"Deepthroat"

Participants:

audrey_icon.gif unknown_icon.gif

Scene Title "Deepthroat"
Synopsis Audrey Hanson is taunted by a mysterious informant with uncertain motives, uncertain abilities, and uncanny knowledge.
Date February 1, 2011

DHS Facility


Cooper is puttering in his office somewhere - He enjoys having something resembling more than a desk in an open room. No calls for them to go out and the situation with the dome means that everyone is in and the place is in a general chicken with head cut off flurry of activity. Three cases of marked cranial trauma had come across her desk this last weekend, tossing up a flag and piquing her interest. She's waiting on pictures from one, hoping against hope that it's A father or son kill and not another false alarm.

Which means the ice cold coffee in the bottom of her mug with a picture of her two dogs - Fuck you cooper, she's going to own this mug - needs to be replenished with hot caffeine. Which might account for why she wasn't immediately in her office but was down the hall and in the small kitchenette where there be pots of the stuff.

But now she's heading back, paused to check on an intern and see if anything's been faxed yet and meandering back in her pumps, pencil skirt and blouse, ID hanging from her hip and holster sitting across her back and shoulders. Blonde as blonde can be, shy of platinum.

Phone in her pocket, vibrating.

It causes a start, the feeling of the phone throbbing on the inside pocket of her blazer. One steady hand is able to retrieve it from inside, balancing her coffee with the other, trying to wedge the door to her office open wth her shoulder. Across the touch screen of the Blackberry, 212-221-9615 with caller ID identification reading NYT PUBLIC. It's a pay phone.

Down the hall, a few suited DHS representatives pass by Audrey, one of them typing on his phone, the other talking on his. They intersperse brief conjecture between one another, while a few interns zip between them carrying folders of documentation up the other end of the hall. It's a circus in here today, and representatives from a half dozen newspapers and television crews are gathering on the ground floor in the press conference room for a briefing about the Dome situation.

Just what Audrey Hanson needs is one more thing to do today.

Takes two seconds to hit the little green phone button, bring her crackberry to her ear and bark out "Special Agent Audrey Hanson" in a greeting - terse - to whomever is on the other end of the phone. Likely some crack pot who's got some tip as to what the dome is about and somehow got the number to her cellphone. Technology these days. "Speak"

"Speak? Now that ain't a way to talk to nobody who ain't a dog, Agent Hanson…" The voice on the other end is familiar, garbled by a distortion device but speaking in familiar tone. It's the anonymous caller who contacted Audrey after her search into the capture of Aric Gibbs brought her under the scrutiny of the National Security Agency.

"I figured, you know, you might have some time to chit chat, me'n you." the voice crackles and pops over the phone, a bad connection or poor signal. Maybe that god damned dome is interfering with radio and satellite because of its size. "But if you're too busy, you know…"

"You look tired," sends a reflexive chill down her spine.

The last three words are enough to cause her to pause on the threshold of her office, look out towards the windows that line the far wall of the office area - She's got an inside office, and four walls. Then she's looking in her office. Air vents? Shelves? She wouldn't put it past the NSA to have done something like that if she had tripped over something sensitive.

"Beauty sleep is a commodity and my market is significantly down this quarter." Her coffee is placed on her desk, her jacket with it's leather gloves snagged from the coat rack, pinning her phone between her ear and shoulder as she works to put it on, before straightening, soft sided briefcase and purse next. She's not going to stay in her office.

"To what honor do I earn another mysterious call not preceeded by a verbal colon cleansing?" Her door is locked behind her and for all visual purposes, seems she's going home. Or out on a call.

"You have a pretty impressive career record. Partnered with Matt Parkman before he was so high up on the food chain as to be nigh invulnerable to protocol. Hunted down Sylar before the whole world even knew who the hell he was. The way I see it, Hanson, you've always been ahead of the curve. Cute ass, too, but you know I ain't counting that on your score card." The voice has a jovial, casual tone to it, if not somewhat facetious at times.

Outside of Audrey's office, a secretary on a cell phone passes by, chattering away and rolling her eyes, smiling. Another intern zips by, this one headed down the hall towards the elevators, carrying an armful of color-coded documents. "You got some attention when you dig a little too deep. That sorta' shit can make a person lose faith. So, I'm here t'say that you aren't the only one in your crowd raising eyebrows."

"You know that bad feeling you get sometimes, in the pit of your stomach? The one that tells you something's wrong before you really know what it is?" There's a purposeful pause by the man on the other end of the phone. "That's truth replacing lies. Truth's scary, ugly, and makes people angry. Do you care about making people angry, Hanson?"

"If you've seen my ass then your close enough to know that I wasn't digging for myself. Given that Gibb's case never crossed my desk. You know how it is. You play raquetball with your opposition in the DoEA, she gets the shaft on a case, pulls a few favors, I burn a few favors, ends up with the NSA breathing down my neck, cease and and desist orders and then mysterious masculine callers who aren't dropping a line for a booty call"

Stairs, not the elevator, popping off her heels and sliding a finger into each heel to carry them down as she walks in pantyhose clad feet down, down, down. Elevators are notorious for dropping calls.

"Society likes lies. They don't want the truth. Truth scares them. They don't want to know about the pervert next door, or the killer down the street. They don't want to know that Sylar's not laid out six feet under and sucking on Satan's teat. They like the lies. It makes them feel more comfortable and safe in their percieved and sometimes obvious ignorance. World is better that way. If they knew even half the truth, the country would be in revolt. Tell me-" She's two floors down and going.

"Do you believe in area 51?"

"'Course not, but I do believe in the Moab Federal Penitentiary, and I do believe in Coyote Sands." One of those two names strikes familiar to Audrey, if only because of the whistleblowing done by now wanted fugitive Vincent Lazzaro. "You're right about the truth, though. Nobody wants to hear it, and for the most part nobody needs to. The general public is a bunch of shit-chewing, grass-grazing little fuckwits that wouldn't know their ass from their elbows if you gave them a fucking diagram."

Vitriol laces through the caller's voice, and across the line it is mixed along with the sound of a noisy ding, ding, ding of a railroad crossing alarm. "Look, I'm gonna' be frank with you. I could use someone like you to do shit I can't, which isn't much but hey, throw a dog a bone right?"

A laugh accompanies the caller's voice, followed by a huff of breath and a sniffle. "Nocturne Ziadie," is stated into the receiver. "It isn't some fucking Jazz musician's name or the title of some trashy Anne Rice novel. He's Registered, a retired cop. You need him." It's a bolt assertion, one made as the doors to the elevator chime open two floors below where Audrey began her descent.

"There's some sketchy shit going on up here that I can't lay a finger on, and I got a lot of fingers, Hanson."

"…Speaking of which— can I make this a booty call?"

There's a sympathetic and sarcastic tchhh from the left side of her mouth, lifting her hand to scratch a thumb at her brow. "I don't even know your name caller of mine, and I like to at least know the name of my one night stands before I go all praying mantis on them" She keeps plodding her way down, occasionally stopping to look up through the center opening of the stairs and down.

"I like to know who's calling in a favor and what kind of favor before I agree to anything. It's one thing to do it for Pak and put my lovely ass on the line. I know she's not going to hang me to dry. It's another thing to do it for someone who won't even tell me his name and is likely talking through a voice modulator or even auto tune. Come on, sing me a show tune, if it's pitch perfect, I got your number"

"You can call me Gaston," the voice on the other end offers with a chuckle. "I ain't gonna' sing my theme song, though, that'd just be rude. Next time though, I promise something a little more intimate, maybe face to face. And hey— for all you know I lost my larynx to a long life of smoking cigars, right? Oh, shit, maybe I should call myself deepthroat."

There's a long, awkward pause.

"Wait— no on second thought can that be yours?"

Headed down the stairs, Audrey is largely alone, save for the sound of her own voice echoing off of the walls of the stairwell. Few people come and go thorugh here during the day, and on more than one occasion Audrey has caught younger agents using the privacy of the stairwell to vent their frustrations. The idea has occured to her from time to time too.

"Ahh, so you're one of those neighbourhood perverts"

"Get to the quick Gaston. What does Nocturne Ziadie have that I should know about and when he tells me, what are you hoping that I'm going to do. I don't like running around bushes. I'm a bitch who likes to get right to the point and not waste time. I've entertained your witty banter. You have until I reach the ground floor."

"International pervert, thank you. Consider this tryouts," Gaston comments dryly as Audrey rounds the next flight of stairs, heading towards a growing sound of voices permeating through the walls from the crowded ground floor made into a circus by the media presence today. "I wanna' see what you can put together on your own, and when I call you again, we'll see how far you've gotten and if you get the job."

The what?

"Until then, Deepthroat," there's a choked back laugh ont he other end of the phone as Audrey presses for the door nearest to her, a large, black 1 painted on the wall beside it. "Oh and— watch out for the reporter on the other side of the door."

Call Ended

Hearing that click on the other side of the phone, Audrey feels a near simultaneous clunk on the other side of the door, followed by a yelp of surprise and a stammer of apologetic sounds spilling from a young, female reporter and her camera crew that was standing too close to the door. Backing out of the way, she offers a silent grimace of apology to Audrey and turns back to her camera crew.

"Can we start again, from the break?" She asks, running a hand through her hair and stepping to the side of the door.

"I'll deepthroat my four inch heel down your gullet" The guy can't hear it, he's hung up, but she's muttered it into the phone anyways, and when she opens the door, Maybe that clunk is a little harder than it should be. Taking out the frustration about the call on the supposed and purported reporter on the other side. For all that the reporter apologizes, Ciara Collins likely, Audrey just scowls, pausing to put her heels on and stalk towards the main door, leave before any reporters can get a chance to ask her if she knows anything. Nocturne Ziadie.

She's got a precinct to visit, find out if they know where the retired cop is. Ask him some questions.


Meanwhile…

Queens


The receiver of the pay phone on the corner of 34th Ave and 42nd street accompanies a muffled ring inside of the graffiti-vandalized phone box. Stepping out from beneath the snow shrouded awning covering the payphone, a man dressed in a ratty brown overcoat with a canary yellow scarf wound around his throat exhales a breathy sigh, visible as a gout of steam in the cold air.

Turning to look towards the intersection, his attention focused on a convoy of National Guard personnel carriers headed towards the sound of sirens and flashing lights to the west, where snow is beginning to settle in haunting stillness atop the gradual curve of a dome-like silhouette dividing Queens from Manhattan.

A smile cuts across his stubbled jaw, satisfied with the conversation.

Now all he has to do is wait.


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