Not Quite Clandestine

Participants:

deckard_icon.gif felix_icon.gif

Scene Title Not Quite Clandestine
Synopsis Flint and Felix accidentally meet over noodles in Chinatown for a little chat about what the former is doing here. They are not Chinese.
Date October 26, 2008

Chinatown

Though it's less than two miles square, Chinatown is home to some quarter of a million residents. Cramped, ancient tenements are the norm, though the fourty-four story Confucious Plaza standing at the corner of Bowery and Division does boast luxurious accommodations by comparison. Mulberry Street, Canal Street, and East Broadway are home to streetside green grocers and fishmongers, and Canal Street also boasts an impressive array of Chinese jewelry shops.


Deckard is tall. Taller than most people here, anyway. Dressed a little more tattily than the norm in a once-black suit that's faded grey in patches, particularly about the joints, he's just finished passing over a fist full of change in exchange for some boring-looking noodles. Rather than find a place to sit, he stands and eats them near the stall he bought them from, just out of the way of the flow of traffic that's bottlenecked between the nearest shop entrances. And for all that he appears to be proficient with chopsticks, there's really no denying that he stands out like a sore thumb.

He's not the only one. Not a lot of blue-eyed patrons at this particular restaurant, especially at this time of day. But there's another, also in a suit, albeit a beautifully tailored gray one, briefcase at his feet, calmly working his way through an evening paper and a bowl of noodles. In that get-up, in this place, he's either a gangster, or the five-oh. And Deck will definitely know him as the latter - the Feds up in Massachusetts made a point of paying little visits now and then, and this particular suit was among them, albeit rarely. He's got his glasses at his elbow, rather than on, for once.

Halfway through a bite that doesn't actually manage to make it all the way into his mouth, Flint does a subtle doubletake after sweeping the restaurant behind him. From there, it takes about a second for him to zero in on Felix. "Great." The excess noodles are nipped off to fall back into his cheap paper bowl, and still chewing, he begins to sort of creeeep in an awayward direction.

"Deckard," Felix's tone is flat, but not entirely unfriendly. "Fancy seeing you here," And you thought you were lucky enough that he'd not notice you. "Aren't you violating some sort of parole by even -being- in New York City." Nothing like old acquaintances to bring up warm and fuzzy feelings? At least he doesn't seem to be rising to pursue.

Deckard pauses at the sound of his name, broad shoulders stiffened out of their usual slope when he turns slowly back to face the younger man. Busted, and all. "Mr. Ivanov. What a weird coincidence." The flat level of his brows and the gravel in his voice pretty firmly suggests otherwise, but cynicism hasn't taken over completely. Yet. "I actually finished up the whole parole thing like half a decade ago. I appreciate your concern, though. It's nice to know you're looking out for me."

Felix's smile is positively beatific, and utterly unconvincing. "Indeed," he says, mildly. "Been a long while. What're you up to in New York, these days?" He motions the other man to a seat across from him. Well, he certainly can't be a tail. You don't exactly send a white guy in a suit to blend in in this part of town.

Flint does, eventually, follow directions. He just does it slowly, and with a mild flounce to the way he drops his bowl on the table before he lowers himself down into the empty seat behind it. "Sight-seeing," is his answer, delivered flatly. "I've never seen a real dystopia before."

Felix snorts at that. "Yeah. Tell me about it. I thought September 11th was bad enough," It doesn't seem to affect his appetite, however- he's working methodically through that bowl, like eating's going out of style. "How long're you planning to stay?"

"Probably until someone kills me." Ever the optimist, Flint watches Felix eat without doing more than giving his own limp noodles a half-hearted prod. "Alternatively, I could die of radiation poisoning."

Not precisely the answer Fel wanted to hear, by the way his eyes half-lid in irritation. He swallows, and says, drily, "I see. If you avoid midtown, you likely won't get radiation sickness."

"Good to know." Nose wrinkled while he watches Felix swallow, Flint directs his attention down into his bowl so that he can better monitor the slow wrap of noodles around his chopsticks. "Always protecting and serving. I'm so proud."

Felix wonders, archly, "You wouldn't be here to take advantage of the pain and suffering of other New Yorkers, would you?"

Flint scoffs, furrow wrinkled with incredulity for the mere /insinuation/ that he could be so cold-hearted. "/No/. That hurts my feelings, you know. I thought we were friends."

And Fel makes an exaggerated moue of apology, though it fails to reach his eyes. "Forgive me," he says, still with that thread of amusement in the backof his voice. "Times are rough, and well, considering what you were in for back when…."

"It's ok. Common assumption." Reassuring, now, Flint finally tips up his chopsticks to nip off a piece of the noodly mass he's accumulated at the end of them. "I forgive you."

"Good," Felix says, finishing off the last of his noodles in a few neat bites, before fixing Flint with a cool blue stare. "So. You're the kind of man who has a skill for procuring the hard to find. Which means you're the sort of man who can be of use to the Bureau, these days. As you know, we've got a lovely homegrown terrorist problem. Our own little mutant Al-Qaeda. But they use mundane gear to destroy, just like everybody else. Do you see where I'm going?"

Deckard's gaze is, in return, bleached a flat, unfeeling grey while he strips past flesh to bone, and an assortment of squishy organs past that. Guns, knives, cell phones. The usual search is performed silently and invisibly before he meets the black hollows where Felix's eyes theoretically still are. "I don't really think I'm qualified to be FBI. I mean, with my record, I'd be lucky if I was allowed to carry a heavy flash light for a private security company." In short, no. He'd rather be intentionally dense.

Well, Captain Paranoid is only packing the service-issue gun, at least - there's a .45 riding comfortably under one arm. And a cellphone in his pocket. Nothing beyond a little pen-knife in another pocket. There is, funnily enough, a little glob of metal sitting right in front of a shoulder blade - a remnant of some long-ago shootout, no doubt. "Indeed," he says, sagely, giving Flint a patient look. "Which is why I'll only ask a little information of you, now and then."

"Oh." Back to poking his chopsticks around in his noodles again, Flint juts his lower jaw a little. Thinking. "So, you want me to spy on these terrorist guys and then tell you what they're up to. That sounds kind of dangerous."

Felix frankly smirks at that. No, Mr. Anderson, you don't get a phone call. "Not spy. Keep your ears open. I'm not suggesting you seek them out, far from it. Just do what comes naturally, and they'll come to -you-, I'm sure," he says, lazily dropping the empty bowl in a nearby trashcan.

"There you go, making insinuations again. What did I ever do to you?" Not really expecting an answer, Flint finally gives up on his appetite and pushes his bowl aside. "Two questions. Actually…one statement, and one question. I'm going to expect you to exercise a little restraint in return, whenever my name comes up and your spidy sense starts tingling. And how am I supposed to stay in contact with you? Can I expect you to pop out of my toilet every couple of weeks to beg for tips?"

Fel reaches into his suitjacket. Happily, what he produces is not the Sig, but a business card. "Email me," he says, simply. "I assume you have e-mail access?"

"Sporadically." Promising. Frowning to himself, Flint reaches for the offered card. One more to add to his exciting collection. "I'll email you if I want to talk, and we can meet. You know what they say about internet privacy."

Felix nods, to that, serenely. "Indeed. Make it worth my while, and I can keep the NYPD off you, so long as you don't do anything too terribly stupid. Make it -very- worth my while, and there may possibly be money involved. Try and pass of chickenfeed, and I'll have you run out of town."

"My hero." One eye narrowed in sarcastic tandem with the forced line of his smile, Flint scrapes his chair back noisily from the table. "Anything else?"

Felix just beams sunnily at him. No wonder the NYPD hates the Bureau. "Have a nice day," he says, blithely.

"You too." Flint doesn't sound like he means it. With one last narrow-eyed look, he pushes away from the table and stands, leaving his half-empty bowl of noodles behind to Felix's noble discretion.

Fel ignores it with magisterial disdain, rising as well, though he pauses to shoot his cuffs, and twitch his suit jacket back into place, before picking up his briefcase and heading for the door without a backwards glance.


l-arrow.png
October 26th: Our Right to Resist
r-arrow.png
October 26th: Rooftop Rendezvous
Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License