momma i got my diploma
She looks like something out of a Hollywood noir movie. Trench coat, heels, perfect hair, lacquered nails. She's young, but the hard, steady look in her eyes masks whether her youth is seventeen or twenty-seven. With hands that don't tremble even a little, she takes a cigarette out of a glossy case. Someone offers her a light and she ignores him. Ida Wingates does things for herself. Even little things. She may cast the image of a frail lady in waiting, but everybody who's seen those old time films knows: you do not fuck with the femme fatale. Even in Gotham, where the fear and crime has cast the glass ceiling ever lower - once you saw enough women in the Narrows castrate their abusive husbands and send assailants packing with vicious broken bottles and well applied tasers, you started to think. You started to hesitate. You might even, if you weren't a big enough asshole, start to give said women a bit more space. When it was a room temperature day in hell - respect.
At least that's what she's always hoping. She acts accordingly - as if it is fact and not mere hope.
Ida takes a drag off her cigarette, blue eyes watching with cold calculation. Her left hand is in her pocket, comfortably wrapped around a Ruger P89, safety off, index finger on the trigger.
"We've got cases and cases of the nine mils," her contact is explaining to her, "Barettas, mostly, though there's some Glocks. Just handguns this time, getting automatics has turned into a big fucking headache with the way these bastards have been cracking down. Fuck..."
She knows the numbers without him having to say so. He knows she knows, by now, and doesn't bother telling her. She ignores his bitching about the police. Excuses.
"Do I have to check them this time?" she asks dryly. "Or are you going to give me the discount up front?"
"The serial numbers are burned off." He sounds offended.
Ida takes another drag, not breaking his gaze. She exhales. "Four cases. We check every single one or you knock off half a grand."
There's grumbling about the time - it's late, these deals need to go quickly - but he ends up conceding to the price break, and they're loading up her Buick by the time she's grinding out her finished cigarette under her heel. She waits until the older men have cleared out before she even opens up the driver's side door - she knows better - and when she does, she just sits for a moment inside the locked vehicle.
Her gun - safety back on - goes back in the glove compartment. It takes her three tries to get her keys out of her pocket and start the engine. Her hands do shake, now, but it's the only tell. Her face is impassive. They could still be watching.