Fanfiction - Pin The Tail. Part 2. PG.
Look ye under the cut. Crit is always appreciated.
Somewhere between the adrenaline and the interrupted sex, the situation took a bit longer than normal to percolate through my brain. But like a lost German tourist finding his way to a duty-free shop, it made its way to the front of my attention through dogged persistence. I looked over to the driver's seat, where Perry was dabbing blood off of his face with a handkerchief. Most of it seemed to be coming from some roadrash over his right ear, and something on the other side I couldn't see.
"They must have thought I was you - I mean, either I was you at the site, or you were me leaving the office. But if they thought me - you - had seen... whatever it was that I might have gotten pictures of, why didn't they just kill you?"
"They tried." Perry tended to underuse audible punctuation when he was upset, and I tried to put in commas and periods as I listened. "Two guys. In a car. They ran it up on the street. I dodged, one of them came out, scuffled a bit, I knocked him down. The other one grabbed the case and ran back to the car. The first one ran while I was chasing the second. The first one had a gun; I'm assuming the second one didn't."
"Why not?'"
"I'm still walking."
"Where are we going?" I asked, looking out of the windshield, my eyes not actually focusing. Most of me was trying to internally explain that it really wasn't my fault, as I had no idea that it was anything actually dangerous, and had taken a token yellow-light turn to throw any casual tail. Some other part of me asked who I was trying to convince, and I realized that I had no idea. I shifted in the seat.
"Your fucking client's house."
"Hey!" I pointed at him. "You gave her to me. She's our fucking client."
"Our fucking client." Perry's eyes widened slightly as strobes reflected off of the walls of the houses one block over. We turned, and found ourselves facing the side of a milling pack of gawkers. Perry pulled over, and we both stepped out and joined the pack on foot.
The house of my - our - former illustrious client was ablaze, burning furiously, collapsing in on itself. The fire crew seemed to be in containment mode. We stared at it for a few moments as an interior wall collapsed, and the crew started to hose down that flattened section of house. It was not a casual fire, a oops-left-the-oven-on fire. It was a soak-this-mother-in-gasoline-and-torch-it fire. No part of the house or garage was not either ablaze or completely burnt out. "That doesn't look... exactly accidental," I commented, unnecessarily.
Perry raised an eyebrow. "Oh, not just a massive coincidence?" He turned and walked back to the car, scratching the back of his head absentmindedly. "Not shot."
"Garrotte?" Not that it really mattered. Something that didn't leave a sign post-inferno. I just like the word.
"Something like that. It doesn't really matter." He started the car, pulled a U-turn, and we headed away. "What does really matter is that someone out there thinks we maybe know something that we don't that they don't want us to know and live."
I gamely followed him to the end and agreed. "Where now?"
"Back to the park."
I snorted. "Oh, yes, hoping that someone dropped a clue. It would be really handy if that big black guy had dropped his passport and driver's license and didn't happen to notice?"
"Got any better ideas, dip?" Perry barked.
I stared moodily out of the windshield, as I didn't. Or rather, I didn't until I stared moodily out of the windshield. "Yeah, actually - why don't we follow that car?" I pointed at a metallic fucking orange Mercedes.
Convenient, isn't it? Oh, look, ma, there's the car. It would have been almost as believable if we had found the head guy's damn passport in the park. If he even had a passport. Do you know how few people in the US ever leave a... I think it's fifty-mile radius of where they're born? Pathetic, really. The guy might have lived his whole life in LA. Poor bastard. But I did warn you that it was a really garish car, you'll remember. And the take-home message, kids, is that flashy, garish cars are good. They make my job easier. Anyway, back to the story.
Two kids were in the car. They didn't look like they had hit twenty yet. They stopped frequently to get out and exchange handshakes of mind-numbingly pointless complexity with small packs of other kids who were hanging out on corners and smoking. From those excursions, we learned that they were, indeed, kids, that one was dark-skinned and the other one fairly pasty white, they were both very skinny, and that they had baggy pants that started somewhere around mid-thigh. I think I'm getting old, because the kids today do dress stupidly (or should that be stupid?), and their music does suck. And they were out too late on a school night. I fidgeted at their umpteenth stop. "They're not too bothered about being seen in their stolen car."
"Is that the same plate?" I looked at it. It didn't look familiar, but I hadn't memorized the damn thing. I shrugged. Perry raised his eyebrows. "Probably not. They swap the plates and have a fine old time before they take it to be chopped. Whoever hired them probably did not approve this excursion. All right," he shifted in his seat and looked up and down the relatively quiet street, "do you know what I'm thinking?"
"I think you're thinking that the guy on the corner five blocks back with the nipple rings had nifty abs."
"Yes, but I'm also thinking that we're being followed by that blue car. It's hanging a ways back. You ready to be a little more proactive?"
I looked at the small pack. "You take the white boy," I muttered. We jumped out of the car and moved quickly and purposefully towards the little group. I walked through the somewhat surprised group and punched the other kid in the stomach, then slammed him against the side of the car, holding him up by the nape of his neck. Perry grabbed the white kid's shirt and wrapped it around his neck, keeping him in a stranglehold with one arm while whipping out his gun and pointing it at the other kids, who had started to recover from surprise and were starting to decide to rush us. They changed their mind rather quickly, and when he barked, "Shoo!" they did so.
We had a quick discussion about where to have a conversation. The white kid tried to weigh in on it, so Perry rapped him smartly over the head with the gun-butt. We figured we'd truss them in duck tape and take them back to the garage. (Perry is looking over my shoulder and telling me that it is duct tape, but what does he know? I mean, that crap gets all gooey in heat - no way would you use it on ducts. Yes, it wouldn't repair ducks well, either. All right, fucking forget it.)
It was a fair enough idea, and we had just gotten started, me holding the other kid, when this woman comes running up. She's a looker, but that's so frequent it gets fucking tiresome in LA. Long, straight blonde hair, angular face, tall, slender, long legs, the whole nine yards and a penalty kick. "What are you doing?" she asked, glancing between the two of us. Perry, oddly enough, seemed startled.
"Fraternity prank," I explained, putting my hand over the kid's mouth. Not such a good idea, as he bit it, and I jumped back. Yes, jumping back means I let go of the little bastard, and he ran like a shot to the closest vehicle - Perry's shiny Mercedes. He (Perry, that is) let out a yelp of pure pain as the kid screeched away. He and I both ran to the orange Mercedes, the white kid no longer a priority. The woman yelled something at our rapidly departing backs, but we paid no attention. I jumped into the driver's seat and hauled ass after the runaway kid.
One of the problems here, I should probably mention, is that I'm not a very good driver. I mean, I don't hit things, but I can't make a rear-wheel drive do all of those lovely fishtailing and slidey things that stunt drivers do. However, I was blessed in the fact that the kid wasn't very good, either, and we both gamely plodded through the streets of LA at a decent, but hardly thrillingly fast, pace. Not thrillingly fast for the audience, that is. As far as I was concerned, it was fucking pell-mell, and my heart was doing a thuddity thing. I glanced over and saw Perry hanging out of the window, the gun in his hand, his brow furrowed like the Nile Delta.
"Shoot out a tire, man!" I yelled at him.
He ducked back in for a moment. "Stop weaving all over the fucking place! I'm going to hit the paint if you keep doing the bumper-car thing!"
I tried to keep steady. "Insurance will cover it! Just stop the bastard!"
Perry leaned out again, took careful aim, and shot. He got it right on; the right rear tire flattened just like my erection had earlier. The not-very-good driver at the wheel promptly lost control, and the car fishtailed like a pendulum, finally sliding into a curb with a painful crunch. Perry let out a moan as we pulled in behind it.
The kid wasted no time, and was out of the car and down an alley before we even got out. Perry chased him; I didn't. I turned to watch the woman who had followed us. She was standing next to a nondescript blue car that screamed "rental," looking levelly at me.
I'd like to say that some smoky saxophone music started playing, and she could not keep herself from throwing herself on me and sticking her tongue into good bits, but that would be lying. Instead, a police car screeched to a halt next to the curb, and I found myself at the station in short order, taken there with the blonde girl, and in the somewhat sticky position of having to explain to an irate sergeant why I had been driving a car that belonged to a couple whose house had been recently burnt to the ground.
God, I hate interrogations. It's giving me a headache just to remember this one. I'll kinda skip over it, as it isn't really important. It's detail, and it's good for setting the atmosphere, I'm told, but I think it's just boring as shit. It's not key to the plot, trust me. The abrupt way I was let go was, but I think you'll figure out why just about as quickly as I did. OK, from here on out things get more confusing, so I'm going to grab a cigarette before I finish. Maybe a drink or three. Later.
Somewhere between the adrenaline and the interrupted sex, the situation took a bit longer than normal to percolate through my brain. But like a lost German tourist finding his way to a duty-free shop, it made its way to the front of my attention through dogged persistence. I looked over to the driver's seat, where Perry was dabbing blood off of his face with a handkerchief. Most of it seemed to be coming from some roadrash over his right ear, and something on the other side I couldn't see.
"They must have thought I was you - I mean, either I was you at the site, or you were me leaving the office. But if they thought me - you - had seen... whatever it was that I might have gotten pictures of, why didn't they just kill you?"
"They tried." Perry tended to underuse audible punctuation when he was upset, and I tried to put in commas and periods as I listened. "Two guys. In a car. They ran it up on the street. I dodged, one of them came out, scuffled a bit, I knocked him down. The other one grabbed the case and ran back to the car. The first one ran while I was chasing the second. The first one had a gun; I'm assuming the second one didn't."
"Why not?'"
"I'm still walking."
"Where are we going?" I asked, looking out of the windshield, my eyes not actually focusing. Most of me was trying to internally explain that it really wasn't my fault, as I had no idea that it was anything actually dangerous, and had taken a token yellow-light turn to throw any casual tail. Some other part of me asked who I was trying to convince, and I realized that I had no idea. I shifted in the seat.
"Your fucking client's house."
"Hey!" I pointed at him. "You gave her to me. She's our fucking client."
"Our fucking client." Perry's eyes widened slightly as strobes reflected off of the walls of the houses one block over. We turned, and found ourselves facing the side of a milling pack of gawkers. Perry pulled over, and we both stepped out and joined the pack on foot.
The house of my - our - former illustrious client was ablaze, burning furiously, collapsing in on itself. The fire crew seemed to be in containment mode. We stared at it for a few moments as an interior wall collapsed, and the crew started to hose down that flattened section of house. It was not a casual fire, a oops-left-the-oven-on fire. It was a soak-this-mother-in-gasoline-and-torch-it fire. No part of the house or garage was not either ablaze or completely burnt out. "That doesn't look... exactly accidental," I commented, unnecessarily.
Perry raised an eyebrow. "Oh, not just a massive coincidence?" He turned and walked back to the car, scratching the back of his head absentmindedly. "Not shot."
"Garrotte?" Not that it really mattered. Something that didn't leave a sign post-inferno. I just like the word.
"Something like that. It doesn't really matter." He started the car, pulled a U-turn, and we headed away. "What does really matter is that someone out there thinks we maybe know something that we don't that they don't want us to know and live."
I gamely followed him to the end and agreed. "Where now?"
"Back to the park."
I snorted. "Oh, yes, hoping that someone dropped a clue. It would be really handy if that big black guy had dropped his passport and driver's license and didn't happen to notice?"
"Got any better ideas, dip?" Perry barked.
I stared moodily out of the windshield, as I didn't. Or rather, I didn't until I stared moodily out of the windshield. "Yeah, actually - why don't we follow that car?" I pointed at a metallic fucking orange Mercedes.
Convenient, isn't it? Oh, look, ma, there's the car. It would have been almost as believable if we had found the head guy's damn passport in the park. If he even had a passport. Do you know how few people in the US ever leave a... I think it's fifty-mile radius of where they're born? Pathetic, really. The guy might have lived his whole life in LA. Poor bastard. But I did warn you that it was a really garish car, you'll remember. And the take-home message, kids, is that flashy, garish cars are good. They make my job easier. Anyway, back to the story.
Two kids were in the car. They didn't look like they had hit twenty yet. They stopped frequently to get out and exchange handshakes of mind-numbingly pointless complexity with small packs of other kids who were hanging out on corners and smoking. From those excursions, we learned that they were, indeed, kids, that one was dark-skinned and the other one fairly pasty white, they were both very skinny, and that they had baggy pants that started somewhere around mid-thigh. I think I'm getting old, because the kids today do dress stupidly (or should that be stupid?), and their music does suck. And they were out too late on a school night. I fidgeted at their umpteenth stop. "They're not too bothered about being seen in their stolen car."
"Is that the same plate?" I looked at it. It didn't look familiar, but I hadn't memorized the damn thing. I shrugged. Perry raised his eyebrows. "Probably not. They swap the plates and have a fine old time before they take it to be chopped. Whoever hired them probably did not approve this excursion. All right," he shifted in his seat and looked up and down the relatively quiet street, "do you know what I'm thinking?"
"I think you're thinking that the guy on the corner five blocks back with the nipple rings had nifty abs."
"Yes, but I'm also thinking that we're being followed by that blue car. It's hanging a ways back. You ready to be a little more proactive?"
I looked at the small pack. "You take the white boy," I muttered. We jumped out of the car and moved quickly and purposefully towards the little group. I walked through the somewhat surprised group and punched the other kid in the stomach, then slammed him against the side of the car, holding him up by the nape of his neck. Perry grabbed the white kid's shirt and wrapped it around his neck, keeping him in a stranglehold with one arm while whipping out his gun and pointing it at the other kids, who had started to recover from surprise and were starting to decide to rush us. They changed their mind rather quickly, and when he barked, "Shoo!" they did so.
We had a quick discussion about where to have a conversation. The white kid tried to weigh in on it, so Perry rapped him smartly over the head with the gun-butt. We figured we'd truss them in duck tape and take them back to the garage. (Perry is looking over my shoulder and telling me that it is duct tape, but what does he know? I mean, that crap gets all gooey in heat - no way would you use it on ducts. Yes, it wouldn't repair ducks well, either. All right, fucking forget it.)
It was a fair enough idea, and we had just gotten started, me holding the other kid, when this woman comes running up. She's a looker, but that's so frequent it gets fucking tiresome in LA. Long, straight blonde hair, angular face, tall, slender, long legs, the whole nine yards and a penalty kick. "What are you doing?" she asked, glancing between the two of us. Perry, oddly enough, seemed startled.
"Fraternity prank," I explained, putting my hand over the kid's mouth. Not such a good idea, as he bit it, and I jumped back. Yes, jumping back means I let go of the little bastard, and he ran like a shot to the closest vehicle - Perry's shiny Mercedes. He (Perry, that is) let out a yelp of pure pain as the kid screeched away. He and I both ran to the orange Mercedes, the white kid no longer a priority. The woman yelled something at our rapidly departing backs, but we paid no attention. I jumped into the driver's seat and hauled ass after the runaway kid.
One of the problems here, I should probably mention, is that I'm not a very good driver. I mean, I don't hit things, but I can't make a rear-wheel drive do all of those lovely fishtailing and slidey things that stunt drivers do. However, I was blessed in the fact that the kid wasn't very good, either, and we both gamely plodded through the streets of LA at a decent, but hardly thrillingly fast, pace. Not thrillingly fast for the audience, that is. As far as I was concerned, it was fucking pell-mell, and my heart was doing a thuddity thing. I glanced over and saw Perry hanging out of the window, the gun in his hand, his brow furrowed like the Nile Delta.
"Shoot out a tire, man!" I yelled at him.
He ducked back in for a moment. "Stop weaving all over the fucking place! I'm going to hit the paint if you keep doing the bumper-car thing!"
I tried to keep steady. "Insurance will cover it! Just stop the bastard!"
Perry leaned out again, took careful aim, and shot. He got it right on; the right rear tire flattened just like my erection had earlier. The not-very-good driver at the wheel promptly lost control, and the car fishtailed like a pendulum, finally sliding into a curb with a painful crunch. Perry let out a moan as we pulled in behind it.
The kid wasted no time, and was out of the car and down an alley before we even got out. Perry chased him; I didn't. I turned to watch the woman who had followed us. She was standing next to a nondescript blue car that screamed "rental," looking levelly at me.
I'd like to say that some smoky saxophone music started playing, and she could not keep herself from throwing herself on me and sticking her tongue into good bits, but that would be lying. Instead, a police car screeched to a halt next to the curb, and I found myself at the station in short order, taken there with the blonde girl, and in the somewhat sticky position of having to explain to an irate sergeant why I had been driving a car that belonged to a couple whose house had been recently burnt to the ground.
God, I hate interrogations. It's giving me a headache just to remember this one. I'll kinda skip over it, as it isn't really important. It's detail, and it's good for setting the atmosphere, I'm told, but I think it's just boring as shit. It's not key to the plot, trust me. The abrupt way I was let go was, but I think you'll figure out why just about as quickly as I did. OK, from here on out things get more confusing, so I'm going to grab a cigarette before I finish. Maybe a drink or three. Later.