Participants:
| Scene Title | Liable To Get Caught |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Logan seeks information as well as an ally in the den of the lion. |
| Date | November 16, 2010 |
Fancy diners of the world— or the immediate city— will be glad to see that d'Sarthe's survived the worst of the 8th. Where better but to have your meals but beneath chandelier while glass is still being swept up from looting, extensive damage, soldiers in the streets, while others are making fish and dove stew for masses of refugees. Logan would probably be less nervous about blending in with them, however, than he is now as he steps into the lovely restaurant.
He avoids displaying this, of course, posture straight and hands still, expression only quizzical — what you can see of it, anyway, with his eyes hidden beneath tinted glass, framed silver. He does draw them off for the sake of politeness, hooking little finger around the silver arm and tugging, folding specs up and disappearing them into the pocket of his jacket. Suit without a tie, shirt closed rather than buttoned but of a soft wool that there is still some formality in designer, shimmering grey and V-neck. No coat to take, braving the slight chill in the air from taxi cab to establishment door for only a few swift moments.
Also: unarmed. Mostly, anyway.
The various enterprises headed by this particular group do not usually need to worry about the same issues that regularly affect business; there is enough money already in the establishments that a great many of them are able to slow to a near standstill and remain functional. The staff at this helm restaurant would normally be shorthanded if it were business as usual. As such, it is not. Marie finds herself as one of only a few dessert chefs, for the moment. She's just off her shift, as it were, decked in an apron, a papery white shirt, and puffed with white clods of flour. She's done her best to wash it from her face, and make sure that her smooth, wavy brown hair is pulled back, but there are always going to be smudges. Spending her 'break' in the kitchen is better than most outside, right now, and off one part of the kitchen is a small room for such things.
A table, a small window, chairs and a small fridge that is probably better described as a mini-bar. It's not much, but enough so that the daughter of the boss is able to fold her hands and lean back, her ballet flats dusted in the same fine white. A man in a suit has no trouble getting direction in here- especially provided he provides a name to find. The staff understands what it means to work here, for the most part.
Not quite as quiet as ballet flats, Italian leather shoes mostly announce themselves in squeaky newness than thudding steps, Logan moving lightly through the restaurant until he's where he was directed, without the kind of hesitation that comes when one find themselves in officialish, staff only territory. "Bonjour," is greeting, and though Logan really needs to not attempt to say any words that aren't English until he can bother shaking intrinsic London from his voice, his poor pronunciation is not actually mocking her.
Even waits at the threshold of the staff area, fingertips making a musical rhythm against door frame as he tilts his head and sweeps a look over what he'd consider to be a humble appearance of someone who works with their hands for a living. A slight, darting, not very thorough glance around the space.
"Merde, Pourquoi Vous êtes ici…" Marie's voice sounds immediately exasperated, when she opens her lazy eyelids and takes in the man coming into the break room. She sits up, eyes narrowing and lips thinning. She doesn't look particularly pleased to see him, but Marie getting angry is sort of like catching a leprechaun. Her voice is always smooth, her manner always delicate. "Je préfère ne pas."
"Hello, John Logan." Marie settles back to English, sitting up quietly again and making a moment of dusting flour from her sleeve.
"Hello." That, decidedly English, with the h phased out subtly and the o kicking round, and Logan lets himself in despite that rare glimmer of impatience— anger? Negative energy, from what he knows to be serene, willowy mobster-sprog. "I didn't catch any of that, but if that's fuck off in French, then I'd beg you to reconsider." He doesn't sound very pleady, however, more assumptive than he has a right to be as he heads further into the room, gripping the back of a chair nearby and moving to sit down.
Scents of flour and food and daylight is mildly soured by staler scents of smoke and sleeplessness from the Briton — but at least he isn't lighting up. "How's business?"
Marie, sitting across from him now, folds her palms down on the tabletop and peers over to him with a decidedly impassive expression. That calm is back, as it always is. She does not seem as irritated as perhaps, unsure about his being there. He surely has better places to be, more important people to bother like this. Nonetheless, she entertains his presence with the usual peace.
"Slow. Obviously. We've downsized, for now. If there is one thing that people will keep doing, it is going to parties, drink at those parties, and eat out. It is New York." Marie's lips turn in a small smile. "What of yours? I know that tits and ass are as much a fine staple as liquor, non?" That was …new.
"My." He doesn't sound offended, anyway, amusement enriching his tone and that neutral smile broadening into something truer. "No, you're quite correct — some things never go out of style." One leg is slung over the other and arm hooks over the back of his chair, Logan considering her and wondering exactly how much smalltalk either of them might be able to take. There are lines at his eyes, either from short night hours or the fact he's a year off thirty, marking his achievement of remaining alive to nearly see three decades.
It's something to do with wanting to meet that goal that has him here, very likely. "I've a colleague that died," he admits, finally. "He was killed, and you might've seen in the papers. Kain Zarek." His voice is quiet, but only conversationally so, rather than trying to scrape for a whisper. "I was interested in what you might have heard."
Marie refrains from making an answer at first, allowing herself a moment of both reverie and consideration of the matter. "Yes, I have heard." She looks quite sad about this, oddly enough- at least, more than someone might normally. She knew Kain well enough, it appears. "It is unfortunate. But I haven't heard anything apart from gossip and what the papers write. If there were something more, I think I may have heard of it by now." This may be a half truth, considering who she is.
"I suppose that you are here because you are looking for more too? Or perhaps you have suspicions." Marie fixes him with her pale green eyes.
His own blink back at her, smile gone as their conversation knifes to the meat of the conversation, and his purpose for being here. "I have suspicions," Logan concedes, breaking stare to skim attention along the surface of a nearby table, still restless and on edge despite the looseness of his limbs, posture slackened into the back of his chair. "But too many of them, I'm afraid. I knew your dad and he had something together, some arrangement. Zarek let me in on that much— took his time, granted, but he did.
"If you're protecting Gideon, then you shouldn't. Won't be worth much, in the end. I just want to know if he knew anything about it." Wait, she did say too. His head cants to the left as if reconsidering her. "Unless you're just as curious as I am."
"Mister Zarek and my father had an arrangement. It was effectively to keep Kain under wing while we-" Marie pauses, finding no apparent issue in sharing. Because she is so open, he must be very correct about her wanting to know. No other reason to be like this, unless she was looking for someone else that also does. "-while my father worked at mister Linderman." Her tongue on the name almost seems embittered by saying it. "I am not protecting anyone, aside from myself."
"Kain was a loss, to both of us." A pale hand rubs idly at the curves of fine knuckles. "But I know that nobody here had anything to do with it." Marie's jaw sets, her eyes momentarily steely. "I would know, if they did."
"Hang on."
A vague wave of a hand, as if to dispel the serious tension befalling the room as easily as he could wave away the smoke he's not imbibing right now. "How much of a loss was Kain to you? Blimey, fancy envying a dead man." There's no easy way to casually touch and instill a sense of warm in artificial response to flirtation and teasing, and there's something reflected back at Logan in her eyes that has him hesitating to try it at a range, so he doesn't, just twitches a smile at her and fidgets with silver ring at his thumb, twisting the loop of metal around.
"I believe you," he adds, voice lower as his words get back on track. The truthiness of that is murky, but there's a note of casual sincerity instilled into his tone. "I just don't trust your old man not to stick knives in people under his wing. Zarek was using him as a diversion. Did you know that?"
From a distance, there is nothing about Marie that gives any hint as to what she meant by it. Only her halfway vacant stare, and the ivory of her fingers fidgeting slightly at the table. And of course, that something that somehow keeps him from trying anything influential.
"I guessed as much. It was that he wanted Daniel for his own, isn't that right?" Marie brandishes the sword here with such skill, that effectively, she has probably just lopped the head from this Jabberwock. "I know that Kain was a true man, despite his choice of lifestyle. I think that he wanted to do right, even if his method was not the most right itself."
"As I said, a loss."
"He started doing stupid deals, like the one that brought you and yours here — no offense — and amongst other things. Getting reckless. I'm just looking for which mistake did him in and how much I share of it." The chair scrapes as Logan gets to his feet, fixing the sit of his jacket, the slight heaviness of one pocket where blade rests untouched, along with other weapons, not the least of which the one that comes with a genetic marker in his chemistry.
Demure sets chair back where he yanked it, and casts a look down to her. Talk of Kain doing right things make his own more monetary ambitions seem somewhat shallow, but to Logan, at least, smarter. "How's Gideon taking the news?" he thinks to ask.
"A loss is a loss, John Logan. Though he knew Kain was valuable to him, he knows that it won't be the last man to come to him." Marie frowns, barely visible, eyes following Logan as he stands there. "I think, that if you want to find where he made a mistake, you don't start at who may have wanted him dead. Start with the neutral parties, perhaps there is something you've missed. You cannot hope to get anywhere, if you move from player to player."
"It is most often the ones watching the game, that bet on it."
The game plan is, or was, to be charming and likeable, but a frission of impatience— pride, too— cracks the veneer as Logan comments, "Darling, I didn't come for advice." It's at least an honest reaction, somewhat bristling and overtired. He hesitates, as if regretting some of the edge in his tone, exhaling once before pushing more words out as if to scroll it by. "I've my suspicions — specific ones, and I'm looking for confirmation 'stead of a starting point. And it seems like a stupid move to leave rocks unturned.
"So consider this one flipped. I'll share what I know— when I know it— if you're willing to do the same." He'll wait a beat to see if she's anything to say, the past week— or over-extended month— seeming to have a scrubbing effect on him, making him seem harder, rawer, edged.
Marie smiles when he snaps a little, his cheekiness getting a rise out of her in the form of a somewhat derisive laugh. If he didn't want advice, he came to the wrong person. "Don't get sassy with me, John." She pushes herself from her seat after a beat, movements languid and her eyes going the few inches up to look into his face. "I am willing, yes."
"But don't go sticking your nose where it is liable to get caught, hm?"
"Hasn't happened yet."
Glasses unfolded and placed, perched only just high enough to conceal the hue of his eyes, but she can at least see the shape of a wink beyond tinted glass and a swift smile. Sassiness is neither denied nor apologised for, but she's demanding neither, so. So. "Take care," is his advice in return, before he's headed out in the same direction he entered, the clip of heels against floor audibly marking his saunter, hands tucking into the pockets of his jacket.
It's still sunshining outside, and with any luck, he'll hail a cab before the murky weather above breaks its dam upon the city.
