What Happened That Night?

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kain_icon.gif lola2_icon.gif

Scene Title What Happened That Night?
Synopsis In the wake of Richard Cardinal's death, Lola comes looking for Kain to find out what happened after she was shot back in October…
Date February 3, 2010

Dorchester Towers, Kain's Penthouse


Even the most expensive hotels and apartments have a 'side' door or a 'back' door for those kind of guests. So seeing this guest going up isn't very surprising - a blonde with big glasses, a long coat, a lollypop and a set of very ruby red lips. Heels, too, all day and into next week there are heels. And she might get a manly eyeball or two, but otherwise someone like this attracts very little attention.

So Lola takes the stairs, all the way up to Kain's apartment. Knock knock knock, sweetie.

From ground floor to Penthouse in heels on the stairs is a monumental task, considering the fifteenth floor of Dorchester Towers is the roof where the residence of Kain Zarek rests. Perched atop Dorchester, it's a sight Lola's seen before, but perhaps with less aching feet. The rap of her knuckles on that frosted glass door dividing apartment from stairwell and elevator echoes soundly in the foyer. Muted shadows move in the apartment, backlit by the diffuse light of a cloudy day shining through the apartment windows. The frosted glass prevents true definition of the shapes and forms to be made out, but one draws closer and closer to the door, until finally a buzzing noise is heard by the magnetic lock, and Kain Zarek's drawl comes over the intercom.

"Whatever y'all got Ah dun want any of it, now get'cher ass offa' my doorstep before Ah' come out there an' move ya m'self." Clearly, Kain woke up on the wrong side of the bed, probably with a hangover and about an hour ago judging from the slur of his voice.

Well it was safer than taking the elevator! So maybe she stopped every couple of floors. But it's a disguise, god damit. And who is really going to pay attention to a hooker at Zarek's door? How else is this man supposed to get a date, anyway?

"Aw sugar, little birdy told me ya was lookin' fer some company t'night." Now he may recognize her voice, or her accent, or the subtle hint about a bird. Either way, Lola's pretty sure that she can sweet-talk her way into this situation. Especially wearing heels and…knee high socks?

Even if Kain doesn't press down the intercom button, Lola can hear his muffled "Son of a bitch," through the glass door. He knows Lola's voice when he hears it, and he's beginning to wonder if attracting sociopathic ladies with southern accents is some sort of Evolved ability— maybe he should go get tested. There's a loud buzz from the glass door, then a click as the lock disengages, followed by a hiss of hydraulics as the door slides to the side, revealing Kain's somewhat done-up appearance. Pinstripe suit, lavendar undershirt and black necktie; he looks like he was getting ready to go somewhere, save that the creases and wrinkles in everything indicates that he's just slept in his clothing.

"You gotta' be the dumbest broad Ah've ever known," Kain grouses as he reaches out and snatches Lola's hand by the wrist and drags her inside, leaning out a moment later to look around the foyer, then flick the door close button which sends the fancy automatic door sliding shut again. "This is a Goddamn Linderman owned building!" Kain growl thorugh his teeth, still clutching Lola's wrist tightly.

"You probably got your ass spotted on six security cameras! You're damn well lucky that Daniel thinks you're dead, because if he thought Ah' fucked up an' didn't kill you— " Kain's jaw clenches tightly shut, brows furrowed and blue eyes just linger on Lola as he keeps that firm grasp of her wrist, standing at close enough proximity that she can smell the alcohol on his breath.

"What'd you want that made you so stupid that you thought comin' t'see me was a good idea?"

Lola doesn't make a sound as she's man-handled through the apartment. "He'd what, sugar? Shoot ya? It'd serve yq right," But Lola doens't seem malicious about it. She's moved passed the whole you-tried-to-kill-me thing, as much as a person can, anyway. She tries to yank her wrist back when she smells his stink. "Now lemme go, this damned wig itches like the dickens." Yes, she's not actually a blonde.

Although her jacket falls open during the little tousle, Kain might notice something interesting. Lola chose a very nice little getup for her sneak into the place. A pink sweater vest. A plaid skirt. Knee-high socks. A lollypop. Surely, somewhere, this seems just a little bit familiar.

"Y'look like a goddamned prosti— " Kain almost finishes that sentence before it actually click in his head. Blue eyes roll back in his head and he lets go of Lola's wrist, both of his hands waving up in the air in a //hands off/ gesture, like's he's done trying ot interfere in whatever it is she's doing. "If'n y'came all th' way out here jus' t'steal somethin' from mah apartment, y'can jus' go an' take it an' get the hell out. Ah' ain't got no time'r patience t'be playin' yer little games t'day."

It's been months since Kain's seen Lola last, and this is how he greets her?

"Fer all yer dumb redneck ass knows, Ah already done took it," Lola quips with that mischevious glint in her eye. She reaches up, pulling off the wig and tossing it aside, shaking her red hair down freely. "Ya weren' the brightest in the Zarek litter, now was ya?" She makes her way to his fridge, opening it and bending over to rummage out a beer before she kicks it closed, popping the thing off his counter edge and taking a swig. At least she doesn't look like she's been shot recently.

Planting herself on the far side of the kitchen counter, Lola sets down her beer with a light 'thud'. "Ya gots a problem, sugar tits, an it ain' me this time. Richard Cardinal's dead."

For all he wants to lay into Lola for even bringing up his family, Kain grows deathly still when she mentions what happened to Cardinal. Tensely swallowing, the cajun stares at her with a haunted look in his eyes, lips downturned into a frown. It's only a moment later that his silent stillness turns to a meandering stare, blue eyes wandering down from Lola to the floor, brows furrowed and head moving slowly from side to side. He starts to move, a few aborted steps across the floor, but then halts and looks back up to his tarted up guest.

"How?" Kain asks in a croaked tone of voice. "What— who'd he go'n piss off?" The truth might not be the best answer here, given how fantastic it is. But Kain's look presumes several things about Cardinal's death, and each presumption begins with Daniel and ends with Linderman.

"Some governmen' shit," Lola explains, lighting up a cigarette and snapping the silver zippo closed. She inhales deeply, exhales, picks up her beer. "FRONTLINE an all that, overseas." She looks up and over Kain's reaction. Every time he shows himself to be a half sentient human being, it's always expected and yet still a complete surprise. Seeing how he reacts, at least, allows Lola to relax a little.

"Weren' nothin' bout what you an' him had goin' on the side, just like it weren' nothin' bout me." She watches him again, almost almost a bit concerned. "Ya need a drink?"

Rolling his tongue over his teeth, Kain nods his head slowly to the information, and it almost seems like he's nodding to the request for a drink before he looks up at her sharply. "No Ah' don' want no drink. Ah' want you t'get the fuck outta' here." He waves a hand towards the door, mood soured more than it already was before now, by this crushing news. "Whatever it was Dicke wanted t'get done, it ain't gonna' happen now 'cause he got his dumb ass dead. So there ain't no fussin' over it. Just— " Kain scowls, shaking his head from side to side. "Get'cher ginger ass outta here an' go fuck up someone else's life since you're right done fuckin' up your own."

Words hurt, and Kain often uses them like weapons. He's not mad at Lola— not as mad as he sounds— but the predicament that Cardinal's death has found him in has left Kain wanting, has left him realizing that the bargain Cardinal had started to put together had fallen apart so terribly. Now, all he really has left is his deal with Linderman. It's enough to make him sick to his stomach that he'd even entertained an alternative.

Thud. That was Lola's beer on the counter. That ginger is glaring daggers across the room at Kain. Well, why not? He's being mean! She walks around the counter to get right up in his face, even as her sweater might show just a peek of a scar caused by him. "Whatever it was ya'll were workin' on, kaka coq, Ah think now'd be a good time ta start singin'. Ya ain' the only one left in a shit position nowdays." And Lola knows there's one thing that can always keep her alive - usefulness. Even if, useful, she did just call him a dick shit in Creole. "So, what was it ya'll were cookin' up behind them closed doors a yers?"

"It doesn't matter!" Kain never raises his voice, he never shouts — not like this — and never has he lost his temper quite like this in front of Lola, nothing more than bitchy grousing before. But this— this is Kain without any semblance of control. "It doesn't fuckin matter what Dickie wanted t'do 'cause he's dead and he was the only one who knew what the hell was goin' on! He's dead he's gone an' Ah' ain't ruinin' the only good thing Ah' still got in mah life just t'sate your God damned curiosity!"

Kain throws one of his barstool chairs at the kitchen counter aside with a rough toss of the chair back, sending it crashing down to the floor from the fitful motion. "You get your skanky ass outta' mah apartment b'fore Ah' call Danny an' let 'im know Ah' found you! Get the hell outta' mah apartment!" He's completely lost all rationality— whatever he and Cardinal worked out, losing it has drop-kicked him in the heart.

Lola is, internally, very happy that she's no longer behind that counter when Kain decides to go all ape-shit. She doesn't even get hit by shrapnel! Instead, she steps back, leaning against the corner of the wall and reaching for her beer again, taking a sip as though she were just standing on a street corner. What's she doing? Waiting for him to get it all out of his system.

"Ya done yet, sug?" She asks, watching him after that. She's ready to bolt, she knows better than to loiter - why she picked a good spot to dodge into the next room if he goes any crazier. "Kain," she says, her voice a little softer, trying to be all feminine and relaxing. Not really that it works, as her voice is probably like sandpaper to his very sensitive ears, but hey. She's trying. "He left behind people an' papers an his whole life. Ya know how people are - yer deepest, darkest shit don' come out until after yer dead." It might be her next line that's the most surprising thing she's ever said.

"Let me help ya."

The expression on Kain's face is much the one that he had in New Orleans after having shot that man playing poker. There's a hollow, haunted look on his face as he watches Lola, tongue working inside of his mouth to get the taste of bile off of it. He doesn't say anything, not for a while as he moves away from the kitchen, stalking across the floor of his apartment towards the living room, all perfectly visible from the kitchen with how few walls are in this Penthouse suite.

He settles down, tiredly, on the sofa and rests his forearms over his knees, head bowing and dirty blonde hair hanging in his face. "It don't matter none… even if he said Rosebud on his dyin' bed an' you realised he meant that it was a sled." Citizen Kane is perhaps not the most timely analogy Kain could use. "Richard's gone… don't matter none if he left all his memoirs behind and his little black Goddamned book. Ah' dun' know how he was gonna' pull it all off… Ah don' even know what the hell he wanted to do. He was a crazy son've a bitch… maybe he was jus' makin' all this shit up…"

Kain's hands rake fingers thorugh his hair, voice weak now. "Maybe Ah'm dumber'n a hill've ants for thinkin' any've it could've been true…" On his coffee table near the sofa, stacks of unpaid bills are in a disorganized heap, along with repossession notices and shut-off warnings for his cable and electricity. He has to make over a hundred thousand dollars a year— how the hell is he in debt?

Yeah, Lola has no idea what the fuck he's talking about. "Ah'm sure if he's got a grave someplace ya kin bring him rosebuds all ya want, sug." Lola wasn't the pick of the Mayeux litter either, it seems. She lets him wander, but doesn't notice the bills or any of the rest of it - not until she's following after him without her jacket and a bottle of vodka, which she sets down on the table as she slumps across from him in a chair, kicking one leg up over the chair's arm. She does look like a prostitute, it'd be kind of funny in any other situation. She takes a long sip of her beer, considering the man across from her for a moment. She might have high-tailed it out of here if she had someplace to go, and if Kain Zarek hadn't not killed her. So maybe that's sort of like saving her life. It's a very grey line, but even Lola couldn't run out when she owes something like that. Kain's got to know how that feels, in some creepy way. "What happened that night?"

What happened that night?

There's no objection given to the man going for a drink. Cardinal could use one too, but, really, it's probably best that he doesn't just yet.

After the pair are out of the room, he exhales a faint sigh of relief, free hand coming up to scratch at the side of his neck. "I'm into information these days," he tells the other man casually, "Hell, even Danny-boy's hired me once or twice, but he doesn't realize half've what I know. I don't know how much you keep an ear on things these days— you hear about that fucked up time travel shit we had going on a couple months ago?"

Kain stops with his hand settled on a decanter of bourbon. His back to Cardinal, the cajun doesn't move, and as his hand slips away he looks over his shoulder with an expression on his face like Cardinal just took a shit on the carpet right in ront of him. Blue eyes peer out at the gun-toting man curiously, and Kain's head tilts slowly to the side. "So this is what this is?" He nods vaguely around the room. "You done gone and got hit upside the head really hard, lost your goddamned marbles and came here t'tell me Ah'm Satan in the future or somethin'?"

Kain's brows furrow together, his head shakes from side to side, and his eyes come shut. With his fingers already wound in his hair, he looks stressed to the point of breaking. "Richard was all— crazy. Ah' dunno, he was talkin' crazy talk, like 'bout people from th' future n'shit." When his head lifts up, Kain's eyes look haunted by whatever it was Cardinal had told him. "He… didn't make a whole lotta' sense…. not right away."

There's a squint of his eyes. "Ah was jokin' 'bout that Ghost of Christmas Past shit earlier. Don't you go an' get all retarded on me or so help me Ah'll just ask fer ya t'shoot." An anxious glance moves to the door, then back to Cardinal.

"Not quite." Cardinal's lips twitch into a faint smile one brow ticking up over the edge of his shades, "Good guess, but not quite. No. See, after some crazy Evolved fucker decided to juggle where a few people were in time, I, being the curious yet handsome hero to this particular tale, decided to ask some questions about what the future was like."

"Imagine my surprise to hear about a little thing called the Zarek Group." A pause, and he asks mildly, "Should I continue, or am I boring you?"

"He told me some fuckin' crazy-ass story 'bout time travelers from th' future or some shit, said that Ah'd taken control of the Linderman Group from Danny… like Ah' was some sort've big ol' head honcho of the place. Ah' don' know what t'believe, he ain't never shown me no proof, just a lot of crazy talk. But…"

"Bullshit." Kain's answer is quick and to the point. "Ah'm about as good with runnin' a business as you are with hostage situations, Dicky." Those blue eyes narrow, and Kain takes a step away from the sideboard. "Look, you wanna tell me that some great big future seer says Ah' live a short and unfulfilling life because bein' a hitman is a shit job? Fine, Ah'll buy that, but you go on tryin' t'tell me that Ah'm gonna take over after Danny checks out?" Kain's stare turns into a glare, accompanied by a scowl.

"You can keep shovelin' that heapin' helpin' a horse-shit, but Ah'm not eatin' it up."

"Ah' think he was outta' his fool mind." Kain admits in a grumbling tone of voice. "S'probably why he done got himself killed overseas… or whatever the hell he got turned into fertilizer." A sign slides out of Kain's nose and some of the tension in his body deflates. "Wasn't until he told me how he found out 'bout it that Ah' actually started believin' him…"

Lola listens intently to the entire story, swinging her beer bottle by the neck delicately between her press-on nails - a nice touch for her disguise to get her upstairs. She takes a thoughtful swig, then returns to position A. Her gaze is not quite on Kain, but nearby him enough to demonstrate that she really is listening, but she's thinking all the while.

"So that's what all this shit was 'bout then?" Lola finally asks after a long minute of quiet. "Ya wanted ta be Mistah Daniel yer own self? Seems less 'bout runnin' a business than tellin' who ta shoot who." Another thoughtful sip of her beer.

"Kinda makes sense though, if ya think 'bout it. Ah mean, is it true that all these Italian mob bosses get taken out by their drivers? It's cause the driver knows shit, right?" She sips her beer again, her mischevious glance tilting up toward Kain again. Uh-oh.

"Could ya do it? Real an honest, could ya?"

Swallowing tensely, Kain's expression goes from defiant to shaken in a matter of moments. Anxious eyes stare at Cardinal, more afraid of him now than he was when he thought he was going to getshot. "Why're you tellin me this?" That's the part that has him afraid. "Why— " his words hitch in the back of his throat. "Ah'm not some— Ah' ain't nobody good. Why're you— " he's irrationally fearful now, afraid that what's steaming on the floor isn't a big pile of proverbial bullshit, but a gleaming turd of opportunity.

"You know how this business goes, Kain."

Cardinal's thumb slides up to the hammer of the gun, clicking it undone and lowering the weapon to rest his hand on his thigh; he's not going to shoot Kain unless he makes a move, and he's pretty sure that he's not going to at this point. "Linderman's racking up the enemies left'n right, and the world's changing. He's old. He's not. Think about the shit he's done recently… you agree with all of those decisions?" A faint smile, "If he dies, if the Group collapses? Somethin' else will step into place. Personally, I'd rather the same ol' same ol', just with different administration. The Group's good for business. Others aren't."

"Ah dunno…" Kain admits with a shake of his head to Lola's question. "Ah' don't think Ah' could, Ah'm not that kinda' guy. Dickie sure's shit thought Ah' was, but e'ain't alive no more, so that kinda' throws the whole plan out the window. Unless he left a nice little to-do list with Mah name on it…"

A worried look is shot around the room, then back to Cardinal as Kain takes a conspiratorial step closer. Come in to my parlour, said the shadow to the mobster. "You think Danny's just gonna give up? He— He'd probably put Robert Caliban in charge before me. How the hell— " he's actually considering this. Kain's jaw tenses, eyes go wide and he takes a half step back. There's still a little forward progress.

"How do Ah' know you ain't just some plant from Danny com'n t'check up on whether Ah'd do that Lola girl an' whether Ah'm loyal or not?" Kain's blue eyes peer intently at Cardinal. "How d'Ah know Ah' can trust you— Ah' just got fuckin' stuck bah lightnin' last week, so the odds are pretty darn good of unusual shit bein' unusual."

He looks good— for a man who was stuck by lightning.

"You don't. No more'n I know whether or not you're gonna believe anything I just said, or if you sent Manny off to toss Lola in a dumpster somewhere, or if you're going to tell Danny-boy everything I said," The gun's tucked away inside his jacket, and Cardinal pushes himself up to his feet from the couch, cracking his neck briefly before gesturing to the door with a smirk, "But you're a man who understands how you're supposed to run business, and I can respect that. So I guess I'm just gonna have to trust you."

"He thought Ah'c ould do it, but he had a plan, kid." Kain's brows crease together, his head shakes slowly and his hands finally slide away from his hair. "All that's gone now, whether or not he left anythin' behind Ah' guess. 'Cause all that's left now's a whole lotta' disappointment. Ah' ain't takin' over no nothin'. Ah'm not riskin' mah life for some dumb dream that ain't never gonna' do me no good."

Well this is certainly a very interesting night.

"Seein' as yer piss-drunk as a piss-drunk skunk, right now Ah kin imagine that ya couldn' do nobody no good right now," Lola says, with her usual empathy once more returned. But she can tell, in teh past few months, Kain has been falling off the edge. She lift sher beer, considering the amber liquid therein contained.

"Why not?" The girl asks, lowering her beer and turning her gaze toward the man. "Why not risk it fer yer dumbass dream?"

"Now, shall we go check on our little lady and see if she's calmed down?"

"She's in a dumpster," Kain notes with a quirk of his head, straightening his tie and looking to Cardinal with a side-long stare and a crooked smile, "Ah' bet'cha she's about as calm as along-tailed cat in a room full'a rockin' chairs." And with that southern drawl, Kain crouches down and picks up his revolver, tucking it inside of his jacket, then looks towards the chair with the bullet hole in it.

Rubbing one hand over his mouth, staring down at his muted reflection in the glass-topped coffee table in front of him, Kain Zarek considers Lola's request, though he doesn't quite voice an answer she wants, what he'd said to Cardinal that night still rings in his ears. His silence is answer enough for her, for now, and his memories of that day are answer enough for himself.

"Ah' got a lott'a 'splainin t'do."


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