The dark-gold nectar poured slow, like syrup, but didn’t smell like anything Folie had ever smelled before. She swished it in the old glass and looked through it at the bartender, bent out of shape by the light’s sudden deceleration in the thick liquid.
“There a problem?” said the bald-headed barman, crooking an eyebrow.
“It’s just the glass. Do you have a cleaner one?” said Folie.
The barman brought a big hand up to the rack over the bar and brought down another glass. “They’re all clean,” he said, scowling. “But you’re the boss.”
Folie felt a hand on her shoulder and tensed, before she heard the laughing voice of Andy Post behind her. Post was the reason she wasn’t catching a faceful of hell from the barman right now, and he was a smuggler. What he was a smuggler of varied – guns, drugs, occasionally paying customers – but the job never did. He drove fast, never carried a gun, and had a devil-may-care attitude that made him either very annoying or completely irresistable, depending on your taste.
Folie’s taste was irrelevant, since she was an undercover plain-garb detective with the Coca Cola Enforcement Squad. Getting close to him was her job description, for the time being. When the time came, her job description would change.
Post chattered with the barman for a while – idle stuff, she had never detected any hint of a business relationship between the two men – and pulled her arm.
“Zach wants us upstairs,” he said. “Bring the drink.”

Zach was nothing – just another go-between – but the gig itself was interesting: carrying a bundle of cash to a drop in the industrial zone. These guys rarely ran cash, preferring to barter or swap services where possible as it left less trail. Cash meant a big deal was going down. The kind of big that might lead Folie and the CCES another rung up the ladder.
After Zach, they went home and Post put on the TV loud so the neighbours wouldn’t hear them talk. He wanted her to cover him on the cash run. He knew she could handle herself – had seen it when the Upper South Bastards had come at them once in a traffic jam – and he couldn’t think of anyone he’d rather trust with his life.
Goddamn, are you a horrible judge of people, thought Folie. But she agreed.
Post went to the drawer and got out his pipe and stash of the red-dyed herbshit he smoked, and they got high together and he turned up the TV further.

Next morning, Folie got dressed and slipped out. She had a report to make to her higherups, whoever they were. She drove out to the edge of the ZZ on her bike and met up with the guy with the limp who always took her case notes.
“Does he suspect anything?” asked the guy with the limp. Folie shook her head.
“He’s drunk half the time and stoned the other half. You could move a squad into his house and he wouldn’t suspect.”
“That’s good. Keep it that way,” he said. He had a big pair of dark glasses on that blacked out his face, so under his hat all you could see was the shadow of a mouth. Folie nodded and parted silently, leaving her notes with him.

She sat down next to him in the cafe and stuck a plastic straw into a can of Coke. “Heard anything else about the gig?” she said out the side of her mouth.
“Nothing yet,” said Post, kissing her on the cheek. He ordered another drink and they chatted idly for a while. Post had seen a couple of strange men going up and down the apartment hallway. They always stopped in front of the door a few down from him and went inside, and then stayed until nightfall.
“Isn’t that-”
“Where that old couple live?” said Post. “Who knows what they could be getting up to. Ve-ry slow-ly.” He snorted a laugh, and Folie couldn’t help but join in. Her feelings may have been irrelevant, but she couldn’t deny he had grown on her in the weeks they’d been together.

That night, a friend of Post’s came round to watch the game. He was called Flint, a boisterous man who didn’t at all fit his hard and unforgiving name.
“Is she…?” said Flint when Folie entered the room. Post nodded.
“She’s cool. She knows all about.”
“Damn, I nearly shit myself thinking you’d brought some clueless type chick to the party!” laughed the man. The West Warchester Warriors on the TV scored a goal from the halfway line and the crowd went nuts.
“How dumb do you think I am?” said Post.
Flint turned to her and looked over the top of his glasses. “So. You cool with the cause?”
Folie shrugged. “I guess I am. I thought you were just here to watch the Warriors?”
“That’s of secondary concern.” Flint turned around to Post. “I heard you heard from Zach. You know he and I aren’t on the best of terms right now, but I am willing to let that slide. I want you to tell him that I have done right by Melia. He will not be hearing bad shit about me from her again.”
Post nodded, not really taking in what Flint was saying.
Later, in a haze of smoke, Folie was sitting in between the two of them.
“How’d you get involved in the cause, baby?” said Flint. The TV was now on some kind of comedy channel. A guy was running around naked except for a long wig that covered his whole body. Andy was losing his mind laughing at it.
Folie shrugged and sank deeper into the space in the sofa between the two men. “I don’t know. Fell in with a bad crowd,” she said, and giggled. “How about you?”
“I used to have a good gig, working in delivery. Sorta like I do now.” said Flint. “But I worked for a small company. Soda Joint. They’re gone now. Lost my job then and there.”
“Why didn’t you stay with Coke? When they bought out your company they should have offered you your old job back. They have to, legally.” “They have to offer you a job – don’t mean they have to offer you a job you can take! I didn’t have enough saved to keep my permit when the company changed the laws – I was already hand to mouth. Soda Joint let me work under the radar. So I went underground. At first it was just for myself, running black market whatever to whoever. But you don’t live like that for long, one way or another. The rebellion gives us something to work towards above ourselves. Man gets to needing that eventually.”
Great, thought Folie. A philosophical stoner. Not enough of those around.
But his story had moved something in her.
She had seen too much of the heart of the city to think that these people were really any worse. In the company district uptown, they would call in demo-squads on businesses that failed to make rent, and to hell with anyone who didn’t get the letter and showed up for work that day anyway.

The day before the job went off, she got a call from higher up to the payphone outside Post’s building, just round the corner from the door half-nested in an alleyway.
“Detective,” said the metal voice on the other end. “Acknowledge.”
“Acknowledge, control,” said Folie.
“It’s been a while since we’ve heard from you, detective. Some of us were starting to worry.”
“Yes, control,” said Folie. She stared impassively at the big label which said ‘CALL: $10/MINUTE’. “I’ve been very busy. I couldn’t get away without arousing suspicion.”
“Not the only thing you’ve been arousing,” said control. “Our people have eyes everywhere. Eyes and ears, detective.”
The people down the hall. Dammit. “I have a cover to maintain. Sometimes it necessitates I… fraternise.”
“Just remember who you work for,” said control.

Andy Post was asleep when she went up. Flint was making a sandwich in the little kitchenette, chopping up a mixed-veg block.
“Didn’t know you were up,” he said. Folie nodded.
“I’m a light sleeper.”
“We’re all light sleepers, these days. You went out?” Folie nodded and spun a yarn about having to go downstairs to sign for mail.
“What mail?” said Flint, and she made a big show of slapping her forehead and said things like “I’d forget my own head if not…” The things that are expected.
Flint left soon after, before Post woke up.
“Hey, babe,” he said. “What time is it?”
She kissed him, then told him. He seemed to consider for a minute.
“The thing’s tomorrow, isn’t it?” he said. Folie nodded. “Better keep a clear head, then. Want to smoke?” Folie nodded. Post got out of bed – he was nude, vulnerable – and lumbered to the drawer where he kept his pipe. That night, she went to bed, and the morning came as mornings do.