The Pressing Appointment

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Scene Title	The Pressing Appointment
Synopsis	What would they do without Nisha?
Date	February 1, 2009

Solstice Condominiums: Nisha's Condo

Unbeknownst to some, the bomb that savaged New York City in November of 2006 did many wonderful things.

In order to get the people with the money and clout necessary to rebuild the city, many banks renegotiated loans. Real estate agents lowered their asking prices in an attempt to lure people who would likely flee to Newport or the Hampton's back into the city.

Nisha Kotecha got this place for a steal.

She lounges in the library, alone in a condo that is easily far too large for just one woman. Even the staff rooms are empty, as Nisha relies on a maid service rather than hire an individual. She's seated at a large oaken desk, bare feet tucked beneath her as she reviews a heap of paperwork, occasionally scribbling a note to subsequently stick to whatever page she's on.

Outside, in other condos, apartments, and homes, families are sitting down after dinner to watch a movie, play a game, or just talk. There are certain times when, in places like New York City and across the nation, that people find a common need to be close to those they care about.

Nisha Kotecha sits alone in her opulent residence, working.

Not alone for long. He called ahead— Logan's not about to travel all the way into Manhattan only to be turned away at the door because the rich lawyer's got an appointment. With a Vespa parked somewhere outside indicating his mode of travel from Manhattan shores to here, he's a little wind swept, but such a state suits him reasonably well and takes away from the severity of the black suit he's wearing, faint pinstripes piping through the fabric. More casual, a dark green scarf is wrapped about his throat - or was, as he unwinds it as he's shown through the elaborate condo.

It doesn't matter if you've been here before or if you're a virgin to such a place - it's still reasonably breathtaking. It reminds him that all the glitz and glamour of the Happy Dagger may as well be craft supply glitter and cellophane, but oh well. He can appreciate it, turning once as he goes to take it in before he steps into the library, polished shoes squeaking a little as he goes.

"Oh Miss Kotecha," Logan says in his slightly affected English accent, before he can be introduced by hired help. "You haven't forgotten our most pressing appointment, have you?"

"Of course I haven't," Nisha responds in her own smooth and posh voice that betrays her upbringing. She doesn't look up for a moment, however, and the doorman who was kind enough to escort Logan all this way is long gone when she finally does. It's possible she simply wanted to finish the page before she closes the file and replaces it on her desk.

The smile that Nisha has for Logan is a polite one, but it is not easily described beyond that. She uncurls from her seat like a cat relunctant to leave the one spot in the house lit by sunshine. The azure cocktail dress she wears was certainly not donned for Logan, but a guest coming made the notion of readying for bed a silly one. The attorney makes her way around the desk in order to lean back against the front of it, folding her arms across her chest.

"What's brought you up from the depths to see me, John?" Nisha's smile catches in one corner of her mouth before she adds, "But I suppose I should offer you a drink before we get to whatever business you've come to discuss."

The green scarf is stuffed into a pocket of his jacket, hands coming to clasp behind his back in an almost polite posture. "A drink would be brilliant," Logan says, stepping further into the library at an easy stroll, glancing around the place, pale green gaze gravitating back to her, inevitably, say continues with, "The easiest way to get from Staten to here is by boat, now, unless you want to detour through New bloody Jersey. Terrorists, right?"

He doesn't bother to clarify what he means - the fall of the Narrows has made every headline. Just another thread to cut the desolate borough from the rest of the City. "Point being, it's cold as fuck. I'd love a drink. Gin, if you got it. And you look lovely, by the way."

What good English household, even a displaced one, doesn't have gin? Nisha crosses the hardwood floor of the library on silent feet to a mahogany side table with carved lion's heads and claws on the legs and goes about the business of pouring a gin for her guest and a bourbon for herself.

"I'd heard that," she comments as glasses tink together and against the wood and one decanter is used after another. "Too bad you're doomed to those little ferries of yours and not a proper boat." One with heat. She turns to walk across the room again, this time toward her guest in order to give him his libation before she lifts her own in a silent toast. "And thank you."

Taking the glass, he lifts it slightly in wordless thanks, before taking a generous sip for such a harsh choice of liquid, though Logan appears to enjoy it. "Well there's little about Staten Island anymore that's proper in the first place," he says. Pause. "Now if you'd like to buy me a real boat I wouldn't turn it down. I hate the winter. Shall we sit?" A head tilt towards where furniture awaits, although he's already moving by the time his suggestion is made. "Now it might come as a bit of a shock to you but I'm not the one who's in trouble. Yet. But something's come up that might mean I will be."

"You boys," Nisha sighs as she walks alongside Logan, taking a seat in an armchair that flanks a small table with a lamp, an identical one mirroring it on the other side. "What would you do without me?" She smiles as she strokes her own ego and tucks her legs up underneath her once more. She props an elbow on the arm of the chair to position her glass closer to her face while her other arm drapes gracefully across her lap.

"I can put you up in a guest bedroom for the night, so you can ride back across the bay in the comforting warmth of the morning sun - you needn't ask." Nisha pauses long enough to take a sip of her own drink before she continues. "So what dark spectre do you see on your horizon?"

"You're a generous woman, Nisha," Logan says with a curl of a smile, relaxing back into his seat at the corner of a couch, stretched out legs crossing at the ankles and an arm draped along the back of it. "I have a bit of a situation with one of my women. She says she has the police waving her name around, reckons even staying on Staten Island won't do her any good. She's got family in Brooklyn and all that, not exactly a drifter. Now, normally I got my own ways to deal with that sort've thing," and his accent slips a little back into his more natural Cockney, entirely unintentionally, but it happens, "but if I can 'ave it properly handled, all the better. The girls feel good if they know I can look after 'em if they think they'll get in trouble with the law." A leisurely sip of gin is taken, and he gestures to add, "Plus, you know, I'd rather stay off the radar if she gets arrested and found guilty of whatever, and I can't 'ave that."

Despite her casual posture as she watches Logan from across the distance between her chair and the couch, Nisha's expression is all business. "Waving her name around…with what purpose? What do they think she did?" Because it's always better to assume, in cases like these, that whatever the boys in blue think someone did is not, in actuality, the case.

Nisha's seriousness is met with a slightly lazy smile from Logan, although as usual, his eyes don't hold much in the way of warmth, the pale tone of green doing nothing to help this. "Prostitution," he says, simply, saying the word in a condescending way - not so much to condescend Nisha, but more directed at the word itself, as if the legal hang ups that were connected to such a thing were silly.

"So you can imagine my worry. Luckily they haven't come knocking on my door and if they do, well, that's an entirely different matter," he adds, tone dismissive. That's not really a worry, in Logan's world. "What I'm worried about is them pressing charges and her giving them a reason to do so. Now, she won't if I promise her I'll give her only the best in terms of legal representation." Cold eyes sparkle just a little this time as he looks over his glass at Nisha.

First Zarek, and now Logan. Nisha is fine with being a nanny of sorts to these men with boyish tendencies, but taking out their trash is starting to get old even before it's really begun. She frowns, hides her face with her glass for a moment, then sets it down on the table beside her chair.

"With all that the local law enforcement has to worry themselves with at present, I don't see your girl or your business in any sort of imminent danger. Even then," Nisha says with a slight shrug, "it's a misdemeanor. She pays a fine. Does a brief stint in jail, and then she's all yours again. But what you're worried about is morale. If you want to tell her that should she get picked up, you've got her back, fine. But do the smart thing and keep her inside for awhile, would you? At least until the police get distracted enough to forget all about her?"

Logan's smile fades a little as she talks, nodding once at what she has to say although even as she reassures him, there's doubt there, seen in perhaps he looks away to briefly fidget with his glass of gin, which is promptly upended to finish off completely. And as for why he should doubt such solid facts, he's not saying. He could just be paranoid. He could just be worried about everything else he's done coming to light should he ever draw unwanted attention. But it's a bridge to cross should it ever come, and her advice is as good as any. "They've certainly got their work cut out for them these days," he says. "I'll keep 'er out of trouble as you say. In any case, it'd be worthwhile not to use up what credit I have with you before I truly do need it, now wouldn't it."

"Don't be silly, John," Nisha says with a shake of her head and a light hearted sigh. She gets up, plucking her own glass from the table in the process, and crosses to join him on the couch. It's a more personal conversation and assurance that way, after all - better to ease the man's mind than to let him go to bed down the hall with a head full of worry. "All it takes is one crack for a dam to break. You're right in taking care of this girl to see she doesn't compromise your entire operation." How Nisha knows about the inner workings of the Rookery can be inferred, certainly, but much of it remains somewhat mysterious.

Folding her legs beneath her once again, Nisha takes another sip of her bourbon and muses for a moment. "I don't suppose you have any contacts in Rhode Island, do you John?" She watches the play of light against the crystal glass and the liquid inside it, her demeanor thoughtful to the point of distraction.

Logan watches as she approaches, shifting where he's seated to turn towards her as she relocates, the arm draped along the back of the couch folding so he can rest his head against his hand. His demeanor is relaxed, the helping of gin only contributing to this. "Rhode Island?" he repeats, brow furrowing, as if she were referring to some foreign place rather than a state merely a hop, skip and a jump away. "A pond-crosser like me? Not directly. It's 'ard enough getting set up in this city. Why do you ask?"

"Give her a loan," Nisha suggests, slowly adopting a more calculating smile, "so that she can get herself a small little apartment there. Nothing fancy. So long as she doesn't loiter or solicit Johns in vehicles, she's perfectly within the confines of the law to practice her trade, independent of a pimp or house. Now, when she returns to New York, say because she misses her family, she simply pays you back the loan. You keep a girl in the long run, and she sees a bit of profit to pad her pockets."

Logan narrows his eyes at this scheming, trying to stifle down the instinctive reaction of: oh god complicated. But Rhode Island is basically over there, and in the end, what's a bit of logistics in order to evade the law? Staten Island can't be their sanctuary forever and he knows it's unwise to lean on it so heavily. In the end, it'd only fall through. "You know. That doesn't sound like a bad idea," he finally says, accent hiking up once more as he smiles across at her. His glass is empty, but he glances into it nonchalantly. "I'll see what I can't do about it tomorrow."

Like any good hostess, Nisha doesn't fail to notice Logan's empty glass. Beaming internally at the compliment, she lifts her eyebrows as her lips curl into a smug sort of smirk. "Can I get you another, or will you be heading off?" Upstairs, that is.

"I'd love another," Logan says, holding out the glass as politely as he can. "The night's still young and I'd hate for you to have wasted such a nice dress on such a brief meeting," despite such a get up having very little to do with him, and after a pause, he adds, "…which won't cost Muldoon too much, I hope." Smile?

"Only an hour, unless you have more business to discuss." Nisha's smirk twinges as she rises and takes Logan's glass to refill it. It's not her place to tell Logan he should pay his own bills and not pass them off to his business partner and supposed friend, and so she keeps her opinions to herself. "Why?" Nisha asks as she makes her return to the couch, "Do you think he would disagree to pay for your use of my services?"

Logan holds out his hand for the glass. If he sees anything wrong in shoving the bill to Muldoon— well all indicators point to: he doesn't see anything wrong in it whatsoever. Muldoon may disagree when it comes to that, but, well, that's an argument for a later day. "On the contrary, I'll be surprised if he doesn't think it to be a valuable use of our time," he says. "What protects me protects him. And no," he adds with a flicker of a smile, "I have no more business to discuss. Besides, I've always found it best when business is mixed with pleasure." A personal mantra of his, and considering his line of work, that can't be so surprising.

"I'm sure you do," Nisha chuckles as she reclaims her seat, an edge in her voice. She doesn't have to specifically state her disagreement (especially since doing so would mark her a hypocrite), but it is definitely sensible in her posture as she continues to nurse her bourbon and on through the pleasurable yet polite conversation shared before it can be safely said Nisha's dress has not been wasted, and the two retire to their respective rooms.