FIC : Kansas City Shuffle (Star Trek Reboot, gen, rated R for reel_startrek)
JFC I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS BEAST IS DONE.
Title : Kansas City Shuffle
Fandom : Star Trek XI
Characters/Pairing : Winona Kirk, Jim Kirk, Khan, Sarek, Pike, cameos by everyone else; mentions or implies a bunch of pairings, but is really gen.
Rating : R for violence and language, i guess?
Warnings : none really.
Word Count : 9400
Summary : A Kansas City Shuffle's a delicate operation. You gotta have a handle on all the strings in order to keep the puppets moving where they need to be. Lucky for Goodkat, she's had twenty years to get her strings in order before she starts making them dance.
A/Ns : this is my au/reboot of the movie "Lucky Number Slevin" for
reel_startrek. for the record, i'm still mad i couldn't work jim saying the 'man with two penises' line in somewhere. if someone feels like writing an outtake... ;) mucho mucho thanks to
raindissolved,
sekala and
jazzy_peaches for the fantabulous beta-ness.
--- --- ---
A young man saunters up a New York City street at midday. His suit jacket's hooked over his shoulder with a finger, and his shirt sleeves are rolled up. Bare wrist, no watch, his pockets too light for any of them to contain a wallet, and his face-- well. It's a good face, but there's no way around the fact it's seen better days. Blood on his lip, nose swollen and just starting to purple, a line between his eyebrows that suggests a headache coming on.
In front of a tall apartment building, the man stops, fishes in his pocket, and consults a piece of paper. He squints at the address on the building before shoving the paper back in his pocket and shouldering the door open, vanishing inside.
At a table in front of the cafe across the street, Goodkat watches over the top of her padd, her fingers paused in the middle of scrolling through a series of images. On the screen under her index finger, the face of the young man (here with his nose unbroken) is caught in motion, in the middle of opening his mouth to speak, blue eyes wide and earnest. The documents behind the photo are titled things like "Fisher, Nick" and "Spock/The Fairy" and "Pike, Detective C."
The waitress's step sounds behind her, and a quick brush of Goodkat's fingers sends the whole mess away to be replaced by the Times' business section as the girl leans over to take her empty cup.
"All set here?" the girl asks kindly.
"All set," Goodkat agrees with a nod.
She pays in cash and shrugs into a greying trenchcoat. At the curb she throws her arm up; as a cab brakes in front of her she feels the first drops of rain on her neck, and turns up her collar as she gets inside.
--- --- ---
The inside of the Boss's place is flashy and ornate, just barely on the tactful side of gaudy. The foyer is walled with gilded paper, the floor clicking beneath Goodkat's boots real marble from the quarries of Edanna. Goodkat can't tell if she's meant to be impressed or intimidated; in any case, she's neither. She eyes the guy with the Uzi guarding the elevator diffidently. He gives her an identical look in return. At least we're on the same page, she thinks.
It's well known the Boss has a fondness for pretty things, and the bodyguards that come to bring her up to the penthouse fit that bill all the way. The blonde's three inches shorter than her, and that's with heels on; the guy is big enough to do some damage, but right now he looks more bored than anything else. They're halfheartedly bickering as the door opens, but fall silent as she gets in.
She cracks her gum. They turn, almost in unison, and stare at her. She meets a set of blue eyes and then a set of green, and grins, cracking her gum again. "Always nice to see you kids again," she says. "The ones that dodge the high turnover rate, anyway."
The girl snorts. "It's not hard," she says, her voice higher than Goodkat had expected, making the sarcasm sound almost funny.
The guy chimes in. "You just gotta not be stupid." Southern, she notes. Atlanta, maybe Macon.
"Well, I'm flattered the Boss decided not to send stupid people to collect me," is all she says.
The girl snorts again, not at all polite, and the guy says softly, "Chapel, be nice."
She gives him a bland, innocent look. "I am," she says, and right then Goodkat believes it.
Then the elevator door opens on the Boss's office, a penthouse converted into one huge room. The sunken area in the middle with the chessboard laid out, big mahogany desk on the far side in front of the windows, three-inch bulletproof Stoerlanic glass forcefielded on two separate frequencies-- ostentatious is the name of the game, but Goodkat doesn't really look at any of it.
The Boss is standing at the window, and Goodkat puts her hands in her pockets to hide the clenching of her fists. Excitement and adrenaline flood her body; her fingertips go cold and she takes a deep breath, forcing her pulse to calm down.
“Goodkat,” says the Boss, turning towards her with a smile that isn’t even close to real.
“That’s me,” she says, shrugging. “And you’re the Boss.”
The Boss used to be known by his name; by all three of his names, actually. Khan Noonien Singh. Used to be people who got too friendly with that name, too casual flashing it about to open doors for themselves, would end up friendly with the bottom of the river before too long. Then there was the incident at Botany Bay, and people got superstitious, as people will. They started whispering the name, and then they stopped saying it at all.
Khan’s been known as the Boss for twenty years. Goodkat always thinks of him as Khan. She thinks it’s lucky he doesn’t know anything else to call her. Really lucky he doesn’t know what name she used to be known by, before she was Goodkat. This might all be over a lot faster if he did, and she’s not ready for this to be over until she says it is.
“This is how it’s going to go down,” she says, and lays it out for him. He calls back his bodyguards and gives them an address, an apartment on the Upper West Side, and a name.
“Bring me Nick Fisher,” he says, and Goodkat hides a smile.
--- --- ---
The kid isn't Nick Fisher.
Slevin, then, has a wise mouth. She wonders why he's in a bath towel (and a white-flowered purple one at that), but decides it's not really her business. He wants to end up with pneumonia, it's his death wish-- so long as he carries it out after her plans have come to fruition.
"I'm not Nick Fisher," the kid insists. “Your brute squad picked up the wrong guy.”
“The wrong guy for what?” The Boss counters, his strange smile turning Goodkat’s stomach a little.
“Whatever it is you wanted to see me about,” he says with an affable shrug.
“Do you know what I wanted to see you about?” The Boss steeples his fingers under his chin.
Slevin looks nonplussed, eyes darting left and right before settling back on the Boss. “Well... no...”
“Then how do you know I have the wrong guy?” It’s good logic. The Rabbi might be impressed.
Then there’s a rambling story, a dead bookie in a freezer, a guy named Nick Fisher who owes the boss 93,000 credits, and lots more of Slevin’s wiseass mouth. Finally the Boss quirks an eyebrow at the kid and says dryly, “I bet it was that mouth that got you that nose.”
“You’d win that bet,” Slevin agrees, gingerly touching the appendage in question.
The Boss’s eyes crinkle in a smile and he spreads his hands wide and generous. “Well Mr. Fisher, since you can’t get me the money you owe me, why don’t I cancel the debt in exchange for a favor.”
There’s a heavy pause, then Slevin asks, guarded, “What’s the favor?”
The Boss picks up a picture frame and turns it toward the kid. Goodkat can’t see the picture, but she knows who’s in it. “That was my son,” Khan says. “Notice I said was. That’s because he’s dead. Murdered. Relegated to the past tense.” Lines engrave themselves on the Boss’s face now, deep grooves that show his age, his grief. Goodkat can sympathize.
“Bummer,” says Slevin softly.
The Boss turns and looks out the window. Across the street is a monolith of white stone, an old institution of money, power and influence. If she looked, Goodkat might be able to make out the figure of a tall man standing stiff-spined at a window on the top floor. She doesn’t look.
“My son was murdered,” the Boss says softly, “so the Rabbi’s son must share the same fate.”
“The Rabbi?” Slevin asks, and the Boss’s mouth thins into a satisfied line.
“The Rabbi,” he confirms, and tells another story-- his son killed, the cease-fire between the Boss and the Rabbi broken in one quick blast of disruptor fire, the Rabbi’s son (the one they call the Fairy; “Why do they call him the Fairy?” Slevin asks; the Boss just says “Shut up.”) with a black mark next to his name, his life now measured in a span of hours, the time ticking slowly down to zero.
Slevin does everything she'd told the Boss he would. She’s good at predicting, it turns out. But Goodkat’s not a betting woman, and she tries not to get excited; there's a long way to go before the end.
Georgia and Chapel escort not-Fisher out and there's silence for a long stretching moment. Then :
"This seems counterintuitive to me," says the Boss, his tone speculative. "I'm paying you a lot of money to kill somebody, and you're getting someone else to do it?"
Goodkat comes out from behind the partition where she stood watching the scene. She's just starting to get warm inside her coat. "Don't worry," she says, the hint of a smile showing in the lines around her eyes. "I'm going to kill somebody."
She takes the elevator down by herself.
--- --- ---
Across the street inside a grey utility van, the kind only really small companies and government agencies still use, one man sits eating Chinese food with a pair of disposable chopsticks while another uses a high-definition camera to take pictures of three people exiting the Boss's building. One woman (his brain files automatically, Christine Chapel, age 26, former SpecOps turned private security turned mobster) and two men (the one on the left, Leonard McCoy, age 32, former Army Ranger and combat surgeon turned black market organ dealer turned mobster) one of whom is a total stranger (Terran human, blond, maybe 25, 26 years old, broken nose, terrible taste in linens).
"Hey Scotty," says Sulu, lowering the camera to glance over his shoulder. "Better call Pike. Tell him there's a new player in town."
"Oh's that right?" the other guy says, arching an eyebrow. "One of the Boss's?"
Sulu turns back to the camera, snaps a final shot of the newcomer, who pauses before letting McCoy herd him into the car, looking around with a thoughtful expression. For a second Sulu thinks his gaze lingers on the van, on them, almost like he's letting his picture be taken; but then he's ducking into the long grey car and Sulu shakes his head. "I really can't say."
--- --- ---
Goodkat goes back to the hotel. It's a nice hotel. Not that she couldn't afford a nicer one, one with a few extra stars to throw around. But she likes the smaller rooms; there's something comforting about them. About being able to open her eyes anywhere in the room and see all four corners of it, to turn on the light and chase all the shadows away.
It's not long before her appointment with the Rabbi. She takes a nap, and a shower, and plans to grab lunch on the way.
An Orion girl gets to the elevator the same time she does. She doesn't think anything of it, until the girl pulls her comm unit up to her ear and does a bad job hiding the fact she's taking Goodkat's picture. The fuck? Goodkat thinks, but doesn't move a muscle, not even her eyes. She doesn't need a camera to fix the girl's face.
Why a strange girl-- who isn't one of the players in this game, Goodkat knows she isn't-- would be taking her picture is maybe the first real puzzle she's come across in weeks. Maybe months. Who are you? she asks the girl silently, as the elevator gets to the lobby and they go their separate ways. She files the girl's face away under To-Do: Later, and straightens her collar as she gets into the cab.
She's so preoccupied by the appearance of something unexpected that she forgets entirely about her plans to eat lunch.
Back across the bridge, the Rabbi's holed up at the top of what used to be a bank. That was before interplanetary currency and offworld accounts; and it doesn't matter that Sarek isn't actually a Jew, just got given the nickname by the faithful in the neighborhood. Goodkat thinks it's ironic, a slew of inappropriate remarks running through the back of her mind as she lets the bodyguards pat her down and take her into the elevator.
She cracks her gum. The girl on her left doesn't blink; the one on her right does, her eyes flicking to Goodkat and back so fast it's hard to catch. She’d try to behave, but with the Rabbi’s bodyguards (especially these two) it’s too much to resist; like trying to get the guards on Buckingham Palace to twitch, it’s practically a tourist attraction.
"So what short straw did you draw to get stuck babysitting my ass today?" she asks, her half-grin as insolent as half-grins get. The girl's eyes get stonier and she doesn't move, barely seems to breathe.
But maybe the Rabbi's told them to play nice with her, 'cause after another breath the girl says, "It's not a short straw. We rotate."
"Oh," says Goodkat, "like musical chairs. Cool."
The other one, the actual Vulcan, turns to look at her then. "My companion's assessment is not entirely accurate. The Rabbi delegates tasks to those best able to perform them; in this case, he sent those of us with the best chance of disarming you if you proved hostile."
Goodkat grins, wolfish. "Yeah. That's more like it." She glances at the first girl, the tall human whose expression hasn't changed despite getting shown up. "Your companion?" she echoes.
"As good a word as any," the girl says smoothly, then mumbles something in Vulcan, her eyes meeting the other's over Goodkat's head. The girl answers in kind, and before Goodkat can formulate a reply (one that plays on their belief she can't understand Vulcan, of course) the elevator dings and the doors open, and she's getting escorted into the Rabbi's study.
He's standing at the window, but facing her, a strange backward mirror to her meeting with Khan. "Goodkat," he says in that toneless formal voice of his, the diplomat's voice, no trace of the mobster in his demeanor or his words.
"Yep," she says, purposefully casual.
"You wanted to meet with me," he says. It's not a question, but she nods anyway.
"Yeah, I did. I have information for you. And all I ask is that you wait to kill me til after you hear everything I've got to say."
There's a pause which on a human might register as surprise. "Very well," he says at length. "I am listening."
The whole time she’s talking, she does her best not to look out the window-- out, across the street, the wide windows with forcefields shimmering barely visible, carefully not disturbing the Boss’s view of his nemesis. She was there barely two hours ago; it feels like two days. She focuses on the Rabbi and tries not to get too excited.
At the end he swallows hard, the only sign he's shaken. "Your proposal is acceptable," he says, and calls for the girls to come back in.
He gives them an address. "Bring me the Terran called Nick Fisher," he says. They leave, and Goodkat lets out a silent breath.
--- --- ---
Sulu looks up from stirring another creamer into his coffee when he hears Scott swear. "What?" he asks.
"Take a look," Scott says, disgusted, and leans back so Sulu can look out the window. When he sees what Scotty was looking at, he feels his mouth drop open.
"The same kid?" he asks, incredulous, and Scotty shrugs.
They both recognize the kid’s escorts on sight, of course. The Rabbi’s wards, like his daughters, if his daughters could be unrelated to him by blood and romantically involved with each other. Nyota Uhura, the advisor and business manager-- what they’d call consigliere in the Godfather movies-- and T’Pring, the head of security and intermediary between the Rabbi’s fingers and some less-than-savory pies. Either one of them could break the neck of a human like a twig, and both have done so in the Rabbi’s name enough times to keep most smart people scared shitless.
The kid, though, is now officially more of a mystery than he was before. “Dammit,” Sulu mutters. “Scotty, call Pike and tell him we got a possible double agent. He’s gonna want a name to this face before I’m done with this cup of coffee, so we better get on it.”
Scott picks up his comm and talks into it, eyes never leaving the stranger’s face as he ducks into the car. “Pike, sir, it’s Scott. We saw the kid again, this time going into the Rabbi’s.” He pauses and listens, nodding. “Yes sir. Did you get a hit on his-- Yes we will, sir. Understood. Scott out.”
He clicks off his comm and looks at Sulu, faintly concerned. “He’s coming here,” he says. Sulu’s eyes widen and Scott nods gravely. “I know.”
“This is already some serious shit,” says Sulu, “and I have a bad feeling it’s only gonna get worse from here.”
--- --- ---
Three blocks away from where the Rabbi and the Boss sit scowling at each other across the chasm of Park Avenue, a small police precinct sits innocuously on a street corner. Fourth floor, small cluster of desks outside an even smaller office; a young detective, her hair twisted high and intricate on her head, sits with her feet up on someone else’s chair, thinking.
The door bangs open behind her just as she sighs loudly. The man who just exited the office comes to peer over her left shoulder and snorts. “Bored?”
“Nah,” she says, then shrugs, then cranes her neck back to look at him and says, “maybe a little. You get a hit on Sulu’s mystery kid yet?”
“Nah,” he returns dryly. He runs a hand through his hair, dark once, now peppered with silver, then spins back around as the comm unit on his desk rings. He grabs it on the third ring. “Pike,” he says, and tries not to notice Detective Rand listening in. “The Rabbi’s, are you kidding?” he asks with a sinking feeling in his chest. “No, nothing on the photo yet, look, you just sit tight there, I’m coming down. I wanna see this fucker for myself. Be there in ten.”
He comes out of the office again, shrugging into his jacket, to find Rand already on her feet. “Field trip?” she asks brightly, and Pike rolls his eyes, waving her to join him. It’s gonna be a lot of hurry up and wait for now, but anything involving both the Boss and the Rabbi is going to end in fireworks. Truth be told, he recalls the fireworks a little too well for his liking; twenty years isn’t long enough to forget being one of the guys lighting the fuses.
--- --- ---
Slevin, who still isn't Nick Fisher, is dressed when she sees him next. Jeans, button-up, vest, ugly sneakers-- hair dry, nose unbandaged. It hasn't been set. She has to wonder if that's intentional. The girls are on either side of him, relaxed like they don’t even consider him a threat-- which Goodkat supposes they shouldn’t, with the kind of training they have.
It goes down smooth as butter for the second time. The conversation gives her a serious case of deja vu. She wonders if anyone's ever bothered to point out to either of these two ghouls that they're the same fucking person at heart. She can't imagine anyone's ever been so stupid.
From her sort-of hiding spot in an alcove she listens to the cadence of their voices, the tonelessness of the Rabbi, the kid's Midwestern drawl. The yammering small talk the Rabbi's given to is annoying, but nothing she can't tune out. Logic has never really interested her, except as a tool for better understanding her marks. Slevin's good at it though, doesn't seem fazed by the rapid-fire turnabout of the Rabbi's questions, and seems genuinely puzzled when Sarek asks him for 33,000 credits.
"But I’m not Nick Fisher," he insists again. Goodkat could smile.
"Then who are you?" the Rabbi asks coolly.
The kid sighs. "I'm just a guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time."
The Rabbi appears to consider this. "You have 48 hours to get me my money," he says, ignoring the indignant flail of Slevin's hands.
The kid leaves pretty quick after that. Goodkat can't blame him; after the morning he's had, she wouldn't be inclined to stay and chat either. She's only been a witness to half the morning he's had, and she feels like she needs a drink.
The Rabbi speaks when the room is empty except for the two of them. "I wired half your money. You will receive the other half when our old friend is dead." Goodkat comes out of her alcove nodding, and the Rabbi half-turns toward her. "And I can expect that when?" he prompts.
"Very soon," she promises.
"Good," the Rabbi says with a nod. She remembers what he just told the kid; Killing you before you killed me would be logical, and therefore acceptable. She supposes that extends to ordering hits on people too. His voice interrupts her thoughts. "So tell me, Goodkat. This young man-- what do you want with him?
"The kid and I have unfinished business," she says, hoping he hears the iron in her voice. This is not something she's talking about with him, no matter how hard he tries.
There's another pause and then the Rabbi says, "One thing I know is when someone is lying-- it is, at times, the only thing someone in my position can rely on, sometimes the difference between life and death, between someone else's life and your own. That said, the young man was not lying. That is not Nick Fisher." He sounds perplexed, which Goodkat finds funny.
She reins in her smile and heads for the door. "I know."
--- --- ---
She's back at the Boss's the next morning when the kid comes to give his answer.
"Yes," he says, like it doesn't scare him at all, and maybe it doesn't. She wouldn't know how to tell if it did.
She saunters out. No reason to stay for the rest, and all he's gonna do is let the Boss beat him at chess. The kid looks up as she passes, his eyes barely widening before he shakes it off.
She smirks the whole ride down in the elevator. Chapel eyes her skeptically. "Not cracking your gum this time, you in a good mood or something?"
Goodkat cracks her gum and smiles.
She takes the side door, because the utility van's still out front, and she doesn't need the cops getting a look at her yet. Detective Pike is good at his job-- not so good that she thinks he'd know her on sight, of course. Almost no one is that good. But still-- there's a day or so to go before she'll be cocky enough to tempt fate like that.
Anyway, Pike doesn't deserve more than one chance to put the pieces together. And Goodkat wants to make sure that by the time he gets it, it's too late for him to do anything with it.
--- --- ---
The mystery kid gets shown the door by the Boss's guards half an hour after he goes in. The kid's already got McCoy rolling his eyes at his jokes; from inside the van, Pike can see the ex-doctor trying not to smirk, the satisfied look on the kid's face.
"Who the fuck is this guy?" he demands, putting the scope down and turning to Sulu.
"No idea," says Sulu, "but he's in some very deep shit. He's playing hardball with both sides of the street and who the fuck knows what else."
Pike takes a step closer and leans in. "I want to know what the fuck he's doing in my fucking city," he says calmly. "And it's up to you to find out."
That’s when the door opens, right on cue, to admit Scott, who’s looking blanched and scared. “Get this,” he pants, “Goodkat’s in town.”
There’s a sinking feeling in Pike’s stomach. He hears Rand ask who Goodkat is, and thinks disgustedly, I wish I knew.
“A heavy hitter,” he says. “The heaviest. No one knows what he looks like, or she, lots of people say she’s a woman, but she could be a goddamn Denobulan for all anyone knows. All anyone does know is, Goodkat shows, people get dead, Goodkat vanishes. But he hasn’t been Earthside in years, hasn’t worked New York in decades.”
“Just what we need,” Sulu mutters.
Pike can’t help but agree. Between their mystery man and Goodkat, there’s something happening in the neighborhood that Pike doesn’t understand, and he holds a personal grudge against shit he doesn’t understand happening right under his nose. There's a faint thought in the back of his head, Could he be...? But no; twenty years ago this kid was just that-- a kid. Goodkat is unrelated-- has to be unrelated. Still-- what fucking timing.
“Just keep your hat on,” he says, getting to his feet, going for the door. “Sit tight, get some more goddamn coffee in this bucket, and I’ll be back later. I gotta get to the morgue.”
Half an hour later he pokes his head into the lab where the coroner’s got three bodies laid out, toe-tagged and ready to go. “Gaila,” he drawls, grinning. This-- her wide smile, red curls, bounce in her step-- is one of the best parts of his day.
“Detective,” she drawls back, waggling her eyebrows. He likes how she flirts with him, that she doesn’t make it seem like she’s humoring him.
“Benny the bookie, killed by a baseball,” he says, shaking his head at the first body. He peeks under the sheet, then wishes he hadn’t.
“You know him?” Gaila sounds surprised, and for a second he feels a slice of shame. Doesn’t last long, though.
He gives her a rueful look and admits, “He used to work for the Rabbi. Between you and me... twenty years ago he used to be my bookie. I used to sign my paychecks over to him.” It’s easier to admit than he’d thought.
“Well,” says Gaila with a shrug, “someone wanted him dead in a really creative way. His guys--” she motions to the other two bodies-- “were poisoned. Something exotic, I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know.”
Pike nods, already thinking about the next thing on his to-do list, Find out who that goddamn kid is. It doesn't occur to him to remember the story he read in the Times that morning, about the guy who'd been the Boss's bookie for years going missing. Ironic, he'd thought as he read it, that a guy who worked for the Boss (unchallenged champion of making people vanish) had disappeared. But he's had a rough week, and it's only getting rougher, so he doesn't think to put two and two together.
Before he leaves, he spares a moment to lean over Benny’s ruined face and mutter, “Prick.” Stupid, he knows, but it makes him feel better-- or as close to it as he’s gonna get.
--- --- ---
Another day passes, full of nothing but killing time, until the sun's put to bed and the night life of the city's got its dancing shoes on. From her car parked across the street, Goodkat watches Slevin leave for the restaurant with Fisher's nosy green neighbor in tow.
He's going there to meet the Fairy, she knows-- meet him, set up a date with him for the following night. It's dicey, entirely dependent on emotion and chemistry and if Spock son of Sarek is in the goddamn mood to be flirted with. But she's seen enough of the kid's charm to trust it'll work out-- that, and rumor has it the Fairy likes them smart and stubborn, so really, he should be a shoo-in.
She goes around the corner to the hot dog stand right outside the cops' conspicuously featureless van and gets a chili dog with extra chili. Now, finally, she's starting to get confident. She goes back to the car and kicks up her feet onto the passenger's seat, tips her head back against the window and watches the stars while she eats her hot dog.
Two hours pass while she listens to the radio. The White Sox are losing to the Mets, which might make her cranky if she were actually paying attention. When it's bordering on three hours of sitting here pretending she's comfortable, she sees green skin in her rearview and hunkers down, watches the two of them saunter up the street. They look pretty cozy, her arm tucked close into his, both of them laughing.
She waits fifteen minutes after they disappear into Fisher's apartment building before hitting the comm on the dash and dialing a number. She's expecting the signal-- two rings, a disconnect, a call back ten minutes later. It's how she planned this to go-- the kid comes back from making contact with the Fairy, she makes the call. There's no understanding, no contingency for what happens if he doesn't pick up when she does.
"Pick up the goddamn phone, kid," she mutters, finally hanging up when it's plain no one's home.
She looks up at the building, to the window she'd long ago figured out was Fisher's. No lights on, or at least none in the bedroom, which could mean any number of things. We're going to be having a conversation about that girl, she thinks, drumming her fingers on the dash. I told him to stay focused, and this is what happens. Jesus.
She calls a second time just to be sure, but yeah, there's no mistaking it. She's being ignored. That or someone was waiting for them upstairs, in which case she's already too late and getting angry won't do any good. She calmly turns up her collar and goes into the building, rides the elevator up to the fifth floor.
She knocks quietly. There's no answer, so she knocks again. Still nothing; no sign of forced entry or anything amiss. Something sharp blooms in her chest and she's about to lift her foot to the jamb when she hears a laugh from across the hall. Low and intimate, not meant for intruders' ears or old buildings with thin walls, but unmistakably the kid's. Her kid's; she'd know it anywhere.
"Son of a bitch," she murmurs quietly, and shoves her hands in her pockets as she goes back down the hall.
--- --- ---
Detective Pike hasn't gotten where he is in life by being unobservant. In fact, he's made it a point to pay attention, and to learn how to put what he learns together as fast as possible. Which is why this morning finds him and his team's stupid van parked outside an apartment building like a cat outside a mouse hole.
Doesn't take long for the mouse to show his face. Bruises fading, hands in his pockets and a smug smile on his face; he's about two seconds away from whistling.
"Grab him," Pike says, and stays sitting with his arms crossed as Sulu and Scotty hop out to grab the kid by his arms and haul him inside, sling him into a chair and shut the door behind them. Pike taps on the ceiling and Janice kicks the van into gear. She drives slow; this isn't going to take long.
"Hi, kid," he says, and sees the recognition hit the kid's face with a certain amount of satisfaction.
Last night in the bathroom at the restaurant he'd been on his guard, too cagey for Pike to read well. Do I know you? polite and easy, the line between his eyes deepening when Pike had replied No, but I know you. Unsettled, like he was afraid it might actually be true. It wasn't. He'd explained I know who you're not, told the kid about Nick Fisher's photo coming in from the penal colony on the moon, and gotten barely more than that faintly puzzled look.
I'm just a guy whose dinner's getting cold, he'd said. Pike feels his eyes narrow, still annoyed by the brush-off. 'Just a guy' my ass, he thinks. If this kid is "just" anything, Pike will eat his hat with a side of hot sauce. It's infuriating, thinking he might be barking up the wrong tree, that there's an explanation to all this that's simple instead of one tantalizingly out of reach. And there's still that something familiar about him that Pike can't place, something obnoxiously niggling the back of his mind.
"Am I being kidnapped?" the kid asks, raking blond hair out of his eyes with one hand, bracing himself against the wall with the other. Scotty nods towards a chair and the kid takes it. Maybe the first smart thing he's done all day.
"Nope," says Pike placidly. "Just want to have a quick, friendly chat."
The kid doesn't want quick, if his smart-ass retorts are anything to go by, and after a few rounds of banter Pike isn't so inclined to be friendly. His fist in the kid's gut feels good, letting out some of the tension he's been grinding under for the past two days. "What is your name?" he asks again, just soft enough to be menacing.
"Oh yeah, I remember," the kid chokes out when he can breathe again. "Slevin Kelevra." For a split second the neurons connect in Pike's brain and he has a flash of something, a memory, but it's gone before he can hold onto it.
"Okay," Pike says, conversational. "Slevin. It's pretty simple, what I asked you in here to say. I don't know what's going on or how you're involved, but once I figure out what there is to figure out--" he pauses for emphasis that's lost 'cause the kid's not looking at him-- "I'm not gonna be so nice to you."
The kid raises his eyes to Pike's, sky blue and full of something dark and ugly. Pike exerts no small amount of effort to keep from flinching. Those are not the eyes of a twenty-something kid in over his head. Those are the eyes of someone who means to do business, and to do it so thoroughly no one will be around to talk about it after. What the fuck am I in the middle of? he wonders with the piece of his mind that isn't occupied trying to stay cool.
"Last chance to come clean," he offers, though he knows now the way this is going to play. Slevin just raises an eyebrow, smooth and arrogant, and Pike shakes his head in disgust. "Take a walk," he spits, banging on the wall for Janice to stop and motioning for Sulu to muscle the kid out of the van.
With one more parting shot the kid's gone and the doors shut behind him. Pike smacks the wall again and as Janice hits the gas, Pike sees Slevin brush off his shoulders and stick his hands back in his coat pockets, turning to meander back down the street like he hasn't got a care in the world.
--- --- ---
Goodkat hears footsteps and steps back into the stairwell, waiting for the kid to pass by before she follows him down the hall. There's an ease to his saunter she attributes to his just having gotten laid, but the relaxed look on his face is unfamiliar. She remembers having a different face, remembers what it felt like waking up wearing this one. Not the same; almost the same.
She's silent, but he's well-trained; after two paces he whirls on her, every muscle tensed and ready to drop the two cups of coffee in his hands. It flows out of him like water when he sees it's her.
"Your girl made me," she says. "She took my picture. She's gotta go in the ground." No point in preamble, she reasons. Either he'll accept it or he won't.
There's a pause; she can practically hear the gears in his head working. She almost holds her breath, but doesn't. He nods abruptly, just one bob of his head, mouth tight. "Okay."
Goodkat nods and melts back into the woodwork, taking the back stairs down to the street and another cab. She looks up at the fifth floor and remembers the soft look on his face, the way he'd almost looked happy. She reminds herself that she knew going into this what the price would be, that in order to make this work she would have to give up parts of herself, give up just about everything except the drive to see this through. This is the first time in twenty years she's wondered if it's worth it.
--- --- ---
Night again. The days pass by so quick in a city like this, a muddle of noise and light and color. Nights, at least Goodkat feels like she has the space to breathe, to move in her own skin and not feel penned in on all sides. Especially nights like this, where the air is dry and crisp, practically humming with tension, and everything in the city seems on edge, waiting for something to happen.
Spock is already dead by the time she opens the door to his apartment.
"It was close," Slevin murmurs, pocketing the tiny disruptor. "He almost got to the panic button before--"
"It's done," she says with a shrug. "No point in might-have-beens. Go get Fisher."
He nods, looking a little shell-shocked. Goodkat can't blame him; it feels a little crazy to her, too, that this is finally happening. "Go," she says, and he goes.
After the door shuts, she reaches down for the small pendant, a triangle intersecting a circle, that serves as the Fairy's panic button. She presses it, pulls out her guns, and waits.
The opaque forcefield between the two rooms vanishes in a blink. Uhura and T'Pring come through with their guns out, but Goodkat was waiting, and is faster anyway. They're dead before they know what's hit them; it's a shame, Goodkat thinks. In another life they might've lived, but Sarek had signed their death warrants along with Spock's and his own.
Slevin bangs the door open and hustles a body bag in. "Christ, he's heavy," he mutters. "Explains why all his clothes are big on me."
"Work now, bitch later," she says, and together they unzip the bag and get the body out of it. One hand drops slack into the pool of Spock's blood, dark green against the pallor of Fisher's cold fingers. She slips the watch off his wrist and passes it to Slevin, who pockets it, then drops his own watch into her hand. She slides it onto Fisher's wrist.
"Let's go," she says as she gets to her feet. "Not much longer now."
"Yeah," says Slevin, still staring down at Spock and Fisher. "Yeah," he says again a second later, tearing his eyes up as Goodkat tugs on his sleeve. "Let's go."
As they walk down the street, Slevin digs in his pocket and lights a cigarette, passing it to Goodkat before lighting one of his own. The sky is dark overhead with no sign of stars.
Then the windows of the Fairy's apartment explode behind them, and the street is washed in orange light. Slevin turns back to look, his face aglow in the blaze, and for a moment Goodkat can't tell if she's looking at him, or at a younger version of herself.
--- --- ---
They sleep for a few hours in Goodkat's motel room. In the morning Goodkat gets up while Slevin's still thrashing in the sheets, and is gone before he's even half awake.
She drinks her coffee in the cab. When she gets out at the morgue, she crumples the cup and tosses it in the recycler unit outside the door. Then she goes around the back and hacks the side door the morticians use for their cigarette breaks, goes silently down the hall to where she can hear the sound of singing.
Inside autopsy room two, the Orion girl has the radio on. She doesn't hear Goodkat come in, and doesn't look up when Goodkat pulls out her gun.
Goodkat fires, and the room goes silent.
--- --- ---
She gets to the Boss's place as the sun is just starting to kiss the horizon.
There's no chit-chat in the elevator this time. Fifty-seven floors is a long way up; on the way Goodkat closes her eyes and focuses on breathing, in and out, slow and even. Inside the pockets of her trenchcoat, her hands clench and release in time with her breaths.
The elevator dings at floor fifty-seven. As she leaves, she steps carefully to avoid the growing pool of blood on the floor. The doors move noiselessly closed behind her; if anyone had been nearby, they might have caught a glimpse of Chapel and her southern gentleman lying sprawled on the floor. But there's no one there.
The Boss is standing alone at the window just as he was when she first got here. His long hair is tied back, and the set of his shoulders doesn't look happy.
"I'm unhappy," he says without moving. He's going to monologue now; Goodkat can tell when these sort of things are coming. She's not wrong, either. She stands still on the opposite side of the desk, her entire body thrumming with tension. It doesn't make sense; she's waited twenty years for this, and now the last twenty minutes is going to do her in? Slevin would laugh.
The Boss ends it abruptly. "Fuck it," he says, shrugging, dropping his arms to his sides with a thwack. "If the Rabbi wants a war, I'll give him a war." He turns, the hard light of vengeance in his eyes.
He has just enough time to see the grim look on her own face before she hits him with the stunner hidden inside her sleeve.
--- --- ---
"You thought Fisher was heavy," she wheezes, dragging the Boss into the Rabbi's study. "This guy, Jesus."
"Eugenics aren't all they're cracked up to be," Slevin says with a shrug. "Come on." He takes the Boss's feet and together they get him into a chair. The Rabbi's already set up, sonic handcuffs keeping his arms and legs in place, and soon the Boss is similarly trussed.
"How long til they wake up?" Slevin asks. She glances over at him, sees he's a little flushed, the back of his neck and his cheeks tinged red.
"Ten minutes," she says. She feels his shoulder brush hers and reaches for his hand, squeezing hard. There aren't words that'll do either of them any good; how could they? Goodkat's not even sure she has the capacity for talking right now, anyway.
Slevin-- who she supposes now she can start thinking of as Jim again-- doesn't let go of her hand, and for a moment that seems a lot longer than it is, Goodkat remembers.
Remembers waking up in agony, doctors murmuring, her own voice hoarse and screaming for her son, for Jim. Remembers flashes of moments that are still all she can recall of days, weeks, months spent under the knife while they fixed what they could of her battered body, built anew what they couldn't fix. Remembers getting to her feet for the first time, seeing her own face like a stranger's in the mirror.
She remembers promising revenge. They were dead to the world; this, then, would be her job. Make a name for herself that people would fear, so when the time was right she could use it for her own ends. Goodkat. It was a joke of theirs, those years before planet hopping, before pulling jobs and fattening their bank account, Risa to Romulus to Tarsus and beyond. Good cat, bad dog. It's lost now, the story behind George's pet names for them, like the feel of his fingers in her hair, the sound of his laugh.
The day they finally figured out how to pull it off, though; that's something she'll never forget.
"If we get to the bookies, we've got them," Jim had said, fervent the way he only got when he knew he was right about something. "They call it a Kansas City Shuffle, whatever the fuck that means. But look-- we get the bookies, we get the books. We get the books, we get the names. All we need is one-- one name, one guy who owes both of them a chunk of change, and we're in."
"In how?" she'd asked, curious.
Jim had grinned, a rare sight that lit up his whole face. She wouldn't see that contentment again until their conversation in the hall outside the Orion girl's apartment. "Easy," he'd said, shrugging. "A simple case of mistaken identity."
He'd waited long enough for it to click, long enough for her own expression to relax. "I see," she'd murmured. "Someone knocks the Boss's son... the Boss calls me for a favor. I say hey, I got a plan, get me the name of some schmuck who owes you one. I make sure he picks you."
Jim had continued for her. "Then you go to the Rabbi and say hey, just so you know, your buddy the Boss ordered a hit on you. Pay me double, you stay alive, he gets dead. But by the way, can you call in this kid for me, I got some business with him and I think I'll have a better chance getting it done if you're leaning on him for your business too."
She'd seen it immediately, the way it would unfold from there. She'd tried to say yes, to tell Jim he was right and it was perfect, but her throat had been too tight with emotion to let her speak.
Here and now, Jim's hand clasped tight in hers, her throat is tight again. But as the men in front of her begin to stir, she swallows the lump in her throat and finds, impossibly, that she is smiling.
-- fin --
--- --- ---
...or is it?
At half past ten, Pike locks his office and pockets the keycard. Janice has kicked off her heels and shaken out her ridiculous hairdo of the day, and twiddles her fingers at him in farewell as he heads past her for the stairs. "See you in the morning, boss," she says, tossing a padd into a drawer and reaching for the next one on the stack. He mumbles something vague in reply and pulls out his comm as he nudges his way into the stairwell.
It rings twice before Sulu picks up. "Hey boss," he says, sounding as tired as Pike feels.
"What have you got?" he asks. His feet make plodding sounds; he could've taken the lift, but it's always seemed lazy to take it down two flights when his feet will do just as good a job.
"I... I don't even know, boss," he says, and suddenly Pike realizes the sound in Sulu's voice isn't fatigue. It's shock, maybe even panic. "I'm in this motel room... Kelevra stayed here last night. I've been sitting outside for the past six hours and I think... I think I figured it out. Where he's from, what his part in this is." He doesn't need to add, And you're not gonna like it.
Pike feels his eyebrows draw together as he exits the building into the car park on the side, fumbling in his pocket for his keys. "Okay, give it to me."
"So there's not much in here, but it looks like two people's worth of stuff. So I'm going through some of it-- careful, you know, but I find a padd in the bedside drawer so I'm flipping through it, and it's like... like a library, or something. Twenty years' worth of stuff... articles, obituaries, photos, notes, a whole fucking dossier. So I finally get it in some kinda order and the first thing I come to is this article on a horse race from about twenty years back. Did you know they still race horses? I didn't-- east coast thing, I guess."
Pike's nostrils flare as he draws in a silent breath. Dread is already pooling in the pit of his stomach. "And?" he prompts.
There's a click that Pike puts down as the flick of Sulu's lighter under a cigarette. "And so this horse was like, the favorite to win, right. Only it didn't win, it went down like a ton of bricks just as it was supposed to pull ahead, and it comes out it was full of these genetic modifications, shit that had been going on for years with the family that bred the horses or whatever. And isn't it ironic, but the horse was running the seventh spot in the race and its name was Lucky Number Slevin."
I remember, Pike says silently. His eyelids slip closed and suddenly he's twenty years younger, laying down a credit chip with a month's pay into the sweaty palm of the Boss's bookie. Seventh horse, tenth race. He'd been so sure the chip would come back with a few more zeroes on the end of it; a sure thing, it had been. What a fucking joke.
"Anyway," Sulu continues, exhaling, "it turns out the horse was owned by someone who was paid by someone who was paid by the Boss and the Rabbi. They were the ones working on the horse, had plans to turn the modifications planet-wide, maybe even start adapting it to other species. The Boss was all about the science-- not surprising, what with the whole Botany Bay thing, genetics, eugenics, whatever. The Rabbi was the money. Had buyers lined up around the block for this tech. Only chink in the works is this guy, this nosy SIS moron who just won't stop digging no matter how many times he gets told to stop. He digs and digs until he digs up this story, and he's a pretty smart guy so he puts all the pieces together and brings 'em to his captain, and then to the newspapers. It was the start of the feud between the Boss and the Rabbi, 'cause after this the Rabbi wouldn't fund any more weird genetic shit and that's all the Boss was interested in."
Like it was yesterday. "I thought we paid you to keep your people from getting too curious," the Rabbi had murmured, disappointment evident in every line of his face. "You'll have to make it up to me-- help me clean up this mess you've neglected to prevent." Thirty-one years old and desperate not to meet the kind of end a crooked cop like him deserved, he'd promised. "Anything, whatever you need, just tell me--"
"Well naturally the Boss and the Rabbi don't take too kindly to their whole operation being torn apart, so they want revenge, and they're gonna get it the hard way. And they kill everybody, Pike, I'm not exaggerating here. The breeders and scientists who worked for the Boss and the Rabbi, they go under too. Hell, even the horse and the jockey ended up dead before all this played out. But the SIS guy, this uh, George Kirk, he was the target. He's got a wife and kid, except he doesn't anymore 'cause they get put in the ground, just soon enough so Kirk can find out about it before they do him in."
"What happened to my family?" Kirk had begged, bloody and broken. "You don't have a family anymore," the Boss had said, while across town Pike was knocking on the door where his wife was setting up for dinner. Shotgun in hand, he knocked, and nudged it open when there was no answer. The wife came in, surprise on her face when she saw him, turning to fear when the gun appeared. "Make an example," the Rabbi had said, and boy, had he ever.
"But just when I start to feel like my head's spinning I turn to the next thing in the padd and it's medical records. Tons of them, and I mean extensive. No name on her, but it's definitely a her. Now I don't know who put her in the hospital but she was beat to shit and shot up like a piece of Swiss cheese. And what it took to get her out-- she's got more bionics on her than the fucking Terminator, they practically had to rebuild her from scratch when they brought her in. Cheek plates, forehead plate, new teeth, fifteen new bones, more muscle and skin grafts than God, I mean if anyone knew what this chick looked like before, her own mother wouldn't recognize her now. There's a photo in here of Kelevra and a woman, I'm guessing it's her. Sending it to your padd now."
Pike snatches it up with trembling fingers, opens the attachment, nearly drops it as he sees the face. Sulu's right; she's different now, but he's looking for it and he recognizes the set of her mouth, the line of her neck, the steel blue of her eyes mirrored in the face of the boy beside her-- but not a boy any longer, the boy he searched that entire house to find, to kill-- no, here's a man, the fish who got away come back to bite Pike when he's least expecting it. Slevin Kelevra, he thinks, choking on bile, Jimmy Kirk. Christ Almighty, whatever's coming next--
That's when he sees movement in the back seat of his car, a pair of cold blue eyes in his rearview, and feels the muzzle of a gun kissing the back of his neck.
"So that's all--" Sulu still sounds deeply troubled. Pike would love to explain how easy he has it, comparitively speaking-- "except it's obvious the kid's using a fake name, so it occurs to me to look up the last name he gave us, Kelevra. The Universal Translator picked it up right away, says it's an Old Hebrew word. Slang, you know, it means--"
"Bad dog," the kid murmurs, and Pike closes his eyes as Kirk pulls the trigger.
---
and earlier that day...
In the basement of the city morgue, it's not quite noon. Footsteps echo down the hallway, then the sound of a door's squeaky hinge, then nothing.
The green-skinned girl sprawled on the floor, blood pooling bright and crimson from two places on her chest, isn't breathing.
Then suddenly she coughs, deep and hard, rolling half on her side and clutching her abdomen. "Ow," she groans, "goddammit, ow." She coughs again, slowly sits up. She peels off the blood-stained lab coat and the blood packs beneath, trapped between the coat and the body armor she's got under it. Two dents where the bullets went in; she'll have bruises tomorrow.
"Okay," she murmurs, shoving the whole mess into the biohazard incinerator in the wall. She's remarkably cheerful for someone who's just been shot. "Okay Jim," she says, soft and affectionate. "I'm coming." On the screen of the padd in her hand is a neat chart in blue and white; a train schedule, with one box circled in red.
"I'm coming," she says again, and hurries out the door to hail a cab.
This post crossposted from Dreamwidth (
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Title : Kansas City Shuffle
Fandom : Star Trek XI
Characters/Pairing : Winona Kirk, Jim Kirk, Khan, Sarek, Pike, cameos by everyone else; mentions or implies a bunch of pairings, but is really gen.
Rating : R for violence and language, i guess?
Warnings : none really.
Word Count : 9400
Summary : A Kansas City Shuffle's a delicate operation. You gotta have a handle on all the strings in order to keep the puppets moving where they need to be. Lucky for Goodkat, she's had twenty years to get her strings in order before she starts making them dance.
A/Ns : this is my au/reboot of the movie "Lucky Number Slevin" for
reel_startrek. for the record, i'm still mad i couldn't work jim saying the 'man with two penises' line in somewhere. if someone feels like writing an outtake... ;) mucho mucho thanks to
raindissolved,
sekala and
jazzy_peaches for the fantabulous beta-ness.
--- --- ---
A young man saunters up a New York City street at midday. His suit jacket's hooked over his shoulder with a finger, and his shirt sleeves are rolled up. Bare wrist, no watch, his pockets too light for any of them to contain a wallet, and his face-- well. It's a good face, but there's no way around the fact it's seen better days. Blood on his lip, nose swollen and just starting to purple, a line between his eyebrows that suggests a headache coming on.
In front of a tall apartment building, the man stops, fishes in his pocket, and consults a piece of paper. He squints at the address on the building before shoving the paper back in his pocket and shouldering the door open, vanishing inside.
At a table in front of the cafe across the street, Goodkat watches over the top of her padd, her fingers paused in the middle of scrolling through a series of images. On the screen under her index finger, the face of the young man (here with his nose unbroken) is caught in motion, in the middle of opening his mouth to speak, blue eyes wide and earnest. The documents behind the photo are titled things like "Fisher, Nick" and "Spock/The Fairy" and "Pike, Detective C."
The waitress's step sounds behind her, and a quick brush of Goodkat's fingers sends the whole mess away to be replaced by the Times' business section as the girl leans over to take her empty cup.
"All set here?" the girl asks kindly.
"All set," Goodkat agrees with a nod.
She pays in cash and shrugs into a greying trenchcoat. At the curb she throws her arm up; as a cab brakes in front of her she feels the first drops of rain on her neck, and turns up her collar as she gets inside.
--- --- ---
The inside of the Boss's place is flashy and ornate, just barely on the tactful side of gaudy. The foyer is walled with gilded paper, the floor clicking beneath Goodkat's boots real marble from the quarries of Edanna. Goodkat can't tell if she's meant to be impressed or intimidated; in any case, she's neither. She eyes the guy with the Uzi guarding the elevator diffidently. He gives her an identical look in return. At least we're on the same page, she thinks.
It's well known the Boss has a fondness for pretty things, and the bodyguards that come to bring her up to the penthouse fit that bill all the way. The blonde's three inches shorter than her, and that's with heels on; the guy is big enough to do some damage, but right now he looks more bored than anything else. They're halfheartedly bickering as the door opens, but fall silent as she gets in.
She cracks her gum. They turn, almost in unison, and stare at her. She meets a set of blue eyes and then a set of green, and grins, cracking her gum again. "Always nice to see you kids again," she says. "The ones that dodge the high turnover rate, anyway."
The girl snorts. "It's not hard," she says, her voice higher than Goodkat had expected, making the sarcasm sound almost funny.
The guy chimes in. "You just gotta not be stupid." Southern, she notes. Atlanta, maybe Macon.
"Well, I'm flattered the Boss decided not to send stupid people to collect me," is all she says.
The girl snorts again, not at all polite, and the guy says softly, "Chapel, be nice."
She gives him a bland, innocent look. "I am," she says, and right then Goodkat believes it.
Then the elevator door opens on the Boss's office, a penthouse converted into one huge room. The sunken area in the middle with the chessboard laid out, big mahogany desk on the far side in front of the windows, three-inch bulletproof Stoerlanic glass forcefielded on two separate frequencies-- ostentatious is the name of the game, but Goodkat doesn't really look at any of it.
The Boss is standing at the window, and Goodkat puts her hands in her pockets to hide the clenching of her fists. Excitement and adrenaline flood her body; her fingertips go cold and she takes a deep breath, forcing her pulse to calm down.
“Goodkat,” says the Boss, turning towards her with a smile that isn’t even close to real.
“That’s me,” she says, shrugging. “And you’re the Boss.”
The Boss used to be known by his name; by all three of his names, actually. Khan Noonien Singh. Used to be people who got too friendly with that name, too casual flashing it about to open doors for themselves, would end up friendly with the bottom of the river before too long. Then there was the incident at Botany Bay, and people got superstitious, as people will. They started whispering the name, and then they stopped saying it at all.
Khan’s been known as the Boss for twenty years. Goodkat always thinks of him as Khan. She thinks it’s lucky he doesn’t know anything else to call her. Really lucky he doesn’t know what name she used to be known by, before she was Goodkat. This might all be over a lot faster if he did, and she’s not ready for this to be over until she says it is.
“This is how it’s going to go down,” she says, and lays it out for him. He calls back his bodyguards and gives them an address, an apartment on the Upper West Side, and a name.
“Bring me Nick Fisher,” he says, and Goodkat hides a smile.
--- --- ---
The kid isn't Nick Fisher.
Slevin, then, has a wise mouth. She wonders why he's in a bath towel (and a white-flowered purple one at that), but decides it's not really her business. He wants to end up with pneumonia, it's his death wish-- so long as he carries it out after her plans have come to fruition.
"I'm not Nick Fisher," the kid insists. “Your brute squad picked up the wrong guy.”
“The wrong guy for what?” The Boss counters, his strange smile turning Goodkat’s stomach a little.
“Whatever it is you wanted to see me about,” he says with an affable shrug.
“Do you know what I wanted to see you about?” The Boss steeples his fingers under his chin.
Slevin looks nonplussed, eyes darting left and right before settling back on the Boss. “Well... no...”
“Then how do you know I have the wrong guy?” It’s good logic. The Rabbi might be impressed.
Then there’s a rambling story, a dead bookie in a freezer, a guy named Nick Fisher who owes the boss 93,000 credits, and lots more of Slevin’s wiseass mouth. Finally the Boss quirks an eyebrow at the kid and says dryly, “I bet it was that mouth that got you that nose.”
“You’d win that bet,” Slevin agrees, gingerly touching the appendage in question.
The Boss’s eyes crinkle in a smile and he spreads his hands wide and generous. “Well Mr. Fisher, since you can’t get me the money you owe me, why don’t I cancel the debt in exchange for a favor.”
There’s a heavy pause, then Slevin asks, guarded, “What’s the favor?”
The Boss picks up a picture frame and turns it toward the kid. Goodkat can’t see the picture, but she knows who’s in it. “That was my son,” Khan says. “Notice I said was. That’s because he’s dead. Murdered. Relegated to the past tense.” Lines engrave themselves on the Boss’s face now, deep grooves that show his age, his grief. Goodkat can sympathize.
“Bummer,” says Slevin softly.
The Boss turns and looks out the window. Across the street is a monolith of white stone, an old institution of money, power and influence. If she looked, Goodkat might be able to make out the figure of a tall man standing stiff-spined at a window on the top floor. She doesn’t look.
“My son was murdered,” the Boss says softly, “so the Rabbi’s son must share the same fate.”
“The Rabbi?” Slevin asks, and the Boss’s mouth thins into a satisfied line.
“The Rabbi,” he confirms, and tells another story-- his son killed, the cease-fire between the Boss and the Rabbi broken in one quick blast of disruptor fire, the Rabbi’s son (the one they call the Fairy; “Why do they call him the Fairy?” Slevin asks; the Boss just says “Shut up.”) with a black mark next to his name, his life now measured in a span of hours, the time ticking slowly down to zero.
Slevin does everything she'd told the Boss he would. She’s good at predicting, it turns out. But Goodkat’s not a betting woman, and she tries not to get excited; there's a long way to go before the end.
Georgia and Chapel escort not-Fisher out and there's silence for a long stretching moment. Then :
"This seems counterintuitive to me," says the Boss, his tone speculative. "I'm paying you a lot of money to kill somebody, and you're getting someone else to do it?"
Goodkat comes out from behind the partition where she stood watching the scene. She's just starting to get warm inside her coat. "Don't worry," she says, the hint of a smile showing in the lines around her eyes. "I'm going to kill somebody."
She takes the elevator down by herself.
--- --- ---
Across the street inside a grey utility van, the kind only really small companies and government agencies still use, one man sits eating Chinese food with a pair of disposable chopsticks while another uses a high-definition camera to take pictures of three people exiting the Boss's building. One woman (his brain files automatically, Christine Chapel, age 26, former SpecOps turned private security turned mobster) and two men (the one on the left, Leonard McCoy, age 32, former Army Ranger and combat surgeon turned black market organ dealer turned mobster) one of whom is a total stranger (Terran human, blond, maybe 25, 26 years old, broken nose, terrible taste in linens).
"Hey Scotty," says Sulu, lowering the camera to glance over his shoulder. "Better call Pike. Tell him there's a new player in town."
"Oh's that right?" the other guy says, arching an eyebrow. "One of the Boss's?"
Sulu turns back to the camera, snaps a final shot of the newcomer, who pauses before letting McCoy herd him into the car, looking around with a thoughtful expression. For a second Sulu thinks his gaze lingers on the van, on them, almost like he's letting his picture be taken; but then he's ducking into the long grey car and Sulu shakes his head. "I really can't say."
--- --- ---
Goodkat goes back to the hotel. It's a nice hotel. Not that she couldn't afford a nicer one, one with a few extra stars to throw around. But she likes the smaller rooms; there's something comforting about them. About being able to open her eyes anywhere in the room and see all four corners of it, to turn on the light and chase all the shadows away.
It's not long before her appointment with the Rabbi. She takes a nap, and a shower, and plans to grab lunch on the way.
An Orion girl gets to the elevator the same time she does. She doesn't think anything of it, until the girl pulls her comm unit up to her ear and does a bad job hiding the fact she's taking Goodkat's picture. The fuck? Goodkat thinks, but doesn't move a muscle, not even her eyes. She doesn't need a camera to fix the girl's face.
Why a strange girl-- who isn't one of the players in this game, Goodkat knows she isn't-- would be taking her picture is maybe the first real puzzle she's come across in weeks. Maybe months. Who are you? she asks the girl silently, as the elevator gets to the lobby and they go their separate ways. She files the girl's face away under To-Do: Later, and straightens her collar as she gets into the cab.
She's so preoccupied by the appearance of something unexpected that she forgets entirely about her plans to eat lunch.
Back across the bridge, the Rabbi's holed up at the top of what used to be a bank. That was before interplanetary currency and offworld accounts; and it doesn't matter that Sarek isn't actually a Jew, just got given the nickname by the faithful in the neighborhood. Goodkat thinks it's ironic, a slew of inappropriate remarks running through the back of her mind as she lets the bodyguards pat her down and take her into the elevator.
She cracks her gum. The girl on her left doesn't blink; the one on her right does, her eyes flicking to Goodkat and back so fast it's hard to catch. She’d try to behave, but with the Rabbi’s bodyguards (especially these two) it’s too much to resist; like trying to get the guards on Buckingham Palace to twitch, it’s practically a tourist attraction.
"So what short straw did you draw to get stuck babysitting my ass today?" she asks, her half-grin as insolent as half-grins get. The girl's eyes get stonier and she doesn't move, barely seems to breathe.
But maybe the Rabbi's told them to play nice with her, 'cause after another breath the girl says, "It's not a short straw. We rotate."
"Oh," says Goodkat, "like musical chairs. Cool."
The other one, the actual Vulcan, turns to look at her then. "My companion's assessment is not entirely accurate. The Rabbi delegates tasks to those best able to perform them; in this case, he sent those of us with the best chance of disarming you if you proved hostile."
Goodkat grins, wolfish. "Yeah. That's more like it." She glances at the first girl, the tall human whose expression hasn't changed despite getting shown up. "Your companion?" she echoes.
"As good a word as any," the girl says smoothly, then mumbles something in Vulcan, her eyes meeting the other's over Goodkat's head. The girl answers in kind, and before Goodkat can formulate a reply (one that plays on their belief she can't understand Vulcan, of course) the elevator dings and the doors open, and she's getting escorted into the Rabbi's study.
He's standing at the window, but facing her, a strange backward mirror to her meeting with Khan. "Goodkat," he says in that toneless formal voice of his, the diplomat's voice, no trace of the mobster in his demeanor or his words.
"Yep," she says, purposefully casual.
"You wanted to meet with me," he says. It's not a question, but she nods anyway.
"Yeah, I did. I have information for you. And all I ask is that you wait to kill me til after you hear everything I've got to say."
There's a pause which on a human might register as surprise. "Very well," he says at length. "I am listening."
The whole time she’s talking, she does her best not to look out the window-- out, across the street, the wide windows with forcefields shimmering barely visible, carefully not disturbing the Boss’s view of his nemesis. She was there barely two hours ago; it feels like two days. She focuses on the Rabbi and tries not to get too excited.
At the end he swallows hard, the only sign he's shaken. "Your proposal is acceptable," he says, and calls for the girls to come back in.
He gives them an address. "Bring me the Terran called Nick Fisher," he says. They leave, and Goodkat lets out a silent breath.
--- --- ---
Sulu looks up from stirring another creamer into his coffee when he hears Scott swear. "What?" he asks.
"Take a look," Scott says, disgusted, and leans back so Sulu can look out the window. When he sees what Scotty was looking at, he feels his mouth drop open.
"The same kid?" he asks, incredulous, and Scotty shrugs.
They both recognize the kid’s escorts on sight, of course. The Rabbi’s wards, like his daughters, if his daughters could be unrelated to him by blood and romantically involved with each other. Nyota Uhura, the advisor and business manager-- what they’d call consigliere in the Godfather movies-- and T’Pring, the head of security and intermediary between the Rabbi’s fingers and some less-than-savory pies. Either one of them could break the neck of a human like a twig, and both have done so in the Rabbi’s name enough times to keep most smart people scared shitless.
The kid, though, is now officially more of a mystery than he was before. “Dammit,” Sulu mutters. “Scotty, call Pike and tell him we got a possible double agent. He’s gonna want a name to this face before I’m done with this cup of coffee, so we better get on it.”
Scott picks up his comm and talks into it, eyes never leaving the stranger’s face as he ducks into the car. “Pike, sir, it’s Scott. We saw the kid again, this time going into the Rabbi’s.” He pauses and listens, nodding. “Yes sir. Did you get a hit on his-- Yes we will, sir. Understood. Scott out.”
He clicks off his comm and looks at Sulu, faintly concerned. “He’s coming here,” he says. Sulu’s eyes widen and Scott nods gravely. “I know.”
“This is already some serious shit,” says Sulu, “and I have a bad feeling it’s only gonna get worse from here.”
--- --- ---
Three blocks away from where the Rabbi and the Boss sit scowling at each other across the chasm of Park Avenue, a small police precinct sits innocuously on a street corner. Fourth floor, small cluster of desks outside an even smaller office; a young detective, her hair twisted high and intricate on her head, sits with her feet up on someone else’s chair, thinking.
The door bangs open behind her just as she sighs loudly. The man who just exited the office comes to peer over her left shoulder and snorts. “Bored?”
“Nah,” she says, then shrugs, then cranes her neck back to look at him and says, “maybe a little. You get a hit on Sulu’s mystery kid yet?”
“Nah,” he returns dryly. He runs a hand through his hair, dark once, now peppered with silver, then spins back around as the comm unit on his desk rings. He grabs it on the third ring. “Pike,” he says, and tries not to notice Detective Rand listening in. “The Rabbi’s, are you kidding?” he asks with a sinking feeling in his chest. “No, nothing on the photo yet, look, you just sit tight there, I’m coming down. I wanna see this fucker for myself. Be there in ten.”
He comes out of the office again, shrugging into his jacket, to find Rand already on her feet. “Field trip?” she asks brightly, and Pike rolls his eyes, waving her to join him. It’s gonna be a lot of hurry up and wait for now, but anything involving both the Boss and the Rabbi is going to end in fireworks. Truth be told, he recalls the fireworks a little too well for his liking; twenty years isn’t long enough to forget being one of the guys lighting the fuses.
--- --- ---
Slevin, who still isn't Nick Fisher, is dressed when she sees him next. Jeans, button-up, vest, ugly sneakers-- hair dry, nose unbandaged. It hasn't been set. She has to wonder if that's intentional. The girls are on either side of him, relaxed like they don’t even consider him a threat-- which Goodkat supposes they shouldn’t, with the kind of training they have.
It goes down smooth as butter for the second time. The conversation gives her a serious case of deja vu. She wonders if anyone's ever bothered to point out to either of these two ghouls that they're the same fucking person at heart. She can't imagine anyone's ever been so stupid.
From her sort-of hiding spot in an alcove she listens to the cadence of their voices, the tonelessness of the Rabbi, the kid's Midwestern drawl. The yammering small talk the Rabbi's given to is annoying, but nothing she can't tune out. Logic has never really interested her, except as a tool for better understanding her marks. Slevin's good at it though, doesn't seem fazed by the rapid-fire turnabout of the Rabbi's questions, and seems genuinely puzzled when Sarek asks him for 33,000 credits.
"But I’m not Nick Fisher," he insists again. Goodkat could smile.
"Then who are you?" the Rabbi asks coolly.
The kid sighs. "I'm just a guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time."
The Rabbi appears to consider this. "You have 48 hours to get me my money," he says, ignoring the indignant flail of Slevin's hands.
The kid leaves pretty quick after that. Goodkat can't blame him; after the morning he's had, she wouldn't be inclined to stay and chat either. She's only been a witness to half the morning he's had, and she feels like she needs a drink.
The Rabbi speaks when the room is empty except for the two of them. "I wired half your money. You will receive the other half when our old friend is dead." Goodkat comes out of her alcove nodding, and the Rabbi half-turns toward her. "And I can expect that when?" he prompts.
"Very soon," she promises.
"Good," the Rabbi says with a nod. She remembers what he just told the kid; Killing you before you killed me would be logical, and therefore acceptable. She supposes that extends to ordering hits on people too. His voice interrupts her thoughts. "So tell me, Goodkat. This young man-- what do you want with him?
"The kid and I have unfinished business," she says, hoping he hears the iron in her voice. This is not something she's talking about with him, no matter how hard he tries.
There's another pause and then the Rabbi says, "One thing I know is when someone is lying-- it is, at times, the only thing someone in my position can rely on, sometimes the difference between life and death, between someone else's life and your own. That said, the young man was not lying. That is not Nick Fisher." He sounds perplexed, which Goodkat finds funny.
She reins in her smile and heads for the door. "I know."
--- --- ---
She's back at the Boss's the next morning when the kid comes to give his answer.
"Yes," he says, like it doesn't scare him at all, and maybe it doesn't. She wouldn't know how to tell if it did.
She saunters out. No reason to stay for the rest, and all he's gonna do is let the Boss beat him at chess. The kid looks up as she passes, his eyes barely widening before he shakes it off.
She smirks the whole ride down in the elevator. Chapel eyes her skeptically. "Not cracking your gum this time, you in a good mood or something?"
Goodkat cracks her gum and smiles.
She takes the side door, because the utility van's still out front, and she doesn't need the cops getting a look at her yet. Detective Pike is good at his job-- not so good that she thinks he'd know her on sight, of course. Almost no one is that good. But still-- there's a day or so to go before she'll be cocky enough to tempt fate like that.
Anyway, Pike doesn't deserve more than one chance to put the pieces together. And Goodkat wants to make sure that by the time he gets it, it's too late for him to do anything with it.
--- --- ---
The mystery kid gets shown the door by the Boss's guards half an hour after he goes in. The kid's already got McCoy rolling his eyes at his jokes; from inside the van, Pike can see the ex-doctor trying not to smirk, the satisfied look on the kid's face.
"Who the fuck is this guy?" he demands, putting the scope down and turning to Sulu.
"No idea," says Sulu, "but he's in some very deep shit. He's playing hardball with both sides of the street and who the fuck knows what else."
Pike takes a step closer and leans in. "I want to know what the fuck he's doing in my fucking city," he says calmly. "And it's up to you to find out."
That’s when the door opens, right on cue, to admit Scott, who’s looking blanched and scared. “Get this,” he pants, “Goodkat’s in town.”
There’s a sinking feeling in Pike’s stomach. He hears Rand ask who Goodkat is, and thinks disgustedly, I wish I knew.
“A heavy hitter,” he says. “The heaviest. No one knows what he looks like, or she, lots of people say she’s a woman, but she could be a goddamn Denobulan for all anyone knows. All anyone does know is, Goodkat shows, people get dead, Goodkat vanishes. But he hasn’t been Earthside in years, hasn’t worked New York in decades.”
“Just what we need,” Sulu mutters.
Pike can’t help but agree. Between their mystery man and Goodkat, there’s something happening in the neighborhood that Pike doesn’t understand, and he holds a personal grudge against shit he doesn’t understand happening right under his nose. There's a faint thought in the back of his head, Could he be...? But no; twenty years ago this kid was just that-- a kid. Goodkat is unrelated-- has to be unrelated. Still-- what fucking timing.
“Just keep your hat on,” he says, getting to his feet, going for the door. “Sit tight, get some more goddamn coffee in this bucket, and I’ll be back later. I gotta get to the morgue.”
Half an hour later he pokes his head into the lab where the coroner’s got three bodies laid out, toe-tagged and ready to go. “Gaila,” he drawls, grinning. This-- her wide smile, red curls, bounce in her step-- is one of the best parts of his day.
“Detective,” she drawls back, waggling her eyebrows. He likes how she flirts with him, that she doesn’t make it seem like she’s humoring him.
“Benny the bookie, killed by a baseball,” he says, shaking his head at the first body. He peeks under the sheet, then wishes he hadn’t.
“You know him?” Gaila sounds surprised, and for a second he feels a slice of shame. Doesn’t last long, though.
He gives her a rueful look and admits, “He used to work for the Rabbi. Between you and me... twenty years ago he used to be my bookie. I used to sign my paychecks over to him.” It’s easier to admit than he’d thought.
“Well,” says Gaila with a shrug, “someone wanted him dead in a really creative way. His guys--” she motions to the other two bodies-- “were poisoned. Something exotic, I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know.”
Pike nods, already thinking about the next thing on his to-do list, Find out who that goddamn kid is. It doesn't occur to him to remember the story he read in the Times that morning, about the guy who'd been the Boss's bookie for years going missing. Ironic, he'd thought as he read it, that a guy who worked for the Boss (unchallenged champion of making people vanish) had disappeared. But he's had a rough week, and it's only getting rougher, so he doesn't think to put two and two together.
Before he leaves, he spares a moment to lean over Benny’s ruined face and mutter, “Prick.” Stupid, he knows, but it makes him feel better-- or as close to it as he’s gonna get.
--- --- ---
Another day passes, full of nothing but killing time, until the sun's put to bed and the night life of the city's got its dancing shoes on. From her car parked across the street, Goodkat watches Slevin leave for the restaurant with Fisher's nosy green neighbor in tow.
He's going there to meet the Fairy, she knows-- meet him, set up a date with him for the following night. It's dicey, entirely dependent on emotion and chemistry and if Spock son of Sarek is in the goddamn mood to be flirted with. But she's seen enough of the kid's charm to trust it'll work out-- that, and rumor has it the Fairy likes them smart and stubborn, so really, he should be a shoo-in.
She goes around the corner to the hot dog stand right outside the cops' conspicuously featureless van and gets a chili dog with extra chili. Now, finally, she's starting to get confident. She goes back to the car and kicks up her feet onto the passenger's seat, tips her head back against the window and watches the stars while she eats her hot dog.
Two hours pass while she listens to the radio. The White Sox are losing to the Mets, which might make her cranky if she were actually paying attention. When it's bordering on three hours of sitting here pretending she's comfortable, she sees green skin in her rearview and hunkers down, watches the two of them saunter up the street. They look pretty cozy, her arm tucked close into his, both of them laughing.
She waits fifteen minutes after they disappear into Fisher's apartment building before hitting the comm on the dash and dialing a number. She's expecting the signal-- two rings, a disconnect, a call back ten minutes later. It's how she planned this to go-- the kid comes back from making contact with the Fairy, she makes the call. There's no understanding, no contingency for what happens if he doesn't pick up when she does.
"Pick up the goddamn phone, kid," she mutters, finally hanging up when it's plain no one's home.
She looks up at the building, to the window she'd long ago figured out was Fisher's. No lights on, or at least none in the bedroom, which could mean any number of things. We're going to be having a conversation about that girl, she thinks, drumming her fingers on the dash. I told him to stay focused, and this is what happens. Jesus.
She calls a second time just to be sure, but yeah, there's no mistaking it. She's being ignored. That or someone was waiting for them upstairs, in which case she's already too late and getting angry won't do any good. She calmly turns up her collar and goes into the building, rides the elevator up to the fifth floor.
She knocks quietly. There's no answer, so she knocks again. Still nothing; no sign of forced entry or anything amiss. Something sharp blooms in her chest and she's about to lift her foot to the jamb when she hears a laugh from across the hall. Low and intimate, not meant for intruders' ears or old buildings with thin walls, but unmistakably the kid's. Her kid's; she'd know it anywhere.
"Son of a bitch," she murmurs quietly, and shoves her hands in her pockets as she goes back down the hall.
--- --- ---
Detective Pike hasn't gotten where he is in life by being unobservant. In fact, he's made it a point to pay attention, and to learn how to put what he learns together as fast as possible. Which is why this morning finds him and his team's stupid van parked outside an apartment building like a cat outside a mouse hole.
Doesn't take long for the mouse to show his face. Bruises fading, hands in his pockets and a smug smile on his face; he's about two seconds away from whistling.
"Grab him," Pike says, and stays sitting with his arms crossed as Sulu and Scotty hop out to grab the kid by his arms and haul him inside, sling him into a chair and shut the door behind them. Pike taps on the ceiling and Janice kicks the van into gear. She drives slow; this isn't going to take long.
"Hi, kid," he says, and sees the recognition hit the kid's face with a certain amount of satisfaction.
Last night in the bathroom at the restaurant he'd been on his guard, too cagey for Pike to read well. Do I know you? polite and easy, the line between his eyes deepening when Pike had replied No, but I know you. Unsettled, like he was afraid it might actually be true. It wasn't. He'd explained I know who you're not, told the kid about Nick Fisher's photo coming in from the penal colony on the moon, and gotten barely more than that faintly puzzled look.
I'm just a guy whose dinner's getting cold, he'd said. Pike feels his eyes narrow, still annoyed by the brush-off. 'Just a guy' my ass, he thinks. If this kid is "just" anything, Pike will eat his hat with a side of hot sauce. It's infuriating, thinking he might be barking up the wrong tree, that there's an explanation to all this that's simple instead of one tantalizingly out of reach. And there's still that something familiar about him that Pike can't place, something obnoxiously niggling the back of his mind.
"Am I being kidnapped?" the kid asks, raking blond hair out of his eyes with one hand, bracing himself against the wall with the other. Scotty nods towards a chair and the kid takes it. Maybe the first smart thing he's done all day.
"Nope," says Pike placidly. "Just want to have a quick, friendly chat."
The kid doesn't want quick, if his smart-ass retorts are anything to go by, and after a few rounds of banter Pike isn't so inclined to be friendly. His fist in the kid's gut feels good, letting out some of the tension he's been grinding under for the past two days. "What is your name?" he asks again, just soft enough to be menacing.
"Oh yeah, I remember," the kid chokes out when he can breathe again. "Slevin Kelevra." For a split second the neurons connect in Pike's brain and he has a flash of something, a memory, but it's gone before he can hold onto it.
"Okay," Pike says, conversational. "Slevin. It's pretty simple, what I asked you in here to say. I don't know what's going on or how you're involved, but once I figure out what there is to figure out--" he pauses for emphasis that's lost 'cause the kid's not looking at him-- "I'm not gonna be so nice to you."
The kid raises his eyes to Pike's, sky blue and full of something dark and ugly. Pike exerts no small amount of effort to keep from flinching. Those are not the eyes of a twenty-something kid in over his head. Those are the eyes of someone who means to do business, and to do it so thoroughly no one will be around to talk about it after. What the fuck am I in the middle of? he wonders with the piece of his mind that isn't occupied trying to stay cool.
"Last chance to come clean," he offers, though he knows now the way this is going to play. Slevin just raises an eyebrow, smooth and arrogant, and Pike shakes his head in disgust. "Take a walk," he spits, banging on the wall for Janice to stop and motioning for Sulu to muscle the kid out of the van.
With one more parting shot the kid's gone and the doors shut behind him. Pike smacks the wall again and as Janice hits the gas, Pike sees Slevin brush off his shoulders and stick his hands back in his coat pockets, turning to meander back down the street like he hasn't got a care in the world.
--- --- ---
Goodkat hears footsteps and steps back into the stairwell, waiting for the kid to pass by before she follows him down the hall. There's an ease to his saunter she attributes to his just having gotten laid, but the relaxed look on his face is unfamiliar. She remembers having a different face, remembers what it felt like waking up wearing this one. Not the same; almost the same.
She's silent, but he's well-trained; after two paces he whirls on her, every muscle tensed and ready to drop the two cups of coffee in his hands. It flows out of him like water when he sees it's her.
"Your girl made me," she says. "She took my picture. She's gotta go in the ground." No point in preamble, she reasons. Either he'll accept it or he won't.
There's a pause; she can practically hear the gears in his head working. She almost holds her breath, but doesn't. He nods abruptly, just one bob of his head, mouth tight. "Okay."
Goodkat nods and melts back into the woodwork, taking the back stairs down to the street and another cab. She looks up at the fifth floor and remembers the soft look on his face, the way he'd almost looked happy. She reminds herself that she knew going into this what the price would be, that in order to make this work she would have to give up parts of herself, give up just about everything except the drive to see this through. This is the first time in twenty years she's wondered if it's worth it.
--- --- ---
Night again. The days pass by so quick in a city like this, a muddle of noise and light and color. Nights, at least Goodkat feels like she has the space to breathe, to move in her own skin and not feel penned in on all sides. Especially nights like this, where the air is dry and crisp, practically humming with tension, and everything in the city seems on edge, waiting for something to happen.
Spock is already dead by the time she opens the door to his apartment.
"It was close," Slevin murmurs, pocketing the tiny disruptor. "He almost got to the panic button before--"
"It's done," she says with a shrug. "No point in might-have-beens. Go get Fisher."
He nods, looking a little shell-shocked. Goodkat can't blame him; it feels a little crazy to her, too, that this is finally happening. "Go," she says, and he goes.
After the door shuts, she reaches down for the small pendant, a triangle intersecting a circle, that serves as the Fairy's panic button. She presses it, pulls out her guns, and waits.
The opaque forcefield between the two rooms vanishes in a blink. Uhura and T'Pring come through with their guns out, but Goodkat was waiting, and is faster anyway. They're dead before they know what's hit them; it's a shame, Goodkat thinks. In another life they might've lived, but Sarek had signed their death warrants along with Spock's and his own.
Slevin bangs the door open and hustles a body bag in. "Christ, he's heavy," he mutters. "Explains why all his clothes are big on me."
"Work now, bitch later," she says, and together they unzip the bag and get the body out of it. One hand drops slack into the pool of Spock's blood, dark green against the pallor of Fisher's cold fingers. She slips the watch off his wrist and passes it to Slevin, who pockets it, then drops his own watch into her hand. She slides it onto Fisher's wrist.
"Let's go," she says as she gets to her feet. "Not much longer now."
"Yeah," says Slevin, still staring down at Spock and Fisher. "Yeah," he says again a second later, tearing his eyes up as Goodkat tugs on his sleeve. "Let's go."
As they walk down the street, Slevin digs in his pocket and lights a cigarette, passing it to Goodkat before lighting one of his own. The sky is dark overhead with no sign of stars.
Then the windows of the Fairy's apartment explode behind them, and the street is washed in orange light. Slevin turns back to look, his face aglow in the blaze, and for a moment Goodkat can't tell if she's looking at him, or at a younger version of herself.
--- --- ---
They sleep for a few hours in Goodkat's motel room. In the morning Goodkat gets up while Slevin's still thrashing in the sheets, and is gone before he's even half awake.
She drinks her coffee in the cab. When she gets out at the morgue, she crumples the cup and tosses it in the recycler unit outside the door. Then she goes around the back and hacks the side door the morticians use for their cigarette breaks, goes silently down the hall to where she can hear the sound of singing.
Inside autopsy room two, the Orion girl has the radio on. She doesn't hear Goodkat come in, and doesn't look up when Goodkat pulls out her gun.
Goodkat fires, and the room goes silent.
--- --- ---
She gets to the Boss's place as the sun is just starting to kiss the horizon.
There's no chit-chat in the elevator this time. Fifty-seven floors is a long way up; on the way Goodkat closes her eyes and focuses on breathing, in and out, slow and even. Inside the pockets of her trenchcoat, her hands clench and release in time with her breaths.
The elevator dings at floor fifty-seven. As she leaves, she steps carefully to avoid the growing pool of blood on the floor. The doors move noiselessly closed behind her; if anyone had been nearby, they might have caught a glimpse of Chapel and her southern gentleman lying sprawled on the floor. But there's no one there.
The Boss is standing alone at the window just as he was when she first got here. His long hair is tied back, and the set of his shoulders doesn't look happy.
"I'm unhappy," he says without moving. He's going to monologue now; Goodkat can tell when these sort of things are coming. She's not wrong, either. She stands still on the opposite side of the desk, her entire body thrumming with tension. It doesn't make sense; she's waited twenty years for this, and now the last twenty minutes is going to do her in? Slevin would laugh.
The Boss ends it abruptly. "Fuck it," he says, shrugging, dropping his arms to his sides with a thwack. "If the Rabbi wants a war, I'll give him a war." He turns, the hard light of vengeance in his eyes.
He has just enough time to see the grim look on her own face before she hits him with the stunner hidden inside her sleeve.
--- --- ---
"You thought Fisher was heavy," she wheezes, dragging the Boss into the Rabbi's study. "This guy, Jesus."
"Eugenics aren't all they're cracked up to be," Slevin says with a shrug. "Come on." He takes the Boss's feet and together they get him into a chair. The Rabbi's already set up, sonic handcuffs keeping his arms and legs in place, and soon the Boss is similarly trussed.
"How long til they wake up?" Slevin asks. She glances over at him, sees he's a little flushed, the back of his neck and his cheeks tinged red.
"Ten minutes," she says. She feels his shoulder brush hers and reaches for his hand, squeezing hard. There aren't words that'll do either of them any good; how could they? Goodkat's not even sure she has the capacity for talking right now, anyway.
Slevin-- who she supposes now she can start thinking of as Jim again-- doesn't let go of her hand, and for a moment that seems a lot longer than it is, Goodkat remembers.
Remembers waking up in agony, doctors murmuring, her own voice hoarse and screaming for her son, for Jim. Remembers flashes of moments that are still all she can recall of days, weeks, months spent under the knife while they fixed what they could of her battered body, built anew what they couldn't fix. Remembers getting to her feet for the first time, seeing her own face like a stranger's in the mirror.
She remembers promising revenge. They were dead to the world; this, then, would be her job. Make a name for herself that people would fear, so when the time was right she could use it for her own ends. Goodkat. It was a joke of theirs, those years before planet hopping, before pulling jobs and fattening their bank account, Risa to Romulus to Tarsus and beyond. Good cat, bad dog. It's lost now, the story behind George's pet names for them, like the feel of his fingers in her hair, the sound of his laugh.
The day they finally figured out how to pull it off, though; that's something she'll never forget.
"If we get to the bookies, we've got them," Jim had said, fervent the way he only got when he knew he was right about something. "They call it a Kansas City Shuffle, whatever the fuck that means. But look-- we get the bookies, we get the books. We get the books, we get the names. All we need is one-- one name, one guy who owes both of them a chunk of change, and we're in."
"In how?" she'd asked, curious.
Jim had grinned, a rare sight that lit up his whole face. She wouldn't see that contentment again until their conversation in the hall outside the Orion girl's apartment. "Easy," he'd said, shrugging. "A simple case of mistaken identity."
He'd waited long enough for it to click, long enough for her own expression to relax. "I see," she'd murmured. "Someone knocks the Boss's son... the Boss calls me for a favor. I say hey, I got a plan, get me the name of some schmuck who owes you one. I make sure he picks you."
Jim had continued for her. "Then you go to the Rabbi and say hey, just so you know, your buddy the Boss ordered a hit on you. Pay me double, you stay alive, he gets dead. But by the way, can you call in this kid for me, I got some business with him and I think I'll have a better chance getting it done if you're leaning on him for your business too."
She'd seen it immediately, the way it would unfold from there. She'd tried to say yes, to tell Jim he was right and it was perfect, but her throat had been too tight with emotion to let her speak.
Here and now, Jim's hand clasped tight in hers, her throat is tight again. But as the men in front of her begin to stir, she swallows the lump in her throat and finds, impossibly, that she is smiling.
-- fin --
--- --- ---
...or is it?
At half past ten, Pike locks his office and pockets the keycard. Janice has kicked off her heels and shaken out her ridiculous hairdo of the day, and twiddles her fingers at him in farewell as he heads past her for the stairs. "See you in the morning, boss," she says, tossing a padd into a drawer and reaching for the next one on the stack. He mumbles something vague in reply and pulls out his comm as he nudges his way into the stairwell.
It rings twice before Sulu picks up. "Hey boss," he says, sounding as tired as Pike feels.
"What have you got?" he asks. His feet make plodding sounds; he could've taken the lift, but it's always seemed lazy to take it down two flights when his feet will do just as good a job.
"I... I don't even know, boss," he says, and suddenly Pike realizes the sound in Sulu's voice isn't fatigue. It's shock, maybe even panic. "I'm in this motel room... Kelevra stayed here last night. I've been sitting outside for the past six hours and I think... I think I figured it out. Where he's from, what his part in this is." He doesn't need to add, And you're not gonna like it.
Pike feels his eyebrows draw together as he exits the building into the car park on the side, fumbling in his pocket for his keys. "Okay, give it to me."
"So there's not much in here, but it looks like two people's worth of stuff. So I'm going through some of it-- careful, you know, but I find a padd in the bedside drawer so I'm flipping through it, and it's like... like a library, or something. Twenty years' worth of stuff... articles, obituaries, photos, notes, a whole fucking dossier. So I finally get it in some kinda order and the first thing I come to is this article on a horse race from about twenty years back. Did you know they still race horses? I didn't-- east coast thing, I guess."
Pike's nostrils flare as he draws in a silent breath. Dread is already pooling in the pit of his stomach. "And?" he prompts.
There's a click that Pike puts down as the flick of Sulu's lighter under a cigarette. "And so this horse was like, the favorite to win, right. Only it didn't win, it went down like a ton of bricks just as it was supposed to pull ahead, and it comes out it was full of these genetic modifications, shit that had been going on for years with the family that bred the horses or whatever. And isn't it ironic, but the horse was running the seventh spot in the race and its name was Lucky Number Slevin."
I remember, Pike says silently. His eyelids slip closed and suddenly he's twenty years younger, laying down a credit chip with a month's pay into the sweaty palm of the Boss's bookie. Seventh horse, tenth race. He'd been so sure the chip would come back with a few more zeroes on the end of it; a sure thing, it had been. What a fucking joke.
"Anyway," Sulu continues, exhaling, "it turns out the horse was owned by someone who was paid by someone who was paid by the Boss and the Rabbi. They were the ones working on the horse, had plans to turn the modifications planet-wide, maybe even start adapting it to other species. The Boss was all about the science-- not surprising, what with the whole Botany Bay thing, genetics, eugenics, whatever. The Rabbi was the money. Had buyers lined up around the block for this tech. Only chink in the works is this guy, this nosy SIS moron who just won't stop digging no matter how many times he gets told to stop. He digs and digs until he digs up this story, and he's a pretty smart guy so he puts all the pieces together and brings 'em to his captain, and then to the newspapers. It was the start of the feud between the Boss and the Rabbi, 'cause after this the Rabbi wouldn't fund any more weird genetic shit and that's all the Boss was interested in."
Like it was yesterday. "I thought we paid you to keep your people from getting too curious," the Rabbi had murmured, disappointment evident in every line of his face. "You'll have to make it up to me-- help me clean up this mess you've neglected to prevent." Thirty-one years old and desperate not to meet the kind of end a crooked cop like him deserved, he'd promised. "Anything, whatever you need, just tell me--"
"Well naturally the Boss and the Rabbi don't take too kindly to their whole operation being torn apart, so they want revenge, and they're gonna get it the hard way. And they kill everybody, Pike, I'm not exaggerating here. The breeders and scientists who worked for the Boss and the Rabbi, they go under too. Hell, even the horse and the jockey ended up dead before all this played out. But the SIS guy, this uh, George Kirk, he was the target. He's got a wife and kid, except he doesn't anymore 'cause they get put in the ground, just soon enough so Kirk can find out about it before they do him in."
"What happened to my family?" Kirk had begged, bloody and broken. "You don't have a family anymore," the Boss had said, while across town Pike was knocking on the door where his wife was setting up for dinner. Shotgun in hand, he knocked, and nudged it open when there was no answer. The wife came in, surprise on her face when she saw him, turning to fear when the gun appeared. "Make an example," the Rabbi had said, and boy, had he ever.
"But just when I start to feel like my head's spinning I turn to the next thing in the padd and it's medical records. Tons of them, and I mean extensive. No name on her, but it's definitely a her. Now I don't know who put her in the hospital but she was beat to shit and shot up like a piece of Swiss cheese. And what it took to get her out-- she's got more bionics on her than the fucking Terminator, they practically had to rebuild her from scratch when they brought her in. Cheek plates, forehead plate, new teeth, fifteen new bones, more muscle and skin grafts than God, I mean if anyone knew what this chick looked like before, her own mother wouldn't recognize her now. There's a photo in here of Kelevra and a woman, I'm guessing it's her. Sending it to your padd now."
Pike snatches it up with trembling fingers, opens the attachment, nearly drops it as he sees the face. Sulu's right; she's different now, but he's looking for it and he recognizes the set of her mouth, the line of her neck, the steel blue of her eyes mirrored in the face of the boy beside her-- but not a boy any longer, the boy he searched that entire house to find, to kill-- no, here's a man, the fish who got away come back to bite Pike when he's least expecting it. Slevin Kelevra, he thinks, choking on bile, Jimmy Kirk. Christ Almighty, whatever's coming next--
That's when he sees movement in the back seat of his car, a pair of cold blue eyes in his rearview, and feels the muzzle of a gun kissing the back of his neck.
"So that's all--" Sulu still sounds deeply troubled. Pike would love to explain how easy he has it, comparitively speaking-- "except it's obvious the kid's using a fake name, so it occurs to me to look up the last name he gave us, Kelevra. The Universal Translator picked it up right away, says it's an Old Hebrew word. Slang, you know, it means--"
"Bad dog," the kid murmurs, and Pike closes his eyes as Kirk pulls the trigger.
---
and earlier that day...
In the basement of the city morgue, it's not quite noon. Footsteps echo down the hallway, then the sound of a door's squeaky hinge, then nothing.
The green-skinned girl sprawled on the floor, blood pooling bright and crimson from two places on her chest, isn't breathing.
Then suddenly she coughs, deep and hard, rolling half on her side and clutching her abdomen. "Ow," she groans, "goddammit, ow." She coughs again, slowly sits up. She peels off the blood-stained lab coat and the blood packs beneath, trapped between the coat and the body armor she's got under it. Two dents where the bullets went in; she'll have bruises tomorrow.
"Okay," she murmurs, shoving the whole mess into the biohazard incinerator in the wall. She's remarkably cheerful for someone who's just been shot. "Okay Jim," she says, soft and affectionate. "I'm coming." On the screen of the padd in her hand is a neat chart in blue and white; a train schedule, with one box circled in red.
"I'm coming," she says again, and hurries out the door to hail a cab.
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