Porcelain Smile

Porcelain Smile


In the end, it comes down to one thing. A body.  Sometimes you start a bit higher than that. Police work has all sorts of ways to get down to that last factor. It always ends up as a body though, dead or alive. When you’re staring down at that body, you know exactly what you should have done, when you should have done it, who you should have left alone and who you should have shot. When the body is lying there in front of you and there’s nothing left to do, you have only regrets. Just as the body had its life flash before its eyes, you have what came before flash by yours, and you’ve never done enough.

In Paris, no day is like another. The name is Barthelemy Karas. If you’re my enemy, just Karas is fine.  Today seems my day to be surrounded by enemies.  To my right is Police Chief Bravura. Today, he dragged me out of bed early, shoved me into a case with cruel possibilities, thick with players. I don’t play well. To my left, Paul Delienbach, Vice President of Avalon, the company in Paris. He’s a man who has let his personal concerns override common sense, pulled rank, and is currently interfering in a delicate situation. Directly in front of me, the Bank of Paris, whose high rates are in and of themselves enough to annoy me, made even worse by the fact that it’s filled with robbers, who are quickly devolving into hostage takers.

Delienbach seemed the composed type, at least in a normal situation. He was not composed now. In fact, Mr. Delienbach seemed close to the edge of panic, his thin hair shooting out of his head, and straying, unkempt, across his forehead. His expensive suit rumpled. “My son is in there.” As I said, personal.

“Yes sir, we’re doing all we can. Right now we’re waiting for a team of specialists, officers, and negotiators to arrive, until then,” Bravura assured, “I’m negotiating with them in good faith.”

My eyes flicked up. Paris might be isolated from the outside world… but no one’s figured out how to stop the rain, at least not yet. Nothing like a little wet to help a situation.

“Chief Bravura, Why not just give them what they want now and catch them later? Just let them go, we can figure out the rest once the hostages are free.”

“With all due respect Mr. Delienbach, they are not going to just let their security go. No matter how good our faith is. I still stand by my suggestion of storming them now.” Bravura drove lead eyes into me when I spoke. I told you, I don’t play well with others.

One of the officers sidled along the back of the squad car, pushing his back into the cold metal. “They’ve called again. They’re moving, and their taking hostages with them. They said that they’ll release most of the prisoners, but if we try anything, they’ll shoot the ones they’re taking with them.”

Bravura grabbed his handset and started shouting orders to clear a path. I stood next to Delienbach, who was wringing his hands. I wanted a cigarette, bad, but his company had helped make them illegal years ago. So, I did what any career oriented police officer would have done. I comforted one of the most important men in Paris as his face turned into an inverse chalkboard, with the dark lines that had formed from age becoming black chalk against a grey paler then the sky. “Just let us work sir.” We should have stormed them. It was a mistake.

The terrorists paraded out, whirling back and forth like homicidal tops, guns to the heads of the hostages. Delienbach was staring at each villain intently. The last one passed out the door, facing away from me, his gun like a broken video, skipping from his hostage to us and back.

“Oh my god, he’s with them.” Delienbach had no idea. They moved quickly down the cleared path, the one at the end spun around, facing his hostage directly towards me. My eyes met hers. Those eyes stabbed into me, clear, blue, deep, pulling me through glass. Pain crawled up and down my spine, infecting my gut. Shards of it refracted my vision. All I could see was that last robber, his hands gripping her by the waist, her curves the same lines that embossed themselves into my bed covers this morning.  

Bia.

I saw her and everything went black and white. I didn’t hear Delienbach tell Bravura that his son was one of the hostages. I didn’t feel Delienbach tug at me, asking what to do, or Bravura shouting panicked orders. I saw the robber shove her into the truck and I thought that her eyes picked me out from the crowd. They pled with me. Those lips, red now smeared, did they mouth ‘save me’ across the cordon in slight movements of fear and trust?

I turned towards the police cruiser and shoved the cop in front of it out of the way. Bravura rushed me. “Karas, what the hell do you think you’re doing? If they notice you, the hostages are dead! You have to stay back and wait for Section K to pick them up. They’ll never get out of the city.”

“No.” Until today I had no idea one could imbue a single word with so many levels of meaning.

“Dammit Karas, are you crazy? This will be your badge and your gun, you’ll never leave a desk again, if you even stay a cop.” Bravura’s spittle flecked my driver’s side window, distorting him and a panicked Delienbach who seemed to be unable to choose between the two arguing cops.

I rolled down the window, relief washed over my chief’s face; he thought he had talked sense into me. Instead, I ripped the ID from my vest and pushed him, and it, out of the way. “You can have the badge, I’ll be keeping the gun.” The window went up and the gas pedal went down. A crash of thunder and the water began to dive from the heavens in a genocidal splatter. My car’s lights turned on, but I switched them off, secure in darkness, and sped through the streets of Paris, hoping that I was right.

Paris’s streets constricted around me, pushing me forward and keeping me back all at once. Sometimes I rounded corners without looking, water sluicing off my car in buckets, almost crashing into street signs and parked vehicles. My eyes were on the road, but they barely saw it, it was only her face, her eyes, her lips.

Bia.

She was reaching out to me, her nails in that dark purple she thought was funny, her black hair splaying out behind her as the man pushed her into the truck. She was reaching for me, but I couldn’t get to her. I had to get to the truck and grab her away from them. I had to stop it… the truck… the truck… it was right in front of me, back doors open, empty. I slammed on the brakes and the prowler spun towards the curb. I was out the door, rolling, gun up, before it slid to a stop.

No one. With a kick fueled by desperation, I planted my foot through the deathly colored wood of the nearest door. A man was there, his eyes mere pools of shadow inside his mask, a mobile in his hand, dialing with mad fury. A flash of dark steel, his phone, and a finger, blown away.

“Son-of-a -”

He didn’t have time to finish. I was on him, my gun butt leading a dance step into his face. “Where’d they go?”

“Who the –“

It was all shards again; her face was in front of me. I had to focus. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to help anyone, even myself. “You still have nine fingers.” I jammed my face up close to his, pushing us both into the shadows. “No, I think I’m wrong,” another loud shot, “eight.”

“No more,” he gasped out, his voice fading. I put my ear close to his mouth as he whispered out his buddies’ location.

I got up, uncaring that the lively shade of red smeared over my vest came from two stumps that used to be fingers. I stood over him for a moment and reloaded. I didn’t want to be short when the time came.  Commandos each wearing a white K under their right shoulders, eyes covered with vision enhancement goggles, bodies dark lumps of armor and weapons, burst through the doors as I slid the clip in.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing detective?” They looked at the masked bleeding man and the shattered mobile. “You shot our chance at a trace and now you’re letting our only lead bleed to death.”

“No.”

They looked confused. No what? No time, no time for Bia, no time to let them figure it out, no time to explain. A click, like some huge grandfather clock, a bullet slid into my gun’s chamber.  Section K rushed to the criminal as I dove into the car, leading with my foot to the gas, swerving with precise desperation past the black Section K vehicles.

I headed to the rim of civilization, the edge of Paris; I didn’t even notice the Avalon billboards which usually set my teeth on edge with their sweet, whispered, promises of youth.  Avalon pedaled beauty and vitality, but even they couldn’t bring back the dead, what use were they?

I slid my car to a stop in the dark shadow of a small building, at the edge of one of Paris’s rare open fields.  Mere dots in the black rain, they were in front of a helicopter sitting in the grass, its blades pumping power into the water. They were dots lining up hostages, standing each one to face the copter.

They would congratulate me afterwards. Talk about how brave I was. How clever. How, if I hadn’t stepped in, the bad guys would have flown out of the city and left all the hostages dead. That it was only my actions that saved them. I would be raised pay grades and put on special assignments. Delienbach, and Avalon with him, would call me a hero. They were all wrong.

I followed procedure, left the car behind to creep into the field, my gun drawn high.  I heard the first shot. I ran. They didn’t even notice me with the helicopter running. I came up behind them and drew a bead on the man who was walking down the line. I fired. Too late.

A small, almost silent, click reverberated in my head, above the deafening wind, as the shell ejected from the top of the murderer’s gun. The quiet dignity of her fall, like a swan folding into itself.  Even as my mind rebelled, my body completed its task, barely feeling the harsh kickback as I killed the other masked men, one after the next until they were all gone.

Bia.

I ran to her body, mindless of the surviving hostages, including Delienbach’s son, scattering away from the helicopter like leaves to the wind. Behind the helicopter the sun had set. Darkness rolled in like a wave as I stared down at her body, a puddle of shadows and blood against a sparkling wet green. The helicopter, with no one to control it, sputtered into silence and the world surrounds us in perfect stillness. Nothing moved as my vision telescoped down to her pale face, the rain running down her cheeks like tears. Her delicate ears, silky hair, lifeless blue eyes, and the red gap in her head, where life should have been.

A model looked down from the Avalon billboard, porcelain on black night, a white smile with perfect lips that parted and whispered down to me.

"Live forever."