Post by Downfall on Aug 31, 2022 13:24:30 GMT -5
There were two, laid side by side. They were not executed quickly, with a bullet between the eyes, no... their faces were mutilated, swollen and bursting like overripe fruit. It didn't turn his stomach. Didn't make him roil. But, as he took them in, he sighed a little.
An officer appeared at his shoulder, grasping him; The kid's nameplate read Pak. He studied the young beat cop's face, wondering at the backstory that lay behind his life here in this little block, if indeed he was from the block.
The interconnected web of stories... all of which end, one way or another, in a finality just like the two laid side by side, positioned as lovers, despite their mangled, broken limbs and burst faces.
He thought...
He thinks too much, he realizes, coming back to earth and finding the child-officer Pak, a Korean in Japantown, is warning him sternly - "Didn't you hear, crime scene, get behind the tape and back up or I put you in cuffs - "
"I got this, kid," says a brusque, cigarette-roughened voice, stepping over. He's even more of a mystery, a weathered old man with greying hair. "Lamont, SFPD. You Fehl?" His eyes speak of decades worth of stories ending in tableaus such as this, they barely even give the lovers a precursory scan before looking over at him.
"Come with me."
They leave the alleyway behind the shell of the dojo, weaving back over towards the row of shops. Fresh from the rain, neon lights reflect off puddles, casting red and blue pallor on the walls as they pass a bodega, before coming to rows of stalls selling food, and dialects of Japanese shouted by short order cooks as they acclimate business.
Danny stops, not heeding Lamont, at a coffee kiosk, and the man older than he and Lamont combined, smiling with only one tooth, gives him a little respectful nod as he hands him over a black coffee with a little kick of ginger.
He sips it, mouth tensing against the bitter.
Lamont, already irritated by the intrusion on his crime scene and the world-weariness, I'm-gettin'-too-old-for-this-shit that grows like cancer inside anyone with longer than ten years on the force, eyes him as he sips his coffee. "You done playing games with me, wasting my time on this investigation, do I gotta run you in?"
Danny chuckles, as if to say, arrogantly, yeah you can try that, but, solicitously, he tips the paper cup to Lamont, "You want a coffee?"
Lamont seethes, closes his eyes, then, eyes flickering over to the coffee vendor, who still stands, smiling a snaggle-toothed, empty smile, barks "Two sugars."
It's ten minutes later as they've migrated to a bench, overlooking a chain-linked fence beside a public school down the street, and Lamont is the first to talk. "You're a long way from home, Fehl."
Danny, holding the cup in his hands, just shrugs simply, "I set up shop here. I was renting an empty space in between the warehouse and the laundry; Little hole in the wall, really, but the upstairs was a kendo dojo... owned by my... old friend..."
Lamont looks at him sidelong over the rim of the coffee cup. "The place that burned down Friday."
"Yes," he says, then drinks his dark, bitter coffee, "......faulty wiring."
Wryly smiling, Lamont puts his coffee cup down on the bench beside him, "I heard something about that."
"About a white man who came in to town, attacked members of the Death Riders gang, and had a swarm of them come to his place of business... Heard that he tuned one of the Death Riders up with a crowbar... and that he stood in the doorway of a burning building and, loudly, proclaimed to the neighborhood, that he was their new kingpin."
Danny lifted a finger from his coffee cup, "Never said 'new kingpin', just that he was going to be protection for the shopkeepers on Pine Street..." He stops himself, as he sees Lamont's slow, gotcha smile, "...This, hypothetical white man."
Lamont had the shrewd look of someone that's seen both sides of the street, if not played on the dirty side himself. But his eyebrows knitted. "I'm not gonna run you in... "kingpin", but I'm afraid that you've gotten yourself into something you don't understand. These people, are not going to tuck tail and run."
Danny lifted his eyes skyward, putting his incredibly bitter coffee down. Craning his head up, he couldn't see the stars from here. All he could see was the light from the city, and the haze of the red, blue, and green neon from the shops behind them reflected in the sky. He looked back, over his shoulder, thinking of all of the stories back in the shops.
"I'm aware of that," is all he could say.
As with Johnny Bacchus, costing him his shot at All-In right when he was unhooking the briefcase... the state of Pine Street was not an unforeseen outcome. He had gone full well into this, all of this, knowing there was a very good chance he would face swift reprisal.
But he was also... tired of course correcting.
He'd noticed, every time he had lost something major in AW, especially, he would scramble, scrap what he was doing, start somewhere new. Hell... that was kind of the impetus for why he had decided to move from Florida, no?
But he had done it, and then, he had seen the state the Death Riders had put Nihonmachi in, their iron grip... he had grown tired of the juvenile japes and ever-present attempts to work him Johnny had given him... and he had firmly committed to starting over and not overbalancing this time.
So he was bitter, and spoke of lost opportunities at first. He had been angry. He still was angry.
But, even in loss, he knew that the key to getting yourself where you want to be in life is that you can't give up when things get hard. Dion had taught him that, but Dion also believed he'd sacrificed all of his honor to be a scumbag again.
He wasn't.
He was just refusing to compromise with scum anymore.
He told himself that, then he asked himself... about the two young men, teenagers, really, who had been caught coming from a school just like this and beaten, mutilated and left posed as a set right in his alleyway... what their story was, before they became a reprisal to him? An accusation?
He wondered... about all of those shopkeepers and cooks in the stalls on the street they just passed... even the snaggle-toothed, smiling old man at the little cart who served him exotic, wild roasts of coffee as bitter and black as he liked... what their stories were, before he came to town.
Pine Street is my home, he had told the fleeing thugs.
But, his words in that abortive phonecall to Dion, rang true also. He was sorry that people had to get caught up in his wake.
He had expected to get attacked by the Death Riders... he didn't expect to find bodies at his doorstep. He had expected Johnny Bacchus to try to out-petty him and take away his All-In just as he'd taken away Johnny's... he hadn't expected or wanted Dion to eat that, too. He hadn't wanted it...
But that was the story he lived.
And, in both cases... all he was left was vengeance. He frowned.
Lamont, sensing his woolgathering, had just given him a headshake, a kind of sympathetic sorry, pal. "Long ways away from just being a wrestler, Fehl... might be you're more comfortable just doing that..."
He met Lamont's gaze. "I'm pretty comfy where I'm at. Feels homey."
They paused, and then, they looked down at their coffee cups.
"That yours or is that mine?" Lamont said, confused...
An awkward beat, then they both hurried dumped their coffee cups out on the ground, "Better to not..."
"Yeah, don't want to risk it, you're around blood all day, Hep-C is a thing..."
"Me, what about you, you touch dead bodies..."
Lamont stands, straightening his duster, "Well, if you're staying in town, the least I could do is give you a heads-up. You're playing in deep waters, pal."
His jaw is set in stone, "I swim just fine."
Lamont scoffs, "These are ruthless killers. And you've done kicked a hornets nest. You put down a barking-mad firebug named Tetsuya, but he's a pawn in their organization, and you've only ever met as high as a rook. Middle management has offices down there at the docks, and I know you've met Yaichi by now... but there are much, much bigger fish."
Boldly, he'd stood, standing straight and his eyes beating into Lamont's. "So tell me where to look... and where I can find these... bigger fish."
Lamont's eyes fuck his for a second, then a little, odd smile crosses his lips, "I feel like you might know one... just not how to get to him. His name's Fugikawa."
Danny blinked.
"...What?"
