Participants:
| Scene Title | Tricky Ricky and the Cajun Damsel |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Lola Mayeux, at the advise of the Irishman, goes to see Richard Daselles about procuring falsified identification. |
| Date | December 3, 2010 |
The Rookery is one of the most dangerous places in the United States, a haven for drug and gun running, human trafficking and murder. Even with the United States Government leaning down on Staten Island, the Rookery still proves to be the pustulent head of Staten Island's infected underbelly.
It's on one particularly foggy morning that brings Lola Mayeux out to this terrible side of New York City, where derelict apartment complexes lie boarded up, burned out husks of cars lay on the street side, and graffiti paints nearly every building and surface. Steam rises up from trash-clogged sewer grates, rain soaked newspaper pages lie patch worked across the sidewalk, and homeless junkies are huddled in shallow alleyways and stoops for closed up businesses.
On one particularly run down street, there lies a brick-faced building of crumbling appearance with barred windows on the ground floor. The old sign that once proclaimed Tuck's Pawn Shop is now unlit and left to fade further than it already was. Near the pawn shop entrance, there is an entrance to a stairwell marked with a smashed in intercom and buzz-lock system that leads up to apartments above the pawn shop.
It's here where a man known on Staten Island as Tricky Ricky resides, a loose-associate of the Ferrymen, drug runner, and generally untrustworthy sod of a man. Loose connections to the gun-runner known as the Irishman and Ricky's own notoriety as a fabricator of falsified identification has led Lola to this dilapidated building, the stink of low tide not the only foul smell on the street outside.
When she pulls open the shattered frame of the doorway that leads to the apartment stairwell and heads up the concrete steps to the second floor, she can hear the muffled and distant sounds of an argument, a man and woman's voice raised, something smashing, a child crying. Another floor up a dog is barking and someone has their radio on too loud, but far enough away that only the generic bass beats can be heard through the ceiling.
Apartment 201 is the first door on her right, just like she'd heard. It's numbers have long since been peeled off — they were copper, but copper is valuable — and all that remains now are the faded markings that ghostly show suggestions of numbers. Beyond the door, the sound of a too-loud television prattles muffled through the too-thin walls.
Staten is a place that Lola never wanted to go again, if she could help it. She used to live here, back when she was placed undercover. It was a good cover too, until Adam moved her to the mainland. The last time she saw this place? She was tailing it out of here, shivering and shot, coming down from a Refrain high with two new bullet holes in her body. Not exactly the memory one wants to return to.
But the memory is there all the same. She's got a black cap on, her leather jacket, cargos and boots. Her feet carry her, making taps on the concerete as she goes. She doesn't pause, but she does walk slowly, pausing to look careful at each door, each corner. In this town? You never know. And there's just enough people out there who may still care that she's breathing to not be terribly certain. She moves along, carefully to the door, peering this way and that. She steps back, out of the doorway, before knocking a few times hard with her fist.
Ya know, just in case he answers with shot-gun fire.
There's no answer, just the continued droning sound of a too-loud television juxtaposed against an argument continuing somewhere else in the apartment building. In the hallway, a stray tabby cat wanders her way down the stairs from the third floor, mewling softly on locking eyes with Lola, before padding swiftly across the stained carpet floor towards the stairs to the ground floor in that sudden haste that cats sometimes find themselves in.
Still no answer from inside, either.
"Ah'd sacrifice you if folks didn' get all 'animal cruelty' on mah ass. Bet the odas'd love that," Lola tells the cat, looking back to the door as she hears no answer. She frowns. This isn't going smooth. She wants it to go smooth. Staten already gives her the shivery timbers, she wants it to go smooth and she wants it to go done. She slams ehr fist on the door, this time hard enough to shake it.
"Hold on!" Comes the booming voice from inside, "Hold on!" A little quieter that time. With all the noise in the apartments, Lola can't quite hear what's going on behind the door, not until the floorboards creak right in front of it, and the chain slides back, two deadbolts click back into the door and the knob unlocks. When the door comes swinging open, there's a confused looking, heavy-set man with an unruly mop of curly hair standing on the other side.
He looks like he was expecting someone else.
"Yyyyou aren't my usual," Ricky offers blearily, rubbing one hand at his eye, dressed in an open blue and green bathrobe, stained Harvard tshirt and his boxers. "Uh, wait… are you Carmilla?" Ricky's hand slowly lowers from his eye, a finger picking at crust in the corner. "'Cause, seriously, I plan on paying everything up in full as soon as Jiminez pays me back, and you know how that little rat-fucker is about timely payments, right?"
Lola frowns a little bit. Okay, this isn't quite what she was expecting. What was she expecting, though? A bald guy, too boney with stretched skin, and a scar going over his glass eye, picking his teeth with a bowie knife. Okay, that's what she was expecting. Exactly that. Well, anyway, back ta business.
"Naw sugar, but Ah am here ta bring ya somethin' that might cure yer money woes, an'll keep ya stocked in hookers fer awhile." She turns into the doorway, facing him. One gloved hand gets placed on his shoulder and she moves to shove him back, back into his apartment, back onto a sofa or a chair if she can.
The closest thing winds up being a fish tank, so full of algae that it looks like an experiment in botanical studies more so than marine life. The tall glass case rocks back and forth with empty weight as Ricky stumbles into it, eyes wide and brows furrowed together as he offers a stare to Lola. With as thick a frame and as might weight as he has, it's likely only his half-waking stupor that gives him enough instability for Lola to shove him around.
"Woah, woah, woah, hey there sweet-cheeks," Ricky raises his hands, palms out, showing just how harmless he is. "I love a rough-ride as much as the next guy, but you play patty-cake with me again and I'll introduce you to Mr.Stabby, okay? Okay." Dark eyes avert to the door, and Ricky adjusts his bathrobe collar like it was a fine suit jacket.
"Only pretty ladies get to wake my ass up and then rough me up, so the first one's free. But for fuck's sake close and lock the door unless you want both of us to get stabbed, shot and raped. Probably not in that order, maybe."
"Well Ah ain' worried," Lola says, as she goes to close the door. She never turns her back on him "Figure they'd be more interested in rapin' yer sweet 'ass than mine. Ain' that a fad now, darlin? SUUUUUEY!" Yes, she saw the movie. Everyone saw the fucking movie.
Door finally closed, Lola looks at the man, setting her hands on her hips. "Now then, ya Tricky Ricky, aincha? Funny name, that. Althoguh Ah spoze it goes with the territory, mah Daddy's name is Five-fingered Frankie."
"Yeah, that's real sweet," Rick admits as he dusts off the front of his bathrobe and narrows his eyes, "you got a real sweet way of talking to people. Why don't you turn that candy-ass of yours around and go somewhere else, because I am a respectable man, and I will be respected in my home." Says the man wearing bunny-eared slippers at 11:00 in the morning.
Ricky offers one raised brow to Lola, then begins shuffling away from her and towards a sofa that faces away from the door. The apartment looks both like too many people and no one lives here all at once. Open pizza boxes are piled up near the door with crumbs on the linoueum floor. Portions of that very gaudy avacado flooring are peeling up in places. The paint is quite literally curling off the walls in spots and the flannel-covered couches have cigarette burn marks in them and tears in the upholstery where yellow foam pokes out.
A small cathode tube television rests on a tray opposite the couch, squeezed between a bookshelf and that fish tank. On the television, it's clear Ricky was asleep with Days of Our Lives playing in the background, a bottle of Captain Morgan's Private Stock and a box of Captain Crunch sitting on the coffee table in front of where he was sleeping. Judging from his attire, he was doing this in his boxers and his Harvard tshirt.
He is a man of class.
"Seriously, either foot up some money," Ricky waves towards the largely cluttered kitchen island as he circles around the sofa, "or go take a flying fuck. I don't have time in my busy day to be entertaining every whack-job with a funyn accent that comes around."
"Ye'll make time fer 24 grand, way Ah see it," Lola says, slinging her hands into her coat pockets. "Leastways, bah teh looks a things 'round here ya will." Lola follows him a few steps toward where he sits. "Ah don' wanna be here any more'n you want me t'be here, sugar. But Ah'm a girl what's got business on her mind. You an Ah do some business, an Ah'll be oughta here afore yer nooner a Crisco an girls gone wild." Yes, she went there.
"I like that menthol KY stuff actually," Ricky comments as he snatches up the bottle of Captain Morgans and offers an askance look back to Lola. "It's like a hooker giving a blowjob with a peppermint candy in her mouth. I think they call that a Chris Cringle, right?" Ricky's brows furrow as he sloshes the bottle from side to side, then starts to walk back around the sofa towards the kitchen and past Lola.
"Oh, no— no, wait. A Chris Cringle is when she takes the candy cane up the— " he blurts out a giddy laugh, "right, right. Anyway, put your money where your mouth is, sweetheart, I don't have all fucking day for you to butter me up. What is it you want, because twenty-four large says you want it fast or now, and depending on the demand…" Ricky opens up a cabinet, grabbing two plastic cups out of a stack.
"You ain't here just to score some Refrain," Ricky opines, glancing back over his shoulder.
"Two IDs," Lola explains. She unfolds a slip of paper, offering it out to Ricky with two fingers. "Registration, Social, Ah want ta stick it under Uncle Sam's nose an fer him t'be thinkin' he smellin' roses. Ya follow?" She asks, looking at him with a raised eyebrow. "An Ah think yer thinkin' of a Peppermint Fatty, sugar," Lola says, wrinkling her nose just a little bit. Not that she hasn't done it (come on, she's closer to 30 than she is to 20) but still. The idea of a blowjob and this man ever being associated together, well it's no wonder her nose is wrinkled. "Yer the guy fer that, aincha?"
A sharp whistle accompanies Lola's steep demands. "Linderman Act cards are a fucking nightmare to copy, let alone the difficulty in caging a social-security card." Circling around the kitchen island, Ricky eyes the slip of paper, but doesn't yet take it. Instead, he sets down the stack of two cups, pulls one out of the other and proceeds to pour a small amount of rum into each.
"He's the problem," isn't the best way to begin this. "My contacts do the high-brow forgery work, good people but private people." He turns, headed for the regrigerator, opening up the freezer door and pulling out an ice cube tray. He taps the door with one hand to send it swinging shut. "They've fallen on some kinda' hard times, enough to the point where just up and doing shit like this isn't… exactly something that I'd say they're guaranteed to want to do."
Ricky walks over tot he cups, flexing the tray and pulling out a pair of ice cubes for each plastic cup, clunking them down into the rum where they pop and crack from the contrasting temperatures. "Twenty-four large ain't going to cover it for two Registry cards and Socials. But it doesn't matter how much money you want to send me is the problem. The problem is convincing them to do the dirty deeds for me."
Ricky sets down the ice cube tray, picks up both cups and turns around, offering one out to Lola. "You hand me that piece of paper, and I have to go to them. I have to ask, and they might just say no. You down with that?"
"Well Ah'd be more'n happy ta talk to 'em mahself. Ah got the money, sugar. And if yer folks do a real good job, there could be more money comin' their way. Ah know how yer kinda folks work, done grown up with 'em. Ah'm gonna make 'em work sugar, but they's gonna get paid good for their good work. Bad work, maybe not so much. Ah'm strictly business."
She watches him move around, keeping a very light and easy stance, almost as though the two of them were just shooting the shit. "Ah'm here from the Irishman. He done told me that fer 12 grand a pop Ah kin get a full set of IDs. Ah'mma need three in all, one more after these two. After that Ah'm outta yer hair. Now ya kin tell me whatcha need exactly ta get this done or, if ya ain' up ta it, ya kin put me in touch with folks what can."
Rattling the proffered cup in front of Lola's face again with an expectant look, Ricky tilts his head to the side as if trying to bribe her with alcohol. Fact of the matter is he just dislikes drinking alone — at eleven in the morning. "No can do on meeting them yourself, part of my arrangement is that I don't involve anyone directly with them. How this would go down is like so," Ricky motions with the offered cup of rum around the kitchen. "I take your request up to them, they consider it and tell me whether or not we both can go take a flying fuck off of a short dick."
Ricky's eyes flick towards the television, briefly, then back to Lola. "Then I let you know what they said. Thing is, I don't know how long it will take for them to tell me to pay up or fuck off. I'll need half up front in case they accept, so I can just pass payment along to them instead of having to track your fine ass down again. If they say no, I can just toss you your cash back."
Ricky's chin tilts up, brows furrow and tongue presses against the inside of his cheek. "Total cost to you will be thirty grand total. Because despite what ol' Lucky Charms says about my work, he isn't aware of the shifting circumstances I'm dealing with now. So fifteen up front, fifteen on delivery." Ricky's brows furrow. "Take it or leave it."
"Done," Lola says, crossing her arms and looking down at the drink. She shakes her head a little - not on this kind of business, not with these kinds of people. No fucking around her,e no fucking around on Staten Island. That's just asking for….well, bad things. "Ah'll bring ya the money today." The difference on the second payment she can make up herself. "Now remember, Ah want a full workin' set of IDs. Registration cards, social, picture ID. Fer two names, both of 'em are on the lists." She nods toward the list that was held out for him. And of course, both are pictures of her. One with glasses and pig tails, one with a ponytail and a lot of eye makeup. "These check out ta mah satisfaction Ah'll be needin' one more. Then we can all go on our merry ways."
Ricky's brows shoot up in a suit yourself expression as he tips back the cup offered to Lola in a quick swig that downs most of the rum save for some dregs in the bottom of the glass. "I take it you're not dumb enough to carry that kinda' cash around with you, I've got a drop point for that sorta shit out on Holloway Street, it's three blocks from here. Old Western Union building, there's a fucker named Tom that lives there now. You just leave the money with him," Ricky explains as he sets down the cup to free up one hand, "and I'll know when its good."
Looking back to Lola, Ricky's brows furrow. "I can't tell ya how long this might take to do. Probably a couple weeks on the inside, maybe not till the end of the month or more… it— depends on how charitable they are at the moment." Ricky's brows furrow, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
"If that's everything, babe, than I think we're lickity-split spic-and-spam done." Whatever the hell that means.
"Well ya be sure ta remind 'em that it is Christmastime. If they're ever gonna have a charitable spirit, now'd be the time for it." Lola seems ready to go, and yet she doesn't. Something's tugging at her, holding her back. Dark eyes sweep over the apartment. "Ya…ya also mentioned Refrain," Lola says slowly, measuring her words. IT's been a long time since she spoke the name of her old addiction, but a much shorter time since she thought about it. IT's one of those things, they say. "That still goin' around?"
"Not on hand, but I can get you some. I've got a supplier, moved in here 'round about two or three months ago? Supply and demand is pretty fucked right now, so it'll cost you sixty for one syringe," Ricky off-handedly explains, tipping up the other cup to — more slowly — down the other quantity of rum, taking a few slow swallows to get it all down this time. Exasperatedly breathing once he's done, Ricky wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his bathrobe, then sets the cup down on the island.
"I'll call down, let him know you're looking. How many vials do you want? I can leave 'em with Tom and when you go to drop off payment, just leave enough for what you're buying and we'll call it good." Sixty dollars for Refrain is twice as much as Lola was paying back in the day, it just goes to show what the riots and martial law has done to the city.
She considers. Really hard, she considers. It takes a few seconds of her just staring past Ricky, hand on the knob. "Naw thanks sugar," she finally says, turning the knob on the door to pull it open. "Don' know what the folks Ah'd be buyin' for kin trust what ya might've put in it. Least, lets see how ya do with one task afore Ah start settin' ya up with another." She opens the door and turns to walk out. It's true what they say.
That need never really goes away.
"Hey, I don't trust 'em t'not put shit in it either, sweet-cheeks," Ricky admits as Lola turns back to the door and starts on her way out. He doesn't protest her departure though, she'd worn out her welcome before she'd even set foot inside of the apartment. By the time he's closed the door behind her, there's more clicking on closing than there was on opening, and the locks shutting Ricky into his apartment are for security reasons.
Also because he wasn't joking about the menthol KY.
Not that anyone needed to know that.