TITLE: A Conversation With Jacobi While Bustin’ a Punk
PAIRING: Lindsay/Cindy
DISCLAIMER: Not mine. Never was. Never will be. No profit. Just love.
She didn’t care if Jacobi laughed at her bizarrely progressing love life… much. She didn’t care if he laughed at her personally. She didn’t even care if he thought that she was losing her mind at the mere thought of getting Cindy naked. She did, however, care if he laughed at her police work, which he had been doing. All. Day. Long. Despite the fact that she had been a ninja of awesome ever since she left the morgue.
She’d been kicking so much ass and taking so many names, both her fingers and toes were cramping up. But she was ninety-eight percent done with this damn case, and she’d managed it with little help from her partner, who had been rather content to stand on the sidelines, watching as if he’d bought a ticket for the show.
“What is so funny?” Lindsay finally demanded across the console as Jacobi continued to spew laughter at her from the passenger seat. When Jacobi couldn’t answer for his laughing, she blew out a breath. “Is this why you made me drive? So you could continue your hysterics? Because you know, chauffeuring me is the only useful thing you’ve done today.”
Far from being offended, Jacobi’s laughter only amplified, as he grabbed the air before him like he was wrapping his hand around an invisible neck and pretended to punch an unseen face in time to his words. “I’ve.” Punch. “Got.” Punch. “Places.” Punch. “To.” Punch. “Be.” Punch. Then, he lost it all over again.
“Well, he talked, didn’t he?”
“Oh, he talked,” Jacobi admitted. “Through the half of his face that was still working.”
“Is there a point to this?” Lindsay asked in aggravation.
“I just hope she rocks your world like you’re hoping,” Jacobi responded on a laugh, then smirked. “Not that I have any doubts.”
“Do you want to be next?”
“Ohhh no,” Jacobi waved her off dismissively. “I’m far too pretty to be a victim of your sexually-frustrated rages.”
Lindsay growled beneath her breath as she pulled up next to the curb. Mouth full of verbal vinegar as she turned to her partner, she wished she had time to spit it in his face. But she didn’t. She had a bad guy to catch and she had a tight deadline to do it. Jacobi’s punishment would have to come sometime later. When he was least expecting it.
“You think this is it?” Lindsay asked him, glancing out the windshield at the derelict building, police tape crossing the entrance and a big red sign where the city condemned it on the door.
“Gang tags, drug paraphernalia, bullet holes. Yep. Welcome to hell.”
Danger looming all around them, Jacobi finally stopped laughing. He looked around the vicinity, checking for any sign that it was a bad idea and started out of the car. But before he made it to the sidewalk, Lindsay saw a threesome of thuggery coming down the street toward them.
“Wait, Jacobi, look.” She pointed to the middle of the three hoodlums.
“He does fit the description.” Jacobi agreed. “Little scrawnier than I imagined he would be. Do you want to be the one to find out if he has a tattoo of Cookie Monster on his left butt cheek?”
“It’s him,” Lindsay said. “Look at his hand. You really think that’s his class ring?”
Jacobi shook his head. “I doubt this guy’s ever been to a class. I’d guess that’s the missing class ring of our victim. Let’s take him in.” He started out the door for the second time.
“Hold on,” Lindsay pulled him back into the car again. “We need to get him to confess.”
“And we will,” Jacobi said, glancing at Lindsay’s longing face. “Oh, you mean we need to get him to confess like right now, ’cause you’ve got places to be.”
Trying not to let Jacobi’s amusement at her desperation distract her from the mission, Lindsay took in their suspect. “I have an idea,” she said. “You go talk to him. I’ll be over in a minute. Just play along.”
“What are you going to do?” Jacobi asked suspiciously.
“Whatever I have to do to get this idiot to confess!” Lindsay anxiously returned.
Without a word, but with a humored look that made Lindsay want to punch him in the lip, Jacobi finally made it all the way out of the car.
Lindsay watched Jacobi approach the suspect and wave his small posse on their way, and when she was certain that he didn’t need backup, she popped the trunk and got out of the driver’s seat. Hoping that F-Dog didn’t see her emerge from the same vehicle as Jacobi, Lindsay crouched at the back of the car and peeked in at the trunk’s contents. Black t-shirt, shredded in a fight with a perp, a bicycle chain she’d confiscated from an unruly teenager, Mardis Gras beads for no reason she could remember. Well, she thought, glancing up to make sure Jacobi and F-Dog were still in place, you do what you have to do.
Glancing up and down the street, Lindsay found it deserted but for the three of them. So, she pulled her shirt over her head and went to work. A moment later, she popped up from behind the trunk and headed in her partner’s direction.
F-Dog saw her first. He glanced up over Jacobi’s shoulder, took one look at her and licked his lips. Which, she hated to admit, was exactly the reaction she wanted.
“Hey, hey, old man,” Lindsay shouted in her best ‘hard street’ voice, coming up at Jacobi’s back. “What do you think you’re doin’?”
Jacobi turned around, jaw hanging open as he took in the tattered t-shirt, the beads twisted around her neck, the bicycle chain bracelet winding halfway up her arm and her perfectly teased hair.
Trying to keep her persona as Jacobi’s face contorted in near agony, Lindsay willed Jacobi not to laugh like he so clearly wanted to do.
“Keep walkin’,” Jacobi finally managed.
“You gettin’ somebody else on the same crap charges you got me on? Huh?” Lindsay argued back. “I bet you didn’t even tell him his rights. Go on, tell him he’s got rights.”
“He’s not under arrest… yet,” Jacobi responded, eyeing F-Dog.
Pushing into the space between Jacobi and F-Dog, Lindsay turned all of her attention on the appreciative suspect. “Hey you, you got rights you know. Like, you got the right to remain silent. And anything that you say to him can be used against you in court. And you got the right to an attorney too. But if you ain’t got the money, this bitch has to get you one for free. You know what I’m sayin’? You understand your rights?”
“Yeah, I got you,” F-Dog smiled at Lindsay like she was his sexy salvation.
“If you ain’t been arrested, you also got the right to walk away,” Lindsay added. “In’t that right, Pops?”
Jacobi cut his eyes toward her in a way that clearly stated that was the last insult from her that was going to go unanswered. “Yeah, that’s right.”
“Well then, see ya,” Lindsay grabbed F-Dog by the shoulder and walked him off down the street, throwing her hand up at Jacobi in a rebellious wave.
Turning her head as she led F-Dog away, she saw Jacobi run back to the car, climb in the driver’s seat and whip it around in the middle of the street.
“That same guy picked me up four times this year just for lookin’ too good not to be a hooker,” Lindsay said. “You believe that?”
“Well, you do look pretty good,” F-Dog admitted.
“Yeah?” Lindsay smiled, trying to run her fingers through her hair in an inviting manner before realizing that she couldn’t get her fingers through the rat’s nest and turning it into an unattractive scratch. “Thanks. So, what’s he trying to get you for anyway?”
“He thinks I did a murder.”
Lindsay looked over at F-Dog and laughed.
“Why you laughin’?” he asked, offended.
Head turning just slightly, Lindsay saw the car creeping silently down the street behind them.
“No,” Lindsay shook her head, still laughing. “I got three exes doin’ time for poppin’ somebody. You,” Lindsay aimed her finger back and forth at his scrawniness, “you ain’t done no murder.”
“What? Are you sayin’ I ain’t man enough?”
“You ain’t a man like them.”
F-Dog stopped in his tracks and turned toward her, and Lindsay took a few steps forward to make sure the car, and Jacobi, were outside of his line of vision.
“Yeah?” F-Dog started, stepping into Lindsay’s personal space, and looking much more like a man who could have killed someone. “Well, let me tell you somethin’. I did do that murder. I put my gun right under that rich kid’s chin and I blew his fuckin’ brains out… just because I didn’t like him.”
“For real?” Lindsay challenged. “You killed someone? What was his name?”
“Matt Ricardo,” F-Dog smirked.
“Yeah, that’s his name,” Lindsay nodded, losing the voice and glancing back at Jacobi, who was rolling to a slow stop by the curb. “Did you catch that?”
“Yeah. F-Dog here blew rich kid Matt Ricardo’s fuckin’ brains out just because he didn’t like him.”
“Good,” Lindsay replied. “Saves on the ‘he said, she said’ in court.
“Are you fuckin’ kiddin’ me?” F-Dog squawked as Lindsay brandished the cuffs from her waistband and clasped his hands behind his back.
Lindsay pushed him over to the car, opened the door, and none-too-gently deposited him in the backseat, before practically skipping around to the passenger’s side and climbing in next to Jacobi.
“Let’s go,” Lindsay said, a big grin coming to her face at both her victory and the prize that was in store for her.
Jacobi looked her up and down. “You gonna wear that getup with Cindy? Very street sexy.”
Lindsay groaned. “Are you really gonna start with this again?”
“If you were always this inspired, we’d clear four, five cases a day.”
“You know,” F-Dog spoke up from the back and Lindsay was actually glad for the interruption. “You can’t use what I told you in court. ‘Cause, you know, I didn’t know you was a cop and that’s entrapment.”
“What do you mean?” Lindsay asked.
“You know what I mean. You acted like you wasn’t a cop.”
“No,” Lindsay clarified. “I mean, which part of what you told us?”
“You know…” F-Dog stated insistently. “That I killed Matt.”
Looking over at Jacobi, Lindsay smiled brightly. Jacobi wanted to smile back, but could only manage to shake his head at the fact that any one human being could contain so much dumb. At least until his eyes dropped to Lindsay’s wrist, still looped by bicycle chain.
“You should probably lose the chain though,” Jacobi picked right up as if the second confession never happened. “You could do some serious damage to her with that.”
Growling, Lindsay turned toward the window.
