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Scene Title | Shootout at the Angry Pelican |
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Synopsis | The Irishman is selling trouble on clearance. |
Date | January 3, 2011 |
The Angry Pelican is a scabberous sore on the western face of Staten Island.
Despite its ramshackle appearance it has weathered more trials than most other residences and businesses on the island have in the last four years. That it has become known as a haven for smugglers, drug dealers and arms runners isn't much of a secret. That the United States government is encroaching on this lawless territory more and more every day also isn't a secret, which is likely why patrons of the Angry Pelican are fewer and further between than they used to be back in the hey-day of the Rookery.
Daniel Walsh is one of the old-school of the Pelican's corrupt and incestuous criminal organizations. That Lola Mayeux has come here to do business with the only show in town means that he has had to take time out of his busy day to coordinate a meeting with her, and unusually it has been chosen for here instead of the usual vacant lots or underpasses that have become typical of meetings with Walsh or his employees.
Seated at a table by the bar, Walsh nurses a dark bottle in both gloved hands. He's hunched forward over the table, looking tense and anxious, beady eyes flicking from one side of the bar to the other. A briefcase rests on the floor by his side, another larger black case resembling something a large musical instrument would be carried in sits across two unoccupied seats at his other side.
Tapping one gloved thumb on his beer bottle rhythmically, Walsh stares at the table in deep thought and consideration. Outside, night has crept in to steal the light of day away, or maybe it was one of the other thieves here at this seedy bar. The dark outside is broken up only by strings of Christmas lights hung up on the front porch, glittering multicolored through the frost-trimmed windows.
"If ya wanted ta take a girl out fer drinks, darlin, all ya had ta do was ask," Lola slipped in behind Walsh, it seems, and now she stands, one hand on her hip. She wears a wool coat over her usual styled pants and boots, and she seems in no rush to remove anything - after all, to the Cajun, winters are hell on earth. Still, she's got a dimpled smile on her features as she walks around Walsh and the table. Only a bit of her red hair can be seen, pressed against her forehead as it peers out from beneath her black cap.
She slips into the seat, setting her hands together on the table as she smiles just a little, eyes situated on Walsh. "Ah spoze Ah'd best start with some bad news that yer fellah Nicky's been stayin way under the radar a late, an Ah ain' laid my hands on him just yet. Whatever someone done ta him scared 'im shitless, Ah'd guess."
"I may've strapped a bomb t'his chest and thrown 'im in the middle of a fancy meet n' eat," Walsh admits in a murmured tone of voice, reaching up to scratch at his neck where his wool scarf hangs loose. Looking up from his beer to Lola, the Irishman flashes a brief smile that does little to hide his nervousness or the dour expression that comes bleeding back across his lips.
He peels the corner of the label off of his bottle, slouching back into his chair, black peacoat still buttoned and making him look thick around the middle. "Which a'guess brings me t'my first question fer you t'day, darlin'… did you 'appen t'bring a gun?" Both of Walsh's faded red brows begin to raise as his eyes move to meet Lola's, as he watches the Cajun slip into the empty seat.
There's a faint smile that creeps across Walsh's face, wearily. "Well, here's the unfortunate part'v today's deal…" the gun runner admits as he leans in on the table. "Me cover's been blown, 'round about six ways to sunday an back again. Y'see, the feds seem t'ave tied me up with that little bomb trick me an' me boys tried t'play…" Walsh's blue eyes square down at the label he's peeling back.
"I found out about twenty minutes ago tha' the ATF and FBI 'ave closed in on this here location… watchin' fella's goin' in an' out. 'Course it was a bit late t'be able t'warn you… which— " Walsh manages to let his lips creep up into a slightly more crooked smile. "Means tha' in about five minutes tha' door's gonna' be bust down by a bunc'f fine chaps in SWAT uniforms packin' more heat'n a high school boy on prom night with his lady."
Looking across to another table where a group of hispanic thugs sit, smoking and drinking. "That feller over there," he motions to an old, wrinkled and long-haired hispanic man smoking a cigar, neck and forearms covered in tatoos. "That's Espenosa, runs more drugs than I do guns. That's some prime slice a'meat there…" Walsh turns his attention back to Lola, one brow raised.
"'Ow badly d'you wanna' get outta' here w'out gettin' arrested, darlin?"
This isn't what she signed up for.
"Aincha ever heard of a text message?" Well that would have been nice, to get a proper warning and to have stayed out of this mess. But what's done is done, and it can't be undone. Lola turns, looking around the bar, checking the exits, the views, the patrons. And then she turns back to Walsh with her own little smile. "Ah suppose that depends on how badly you wanna get outta here without gettin' arrested." Lola sets her arms on the table, leaning in a little bit to look at Walsh, dead in his face.
"Let's hear what yer thinkin," Because suddenly she's got some damn plans of her own.
Walsh's smile is perhaps secretly patronizing when his head dips down slowly into a nod. "Espenosa's worth both'f our heads, way I see it. We feed him t'the feds they might be distracted with their new chew toy 'bout long enough for us to go our seperate ways. You break intoa full run to the east and duck into the greenbelt an' no helicopter'll be able t'find you from the air. From there on out you can duck up north towards Port Ivory way and wait out the heat."
This implies that Walsh isn't going the same way, which also implies that he's got his own escape route. "You may notice that Espenosa looks a touch pissed off now that we're discussin' this," Walsh says in an undercurrent, motioning with a nod to the table where the broad-shouldered old hispanic drug dealer is rising up from his seat and picking up a gun off of the table. Walsh is still ear-to-ear smiles.
"See, word on the stret is Espenosa's a telepath, so he's likely listenin' t'what kinda' thoughts we're thinkin'." Leaning back in his seat and folding his hands in his lap, Walsh ends his conversational tone and flashes a white, toothy smile as Espenosa and his crew of some ten thugs begin shambling their way over across the bar.
"Well that does rather seem like yer problem, sugar." Lola drawls, her smile becoming slightly wider. "Ya see….Ah ain' done nothin'. Ah ain' touched nothin'. Cops come in here, they gotta deal with you an Mr. Mindreader over there." She jersk her head in the direction of the approaching men.
"Much too busy ta go after patrons in a bar, hidin' like we weak little girlies oughta. An soemthin' tells me that if ya could knock him out all by yer lonesome, ya'd have done it already. So as far as Ah'm concerned, as a legal, legit citizen what's paid all mah debts to society, all the problems is yers unless yer willin' ta make it worth mah while. An if he's a mindreader….well he kin read mah mind an yers and know that yer the only one thinkin' a doin' him harm just now." She even gives the men a little wave and a wink. "Got but a New York minute ta make up yer mind sugar, cause Ah'm lookin' at a cut a yer business or Ah'm walkin' out an leavin' you holdin' the bag. Either way, yer gonna start havin' a lot more problems in the comin' days if ya've been made by the po-po. Hard ta run a business all by yer lonesome that way."
"What if I said tha' the ATF might suspect you're here fer me?" Walsh's smile turns into a wince, implicating that just maybe they're here for Lola Mayeux too. "Might pay off t'stay on m'good side, but…" Walsh looks up and past Lola towards the gaggle of hispanic men coming around the table, tilting his chin up slowly in greeting. Daniel Espenosa, heard a lot 'bout you 'round here on Staten. Don't worry yer head none, ain't cuttin' in t'yer Refrain business none."
Running his mouth, Walsh keeps his hands folded above the table. "You met m'sweetheart Sandy 'ere?" A gloved hand motions to Lola — apparently now Sandy — before reaching up to tug on his ear. Right about this time, Lola notices something is amiss in the bar. Walsh's scratch to his neck seemed innocuous earlier, but with the tug to his ear that same asian man who had gotten up out of his seat is moving again. Short, middle-aged, in a leather jacket and dark jeans, circling the bar now and moving towards the bathrooms.
"You have a big mouth," Espenosa grumbles as he steps around the table, one of his thugs coming over to sit down right beside Lola, spinning a chair around and leaning forward over the back, inspecting her like she were some sort of piece of meat. "You had best be trying to impress this sweet juera you've got here." Espenosa brandishes his cigar in Lola's direction, then looks back down to Walsh. "You would not be so fucking dumb as to think what you did and think I wouldn't hear it."
Judging from Espenosa's reactions, he only heard whatever it was Walsh and perhaps Lola were thinking in part and possibly not the entire bit about the ATF and FBI.
She sees it. The Asian. "Yer runnin' Asians? Ah swear ta god, sugar, long as Ah don' get shot again, or get blood on mah new coat we ain' on nothin' but good sides so long as ya keep up yer end a bargains," Lola grumbles this toward Walsh, turning just as they are joined with a dimpled, girly smile on her face. "Aw darlin!" She drawls, and giggles, like a simple, sweet Southern thing. "Ya should hear some a the sweet stuff he says to me!" She leans a little toward him, thinking the things that she's saying very hard indeed. "Makes up all sortsa stuff, last week it was 'bout how he used ta be a diamond smuggler! Well that was all well and good till he didn' have no diamonds ta show fer it!" Her voice drops to a bit of a whisper. "And truth be told he's real old fer mah type anyway, but Ah wanna be fair and give a fellah his chance. Speically if he maybe does have some diamonds he's willin' ta share!"
Of course, she's ready to reach for her gun at a moment's notice. But she doesn't yet - doesn't want to tip off a telepath after all.
Lola's prudence presages a cavalcade of things that happen all at once.
Espenosa leans forward and exhales a breath of smoke in Walsh's face. "Why're you thinkin' in French, ain't you the Irishm— " his comment is cut off when Walsh produces a straight razor that unfolds in one gloved hand and cuts across Espenosa's cheek and down his lip. The telepath recoils, clutching as his face as hot blood streams down his mouth and chin.
The thug beside Lola bolts up from his chair, reaching inside of his jacket. Faster than the thug can draw his gun, Walsh falls backwards out of his chair as the gun goes off, shooting into the bar behind where Walsh was sitting. The Irishman, having hit the deck, produces a .40 revolver from insode of his jacket, firing at legs visible under the table, sending the gun-toting thug down to the ground with a crash and a scream.
"Distractions darlin'!" Walsh calls out to Lola, only to find one of the hispanic thugs closing in on him where he lays on the ground, Glock withdrawn from the waistband of his pants and aimed down at the Irishman.
"Son of a bitch." Lola roars, falling off her chair and rolling beneath the table. Because at least, under there, it's slightly safer. And she's over to the side, staying well out of the Irishman's line of fire. French, she heard something about French. "You owe me my fucking crackerjacks," she yells to the Irishman. Hopefully that yell and that thought will distract from what she's doing next.
Because Lola has a fucking grenade. And the pin is pulled. "Dammit. Ah had somethin' fer this. Suck splosions or….ah hell. Fire in the hole!" And the grenade rolls to the far corner of the room, as far from any patrons as Lola could get it. And then she's diving behind the bar. With her case.
The grenade goes off with a riotous explosion, sending flinders of wood and shattered glass through the builging, blowing out another window of the Pelican onto the street. Glass rains down in tinkling shards onto the floorboards as a bartender dives for cover and likely from injury by shrapnel like several of Santiago's men, tumbling forward from the reverberation of that concussive blast. Walsh's — and Lola's for that matter — ears are ringing from the blast, and that temporary deafness muffles the noisy report of gunshots to soft thumps.
One of Espenosa's men, not staggered by the blast opens fire wildly in Lola's direction, bullets punching through the wooden floor in wild and untrained fire. He staggers, then turns towards the muffled sound of the Angry Pelican's front doors being hammered open by the emergence of three ATF officers in riot gear and raised voices barking orders. The thug lifts his gun, training it in the direction of the SWAT team before being mowed down by the percussive explosion of shotgun fire.
The back door bursts open, sounds of footsteps in the kitchen, shouting and clattering pots and pans, more ATF officers raiding the Pelican. Espenosa stumbles blindly, one hand on his head before turning towards the riot officers and shambling right past the three of them without notice, as if he hadn't been bleeding and staggering by them.
Under the table, Walsh crawls on his stomach towards Lola, waving her down where there's cover.
Lola has her back pressed to the bar, curled up in an almost fetal position as bullets cease exploding around her. She's dazed, confused for a moment, knowing that she wants to be anywhere but where she is right now. Using her coat to pull out her guns without leaving prints, she deposites all four of them into the case and closes it, pushing it away. Still in arm's reach if there's a way out, but she'd doubting that very highly right now. STill, it doesn't hurt to ask, right? Walsh's crawling has brought him within arm's reach of her, and the tender is beside her.
"Is there another way out?" She hisses, hoping one of the two can answer.
"What?" is Walsh's deafened response when he sees Lola peering from around the corner of the bar. "Goddamnit woman this way!" is unintentionally her answer as Walsh wags his hang back towards the table he's ducked under. The reason for that winds up being three black-clad AFT officers that come barreling out of the back room in full view of the bar, revealing Lola and the cowering bartender amidst the chaos of patrons fleeing in every direction and the pop of gunfire from members of Espenosa's gang.
One of the ATF agents trains his gun down on Lola, racking back a round in his shotgun as he barks out, "Federal agent! Face down on the ground! Face down on the ground now!" The other two nearby to him are focused on Walsh's shambling emergence from beneath the table, hands raised in the air and a sheepish smile on his face as if to say you got me, boys.
Then one of the ATF officers spits up blood.
A length of blackened metal is wedged in his throat up to the handle, a fixed-blade knife that sends the black-clad man falling backwards with a hand at his throat. Walsh isn't know for his knife throwing expertise, and it winds up being a black-clad figure of a different stripe that vaults the bar, grabbing the shotgun out of the hands of the man trained on Lola. He moves fast, whip-crack fast with a wrench of the gun out of the officer's hand, spinning it around to fire point-blank against his chest, sending him recoiling backwards into the one ATF officer behind the bar still standing.
Feng Daiyu drops the shotgun in the same motion, falling into a crouch just as assault rifle fire perforates the glass bottles behind the bar. He looks down to the gun, then over to Lola with dark brows raised. "On three?" Sounds optimistic, even while Walsh is running for dear life, throwing himself behind a half wall where a cash register is being torn apart by bullets, shaking out empty shell casings from his revolver to load in more rounds while Espenosa's gang continues to open fire on the other ATF agents around front.
Alright, so that's how this is going to play out.
A voice rings in Lola's ears, warning her away from the Chinese. That they would be bad for her. That she would know when she met the one she should fear. And maybe she should fear this guy, and it does rattle her to her bones considering what she's got planned. But for the moment, Jensen Raith and his voice and his dynamite are far from here. The gun is lifted, checked, and a clean shell is racked into the chamber.
The shoulder-strap of the sax case is thrown over Lola's head, so as to keep the thing on her back. She's not leaving without what she came for - so long as she's not being arrested. The Chinese man gets a solid nod from Lola. Sure, she's frightened. But these sort of situations are becomming … par for the course. "Sure, sugar, if ya kin keep up." She crouches just below the bar, shotgun raised, ready to cover Feng for his movement and, theoretically, he for hers.
"I am spry," Feng admits with a cockshore smile as a bullet punches thorugh the bar over his shoulder, "for my age." Reaching into his jacket, the former Vanguard member withdraws something boxy, black and plastic from inside of the zippered coat. "But these men are shooting, and I am not faster than bullets." A pin is pulled on what is obviously a grenade, and Feng comments, "close your eyes" before lobbing the flash-bang over his shoulder to clater down across a table, then bounce across the bar towards the direction of gunfire.
"Grenade" is screamed at the same time Walsh is scrambling behind the bar with one hand covering the top of his head and his revolver held out. The near deafening explosion of sound and light quickly floods the bar, Lola and her entourage shielded somewhat by the curve of the bar, though rays of light shine brightly through the hiles bullets have made.
Feng reaches out, mouth moving but with Lola unable to hear him, a slap to her shoulder and his hand pointing towards the doorway to the kitchen seem indicative of the direction they're going to flee in.
Lola pins herself to the back of the bar. The shotgun rests over her shoulder as she clamps her hands down over her ears, shutting her eyes as tightly as she can. This is the first flash greanade she's ever been through, and as she feels Feng touch her to move, only then does she uncurl from her kneeling/fetal position. And evne now, she's a little wobbly, her ears stinging a little, but her eyes generally okay. None the less she gropes for Feng, grabbing at him and using his running-momentum to pull herself to her feet - and cop a feel of his pockets. The bag of goodies remains hanging over her back.
"Didn' even get ta shoot nobody," Lola complains, though secretly she's rather glad. No use having a cop-death on her mark - she may lose her only friend and true ally to that.
Within a few seconds she's right up Feng's ass, almost pushing him faster even as she runs in a crouche,d low position. "The hell's the drunk Irish?!" She demands, looking around, her eyes still squinty. She hasn't seen him since she went down to hide from the grenade.
"I'm right bloody b'hind you y'blind bitch!" Walsh shouts from over Lola's shoulder, turning to shoot blindly back into the bar as the three maneuver into the kitchen. Unaware of what they've run into, howevr, Walsh is surprised by the sudden noise of gunfire that has Feng diving out of the way and bullets whizzing past Lola so close she can hear them buzzing in one ear. Two ATF agents with riots shields and handguns stand by the back door.
Walsh drops down into a crouch and rolls behind the prep-cook island where cutting blocks stacked with knives and other kitchen wares hang on hooks and racks. Feng vaults the island, pots and pans clattering as he sails through the air, smoothly sliding a cleaver out of one of the wood blocks as he does. When he lands on the other side, the cleaver is swing out, chopping against the gun-wielding hand of the closer ATF agent, causing him to recoil and release his gun in reflex. Feng extends out a side kick to the other officer square to his shield, launching him backwards out the open door and onto his posterior. One gloved hand snaps quick to one of the pockets Lola had searched, withdrawing a butterfly knife in the process. The shiny metal flashes open and snaps into the rigid form of a knife before being quickly thrust inwards between man and shield, punching up beneath the remainign ATF agent's arm pit as Feng muscles him out the door as well.
Pushing the man off of the knife and letting him trip over his compatriot, Feng squints up against the floodlight of what Lola and Walsh are only starting to be able to hear — the chopping rotors of a helicopter. Feng ducks back inside the kitchen and shakes off some of the blood from his knife onto the floor.
"Solutions?" He asks in an accented and //expectant tone of voice to the kitchen in general.
When bullets start flying again, Lola is quick to duck into a doorway - a locked doorway, so she's pressed up against the door. Her arms, way too comfortable with the weight of a firearm anymore, lift the shotgun and take aim, but before she can pull the trigger, there's an Asian ninja taking care of things. And then, of course, comes the floodlight through the kitchen doorway and the sound of a helicopter. And that makes Lola a little nervous. Until she remembers that movie, Black Hawk Down. Who didn't see that movie 80 times?
Without answering Feng, Lola slides the shotgun to Walsh. "Watch the hall," she yells at him, over the noise of everything, just so that she can remove a .45 handgun from the box she wears over her back.
The faux redhead hurries to the doorway, crouching beside it and peering around the corner to see the helicopter. And that's all she needs to do. See it. Returning behind the doorway, she takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. Then she's rising, turning and holding the gun between her hands, she peers it around teh corner. And she pulls the trigger twice.
She's not aiming for the pilot. She's aiming for the tail-rudders. It's a very difficult shot, though Lola is gifted that way. The theory is that the tail rudder will bend or lose a piece. If that happens, the helicopter will lose a lot of it's control. If the pilot's good, he may be able to land it. If he's not….whoops.
If there's one thing that lola Mayeux is good at, it's aiming. Even a rapidly moving tail rotor of a police helicopter is no match for her canny aim. The pair of noisy shots from the .45 strike the rotor blades dead on each time, denting a different one with each shot. The effect is noticable, perhaps not as much as Hollywood may have implied, but the helicopter does wobble in the air, then begin t pitch to one side, causing the man who was perched in the door with a rifle to grab on and brace himself in the doorway with both feet. Strapped in as he is, there's no hope of falling out, but with the helicopter flagging as it is, there's no way he can take a clear shot.
Crouched beside the door near Lola, Feng watches the treeline while Lola is taking her shot, folding his butterfly knife shut again with a click, tucking it into his back pocket. "We're clear to the woods," he comments, looking back to Walsh, "which way are we going?"
Walsh's answer to that is a narrow-eyed look back towards the front of the bar, "Woods, then north." Which implies Lola is welcome to go in any other direction. "There's probably a few more'v 'em outside but I'm fresh outta' ideas. Espenosa's either ran off or got 'imself caught, but we gotta' get movin'."
Lola tucks the gun into the back of her pants, turning and looking at Walsh. "You an Ah, sugar, we're gonna have a nice little chat sometime soon." It's definitely a promise. STill, the Cajun has no desire to push her luck. That said, she turns with her newfound toys (which she did not and will not now pay for) and nods to Walsh. "Well whatcha waitin' for then? Get ta runnin." With any luck, she may still come out of this looking like a fleeing patron. And if there's any more snipers? She'd want them to be distracted so that seh could get away. Nothing's quite so important as Lola's own skin, after all. She starts to move off to teh side, turning to look at Feng. To get a good look at him out here. "An Ah spoze Ah owe ya a beer or somethin' sometime, sweet-cakes."
Feng Daiyu has another way that Lola can repay him, but that particular debt and the bullet-riddled corpse that will belong to it are best saved for another day. "I agree," is all he notes before bolting out of the back door, gun in hand as he sprints towards a truck parked out back, skidding to a stop on frozen gravel with his back slamming against the truck's passenger side door.
Shouts from the rear parking lot come from black-clad federal agents starting to form a perimeter, though a chase through the woods in the winter reminds Feng Daiyu all too much of personal failures. Warning from the federal agents soon turn into the pop and snap of tear gas canisters flying thorugh the air, expelling stinging clouds of white smoke where they land, spinning and hissing on the ground.
Feng covers his mouth and nose with one arm, and the last Walsh and Lola see of him is his darkly-dressed frame disappearing into the gas. Walsh scrambles up towards Lola, offering an apologetic nod to her. "That selection a'goods is on the house, darlin'. Consider it payback for watchin' me back. If you make it outta' this alive, I'll look you up." Red brows wag, and Walsh dips out the door with the tear gas wafting towards the building, firing straight up into the air with the intention of keeping heads down and eager to advance federal agents low to the ground.
When the helicopter starts to make a return approach, wobbling as it is, the down-draft from the main rotor starts to disperse the tear gas, and Walsh's escape into the woods is met with the sound of barking dogs, gunfire and shouting.
The tear gas is going to be the only way for Lola to get out of this whole situation alive. She curses Walsh and his mother too as the man runs off, using her sweatshirt arm to cover her mouth and nose as she looks around. What to do, waht to do. Roof? No, chopper. Woods? Well Walsh does seem to have that covered, and it doesn't sound like it's working too well for him.
At this rate, Lola is fairly certain she won't have a stash left. But another grenade is removed, and tossed underneath the truck that Feng's back so kindly discovered. The boom, hopefully, will be enough of a distraction for Lola to follow the remainder of the tear-gas - yes, she means to stay inside of it - and run the way the cloud is being dispersed: west. Away from Feng, away from Walsh, away from everybody hopefully.
Fuckin' Yankees.
When a grenade detonates under a pickup truck, that is where Hollywood is right. The explosion of the grenade ignites the gas tank and sends a pyroclasmic ball of fire roaring up into the air, choking black with smoke. The helicopter veers away from the blast, spinning slowly in an out of control pattern thorugh the air, getting lower and lower to the ground as it becomes clear the pilot is searching for a way to land it.
Not prepared to deal with the armaments of a small military force when rounding up one crooked detective, the ATF and FBI seem ill-equipped to handle the onslaught of multiple armed assailants. As Lola runs head long into the remaining cloud of tear gas, her eyes begin to water, then burn followed by the same stinging in her lungs and on her exposed skin.
Emerging out the other side of the cloud, the pain and blur in her eyes is still there from fat, flowing tears caused by the eponymous gas. She can hear gunshots in the woods, the yelp of dogs and men together, and as she blindly runs through the dark forest, branches crash under her feet, snap away and tear into her jacket, and snow underfoot crunches until she reaches the deeper and thicker canopy where no snow touches the frozen ground.
Dogs are barking in the woods at her back, flashlights are shining and sirens wailing. But Walsh was right about one thing, the untamed Staten Island Greenbelt, with all its abandoned residences and trackless wilderness is nowhere to pursue a chase.
Thankfully for Lola Mayeux, it means she is free.
Even if free means sleeping for a night in the woods in the winter.
Better cold than dead.