Miami Dash

by FestOfAmerican

White Lies

If the best education came from the streets, then taxis were university departments on four wheels. Sociology; economics; political science; all these and more were endless discourse for citizenry’s most unexpected scholars. Cab drivers knew every one of a city’s million stories as they knew its shortcuts. In the abstract, their monopoly over wisdom rendered them New York’s true masters.

“38 years! I’m telling you that in my 38 years, I’ve never seen an autumn snowfall this early!” Georgie exclaimed in that deep rasp that captured the city’s beating heart.

The yellow 1960’s Checker Marathon turned left on East 58th Street, crossed a bustling intersection with 59th, and followed the curving on-ramp for the Queensboro Bridge. It trailed sparse traffic into the arched passage.

Suppressing a cough with a handkerchief, the wizened griffon continued his Ivy League-worthy lecture on the weather. He jabbed a clawed foreleg through air to emphasize certain points. A blast of cold air from behind made him pause, both for thought and to ruffle his shoulder feathers. Looking at the rear-view mirror, it was apparent that his earth pony passenger had rolled down a window.

“Hey lady, that wind chill’s got to be in the 20’s. Don’t it bother you?”

“I can’t get enough of it,” she confessed in a southern twang as she leaned her head out of the frame.

Wintertime always made her feel nostalgic. Visions of lower Manhattan, the East River, and Roosevelt Island were flashing by in a giant kaleidoscope created from the bridge. The tires hissed against a roadway slick with salted water. The crisp air whipped about her orange pelt and blond mane. There was something undeniably magical about visiting home in the year’s final season.

‘I’ve been away for too long,’ she thought with a smile.

A wailing siren dashed her tranquility. The griffon heard it too and quickly jutted the Checker into an adjacent lane. Moments later, two Dodge Diplomat police sedans with spinning lights roared past. They disappeared when the vehicles ahead resumed their original positions. their haunting shrieks eventually fading as well.

‘Stay safe officers.’

“Damn, there goes my coffee!” Georgie said.

He dropped the handkerchief over the moist carpeting and stamped on it with a lion foot.

“Crime is way out of control! That bozo mayor’s so full of it! I'll be damned if his name goes on anything else than a sewage plant, you know what I’m saying?”

Expecting concurrence or even amusement, the cabbie was stunned to find the mare’s shamrock eyes looking stern through the mirror. Their once inviting dazzle was gone, hardened now into a matte jade. Words had failed him. Instead he diverted his focus back on the road and tugged on his skull cap, and the receding feathers that quivered underneath.

Exhaling sharply, Applejack grabbed the window handle in both fore-hooves and rotated it until the glass was firmly in place. She picked up her Stetson hat and flipped it over; a pocket was secreted on the inner brim. From it, she withdrew and studied her “VOID” stamped ID card from the New York City Police Department. After many years of sacrifice, she wasn’t interested in hearing any outsider’s perspective on her old colleagues.

‘They’re trying their best. Big Mac and I gave everything we had.’

Three years ago, Applejack was an Armed Robbery detective in the Bronx. She was inspired to follow in the hoof-steps of her older brother, Big Macintosh, of the Vice division. The brother and sister rubbed shoulders professionally on occasion; competing in everything from casework to marksmanship. They were greatly hailed for their devoted service. Then one evening in September 1984, the earth pony siblings were ensnared in an undercover operation that would change the course of their lives forever.

The primary suspect eluded them during the incident, and bureaucratic inaction proceeded the fallout. AJ, bitterly determined to see the score settled, fabricated the clearance to continue the investigation in Florida. However, the deception proved futile when the target slipped through her grasp yet again. Facing reprisal in New York for her vigilantism, the detective was persuaded to transfer into Metro-Dade Police. As a Sergeant in the Organized Crime Bureau, she ultimately fulfilled her quest for justice; at the pull of a trigger than the fall of a gavel.

Today is the last day of her 1-week leave from the job. Having spent the previous night with an old flame, Applejack saved the most important stop for last; to visit Big Mac and apologize for letting her sworn duty become a vendetta. She hadn’t seen him since the operation that drove them apart. Among her excuses, the younger sibling lacked Big Mac's ability to self-reflect, or confront the most unyielding truth of all.

The off-duty detective looked up from the remnant of a past life and saw that Georgie was merging from State Route 25 onto Queens Boulevard. She put the ID card away and fitted the Stetson atop of her head. When the Marathon came to a stop, she opened the right passenger door climbed out hind legs first onto the sidewalk.

“Keep the change, friend,” Applejack said when her teeth were relieved of their $20 bills. “That ought to make up for the spilled coffee.”

“Wha-? Nah, that wasn’t your fault, miss,” Georgie said, taken aback.

The griffon held out the remaining balance through the window, but the earth pony gently closed his scaly fingers around it.

“I insist,” she smiled reassuringly. “I just want to know if you’ve got any other fares waiting.”

“Are you kidding? This is what’s known as a dry spell; too cold for the fall crowds, and too early for Thanksgiving. You were my first fare today, and I’m starving, literally!”

“Well I know a little place nearby called ‘Sidetracks’ that makes a great chicken soup. Go on and have a lunch break. Be back here in, say, half an hour, and I could use another ride to Kennedy airport.”

“Okay, you got it!” Georgie nodded, the corners of his beak tilting upwards.

The idling taxi shifted back into “Drive” and pulled away from the icy curb. Applejack watched it perform a U-turn and head for the restaurant per her direction. She raised a foreleg and glanced at her watch. Taking a visible deep breath to steady her nerves, she turned on the spot and trotted through the stone-layered turret gateway of the New Cavalry Cemetery.

The morning’s gloomy overcast had been evaporated by the sun. Disparate coverage persisted against a warm blue sky. Birds were chirping a peaceful melody from their roosts of barren tree branches. Snow crunched loudly under-hoof as the earth pony made her gradual ascent up the hill to Section 18. Her eyes and mouth widened in sync upon reaching the top and beholding a truly breathtaking scene.

In the backdrop roughly 30 miles away, the spires of the Empire State and Chrysler buildings were the prominent hallmarks of the expansive Midtown skyline. Chiming buoy bells, honking car horns, and rumbling machinery of the distant living city stood in stark contrast to the dormant valley that unfurled itself before Applejack. There were headstones of varying compositions and religious denominations, as far as the detective could see.

Swallowing dryly, she sat on her haunches and pulled out an annotated copy of the cemetery map. Beneath the darkening brim of her Stetson, she memorized the path to her brother’s grave. Minutes later with weighty steps, the earth pony entered the valley. The grave markers faced away from her, casting long shadows over Section 18’s eternal occupants. Looking around for a familiar name, tiny American flags, bouquets of flowers, and other personal effects had adorned some of them. One particular tombstone drew Applejack’s attention; it was inscribed with "R.I.P. – The Living" and had a pair of stereo headphones leaning on its base. She wondered if that was somepony’s idea of a last laugh.

At last she’d found it, and the mare hurried forward. Without checking her watch, she counted less than 10 minutes left to pay her respects, but was determined to make them count. Her tired panting chilled quickly in the ambient cold and drifted past her eyes, obfuscating the modest stone carving that jutted from the rising curve in the earth. The detective reached a foreleg up and removed her Stetson, clutching it against her chest as she swept away snow from the headstone’s base with the other.

Years of suppressed emotions returned from the inscription. Uncaring if anypony saw her, Applejack draped herself over the lonely memorial, resting her chin on top of it. Tears ran from her eyes and onto the iced rock.

“I’m sorry, Big Mac. I am so, so sorry,” she offered repeatedly, clutching the stone tightly in her forelegs.

Detective Macintosh’s fatal assignment was to make a narcotics purchase face-to-face with one of New York’s biggest drug lords. Months of patient cultivation had precluded the meeting. However, Applejack had discovered it was a setup and raced to the deal location. Tragically, she arrived only to witness her brother and an informant being gunned down on the drug lord’s orders. As his limousine pulled away, AJ cradled Big Mac's body and screamed as if to let the whole city know this egregious injustice.

Even after hunting him down in the Bahamas months later, the drug lord’s descendants continued to torment the detective in excruciating ways beyond reckoning. It was earlier this year, on the small island of St. Gerard, that the blood feud was settled once and for all. Applejack settled with the choices she made, and their consequences. The only lingering question was what would her brother have thought about such a grotesque cycle of death and vengeance, had he lived to see it.

His scornful look and tone had been imposing on her dreams for weeks. Concerned that Applejack’s job performance was degrading, her partner in Miami Vice suggested a short vacation for both of them, a proposal that was approved by their lieutenant. These forces conspired to bring the earth pony mare to a snow-covered field in Queens, to embrace the tombstone of the only family she'd ever really known.

“All I want now is peace; to do my job again for the right reasons,” she said, holding further tears at bay. “I know that’s what you’d want for me too.”

Perhaps that second declaration was true. Big Macintosh never held grievances against anypony, least of all his own sister. Then again, it could be a lie told in self-condolence, because he had found a peace so fulfilling and wouldn’t bother contradict her.

Applejack released the stone carving and reached her mouth into a saddlebag, extracting a wrapped bunch of hellebores she’d purchased in Manhattan. She tenderly lowered them over Bic Mac’s final resting place, the 5-petaled flowers vibrant in the daylight. Bowing respectively one last time, she stood up and put the Stetson back on.

“Sleep well, big brother."

With a parting half-smile at the remote slab, she turned and jogged to the hoof-path that would lead her back to the Queens Boulevard entrance and the waiting taxi. There was just enough to time to catch the flight back to Miami.

The afternoon Georgia sun hovered in the swaying grasp of the westward oak trees. Great swaths of the landscape were painted in a golden orange hue. The same breeze shifting the trees also fluttered the blades of grass that covered the field. In their aromatic midst, a well-worn football bearing the initials "UF" sat upright on a tri-legged stand.

“Ready, set, HUT!” a filly’s voice shouted.

A small orange pegasus galloped from one end of the field. Her spiky violet mane and tail bobbed in the wind, but otherwise blended with the sunset. Round plum eyes locked onto the football straight ahead, putting a bit more oomph in her charge. At the moment of truth, she reared onto her hind legs and jointly swung her fore ones, the brown, white-laced pod sailing into the air. Without pausing to admire her kick, the pegasus was running again, passing one 10-yard line after another.

“Ready or not, here I come!”

“Don’t worry, I am!” a coarse female voice taunted from offense.

Crossing the median yard line, the opposing team came into the filly’s view. The adult pegasus mare’s blue pelt and spectrum-striped hair gave her a camouflage value of nil. The killer look in her pink eyes told you that she didn’t need it anyway. The football was securely in the grip of her right wing, protruding though a teal jersey dating back to the late 60’s. Stitched across the back in blocky white lettering was the following:

Scootaloo decided to try a fake-out maneuver, tagging her opponent at the last minute. She aligned herself parallel to Rainbow Dash, who suddenly veered into a collision course. When the pegasus filly tried to move away, she kept entering her line of sight. Flinching in the mere feet left between them, Scootaloo hit the dirt while the prankster leapt abundantly over her and continued unfettered to the 0-yard line.

“Aw yeah, another touchdown for the Gators!” she said, dropping the ball in the end-zone and trotting triumphantly in circles.

The girl arose from literally bitter defeat; spitting out grass slivers and soil that was caked against her lower jaw. She then turned and bounded up to Rainbow.

“No fair, Mom!” Scootaloo protested. “You were supposed to let me trick you!”

“Sorry, kiddo, it slipped my mind in the heat of the game.”

“That’s your excuse for everything!”

“Well then, I guess it must be true.”

She winked at her daughter, who was still wearing an unamused scowl. Dash had to think of a way to make it up to her. Looking over at the nearby goalpost gave her an idea.

“Alright, you can have a safety kick. Get the ball inside that post and Georgia wins.”

Scootaloo considered the structure with some apprehension.

“Do you think I can?”

“Of course, that foreleg kick of yours is a bruiser!” she said, lifting her wing and revealing inflammation through the pelt.

Rainbow Dash held the football steady in her forelegs. Scootaloo was running towards her again, her composure focused. The double kick was so strong that her mother shook her stinging hooves when relieved of the ball. The pair watched as it flew through the poles and into the adjacent parking lot. The bleating of a car alarm signaled a definite touchdown, if not some inadvertent property damage.

“I did it! Woo-hoo!” she said, flittering her tiny wings like a hummingbird to hover inches above the ground.

“Hay yeah you did!” Rainbow said, beaming.

She hoisted the tiny pegasus and took off on a celebratory flight around the park. The prospect of the football hitting the Testarossa, and the lieutenant chewing her out, didn’t weigh heavily on her at the moment.

While playing for her alma mater, Rainbow Dash had a promising future in the NFL until a leg injury sidelined her. By the time she recuperated, both the Gators and the larger world had moved on. Concerning the latter, she was drafted to serve in the Army during the Vietnam War, in two separate tours leading up to the war’s ignoble conclusion.

Influences during the war and prior led her to joining the Metro-Dade Police Department. She rose quickly from uniformed patrol to Detective-Sergeant in the Organized Crime Bureau’s Vice Division. It happened to be no coincidence that soon after losing her partner in a car bombing, she crossed paths with the renegade Applejack of the NYPD; the drug lord she had stalked south was the same man responsible for the bombing. When all was said and done in their first assignment together, Rainbow Dash convinced Applejack to bring her law enforcement credentials south to Dade County.

Since then, the "Miami Vice" dream team had shattered many criminal organizations, their wit and might tested by international adversaries descendeding upon their city. These victories were not without personal defeats. In Dash’s case, it was an estranged spouse and daughter living in the Atlanta metropolitan area. The traumatic outcome in a recent case prompted her to rebuild ties, in spite of her dangerous career choice.

‘This game, the moments we’re sharing right now, should’ve been a lot sooner,’ Rainbow Dash reproached herself in mid-air.

In a quaint suburban block close to Rebel Ridge, Scootaloo nimbly hopped the uphill steps to her father’s house. Making it to the front porch first, she turned and beckoned with a foreleg to the lagging detective.

“Hurry up, Mom!” she said.

“Whoa, easy Scoots, I don’t see a fire,” the blue pegasus jested.

Her leisurely apparel and stride would suggest that she was going at her own pace, but in reality the football game had drained her physically; an unwelcome reminder that time caught up with everypony. In addition, knocking on that door meant the end of her leave, not counting the exorbitant drive home. Having robbed as much time as she could, Rainbow Dash eventually rapped a hoof on the ornate wooden panel.

The door opened, and posted in the frame was a pegasus stallion. His pelt was a shade of blue brighter than Rainbow’s. His mane and tail resembled flames of sapphire. Luminous green eyes pierced the sunset draping across his face.

“Daddy!”

Scootaloo greeted ecstatically with a hug, the stallion kneeling down to return the embrace.

“Hi, sweetheart,” he said in a melodic surfer accent. “Did you and Mommy have a good time at the park?”

“Yeah, it was the best! I made the winning point!”

“You did? I’m so proud of you. Dinner’s almost ready, so come on in and wash up.”

“Okay!”

The pegasus filly landed on her forelegs with a clap and scurried through the open space in the doorway. The father rose to full height and considered his ex-wife as she leaned casually on the porch fence. The antiquated teal jersey was swapped for his standard department-issue; a loose-fitting white silk sport coat, pants, and a beige undershirt. A pair of Ray Ban sunglasses were perched on her snout. The hind hooves were nestled in loafers made of soft leather, foregoing socks. A gold Rolex watch slid back on one foreleg as she raised an open lighter to the cigarette dangling from her mouth.

“Hey, Soarin,” Rainbow Dash said with a hiss of smoke through her clenched teeth.

“Hey, Sunny,” he replied cordially.

Being privy to the alias was to glimpse into a vastly different world, one of unbridled decadence. For its inhabitants, money and notoriety were the ends to justify all means; betray or be betrayed; kill or be killed. Not unlike the great games of conquest played centuries ago, these new empires span continents and clash with one another to satiate the demand for illicit commodities. Only those of unscrupulous ambition could hope to attain longevity. For the part of “Sunny Burns”, and others daring enough to infiltrate this world, to survive untainted was more arduous than the bust.

In retrospect, Soarin had been naïve when he blissfully decided to share a life and daughter with Dash. The stresses induced by a law enforcement career were compounded on the officer’s loved ones. Going undercover as a freelance drug distributor, the detective would live away from them for months on end. Her successes within the department forged "Sunny" as an inseparable part of her identity. Even as he came to acknowledge that, it’d filled him with dread that Rainbow’s other life would endanger them as well.

When that fateful evening arrived, the assassin had been waiting for them indoors, riddling the abode with sub-machine gunfire. A divorce inevitably followed, as did Soarin gaining custody of Scootaloo and moving north to Marietta. A quiet three years later, Rainbow Dash reached out to them, stricken with anguish. The pledge made to reconnect with their daughter was too sincere for the remarried stallion to deny. The spectrum-maned pegasus arrived at the front door last Friday, exhausted from the nearly 700-mile road trip, but rejuvenated instantly by Scootaloo’s embrace. She spent every day of the week together as her mother promised.

“She’s happier than I’ve ever seen her,” Soarin attested. “You two really have a special connection.”

“It’s not that complicated,” Sunny said, balancing the cigarette on an extended fore-hoof. “I simply take her along on the things that I like.”

“Does that include your road rocket?”

His ex-wife coughed, and he knew well enough it wasn’t from taking a drag.

“Don’t lie to me, Sunny.”

“Okay, okay, a little ‘Driver’s Ed’ seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“She’s still in grade school,” he said, shaking his head. “And probably can’t see over the steering wheel.”

“We solved that with enough textbooks,” the mare explained playfully.

“Now I don’t need to guess what you were doing for her study hour. So what happened?”

“Nothing; we went around the block a couple times. The local PD pulled us over though. Scoots told me to keep quiet and let her handle it.”

“Rainbow!” the stallion shouted.

“I’m joking, come on!” she said, holding up both forelegs in a defensive gesture. “I showed him my badge and we had a good laugh over it. He said he lets his kid use the siren.”

“Unbelievable.”

“It’s called ‘having fun’, Soarin. We cops need to have some too.”

The ex-husband looked away and sighed. Dash shrugged and took another puff from her cigarette, tapping the bottom of it with a fore-hoof and watching the gray curls of ash drift away in the evening breeze. Twin snakes of smoke blasted from her nostrils upon exhaling. She dropped the cigarette into the free hoof and rolled it slightly in the keratin sole.

“How’s Spitfire?” Sunny asked in a low voice. “Is she treating you guys okay?”

“Fine; out working as usual,” Soarin replied. “Scootaloo’s taking to her little by little, but it’s a long-distance relationship. She’s pushing hard for a transfer to a local post.”

Rainbow Dash had met Soarin’s new wife; the day she arrived, Chief Petty Officer Spitfire was ordered back to NAF El Centro in California for another training session with the Blue Angels. The two had met through a shared background in naval aviation, but Soarin was medically discharged. Rather brusque in her first impression, Spitfire proved to be engaged in her stepdaughter’s well-being, hoping for reassignment to Atlanta recruitment by March.

“That’s good. Both of you could use somepony with a little more stability,” Dash said encouragingly.

“She’s got a lot of respect for you, Sunny. The Blue Angels have been her entire career. She can’t imagine doing anything outside of the Navy, and certainly not what you do.”

The unfinished cigarette tumbled out of the hoof and onto the porch. The pegasus mare turned to face the stallion in the doorway. He was staring right back, dissuading any doubt from the abrupt confession.

“It’s true, Spitfire thought you were some ‘hot shot ex-jock’,” Soarin continued. “But then I told her what you saw in Vietnam, and what you see in Miami. It really scared the hell out of her.”

‘Hot shot ex-jock, huh? Not bad, I’ll take it,’ the detective noted as she kicked the burning paper tube down the steps.

The sun was long gone over the horizon. The overhanging purple clouds were darkening rapidly and the crickets were beginning their nighttime chorus. Rainbow Dash removed her sunglasses and hanged them from the front of her undershirt. If she delayed her departure further, the chances were she might not make it back to work on time.

“Thanks, Soarin, for everything you did to make my leave worthwhile,” she said, trotting up to him and offering a hoof-shake.

“Won’t you stay over for dinner?” he said, ignoring Rainbow’s attempt at farewell. “We have plenty to go around.”

“Sorry, but to reach the state line by dawn, I need to cover a lot of distance before finding a motel.”

“Oaky. Then let Scootaloo say goodbye to her mother,” the blue-on-blue pegasus said calling for the filly over his shoulder.

The young girl dispensed her tomboy persona and wept, her fore-hooves clinging fiercely to the sport coat. Rainbow Dash hugged her in return, running a foreleg across the top of her mane in consolation.

“I love you, Mom. I love you so much,” she sniffled, burying her face into the undershirt and letting loose more tears.

“I know, Scoots. I love you too, and I always will,” Sunny affirmed, ducking and embracing her daughter with her neck.

“You’ll come back to see Daddy and me soon, right?”

The mare raised angled eyes at her ex-husband, and the expression he gave was ambiguous; “We’ll see”, was her interpretation. Children only know absolutes: “Yes” or “No”. Dash meant to come back and see her, that much truth she could deliver. Being more specific was to lie.

‘I can live that. One more to the pile of lies I’ve told others and myself.’

“Sure, kiddo. I’ll be back soon, I promise.”

Sunny Dash climbed the hill’s last rocky step onto the curb. She turned, waving to her daughter and ex-husband one last time. Next she jogged the declining roadway to the only car capable of supplementing his high-rolling cover.

It had a flat white rectangular shape with a low-lying grille and headlights. Across its doors were etched with drag-reducing vents. The windows, roof casing, and side-view mirror were trimmed to an epitome of aerodynamic performance. A chrome standing horse set between the stoplights was the trademark of Ferrari.

Detective Dash opened the driver’s side door and climbed into the Testarossa. She turned the key in the ignition and was greeted immediately by a monstrous roar of the 12 cylinder engine.

‘Let’s see if she goes any faster on a southern path,’ Sunny proposed with a grin.

Stomping the pedal to the metal, the tires squealed, expelling a smokescreen of charred rubber before the momentum of their spin pushed the super car forth on the winding shadowy road.