Participants:
| Scene Title | Guess Who |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | You can't betray trust when you don't have it, right? |
| Date | August 22, 2009 |
By night, Burlesque has a little extra high class shimmer and sparkle to it than its former incarnation of Exotica, which had more sleaze than glitter. During the day, you couldn't tell the two apart. Sunlight is attempting to wriggle its way passed heavily curtained windows, and it's smoggy with smoke from the leaking cigarettes clenched in the fingers of the daylight patrons. Anonymous men who dot the space here and there, singular, with no where else better to be. Women of the daylight shifts, rail-thin young things gyrating to Led Zeppelin blaring from a jukebox, pay them all the attention they can afford.
Logan is paying attention to nothing, not the patrons nor the ladies, but a gin and tonic, a burning cigarette, an open business diary and his cellphone. His taken up a shady corner of a booth towards the back, which awards him a good vantage point of the entrance of the building, and speaking quietly into the cell he holds up to his ear, chin resting in his hand.
"…soon as possible would be grand, you'd be surprised about the types of people you get around these parts…"
It's a warm day, and his jacket is slung over the back of the leather boots. The wide-necked, gauzy, paper-thin grey sweater is likely designer in its simplicity and no less ostentatious than his former splashes of leopard print and zebra if only in ridiculous price. Pinstripe slacks are well tailored and end in a ever so slightly trashy pair of faux-iguana shoes, metal tips at the points and a slight lift to the heel.
"…course I've got security, but— I've not got eyes in every corner and that worries me. Right, yes. Laura Morgan?" He brings a leather covered diary closer to him, picking out the silver pen tucked into its seam and writing down a name and number, momentarily distracted from watching the entrance. "Lovely, thank you."
"You talk loudly on your phone," comes the politely courteous voice from beside the booth. It's a familiar voice, one John Logan went out of his way to shake out of a tree, a voice belonging to the darkly dressed man standing at Logan's side, having crept up like a ghost. "Fortunately your business is not typically my concern," he slides around the booth's table, making himself comfortable at a seat opposite of where John is, then motions towards Logan's cell phone before leaning back and folding his hands in a very whenever you have the time. gesture..
Feng's sunglasses don't come off, even indoors, but it does little to hide his eyes wandering around the club as he off-handedly adds. "This is quite the lateral movement, isn't it?" One black brow rises up as he turns to look back over to John. "Something to be said for the lusterless charm of progressive promotions."
"Blimey— " …is hissed out almost tonelessly between his teeth when a ninja materialises just there, Logan manages at least not to jump in his seat even as he jerks his phone away from his ear. He didn't have time, really, to say thank you and goodbye to whoever's on the other end, which is fine, because you never do all that in movies anyway. Blinking owlishly for a moment, Logan's back is ramrod straight as Feng goes to sit down, but eventually, the Chinaman is awarded a tight smile from the Englishman, and there's a soft whisper of pages as he shuts his diary, laying a hand over the leather cover as he glances at his phone— still engaged— and brings it back to his ear.
"Got to go, thanks again," he says into it, keeping a cattishly avid gaze on Feng all the while, a coy upturn at the corner of his mouth in a mild smirk. "This is just the sort of thing I'm talking about."
Click. He snaps the phone closed and goes to squirrel it away into the pockets of his discarded coat, shoulders lifting and falling in a shrug. "Just a new adventure across the river," Logan says, breezily, his accent hiking back up into someplace that doesn't resemble the East End. "I get bored, especially when former businesses burn to the ground, and all that. But as you said, fortunately, it's none of your concern."
"I hope you laid out the breadcrumbs for more than just spread thighs," Feng states dryly, hands folding on the table top as he reclines back against the supple leather of the booth's bench seat. "Because I'd like to think our arrangement has been a mutually benificial one, but…" Disquiet haunts across Feng's features as he leans forward and gives Logan a more appraising look, "things change." One dark brow raises higher than his other as Feng considers that and rhetorically asks, "have they changed, mister Logan?"
"No." The smoldering cigarette pinched between Logan's fingers is flicked so as to spill ash into the glass cigarette tray placed off towards his left. "They haven't. You had me at 'hello', or— whatever it is you said the first time." He too reclines into his seat, legs crossing at the knee beneath the rounded table and glance dancing over towards where a woman with red-from-a-box hair is swinging herself around a pole upon the barely lit stage.
Nothing wrong with spread thighs, at the end of the day. "Last I saw you, you wanted to know there whereabouts about one Eileen Ruskin." Logan's voice comes across almost husky, intimate, but if only thanks to discretion - he'd been told he talks loud on the phone, but he keeps a lid on the volume of his voice this time. "And guess who came knocking on my door the other day."
About to venture with his knowledge of Ruskin's whereabouts, it's only when Logan suggests she's slipped out of her rabbit hole that he gives the Brit a more scrutinizing stare. "Did she, now?" Feng's brows crease together, head tilting to the side. "Eileen's been like a mouse hiding from a very large snake as of late," no Cat analogies, not for Feng at the very least. "What do you want," the dark-haired assassin adds next, both of his brows rising up quickly.
"You wouldn't offer this information to me without dangling it from a string." Feng's dark eyes size up Logan quietly from behind the lenses of his sunglasses, thumbs brushing over one another as he laces his fingers together, hands folding in front of him. "What's your angle, Mister Logan?"
His pale green eyes turn to crescents beneath a heavy hooded look in Feng's direction. "Profit," Logan says, gently. "I'm many things, and a businessman is first and foremost, as a rule. The second thing I am is a vindictive cunt, and I like revenge, best served cheaply. She's been looking for you, Feng."
Logan's gaze drops down towards his glass of gin, tonic and ice, picking it up and swinging it in subtle angles to and fro. "Out of the goodness of my heart and for a tidy profit, I'd love to see you two have the reunion you're both clearly craving. The difference between you and her is that I wouldn't mind being rid of her. She's also given me two hundred dollars, and more where that came from should I tell her about your whereabouts. Now, depending on what you have to offer…"
A smile accompanies these words, and Logan takes his time drawing a sip from his drink, then leans upon the table a little closer, through the haze of his own cigarette smoke. "Depending on what you have to offer, I'll tell her anything you like."
"Looking for me?" Feng's lips creep up into a smile, "To be absolutely honest, Mister Logan, my end goal isn't Ruskin," Feng explains with a rise of his brows, withdrawing a narrow white envelope from his jacket to lay on the table. "I did need her — before — because she's a gateway to someone else I'm looking for; a man named Ethan Holden. I think you two had a small falling out where he cost you several thousand dollars?" Shielded behind the lenses of his sunglasses, it's hard to say exactly what Feng's looking at, but given how intently he's sharpened his words towards Logan, it's undoubtably the Brit that has his full focus.
"I have an offer, of something you're missing." The envelope is pushed forward across the table, Feng's brows lifted with a crooked smile on his lips. "I give you this, and you tell Ruskin that I came by here looking for her, and that you didn't give me anything worthwhile. Give her some small measure of comfort, and then— well— I think distracting both she and Holden is exactly what I need right now."
Leaning back against the seat, Feng folds his hands in his lap and nods towards the envelope with a silent offer of go ahead, it's yours.
Head tilting a little, Logan lets his gaze drop down towards the envelope, before pulling to closer. Running his fingers beneath the paper seam with a rustle, he extracts what's inside with all the fidget of someone much younger than he opening a Christmas present. The glossy photographs inside are not what's expected. "Bloody hell," Logan murmurs, dropping the envelope in favour of going through the pictures, the muttered Britishism given when he recognises the older of the two women featured in this collection. "One happy fucking family."
He catches his bottom lip beneath his teeth, a tease of a smile at the corners of his mouth as he looks back across Feng. "Well. I know my part." Logan picks up his cigarette, ashing off the small cylinder of ash that's collected at its burning tip with a delicate flick. "Let's hope you live up to your own legend."
A flutter of a wink is given across the table. "And, naturally, you can do better than the two hundred she's given me and the four hundred she will be giving me."
Feng raises a brow slightly, giving Logan a side-long look, "Beat a stick at the hedges, John, see if you can scare out the foxes from their hole." Feng's glasses slide down the bridge of his nose, revealing dark eyes that are focused across the room at the door, ones that slowly swivel back to Logan afterwards. "Then, if you manage to scare out Ruskin and Holden… I may have something else for you. The other woman," his hand waves ambiguously, but it's obvious who he means, "she's yours."
"As for money," Feng reaches up to push his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose, sliding out from the booth with the fingertips of one hand still resting on the tabletop. "One step at a time," his voice has all the flatness of an investment banker, "so try not to trip up?"
Muldoon spoke to him like that too. Must be a universal thing. Logan taps the edges of the photographs against the table, a gesture of discontent at the lack of cold hard cash in his palm, but otherwise he reclines back in his booth and smiles up at the other man.
"I'll watch my feet," he confirms, arms spreading out along the back of the booth, the fan of images caught in one hand. "And I'll be in touch with you soon. Maybe next time you'll even let me buy you a drink - you seem the kind of man who needs to loosen up." The simmer of giddiness that accompanies that, low in Feng's stomach, is almost too obviously artificial, a chemical reaction to nothing that goes on in Feng's head or whatever excuse he has for a heart.
"Someone once told me, that there will be time to rest when— "Feng's brows rise, uncertainty crossing his face for a moment as a smile threatens the corners of his mouth, he can't help but laugh tersely — he really can't. "He said we can rest when we're all dead." There's a crease of Feng's brows as he takes a step back, hands tucking into the pockets of his slacks as one shoulder rises higher than the other, a subtle nod given to Logan before the assassin turns halfway, considering the strange Brit one last time before edging his way towards the exit of what was once Exotica — now the far more sultry club named Burlesque.
Two snakes, and not a moment of hissing; imagine that.