ARGH! Original/SCU
Jun. 12th, 2005 05:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbard*hits LJ with a baseball bat* Stupid thing keeps screwing up my profile - so that I can't change it, and so I have some weird-ass long thing for a webpage URL when I don't even have a fucking webpage, and it won't let me delete it off of there, because - I don't know why. When I try to edit my profile, there's either nothing in that little slot or it stays the same way no matter WHAT I do. *grrr*
Also, one of the worst cop-outs in fiction? "And then he woke up." Or its lesser-used equivalent: "You're really a mental patient and this whole thing has been a delusion." I was really liking the book, too.
Anyway, more of the SCU (Special Crimes Unit) original. Except that Detective Jack O'Carolan is apparently not part of SCU, but instead one of the detectives that works cases that may end up being in the perview of SCU, because you can't always tell. "Roving detectives" apparently, whose precincts cover all of New York.
O'Carolan is a cop family, a family whose ancestors came over on a boat from Ireland sometime in the nineteenth century and put down roots in Boston. Since then branches have spread out all over the country, and prisoners in state and federal prisons nationwide compare the cops they've run into and shake their heads at the number of O'Carolans and O'Carolan relations. O'Carolan is a family whose children go either into law or its enforcement - preferably its enforcement, but O'Carolan will take what it can. Every generation turns out at least one lawyer, and now and then the odd politician. Even, in times of great social unrest, a few soldiers, who bear their medals with as much pride as any of their police relatives and are always first into the breah. O'Carolan is a family with many children and more children's children, and it is the odd O'Carolan who doesn't have at leas three siblings when growing up. Six or seven is the more common number, even in the enlightened years of the twenty-first century. This is O'Carolan, after all, whose mottos are many and numerous, but one of which is bare is back without brother. O'Carolan isn't picky; they'll take a sister or a cousin if the opportunity should present itself.
This is the family Jack O'Carolan was born to but never knew. His father was Eamon O'Carolan, who ran away from his Boston home to join the NYPD, and his mother was an ex-hooker named Veronica Smith. There were a lot of Smiths in New York City, but Jack had never known if his mother had come by the name honestly or by happenstance. He suspected it was the latter, but he never even considered asking his mother. Some secrets should remain secret.
And others cannot remain secret, not if justice shoudl turn itponderous head in their direction. Justice, after all, is blind, and how should it tell one secret from another when in such a stranglehold. No, Justice chooses the secrets it can uncover, whether or not they should remain mysteries.
He woke facing the dent in the wall where Sara had thrown a hairdyer at his head the day she walked out.
Jack lay back in bed with his heart hammering and murmured with great certainty, "Jesus." He'd had a hell of a dream. Something about the precinct empty and abandoned, the hallways twisted up and turned inside out. He'd wandered through them with his hand on his gun, calling in a low voice barely louder than whisper, "Electra? Lew? Anyone here?" No one had answered, and he'd pushed open doors to peer at rooms dusty with disuse and time. When he'd opened the last door it had been to Lew's office and Lew himself had been sitting there, head bent over a stack of reports.
"Lew?"
Detective Lieutenant Lew West raised his head and there was nothign there but skin stretched tight over boen and empty blue eyes that stared at him with fire flickering in the irises.
Jack took a step back and ran into Electra. She was comfortingly flesh and bone against his skin, so he grabbed at her, fingers slipping against the silk of her oversized men's shirt. "Electra, Lew's -"
She laughed, low and sultry, like he'd never heard her laugh in real life, and put her hands up by his face. "What?" she asked. "He's what?" Suddenly her mouth was full of blood and there was blood running down his face where she'd touched him. Jack shoved her away and turned to look down over all of New York from a bird's eye view. The boroughs stretched out beneath him, each brightly lit but silent, and he realized with sudden surety that they were all dead. Eight million people. All dead. And you didn't do anything, his cop's blood gnawed at him. Not a damn thing. And that's when he fell, and woke up.
It took him a moment to realize that the patient beeping he heard wasn't actually his alarm clock, which was set to a local radio station, but instead his pager. Jack reached over and shut it off, then squinted at the screen with bleary eyes.
Great, bodies in Littly Italy. What else is new?
Am tired. And depressed.
Also, one of the worst cop-outs in fiction? "And then he woke up." Or its lesser-used equivalent: "You're really a mental patient and this whole thing has been a delusion." I was really liking the book, too.
Anyway, more of the SCU (Special Crimes Unit) original. Except that Detective Jack O'Carolan is apparently not part of SCU, but instead one of the detectives that works cases that may end up being in the perview of SCU, because you can't always tell. "Roving detectives" apparently, whose precincts cover all of New York.
O'Carolan is a cop family, a family whose ancestors came over on a boat from Ireland sometime in the nineteenth century and put down roots in Boston. Since then branches have spread out all over the country, and prisoners in state and federal prisons nationwide compare the cops they've run into and shake their heads at the number of O'Carolans and O'Carolan relations. O'Carolan is a family whose children go either into law or its enforcement - preferably its enforcement, but O'Carolan will take what it can. Every generation turns out at least one lawyer, and now and then the odd politician. Even, in times of great social unrest, a few soldiers, who bear their medals with as much pride as any of their police relatives and are always first into the breah. O'Carolan is a family with many children and more children's children, and it is the odd O'Carolan who doesn't have at leas three siblings when growing up. Six or seven is the more common number, even in the enlightened years of the twenty-first century. This is O'Carolan, after all, whose mottos are many and numerous, but one of which is bare is back without brother. O'Carolan isn't picky; they'll take a sister or a cousin if the opportunity should present itself.
This is the family Jack O'Carolan was born to but never knew. His father was Eamon O'Carolan, who ran away from his Boston home to join the NYPD, and his mother was an ex-hooker named Veronica Smith. There were a lot of Smiths in New York City, but Jack had never known if his mother had come by the name honestly or by happenstance. He suspected it was the latter, but he never even considered asking his mother. Some secrets should remain secret.
And others cannot remain secret, not if justice shoudl turn itponderous head in their direction. Justice, after all, is blind, and how should it tell one secret from another when in such a stranglehold. No, Justice chooses the secrets it can uncover, whether or not they should remain mysteries.
He woke facing the dent in the wall where Sara had thrown a hairdyer at his head the day she walked out.
Jack lay back in bed with his heart hammering and murmured with great certainty, "Jesus." He'd had a hell of a dream. Something about the precinct empty and abandoned, the hallways twisted up and turned inside out. He'd wandered through them with his hand on his gun, calling in a low voice barely louder than whisper, "Electra? Lew? Anyone here?" No one had answered, and he'd pushed open doors to peer at rooms dusty with disuse and time. When he'd opened the last door it had been to Lew's office and Lew himself had been sitting there, head bent over a stack of reports.
"Lew?"
Detective Lieutenant Lew West raised his head and there was nothign there but skin stretched tight over boen and empty blue eyes that stared at him with fire flickering in the irises.
Jack took a step back and ran into Electra. She was comfortingly flesh and bone against his skin, so he grabbed at her, fingers slipping against the silk of her oversized men's shirt. "Electra, Lew's -"
She laughed, low and sultry, like he'd never heard her laugh in real life, and put her hands up by his face. "What?" she asked. "He's what?" Suddenly her mouth was full of blood and there was blood running down his face where she'd touched him. Jack shoved her away and turned to look down over all of New York from a bird's eye view. The boroughs stretched out beneath him, each brightly lit but silent, and he realized with sudden surety that they were all dead. Eight million people. All dead. And you didn't do anything, his cop's blood gnawed at him. Not a damn thing. And that's when he fell, and woke up.
It took him a moment to realize that the patient beeping he heard wasn't actually his alarm clock, which was set to a local radio station, but instead his pager. Jack reached over and shut it off, then squinted at the screen with bleary eyes.
Great, bodies in Littly Italy. What else is new?
Am tired. And depressed.