Michael Ares - Dayfall

“What time?” the family man said, but Jon interrupted him.

“It’s tempting,” Jon said, and meant it. “But we’re very short on time. Frank, would you please call Amira and have her bring a flash drive to you halfway, so we can get on with this?”

The big man grimaced, grunted, and murmured something like “Damn right it’s tempting” as he stepped off the stool, pulled out his phone, and headed for the door.

“Can you show me where the cameras feed into?” Jon asked when Halladay was gone.

When she’d led him into a small back room with two screens, and their bodies were pressed close together in the confines, he had to admit that he wanted to walk her home. This was the last thing he’d expected to happen on the first day of a new job in a new city, especially in this current situation. And worse, he knew that the faculty of reason he relied on so much could be adversely affected by feelings like this. He knew that he should get out of that dark room as soon as possible, but he had to wait a few minutes for Halladay to return, so he tried to use them to his advantage.

“If you’re worried about the police,” he said softly near her ear, “I can protect you from them. I’m a cop… but I’m not from here.”

“Why don’t you come back at two when I get off?” she said at his ear, leaning into him as she did. “You can pick up the tapes then, and you can walk me home.”

Jon couldn’t help but make a mental note of the time she mentioned, and think to himself that he might be alone for a while around that hour, if he couldn’t keep Halladay from going home and wasn’t allowed to go with him. But Jon’s commitment to solving the crimes was still overriding any other considerations, no matter how appealing they might be.

“I’ll take them now,” he said, “when my partner returns.” But he didn’t comment about the two o’clock proposal. “Is there some reason you don’t want us to have your security videos?”

“No, we don’t have anything to hide,” she said, again too quickly, but then added, “I mean, sometimes when a customer’s had too much, I don’t give them change. I figure it’s their fault, you know. And I only did that in the early days. Now that we’re doing better…”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Jon said, and she remained quiet for a while until Halladay clambored through the half-open door, and looked around in the cramped, dark quarters.

“What’re you two doin’ in here?” he said with a chuckle.

“Pulling up the files,” Jon said, and held out his hand for the high capacity drive that Halladay had brought with him. He gave it to Mallory, telling her how far back he wanted her to go and that he would test the files before he left to make sure they had been copied. No one said anything in the minute or two this all took to happen, but finally the bartender spoke up as the men turned to leave.

“See you later,” she said. “I hope.”

Outside the bar, Halladay shook his head and said, “If you don’t get some of that…”

“You will, I suppose?” Jon said.

“I was gonna say you’d be a fool,” the sandy-haired cop answered.

“Did it ever occur to you,” Jon said, frowning at him, “that she might have ulterior motives?”

“Nah.” Halladay shook his head and pointed to it. “I wasn’t thinking with this.”

On the walk back to the Flatiron Building, Jon was ruminating on what it must be like for people to live in a city of endless night, never seeing the sun for more than ten years, when they passed a small “health store” that wouldn’t have existed before the darkness fell. There were signs on the front windows with pictures of vitamin D products like fortified milk and orange juice, several kinds of fatty fish, and the usual bottles of pills. Others advertised the psychiatric medications that were only available by prescription in other places, but were allowed to be sold over-the-counter here. The signs indicated that D deficiency was known to cause depression, memory loss, and even schizophrenia.

Jon glanced over at Halladay and wondered if his partner was taking any of those drugs, or whether he should be.

When they reached the lab at headquarters, they gave the external drive to Amira and asked her to run facial recognition software on the customers who took wipes from the bar. And Jon told her to scan the staff, too. When she told them how long it would take, Jon said he would wait in the shooting range and motioned for Halladay to follow him as he headed out of the lab.

“The range is in the basement,” he said. “Right?”

“Yes,” Halladay answered, but then stopped in the hallway. “Damn me if I didn’t forget because of that bartender… but I need to go home.”

“Don’t you want to know if anyone interesting turns up on the tapes?” Jon asked.

“I’ll find out when I come back in.”

“When’s the last time you’ve been to the range?” A stab in the dark. “I made a vow that I’d practice with my left for a hundred hours, since it almost got me killed.”

“It’s been a while,” the big man admitted.

“Wait… you didn’t practice up for when the daylight started breaking through, even though you knew it might be dangerous?”

“I wasn’t working when that happened.”

“Where were you?”

“At home, where I need to go now.”

“Nope,” Jon said, shaking his head and pulling on the big man’s arm. “You definitely need some preparation. In less than twenty-four hours, we’ll have almost a full day of sunlight, and we’ll have to be out there working. No hiding from this one. Come on…”

Halladay reluctantly went with Jon, probably because he knew there was some truth to what he said, but also because he actually was tired—almost too tired to argue with the persistent younger man. They practiced at the range for a while, then took a break outside of it at the snack machines when they realized Amira hadn’t called yet. While they were hanging out, Halladay said hello to a man who walked through from the custodian’s office nearby, and introduced him to Jon. His nickname was “Poppy,” and Jon asked how he had come by it.

“My father was the super here before me,” the man said, “His name was Sunny, spelled with a ‘u,’ but people thought it was Sonny, like someone’s son, ya know, so they started calling me Poppy. Thought it was funny, I guess.”

“This is a cool building to take care of,” Jon said.

“Yeah, well, it was a lot cooler before you guys moved in…. No offense. Now we have all this extra security. Used to be able to fix shit right away ourselves, now we got all this fuckin’ red tape. Used to be able to show people around, like tell ’em about the fancy restaurant that was down here way back, or the big old boiler room thirty feet down with the big old generators, looks like some kinda movie set or something.”

“I read that the Flatiron used to have hydraulic elevators,” John said. “Water-powered, right?”

“Yeah, that old generator’s down there, too. A lot of the buildings in the city had that. My dad said it used to break sometimes, water would gush out into the elevators and offices up there. Heh.”

“What do you think about Gotham Security?” Jon asked him. “And what do you hear from others who work here, and around the city?”

“How ya mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know, it seems that someone like you might have his ear to the ground. Have a good sense of how the vote will go on Tuesday.”

“Still got a thing for GS, huh?” Halladay said to Jon.

“Huh?” Poppy said.

“Nevermind him,” Jon said, “What do you think the chances are that Gar Render will be running this city in a couple days?” The man looked hesitant, so Jon added: “You can be honest…. We don’t have a dog in the hunt.”