PRIVATE All The King's Horses | Jack Kowalski



Lizaveta shut her eyes, squeezing her eyelids tightly.

"It is annoying that your type -- not you, since I don't know you, but your type -- cares more about Grigori's crimes now that he is dead than they ever did when he was alive. If I had come to a police officer on the street and said my boyfriend is a criminal, he is involved in organized crime they would have told me to call someone who cares. And that is not just a Night City problem. No, it is the same or worse in the Soviet Union. The things he did to people... the things he did to me -- there is not a soul in Night City or Moscow that would care."

She opened her eyes and took her coffee cup to the trash can to tap the cigarette out into the trash bag. "Where do I start with Grigori?" A deep breath, a shaky exhale. "I was nineteen when he took me over. When he decided that I would be his property. I did not want a man; I was barely more than a child. I was not ready for -- for all the things that he expected of me. But when I tried to refuse, he threatened my family. That he could locate them in a matter of hours was terrifying. I could not refuse him."

Her jaw set and her voice was dull, as if she was reading from a particularly dull book. Someone with an understanding of psychology and unhealthy coping mechanisms would recognize it as disassociation, a way to strangle the emotions before they strangled her. "Life with Grigori was comfortable but punctuated with brief periods of great discomfort. He took away the things that mattered to me, piece by piece. My family, who I was not to visit without him. Friends, who did not like being surveilled when we had lunch. My dancing -- my dancing," she said, voice trembling, as if discussing the death of a child.

"First it was that I could not tour with the traveling company so I wasn't away from him. Then he came here and decided to make his life here. I wanted to return to Moscow, to continue my career. He took it all in stride, of course. Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. He wasn't angry -- Grigori did not get angry, you understand. That made it all the more terrifying. You see there were no warning signs when he came back to me with a hammer and smashed my knee with a hammer."

Tears were streaming from her eyes then, though she did not give in to the emotion of it. They were an automatic response, not an indulgent one. She was leaking more than crying, but they made her eyes the most brilliant aquamarine. "It ended my career. I would never dance again. The Bolshoi does not allow cybernetics in their dancers, nor surgical enhancements. My knee is titanium, which is close enough for them." Lizaveta brushed her cheeks with her sleeves, irritated at the weakness that her tears showed. "It was over. And I knew he wouldn't stop that. If I ever questioned him or disobeyed him, it would only escalate. So he was made to face the consequences of his actions. Not just ending my identity as I knew it. Mixing drugs and alcohol so carelessly... as if he was too important and well-connected to stumble like we mere mortals." A derisive half-snort.

Finally she turned back to Jack. Her voice was cold, her fury at being made to recount her experience with Grigori glacial but readily apparent. "Call it vengeance if you like. I know better. Are you satisfied, Office Kowalski?"


 


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Tags: @Lizaveta Isakova


As he listened, her piece about classical music brought something to the forefront of his mind, the Commendatore scene from Don Giovanni. Don Giovanni lamenting to the statue of the Commendatore- his murder victim, only for the statue to come to life as the Commendatore, chastising Don Giovanni for the murder and his wrongdoings. The hauntings of one past tended to catch up to them, and that redemption and forgiveness were not beyond reach. But she wasn't currently interested in that. She had literally gotten away with murder. But a question lingered on Jack's mind, to which he asked before- the information she relayed to him soaked in non-verbally. Despite his faults, Jack really was a good listener.

"So what now for you, Miss Isakova?"

It seemed a rational question about the temporal actions, and the spiritual consequence. Jack knew the gravity of taking a life- but he never had to do it to someone so intimately intertwined with him. He took his seat again, deflated almost. Defeated, and saddened. Her hardship and the cruelty of her life, the snatching of her dreams by Grigori was clearly not something he was a fan of. He was torn between understanding and wanting to haul her in. Murder, was murder after all.

Right?

"And no. I'm not satisfied. Are you?"

His eyes flicked to meet the tall, beautiful woman. A question poised back to her. Two words, elaboration that she probably wouldn't articulate to him presently. He stood silent for a while, before taking a deep breath. Perhaps he wanted to get on her good side, perhaps he really did want to comfort her when he leaned forward and began to speak.

"I was a year into my previous employment, on Mars. We had word that there was a local problem child with a gun. 17, robbery here and there. Nothing really stuck and being that it was a mostly industrious area on Mars- local magistrate and the like weren't keen on prosecuting a trouble maker. Well. He had a gun now. Name was Ilya. Ilya came around, just having robbed someone for a handful of cash, some jewelry and their hat. So this kid turns the corner- and I'm there. I tell him to stop, he takes off running." He paused for a second, collecting him. A deep nasal inhale, and he closed his eyes. Jack was trying not to be there again. But he could still smell the cordite, the red dust clicking under his feet.

"We run, I'm right behind him, yelling at him to drop the gun. He turns a corner, down to a parking lot. He pivots, and-" He clicked his teeth. "I saw that gun go up. Maybe he wanted to toss it, make me focus on recovering the gun. Maybe he wanted to shoot me. I came out of the holster, and- put five rounds in his chest." He took another deep breath. "I'm a good shot. I don't think he even registered he got hit."

He snapped his fingers. "Lights out." He looked over at her, being lost in his own memory for a spell.

"You won't forget it. And maybe you shouldn't." He stared at her, his eyes flicking up and down her figure, once again. He was unable to- she was alluring, dangerous, and now, the antithesis of what he was supposed to represent. He couldn't help but be... enthused.

"Show me to the door?"



 
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"Returning to Russia would be suicide," she sniffed. "Even if no one knows what really happened to Grigori, they will assume I know enough to be dangerous." She didn't add: and they'd be right. Some things could still be managed with finesse, after all. "There is his business to attend to. The business itself is a tool. A hammer need not always be used to bash in the knees of promising ballerinas; sometimes it is used to push in nails. The business can be fashioned into something less... malevolent. Certainly less criminal."

If they don't take it away from me, she added to herself.

His question caught her off guard, but she merely canted her elegant head to one side. "Satisfaction is a luxury, Officer Kowalski, that I cannot afford. For the time being I must be content with life and freedom." She stood still, listening to his story. There was much to learn about the man from his story; she made a mental note to have it checked, along with his background. She had a feeling this was not the last she would see of Jack Kowalski.

Lizaveta could think of a few things to say about his story. Of course it was awful to carry that kind of thing around on his conscience. She supposed it would be futile to suggest that his work merely reinforced a system that drove the poorest into lives of crime while extracting wealth for the corporations. That would make the killing of a child, even with a gun, even who had just robbed someone, into the realm of murder for hire. But she wasn't stupid enough to think that antagonizing the police officer who could very well have her life in his hands was a good idea.

Besides, the badges did not create the system any more than the ballerinas did. They were as much hostages of circumstance as anyone else.

"Terrible," she said instead, with a genuinely sympathetic shake of her head, giving him the old eyelash-veiled, wide-eyed look she did so well. "And yet -- necessary, I think. An act of violence, when taken as a measure of self-preservation..." Lizka's eyebrows raised suggestively. "These questions will give the philosophers something to do while you are busy stopping criminals, I think. But if you take anything away from this conversation, it should be that I do not forget. I do not look away. I do not love what I did, but I am not so ashamed that I cannot face it. I see it every time I close my eyes."

Her gaze held his until he asked to be seen to the door. Lizaveta pushed away from the table and smoothed her blouse self-consciously. She led him back toward the front door of the apartment. "I have an uneasy feeling, Officer Kowalski, that this is -- what is the phrase?" said Lizaveta as she settled her hand on the door before half-turning to him. "It's not goodbye, it's only au revoir?"


 


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Tags: @Lizaveta Isakova


Jack listened again, and his face showed a hint of regret. Perhaps even shame, but, he didn't respond. He said more with his eyes, more with his gazes he averted than the ones he did make. He was conflicted as ever. Sure, he had taken a life in the line of duty- justifiably so. So what made hers, to his subconscious, unjustified? Was it that she was outside the law? That she used subterfuge to get away with it? Would he have done the same thing?

Would he have done the same thing, if put in her shoes?

A part of him immediately said no. But a small part of him begged a different question to that one-

What would stop him, if he were her?

He stood up tall, fixing his uniform as he walked, clearly at a loss for words. She spoke again- all of them bouncing around in his mind, rapidly. He clicked his tongue in response, his perfect teeth ran over by his tongue, before he spoke again.

"May we meet on better terms, Miss Isakova."

Out of all the things he said, all the waxing poetics, the questions, that was the most genuine thing he said all night. He began to take his leave, leaving her be. He knew he caused her a great disturbance- but also lightened her burden. She was free of the police inquiry- for now. Grigori's death would be pushed aside, the city moving on without him. And she could, too.


 
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