Fic: Skip Muck, PI - Chapter Three
Title: Skip Muck, PI - Chapter Three
Summary: AU. Pittsburgh in the summer of 1988. Skip Muck's a detective, Lewis Nixon has had his clock stolen, Don Malarkey has a way of popping up at inappropriate moments, and somebody's been murdered. How is all this linked? Read on.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2333
Disclaimer: Not my property, not for profit. All characters based on depictions in the miniseries, and no disrespect intended to anyone real.
Notes: Crossposted to ihave_no_idea.
Chapter One: In which Skip is frustrated, Penk is hungry, and Julian's been murdered.
Chapter Two: In which Lipton is strangely familiar, Speirs is irritable, and Malarkey is unexpected.
I stood at the window, half-open shutters casting lines of shadow across my face. I don't think Penkala or Mrs Lamb even notice the attempts I make to give the place a little bit of atmosphere; some people have no idea how hard I work to try and bring some class to this operation. She was busy doing the dusting, while Penk was sitting with his feet propped up on his desk, going through his notebook.
"What have we got?" I said.
"One clock, missing, presumed stolen. Taken from Nixon's office before a move to a new building," Penk started. I waved my hand impatiently.
"Yeah, yeah, I know all that. C'mon. Have we got any potential suspects?" I said.
"There's no evidence of a break-in, so it's got to be somebody within the building - but that makes pretty much every employee there a potential suspect," Penk said. "Personally, I think that Speirs guy was onto something when he said to check out the cleaners. You saw how that janitor reacted when he saw we were detectives."
I started to pace back and forth across the room. It wasn't as if there was anything worth looking at outside, not since they'd taken down the Victoria's Secret ad on the hoarding the window looked out onto.
"I think we need to pay him another visit and find out why he was acting up like that," I said.
"And if he still doesn't want to talk?" Penk said.
"He's hardly the only cleaner in the building," I said. "And his twitchiness isn't enough to make him a suspect. Though talking of twitchy, did you see how keen Speirs was to get us out of his office?"
Penk frowned at me.
"But he said so himself, what reason would he have to take the clock?"
I grinned, and picked up speed as I walked. I could feel I was onto something here.
"Would an innocent man feel the need to make up excuses like that?" I said, and span on my heel to start pacing back the other way. "He doesn't want us to get information on him. Which, obviously, means we should. That guy's hiding something. I can just feel it."
Penk scoffed.
"You're just getting carried away," he said. "I know 'the cleaners did it' is a pretty boring solution, but you can't just call someone a suspect because you think it'd be cooler if it was them."
I stopped pacing, and folded my arms.
"If I wanted to just make up solutions I'd have implicated the Yakuza by now, or maybe aliens," I said. "You can't just reject ideas because you think they sound silly."
Penk sighed, heavily.
"We haven't got enough evidence to make anyone a suspect," he said. "Let's hope this guy we're meeting can find us some information to back some of these ideas up."
"Boys?" called Mrs Lamb. "It's quarter to. You ought to be getting a move on."
She was right. So we did.
We arrived at Grant Street bang on two o' clock. Dick was, as promised, waiting on the steps of the City-County Building. I waved at him as I got out of the car, and he nodded in recognition.
"Glad you could make it," he said, shaking my hand when I approached him, and doing the same for Penk when he caught up a moment later. "I'll take you round the side. It's quicker."
We followed him around the corner, and entered via a side door, underneath an arch inscribed with the word 'prothonotary'.
"What the hell's a prothonotary?" I asked.
"Kind of tropical bird," Penk said. I punched him on the shoulder.
"Why would they put the name of a bird on the side of a building?" I said, and turned to Dick. "You're going to have to excuse my colleague, he's kinda slow. His mom dropped him on his head as a baby."
"She did not!" Penk said, and punched me back.
"As far as I know, a prothonotary is just another name for a court clerk," Dick said, entirely unaware of the pair of us pushing and shoving at each other behind him. If it weren't for the fact we were in company, I would have treated Penk to a half-Nelson worthy of Hulk Hogan, but an office is no place for wrestling. By this time, we'd been led up a couple of flights of stairs and down a long, narrow corridor.
Dick paused by a door, and just as he reached for the handle, it flew open and a guy came hurrying out. He had a stack of papers in his arms and a look on his face like someone had stuck a firecracker up his butt.
"Ah, Dick, there you are," he said, peeking over the top of his files. "I'm just taking these over to Sink. Very important business, I'm afraid, so I'll have to miss that meeting at three."
With that, he elbowed his way past us and scuttled down the corridor. Dick watched him go, and let out a little sigh.
"Who was that?" Penk asked.
"Norman Dike. I technically share an office with him, but he's never in it," Dick said. He glanced around us and lowered his voice a little. "He generally prefers the company of our bosses. I'm fairly sure he's bucking for a promotion, but he seems to have got it into his head that he can achieve that without doing any real work. The worst thing is, he's probably right."
Dick pushed open the door, and led us into his office. It was a tidy, well-kept little place, if somewhat old. The only other person there was a tall, dark-haired man who glanced up from his work to regard us with a mixture of curiosity and contempt.
"Going to introduce me to our guests?" he asked, narrowing your eyes.
"It's nothing to do with work. I'm just doing a favour for a friend," Dick said. "They won't be here long." He turned to us. "Let's go into the kitchen, it's a little more private. Anyway, I'm taking my lunch hour, I might as well eat now."
We managed to wedge ourself into a small kitchenette with a sink, a fridge, a coffee machine and several cabinets. Penk leaned against the wall and I perched on the countertop while Dick took a lunchbox from the fridge.
"Feel free to have a drink," Dick said, gesturing towards the coffee machine. Penk immediately barged his way towards it. Poor guy had been without coffee for a whole hour. I don't know how he'd managed to survive.
"What now?" I said. Dick checked his watch.
"He'll be here in a couple of moments. I told him to meet me up here," he said. Right on cue, I heard the sound of a door being kicked open, and an unfamiliar voice saying,
"Hey, Herbie! You seen Dick around?"
"He's in the kitchen with a couple of strangers," replied the voice of Dick's co-worker, sounding none too pleased. "And don't call me Herbie."
"Sure thing, Bertykins," the voice said. A few seconds later, the owner of the voice appeared at the kitchen door - a skinny little guy in an ill-fitting suit and a tie that could rival Penk's shirt in the tasteless stakes1.
"There you are," he said. "Why are you all hiding in here?"
"Didn't want to bother Herbert," Dick said. The new guy scoffed.
"Then make him go sit in the kitchen," he said, and then glanced at me. "Budge up, would ya?"
I moved aside a little, my ass half in the sink, and he hopped up onto the counter beside me.
"How are the negotiations going?" Dick asked. The new guy shook his head.
"Not well. Funding cuts for the third year in a row, and everyone keeps pulling this Reaganomics crap on me when I suggest education should be a higher priority," he said. "And when I mention that hey, it'd be real nice of them if they could sling a few bucks our way to get some more textbooks, well... Herbie goes bananas." He snickered at his own joke. Me and Penk were both somewhat lost, but luckily, Dick had noticed.
"Well, we can talk about it later," he said. "In the meantime, I should introduce you all. These are detectives Muck and Penkala, the ones Nix hired to track down his lost clock." Dick turned to us. "And this is Harry Welsh. He works for the county school board, but he's also a good personal friend of mine."
"Me and Dick go way back," Harry said, grinning. "We were on the high school basketball team together."
Penk and I exchanged glances. Now, I don't want to be discriminatory, but if this guy was any use as a basketball player he must have had spring-loaded calves, 'cause he was barely five and a half foot, if that. Seeing our confusion, he went on to explain:
"Dick was the captain. I was the mascot. And I reckon the Lancaster Lions' unbeaten record in the '79-'80 season was due almost entirely to the killer combination of Dick's leadership and my God-given gift for dancing. Now, I don't like to blow my own trumpet, but let me tell you, it takes a special kind of talent to be able to pull the smooth moves stuck inside a giant plush lion costume."
Dick rolled his eyes.
"Oh, here we go," he sighed.
"Hey, this is relevant," Harry said. "Dick said you guys needed contacts."
We nodded. I wasn't at all sure where this was heading. What I can say, though, is that I certainly wasn't expecting what Harry came out with next.
"I've got this breakdancing crew," he said. Penk choked on his coffee. I tried not to laugh. Harry didn't seem to have noticed.
"Now, bless the guys, they're all good fellas, but some of them don't come from, ah, the best of backgrounds. And that's where the contacts come in. I'd say that between 'em, my boys can tell you how to reach half the hoodlums in this city, and they know which ones are likely to squeal. 'Course, you might have to buy 'em a couple of drinks first, but it's worth it. They've helped out on a few cases now."
"Won't snitching on people get them into trouble?" Penk asked.
"Anybody wanting to mess with my boys has to go through me first," Harry said, apparently entirely serious. The guy was clearly crazy, but it couldn't do us any harm to go along with it.
"We've got a competition on Tuesday night," Harry said. "You up for it?"
Penk looked over at me, uncertain. He'd got his eyebrows raised so far they were threatening to merge into his hairline.
"I wouldn't miss it for the world," I said.
1 Penk was today favouring us with a combination of palm trees and hula girls, whereas the new guy's tie was patterned with stripes in all the colours of a bad acid trip.
"Well, that was odd," Penk said as we left the kitchen, leaving Dick and Harry behind to talk shop. I shrugged.
"Can't go stereotyping. If a skinny little white guy wants to be a breakdancer, good for him. Different strokes for different folks," I said.
"I'm sure there's a joke to be made there about his height and Gary Coleman, but it ain't happening right now," Penk said, pushing open the office door. As we emerged into the corridor, we bumped into the last people we were expecting - Alton More and Don Malarkey, heading our way.
"Hey!" I called, grinning. "More, Don, fancy seeing you here. What's up?" More frowned.
"What the hell are you doing here?" he said.
"What the hell are you doing here?" I replied. There was a pause, both of us waiting to see who'd go first. As it was, Don decided to provide an answer.
"More and me are here to check out some records, building up background info on Julian," he said. "Still can't figure out any likely reason for somebody to have it in for him." He noticed Penkala.
"Hey, you must be Penk," Don said, holding out his hand. "Skip told me about you. I'm Don Malarkey. Got transferred over from Portland a few days ago."
"If we can get past the introductions," More butted in, "You still haven't said what you're doing here." He narrowed his eyes. "I sure as hell don't want you getting funny ideas about moving in on our cases."
"Oh, Alton, always assuming the worst," I said. "You're welcome to Julian and I don't envy you the stress - we're just picking up some contacts to help with our own case. Turns out Nixon knew a guy who knew a guy who knew some guys." I paused, counting, making sure I hadn't missed anyone out. "Oh, and those guys know some more guys."
Don laughed. More looked unimpressed.
"I think I know the feeling," Don said. "We bumped into some weird guy on the way up who reckoned he could help us. Apparently he's in some breakdancing crew with some guys who've got relatives in the mob, or some crazy shit like that."
"You met him too?" Penk said. Me and Don both burst out laughing, caught each other's eyes, and stopped as suddenly as we'd started. I felt myself going a bit red.
"C'mon," More said impatiently. "We've got stuff to be getting on with." He pushed his way in between us. Don followed, but not without turning to flash me a dazzling grin.
"See you Tuesday night," he said.
Next time - information gathering, important conversations, and the hiphop stylings of the man they probably don't call the Welshinator. You be illin' if you even consider missing the next instalment of - Skip Muck, PI!
Summary: AU. Pittsburgh in the summer of 1988. Skip Muck's a detective, Lewis Nixon has had his clock stolen, Don Malarkey has a way of popping up at inappropriate moments, and somebody's been murdered. How is all this linked? Read on.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2333
Disclaimer: Not my property, not for profit. All characters based on depictions in the miniseries, and no disrespect intended to anyone real.
Notes: Crossposted to ihave_no_idea.
Chapter One: In which Skip is frustrated, Penk is hungry, and Julian's been murdered.
Chapter Two: In which Lipton is strangely familiar, Speirs is irritable, and Malarkey is unexpected.
I stood at the window, half-open shutters casting lines of shadow across my face. I don't think Penkala or Mrs Lamb even notice the attempts I make to give the place a little bit of atmosphere; some people have no idea how hard I work to try and bring some class to this operation. She was busy doing the dusting, while Penk was sitting with his feet propped up on his desk, going through his notebook.
"What have we got?" I said.
"One clock, missing, presumed stolen. Taken from Nixon's office before a move to a new building," Penk started. I waved my hand impatiently.
"Yeah, yeah, I know all that. C'mon. Have we got any potential suspects?" I said.
"There's no evidence of a break-in, so it's got to be somebody within the building - but that makes pretty much every employee there a potential suspect," Penk said. "Personally, I think that Speirs guy was onto something when he said to check out the cleaners. You saw how that janitor reacted when he saw we were detectives."
I started to pace back and forth across the room. It wasn't as if there was anything worth looking at outside, not since they'd taken down the Victoria's Secret ad on the hoarding the window looked out onto.
"I think we need to pay him another visit and find out why he was acting up like that," I said.
"And if he still doesn't want to talk?" Penk said.
"He's hardly the only cleaner in the building," I said. "And his twitchiness isn't enough to make him a suspect. Though talking of twitchy, did you see how keen Speirs was to get us out of his office?"
Penk frowned at me.
"But he said so himself, what reason would he have to take the clock?"
I grinned, and picked up speed as I walked. I could feel I was onto something here.
"Would an innocent man feel the need to make up excuses like that?" I said, and span on my heel to start pacing back the other way. "He doesn't want us to get information on him. Which, obviously, means we should. That guy's hiding something. I can just feel it."
Penk scoffed.
"You're just getting carried away," he said. "I know 'the cleaners did it' is a pretty boring solution, but you can't just call someone a suspect because you think it'd be cooler if it was them."
I stopped pacing, and folded my arms.
"If I wanted to just make up solutions I'd have implicated the Yakuza by now, or maybe aliens," I said. "You can't just reject ideas because you think they sound silly."
Penk sighed, heavily.
"We haven't got enough evidence to make anyone a suspect," he said. "Let's hope this guy we're meeting can find us some information to back some of these ideas up."
"Boys?" called Mrs Lamb. "It's quarter to. You ought to be getting a move on."
She was right. So we did.
We arrived at Grant Street bang on two o' clock. Dick was, as promised, waiting on the steps of the City-County Building. I waved at him as I got out of the car, and he nodded in recognition.
"Glad you could make it," he said, shaking my hand when I approached him, and doing the same for Penk when he caught up a moment later. "I'll take you round the side. It's quicker."
We followed him around the corner, and entered via a side door, underneath an arch inscribed with the word 'prothonotary'.
"What the hell's a prothonotary?" I asked.
"Kind of tropical bird," Penk said. I punched him on the shoulder.
"Why would they put the name of a bird on the side of a building?" I said, and turned to Dick. "You're going to have to excuse my colleague, he's kinda slow. His mom dropped him on his head as a baby."
"She did not!" Penk said, and punched me back.
"As far as I know, a prothonotary is just another name for a court clerk," Dick said, entirely unaware of the pair of us pushing and shoving at each other behind him. If it weren't for the fact we were in company, I would have treated Penk to a half-Nelson worthy of Hulk Hogan, but an office is no place for wrestling. By this time, we'd been led up a couple of flights of stairs and down a long, narrow corridor.
Dick paused by a door, and just as he reached for the handle, it flew open and a guy came hurrying out. He had a stack of papers in his arms and a look on his face like someone had stuck a firecracker up his butt.
"Ah, Dick, there you are," he said, peeking over the top of his files. "I'm just taking these over to Sink. Very important business, I'm afraid, so I'll have to miss that meeting at three."
With that, he elbowed his way past us and scuttled down the corridor. Dick watched him go, and let out a little sigh.
"Who was that?" Penk asked.
"Norman Dike. I technically share an office with him, but he's never in it," Dick said. He glanced around us and lowered his voice a little. "He generally prefers the company of our bosses. I'm fairly sure he's bucking for a promotion, but he seems to have got it into his head that he can achieve that without doing any real work. The worst thing is, he's probably right."
Dick pushed open the door, and led us into his office. It was a tidy, well-kept little place, if somewhat old. The only other person there was a tall, dark-haired man who glanced up from his work to regard us with a mixture of curiosity and contempt.
"Going to introduce me to our guests?" he asked, narrowing your eyes.
"It's nothing to do with work. I'm just doing a favour for a friend," Dick said. "They won't be here long." He turned to us. "Let's go into the kitchen, it's a little more private. Anyway, I'm taking my lunch hour, I might as well eat now."
We managed to wedge ourself into a small kitchenette with a sink, a fridge, a coffee machine and several cabinets. Penk leaned against the wall and I perched on the countertop while Dick took a lunchbox from the fridge.
"Feel free to have a drink," Dick said, gesturing towards the coffee machine. Penk immediately barged his way towards it. Poor guy had been without coffee for a whole hour. I don't know how he'd managed to survive.
"What now?" I said. Dick checked his watch.
"He'll be here in a couple of moments. I told him to meet me up here," he said. Right on cue, I heard the sound of a door being kicked open, and an unfamiliar voice saying,
"Hey, Herbie! You seen Dick around?"
"He's in the kitchen with a couple of strangers," replied the voice of Dick's co-worker, sounding none too pleased. "And don't call me Herbie."
"Sure thing, Bertykins," the voice said. A few seconds later, the owner of the voice appeared at the kitchen door - a skinny little guy in an ill-fitting suit and a tie that could rival Penk's shirt in the tasteless stakes1.
"There you are," he said. "Why are you all hiding in here?"
"Didn't want to bother Herbert," Dick said. The new guy scoffed.
"Then make him go sit in the kitchen," he said, and then glanced at me. "Budge up, would ya?"
I moved aside a little, my ass half in the sink, and he hopped up onto the counter beside me.
"How are the negotiations going?" Dick asked. The new guy shook his head.
"Not well. Funding cuts for the third year in a row, and everyone keeps pulling this Reaganomics crap on me when I suggest education should be a higher priority," he said. "And when I mention that hey, it'd be real nice of them if they could sling a few bucks our way to get some more textbooks, well... Herbie goes bananas." He snickered at his own joke. Me and Penk were both somewhat lost, but luckily, Dick had noticed.
"Well, we can talk about it later," he said. "In the meantime, I should introduce you all. These are detectives Muck and Penkala, the ones Nix hired to track down his lost clock." Dick turned to us. "And this is Harry Welsh. He works for the county school board, but he's also a good personal friend of mine."
"Me and Dick go way back," Harry said, grinning. "We were on the high school basketball team together."
Penk and I exchanged glances. Now, I don't want to be discriminatory, but if this guy was any use as a basketball player he must have had spring-loaded calves, 'cause he was barely five and a half foot, if that. Seeing our confusion, he went on to explain:
"Dick was the captain. I was the mascot. And I reckon the Lancaster Lions' unbeaten record in the '79-'80 season was due almost entirely to the killer combination of Dick's leadership and my God-given gift for dancing. Now, I don't like to blow my own trumpet, but let me tell you, it takes a special kind of talent to be able to pull the smooth moves stuck inside a giant plush lion costume."
Dick rolled his eyes.
"Oh, here we go," he sighed.
"Hey, this is relevant," Harry said. "Dick said you guys needed contacts."
We nodded. I wasn't at all sure where this was heading. What I can say, though, is that I certainly wasn't expecting what Harry came out with next.
"I've got this breakdancing crew," he said. Penk choked on his coffee. I tried not to laugh. Harry didn't seem to have noticed.
"Now, bless the guys, they're all good fellas, but some of them don't come from, ah, the best of backgrounds. And that's where the contacts come in. I'd say that between 'em, my boys can tell you how to reach half the hoodlums in this city, and they know which ones are likely to squeal. 'Course, you might have to buy 'em a couple of drinks first, but it's worth it. They've helped out on a few cases now."
"Won't snitching on people get them into trouble?" Penk asked.
"Anybody wanting to mess with my boys has to go through me first," Harry said, apparently entirely serious. The guy was clearly crazy, but it couldn't do us any harm to go along with it.
"We've got a competition on Tuesday night," Harry said. "You up for it?"
Penk looked over at me, uncertain. He'd got his eyebrows raised so far they were threatening to merge into his hairline.
"I wouldn't miss it for the world," I said.
1 Penk was today favouring us with a combination of palm trees and hula girls, whereas the new guy's tie was patterned with stripes in all the colours of a bad acid trip.
"Well, that was odd," Penk said as we left the kitchen, leaving Dick and Harry behind to talk shop. I shrugged.
"Can't go stereotyping. If a skinny little white guy wants to be a breakdancer, good for him. Different strokes for different folks," I said.
"I'm sure there's a joke to be made there about his height and Gary Coleman, but it ain't happening right now," Penk said, pushing open the office door. As we emerged into the corridor, we bumped into the last people we were expecting - Alton More and Don Malarkey, heading our way.
"Hey!" I called, grinning. "More, Don, fancy seeing you here. What's up?" More frowned.
"What the hell are you doing here?" he said.
"What the hell are you doing here?" I replied. There was a pause, both of us waiting to see who'd go first. As it was, Don decided to provide an answer.
"More and me are here to check out some records, building up background info on Julian," he said. "Still can't figure out any likely reason for somebody to have it in for him." He noticed Penkala.
"Hey, you must be Penk," Don said, holding out his hand. "Skip told me about you. I'm Don Malarkey. Got transferred over from Portland a few days ago."
"If we can get past the introductions," More butted in, "You still haven't said what you're doing here." He narrowed his eyes. "I sure as hell don't want you getting funny ideas about moving in on our cases."
"Oh, Alton, always assuming the worst," I said. "You're welcome to Julian and I don't envy you the stress - we're just picking up some contacts to help with our own case. Turns out Nixon knew a guy who knew a guy who knew some guys." I paused, counting, making sure I hadn't missed anyone out. "Oh, and those guys know some more guys."
Don laughed. More looked unimpressed.
"I think I know the feeling," Don said. "We bumped into some weird guy on the way up who reckoned he could help us. Apparently he's in some breakdancing crew with some guys who've got relatives in the mob, or some crazy shit like that."
"You met him too?" Penk said. Me and Don both burst out laughing, caught each other's eyes, and stopped as suddenly as we'd started. I felt myself going a bit red.
"C'mon," More said impatiently. "We've got stuff to be getting on with." He pushed his way in between us. Don followed, but not without turning to flash me a dazzling grin.
"See you Tuesday night," he said.
Next time - information gathering, important conversations, and the hiphop stylings of the man they probably don't call the Welshinator. You be illin' if you even consider missing the next instalment of - Skip Muck, PI!