Officer Grace Jones has been called a lot of things in her eight years with the NYPD. “Stupid” isn't one of them. You don’t get to where Grace is by letting your guard down, not when you’re patrolling the South Bronx at 3am, not when you’re breaking up prostitution rings in Hunts Point, and not when you’re shoving sixteen-year-old crackheads into the back of squad cars for anything from petty theft to first degree. It kills her by inches, some of the stuff she sees. It really does. So she suits up and locks it down, compartmentalizes, pulls every trick she knows so it doesn’t get to her too badly. She figures as long as she doesn’t lapse into raging alcoholism then her coping methods are working all right.

It’s nights like this, though, when it’s bitter cold and pissing down rain, that Grace has trouble keeping all that mess from rising to the surface. She’s got the cruiser idling outside a busted-up looking Duane Reade with the heat cranked up as high as it’ll go because it’s cold as a bitch, watching homeless people shuffle past or curl up in the shelter of abandoned stoops. There’s a couple of streetwalkers working the curb in spite of the weather, shivering in tatty halter tops and fishnet stockings, hoping for some john to drive by and get them out of the cold for a while.

Grace is from the Bronx. She knows how it is and how things can go bad real quick, and she's got nothing but sympathy for hookers. She doesn't harass them, and she never picks them up unless they’ve got something going on the side like drug dealing or grand theft auto or (God forbid) they’re minors. The ones on the curb tonight aren’t up to anything apart from being miserably cold, forced to stand out here by pimps who aren’t about to lose business because of some shitty weather, and Grace’s heart goes out to them. She’d pile them all into the back of the squad car just to get them out of the elements, but that’d do nothing but get them beat the next day for getting picked up by the cops. So Grace sits and watches and feels pretty miserable herself.

Imogen had been in Hunts Point since the tender age of fourteen. She had run away from her foster home, where she had landed at the age of nine due to her mother's drug addiction. She didn't remember her father, but he was alive and well, living in the suburbs of some unknown town upstate. She was headed there when she ran away, but at fourteen with $26 in her pocket, she didn't get too far. It was then that she met Lady, a working girl from LA, that introduced her to the game. Her first time was awful, it was in the back of a white Buick sedan with a man named Lefty. He choked her and beat her, and she cried the entire time. It was the type of experience you could never forget. That night, when she went back to the hooker's apartment, Lady found her crying in the bathroom, washing the blood off the inside of her thigh. She helped Imogen and offered her version of comforting and motherly words. "It gets better in time, honey," she explained. "After a while they stop havin' a face. They just become a stack of bills." She washed her hair and gave her pajamas that were two sizes too big and put her to sleep. Even now, she didn't know whether to thank Lady, or resent her.

As she stood at her usual spot under the bridge in Hunts Point, she watched the other girls in their leopard spandex with slits on the side, heels six or seven inches high and the tiniest shirts she had ever seen. She laughed softly, disdain dripping with each note of her voice. She was dressed in a leather jacket, jeans, and her favorite pair of Jordan sneakers. The retro '86, that she had purchased with the money from her last trick the night before. Her kinky hair was loose and framed her angular face and her eyes, the color of jade in moonlight looked like they knew every secret in the world. She leaned against a 'No Parking' sign for just a second, when her pimp, Lefty walked over.

"Girl, whatchu doin' all covered up like that?" Imogen resisted the urge to roll her eyes, that would just earn her a smack in the face. Johns didn't pick up girls with marks on their face, so she'd end up paying for her sass twice. "Left, it's cold. I still get Johns," she said with eyes cast down. He walked over to her in one fluid stride and pushed her, hard. "Look at all these other bitches!" He grabbed her arm forcefully, definitely leaving bruises on her caramel skin. "They wearin' nothin' and you here covered up like a polar bear! Take that shit off!" He ripped the sleeve of her floral Bellfield jacket. She decided it wasn't worth the trouble and took it off. Underneath wasn’t much better. She had a plain gray long sleeved henley tee. "The hell is that?" Thwack! He back handed her across her left cheek, and it immediately began to swell. She swayed a bit from the impact but regained her footing. "I'm talkin' to you!" She didn't respond, if he hit her again, she could go home. "Who the hell you think you are, defyin' me like this?" Thwack! Same cheek. This time he hit her real hard and knocked her to the floor. She didn't bother getting up, a single tear making its way down her cheek and onto the dirty concrete beneath her. It was then she realized that what she felt for Lady, was actually resentment.

“Oh hell no,” Grace mutters under her breath when the girl gets backhanded the first time. She’s shifting gears when the pimp gets a second hit in and the girl goes down hard. “Motherfucker,” Grace hisses and peels out across the wet pavement, flipping on the lights and siren before she grabs hold of her shoulder radio. “Dispatch, this is 11662,” she says, throwing the cruiser into park and shoving the driver’s door open. “I’ve got a 10-32 on Southern and 163rd. Gonna need a 10-13, over.”

“10-4, 11662. 10390 en route, over.”

Hookers and druggies are already scattering in all directions as Grace steps out into the rain and rounds the hood of the squad car, but she’s only got eyes for the girl on the ground and the man standing over her. “Hey, hey, hey!” she shouts. “What the hell you playing at? Get your hands off that girl.”

The pimp backs up a few steps and raises his hands. “Just havin’ a private conversation with my girlfriend, officer.”

“Uh-huh. That what laid her out on the ground?” Grace snaps.

"She tripped. She's real clumsy sometimes."

"Guess that's how she got those bruises too, huh?"

He shrugs and Grace squints at him, sizing him up. He's a fairly big man, thuggish, likely in his mid-thirties. She's taken down bigger, but it never hurts to let them know you're packing. Casually, she pushes her windbreaker back and rests a hand on the pistol grip of her sidearm, makes sure he sees her do it.

“Got a lot of girlfriends on this street waiting for cars to pull up," she says finally. "You know what the penalties are for pimping in New York? Seven years and double the money you’ve made off these girls."

“Those hoes got nothin’ to do with me,” he says. “I told you, man. I was just talkin’ with my girlfriend. Ain't that right, baby?”

The girl looks up at him from where she's sitting, cross-legged on the wet pavement and cradling her face, then she looks at Grace. She stays silent.

“Is that what you call this? Talking?” Grace says, gesturing at the girl’s wide, hurt eyes and bruised face. On her shoulder, Grace's police radio crackles to life.

”11662, this is 10390. Coming up on you, over.”

"10-4, 10390. Ready when you are," she replies and looks over at the pimp. "All right, I've had enough of you. Get your hands behind your head," she tells him as a second squad car pulls up to the curb.

"Bitch, you got nothin' on me," he says warily, but he does as he's told.

"How about assault and battery?" Grace asks. “I got more than enough evidence right here to put your ass in jail. Not to mention all those outstanding warrants that are going to come up when we run a background check.” She nods at the burly Italian cop stepping up onto the curb. “Hey, Jim.”

“What’s up, Jones,” he replies. “We booking someone tonight?”

Grace nods in the pimp’s direction. “That one.”

“I got rights, man!” the pimp says, indignant.

“Shut up and get against the car,” snaps Jim, grabbing him by the shoulder and steering him towards the cruiser. Grace leaves the frisking and cuffing to him and crouches down beside the girl.

“You all right?” she asks.

Imogen thought the best idea was to just stay on the floor, she didn't feel like falling down again. Lefty kept screaming and yelling at her about her clothes, she needed to look more like a hooker, he didn't give a shit that it was cold out, deal with it. That was his favorite line, deal with it. It was his way of saying, 'I protect you, I make sure men respect you, I got you off the streets.' Imogen knew better than that, of course. Lefty got half of whatever she made, and if she didn't work he made no money. As far as protection went, there had been times where she yelled for his help, but the almighty dollar was more important than her wellbeing.

She just sat there on the ground listening to him berating her. It was a common occurrence, it was very easy to tune him out. He didn't know jack about her, he was just another john to her. Her attention focused on the sound of a police car making its way to them. She was secretly relieved, if Lefty got arrested that would give her at least a day or two to heal the bruises and just sleep. She continued to sit on the floor, a hand pressed to her swollen cheek. He got her good this time and it her angry, but acting on it would just get her into more trouble.

The cop car slammed into park, a small police officer coming out of the car looking really pissed off. She was a short woman, with fierce dark brown eyes. Imogen kept sitting on the ground, her head spinning from the smacks and listened to their exchange. She had to give it to the girl, she definitely wasn't stupid. Every time Lefty came up with some bullshit, she shut it down with an equally smart remark. Imogen the resisted the urge to stand beside her and say "Yea, that's right girl! You tell him!" Instead she concentrated on trying not to smile at all, her face was still throbbing.

A few moments later, another squad car came over, a male officer stepping out, obviously to help the policewoman. Lefty kept shouting at them, making the situation worse for himself. Imogen couldn't help but feel glad that he was an idiot. As the white cop arrested him, the woman came over to her. "I'm fine, thank you," Imogen responded, finally getting up. Her tone was a bit rude, but it was defensive. She knew how this worked. The cop would ask her questions, find out she was a working girl and take her in. "It was just a misunderstanding, he has a temper," she kept going, walking slowly away from the police officer's knowing gaze. "He's my boyfriend and I pissed him off, that's all." She wasn't defending Lefty, if the cop asked her if she wanted to press charges, she'd go the precinct with bells on, but not at the cost of spending a night in Central Bookings herself. She smiled at the woman, heading back towards her apartment. She was done for today, with only twenty six dollars in her pocket. The irony of which was definitely not lost on her.