They do it with mirrors
Title: Call of Crockthulu (1/1)
Fandom: Miami Vice
Rating: Gen.
Setting & Series Info: Set late in the third season, methinks. When things are starting to go badly, but have not yet started going Badly.
With all apologies to HP Lovecraft, Joss Whedon and Bette Davis, and many thanks to hello_cleveland, Beck, and the Glen Miller Orchestra.
--------------
The marquee lights of Club Rhyleh danced merrily above the line of people waiting to get in, and across the street, Sonny Crockett was holed up inside a telephone booth pretending to make a call, but watching the marquee lights reflected in raindrops rolling down the glass.
The rain had been typical for Miami: a brief, violent downpour to clear the air and fill the potholes. A few minutes after it started it was gone, replaced by a breeze carrying the tang of ozone. Next to the phone booth, Tubbs sat in the shelter of his Caddy with the top pulled up.
Crockett had his doubts about this stakeout. The club was definitely a front for something--they all were, these trendy South Beach hotspots, sprouting like mushrooms from the rich soil of Miami's criminal underbelly. A couple gouts of neon in the night, a few lives ruined, a couple others ended in gunfire and blood, then they crumbled and rotted in the darkness, and an indecently short time later a new club grew on top of their bones. Crockett gave this place another two or three months, tops, then it too would be just another empty shell, broken glass and used condoms baking in the Florida heat. The dirty peach stucco would be painted over, the marquee would just need a couple tweaks to spell out the next big thing. Opening the folding door of the booth, Sonny scraped gum from the bottom of one deck shoe and walked back to the Caddy.
He slid into the passenger seat next to Rico and watched, with a focus borne of practice, the bizarrely costumed crowd milling around the entrance.
Drugs, girls, guns. This damn town always boiled down to the same toxic soup, and the only thing that changed were the cooks. Sonny pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. They should just call this stakeout and be done with it. The place was nothing special, nothing worth the overtime, at least.
Rico looked lazily over at his partner. "What's up with you, man? You look like you haven't slept in weeks."
Crockett pulled out a pack of cigarettes and stuck one in his mouth. "Aw, same old same old. Too many cases, too few days off..."
"Sonny."
"Yeah I know. Take some time off, go down to the Keys for some fishing, maybe a couple of days with Billy and Elvis. Wouldn't that be a hoot."
"Crockett, you've been saying that for the last eight months. Man, relax. A little time off won't kill you." Rico spoke playfully, but his partner could hear serious just below the surface.
"Sonny." Crockett stopped in the middle of lighting his cigarette.
Lit from below by the lighter's wavering flame, Crockett's face took on an unearthly glow, the shadows around his eyes even deeper than usual. "Rico, I'm fine." He sighed and sank lower in the seat. "I just think this Ryleh thing is a bum tip, not worth us sitting out here watching another damn freakshow. I'm sick of chasing shadows, knowing, whatever we catch these guys doing, whatever we pin on them, some slick defense attorney's going to come along and find some way to get it all thrown out." Crockett banged a fist the dashboard. "What are we doing here, Tubbs? What's the point? What does it matter if it's this club, or the one that was here before, or the one down the block..."
Rico's voice was quiet but firm. "You don't unwind soon, man, you gonna get somebody killed."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Crockett glared angrily.
Rico fell silent, and Sonny's temper cooled just as quickly as it had boiled. "Ah hell, forget it. Look, you're right. I need a vacation. I need some rest. Lately I been having these strange dreams, and...I wake up just as tired as if I hadn't bothered. Soon as we catch these yahoos and whatever weird crap they're pushing out of this funhouse I'm gonna hit the sack for at least a week."
"Maybe you should try hitting it alone sometime, man. Might just do the trick with your 'sleeping problem'." Tubbs laughed, and Crockett shot him a sarcastic smirk, leaning over to train a pair of binoculars on the club's entrance.
A thin redhead in an oversized teal knit sweater and formfitting skirt had won approval, and teetered towards the front doors on white-and-black-polka dot stilettos, but her companion, a pale pockmarked youth in stovepipe black denim, was summarily denied. The redhead entered the club without a backwards glance at the boy, and he stood dejected on the sidewalk, jeans too tight to even stuff his hands in the pockets. A couple with matching mohawks, whose argument Crockett had watched earlier ended in petulant shoves had apparently made up, and were now hovering at the edge of the crowd, eagerly shoving their tongues down each other's throats, the club forgotten.
This pack of hopeful denizens all shimmered with anticipation, fawning and cooing at two tall, bald bouncers clad in identical black three-piece suits. Both bouncers were rail-thin, with impossibly long fingers on hands nearly gray under the neon, and they wrung their hands more often than was natural, grinning maniacally at the assembled partygoers. Smoke slid from between Crockett's lips and formed eldritch shapes in the darkness, but he paid no notice, focused as he was, so entirely, on the scene outside the front door.
At some unseen signal, the gentlemen guarding the front entrance turned towards each other and retreated inside the club, drawing the doors shut and stranding the disappointed crowd outside. However this being South Beach, the crowd dispersed in a leisurely manner, and everyone danced or staggered off down the street in search of the next party, the next chance to be seen, the next loud, brightly colored distraction. As Crockett craned around in the seat to watch them go, the night breeze intensified, carrying show fliers and other assorted detritus off after them.
He and Tubbs looked at each other, and wordlessly got out of the car.
What light spilled out from behind the two deeply tinted windows flanking Club Ryleh's front doors gradually dimmed, and as the two detectives walked towards it, one of the bulbs in the marquee blew out with a sharp pop and a shower of sparks. Tubbs flinched.
The marquee went dark entirely.
"Wait a minute," Crockett said. "it's not even midnight yet. What the hell is going on here?"
"I'll go round the back," Rico whispered.
Crockett walked up the front doors and tried one of the handles. The door swung open silently, and Crockett turned to call Rico back, but his partner had already been swallowed by the shadows; with one last wide-eyed look along the deserted street, Sonny stepped inside.
And immediately knew something was wrong.
Inside was much larger than Crockett would have guessed: a long narrow room stretched off into the distance, with the only illumination coming from sickly yellow orbs mounted on nearly invisible posts on the wall at intervals. The resulting effect made the orbs seem to hover in the semi-darkness. The room was choked with a sweet, oily smoke, and Crockett could barely make out a stage at the room's far end, and an ornate mahogany bar running along one wall. Other than that the club was completely empty. Softly, as if at a distance, he could make out tinny strains of music, an old-fashioned tune that seemed vaguely familiar. Onstage, a group of people bumped and shuffled in time to the song, but their movements could not be considered dancing, per se. Next to them, something shimmered indistinctly through the smoke.
Crockett unbuttoned his jacket and slid a hand towards his gun when he noticed for the first time, directly in front of him, the two bouncers. They had a large, old-fashioned book open in front of them on a lectern, and both were staring at him, grinning, heads tilted to one side inquisitively. Neither spoke. Crockett let his jacket fall back into place.
"Evening," Crockett began. "Sonny Burnett. I was told you fellas know all about a good time in Miami." The two bouncers looked down at the book, then at each other. They gestured silently behind them towards the bar.
"Yeah, thanks guys," Crockett responded, then as he moved away, "...thanks for nothing." He padded cautiously over to the bar, keeping his eye on the stage. Putting his hands palm-down on the bartop, he was startled to feel intense heat; the wood was unnaturally warm under all the coats of dark lacquer. "There is something very wrong here," he muttered to himself, and was startled to hear a voice at his elbow. "And yet, should you look closer, you will find that there are many more things right." A brassy blonde sat alone at the bar in an old-fashioned cocktail dress, nursing what looked--and smelled--like Kentucky's finest. She raised a finely shaped eyebrow at him.
"Detective James 'Sonny' Crockett. What. A. Pleasure." He stared. Her voice was just as familiar as the song that had been playing when he'd first walked in. And yet he could no more tell you why than he could have identified the song, or spelled out just what it was about this whole setup that made him feel like running for the door.
She gestured to the bartender for a refill, "--and one for my new friend here." She smiled then, oversized teeth under huge blue eyes, and Crockett could have sworn he recognized her from some long-forgotten late-night movie.
As the bartender turned back from the bar with Sonny's bourbon, Crockett caught a flash of something behind the bar. He widened his eyes, then rubbed them, hard, his other hand unconsciously drifting over his shoulder holster. Just for a second, behind the bar, Sonny thought he'd seen something. Something that couldn't possibly have existed.
The bartender set his drink down on the mahogany with a solid, reassuring thump, and when Sonny reached for it, it felt real and right, and not at all as if the man who'd made it had just appeared to sport a thick, ponderous dinosaur tail peeking out from under his formal jacket, dragging along the floor behind him. Sonny swirled the bourbon in its glass and looked over at the blonde in the cocktail dress. She seemed normal enough at least.
He put the glass back on the bar without taking a sip.
"So darling, what's a nice girl--"
"Save it, Sonny. I'm Not Your Type." Picking up the bourbon again, Crockett wondered how it was he always wound up in strange bars with women who spoke in capital letters. He tried again.
"Allright, so you're not my type, and," he looked over at her, "you know who I am and presumably why I'm here. You wanna cut to the chase, toots, and give me the lowdown on this joint? What's this a front for, anyway?"
"Heaven help me, I'm drinking with Mensa." The blonde laughed and tossed her curls back over her shoulder. Up close, she was much older than Crockett had thought at first. Lipstick had seeped into the tiny lines around her mouth, and liver spots dotted the cleavage visible above her slinky, copper-colored gown. "Not that you asked, but you, may call me Margo, detective. And as for why you're here?" She looked distinctly amused. "Well you're the detective, it's time for you to detect!"
The evening, the club and the dinosaur tail--actual existence still up for debate--became too much. Exhaustion weighed on him, sudden and fierce.
"Look lady, I don't care what your name is, just so long as you tell me what the hell's going on here."
"What's going on, Detective Crockett, is a party. A whale of a good time, in fact. You remember how to have fun, don't you Sonny?"
"Look lady, I don't need this. It's been a long night, and I'm just here doing my job, so let's cut the crap. What kind of fun are you freaks pushing here?"
Margo fixed a stern eye on him. "You know, Detective, there are some kinds of fun that even drugs won't buy."
"I wasn't born yesterday, Margo, and neither were you. This place is no more a South Beach hotspot than I am Chief of Police. We can talk here, or I can drag you and your pals downtown, and you can try out your routine in a holding cell."
"You're not much of a bargain, you know. You're conceited and thoughtless and messy."
"Save the smalltalk for one of your creepy pals at the door, lady. I say you're running some pretty crazy stuff out of here, and I wanna know what it is. Right now."
Margo tossed back her bourbon in a single gulp. "It's not me you should be worried about, dear." Crockett stared. Margo leveled her watery blue eyes at her reflection in the mirror behind the bar and toyed with the lead crystal tumbler. "Right about now, Detective, you should be asking yourself where that darling partner of yours has gotten to."
Crockett felt as if the whole night had been a dream, and he'd just been awakened with a bucket of cold water.
He reached under his jacket, and Margo tossed back her head, laughing in an equine manner. "Oh my dear, Sonny," she said, signalling the bartender to refill her glass. "Wherever would I hide a weapon," she gestured, "in this outfit?"
He jumped off his barstool and stalked through the club towards the stage, gun drawn. "Rico!" He felt as if the walls were closing in, the smoke swallowing his cry. "Tubbs!" Closer to the stage, Crockett was able to make out the presence of the mohawk couple, along with a myriad of others Crockett had seen enter the club during his hours outside in the dark. Up close he could see eyes unfocused, jaws slack with drool, limbs palsying independent of the song in the background.
Ha, ha, ha, you and me,
Little brown jug, don't I love thee!
Ha, ha, ha, you and me,
Little brown jug, don't I love thee!
Whatever drugs these folks were on, there were too many of them for Crockett to take down alone. He had to find Tubbs. Whatever was going on here, they needed backup, and fast; all Crockett's senses were on high alert, recognition of a danger widespread and all-embracing. "Tubbs!"
Up close, Crockett could make out that the shimmer he'd seen from the door was in fact a girl dressed in sequined pasties and a g-string, gyrating in a heavily gilded cage, madly out of time with the music. Crockett stared, barely noticing the feathered mask she held in front of her face, her eyes glowing oily and strangely feline. His attention instead was on her shoes: white stilettos with black polka dots.
"TUBBS!"
Crockett spun around, holding his gun out like a talisman. Margo and the bartender both had disappeared.
"Aw this just keeps getting better and better," Crockett muttered. He followed the sickly yellow orbs to a hallway that led off to one side of the stage. Both walls were mirrored, floor to ceiling, and as Crockett stalked down the hallway, an infinite number of other Crocketts followed in lockstep, stretching away on either side of him farther than the eye could track.
"Sonny!"
Crockett started at the sound of Rico's voice. To his left he saw his partner, reflected in one of the mirrors, staring around him wildly, seemingly unaware of Sonny. Crockett spun in a circle, but couldn't locate the original. As he watched, horrified, the birdwoman danced gracefully up behind Rico, spun easily on the white stilettos and then stopped cold, focusing on Rico with an icy stare. Crockett screamed a warning, but to no avail a tiny silver knife appeared in one of her hands, and with no warning, she plunged it into Rico's ribs. As Sonny watched the mirror, blood crept slowly and obscenely across his partner's grey suit jacket, and Rico fell to his knees in agony. Sonny screamed again and fired at the woman in the glass.
Then everything exploded, and the last thing Crockett remembered was hitting the floor.
---------
Crockett crouched in the middle of the street, staring off into space, until measured footsteps brought him back, and he looked up into the face of Lieutenant Castillo. "I know what this looks like, Marty, but I swear to you, there was a club...and these drugged out kids, and...Rico..."
Behind him, the building sat cold and dark, completely unharmed, marred only by graffiti and a few broken windows. It looked like no one had been near it for months.
Castillo remained impassive. "What's Detective Tubbs' current location?"
Crockett shot to his feet and glared at the lieutenant. "I don't know, okay. I don't know. I just know what I saw." Crockett shoved his hands in his pockets. The SWAT team swarmed impotently around the two men, unsure why they'd been called, but unwilling to leave before securing the scene.
"There was a girl, and she was dressed like a bird," Crockett continued, "and she stabbed my partner! Now I don't know what happened between then and now, but dammit, he's here, I just know it." Crockett stalked in a tight circle, staring up angrily at the broken windows. "He's gotta be in there somewhere, or they took him somewhere while I was out, and--"
Castillo interrupted. "The SWAT team's been through the building three times. No sign of anyone, dead or alive."
"Dammit, Marty! We're wasting time! We've got to find--"
"Hey!" Tubbs' voice rang out along the length of the street. "Hey, man! What happened to you?"
Tubbs jogged up the street towards Crockett and Castillo, past the knot of latenight onlookers who'd gathered behind the crime-scene tape. Ignoring Castillo, Tubbs ran right up to Crockett, stopping only inches from his face. "Where were you, man?"
Crockett stared like a wild man. There wasn't a spot of blood on his partner.
The silence between them lengthened until Tubbs put a steadying hand on Crockett's shoulder. "What's up with you, man? You look like you haven't slept in weeks."
Fandom: Miami Vice
Rating: Gen.
Setting & Series Info: Set late in the third season, methinks. When things are starting to go badly, but have not yet started going Badly.
With all apologies to HP Lovecraft, Joss Whedon and Bette Davis, and many thanks to hello_cleveland, Beck, and the Glen Miller Orchestra.
--------------
The marquee lights of Club Rhyleh danced merrily above the line of people waiting to get in, and across the street, Sonny Crockett was holed up inside a telephone booth pretending to make a call, but watching the marquee lights reflected in raindrops rolling down the glass.
The rain had been typical for Miami: a brief, violent downpour to clear the air and fill the potholes. A few minutes after it started it was gone, replaced by a breeze carrying the tang of ozone. Next to the phone booth, Tubbs sat in the shelter of his Caddy with the top pulled up.
Crockett had his doubts about this stakeout. The club was definitely a front for something--they all were, these trendy South Beach hotspots, sprouting like mushrooms from the rich soil of Miami's criminal underbelly. A couple gouts of neon in the night, a few lives ruined, a couple others ended in gunfire and blood, then they crumbled and rotted in the darkness, and an indecently short time later a new club grew on top of their bones. Crockett gave this place another two or three months, tops, then it too would be just another empty shell, broken glass and used condoms baking in the Florida heat. The dirty peach stucco would be painted over, the marquee would just need a couple tweaks to spell out the next big thing. Opening the folding door of the booth, Sonny scraped gum from the bottom of one deck shoe and walked back to the Caddy.
He slid into the passenger seat next to Rico and watched, with a focus borne of practice, the bizarrely costumed crowd milling around the entrance.
Drugs, girls, guns. This damn town always boiled down to the same toxic soup, and the only thing that changed were the cooks. Sonny pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. They should just call this stakeout and be done with it. The place was nothing special, nothing worth the overtime, at least.
Rico looked lazily over at his partner. "What's up with you, man? You look like you haven't slept in weeks."
Crockett pulled out a pack of cigarettes and stuck one in his mouth. "Aw, same old same old. Too many cases, too few days off..."
"Sonny."
"Yeah I know. Take some time off, go down to the Keys for some fishing, maybe a couple of days with Billy and Elvis. Wouldn't that be a hoot."
"Crockett, you've been saying that for the last eight months. Man, relax. A little time off won't kill you." Rico spoke playfully, but his partner could hear serious just below the surface.
"Sonny." Crockett stopped in the middle of lighting his cigarette.
Lit from below by the lighter's wavering flame, Crockett's face took on an unearthly glow, the shadows around his eyes even deeper than usual. "Rico, I'm fine." He sighed and sank lower in the seat. "I just think this Ryleh thing is a bum tip, not worth us sitting out here watching another damn freakshow. I'm sick of chasing shadows, knowing, whatever we catch these guys doing, whatever we pin on them, some slick defense attorney's going to come along and find some way to get it all thrown out." Crockett banged a fist the dashboard. "What are we doing here, Tubbs? What's the point? What does it matter if it's this club, or the one that was here before, or the one down the block..."
Rico's voice was quiet but firm. "You don't unwind soon, man, you gonna get somebody killed."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Crockett glared angrily.
Rico fell silent, and Sonny's temper cooled just as quickly as it had boiled. "Ah hell, forget it. Look, you're right. I need a vacation. I need some rest. Lately I been having these strange dreams, and...I wake up just as tired as if I hadn't bothered. Soon as we catch these yahoos and whatever weird crap they're pushing out of this funhouse I'm gonna hit the sack for at least a week."
"Maybe you should try hitting it alone sometime, man. Might just do the trick with your 'sleeping problem'." Tubbs laughed, and Crockett shot him a sarcastic smirk, leaning over to train a pair of binoculars on the club's entrance.
A thin redhead in an oversized teal knit sweater and formfitting skirt had won approval, and teetered towards the front doors on white-and-black-polka dot stilettos, but her companion, a pale pockmarked youth in stovepipe black denim, was summarily denied. The redhead entered the club without a backwards glance at the boy, and he stood dejected on the sidewalk, jeans too tight to even stuff his hands in the pockets. A couple with matching mohawks, whose argument Crockett had watched earlier ended in petulant shoves had apparently made up, and were now hovering at the edge of the crowd, eagerly shoving their tongues down each other's throats, the club forgotten.
This pack of hopeful denizens all shimmered with anticipation, fawning and cooing at two tall, bald bouncers clad in identical black three-piece suits. Both bouncers were rail-thin, with impossibly long fingers on hands nearly gray under the neon, and they wrung their hands more often than was natural, grinning maniacally at the assembled partygoers. Smoke slid from between Crockett's lips and formed eldritch shapes in the darkness, but he paid no notice, focused as he was, so entirely, on the scene outside the front door.
At some unseen signal, the gentlemen guarding the front entrance turned towards each other and retreated inside the club, drawing the doors shut and stranding the disappointed crowd outside. However this being South Beach, the crowd dispersed in a leisurely manner, and everyone danced or staggered off down the street in search of the next party, the next chance to be seen, the next loud, brightly colored distraction. As Crockett craned around in the seat to watch them go, the night breeze intensified, carrying show fliers and other assorted detritus off after them.
He and Tubbs looked at each other, and wordlessly got out of the car.
What light spilled out from behind the two deeply tinted windows flanking Club Ryleh's front doors gradually dimmed, and as the two detectives walked towards it, one of the bulbs in the marquee blew out with a sharp pop and a shower of sparks. Tubbs flinched.
The marquee went dark entirely.
"Wait a minute," Crockett said. "it's not even midnight yet. What the hell is going on here?"
"I'll go round the back," Rico whispered.
Crockett walked up the front doors and tried one of the handles. The door swung open silently, and Crockett turned to call Rico back, but his partner had already been swallowed by the shadows; with one last wide-eyed look along the deserted street, Sonny stepped inside.
And immediately knew something was wrong.
Inside was much larger than Crockett would have guessed: a long narrow room stretched off into the distance, with the only illumination coming from sickly yellow orbs mounted on nearly invisible posts on the wall at intervals. The resulting effect made the orbs seem to hover in the semi-darkness. The room was choked with a sweet, oily smoke, and Crockett could barely make out a stage at the room's far end, and an ornate mahogany bar running along one wall. Other than that the club was completely empty. Softly, as if at a distance, he could make out tinny strains of music, an old-fashioned tune that seemed vaguely familiar. Onstage, a group of people bumped and shuffled in time to the song, but their movements could not be considered dancing, per se. Next to them, something shimmered indistinctly through the smoke.
Crockett unbuttoned his jacket and slid a hand towards his gun when he noticed for the first time, directly in front of him, the two bouncers. They had a large, old-fashioned book open in front of them on a lectern, and both were staring at him, grinning, heads tilted to one side inquisitively. Neither spoke. Crockett let his jacket fall back into place.
"Evening," Crockett began. "Sonny Burnett. I was told you fellas know all about a good time in Miami." The two bouncers looked down at the book, then at each other. They gestured silently behind them towards the bar.
"Yeah, thanks guys," Crockett responded, then as he moved away, "...thanks for nothing." He padded cautiously over to the bar, keeping his eye on the stage. Putting his hands palm-down on the bartop, he was startled to feel intense heat; the wood was unnaturally warm under all the coats of dark lacquer. "There is something very wrong here," he muttered to himself, and was startled to hear a voice at his elbow. "And yet, should you look closer, you will find that there are many more things right." A brassy blonde sat alone at the bar in an old-fashioned cocktail dress, nursing what looked--and smelled--like Kentucky's finest. She raised a finely shaped eyebrow at him.
"Detective James 'Sonny' Crockett. What. A. Pleasure." He stared. Her voice was just as familiar as the song that had been playing when he'd first walked in. And yet he could no more tell you why than he could have identified the song, or spelled out just what it was about this whole setup that made him feel like running for the door.
She gestured to the bartender for a refill, "--and one for my new friend here." She smiled then, oversized teeth under huge blue eyes, and Crockett could have sworn he recognized her from some long-forgotten late-night movie.
As the bartender turned back from the bar with Sonny's bourbon, Crockett caught a flash of something behind the bar. He widened his eyes, then rubbed them, hard, his other hand unconsciously drifting over his shoulder holster. Just for a second, behind the bar, Sonny thought he'd seen something. Something that couldn't possibly have existed.
The bartender set his drink down on the mahogany with a solid, reassuring thump, and when Sonny reached for it, it felt real and right, and not at all as if the man who'd made it had just appeared to sport a thick, ponderous dinosaur tail peeking out from under his formal jacket, dragging along the floor behind him. Sonny swirled the bourbon in its glass and looked over at the blonde in the cocktail dress. She seemed normal enough at least.
He put the glass back on the bar without taking a sip.
"So darling, what's a nice girl--"
"Save it, Sonny. I'm Not Your Type." Picking up the bourbon again, Crockett wondered how it was he always wound up in strange bars with women who spoke in capital letters. He tried again.
"Allright, so you're not my type, and," he looked over at her, "you know who I am and presumably why I'm here. You wanna cut to the chase, toots, and give me the lowdown on this joint? What's this a front for, anyway?"
"Heaven help me, I'm drinking with Mensa." The blonde laughed and tossed her curls back over her shoulder. Up close, she was much older than Crockett had thought at first. Lipstick had seeped into the tiny lines around her mouth, and liver spots dotted the cleavage visible above her slinky, copper-colored gown. "Not that you asked, but you, may call me Margo, detective. And as for why you're here?" She looked distinctly amused. "Well you're the detective, it's time for you to detect!"
The evening, the club and the dinosaur tail--actual existence still up for debate--became too much. Exhaustion weighed on him, sudden and fierce.
"Look lady, I don't care what your name is, just so long as you tell me what the hell's going on here."
"What's going on, Detective Crockett, is a party. A whale of a good time, in fact. You remember how to have fun, don't you Sonny?"
"Look lady, I don't need this. It's been a long night, and I'm just here doing my job, so let's cut the crap. What kind of fun are you freaks pushing here?"
Margo fixed a stern eye on him. "You know, Detective, there are some kinds of fun that even drugs won't buy."
"I wasn't born yesterday, Margo, and neither were you. This place is no more a South Beach hotspot than I am Chief of Police. We can talk here, or I can drag you and your pals downtown, and you can try out your routine in a holding cell."
"You're not much of a bargain, you know. You're conceited and thoughtless and messy."
"Save the smalltalk for one of your creepy pals at the door, lady. I say you're running some pretty crazy stuff out of here, and I wanna know what it is. Right now."
Margo tossed back her bourbon in a single gulp. "It's not me you should be worried about, dear." Crockett stared. Margo leveled her watery blue eyes at her reflection in the mirror behind the bar and toyed with the lead crystal tumbler. "Right about now, Detective, you should be asking yourself where that darling partner of yours has gotten to."
Crockett felt as if the whole night had been a dream, and he'd just been awakened with a bucket of cold water.
He reached under his jacket, and Margo tossed back her head, laughing in an equine manner. "Oh my dear, Sonny," she said, signalling the bartender to refill her glass. "Wherever would I hide a weapon," she gestured, "in this outfit?"
He jumped off his barstool and stalked through the club towards the stage, gun drawn. "Rico!" He felt as if the walls were closing in, the smoke swallowing his cry. "Tubbs!" Closer to the stage, Crockett was able to make out the presence of the mohawk couple, along with a myriad of others Crockett had seen enter the club during his hours outside in the dark. Up close he could see eyes unfocused, jaws slack with drool, limbs palsying independent of the song in the background.
Ha, ha, ha, you and me,
Little brown jug, don't I love thee!
Ha, ha, ha, you and me,
Little brown jug, don't I love thee!
Whatever drugs these folks were on, there were too many of them for Crockett to take down alone. He had to find Tubbs. Whatever was going on here, they needed backup, and fast; all Crockett's senses were on high alert, recognition of a danger widespread and all-embracing. "Tubbs!"
Up close, Crockett could make out that the shimmer he'd seen from the door was in fact a girl dressed in sequined pasties and a g-string, gyrating in a heavily gilded cage, madly out of time with the music. Crockett stared, barely noticing the feathered mask she held in front of her face, her eyes glowing oily and strangely feline. His attention instead was on her shoes: white stilettos with black polka dots.
"TUBBS!"
Crockett spun around, holding his gun out like a talisman. Margo and the bartender both had disappeared.
"Aw this just keeps getting better and better," Crockett muttered. He followed the sickly yellow orbs to a hallway that led off to one side of the stage. Both walls were mirrored, floor to ceiling, and as Crockett stalked down the hallway, an infinite number of other Crocketts followed in lockstep, stretching away on either side of him farther than the eye could track.
"Sonny!"
Crockett started at the sound of Rico's voice. To his left he saw his partner, reflected in one of the mirrors, staring around him wildly, seemingly unaware of Sonny. Crockett spun in a circle, but couldn't locate the original. As he watched, horrified, the birdwoman danced gracefully up behind Rico, spun easily on the white stilettos and then stopped cold, focusing on Rico with an icy stare. Crockett screamed a warning, but to no avail a tiny silver knife appeared in one of her hands, and with no warning, she plunged it into Rico's ribs. As Sonny watched the mirror, blood crept slowly and obscenely across his partner's grey suit jacket, and Rico fell to his knees in agony. Sonny screamed again and fired at the woman in the glass.
Then everything exploded, and the last thing Crockett remembered was hitting the floor.
---------
Crockett crouched in the middle of the street, staring off into space, until measured footsteps brought him back, and he looked up into the face of Lieutenant Castillo. "I know what this looks like, Marty, but I swear to you, there was a club...and these drugged out kids, and...Rico..."
Behind him, the building sat cold and dark, completely unharmed, marred only by graffiti and a few broken windows. It looked like no one had been near it for months.
Castillo remained impassive. "What's Detective Tubbs' current location?"
Crockett shot to his feet and glared at the lieutenant. "I don't know, okay. I don't know. I just know what I saw." Crockett shoved his hands in his pockets. The SWAT team swarmed impotently around the two men, unsure why they'd been called, but unwilling to leave before securing the scene.
"There was a girl, and she was dressed like a bird," Crockett continued, "and she stabbed my partner! Now I don't know what happened between then and now, but dammit, he's here, I just know it." Crockett stalked in a tight circle, staring up angrily at the broken windows. "He's gotta be in there somewhere, or they took him somewhere while I was out, and--"
Castillo interrupted. "The SWAT team's been through the building three times. No sign of anyone, dead or alive."
"Dammit, Marty! We're wasting time! We've got to find--"
"Hey!" Tubbs' voice rang out along the length of the street. "Hey, man! What happened to you?"
Tubbs jogged up the street towards Crockett and Castillo, past the knot of latenight onlookers who'd gathered behind the crime-scene tape. Ignoring Castillo, Tubbs ran right up to Crockett, stopping only inches from his face. "Where were you, man?"
Crockett stared like a wild man. There wasn't a spot of blood on his partner.
The silence between them lengthened until Tubbs put a steadying hand on Crockett's shoulder. "What's up with you, man? You look like you haven't slept in weeks."