Participants:
Scene Title | Deja Fuckin' Vu |
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Synopsis | Cardinal and Deckard play phone tag re: Logan's most recent evil doings. |
Date | June 08, 2009 |
It's at the end of a run of his oddly charitable work of late that Cardinal checks with his usual message spots. 'Call please' - no name, but the number seems familiar. Curious. The shadowman's thumb dials it in as he relaxes in the mess set up on the air field, letting it ring as he stirs his spoon through the soup. He's getting kind of sick of soup.
Deckard is asleep.
He's also in the shower.
And in a suit.
Hard water drums off grey soaked to black, rapping off sturdy fabric and the slack knot of his tie pulled loose around his neck. Hair plastered dark to his head, brows knit, he's slow to stir to a faint, sickly buzzing at his chest. He's slower still to lift his watch to where he can squint at it on his way to reaching up and shutting the tap off so that he can reach into his coat after his phone, both long legs extended out the open shower stall door, back slumped against the tile wall. Unknown reads the screen. Probably kind of a miracle that it reads anything at all. Boop!
"Deckard."
"…Deckard?" The soup spoon pauses before Cardinal's lips, his brow furrowing a little, "What the hell do you want? I got a message you wanted to talk to me, old man?"
"Oh. You." Not 100% conscious, Deckard sounds less than enthusiastic across the line, voice rougher than usual in its rasp when he reaches his free hand up to squeegee resilient water off the hollowed out planes of his face. Drip. Drip. "Hey." Even the shower light is too bright to look at. He's quick to tip his bristled jaw down after daring to peer up for a few slogging seconds. How long has he been in here? Back to the watch again. It's stopped. "Yeah I — think Logan might be up to something again." Tip, clap. He manages to nudge one of his shoes off, socked toes splaying before the set to work on the second one. "He says he has Eileen."
There's silence for a few long moments, and then the sound of the spoon clattering with a splash into the bowl. "Fuck. Fuck. Why do I fucking trust anyone to use any goddamn sense with what I— god damn it. Are you sure?"
"Well…I didn't see her there." For obvious reasons. Cynicism traces along Flint's irritable word choice. The water was warm. Now it's getting cold — the flat cling of his suit increasingly uncomfortable. He wipes at his face again, tongue worked thick against the tacky dryness at the roof of his mouth. "That's where you come in, Mother Theresa."
"I've been there before, I know where all the cells and shit are…" A frustrated sigh stirs on the other end of the phone, Cardinal's fingers rubbing against his brow, eyes closing, "…okay. I'll take a look there, see what I can find. Deja fuckin' vu - why haven't I just fuckin' put a bullet in his head, I don't fuckin' know."
Clop. The second shoe finally tips free and Deckard squints against a fresh trickle of water down the hood of his brow and into his eye. The one Logan carved out not that many months ago. The socket is sunken and dark, as increasingly gaunt as the rest of him. "Because he has the best whores in town?" Maybe? Probably a safe bet that has something to do with his own persistent restraint. "He said she's free to come and go. I dunno the situation but he was all wound up when he thought I might be there for her."
At that statement, Cardinal exhales a rough snort. "Yeah, because he's a reliable source. As for the whores, we don't all need to buy our pussy like you, old man." The rancor all fades a moment later, though, "Okay. Thanks. I'll go check on her."
A sigh threads thin through Deckard's sinuses, kicking cold runoff out with it past the tip of his nose. There's no comeback — just dejected tolerance in the lift of his brows, invisible across the line. Fair enough. "If I don't hear back from you by tomorrow I'll say a prayer."
"A bit late for you to find religion," Cardinal replies in quiet tones, "And I'm not going down from a punk like John Logan."
"Don't worry. I was only bullshitting you." Deeper annoyance takes root there, flattening out the lines across Deckard's forehead while he brushes a thumb over the power button, only to hold the phone out and tack on a coarse, "He didn't get me because I was an idiot," before he cuts the line with a button mash stiff enough to make the surrounding plastic creak against the tension. A side-wristed toss clears the phone out of the shower and sends it clattering away across damp tile to a rest near the door a minute later.
Click. Cardinal looks at the phone for a moment, then viciously thumbs the 'off' button. "Well, fuck you too, old man," he mutters, slamming the phone down, his head falling back as he glares at the inside of his eyelids. "Damn it." What's that, Lassie? Eileen's trapped in the old brothel?