Participants:
Scene Title | The Right To Remain Silent |
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Synopsis | For better or for worse, Deckard makes use of the rights he still retains when he's cornered by Elisabeth and Felix in his old apartment. |
Date | March 06, 2009 |
Deckard's Apartment - Staten Island
Lo and behold, the apartment complex the tall, scruffy, middle-aged man known as Mike Burrows (or Flint Deckard, depending upon who you ask and how much money and/or fists are involved) resides in is about as shitty as one might imagine it to be. Narrow hallways lined with dark, moldering wallpaper and rickety wood floors plateau after each turn of an equally narrow stairwell. If the elevator actually works, no one is brave enough to use it.
It's three in the morning, and on the third floor, a man in a black overcoat and shoddy grey suit that matches the description above is on his way out the door of his apartment. He's moving as quietly as he can, which is a feat in itself with the baggage he's lugging around. One briefcase, one rolling piece of luggage, and a shotgun slung in a black diagonal across his shoulders. The luggage is nudged out first, shotgun flashed to the hallway when he creep-turns out to start to pull the door silently closed behind him.
The hallway's apparently clear…..but there's an odd, waiting stillness. Like all the rats in the walls have heard something and gone quiet. And then there's the machinegun pitter-patter of little Fed feet, the uncomfortable tug of Evolved hands relieving Deckard of that ballistic burden…..and the even less comfortable pressure of that shotgun's barrel being pressed into Deckard's spine. "Back we go," Felix coos, in a near-whisper. "Trip's delayed." There is no Miranda warning. Not at the moment. He punctuates this by an ungentle nudge back in the direction of the apartment.
Elisabeth moves just as swiftly in Felix's wake, amazed by the changes wrought on Staten Island. When Felix glides in and holds Deckard at gunpoint, Elisabeth pulls her pistol — if only because dammit, if Deckard goes for Felix, she's gonna shoot out his kneecaps. "You know, it would have been a lot easier if you'd just gone ahead and called like I asked," she sighs softly to Deckard as Felix nudges him back into the apartment. She's even kind enough to bring his luggage back in for him before closing the door.
Bad day.
Technically, something like 99% of Deckard's days are bad ones. Really, a scale ranging from 'mildly disconcerting' to 'better off dead' would provide a more accurate and precise representation of the day to day than one that starts at 'good' and ends at 'bad.'
His grip on the luggage is released immediately. The briefcase…he hangs onto. One second, two seconds, three. Clunk. It drops as well, painfully, and now both hands are up, long fingers splayed empty. He doesn't need to turn to make identification on Felix. The man's voice is familiar, the way the stink of sulfur is instantly recognizable to anyone who's had the pleasure of smelling it before. Elisabeth, though — his head turns fractionally before he passes through the frame of his own door at gunpoint, remaining eye tracing coldly over her from skull top to toe bones in the split second before he's in.
The apartment has been stripped bare. That's how it looks, anyway, though it's pretty much always looked like this. One couch with one blanket, one coffee table. Small, empty kitchenette. No bed in the bedroom.
No smell of sulfur. Just very expensive cigarettes, a fairly subtle aftershave, and that indefinable but obnoxious essence only found in the presence of John Law. "I have a bargain to offer you, Deckard," he says, without preamble. "You tell us what we want to know, and you go free. We were never here, nor were you," There's barely restrained laughter in his tone, as if he were proud of himself for getting the drop on the arms dealer. "You keep mum, I read you your Miranda rights, and hand you off to the tender care of the joint task force."
She scoots the briefcase inside with her foot as well, and then shuts the door tightly. In truth, Liz has little interest in what Deckard's up to at the moment — she's got her priorities. Since Felix has this part well in hand, she simply shuts up and lets him handle it his own way. She keeps to one side of Deckard, out of Felix's line of fire and keeping him out of her own.
Deckard isn't laughing. Eye patch turned blind to the offer, and to much of the vacant apartment, he dips his chin a little after the jab of gun barrel to spine, then lifts it again so as to better squint at the join of wall and ceiling ahead. It would be difficult to look any more deeply unhappy than he does right now. "One of these things is more legal than the other." Not much effort is put into what might qualify as sing-song, but the general idea gets across the gravel and coarse disdain when he flickers another sideways look after Elisabeth and her gun.
"Indeed," Felix says, sunnily, settling the shotgun into the crook of his arm, like he's about to set out with a spaniel and hunt some quail. "Congratulations, Mr. Deckard. You now hold my career in the palm of your hand. But the offer still stands." He checks a battered pocketwatch pulled from his overcoat. "You have a minute to decide. The subject is Tyler Case, what he can do, who he is, why people get turned into stew around him."
Elisabeth pulls a folded set of printed-out pictures tossing a couple of them on the table. They're stills from the traffic camera just down from where Deckard appears to be shooting at a white van in front of an alley. Just in case the name doesn't mean anything to him. "This incident is definitely bringing your presence in New York to a lot of people's attention. So … seriously. We couldn't care less about you. Talk to us about this."
"I don't know anyone named Tyler Case." Deckard is patient in his dragging honesty, his long-suffering manner that of an uncle forced to babysit a particularly obnoxious and entitled nephew. He keeps his hands lifted, however lazily. No move is made for the gun at his side, or anything else he's managed to hide away on his person. "Maybe you should talk to the Joker."
Flop. Flop. His eye falls after the pictures, and almost immediately, there's an increase in tension in the line of muscle that crosses his jaw. Great.
Bitter annoyance nearly becomes anger in the rankle at his nose, and there's a telling knot in the muscle of one shoulder when he starts to turn back around on Felix.
Gun still cradled in one arm, Fel pats down Deckard with the other. "Who's in the van, Deckard? Who were you shooting at in that alley? Last I heard you sold guns, not used them?" The change in expression doesn't go unnoticed. "I take it you see someone there you know."
Elisabeth doesn't miss the change in expression either. She glances at Felix and lets Deckard speak — anything she asks at this moment would be redundant.
There's a revolver in a shoulder holster under his faded suit-coat, a largish switchblade at his belt. Another, smaller one at his calf if Felix cares to go down far enough to risk a kick to the face. The sweet, stale scent of marijuana smoke accompanies the movement of coat over coat, for which he looks unapologetic if he notices it at all. Too busy trying to keep his cool, maybe.
"I've had a worse month than you can imagine, Donnie. You want information, you're going to have to make a better offer than postponing inevitability."
"I'm offering you a chance to bail and run. We can finish this interview downtown at One Federal Plaza if you're really all that eager to enjoy Uncle Sam's hospitality." It is awkward, and Fel goes down on one knee to strip away knife and guns, even as he speaks. "What're these people that you'll pass up a Get Out of Jail free card rather than discuss it? Pure contrariness?"
Elisabeth looks like she will have no qualms whatsoever about shooting Deckard if he even looks like he's going to make a move on Felix while the Fed disarms Deckard. "Considering the fact that you're laying low in order to keep at least three different groups of people from killing you on sight, Deckard, I'd think the fact that we're not intending to be one of them might actually make your life simpler. But hey… you wanna go sit in city lockup where we make it easy for any schmoe to check the blotter — or heck, look at a headline! — and spot your name and send someone to take you out of the equation altogether, then you be my guest." She watches him thoughtfully. "We don't care what you're into, don't really care much about you. Need to find the kid causing the havoc. Now please? Tell us what happened there, and what you know about it."
"Gosh. When you put it that way, it sure is nice of you guys to be so willing to tag and release me back into hell to get some insight into what the fuck is going on with some random asshole who melts people. I owe you so much already, what with not arresting me immediately for something I didn't do and all." Woe, woe, woe. Acrid dislike burns acidic on the fork of Deckard's tongue, cast more at Elisabeth than Felix while the Fed is down on one knee, out of his immediate line of sight. "I don't think you understand exactly how much I hate you."
"I understand. I honestly just don't care," Felix says, blithely. "And guilty or not, they're going to grind you through the system," Having unloaded both of those guns and set them aside, he stands up, eyes Deckard. "One more chance, Flint."
There's a sigh at that, and Elisabeth just looks at him. "Well, fuck, Deckard, if you *wanted* to get out of hell and into jail for three hots and a cot, why didn't you just *say* so? We could have taken care of *that* weeks ago." She rolls her eyes and looks at Felix and shrugs. "He doesn't have any information worth anything to this case. Let's just leave him to his little games." She promised Teo all she wanted to do was talk to the man, and she's perfectly willing to just leave it at that, honestly.
"I know." He's already been chewed up, digested, and shat out by said system once before. Only, for exploding a barn. Chilly eye leveled on Felix when he finally stands up again, he holds out his hands, wrists conveniently spaced at handcuff width apart. Arrest me, oh mighty arrestor.
It's that easy? Fel looks….nonplussed to say the least. And then his training kicks in, and he says, in the toneless voice of a phone operator, "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense. Do you understand?", even as he yanks Deckard's hands behind him and fastens the cuff. Elisabeth gets a bemused shrug. "Now the joy is getting him off the island," he notes. "We should likely gag him so he doesn't call the mob down on us. Cops they'd go for, but what's a kidnapping more or less on this hellhole?"
If Felix is nonplussed, Liz is downright stunned though she's trying not to show it. This guy *really* wants to go to jail as opposed to using his own connections to lay low? Well…. shit. "Uhm…. well, our ride's meeting us in less than an hour out on the pier." She could call in for Anne to meet us, but that's 1) sort of an abuse of the teleporter, as this is not an emergency, and 2) probably not a good plan in that this is cop business and who knows what Deckard might say to whom??
"Yep." Deckard understands. Good eye turned dimly to the wall beyond Elisabeth, he offers no resistance to the rattle and click of cuffs snapping around his wrists, save perhaps some stiff immobility in his arms. He can't make himself be thrilled about it.
"This seems relatively safe. Then we wait, and hustle him down to the docks," Felix says, still giving Elisabeth that hugely uncertain look. Well, isn't this going to be….both a problem and a coup. "Very 3:10 to Yuma," he adds, drily. "Deckard, you can sit if you want."
Elisabeth hesitates and just shakes her head. "Things have got to royally be sucking for you right now, if you're looking at this as your only way out, man," she offers mildly. "You realize that they're going to charge with with a shit-ton of things whether you did them or not, right?" So long as he seems to get it, though, well…. what's she gonna do? She'll wait with them, and when the time comes, she'll pick up Deckard's crap (the briefcase and the suitcase, tuck her gun back into her waistband, and hope to hell we make it to the docks!
![]() March 5th: Skint |
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![]() March 6th: A Lean Wind Flays |