Force of the Habit

T
reason [tree-zuh n]

Jack remembered like it was yesterday...

"Last chance, Dee! Take the envelope or hand in your badge!" He'd thrown his badge on the captain's desk, instructing him to forcibly insert it in a place where the sun don't shine... and he hadn't meant the bar at Madame Butterfly's Boudoir. He was let off the force with a dishonorable discharge. More than half the force was on the take, but to Jack it was a matter of principle. The principle of law.
Jack liked to think that given the same options, he'd have made a different choice but deep down, he knew better... "Once a cop, always a cop. Hey, Jacky Boy?", a familiar voice commented, "An honest but penniless cop, you dumb schmuck"

"Shut up!", Jack yelled as he threw an empty bottle against the wall, shattering it. Another day, another hangover. Jack crawled out from under the blanket and banged his knee against the coffee table doing so. "Goddamn! Son of a... !", he grumbled as he limped up to the window. He squinted and held a hand to his face as he opened the curtains, the bright morning sun hurting his eyes. In between fingers, Jack could make out the familiar flashes of red and blue in the distance, indicating something was up in Paradise Boulevard.

Jack opened the liquor cabinet, took out a bottle of Jack Daniel's and unscrewed the top. He reached for a glass, but changed his mind halfway...

"Son, there's 2 kinds of days: tumbler days and bottle days. Guess what day today is?"
At heart, the captain wasn't a bad man. The problem was his wallet had been a good 3 times bigger than his heart at the time. Which was quite the feat, considering the man had the heart of an ox and a Body Mass Index to match. "Jack, can't you reconsider?", he said as he took a swig from the bottle, "Bobby's squeezing my nuts about your vigilante busts". Jack had smirked. He'd exercised his right to make citizen's arrests and rattled enough cages for the captain to make a social call after he'd been laid off. He'd been working security detail on the graveyard shift at some big store, the name of which he couldn't remember, but he'd kept his ear to the street between shifts and found out names, dates and places of some of precious "Bobby's" largest drug transactions, where someone had subsequently been making not-so-public appearances. On each occasion, the boys in blue had arrived just in time after the facts to pick the suspects, neatly cuffed to whichever extension hadn't been stripped from the wall, without any sign of the arresting officer apart from the trademark empty bottle of Tennessee whiskey on each and every scene.

Jack sighed as he saw the red and blue lights move further and further away from Paradise Boulevard and took a swig. The morning had all the promises of a bottle day.

Jack had looked like it had been a particularly rough night, with more cuts 'n bruises than usual. "You know, you'd better put a steak on that eye of yours. That's going to be a nice little shiner in the morning", the captain had said. Then, his tone of voice had changed drastically. "Look, Jack, let's cut the crap here", he'd spat, "I don't care what anyone's saying, I know it's you and I'm giving you fair warning - stop it or you'll find yourself looking at the bottom of the river!". Jack had stood up and stared the man squarely in the face with one good eye. "Careful, Pat, that almost sounded like a threat", he'd replied in a deadpan voice. "A threat? C'm on, Jack", Pat had replied as he had patted Jack on the back, "I thought you knew me better than that after all those years". And then ... lights out and an explosion of sound as the glass coffeetable had shattered. Jack had to hand it to the captain: he might have been a fat bastard, but he still knew how to throw a sucker punch like the best of 'm. "Now this" - his statement stressed with a bold kick in the nethers - "is a threat. You stay as far away from Bobby as a nun from an abortion clinic!". Pat had slammed the door shut behind him and Jack remembered staring into a puddle of blood forming on the carpet before passing out.

Jack stroked the scar on his chin. "A pat from Pat", as the saying on the force went. He took another swig, topped up his hip flask, finished what was left in the bottle, grabbed the keys from the coffee table, his coat off the rack and set out again. When Jack arrived at the office, he found a note neatly folded in half slid under the door. Upon unfolding the small bit of paper, all he found at first was a telephone number. Then, Jack discerned a very faint mixed scent of rose, jasmine and vanilla. Within the dark recesses of his soul, the wolf howled.

Intrigued, Jack called the number on the note. A sultry female voice announced itself as "Mary speaking" and inquired the name of the voice on the other end. Jack introduced himself and upon mentioning the note he'd found, noted the immediate change in pitch and the ever so slight trembling on the part of the voice on the other end of the line. "Is there somewhere we can meet, Mr. Dee ...", the voice asked emphasizing the mister in addressing Jack after having briefly paused in an ill-fated attempt to regain control of its emotions,"somewhere private, that is?". Jack thought for a while - "Between the sheets with a private dick private enough for ya, 'ey?" - and then proposed a rendezvous later at 8 PM in Madame Butterfly's Boudoir on Purgatory Drive since Dawn wouldn't be there that evening. Dawn never worked Tuesday evenings. As far as privacy was concerned, Madame Butterfly's Boudoir prided itself on guaranteeing the non-disclosure nature of its relationship with its clientele, even its regulars... For the right price, naturally.

Jack opened the top desk drawer only to find it bereft of alcohol. He made a mental note - "time for a refill" - as he drew open the bottom drawer and unscrewed the top of a virgin bottle. After quenching his thirst, he turned his chair to the computer in the corner. Checking his electronic bank statements, he found a transfer had been made from an offshore account. The comment read JD1/9072/008CB. Jack pulled the corresponding password from his archive and sent it to the accompanying e-mail address. "Looks like Charles is going to have a lot o' explaining to do tonight", Jack thought to himself, "Good ol' Charlie Brown, hah!". He couldn't help himself but find sardonic pleasure in it. Time and again, his experiences with the world at large and his clients in particular had viciously proven all idyllic concepts of love to be sophomoric conjectures. In all his years, there was but one love that had never betrayed him... his love for the bottle. Jack took another swig. And just when he'd figured it all out, Dawn had come along. "Dawn...", and another swig, "Damn"

Jack slid off into blissful oblivion, induced by toxic levels of alchohol. Happiness is... a bum, an empty bottle and an overly active imagination. And so, Jack dreamt. He dreamt of silken hair, satin skin and velvet carpet. For the entirety of 3 hours in a 30-year lifespan of misery, he was happy. Delusional, but happy. When reality caught up with him, his head was more sore than usual and his throat felt like it had been pelted by a Sahara desert storm. Jack locked up behind him and passed by 6th and Oak on his way home. "Heya, D. Damn, you look like you could do with the special today!", Randal greeted him as he entered the 7-Eleven. Randal disappeared in the back and produced a cup of steaming hot liquid as black as night and as thick as tar moments later. "You've heard about the 'hair of the dog that bit you', right? Well, this stuff bites back! Drink up, D-man", he said as he thrust the cup into Jack's wavering hands. Jack took a sip and nearly coughed out his lungs. "Like it?", Randal enquired, "custom-made from the finest Columbian coffee beans" and added "accept no substitute" with a broad smile.

When Jack came home, he sat down on the sofa. For a second that seemed to stretch out into eternity, he felt lonely. An all encompassing darkness seemed to reach down to his soul and strike at the very core of his being. And as an utter sense of the inconsequentialness of his existence slowly but steadily encroached his mind Jack lay both his eyes in the palms of his hands and... wept. "Sissy", a malicious voice said. Jack raised his head and stared in disbelief at the drops of salty liquid that had formed in his hands. He raised his left hand and slapped his cheek so hard he felt the red marks his fingers had left scalding him for the next 5 minutes. "He's right, you know. Shape up! Be a man!". Jack unscrewed the top of the half empty bottle that stood on the glass coffee table and put it to his mouth. "To hell with it - cheers!", he saluted the bottle and emptied his world and vice versa.

When Jack came round, it was already half past 7. He'd passed out for a good hour and half. He noticed the empty bottle on the coffee table and started patting down his trench coat in search of another bottle to fill the void. Finally, after putting 3 empty flasks on the glass table, he came across the perfumed bit of paper he'd carelessly put into his left breast pocket, close to whatever shriveled remains of his heart resided there in his chest. Again, the wolf picked up the scent and howled - more loudly so than before. "Fuck", Jack thought, "The Dame... What's-Her-Name... Mary, wasn't it?". He walked to the fridge, pulled out an icecube bag and held it to his head. The bag must've been sitting there for more than a year, but it didn't mattter: Jack always drank his whiskey straight up... no rocks. He only kept it there for occasions such as these: when the throbbing headache was too much of a reminder that he was still alive. 10 minutes and half a glass of Jack Daniel's later, he felt better and went to Madame Butterfly's Boudoir and waited for his "client".

He was enthralled by Joy's performance: 1 leg curled around the shiny, metallic pole; the other, stretching into infinity. The tiniest drops of sweat glistening under the heat of the small spotlights directed at the stage, making the place swelter like the Amazon jungle. And just as Joy turned about and bent backwards, giving Jack a clear view of a set of mountains that would put Mount Everest to shame, his world started to fade into black-and-white. He first noticed it when the cleavage staring him in the face grew darker as the area of skin around it grew lighter. He also noted the faint sound of the piano - "play it again, Sam" - he hadn't heard before suddenly grow louder and a saxophone joining the tune. Through the air, thick with the smell of smoke and beer, the wolf picked up a familiar scent of rose, jasmine and vanilla. Jack half-turned his chair to the entrance and stared at the X-shaped silhouette of a dame talking to the waiter making inquiries about "Mr. Dee". There was something extremely sensual about the way she had mouthed the "Mister", Jack thought to himself as the waiter pointed her in the direction of the stage to the place where he was sitting.

The dame sat down on the chair to Jack's right, looked up at Joy and let her eyes linger on the great chasm that had just occupied Jack's mind before facing him. Jack looked down at his left hand and noticed it was shaking violently. He signaled a waitress for another shot of whiskey. "Leave the bottle", he said after his refill, "and bring miss ...", he paused looking into a pair of big blue eyes that looked strangely familiar. "It's Mrs. but Mary will do just fine for you for now, Mister Dee. And I'll have a vodka and gin tonic, thank you", the dame instructed the waitress. "Mary it is", Jack replied and downed his glass in one gulp. To his satisfaction, his hand almost immediately stopped shaking.

"So tell me, Mary, to what do I owe the pleasure of our little encounter?", Jack asked in a vain attempt at acting suave. "I believe, Mister Dee,... " Mary replied before being interrupted by Jack, "... since we're on first name basis, I should point out that Mister Dee sounds a bit too much like the name of the old man who'd take off his belt to teach his boy some manners. Jack will do", he said while pouring himself another refill. As the waitress brought her her vodka and gin tonic Mary took a sip and responded with seemingly genuine sympathy: "My word".

"So back to the reason of this little get-together... ", Jack began but stopped and turned when he heard a couple of screams coming from the entrance. He noticed the big men in sunglasses wielding semi-automatics just in time. He leapt forward, knocking the little round table over and pushing back Mary's chair causing the pair of them to fall to the floor. As he turned his head to the stage, he could see the bullets exploding in slow-motion on impact like little red geysers in Joy's chest before she sagged down on her knees and tilted back. When time rushed back in, it was like all hell had broken loose. "Stay here and stay down!", Jack yelled to Mary before he got up and made his way through the screaming crowd to chase after the big men who'd left through the emergency exit on the side. Jack leaned against the wall next to the exit, pulled a Magnum out of his coat and held it to his face. "What do you say you and me gonna have a little talk to these guys, hey pal? Mano a pistola" and then kicked the door with such brute force it almost immediately swung right back into his face. A muttered "Ouch" was all a slightly dazed Jack could express for a few seconds before he came too and essayed a less brute kick before storming out.

The assailants were already running across 6th Street towards a conveniently parked black BMW Sedan, its yellow-tinted headlights staring him in the face like a panther waiting to pounce. They rushed inside as the driver stamped the pedal down and came at Jack full throttle. Jack raised his gun and managed to get off one shot, hitting the front passenger square between the eyes, before getting knocked to the side by the hood of the car. The car came to a screeching halt a few meters further and its occupants - save the one now resting his head on the dashboard, painting it cranberry - all exited the vehicle and walked menacingly toward Jack. Jack perched himself against the wall, then leaned on his right elbow and raised his Magnum for a second shot but it was kicked out of his left hand before he could fire. This was followed by a swift punch to the face, which dazed him even more than he already was. He reached into his trench coat and pulled out his hip flask before the pugilist in the sunglasses could react and took a swig. "Well, Jack, this is another nice mess you've gotten us into", his internal editor commented. "Shut up", Jack replied and had another sip. "What did you just say?!", his attacker responded as he raised his fist to punch the remainder of Jack's lights out but his hand was stayed by whom appeared to be the leader of the bunch. The attacker turned his head in anger, but quickly bowed it apologetically when he realized who had stopped him. "My apologies, Father", he said, "What would you have us do with him?". Jack raised his head and was surprised to see a person in a monk's habit, his face obscured by his cowl. "Dimittam te, Fili", the man responded, "We'll take him with us... see to it he does not know where.". Jack closed his eyes and squeezed them together as hard he could for the upcoming impact. "Oh, sh...!" was the last thing going through his mind before darkness took him.

To be continued...?