bulling straight through the door with his revolver in hand and making himself a big, dumb target. One of the robbers swung out from inside the storeroom and opened fire; Stefanovich was lucky that he couldn’t aim properly as he moved. The shot went off to the right, smashing the storefront window into splinters of glass as he dived to the floor behind a display case.
The gunman glanced out, couldn’t see either of the cadets; he must have thought he had a free run out. As he made a dash for the door, Dinah ran from her cover. 105 pounds of body mass didn’t count for too much, but with enough speed it may work. The man wasn’t looking for her; Dinah’s body check did what it was supposed to do. He sprawled out as he fell, the gun skittering from his hand as he landed. “Cuff him!” she yelled at Stefanovich.
The other robber had lost whatever nerve he had, and was trying to open a back exit. There’d be an alleyway there to give him an escape route. Dinah dropped a hand for her own gun – but it wasn’t there. The body-slam must have knocked it loose. Improvise, her brain yowled. “Hold it there!” she shouted. As the man turned, she picked up a handful of apples, started hurling them at him. Little League baseball to the rescue; she hadn’t been a great player, but she had worked up a hell of a throwing arm. The apples smacked into him, and one of them caught him hard enough on the head to drop him to the ground.
“Good God damn! You okay?” Stefanovich loomed as he pushed into the small back room. He almost went in to hug Dinah as he would any other girl, just to make sure she was all right, before his stunted sense of professionalism kicked in. She would have laughed, if it wasn’t just as much the wrong thing to do on duty…
-ooo-
Further down the road, St. Anthony’s clock was striking five as Dinah entered the apartment building where she and her father lived. As she opened the door, she could hear Richard Drake talking to someone at the kitchen table. Larry Lance had been her dad’s partner on the streets for a couple of years now. He was a tall, dark-haired man, he had a dry sense of humour which Dinah liked, and he didn’t take himself too seriously; she enjoyed teasing him while still being a bit annoyed that he wouldn’t really notice her the way she wanted.
“Hi, Dad! Hi, Larry! I wasn’t expecting you to be home.”
“Things wrapped up early for us and we got sent home. We got here about fifteen minutes ago. I heard about the cadets getting called out. It sounded rough. How do you feel?”
“Honestly? A bit shaky. Like I need a bath and a strong cup of coffee just to pull all the kinks out of my wires.” Dinah looked at the kitchen table; in front of her father was an envelope with the familiar police department badge in the top left corner. She reached out a hand to pick it up.
“I apologise for opening it, Dinah. I saw the GCPD at the top and the name Drake and assumed it was for me.”
Dinah wasn’t listening to her father as she tore the letter from the envelope. The paper rattled as she unfolded it. Her eyes scanned across the typescript, and looked over briefly at the men. They knew the ugliness of what she was reading right now. She went back and re-read it anyway, because she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
Seeing was still – just – believing; she threw the letter aside, let it float on the air as Larry caught it and refolded it. She glared at her father. “This is complete fucking horseshit, Dad, you know it is!”
“Don’t you use language like that in this house, young lady!” Richard tried to sound angry. There were decencies to be observed.
“What? This is the absolute perfect fucking time to be using fucking language like this!”
Dinah didn’t quite scream at the last, and she practically flopped into a chair. “Sorry, Dad, really I am,” she said, trying to sound placating. “But it just makes no sense.”
Larry, standing by the dining table, looked at the letter again. “Budget cuts have become necessary because of ongoing investigations into the city council’s finances. They’re saying there isn’t enough money to train new cops now?”
Richard shook his head. “New female cops, Larry, that’s the difference.”
“Even if they had to make some cuts, why me?” Dinah asked. “Both of you have seen my transcripts from the academy. I’m not bragging here when I say I was one of the best cadets in this intake. I should have been one of the last on the block.”
Richard looked down into his coffee cup as if it contained the meaning of life. “I don’t think it’s you, sweetie, I think it’s me.”
“How?”
“Too much to say to the wrong people, is my best guess.” He stood up, limbs trembling just a little. “I’ve tried to keep the details from you – not the kind of thing that I’d want a kid knowing about – but there are a lot of dirty cops in Gotham. Gordon’s been doing a lot to clean house since he came in as commissioner, but he’s just one guy. And the few of us who try to stay clean…” a glance of acknowledgement to Larry Lance… “aren’t exactly well thought of. I’m thinking that there’d be some who think that one Drake on the force is bad enough without a second coming on board. They’re making an example of you to make a point to the likes of Larry and me.”
“That isn’t fair,” Dinah protested.
“It ain’t fair, it’s Gotham.” Larry countered. “What really kills me is the bit at the end. That they appreciate your disappointment and want to offer you a job in the department’s payroll office, by way of recompense.”
“Well, they can shove that idea up their… up where the sun doesn’t shine,” Dinah corrected herself.
“I’ll hold ’em down while you do it, kiddo.” Larry tried to smile – Dinah needed to find something to laugh at right now.
It didn’t really work. Dinah stood up, paced the floor a little; with nervous energy or suppressed anger – it probably didn’t matter which. “So what do I do now?” she asked.
Larry frowned. “I love the energy, Richard, but would it do any good? If someone has it in for you – even if it’s just people who don’t want women on the force – it’s just going to leave Dinah facing a mountain of hate. A rookie cop doesn’t need that.”
“He’s right, Dad.” Dinah pulled a small handkerchief from the cuff of her uniform shirt, dabbed at her eyes for a moment. “I don’t like it, but it isn’t like I have a whole lot of choice in the matter. Unless…”
The sudden excitement on Dinah’s face made her father uneasy. He sensed a dumb idea being born.
“Unless I go into law-enforcement by the side door. It isn’t like we haven’t seen it in Gotham these last few years, with the Batman and Robin and the Green Lantern all over the crime pages.”
“What? Oh, hell, no!” Richard almost jumped from the armchair.
“Sure. And for the average beat cop, the jury on those guys is still out,” Larry pointed out. “They aren’t cops. That taints a lot of what they do right out of the gate. Most guys figure Gordon made some kind of deal with the Bat and cuts him some slack for that. A lot of the guys don’t go for that. Makes us look like we can’t do our jobs.”
“Some of ’em can’t,” Richard protested. “You remember that fat Irish bum O’Hara mouthing off last month? That guy hasn’t made a decent collar since Hoover was in the White House.” He looked now at his daughter. “But that still doesn’t make any idea like that a good one, young lady. Rein that one in right now.”
“I guess I do have a fallback option.” Dinah dropped onto the chair at the kitchen table. “Aunt Maureen wanted me to come help her at the florist’s store before I got into the academy. Big difference, but I guess a girl’s gotta make a living somehow.”
“There are worse things, sweetie.” Richard Drake took a deep breath in. “I’ll drop in on Maureen tomorrow and talk to her about it.”