Participants:
| Scene Title | A Fucking Awful Way |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Logan and Caliban Muldoon inform one another of immediately impending life changes. |
| Date | March 21, 2011 |
Dorchester Towers: Logan's Apartment
James Muldoon— and this is how John Logan likes to assign his name— will have the door opened to gentle jazz from some easy listening station emitted from silver sound system, the ever present cloy of cigarette smoke, and naturally, the man who lives there. Supposedly.
The door opens wider to silver and white and black bachelor pad, and for once, it's actually cluttered — but only in the way it gets when one is shifting their things, as opposed to the debris of living. Two large suitcases lie closed on the white carpet, the glass coffeetable shifted aside to make way — they are antiquated things, bought for style and interest in their age as opposed to the crisp, sharp fashion of almost everything else in the room. They contain clothing, for the most part, and a lupara in the case of the one with the bronze corners. Boxes of shoes are being moved into an oak and leather trunk that Caliban has never seen here before, another antique, and this is a task that Logan resumes once he paces back into the apartment.
A black and silver kimono, worn like a robe over sweatpants and wife-beater, left to hang loose and open, whispers its hem after him as he passes by a couple of cardboard boxes already sealed. The most Logan has to take with him is clothing, shoes, weapons and magazines. Some kitchen accessories. Everything else is owned by the apartment, having never really populated it with much in the first place.
"The bar kit's still open, if you want a drink," is greeting in that it's the first thing Logan says, over his shoulder.
Muldoon— Caliban— whatever name he'd prefer to go by these days smells like he's already had one. His breath reeks of scotch and his clothes smoke — the kind cigarettes put out and not the fancier, fatter cigars he's sometimes seen with, pinched between gloved fingers, though neither is lit in his hand now. He leans a shoulder into the door frame, observing the state of Logan's apartment, and maybe he'd appear more concerned if the circles under his eyes were not so dark and the stubble on his jaw not so thick. A few more days and it will be a real beard, and not the salt-and-pepper scruff of someone who's been consuming more drinks every day than the number of hours of sleep he's getting every night.
He assumes he knows why the room in front of him is in its current state of dishevelment.
He is, of course, wrong, but that doesn't stop him from roughing out a low, "What's all this then?" as he reaches up and scrubs a hand over the side of his face, looking between Logan and the assorted boxes.
"I'm moving to Europe. Getting married in Luxembourg, where it's legal." Hogan, Prada, Gucci are dropped one after the other into a very basic tetris configuration of shiny cardboard and watermarked logos. "Would you prefer to give me away, or be best man?"
No drink, then. Logan doesn't go for one himself, or even delve for cigarettes at the sight of someone else imbibing. He does turn back to Muldoon, and sweep a stare up and down that is reasonably cynical, maybe amused, in light of recent events and history's repetition. It's not quite pity when he opts to drop the game with; "I'm moving back to Staten Island. The grass is always greener, and all that. I've seen homeless people look better rested than you right now, old man."
Several seconds elapse where it looks as though Muldoon might actually buy it. That initial story. His brows go up, and his mouth even twists into an expression of protest that stills, recedes when Logan breaks the silence with the truth. He finds less fault in this, somehow, letting his arm drop back to his side as he steps into the apartment and pulls the door shut behind him.
He prefers doors that way. If Linderman kept his closed, he and the younger Englishman might not be in this mess. "That's just as well," he says, circling once around the sofa before sinking down into the cushions, and although it feels good to take some of the weight off his feet, no relief shows on his face. "I came here to impart a warning — they're making the final adjustments to the boss-man's noose. You'll be reading about it in the papers by this time next week.
"Do you have protection?" It's a question that fathers are allowed to ask their sons. The context is just not as it should be. He doesn't mean rubbers.
It would be a little later, in a few ways, had he meant that. So Logan picks the right meaning.
"Yes. No. I don't know." Whud. The heavy lid of the oak trunk is slammed shut with a yank, Logan turning with a dramatic flare of crisp silk to perch on the edge. Right. The noose. Pale eyes lid a little as a hand roams to rub the back of his own neck. By the time he's opening his eyes again, Muldoon is settled, and he turns that look to the older man, speculative. The urge to gush words about his own circumstance is stemmed with a remarkable amount of restraint when he asks, instead, "What's going to happen?"
"They'll move to arrest him," Muldoon says, hands on his knees, "and when they do, I'll place a call to his personal physician upstate, who will deal with things quietly, and efficiently. All there will be left is a body for them to recover and wealth to seize. What we haven't transferred to our own names will become property of the American government regardless of who he intended to leave it to, and if anyone puts up a fight in an attempt to claim it, either the Department of Evolved Affairs or some other branch will step in and declare it all evidence of Linderman's crimes so it can be held indefinitely."
He bends at the middle, leaning forward, and slides his hands off his knees to form a loose clasp between his legs, watching Logan with blue eyes gone bloodshot around the edges. "Because they couldn't take Linderman, they'll take into custody his financial advisors and other key personnel who could've reasonably had knowledge about the truth. You were hired by the Group years after Midtown, so you're in the clear. Nichols and I will have a tougher go of it, but she's clean. Robert Caliban a little less so."
His eyes drop to his hands and he begins to pick idly at his nails in an attempt to occupy them. "If I find myself backed into a corner, I suppose I'll just tell them that Richard Cardinal killed Kain Zarek and see what happens."
Logan remembers Robert Caliban too, some decade and change ago, a Lindergoon with legacy. An eyebrow raises at this last part, before going neutral again, looking passed the other man and out the view through the windows. It's not actually a very good one, but the apartment is nice. He folds his arms around his midsection. "I'd tell you if there was anything I could do for you, but I don't exactly know where I stand anymore. I suppose you could throw in with me— "
He huffs out a chuckle. Actually… "There's a village, now, in Staten Island. For people like us. I was unfortunate enough to witness some soldiers murder civilians during the riots in November, and apparently I was so charming that they offered me a position. If you're desperate— " And he tips a look at James, one that communicates: and I mean, really desperate. "You could tell them the truth and your circumstances. You weren't in with Daniel around Midtown.
"You're just Rookery royalty, like me. And with your ability, maybe you'd be useful enough to look after."
"I could," Muldoon concedes, sounding dubious, "but I'd need to give them a damned good reason not to arrest me on multiple charges of fraud and whatever else that wife of mine might've been able to make stick." He keeps his focus on his hands, at least for the time being, and pulls at a piece of nail that's separated from the rest, having lost his gloves somewhere between the front door and the sofa. Their leather fingers hang limp out of his coat pocket. "I'm not sure if my ability will be enough, all things considered."
Nostalgia hooks his mouth into a rueful grin, and there's a flicker of something feline behind his eyes that Logan hasn't seen for a long time. "I'll know how desperate I am when the knock comes. I'll tell you that right now it isn't enough to set foot on Staten Island again as long as that Colonel Heller's running things from Miller Airfield. I've heard rumours, John — they aren't good. What's he offered you?"
A slight shrug beneath papery silk, Logan honestly unsure if it would be enough. Or wouldn't be enough. "I'm not exactly entirely clean either, not if they tried hard enough. And a witness they won't want, when all's said and done. You can tell exactly what power a man has, which isn't something they got a test for, or anything that's not invasive. Don't undersell yourself.
"And I dunno exactly. Pay cheque. Freedom to get in and out. Bossing people around. A brothel, he said, and I'm making him keep his word on that one. Also not being dead in a ditch for seeing the things I shouldn't. I suppose he imagines me weasel enough to trust." A leg kicks up to fold over the other one, and there's no word about whether that's true or not. "The rumours are about as bad as you know, maybe worse. But the same could've been said of the Rookery too."
A smile alights, and it masks a degree of fear — or tries to. Rests on it uneasily instead.
Muldoon can sense Logan's discomfort. Coming from a different man, under different circumstances, it's something he'd try to exploit, but John is John and the balance of power between them is not what it used to be. "In the beginning," he says, "it was about making a profit. Then survival. I couldn't tell you what we're looking at now, because it isn't that. Not anymore. Go anywhere — you're only putting off the inevitable.
"Kapo. Thug. That's what the colonel expects you to be. Disobey him or outlive your usefulness and that's the end of it. You become the next rumour, another bloodstain on the wall. No body, mind. They'll burn that. Turn the evidence to ashes and leave it for the wind to scatter." He isn't smiling anymore. His blue eyes lift and meet Logan's paler green ones. "I only wish it was that easy for us. I've something else to ask you — you aren't going to like it."
Sullenness drops like a curtain, smile vanished and stare glancing off Muldoon and into the corner of the room at prissy irritation. There's argument in the set of his jaw, but Logan doesn't give it a voice right now, the restraint put in place so as not to, possibly, burn what few bridges he has left. Muldoon knows him well enough to see the swallowing of words, even while new ones are forming. He stands, bare feet padding across the carpet as he nears.
"Smoke," is prim request.
Muldoon reaches into his coat, pops open his cigarette case, a bulkier, brassier thing than what Logan carries around, and produces a skinny cigarillo, the last of half a dozen, which he offers to Logan between two knuckles of his dominant hand. There's a light at the ready, too — a matchbox cupped in his opposite palm with fingers curled loose around it. "The families who were relying on Linderman's protection need somewhere to go. We have a few with abilities the registry might classify as too dangerous to be left to their own devices, but there's a share of political dissenters as well who have legitimate concerns about being disappeared after the Group as we know dissolves.
"I'd seek out Abigail's people myself if I knew where to look. All my contacts, with the exception of Nichols' little sister, and I don't want to go through her, are on the other side of things. You, though. You're friendly with more than a few of them now, aren't you? Laudani? Chesterfield?"
"Friendly's a fucking awful way to state it, old man."
This is said through cynical laughter and smoke both, the strike of match following the nursing of smoke to rise a haze of it around Logan by the time he's tossing matchbook back. He moves, sitting on the other end of the sofa, a leg coming to fold beneath the other. "As far as I know, Chesterfield doesn't have ill-will. Laudani's willing to do business now and then. Another one, Eileen— Constantine's clinic assistant, you might remember. We have something of a business relationship.
"You want me to funnel these people into the network?" He doesn't look so unhappy about this request — there is sharp inquisition in pale eyes, the tilt of his head as he regards the other man's craggier face.
At least Logan is laughing and not outright gnashing his teeth as Muldoon had anticipated. A small blessing, but at this point he will take whatever he can get. "Yes," he says, tone gone abruptly flat, frankness for the sake of frankness. "At this stage, I'm incapable of seeing them safely to Canada or even out of the state with the clock ticking as swiftly as it is, but I can see them to Staten Island, or north— wherever it is that the network has gone to. I've read about the partisans in the papers and can only assume they're one and the same."
His tone hikes up toward the end of this, and although it might not be an explicit question, it nevertheless seeks confirmation. What does Logan know that James doesn't? "Twenty-four individuals total. There are children, but only in the company of their parents. Can you do it?"
"Why do you care?"
Here is the gnashing, or at least— he bares his teeth, but only out of emphasis and maybe disgust. Caring for one person seems stunningly difficult enough, but being responsible for a whole hoard of them seems like insanity — especially seeing as Logan is almost certain he's the only one on the sofa thinking about what price this mob of Evolved and Evo-kin might get them. Implicit query goes unnoticed, or maybe Logan doesn't know after all. He doesn't ask if there are any girls without family ties looking for a place of employment.
Maybe later.
"I don't," Muldoon asserts, "but I've a moral obligation," which is really the same thing as caring but phrased in a way that's more palatable to him. "If you're asking me what I've got to gain from it, then the answer is nothing.
"You, however, do." Presumably he does not mean a bullet lodged in the back of his skull, either, as he rises from his seat on the sofa, his long legs unfolding. "The network exists to help people like these, doesn't it? We aren't burdening them more than they're already prepared to be burdened, and perhaps by taking the initiative it will further strengthen their trust in John Logan whether or not friendly's a fucking awful way to state it."
Cigarillo is pointed lit end up at Muldoon, Logan declining to rise to his feet as the older man does. "I'm not stupid, James. I know what it means to do it, so I will — or I'll see what I can do. But I'm not the one who's got the moral obligation, and I'm just a bit cynical that you've collected yourself a mob of dependants to make me look good. It's your wife, you know. She's ruined you. But," he slouches back into seat, filter end back to his mouth, set between teeth.
"Remember what I said. About if you find yourself cornered. Running a brothel wouldn't be the same without someone doing the budgets and bitching about expenditures instead of shutting up and fucking prostitutes every other visit."
"I like to think she's saved me." Muldoon words carry with them the heat of his temper, but they're level and he manages to keep the colour from flooding into his face. He gives a short sniff instead and retreats around the sofa the same way he came in, the tips of his fingers trailing along the furniture's back, then dipping into his coat pocket to retrieve his gloves.
He snaps them out, then on. "But maybe I've simply gone soft in my old age. Reformed pessimists usually are."
He refuses to call himself an optimist.
"Soft, saved. Same thing."
Cigarillo ash litters the carpet in an aggravated flick of the younger Briton's fingers, looking away now and near sulking where he sits as he doesn't add more words to the one he's already delivered. Logan can't claim back what he had on Staten Island, despite what Heller says, no more than he can make Robert Caliban be James Muldoon. Caught off guard and therefore quiet, he let's James take on the awkward ritual of excusing himself, offering no help.
"I'll be seeing you," is a promise of some kind, though Muldoon does not elaborate on what. He finds the door's handle easily enough and lets his hand rest there long enough that Logan might be able to count the seconds and assign it a number that means more than his stony silence does, but then it's turning and his father figure disappears out into the hall.
He does not slam the door behind him, whatever he may be feeling. Closes it with a gentle click of quiet finality.