Chương 96: Business as Usual... I

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke His mother had raised him to believe that early was on time and on time was late, so it was 7: 45 am when River Ward walked through the front doors of Watson's NCPD precinct, fifteen minutes before his shift actually started. The air smelled of burnt synthi-caf, and the fucking misery could be felt weighing the entire place down.

Ward looked around, taking in all of the officers in this shithole that clearly didn't want to be here.

He was wearing a clean jacket, a pressed shirt, and the newly issued detective's badge clipped to his belt just like the good boy he was, being exactly to spec on what the department handbook recommended for first-day officers. Little did he know this shit was meant to draw attention to him and guarantee everyone in the building would see it and form an opinion about him. And opinions were like wildfires. They formed and spread fast.

The desk sergeant looked up from his terminal at the badge on Ward's hip and then at the face he didn't recognize. Then he didn't waste another second on him before returning to his terminal without giving Ward an ounce of acknowledgment. Two patrol officers walking toward the break room glanced at River and then exchanged a look between themselves, while a third officer who was at a desk near the entrance processing paperwork that was almost certainly fabricated did not look up at all.

"Everyone's got their fucking panties in a bunch," Ward whispered to himself as he took in all of the cold shoulders. But he wasn't too surprised. He had transferred into Watson knowing what to expect from one of Night City's shittiest precincts.

After all, his previous captain had told him that Watson's NCPD division was "operationally compromised at multiple levels" and that a new detective transferring in with a clean record and a reputation for filing internal complaints was going to get a "fuck you" as a Christmas gift if he was lucky. He walked through the bullpen toward the office he had been assigned, which was in the back of the building and past the interrogation rooms and the evidence processing area.

It was a shared office with two desks and a window that looked out onto the alley behind the precinct, just another way for the precinct to tell him just how much they valued his presence. As he was approaching the office, he heard a voice call out from behind him.

"Hey, you! Baldie that looks like he just walked out of the supply closet." Ward turned around to see a man standing next to the synthi-caf machine in the alcove between the bullpen and the break room, holding a steaming coffee pot in a chrome hand. He looked to be in his mid-forties, with a lean and weathered build. Ward recognized the man from the personnel file he had reviewed before the transfer. It was his new partner, and the man whom he was going to share an officer with, Detective Jamie Sheen.

He had fourteen years on the force, seven of them in Watson, and his clearance rate was well above average for the precinct but below average for the city. In other words, he was good at his job, but the fuckers higher up didn't want him solving certain cases and therefore refused to give him access to them.

"You want a coffee?" Jamie asked, holding up the pot.

"Sure," Ward said.

"How do you take it?" Jamie asked while turning to grab a foam cup.

"Black," Ward replied. Jamie poured two cups, one black and one with enough cream to turn the coffee from a dark black to a bright beige. He then handed Ward the black cup and leaned against the counter beside the machine.

"So," Jamie said, taking a sip of his own coffee.

"You're my new partner."

"That's what I've been told," Ward said.

"River Ward who transferred from Central. You got a clean record too, with three commendations. You also have two internal complaints filed against fellow officers, both substantiated and resulting in disciplinary action." Jamie said casually.

"Looks like you have given yourself quite the reputation, Ward."

"Huh, that good or bad?" Ward asked.

"Depends on who you ask," Jamie said as he gestured with the coffee cup at the bullpen behind Ward.

"Most of the people in this building would say bad. They'd say you're a badge-polisher who can't keep his mouth shut and who's going to make life difficult for everybody who's been making life easy for themselves."

"What about you?" Ward asked.

"What would you say?" Jamie took another sip of his coffee and looked at Ward over the rim of the cup. His eyes were brown and tired. He had spent years watching this place rot from the inside, but he wasn't going to change his ways.

"I'd say it's about fucking time they sent me somebody who gives a shit," Jamie said.

"Come on. I'll show you the office. The window doesn't open, and the AC hasn't worked in a couple months, but the view of the dumpsters is spectacular." Ward walked beside him, and as they walked, he took in the precinct's environment. The bullpen was a standard NCPD layout, desks in clusters and terminals on every surface, though there were some differences.

For example, the evidence locker's keypad had been replaced with a model that required dual-officer authentication, which was the type of shit that precincts would only do if their higher-ups or internal affairs had stuck their fist up someone's ass. Three of the desk terminals in the nearest cluster had privacy screens installed only at angles that blocked sightlines from the captain's office, which was the type of stunt you only pulled when you didn't want your superiors to see what they were working on.

And the break room's bulletin board, which in a healthy precinct would have been covered in shift schedules, BOLOs, and the occasional birthday card, was instead dominated by a laminated flyer that read WHAT YOU SEE IN THIS BUILDING STAYS IN THIS BUILDING.

"Charming workplace culture," Ward said with a hint of amusement.

"Ehh, you get used to it," Jamie said.

"Or you don't, and transfer out. Most of the good ones transferred out years ago. What's left is me, Martinez, a handful of patrol officers who are too stubborn or too stupid to leave. And now we got you."

"What about the captain?" Ward asked. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"Shiiiieeeeet. Captain Flores is a good man in a bad position. The fucker knows what's happening, but he doesn't have the institutional support to stop it. So he does what he can, keeping the honest officers alive and hoping that somebody higher up the chain eventually decides that Watson is worth cleaning up." Jamie stopped at the office door and pushed it open.

"After you, partner." The office was exactly as Jamie had described. Ward's desk was the one without anything on it, while Jamie's desk was buried under a small mountain of case files, coffee cups, and a framed photograph of a woman and two kids. Jamie started walking Ward through the filing system and the unwritten rules of Watson precinct when the front door of the precinct opened, and a commotion started. Every officer in the bullpen shifted, their postures changing as conversations died.

A patrol officer who had been leaning back in his chair with his boots on his desk dropped his feet to the floor and sat up straight.

"Oh, fuck me," somebody said from the desk cluster near the entrance.

"Who the fuck called him?" somebody else asked.

"Nobody called the bastard," another said.

"He just fucking shows up."

"Somebody's getting fucked today," another officer said. Ward turned to look at the front door to see a man of about five-foot-ten. He was slim and wearing a wine-red suit that was at least two decades out of date. The lapels were wide and the shoulders structured. His shoes were polished, and his dark hair was combed back, and adorning his face were wire-framed glasses with a wine-red tint to the lenses that matched his suit.

"Morning, chooms," the man said, setting the briefcase down on the nearest desk without asking permission.

"Now which one of you kicked the shitcan?" The officers looked at each other with genuine confusion since nobody in the precinct had arrested anyone high-profile in over a month. The kinds of arrests that attracted the attention of lawyers, which were pretty much dinosaurs in rarity in Night City, had been deliberately avoided by the whole department. Shit, that was why they all took bribes.

"Who is that?" Ward asked Jamie quietly. Jamie took a long sip of his coffee, watching the man in the wine-red suit survey the room with a relaxed expression.

"That," Jamie said, lowering his cup, "is Matt Murdock. Watson's NCPD worst fucking nightmare, parading around in a shitty style that should've been left back in the 2040s where it belonged." Murdock turned his head in their direction, his wine-red glasses catching the light.

"I heard that, Sheen," Murdock said, his smile widening.

"But I'll let it slide because you're one of the only three people in this building I don't have a file on."

"Three?" Jamie said with a chuckle.

"Yup. You, Martinez in records, and the janitor. Everybody else in this precinct has taken money from somebody they shouldn't have taken money from, and I have the receipts." Murdock adjusted his glasses with one finger.

"Speaking of which, I'm looking for a client." Jamie shook his head and took another sip of coffee. Ward looked between them.

"Why is he Watson's nightmare?" Jamie lowered his voice, though not by much.

"If he was just your run-of-the-mill corpo lawyer, that would've been just fine. But he loves to play Robin Hood and helping the needy due to his upbringing. So for the last six years, he's goten real good in getting people out of exactly the kind of bullshit charges the NCPD files when they need to fill their quota or when somebody pissed off the wrong officer."

"I thought defense attorneys went out of fashion decades ago," Ward said.

"Shiiiieeeettt," Jamie said.

"There's a reason he's been doing this for six years. He's good at his job as a corpo lawyer, and he's very fucking good at being a defense attorney. He's even made a personal hobby out of collecting leverage on every dirty cop in Watson, which, as you may have noticed, is nearly all of them."

"He's got files on them?" Ward asked.

"Files, recordings, financial records, witness statements, and at least three officers' personal correspondence with known fixers stored on a deadman's switch that will dump everything to N54 News if anything ever happens to him. Probably," Jamie said as he finished his coffee.

"The man is untouchable, and every officer in this building knows it, and that is why every officer in this building just shit their pants when he walked through the door."

"And what's up with the suit?" Ward frowned.

"The suit is Murdock," Jamie said.

"To my knowledge, he wears that exact style every single day, different colors but the same cut. And every single day somebody has to tell him it looks like shit at least ten times a day, but I doubt he cares. Actually, I think he does it on purpose. Hard to be intimidated by a man in a wine-red suit from the 2040s, right up until he pulls out the file that shows your offshore account balance and asks you to explain it on the record."

Murdock had already crossed the bullpen and was approaching a desk near the back where a heavyset officer with a shaved head and Gorilla Arms was doing a very poor job of pretending to be absorbed in his terminal.

"Officer Durrow," Murdock said, setting one hand on the edge of the desk and leaning on it with casual intimacy.

"Always a pleasure to see you."

"Fuck do you want, Murdock?" Durrow said without looking up.

"I want to know where my client is," Murdock smiled.

"Her name's Judy Álvarez. Booked sometime in the last seventy-two hours. And I want to know who arrested her." Durrow's jaw tightened as he glanced at Murdock. Then he looked around at the room before finally looking back at his terminal.

"Wasn't me," Durrow said.

"That was Quincy. And he's on patrol today."

"Then be a dear and phone him for me," Murdock said, smiling.

"I'm not your fucking secretary," Durrow said.

"No, you're an officer of the law with a very interesting offshore account that we should talk about sometime," Murdock said, his smile vanishing.

"Phone him. Now." Durrow picked up the dispatch handset reluctantly. He then keyed the channel, and the dispatch speaker on his desk crackled to life, audible to everyone within thirty feet.

"Unit seventeen, this is dispatch relay, come in," Durrow said. There was a bit of static before a man answered.

"This is Quincy. What do you have for me?"

"Quincy, it's Durrow. Murdock's here. He's looking for a, uh..." Durrow glanced at Murdock.

"Judy Álvarez," Murdock supplied.

"Judy Álvarez," Durrow repeated into the handset. There was a pause on the other end.

"The Hispanic girl with the firetruck?" Quincy's voice came through the speaker, and every officer within earshot was now listening while pretending not to.

"She was out joyriding an NCFD engine with no registration or license. She even ran a red. I booked her for theft of an emergency vehicle, unregistered operation, traffic violation, and resisting."

"Resisting?" Murdock asked, leaning closer to the dispatch speaker.

"She told me to go fuck myself," Quincy said.

"That's verbal disagreement, not physical resistance. I have the body cam footage request already filed." Murdock straightened and adjusted his glasses.

"Officer Quincy, my client obtained the vehicle from a registered scrapyard in Rancho Coronado. I have the scrapyard's sale receipt, the date-stamped transaction record, and photographic documentation of the vehicle's condition at the time of purchase, which was, and I quote, 'a gutted hull with no engine, no electronics, and no functional systems of any kind.' My client rebuilt the vehicle herself over the course of a year using parts she fabricated or sourced independently.

I have the receipts for those parts as well. The vehicle was abandoned property at the time of acquisition, which under Night City Municipal Code Section 14-7, Subsection C, constitutes legal transfer of ownership upon purchase from a licensed salvage dealer." There was silence on the other end of the line for a little while.

"Look, Murdock," Quincy finally said, his voice shifting from defensive to tired.

"I don't want any fucking problems. If you want the girl, then fine. All charges dropped. Shit never happened. But the firetruck stays. The NCFD found some modifications they liked, and they want to keep it for evaluation."

"The terms are acceptable," Murdock said.

"Which station has the truck?"

"Station twelve. On Fifth," Quincy said.

"Thank you, Officer Quincy," Murdock said while tilting his head toward Officer Durrow.

"Always a pleasure doing business with the NCPD." The dispatch channel clicked off, and Durrow set the handset down and returned to his terminal without looking at Murdock. Murdock picked up his briefcase, adjusted the wine-red suit jacket, and turned toward the exit with a smile that said he was having fun.

"I'll wait for my client outside," he said before walking out. As soon as Matt Murdock left the precinct, the atmosphere shifted.

"Every single fucking time," somebody muttered from the desk cluster. Jamie looked at Ward and raised his empty coffee cup in a small salute.

"Welcome to Watson, partner," he said.