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Renee Montoya saw the Major Crimes Unit logo on the back of the detective's rain jacket, before he saw her, and so she still had time -- if she wanted it -- to change her mind. But no. She had already thought this through. Fighting crime in Gotham meant crossing paths with Gotham cops. And since she was eventually going to need contacts within the department, she might as well start cultivating them her way, on her terms.
And so she drew in a breath, strode toward the flashing squad car lights, and called out, "Hey! Driver!"
The blond man straightened to his full height as he turned to face her. At that instant, Renee could tell she had caught him off guard, which wasn't an easy task with a member of the GCPD's elite unit. Marcus Driver, like every other cop who worked out of Gotham Central, had seen just about everything. He really did look surprised to see Renee, but by the time he crossed the alley to the barricade, he had slipped back into the swagger and smirk that wasn't so much an attitude as a survival skill on the job in this city. "Well, well. Detective Greta Garbo. Of all the crime scenes in all the towns in all the world. . ."
"Ingrid Bergman, genius." Renee smiled, slipping easily into the banter of life on the wrong end of a twelve hour shift and two packs of cigarettes. "If you're gonna quote Casablanca, you better get your facts right. Sarge and Crowe would skin you alive for that."
"Oh, no," Marcus shook his head. "Ingrid was Ilse, but Garbo is you. Sarge is the one gave you the nickname, on account of, when I tried to track you down last year, all I got was 'I vant to be alone.'"
Renee winced. Cops were good at dishing out crap, and Marcus had more of a right than most to shovel it in her direction. "I don't recall using exactly those words."
"No." He leaned closer and used a grave, confidential tone. "But 'Fuck off, Marcus,' didn't make quite such a good joke." She opened her mouth, trying to figure out how the hell to frame an apology for the person she had been a year before. Then a smile broke across his face, and he jabbed a playful punch against her arm. She had a horrible feeling that if they hadn't been in public, he would have tried a hug - Marcus Driver, resident wiseass-slash-den-mother of the Major Crimes Unit. Of course he had been the one to come looking for her after she had quit with hardly a word to anyone. Marcus wasn't even on her shift, she had mostly known him in passing. But he had been the one who tried the hardest to comfort her when Cris was killed. Ever since he had lost his own partner on the job, Marcus had taken it upon himself to look out for others going through the same thing.
He had offered her a shoulder, and she had told him to fuck off. She didn't know how to apologize, but, well, there was the obvious way. "I'm sorry," she said.
"Ahhh," Marcus took his hand off her arm, and rocked back on his heels. "It's no thing. So, how have you been? Where have you been?"
"Here and there," she said. "Khandaq. Nanda Parbat. Back in Gotham long enough to send you a nastygram. Then Nanda Parbat again." Renee had been a cop long enough to know that the best way to lie was often to tell the truth and sound like you didn't mean it.
"Nanda Parbat," he repeated, with the look on his face of a guy who had heard too many really convincing stories from perps who had shoplifted in self-defense. "The Lost Immortal City of the Himalayas? That's great, Renee, that's excellent. Romy and I have been looking at honeymoon spots. We're thinking about the Fortress of Solitude."
Renee's eyebrows went up, as she heard the real information buried in Marcus's teasing. "Honeymoon?"
"Ask to see his ring." Josie MacDonald step up behind Marcus. "Driver loooooves it when people ask to see his ring."
Marcus made a nonspecifically obscene gesture in his partner's direction. "Keep saying that, Jo, it never stops being funny."
"Better than asking about Romy's due date," Renee said. She grinned in Josie's direction, but she couldn't help noticing that the detective's return smile didn't quite reach her eyes.
"Yeah, yeah." Marcus brought a hand to the back of his neck. "I work with women all day, remind me why I want to marry one?" He kept up the caustic tone, but there was the slightest blush at the base of his ears, and Renee suspected she wasn't too far off the mark. If he and Chandler weren't having a baby, he wanted one, and hell. Marcus would make a good father, and if Romy thought she could handle that and the job too, more power to her.
"So, Montoya." MacDonald crossed her arms and turned toward Renee. "You happened to be in the neighborhood? Or do you just like hanging around crime scenes." Unlike Marcus, Josie didn't seem to be feeling the sentimental mood.
"I'm just trying to get in touch with the streets again," Renee said. "I've been away --"
"She's been in Nanda Parbat," Marcus said with a smirk, and Renee cursed herself for being too clever. A cop with a joke was like a dog with a bone, and he'd probably be telling that one for a month.
"I'm a private security consultant for Kane Industries," she said, to take the conversation away from the subject of her travels. She was making it up on the spot, but once she had said it, the idea wasn't half bad. If the state forced her to, Renee would get a license, but meanwhile she'd convince Kate Kane to give her a badge. A shield that said, "There's money behind this" would get you a hell of a lot further, in Gotham, than one that said To Protect and Serve.
"And here you are --" said Marcus, "talking to a couple of lowly city employees. We should be honored."
Renee shrugged. "I figure you jokers -- pardon the expression -- can use all the help you can get."
"I don't see why," Josie answered. "Not now that the World's Greatest Detective is back in town. Or at least --" She looked at Renee. "Somebody's been on the roof, playing around with the signal." There wasn't any reason for Renee to feel any significance in those words. MacDonald had no reason to direct them at her. True, Josie's hunches had a famously good track record, but there wasn't any way she could know that Renee had been one to lay unauthorized hands on the Bat Signal.
Marcus just made a face. "Trying to give me an ulcer, aren't you?"
"Still not a fan of the Bat?" Renee asked him. "I thought you'd come around."
"I had, a little," he admitted. "And then he disappeared on us. I know, I know. It's the old joke. We hate the food, and there's not enough of it."
"Vigilantes," said Josie, with a firm shake of her head, "Can't live with 'em, can't shoot 'em in the chestplate -- oh wait!"
"Hey," Marcus warned.
"Didn't your fiancee do that?" Renee said, joining in on the riff.
Marcus shrugged, loyal to the end. "Way I heard the story, he was kind of asking for it. But really." He shook his head. "Good guy or bad guy, what kind of person puts on a mask and goes through these streets looking for trouble?"
"So the difference between you and him is a mask?" Josie asked.
"Oh, I don't know," said Renee. "We all have our ways of disguising ourselves. When you walk down the street, do people see Marcus Driver, or do they see the badge?"
"A badge isn't a mask. A uniform's not a disguise." He shrugged. "And if it is, I think I can live with it. Dunno if I can say the same about that guy." Then he stopped and straightened, because a young uniformed officer was sprinting toward them. "What?" said Marcus.
Renee instinctively moved after him, though it took her toward the barricade. Josie, subtle but clear, moved her body in front of Renee's, but not before she could hear the conversation between Marcus and the kid. "So, what, you find shell casing?"
"No sir. I found -- it's like last time. I found two."
They started walking forward, and Renee had to hold back the urge to follow. But Josie was right. It wasn't her place to go with them. Renee Montoya wore a different kind of uniform now.
Marcus looked up one last time, before they walked away and left her at the edge of the street. "Glad you're still around, Renee," he said. "Don't be a stranger."