The Reservoir Syndicate's Idea of Normalcy
A new month, a new installment of The Reservoir Syndicate Saga. They drink in this chapter. I know, it's a big shock, isn't it? Thanks again to remycognac, vanillahellsing, and Quentin Tarantino. Because QT and I, we're cool like that, you know? He told me I could do whatever I wanted with the characters and get paid tons of money for it. Right, and I've got a bridge for you to buy.
Oh, and by the way, in the event that anyone here has better Japanese language conjugation skills: please, feel free to correct me.
And now, on with the show.
Part Eleven
A few hours and several drinks later one could swear the rag-tag group of former thieves, killers, and one undercover cop were actually friends, no matter how many times they might have denied it. They sat around one of the back booths, gleeful and inebriated as ever.
“Ren-chan?” Elle inquired playfully, remembering Go-Go’s old nickname for the now exiled Yakuza queen. “Ren-chan, are you drunk?” She starting picking long, elegant jeweled pins out of O-Ren’s hair, snickering. “Your face is all red.”
“Urusai!” O-Ren replied, half-heartedly jerking her head away and pushing Elle. “Monku yuun ja nai yo. Omae wo korosu.”
The others were taken aback at the sudden change in O-Ren’s voice. It suddenly became more commanding, sharper, and a bit on the crude side.
White chuckled. “Now there’s a tone I don’t think I’ve ever heard come out of her mouth.”
Orange raised an eyebrow and smiled. “I don’t know what she said but it’s got me a little concerned.”
Brown, meanwhile, just became slightly more turned-on than he already was. He had a thing for foreign tongues…in more than one way.
Elle laughed, undeterred and continuing to disassemble O-Ren’s elaborate hairstyle. “Sure you will, Ren-chan.”
“What’d she say?” Blonde asked.
“I think it was something in Japanese,” Brown responded, squirming around in his seat like a worm, watching as the Japanese woman’s hairdo was slowly deconstructed. The undercurrent eroticism was almost too much for him to bear.
White rolled his eyes. “Yeah, no shit, Sherlock.”
O-Ren swatted Elle’s hand away and rubbed her forehead, feeling a tad on the woozy side. “Kuso.” The alcohol and hearing Elle call her by such a forgotten nickname lapsed her right back into her mother tongue. “Kono baka…hottoke…shinjimae…” Her voice trailed off as she continued to mutter things to herself, a few dark tendrils of hair uncurling as she tilted her head downward.
Elle just laughed harder and threw an arm around the smaller woman. “Now that brings back memories. I haven’t heard you speak like that in a long time.”
“Wait, you speak Japanese?” Orange remarked.
“Of course I do,” she replied, imperiously, as if it were common knowledge. “You can’t expect me to have known this one for so long without having picked up at least the insults of the language.” She gave O-Ren’s shoulders a jerk of a hug on the words “this one.”
“So what’d she say, Girly? Translate for us,” Blonde challenged, doing his best not to slur his speech from the alcohol.
Elle raised a hand and declared, “Shut up, don’t give me that crap. I’ll kill you. Shit, you idiot, quit bugging me. Go to hell.”
“Yeesh, no need to get all worked up about it,” Brown said. “We just wanted to know what she said.”
O-Ren looked up, brushing hair back from her face, cheeks still quite flushed. “That is what I said.”
Elle grinned smugly. “Told you so.”
“Why did you have to go and undo my hair?” O-Ren asked with exasperation.
“Because you look so much prettier with it down,” the former DiVA answered, playing like a girl with a new doll. Her own cheeks were blushed from the night’s drinking, giving the otherwise cold woman an uncharacteristically warm appearance. Amazing what a carafe or two of Shiro no Jumon could do.
“I hate to say I agree with the cyclops, but she’s right,” White begrudgingly conceded. “You should let your hair down more often.”
“Who are you calling a Cyclops, old man?” Elle retorted under her breath.
“That’s completely absurd, Mr. White,” O-Ren countered, “I would do no such thing.” But even as kimono-clad woman spoke, she sat complacently as her old teammate fanned her hair out over her shoulders.
“You have the prettiest hair,” Elle went on to say in a strange, disjointed, sing-song voice. “I don’t care what Beatrix used to say.”
O-Ren frowned. “What did she used to say?”
“I can see the bottom of my glass, barkeep,” Blonde announced, lifting it up for all to see.
“I think it’s time for another round,” White commented. He touched Orange’s shoulder. “Baby, could you get us some more drinks?”
Orange brought another round for the table and then went one step further. He swayed over to the juke and made sure they had music for at least another hour. As The Beatles belted out “Eleanor Rigby” and the young man sang along, everyone regarded him with surprise - except perhaps White, who knew the cop turned criminal’s hidden abilities all too well. A clear and graceful tenor voice flew from Orange’s lips and while it was a tad shaky from disuse, he slipped out of key only a few times.
Even Blonde gave an impressed whistle. “Well I’ll be damned, looks like we got ourselves a choirboy.”
The pride of St. Michael’s, Orange thought to himself and smiled on the inside. It was nice to know those six years hadn’t been a complete waste.
When the song ended silence claimed the room for a mere moment, but somehow those few seconds felt longer. The group looked in on itself, a rare wave of introspection washing over all present. Not quite strangers anymore, no, not now. They were companions of some kind, in this together; Mary Sue’s attack had, if nothing else, solidified that. It was a strange feeling.
And as the opening riff of Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” played, that strange feeling of solidarity among thieves and killers drove White to say what he did.
“So, let’s be honest with ourselves here,” the aging crook said, “none of us have ever been any good at obeying the law. Except for maybe you, Kid.”
Orange shrugged and sighed, “I’ve come a long way since my days on the beat.”
White nodded. “So I was thinking, fellas…and ladies…that maybe we ought to utilize our skills before they are no longer available to us. I mean, yeah, we’ve been given second chances at life but somehow I just can’t see myself living with just this bar keeping me going.” He looked over at Orange again and lowered his voice. “I’m sorry, Baby, but it’s true.”
“No, I understand,” the younger man resigned himself to say with a heavier sigh than before.
“So what exactly are you saying?” Blonde asked. “You sound like you want to pull another heist or something.”
White smiled, that old dog just found a bone smile of his.
After half a second’s consideration, Blonde smirked back. “Well fuck me running, you are thinking of a new score, aren’t you?”
“You sly bastard,” Brown chimed in. “So what’s it going to be?”
***
White was no Joe Cabot but he knew what he was doing when it came to laying out the how and why of a job, that was for damned sure. Over twenty years of experience in the criminal world served him well. Even Blonde had to admit the score sounded solid. Elle and O-Ren declined from participation, though. “We are assassins, not thieves,” was the reason the femme fatales had stated, and no one held it against them.
“We’re going to need new hardware, though,” White said. “The guns we’ve got now just aren’t going to be enough.”
“That’s easy enough to take care of,” Blonde remarked with a dismissive wave of his hand. “One phone call and it’s done, you leave that to me.”
“Is that so?” White’s interest was peaked at Blonde’s unusual anxiousness to play ball with the rest of the team.
“Yeah, my big brother deals.”
“Who? Vince? I didn’t know he was an arms dealer.” White frowned. “I thought he was working for Marcellus Wallace as an enforcer or some shit like that.”
Blonde’s expression, subtle though it may have been, wavered between annoyance and confusion at the older man’s sudden knowledge of his family. It was the one subject that Blonde tended to get defensive about. “And just how in the hell do you know that?”
White shrugged. “Hey, that’s just what my nephew Jimmie said.”
It was Blonde’s turn to frown. “Yeah, well your nephew Jimmie must not have talked to Vince for a while because he quit that Marcellus Wallace lackey shit and went into business with his old buddy, Jules. They took over Ordell Robbie’s turf after he bit the big one.”
“Ordell Robbie.” The name seemed to leave a bad taste in White’s mouth as he repeated it. “I remember that son of a bitch, he was a fucking punk but he had a pretty sweet operation for a while there.”
Mr. Blonde quirked his shoulder in a half-shrug, saying, “It’s not exactly what it was back in the day but it’s still a Goddamned good ring.” There was a new twist to Blonde’s voice; was it pride? “Vince and Jules have the whole thing under their thumbs. They can get us damn near anything we need from shotguns to grenade launchers.” He paused and smirked. “Surface to air missiles might be a bit harder to come by.”
“I take it that means you get one hell of a discount,” Mr. Brown commented.
“Damn straight,” Blonde replied. “Just give me a list of what you want and I’ll put the call in. It’ll be taken care of in no time, Vince is good like that.”
Brown was taken aback, entirely unused to seeing Blonde so…agreeable. It was unnerving. “Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so eager to participate in anything we’ve done as a group, except maybe getting drunk.”
Blonde waved it away. “Whatever, it gives me an excuse to call my brother, and I don’t talk to him nearly as much as I should.” He tossed in a devious grin for good measure. “That, and I just like the thought of seeing some action again…and guns, I like guns, too.”
Mr. Orange ignored the shiver that ran down his spine. He wasn’t sure how he felt about the whole thing, as far as he was concerned another heist was nothing more than an invitation for another set of problems and possible injuries.
There had been some very heated arguments when Mr. White first mentioned to him that a strictly law-abiding life might not work out. When they ran away together after the warehouse incident, the two men had consented to make a clean break with their pastas: no more thievery for White and no more civic duty for Orange. There had been more than enough danger and excitement involved with going on the lamb - an unrepentant thief and killer with his tragically, beautifully corrupted former cop companion fleeing justice in the name of love. Orange could see how that appealed to White, hell, it appealed to him. It was definitely thrilling, if not a bit romantic or even erotic. Those first few months were loaded with passionate nights spent in safe houses, their limbs entwined as they moaned and gasped their affections into the dawn.
And then their names faded from the newspapers, gracing the back page instead of the front in the event that they made the news at all. A strange form of domesticity settled in as they began the process of finding a location for the Syndicate and making arrangements for it to be both business and residence. Yes, the names on the documents were false but there was so much red tape that no one noticed or cared even if there was something amiss with the paperwork. Running from the long arm of the law became routine, ordinary.
That was right around the time that Orange noticed White started to get edgy. He started calling up old friends, contacts in the industry to “poke around, see what’s what.” Orange didn’t like the sound of it one bit. And then one day White came out and told him. Orange already knew it, he’d suspected White’s plans before the older man even walked in the door. He sensed it just as clearly as any wife could tell her husband was cheating on her. In a way, Orange felt like White had cheated on him, on their new lifestyle.
However, Orange was also painfully aware how difficult it was for White to adjust to normal life since he’d been stealing and far worse since he was only fifteen years old. The transition had been rough from the get-go. But Orange stuck it out, after all, he had sworn to love White no matter what the circumstances. They had been through too much together for either one to walk out now, that just wasn’t an option. So Orange made his choice and grit his teeth, hoping White’s talk of a new score would remain that - just talk.
The memory of their last criminal endeavor was permanently etched into Orange’s mind - along with his belly and right temple. He would stand in the mirror sometimes, after a shower or while getting dressed, just staring at the scar on his abdomen. White had sworn to Heaven and Hell that something like that would never happen again. Orange sighed now, thinking of that oath, while his fingers absently traced the streak of smooth scar tissue just beneath his hair line, recalling the feeling of cold steel pressed there by his own lover’s hand.
“You alright, Kid?” White inquired gently, noticing both Orange’s silence and facial expression. “I know you said that you were okay with all this beforehand but if you’ve changed your mind then you don’t have to be a part of this if you really don’t want to.”
“Yeah, we wouldn’t want you fucking anything up,” Blonde quipped.
“Shut up, asshole,” White snapped at Blonde, who only laughed in response.
Orange sighed. “I don’t know, it’s just that we were all so lucky to get out of that warehouse alive,” he explained. “Diving right back into a life of crime seems like such a bad idea.”
“It’s just like riding a bike,” Brown said. “You get back up and you do it again. But trust me, I know how you feel, buddy boy.” He tapped the center of his massive forehead where, if you squinted carefully, the traces of a nasty circular scar could be found. “We’ve just got to be more careful.” He prodded Orange’s shoulder. “And you won’t be ratting us out so that should make things a hell of a lot easier.”
White made a growling noise in the pit of his throat and shot Brown a reprimanding look but the latter was too chipper and drunk to notice the former’s displeasure at his comment. Brown was notoriously oblivious when sober, triply so when not.
“Are you in or out?” Blonde pressed, eyeing Orange will the full force of that arctic blue gaze of his. “No sitting on the fucking fence, it’s a yes or no answer.”
Orange ended up doing an imitation of a goldfish, his mouth opening and closing as he struggled to come up with a reply.
“It’s your choice, Kid,” White said. “I’m not going to twist your arm one way or the other.”
“You might not but I will,” Brown remarked to White. To Orange, he said, “Come on, pal, join the Dark side - we’ve got cookies. Mmm, cookies. I know you like cookies, don’t lie. I’ve seen you inhale a whole pack of Oreos in an hour and a half.”
Orange rolled his eyes, trying not to laugh. “Brown…”
“Come on, man,” he of the domed forehead whined, “throw in with us. Peer pressure, peer pressure. All the cool kids are into theft these days.” His voice dropped to conspiratorial tones. “Besides, you can’t leave me alone with these two,” he jabbed a thumb in the direction of White and Blonde.
“What’s it going to be?” Blonde asked again, growing irritated.
Brown whistled the Jeopardy ditty, ignoring the others’ wrathful glances.
Orange folded his arms and leaned back, regarding them all with an unreadable expression.
White furrowed his brow. “Kid?”
The young man exhaled heavily and ran his fingers through his hair before responding, “I’ve come this far already. It would be faithless to back out now.”
Brown’s smile broadened. “You mean that?”
“I’m in, no backing out.”
“No half-assed shit either,” Blonde said.
Orange nodded and dared to meet that deadly cold glare head-on, challenging it with his own resolve as best he could. “When I say I’m in, it means I’m in and I’m not backing out. This is my life now and I’ve got to take the ups with the downs. I don’t know which one this is yet but I’m committed either way. You’re not getting rid of me that easily, dickhead.”
All eyes went from Orange to Blonde, waiting for a reply. After a long tense moment Blonde’s face twitched into his usual smirk and he chuckled.
“Well alright then, you pain in the ass little bastard,” Blonde said, tapping himself out a cigarette. “If you say so.”
Brown gave a tipsy whoop and flung his arms around excitedly. “Whoo-hoo! It’ll be just like the old days, only without all the near-fatal injuries and close encounters with death.” He grinned like the Mad Hatter and lunged across the table to seize Orange by the shoulders. “And remember, buddy boy, you already gave your word that you wouldn’t back out.”
“And I’m sure he’s regretting it right now,” Elle muttered under her breath.
“Hey, no one said a damn thing to you and you’re not involved in our score so back the hell out, Patchy.”
Somewhere, that proverbial record skipped.
Elle sat up, ramrod straight, sobriety fast returning to her. “Patchy?” The snarl in her voice conjured up images of sleeping bears being stupidly poked with sticks and promptly devouring the fools who woke them. “Patchy?”
“Well, it was nice knowing you, pal,” Orange uttered with half-joking sympathy.
Brown hadn’t even realized what he had said until the former DiVA rose as though she were going tear his arms off and beat him to death with them. Differentiating interior and exterior monologues was a complicated enough task for him without the addition of alcohol to the picture. He began laughing nervously, eyes going wide.
“I…er…what I meant was…um...OH MY SWEET JEBUS, THERE’S A BABY IN THE OVEN!”
At which point Brown attempted to flee the scene by bolting from his position at the end of the booth. He flung himself outward with the intention of making a dash for the staircase but instead had a tremendous collision with a chair.
“Doesn’t that Goddamned thing ever move?” he exclaimed.
Orange laughed. “I think it does move. It moves to wherever you’re about to step.”
“Babies in ovens,” White remarked with a quizzical expression, shaking his head and watching as Brown struggled to free himself from the chair - which had somehow managed to entangle his limbs and pin him down. “Nothing he says ever makes sense.”
“I have a theory that he may be speaking in tongues,” O-Ren said, her hand on Elle’s elbow in some effort to soothe the other woman’s temper.
White nodded. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”
Blonde was snickering into his nearly empty glass, his breath kicking up vapors off the ice. “You dumb shit - Mr. Shit - living up to your name again, as usual.”
“Fucker,” Brown spat, “I told Joe that name would come back to bite me in the ass.”
With a sigh and a roll of his eyes, Orange got up from the booth and helped Brown escape the treacherous chair and regain footing. “Oh come on, guys, will you quite picking on Brown already?”
Brown broke out into a smile that extended from ear to ear and then wrapped double around his neck. “It’s official, you are now my new favorite person, you Tangerine Dream. If you were a girl or if I was gay I would totally lick your tonsils right now, that’s how much I adore you.” He then attached himself to Orange in what can only be described as a glomp.
Orange raised an eyebrow and chuckled. “Um, thank you, I think.”
“Looks like you’ve got some competition there, old man,” Blonde teased White.
White just laughed.
“Yeah, you laugh now but we’ll see your reaction when Orange and I elope together to Las Vegas,” Brown retorted. “But in a purely non-sexual way, of course.”
White nodded, still laughing. “Of course.”
“Because as much as I adore my little hero, I only give it up for the ladies,” he said, winking at O-Ren.
She sighed and put a hand to her forehead, murmuring, “What have I gotten myself into?”
“You can give it up all you want but I get the feeling the ladies will just send it back,” Blonde commented.
“Still, you should all take a page out of Orange’s book,” Brown continued. “You folks ought to be nicer to me, we all need to band together. C’mon my brothers, get some land!” He released Orange as suddenly as he had attached himself, lamprey-like, to the other young man and did a little jig on his way to the juke box. James Brown demanded to be played. “Two Browns? Now there’s an unstoppable groove!”
“Right, I believe that would be our cue to call it a night,” O-Ren stated, rising and giving Elle a tug. “Mr. White, I’ll be out taking care of some business for the first half of the day but I should return before evening. Mr. Orange will have to fend for himself until then. Also, I will be moving some personal belongings into my room upstairs if that’s not a problem.”
White shook his head. “Not a problem at all. Are you moving in?”
“Yes and no. I’ll be using this location as one of my bases of operation.” There was an edge to her voice that didn’t allow further questioning on the matter.
“What about you, Girly?” Blonde asked Elle. “Are you moving in upstairs, too?”
Elle just sneered and flipped him the bird.
Blonde smiled like the devil. “Well that’s just fantastic, I can’t wait to see your shining face every damned day.”
“Fuck you,” Elle hissed while O-Ren pulled her to the stairs.
“Goodnight,” Mr. Orange said, waving.
O-Ren Ishii gave him a nod. Elle Driver rolled her eyes. Both ladies vanished into their rooms.
“I like them,” Mr. Brown said with a goofy grin, “they’re silly.”
Orange laughed again quietly. Now there was a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
To be continued...
The story thus far:
Part One: Welcome to the Syndicate
Part Two: Hanging with the Syndicate
Part Three: Boozing with the Syndicate
Part Four: Gambling with the Syndicate
Part Five: Cards and Crazy Bitches
Part Six: Hangovers, Dancing, and a Lack of Pants
Part Seven: The Great Breakfast Quest
Part Eight: Enter the Pink Nightmare
Part Nine: Say Goodnight, Mary Sue
Part Ten: The Calm After the Storm.
Oh, and by the way, in the event that anyone here has better Japanese language conjugation skills: please, feel free to correct me.
And now, on with the show.
Part Eleven
A few hours and several drinks later one could swear the rag-tag group of former thieves, killers, and one undercover cop were actually friends, no matter how many times they might have denied it. They sat around one of the back booths, gleeful and inebriated as ever.
“Ren-chan?” Elle inquired playfully, remembering Go-Go’s old nickname for the now exiled Yakuza queen. “Ren-chan, are you drunk?” She starting picking long, elegant jeweled pins out of O-Ren’s hair, snickering. “Your face is all red.”
“Urusai!” O-Ren replied, half-heartedly jerking her head away and pushing Elle. “Monku yuun ja nai yo. Omae wo korosu.”
The others were taken aback at the sudden change in O-Ren’s voice. It suddenly became more commanding, sharper, and a bit on the crude side.
White chuckled. “Now there’s a tone I don’t think I’ve ever heard come out of her mouth.”
Orange raised an eyebrow and smiled. “I don’t know what she said but it’s got me a little concerned.”
Brown, meanwhile, just became slightly more turned-on than he already was. He had a thing for foreign tongues…in more than one way.
Elle laughed, undeterred and continuing to disassemble O-Ren’s elaborate hairstyle. “Sure you will, Ren-chan.”
“What’d she say?” Blonde asked.
“I think it was something in Japanese,” Brown responded, squirming around in his seat like a worm, watching as the Japanese woman’s hairdo was slowly deconstructed. The undercurrent eroticism was almost too much for him to bear.
White rolled his eyes. “Yeah, no shit, Sherlock.”
O-Ren swatted Elle’s hand away and rubbed her forehead, feeling a tad on the woozy side. “Kuso.” The alcohol and hearing Elle call her by such a forgotten nickname lapsed her right back into her mother tongue. “Kono baka…hottoke…shinjimae…” Her voice trailed off as she continued to mutter things to herself, a few dark tendrils of hair uncurling as she tilted her head downward.
Elle just laughed harder and threw an arm around the smaller woman. “Now that brings back memories. I haven’t heard you speak like that in a long time.”
“Wait, you speak Japanese?” Orange remarked.
“Of course I do,” she replied, imperiously, as if it were common knowledge. “You can’t expect me to have known this one for so long without having picked up at least the insults of the language.” She gave O-Ren’s shoulders a jerk of a hug on the words “this one.”
“So what’d she say, Girly? Translate for us,” Blonde challenged, doing his best not to slur his speech from the alcohol.
Elle raised a hand and declared, “Shut up, don’t give me that crap. I’ll kill you. Shit, you idiot, quit bugging me. Go to hell.”
“Yeesh, no need to get all worked up about it,” Brown said. “We just wanted to know what she said.”
O-Ren looked up, brushing hair back from her face, cheeks still quite flushed. “That is what I said.”
Elle grinned smugly. “Told you so.”
“Why did you have to go and undo my hair?” O-Ren asked with exasperation.
“Because you look so much prettier with it down,” the former DiVA answered, playing like a girl with a new doll. Her own cheeks were blushed from the night’s drinking, giving the otherwise cold woman an uncharacteristically warm appearance. Amazing what a carafe or two of Shiro no Jumon could do.
“I hate to say I agree with the cyclops, but she’s right,” White begrudgingly conceded. “You should let your hair down more often.”
“Who are you calling a Cyclops, old man?” Elle retorted under her breath.
“That’s completely absurd, Mr. White,” O-Ren countered, “I would do no such thing.” But even as kimono-clad woman spoke, she sat complacently as her old teammate fanned her hair out over her shoulders.
“You have the prettiest hair,” Elle went on to say in a strange, disjointed, sing-song voice. “I don’t care what Beatrix used to say.”
O-Ren frowned. “What did she used to say?”
“I can see the bottom of my glass, barkeep,” Blonde announced, lifting it up for all to see.
“I think it’s time for another round,” White commented. He touched Orange’s shoulder. “Baby, could you get us some more drinks?”
Orange brought another round for the table and then went one step further. He swayed over to the juke and made sure they had music for at least another hour. As The Beatles belted out “Eleanor Rigby” and the young man sang along, everyone regarded him with surprise - except perhaps White, who knew the cop turned criminal’s hidden abilities all too well. A clear and graceful tenor voice flew from Orange’s lips and while it was a tad shaky from disuse, he slipped out of key only a few times.
Even Blonde gave an impressed whistle. “Well I’ll be damned, looks like we got ourselves a choirboy.”
The pride of St. Michael’s, Orange thought to himself and smiled on the inside. It was nice to know those six years hadn’t been a complete waste.
When the song ended silence claimed the room for a mere moment, but somehow those few seconds felt longer. The group looked in on itself, a rare wave of introspection washing over all present. Not quite strangers anymore, no, not now. They were companions of some kind, in this together; Mary Sue’s attack had, if nothing else, solidified that. It was a strange feeling.
And as the opening riff of Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” played, that strange feeling of solidarity among thieves and killers drove White to say what he did.
“So, let’s be honest with ourselves here,” the aging crook said, “none of us have ever been any good at obeying the law. Except for maybe you, Kid.”
Orange shrugged and sighed, “I’ve come a long way since my days on the beat.”
White nodded. “So I was thinking, fellas…and ladies…that maybe we ought to utilize our skills before they are no longer available to us. I mean, yeah, we’ve been given second chances at life but somehow I just can’t see myself living with just this bar keeping me going.” He looked over at Orange again and lowered his voice. “I’m sorry, Baby, but it’s true.”
“No, I understand,” the younger man resigned himself to say with a heavier sigh than before.
“So what exactly are you saying?” Blonde asked. “You sound like you want to pull another heist or something.”
White smiled, that old dog just found a bone smile of his.
After half a second’s consideration, Blonde smirked back. “Well fuck me running, you are thinking of a new score, aren’t you?”
“You sly bastard,” Brown chimed in. “So what’s it going to be?”
***
White was no Joe Cabot but he knew what he was doing when it came to laying out the how and why of a job, that was for damned sure. Over twenty years of experience in the criminal world served him well. Even Blonde had to admit the score sounded solid. Elle and O-Ren declined from participation, though. “We are assassins, not thieves,” was the reason the femme fatales had stated, and no one held it against them.
“We’re going to need new hardware, though,” White said. “The guns we’ve got now just aren’t going to be enough.”
“That’s easy enough to take care of,” Blonde remarked with a dismissive wave of his hand. “One phone call and it’s done, you leave that to me.”
“Is that so?” White’s interest was peaked at Blonde’s unusual anxiousness to play ball with the rest of the team.
“Yeah, my big brother deals.”
“Who? Vince? I didn’t know he was an arms dealer.” White frowned. “I thought he was working for Marcellus Wallace as an enforcer or some shit like that.”
Blonde’s expression, subtle though it may have been, wavered between annoyance and confusion at the older man’s sudden knowledge of his family. It was the one subject that Blonde tended to get defensive about. “And just how in the hell do you know that?”
White shrugged. “Hey, that’s just what my nephew Jimmie said.”
It was Blonde’s turn to frown. “Yeah, well your nephew Jimmie must not have talked to Vince for a while because he quit that Marcellus Wallace lackey shit and went into business with his old buddy, Jules. They took over Ordell Robbie’s turf after he bit the big one.”
“Ordell Robbie.” The name seemed to leave a bad taste in White’s mouth as he repeated it. “I remember that son of a bitch, he was a fucking punk but he had a pretty sweet operation for a while there.”
Mr. Blonde quirked his shoulder in a half-shrug, saying, “It’s not exactly what it was back in the day but it’s still a Goddamned good ring.” There was a new twist to Blonde’s voice; was it pride? “Vince and Jules have the whole thing under their thumbs. They can get us damn near anything we need from shotguns to grenade launchers.” He paused and smirked. “Surface to air missiles might be a bit harder to come by.”
“I take it that means you get one hell of a discount,” Mr. Brown commented.
“Damn straight,” Blonde replied. “Just give me a list of what you want and I’ll put the call in. It’ll be taken care of in no time, Vince is good like that.”
Brown was taken aback, entirely unused to seeing Blonde so…agreeable. It was unnerving. “Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so eager to participate in anything we’ve done as a group, except maybe getting drunk.”
Blonde waved it away. “Whatever, it gives me an excuse to call my brother, and I don’t talk to him nearly as much as I should.” He tossed in a devious grin for good measure. “That, and I just like the thought of seeing some action again…and guns, I like guns, too.”
Mr. Orange ignored the shiver that ran down his spine. He wasn’t sure how he felt about the whole thing, as far as he was concerned another heist was nothing more than an invitation for another set of problems and possible injuries.
There had been some very heated arguments when Mr. White first mentioned to him that a strictly law-abiding life might not work out. When they ran away together after the warehouse incident, the two men had consented to make a clean break with their pastas: no more thievery for White and no more civic duty for Orange. There had been more than enough danger and excitement involved with going on the lamb - an unrepentant thief and killer with his tragically, beautifully corrupted former cop companion fleeing justice in the name of love. Orange could see how that appealed to White, hell, it appealed to him. It was definitely thrilling, if not a bit romantic or even erotic. Those first few months were loaded with passionate nights spent in safe houses, their limbs entwined as they moaned and gasped their affections into the dawn.
And then their names faded from the newspapers, gracing the back page instead of the front in the event that they made the news at all. A strange form of domesticity settled in as they began the process of finding a location for the Syndicate and making arrangements for it to be both business and residence. Yes, the names on the documents were false but there was so much red tape that no one noticed or cared even if there was something amiss with the paperwork. Running from the long arm of the law became routine, ordinary.
That was right around the time that Orange noticed White started to get edgy. He started calling up old friends, contacts in the industry to “poke around, see what’s what.” Orange didn’t like the sound of it one bit. And then one day White came out and told him. Orange already knew it, he’d suspected White’s plans before the older man even walked in the door. He sensed it just as clearly as any wife could tell her husband was cheating on her. In a way, Orange felt like White had cheated on him, on their new lifestyle.
However, Orange was also painfully aware how difficult it was for White to adjust to normal life since he’d been stealing and far worse since he was only fifteen years old. The transition had been rough from the get-go. But Orange stuck it out, after all, he had sworn to love White no matter what the circumstances. They had been through too much together for either one to walk out now, that just wasn’t an option. So Orange made his choice and grit his teeth, hoping White’s talk of a new score would remain that - just talk.
The memory of their last criminal endeavor was permanently etched into Orange’s mind - along with his belly and right temple. He would stand in the mirror sometimes, after a shower or while getting dressed, just staring at the scar on his abdomen. White had sworn to Heaven and Hell that something like that would never happen again. Orange sighed now, thinking of that oath, while his fingers absently traced the streak of smooth scar tissue just beneath his hair line, recalling the feeling of cold steel pressed there by his own lover’s hand.
“You alright, Kid?” White inquired gently, noticing both Orange’s silence and facial expression. “I know you said that you were okay with all this beforehand but if you’ve changed your mind then you don’t have to be a part of this if you really don’t want to.”
“Yeah, we wouldn’t want you fucking anything up,” Blonde quipped.
“Shut up, asshole,” White snapped at Blonde, who only laughed in response.
Orange sighed. “I don’t know, it’s just that we were all so lucky to get out of that warehouse alive,” he explained. “Diving right back into a life of crime seems like such a bad idea.”
“It’s just like riding a bike,” Brown said. “You get back up and you do it again. But trust me, I know how you feel, buddy boy.” He tapped the center of his massive forehead where, if you squinted carefully, the traces of a nasty circular scar could be found. “We’ve just got to be more careful.” He prodded Orange’s shoulder. “And you won’t be ratting us out so that should make things a hell of a lot easier.”
White made a growling noise in the pit of his throat and shot Brown a reprimanding look but the latter was too chipper and drunk to notice the former’s displeasure at his comment. Brown was notoriously oblivious when sober, triply so when not.
“Are you in or out?” Blonde pressed, eyeing Orange will the full force of that arctic blue gaze of his. “No sitting on the fucking fence, it’s a yes or no answer.”
Orange ended up doing an imitation of a goldfish, his mouth opening and closing as he struggled to come up with a reply.
“It’s your choice, Kid,” White said. “I’m not going to twist your arm one way or the other.”
“You might not but I will,” Brown remarked to White. To Orange, he said, “Come on, pal, join the Dark side - we’ve got cookies. Mmm, cookies. I know you like cookies, don’t lie. I’ve seen you inhale a whole pack of Oreos in an hour and a half.”
Orange rolled his eyes, trying not to laugh. “Brown…”
“Come on, man,” he of the domed forehead whined, “throw in with us. Peer pressure, peer pressure. All the cool kids are into theft these days.” His voice dropped to conspiratorial tones. “Besides, you can’t leave me alone with these two,” he jabbed a thumb in the direction of White and Blonde.
“What’s it going to be?” Blonde asked again, growing irritated.
Brown whistled the Jeopardy ditty, ignoring the others’ wrathful glances.
Orange folded his arms and leaned back, regarding them all with an unreadable expression.
White furrowed his brow. “Kid?”
The young man exhaled heavily and ran his fingers through his hair before responding, “I’ve come this far already. It would be faithless to back out now.”
Brown’s smile broadened. “You mean that?”
“I’m in, no backing out.”
“No half-assed shit either,” Blonde said.
Orange nodded and dared to meet that deadly cold glare head-on, challenging it with his own resolve as best he could. “When I say I’m in, it means I’m in and I’m not backing out. This is my life now and I’ve got to take the ups with the downs. I don’t know which one this is yet but I’m committed either way. You’re not getting rid of me that easily, dickhead.”
All eyes went from Orange to Blonde, waiting for a reply. After a long tense moment Blonde’s face twitched into his usual smirk and he chuckled.
“Well alright then, you pain in the ass little bastard,” Blonde said, tapping himself out a cigarette. “If you say so.”
Brown gave a tipsy whoop and flung his arms around excitedly. “Whoo-hoo! It’ll be just like the old days, only without all the near-fatal injuries and close encounters with death.” He grinned like the Mad Hatter and lunged across the table to seize Orange by the shoulders. “And remember, buddy boy, you already gave your word that you wouldn’t back out.”
“And I’m sure he’s regretting it right now,” Elle muttered under her breath.
“Hey, no one said a damn thing to you and you’re not involved in our score so back the hell out, Patchy.”
Somewhere, that proverbial record skipped.
Elle sat up, ramrod straight, sobriety fast returning to her. “Patchy?” The snarl in her voice conjured up images of sleeping bears being stupidly poked with sticks and promptly devouring the fools who woke them. “Patchy?”
“Well, it was nice knowing you, pal,” Orange uttered with half-joking sympathy.
Brown hadn’t even realized what he had said until the former DiVA rose as though she were going tear his arms off and beat him to death with them. Differentiating interior and exterior monologues was a complicated enough task for him without the addition of alcohol to the picture. He began laughing nervously, eyes going wide.
“I…er…what I meant was…um...OH MY SWEET JEBUS, THERE’S A BABY IN THE OVEN!”
At which point Brown attempted to flee the scene by bolting from his position at the end of the booth. He flung himself outward with the intention of making a dash for the staircase but instead had a tremendous collision with a chair.
“Doesn’t that Goddamned thing ever move?” he exclaimed.
Orange laughed. “I think it does move. It moves to wherever you’re about to step.”
“Babies in ovens,” White remarked with a quizzical expression, shaking his head and watching as Brown struggled to free himself from the chair - which had somehow managed to entangle his limbs and pin him down. “Nothing he says ever makes sense.”
“I have a theory that he may be speaking in tongues,” O-Ren said, her hand on Elle’s elbow in some effort to soothe the other woman’s temper.
White nodded. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”
Blonde was snickering into his nearly empty glass, his breath kicking up vapors off the ice. “You dumb shit - Mr. Shit - living up to your name again, as usual.”
“Fucker,” Brown spat, “I told Joe that name would come back to bite me in the ass.”
With a sigh and a roll of his eyes, Orange got up from the booth and helped Brown escape the treacherous chair and regain footing. “Oh come on, guys, will you quite picking on Brown already?”
Brown broke out into a smile that extended from ear to ear and then wrapped double around his neck. “It’s official, you are now my new favorite person, you Tangerine Dream. If you were a girl or if I was gay I would totally lick your tonsils right now, that’s how much I adore you.” He then attached himself to Orange in what can only be described as a glomp.
Orange raised an eyebrow and chuckled. “Um, thank you, I think.”
“Looks like you’ve got some competition there, old man,” Blonde teased White.
White just laughed.
“Yeah, you laugh now but we’ll see your reaction when Orange and I elope together to Las Vegas,” Brown retorted. “But in a purely non-sexual way, of course.”
White nodded, still laughing. “Of course.”
“Because as much as I adore my little hero, I only give it up for the ladies,” he said, winking at O-Ren.
She sighed and put a hand to her forehead, murmuring, “What have I gotten myself into?”
“You can give it up all you want but I get the feeling the ladies will just send it back,” Blonde commented.
“Still, you should all take a page out of Orange’s book,” Brown continued. “You folks ought to be nicer to me, we all need to band together. C’mon my brothers, get some land!” He released Orange as suddenly as he had attached himself, lamprey-like, to the other young man and did a little jig on his way to the juke box. James Brown demanded to be played. “Two Browns? Now there’s an unstoppable groove!”
“Right, I believe that would be our cue to call it a night,” O-Ren stated, rising and giving Elle a tug. “Mr. White, I’ll be out taking care of some business for the first half of the day but I should return before evening. Mr. Orange will have to fend for himself until then. Also, I will be moving some personal belongings into my room upstairs if that’s not a problem.”
White shook his head. “Not a problem at all. Are you moving in?”
“Yes and no. I’ll be using this location as one of my bases of operation.” There was an edge to her voice that didn’t allow further questioning on the matter.
“What about you, Girly?” Blonde asked Elle. “Are you moving in upstairs, too?”
Elle just sneered and flipped him the bird.
Blonde smiled like the devil. “Well that’s just fantastic, I can’t wait to see your shining face every damned day.”
“Fuck you,” Elle hissed while O-Ren pulled her to the stairs.
“Goodnight,” Mr. Orange said, waving.
O-Ren Ishii gave him a nod. Elle Driver rolled her eyes. Both ladies vanished into their rooms.
“I like them,” Mr. Brown said with a goofy grin, “they’re silly.”
Orange laughed again quietly. Now there was a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
To be continued...
The story thus far:
Part One: Welcome to the Syndicate
Part Two: Hanging with the Syndicate
Part Three: Boozing with the Syndicate
Part Four: Gambling with the Syndicate
Part Five: Cards and Crazy Bitches
Part Six: Hangovers, Dancing, and a Lack of Pants
Part Seven: The Great Breakfast Quest
Part Eight: Enter the Pink Nightmare
Part Nine: Say Goodnight, Mary Sue
Part Ten: The Calm After the Storm.