The call comes late. Maybe he's at a bar, mouth full of Scotch. Maybe he's regretting last night's indulgence and is home, responsibly early, mouth full of toothpaste. So - late, well past business hours, well past sunset, the evening news scrolls by, muted, as someone flashes a white-toothed smile - "Eddie?" His Captain, annoyed by the fuckery of someone interrupting his own evening. Which, the background noise suggests, is taking place in a blues and jazz venue, probably someplace thoughtlessly trendy. San Fran-fucking-cisco.
"Got a hit on one of your guys. Piotrowski. Give this sad fuck a call." Or not, his tone implies. No skin off the Captain's ass.
Now, Piotrowski isn't just a person of interest. He's not just a special target. He's Eddie's newest CI, maybe. They are still mid-courtship, far as Eddie can tell. But behind that flat façade of Slavic imperviousness Piotrowski showed the world beat the heart of a green-gilled coward, and all Eddie needed to do to start turning him from shithead into shithead informant was make him fear the cops and the prison system more than he feared his compatriots. He was promising, a dark, narrow little window into the hidden guts of his organization - Italian, mostly, for all that he himself was a Pole.
Promising, and now past tense.
The 'sad fuck,' you see, is a homicide detective with the Oakland PD, which may well be the second-worst job in the greater SF metropolitan area. And he has the corpse of Eddie's 'person of interest,' his brand spanking new CI "strung up," he says, then goes quiet. "Well, you have to see it." Interdepartmental consult. Metro Crime Task Force. They've already got approval for the overtime if Eddie wants to buy in, bring his knowledge of the deceased to the table.
He's given an address in industrial, sad-sack Oakland. Crime scene processing's just started. "The more the merrier," says dry-voiced Detective Omar Washington. "Got to see this to believe it. But word to the wise. No fucking press."
Eddie VakojIts that hour of the day- wait... night. Its night... (a glance out the window confirms this) when pieces of the lean detective began to feel disjointed. His mouth would go numb. Fingers dance across the bar- through a ring of moisture there perhaps- or his legs to a tune he can't hear. He purses tingling lips, scowling slightly as he listens to the gravel and whisky voice of the man on the other end of the phone.
"Yeah. Sure thing- thanks for the head's up." beep.
Work. Thank god. The endocrine song courses through his veins. Waking him up and lifting the corners of his mouth. These days it seems the only thing that ever really perks him up. Well... that waitress he'd slowly been trying for- Lucy? Suzy? Something with a 'y'. SHE would have perked him up. An hour into the attempt he'd found himself convinced she was a lesbian and gave up.
Funny how they're all lesbians these days.
He chuckles to himself, a dark mutter of humor as he stands on the bar rail and whistles at the bartender.
"Barry! Yeah. What? WHAT?" He rolls his eyes. "YEAH yeah.. you're not a dog. So quit being a bitch and lemme at your phone already. Yeah its local."
Barry's a bit irritated. Not much. Just enough that Eddie makes sure he sees the ten slide into the tip jar. A sullen glare at the man as Barry brings the bar phone over. Ed's hands are fast. Clever. They're through dialing the number before he thinks to recheck it.
Nevermind. Some people just got it. Ring Ring.
"Pick up you shitbag..."
Lucy Stillwell"Washington." The other end of the line. The man's voice is crisp and dark and dry. Behind him, the suggestion of motion. Other voices, the usual movements of a crime scene. "Oakland homicide."
Definitely the second-worst job in the greater SF metro area. No one's sure, yet, what the worst might be.
Eddie Vakoj"Vakoj. Captain Erickson says you've got a dumb Pol-lack joke you want to talk about. You want the file or a face to face?"
Months of work. That's what he's thinking about. Months of stroking that fucker's ego then bursting it again. Over and over and over.. even the threats had gotten tired and finally, finally he was getting somewhere. Nailing Piotrowski down. Guy wasn't all bad. Just kinda hollow. No guts. Just right for Eddie's purposes, as it happens. And now he's dead.
The drive helps to cool his frustration a bit. He'd scuffed his knuckles a few minutes into the drive to Oakland- taking the privacy afforded by the drive to engage in some childish behavior and punching his dashboard. After that brief impact, he'd spent most of the rest of the time talking to Susan. It was a habit that had come out of the shreds of a twelve year marriage, and it was hard to break. Her ghost was every bit the wise ass the reality of the woman was.
No press- just like Washington had said. One dark blue Lexus with the trimmings and nothing else.
Lucy StillwellFace to face.
Face to face to face. That's what Washington wants. You gotta see this guy. He says. Tell me you can give me something.
The neighborhood's one of the rundown industrial districts of West Oakland, near the foot of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, in the broad flatlands. The buildings here are early to mid-century, the last century. There have been a half-dozen attempts to revive the old war-time industrial core that sent Oakland's minority population skyrocketing. Mostly, they've failed. Urban renewel is some kinda sick joke, on streets like these. So these are dark, dim roads fronted by red-brick factories and warehouses, the odd commerical building, the occasional attempt at gentrification, or public housing, or what the hell, in varying stages of repair, punctuated by the odd half-finished, mostly forgotten mural.
He has to park a couple blocks away from the address itself, only because uniforms have the streets approaching the crime scene blocked off. Locals - and gods only know where they came from - linger at the yellow sawhorses, testing the boundaries. Nevermind the hour, some are kids no older than ten or twelve. Some are twenty-year old mothers, heads full of curlers, going on forty-three. Something about curlers and house shoes and house coats gives them a timelessness, caught forever in a once and future middle-age.
The uniforms are still establishing that perimeter, sharing out gossip, chasing down the kids who try to get closer, but they let him through, easy. when he gets close, he can see why they're keeping the public away.
Czeslaw ("Chess") Piotrowski is upside down, naked, lashed to a makeshift upside down cross by means of a heavy duty outdoor extension cord - bright orange - wrapped around his feet and ankles. Darker lashings at waist, neck and wrist are similar - dark green, though. Made to disappear against the landscape. The cord at the right wrist has come loose, and his right arm flops sideways, waving in blank surrender.
He has been hung out of the second or third story of an old warehouse. Various official looking figures are clustered around the shattered window casing through which the whole ugly tableau was suspended (by a heavy duty chain). Others mill about below, boots crunching on glittering shards of shattered glass. No blood. No guts, just glass glinting like fractured diamonds underfoot.
--
As soon as Eddie identifies himself, he's directed to Det. Omar Washington. Inside, upstairs.
Eddie VakojHe follows all the normal steps. Flash badge here. Get directed there. Bright eyed. Alert. Giving the trip from car to scene the same tireless pace he always has. Grim. Earnest. The ground eating pace of a coyote hound that just knows his prey won't get away as long as he covers ground without wearing himself out.
Its when he's given that last direction. Up the stairs, inside... that he begins to deviate from protocols. The idea is this: One gets directions, says something trite in reference to the body, follows directions. In that order. Generally, with that sort of brevity.
This though. This is goddamn wild. The tall, angular detective nods absently to the officer that directs him, and stares up at the lifeless husk of his CI. Slowly his head tilts to the side. A dog puzzling at something. Then his eyes travel with fevered zeal between the body and the ground. He stares into the thousand reflections of the crucified Pole mirrored in tiny bits on the ground.
Green, the arm wrappings. They fit into the background... maybe more cable. Maybe coincidence.
His boots make clipped, morbidly eager sounds on the stairs as he travels up.
"Washington? Vakoj." A handshake, and two names a world apart from each other.
Eddie VakojHe has to clench his hands hard to keep from rushing straight to the windowsill. Did the chain scrape? Does the sill show signs of weight dragging against it? His palms want to taste that ground, he wants to study every bit of grit and industrial absenteeism the scene has to offer. He wants to know about the cross and the green arm ties and he wants to start and WIN-
Instead he's smirking and greeting. Giving introductions. Acting like the other people present aren't just sorta in his way, really.
It will be entire minutes before he begins to sweat. Before the eager, hunting creature that lives between cynicism and a forgotten race in the back of his head starts to rear its head.
Lucy StillwellInside: that's where the crime scene is. One tech is struggling to get floodlights working, another is cataloging blood spatter, while a third works fingerprints. And holy hell, there is a lot of blood. Black pools like oil slicks gleaming from depressions in the worn concrete floor. A long, narrow trickle circling off toward a central drain. Spattered stains on a pair of big plastic paint buckets.
Detective Washington is a big, bluff African-American with a eyes like a mournful puppydog, chewing a mouthful of Nicorette as he circles the interior with a camera, taking careful pictures of the words scrawled around the room, in the victim's blood, again and again and again and again.
Pater noster,
qui es in inferno,
sanctificetur manu tua.
Sanctificetur manu tua.
Sanctificetur manu tua.
"Sick shit, isn't it?" says Washington. He has a pen in his mouth, in addition to all that gum, and he treats it like a cigarette when he finishes photographing the blood-writing, handing off the camera back to the tech tracking down every stray drop of blood. Reaching to shake Eddie's hand. "Your guy must've had some enemies."
Except he didn't. None that Eddie knew. Or rather, he had enemies. He had cap in the back of the head, beat-down, knife in the back enemies. He had enemies willing to murder him, enemies willing to put him on display, even. They all do, even Eddie.
But he did not have enemies willing to commit such goddamned blasphemy, upside down crosses and blood-writing and - sick shit as Detective Washington put it so eloquently. Even the Mexican cartels, the Russians, they murder on Saturday, go to church on Sunday.
Eddie VakojEddie's eyes barely stop skittering like hungry spiders across the scene. A glance to Washington. An itch between his fingers where a long, thin cigar should go.
-Then back to the scene. Wanting and relentless. Long fingers- powerful from hours and hours and hours at the gun range and supple from the sort of sleazy affectations the low- brow interpret as 'style' writhe against each other as people move about and do their jobs. They could step on something. They could move something that inch that means everything. He always gets that feeling. Breathes a certain way to overcome it.
Eddie's lips part slightly as he begins to speak, then pats his phone into his hand to take pictures of his own. Then-
"Well yeah, sure... but they're the sorta enemies that get teary eyed at their daughter's confirmation, you know? This is...."
Then he's distracted. Wait, no. Not distracted. Focused. Really, he's a bit eerie. Eddie's fame is widespread, if local. A laundry list of offences that may or may not be true... and a very, very high number of solved cases. For a few moments, its almost as though Washington were not there.
(Per+Intuition, Per spec: small details+ wp. wp justification- interfering with something he wanted.)
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Lucy StillwellThey're waiting for some sort of crane to get the body down, without further disturbance, but Eddie can get a look at him, from the window frame, or through available binoculars.
There's evidence of superficial torture. Fingernails pulled from their beds. Branded skin, crushed fingers, all survivable. Cause of death: exsanguination. Someone cut both femoral arteries, at the groin, let Piotrowski bleed out like a stuck pig. Collected the blood in a few plastic buckets as if they were milking a damned cow, then started finger painting on the wall.
Blood's everywhere and the place stinks of it. Blood and piss and shit. The ME can tell them just where the poor bastard died, as that's where he soiled himself. And so on.
There are no witnesses beyond the poor, freaked bastard who found the body, the locals who came out before the cops showed. No obvious suspects, despite Piotrowski's ties to organized crime. At least the techs are having a field day, turning up a good half-dozen partial fingerprints, one of which is bound to be solid enough for analysis.
Everybody assumes there's some psychokiller at work here. The (anti-)religious imagery. The blood on the walls. Someone mentions those infants who were exsanguinated, tossed into a Cathedral in SF last week.
But what Eddie notices, more than most, is how methodical the scene seems, beneath the grotesque trappings. Maybe the killer showed some exuberance in the torture, but the letters - Italian, Latin, something - on the wall are painted, repeated, clearly and broadly, in a shallow, practiced hand everyone can read.
Eddie Vakoj"...organized."
Yes. Organized. Religious and nuts goes together like the vodka and tonic he'd been staring into after the sixth or seventh time Suzy or Lucy or whoever had rebuffed him- but Religious and organized? That's not so common a trait among the 'paint the walls in blood' crowd.
For now though, Eddie knows the crucial part is staying out of the way- for all that his gut reaction is possessiveness. Its MY crime scene, and so on. Those minor details everyone else is collecting will be critical. So- while he remains out of their way for the most part, he can't leave- can't leave, without knowing what the green ties on the stiff's arms are, and whether the windowsill shows any signs of stress or pressure. If he had been dropped from the window, someone might have heard something.
Lucy StillwellThe killer was rather more organized than the Oakland PD. Even with the overtime endorsement, it takes the ME and Company a solid hour to finally appropriate - not a crane, in the end, but one of those pneumatic scaffolds that window washers and contractors use, for detailed work at heights.
There's not much for Eddie to do in the interim, except stand around and glower at the techs contaminating the scene even as they work it, while Washington's lieutenant just wants to talk shop. Somewhere in the middle of the blood and guts, the talk turns to budget cuts. Pension woes. Shrinking salaries. Last year's unpaid furloughs, and the looming threat of more of the same, this year.
In the interim, Eddie gets a good look at the window sill. The shattered frame, gouges on the inside where the murder tried to pry the casing away from the worn brick. Crumbled mortar on the ground, too, and a few scintillating shards of glass on the ground - one or two of which seem to have some blood trace on them. There's stress on the frame from the dropped body; wounds, close up, Eddie sees, when they finally get the poor bastard down, that look like the killer tried to nail him to the frame of the cross three or four brutal, pointless times, before settling for extension cords and -
- the green around wrists and neck, the split remnants of an old, ragged hose, bound by florists' paper-covered wire.
Eddie VakojShop talk. There's a dude-
-and Eddie's eyes swing to the crucified man, then back to the lieutenant-
right out there hanging from a fuck me cross, and High Latin writing- in the man's blood- all over the walls... and this boring grunt wants to talk about his pension. His budget cuts.
Eddie gets tired of it after a few seconds. Truth be told, he never even offered a pretense of being involved in the conversation in the first place. Some folks are just that boring. Cut some of the gleam from some new puzzle- from the pursuit of some faceless new thing dressed like a human, and paste a bit of the ordinary in order to fill the gaps. To look at a problem and see some piece they recognize.
He spends an hour squatting on his heels. Long hands dangling. Eyes shining. Taken, completely, with this.
He gives a fuck about his pension. He pads his retirement fund with bribes.
L. Stillwell
Last post:
Shop talk. There's a dude-
-and Eddie's eyes swing to the crucified man, then back to the lieutenant-
right out there hanging from a fuck me cross, and High Latin writing- in the man's blood- all over the walls... and this boring grunt wants to talk about his pension. His budget cuts.
Eddie gets tired of it after a few seconds. Truth be told, he never even offered a pretense of being involved in the conversation in the first place. Some folks are just that boring. Cut some of the gleam from some new puzzle- from the pursuit of some faceless new thing dressed like a human, and paste a bit of the ordinary in order to fill the gaps. To look at a problem and see some piece they recognize.
He spends an hour squatting on his heels. Long hands dangling. Eyes shining. Taken, completely, with this.
He gives a fuck about his pension. He pads his retirement fund with bribes.
L. StillwellThis is an Oakland case, said Washington's lieutenant. This big, florid man interested in funding and pensions and overtime. But we want you on it as secondary. Won't even have to do any work. Keep your reports reasonable and I'll sign any overtime slips you have.
Later, and privately, Washington offers Eddie an oblique apology. An explanation: the boss wants Eddie on board so they can leverage federal metro task-force monies to cover overtime the city won't pay any more. I don't intend, Washington assures him before the night is over, to cut you out. We get the results from the labs and the coroner, I'll give you a shout.
It takes them a couple of hours to get the corpse lowered, photographed, and tucked neatly into the body bag, black to hide the blood. Still, no one has managed to translate the blood-written saying on the goddamned walls as much more than a "fucked up Our Father shit." (Our Father, who Farts in Heaven someone guffaws underneath his breath.)
They'll keep that quiet, though. No need to panic the community. No need to get the media on their collective asses. And anyway, they'll need some way to rule out the crackpots who will inevitably crawl out of the woodwork and claim this as their handicut. What the fuck did you write on the walls? seems as good as any other, and better than most.
The techs have collected fingerprints, blood evidence. Trace. It's time to let the system work.
---
So later: dark, the still hours after midnight now and the uniforms are still blocking off the approaches to the crime scene, leaning against their cruisers, manning the near-pointless barricades. The gawkers left are mostly the homeless who usually crash on this block, who were rousted from their nests of crumbled newspapers and filthy blankets, from their evening libations of alcoholic mouthwash, a dollar a bottle at the seedy dollar store whose half-lit neon sign Vakoj can see from a block away.
He turns the sharp corner on the quiet street, heads down the last half-block to the place he was forced to park the Lexus. The dull glimmer of the uniforms' cruiser lights wash bright off the dull brick buildings opposite him, but there's no clear line of sight from there to here.
The street is deserted.
And except for the rangy adolescent boy - hoodie up to conceal face and hair, forearms braced on his thighs, shoulders slumped forward,in that boneless insoucience kids have - except for that kid sitting on the hood, his Lexus is unmolested.
Eddie VakojEddie had gone through the motions. Plastered that fake-as-hell 'Yes I understand Lieutenant, You aren't a pasty douchebag Lieutenant, I really do wish I could be you, Lieutenant, Yes, you are just 'big boned', Lieutenant'- face on and waited for the department drone to buzz off. All the while holding Father Martin at St. Luke's Cathedral on hold- having paused in the middle of a question and answer session about this or that word on the wall. No intention at all of stepping like an elephant all over this case. None at all.
Fuck but he hates those... anyone who could stand in a room like this, teetering on the edge of sanity as it was, and be that bland surely came from the anus of Hell itself. Just to swallow some of Eddie's time.
Washington he gets a bit more sincere with. Not from trust. Trust isn't Eddie's way. Hasn't been in a long time. Its really just leverage. Washington is from another department. Street guy, like himself. He's not likely to have leverage.
He's tired. Retinas burning by the time the soles of his snakeskin boots click their way down the sidewalk to his car. He's alert, is Eddie. Always paying attention. After noticing the kid on his car he doesn't even slow down. No hitch in his step. No flicker of 'hey- that's mine!' he simply tools down the street.
Long, cable- strong fingers flicker in a cunning, often repeated dance: Cigarette-lighter-pack and lighter back in pocket as he takes the first drag- snap cig between two fingers- and the dance ends.
Only when he reaches the car- is close enough to get a better look at the kid. Note tell- tale weapon bulges- does he actually let on that its his car.
Tendrils of smoke leap from his lips as he whistles between his teeth and hooks a thumb over his shoulder. (off) The thumb says.
With his other hand he withdraws his keys.. but the motion is slightly slow. Taking advantage of the fact that his hand is closer to the baton at one hip the longer it takes for him to take the keys out. Eddie's getting older. That means slower. That means he thinks ahead to keep up with the young.
"Live around here?" Mild.
Eddie Vakoj(Perception+alertness, perception spec: details)
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 9) ( fail )
L. StillwellHe walks slowly down the street. Makes no moves to identify himself as the owner of the car, studies the slope-shouldered kid from a distance and sees nothing to suggest any weapons, no immediate, obvious threat.
It's quiet now. There's traffic in the middle distance, the sound of the officers at the barrier bantering back and forth, though that's slow now. Lazy, tired. Too late for this shit one of them tells the other, voice echoing softly against the bricks, mostly background noise here. He can hear the hum of the streetlamp on the opposite corner, the dull song of some crickets, all the sounds dampened by the cool fog rolling off the bay.
And as he walks up, the kid glances over, down the street. The hint of a pale profile, at once sharply defined and finely made, against the soft give of the gray knit hood. Just the sweep of a cheek, the gleam of an eye, the lift of a pale brow is enough to tell him both: not a boy and not a kid.
Live around here? he asks, mild, hand still close to his baton, reaching for his keys.
"Not far, actually." She gives him a rather more direct look then, she slips from the car's hood. She's so thin, so slight it barely moves, but she is as tall as he might've estimated from a distance - an inch or two or three shy of six feet. As her feet hit the sidewalk, she bends down to scoop up the strap of a messenger bag up from the ground, lifts it carelessly over her head, and settles it over her body so that the strap bisects her chest and the bag hits her at the narrow hip.
Her clothes are dark, but not unrelentingly black. A fitted olive jacket, unbuttoned, over a heathered gray hooded cardigan, half-fastened, over a t-shirt from some Take Back the Night march somewhere in the midwest. And jeans. And well-laced black leather boots. Ordinary.
Except: he'll notice the details. The gray hoodie is not cheap cotton jersey sweatshirt, but a fine gaunged silk-cashmere blend sweater. The boots are lambskin. "I have a studio a few blocks away. Do you have a minute - " a brief flicker of pale eyes to his hands, the baton. Something at his flank. Then back to his face. Her fine mouth quirks. " - or three, detective?"
She breathes out. Adds, as nearly an after thought, "I promise I'm not a reporter."
L. StillwellPer + Empathy
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Eddie Vakoj"Not a reporter..." He purses his lips, pale eyes (startling in an olive complexion) sweep up and down the street- anything to avoid sweeping his own car for tags or stickers.. something to identify it as a cop's car. Fraternal Order sticker? No. In fact... no. He's certain. Damn sure. Some of the places he's got to park, some of the people he's got to meet.. he knows he doesn't have any such identifying marks on the vehicle.
...That's when his hand brushes against the gold badge at his hip. Sure, he was wearing a well worn leather jacket. It all happens in the space of that same glance down the street. Checking his six, as it were.
His eyes lock back on the girl. Wom... woman? Maybe.
"...you know the other option that leaves, right?" That dumb polack was a big guy.. two hundred pounds easy. This one won't get solved that easy.
Even so, faced with the impossibility of this slip of a creature overcoming the mobster Eddie had been courting, his eyes still flicker across her fingertips and the toes of her boots.. Then his deep voice prowls through the space between them again.
"Give ya a lift." He flicks a hand toward the passenger side door. The realistic second option was that she was a witness.
L. StillwellThat amuses her; the hint of bemusement that slipped across her glossed mouth blossoms then, opens up and sparks something sharp, something living in her own eyes. Also pale, clear blue, though less startling against her porcelain skin.
"I'm not that, either," she returns, the skein of laughter subsumed in the texture of her voice. There's a hint of something foreign in the texture of her vowels, but it never fully surfaces. Just gleams below. " - but I wouldn't mind a lift."
There are three pins affixed to the canvas strap of the dull olive messenger's bag bisecting her torso. The topmost says: This guitar kills fascists. in clean, sensible font. The middle has Thy Fearful Symmetry written in classically Gothic lettering, silver on black. And the last proclaims: Dumbledore's Army in Gryffindor colors, red on yellow.
He indicates the passenger's door, and she circles the car to stand beside it. Waits for him to unlock the doors before she slips inside. There are two navy blue cigarette butts and the butt of a thinly wrapped cheroot on the ground by his front tire, and the scent of tobacco and cloves in her fine blond hair.
The doors beep in electronic welcome- and Eddie promptly fumbles his keys. Just long enough to get a slightly closer look at the fresh cigarette butts on the ground. His own smokes have a hint of clove to them- he knows the smell. Decides the cheroot is hers.. he doesn't pocket the butts, knowing the vast majority of that CSI shit doesn't really happen. But he's got good eyes. One butt could have been clamped with teeth, the other smeared with lipstick.. small differences... but the difference between three people hanging around his car and two carries more weight. So he checks. Long enough to pick up his keys and no more.
California is a place of nice driving late at night. Cool. Foggy. Accommodating. It gives him plenty of opportunity to watch his passenger a little more closely.
"So. What's up, kiddo?"
Kiddo. He's not that old. Even was probably handsome once. He's too tired, too intent, and too hard for that now. Aging badly.
L. StillwellThe girl isn't wearing make-up, not tonight. The long sweep of lashes framing her eyes is - pale, blond. She's lovely, though not in a California way. There's nothing easy about it, and nothing artificial. She's had no work done. Her mouth is too fine, the bridge of her nose a hint too broad for a plastic surgeon to have had his hands on her. And breasts, well - she appears to have none to speak of.
In the passenger's seat, she settles her messenger bag in her lap. Just as he watches her, close and sharp, she glances around the interior of the car. Breathes in, deeply, as she settles into the seat. Doesn't bother with the seatbelts, though. She does not even think to reach for one.
"Kiddo?" - that sharpness enters her voice, brights her eyes as she glances up at his reflection in the rearview mirror. She breathes out a narrow band of air, sharp from the diaphragm, "You're not that old, Detective. And I'm not that young, either."
A moment's silence, all fog bound, interrupted by direction. ("I think it's a left up here.") So the neighborhood is not entirely native. Or maybe she's not used to traveling it as a passenger in a car. There are odd one-ways all through the warren of old warehouses and cheap squats, after all.
" - so, this is going to sound odd. Really odd." Casts a sidelong glance at him, expelling another breath for the masquerade of it, all at a go as if she were nervous. There are no other physical signs. She does not tap her fingers. Her pulse isn't racing. Her pale gaze remains steady in the rearview mirror, there looking back whenever he glances away from the fogbound street and up to meet it. "Do you like noir, Detective? Fiction. Carroll John Daly. Raymond Chandler. Mickey Spillane?"
Eddie VakojEddie doesn't drive like he shaves. That is to say, not sloppy. He drives like someone who repeats the department's aggressive driving course at least once a year, with lots of practice in between. Every motion is smooth and precise, wicked hands taking a sure and confident delight in the process of going from A to B. There have definitely been after market upgrades to the car other than the radio. Nothing flashy. Nothing that didn't serve a purpose. An additional obscure -ometer or two. Whatever they are.
Bursts of static mussed murmurs and mutters and the occasional curse word flicker and pass between their voices as the two speak and roll down the street. Eddie's attention does indeed pass across her hands. Check for shuffling of the feet- the ordinary signs of nerves. Every detail snapped up as though his eyes were mouths- though he makes no great show of such things.
"Ma'am it is..." He says it like its a concession. His rumbling voice somewhat dry. Frayed around the edges. He turns left.
"It does sound odd. Mickey Spillane? Ugh." Cream green eyes flicker at her face, then back to the road. Leaving a hint of white teeth in a smile that was certainly supposed to be comforting in their wake. Its a brief encouragement. Trained in. "I don't really read myself back into the job, truth be told. Though I do still have a soft spot for Mario Puzo. Why do you ask?"
Eddie Vakoj(Remove "Why do you ask." Instead there's just an expectant silence.)
L. StillwellMa'am it is - . She offers a choked laugh immediately after, halfway to a guffaw, though most of it is contained in her skin. Subsumed into the frame of her shoulders, the narrow line of her body - not boneless, not now. More precise. "I think I deserved that." Wry. But she doesn't correct him. And she doesn't offer her name, not yet.
She is aware of the space she takes up in the world. He glances at her hands; no fidgeting. Just the gleam of a silver band around her right thumb, and a thin, braided gold band around her left index finger. Her fingers are long and fine, still on the surface of the messenger bag in her lap. The nails are painted an electric, metallic blue, and the enamel on the left index and right middle finger has started to chip from wear.
"Mmm - " a meditative noise, her response to his opinion of Spillane. And another flash of a look for Puzo. The hint of a nod. She knows the name, if not the work. The silence after Mario Puzo is as much of an invitation as anything, so she flexes her fine fingers once, and launches into the story. Her voice is still wry, a self-deprecating half-smile curving her fine mouth.
The hint of it that he can see in profile, the way it deepens the curve of her pale cheek. "Well, see. I'm not a writer myself, but I do some freelance work. Editing, sometimes. Literary translations, mostly. I have an old friend who's three-quarters of the way through a rough draft of a novel. It's set in the near-future, a bit of a dystopian thing. Like Phillip K. Dick?
"It's sharp. It's smart. Has the potential to be something - meaningful. I could go on and on about it, but the thing is, a huge part of the plot follows this detective, this police investigation. Closely observed. This writer, he's an agoraphobic. Wouldn't leave the house if it was on fire, see? I've told him a hundred times that he needs to go to the local PD, see if he can interview a few cops. Shadow someone. Make sure he's writing from a real place rather than remaking Raymond Chandler. But he won't."
A narrow, helpless shrug of her shoulders. "So it's up to me. I have this police scanner in the studio. The neighborhood's shit." Her reference to the murder is so oblique it is virtually opaque. But it's there. "And I thought, I could find myself a detective. Maybe one who'd let me follow along. Like the way you wrote baseball box scores when you were a kid, you know? From the play by play on the radio."
Eddie VakojHe's silent for a time. His adherence to the study of her body language derailed by what is to him, a disappointing revelation. A tourist. Joy.
He shifts gears and makes a right turn.
"Okay... and you thought finding a detective right outside a crime scene was the best way to go about this? I mean, the department offers ride along programs, even riding with detectives could be arranged- and I think you'd find the people there a lot more receptive that guys just coming off a shift."
Its a white lie. This is overtime. Still, one stark black eyebrow climbs its way up Eddie's forhead as he looks back to the girl again.
L. StillwellShe makes a soft noise, the girl. A quiet click - of negation, of disappointment - against the roof of her mouth and shakes her golden head just once. Her voice is soft, almost reproving.
"That's not what I'm looking for, Detective. Not a ride-along. Not a even a ride," is there a spark of humor, darker now, in the sweep of her profile in his direction. "Not whatever your bureaucrats might spit-polish and throw at me. I want a guy who's tired off his shift and works at three a.m., not three p.m. I don't - I'm not looking for that. I want the fucking human mess of it."
The creature turns, stretches to look back between the driver's and passenger's seats, through the rear window. The finely gauged hood catches on her hair as it slips down, pooling at the nape of her neck over the messy knot into which she has twisted her hair. "And this thing - " she continues, as she turns back. "Back there? I live here.
"Speaking of which, this corner's fine. Just think about it. Give me a call and I'll buy you coffee. Or don't. I'm okay with that, too."
She opens an inner pocket of the messenger bag, and flicks out a small white business card, by way of offering.
L. StillwellPresence 1: Charisma + Performance + WP. (Justification: wants to know what the cops know about the murder.)
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (4, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 6 ) [WP]