O’Connor waited to get out of bed until he was confident that it was too late to check out. Even then, he didn’t really have anywhere to be. He was deeply intrigued by the early morning glam rock session, as eager to revel in the Yahtzees' suffering as he was to confront the culprit, their very own little pencil pushing psycho, Mr. Paulson. The sergeant shit, showered and shaved, donned his jeans and tucked in his polo shirt for presentability.
O’Connor was pleased to discover that Mr. Paulson was poolside in his boxer shorts. His suit, briefcase, and shoes were laid out on the lounge chair beside him. His socks appeared to be drying, clipped to the umbrella. He was attempting to find a Wi-Fi signal on what appeared to be a Game-Boy console spliced into a megaphone, or possibly a radar gun of some sort. He waved the cone thing around, concentrating on the handheld screen. Maybe he was checking for residual hair gel on the echoes from the moon or something. O’Connor waved, but Paulson didn’t notice.
The sergeant knocked but walked right in anyway. He found the chief on the telephone, listening intently.
“Yes,” Martinez nodded. “I absolutely understand, but under the circumstances…” Martinez glared, but motioned for O’Connor to close the door, peering past him to make sure that Paulson wasn’t close behind. “I’ll brief him immediately, Ma’am.” He nodded gravely at O’Connor.
The sergeant plucked his gun belt from the back of the dinette chair, cinching it up and adjusting slightly. He nodded at Martinez as he picked up his credentials and tucked them into his waistline.
Martinez nodded approvingly, even as he cringed at the caller’s tone. “Yes, Ma’am,” he said as she abruptly disconnected.
“Fired?” O’Connor smiled hopefully.
Martinez shook his head. “There is a problem with Mr. Paulson.”
O’Connor feigned surprise, badly. “Oh. Yeah?”
“What do you know?”
“Oh, no.” O’Connor demurred, hooking his thumbs in his belt cheerily. “You first, Chief. I don’t know what I know, except that we don’t know as much about him as he knows about us…”
“He doesn’t work for the Commissioner.”
O’Connor nodded, then shook his head. “Shit,” he muttered.
“Yeah.” Martinez agreed.
“So…” O’Connor surveyed the few items that Paulson had left in the room. There was some packaging from various deliveries, a cheap plastic comb, a handful of screwdrivers and cheap ballpoint pens. “Who the hell is he?” He picked up one of the pens, looking for any sort of logo. It was cheap, but heavy.
Martinez nodded. “Who does he work for?”
O’Connor clicked the pen once, and again, satisfied. For a free pen, it was a nice one, but there was no logo on it.
“And…” Martinez continued, “Why the hell did you let him into my office?”
Ignoring the question, O’Connor clicked the pen again. “Yeah,” he agreed, clicking the pen twice more like Paulson had the night before, “...and why the hell is he sneaking off to sabotage the Yahtzees every night?” He clicked the pen three times, quickly, letting his breath out slowly as if it were office yoga of some sort. He shrugged. He didn’t feel any more relaxed.
“O’Connor…” Martinez massaged the bridge of his nose, his glasses bouncing. The sergeant had allowed some strange, cheap suit into the chief's office without so much as a Google search, and now they really were in trouble with the commissioner. Martinez glowered. “Wait. What?”
“Yup,” O’Connor nodded and clicked the pen again, holding it closer to his ear to hear the snap. “Listened to his impromptu DJ set last night.” he clicked it twice more, satisfied with the feel of an old-fashioned click pen, and he set it behind him on the top of the cable box.
“What the hell?” Martinez knit his fingers
The ballpoint pen on the cable box popped like a circuit breaker. The cable box crackled. Simultaneously, the ballasts blew out in every energy saving fluorescent lightbulb in the room.
O’Connor glanced back at the thin tendril of smoke rising from the cable box vents, like a match extinguished.
“Who the hell is this guy?” Martinez repeated.
As they heard the rusty pool gate swing open, Sergeant O’Connor turned to face his chief with an anticipatory glee. “Orders, sir?”
The pool gate slammed shut. In the moment of stillness that followed, the chief thought he heard the soft strains of Mr. Paulson murmuring the lyrics to Streisand’s “On a clear day.” Chief Martinez smiled placidly. “Detain him for questioning, Sergeant.”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
O'Connor smiled slowly. “Yes, sir.”
In Mr. Paulson's defense, because he never really got the chance to defend himself, almost no one returns from a quick dip to find themselves broadsided by a softening supercop with a chick-shaped chip on their shoulder. That the one calling himself Paulson happened to be in his skivvies at the time didn't help. He struggled as much as he could with a pillowcase over his face and O’Connor grunting in his ear and pinning him to the ground. O'Connor took some satisfaction in his application of excessive force, tossing in a few old Greco-Roman wrestling violations just to hear Paulson attempt to squeal with a crumpled washcloth in his mouth.
O'Connor's hand slithered up under Paulson's chin with the insidious intent of a python coiling about prey. The Arizona-tanned forearm flexed with a bronzed Beach Boy bicep, both engorging in tandem to block Paulson's windpipe. Although Paulson clawed at the Coppertone tanned arms, he couldn't free himself. His body relaxed slowly, unwinding in O'Connor's arms as he passed through the screensaver starfield of pretty lights and drifted off to the outer limits of oxygen deprivation.
Martinez watched his erstwhile auditor shudder a few times before finally releasing his grip on O'Connor's arms and going entirely limp. The Sergeant wouldn't ease up. “Well, don't kill him,” Martinez complained.
“Cuff him and tie him to something.” O'Connor said, dead lifting Paulson in the choke hold. “He won't stay out long.”
Martinez dragged a chair over and the sergeant laid Paulson's temporarily vacant body into it. It only took a moment to cuff his hands behind him. He woke slowly and peacefully. Blinking at the newly restored hotel room scene, Mr. Paulson attempted to smile through his washcloth as he watched the sergeant finish lashing his bare ankles to the chair with long swaths of a terry cloth he tore from one of the complimentary hotel towels.
Paulson's muffled chuckle was calm and even giddy as O'Connor pulled the washcloth from the counterfeit clerk's mouth. “So, you guys don't like Streisand?”
O'Connor backhanded Mr. Paulson without a word. Paulson's head bounced back and to the side, nearly sending him over. Paulson looked down at the carpet thoughtfully before chuckling again.
Martinez took a seat on his own unmade bed. He knit his fingers and scowled. “Who are you?” He asked, keeping it simple.
Paulson licked his lips, finding blood, and smiled, but not at Martinez. He only had eyes for the sergeant at the moment. “I'll let you sing the Kris Kristofferson part, if you want, Sergeant.”
O'Connor let fly another backhand, same as the first, laying the bound Paulson out across the floor and opening the split lip further. Paulson chuckled, then rested his head against the carpet. Blood flowed freely, spattering the carpet as O'Connor effortlessly tilted the auditor back upright. Still, Paulson chuckled. “Fine, fine,” he sputtered, spraying a fine aerosol of blood at the sergeant as he did, “you can sing Barbra's part.”
O'Connor cocked his fist back like a Hollywood hero, ready to strike a decisive blow for justice.
The man who called himself Paulson chuckled and cleared his throat, gazing up at the sergeant patiently.
“Well?” O'Connor inquired, thoroughly.
The man tied to a chair in his shorts glanced up at the fist and snorted. “Well, if you're going to do Barb's part–”
O'Connor's fist ricocheted off Paulson's skull with an empty thud, entirely unlike the Hollywood sound studios' heroic punches.
“–You're going to have to start.” Paulson finished, his right eye clamped shut and a fresh cut on his brow, just starting to bleed, a dark trail careening down his cheek. He glanced over at the chief, smirking. Leaning in theatrically towards the chief, he snickered. “Frankly, I don't think he's got the range for Babs, but I don't want to hurt his feelings,” he whispered.
O'Connor swung another backhand that split the auditor's lip and splattered blood across the kitchenette table. He massaged the back of his hand, wiping the blood off. “Sock party, Chief?” He considered dropping a bar of Irish Spring into a tube sock and beating the little twig into paste.
Martinez was as yet unimpressed with the entire process. Having been casually briefed on the “enhanced interrogation” techniques employed in other black ops government agencies, he was somewhat skeptical of the results. Guantanamo Bay detainees aside, he had heard mixed reviews on the efficacy of the techniques prescribed. Good agents quickly became bad people when given the opportunity to explore their sadistic side with an Arab stranger. Already, O'Connor was enjoying his role in the interrogation more than Martinez would have liked. While neither of them had openly chosen their respective “Mutt and Jeff” roles, the sergeant seemed to have taken the enhanced interrogation briefing as an instructional Ted talk of some sort. “Look,” Martinez said, sighing as he took a seat on the bed. He knit his fingers before him, affecting as professional a posture as possible, to level with the imposter. “I don't think you understand how deep you truly are right now, Mr. Paulson. As it stands now, my only orders are to detain you.” The chief sat up. “Of course, the sergeant here might have a history of excessive force…” Martinez shrugged apologetically “...and if anything unfortunate were to happen while we were detaining you, well…” he shrugged again.
Mr. Paulson chuckled politely.
Sergeant O'Connor came out of the bathroom with a pair of tiny complimentary soaps from the hotel bathroom. He plucked one of Paulson's damp socks from the floor and slid the soaps in. His torture device looked about as ominous as a pair of poker chips in an argyle condom.
Mr. Paulson smiled up at the chief. “I'll take my chances.”
O'Connor dropped his soap in a sock sling and cocked his fist for another Hollywood perfect punch. “I'm going to end you.”
Paulson chuckled. “We train for torture like you boys take weekend fishing trips, you glorified hall monitor.”
“We’ll burn your pubic hair with Sterno gel!” the sergeant snarled.
“Go ahead!” Paulson spat. “Waterboard me!”
O’Connor wrapped his belt around his fist and grabbed the glorified accountant by his thinning hair, cocking his rawhide fist back for a properly dramatic full-face punch. “Get the jumper cables, Chief! I wanna see him dance!”
But the chief just clicked a ballpoint pen one time, and the room was instantly still for a second.
He clicked it two times.
Mr. Paulson shook his head as Martinez leaned over to set the pen on his strange computer. “No–” he blurted, “Jack is a time traveler!”
And Martinez clicked the pen three times in rapid succession. Sliding it into his shirt pocket, he smiled at O’Connor. “Go on,” he said. “You’ll find your fresh towels in the bathroom.”