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Who:   Belle and Lazarus
When: 3/23 late evening
Where:   The apartment
What:    Belle recovers an item from a pulse, L sees potential for opportunity in it

It had been quite a day.    After her morning appointment, Belle had set aside an hour to place reminder calls to her semi-regular patients, only to realize that her planner containing their phone numbers and notes about their cases was nowhere to be found.   Checking the entirety of her office, the car, and asking her coworkers had not turned up any signs of it and trying to recall the last time she remembered looking at it had conjured only memories of leafing through it briefly just before entering the coffee shop Lazarus had asked her to meet him at before the attack on the city.

Her thoughts, throughout the day, kept returning to Expresso Yourself as she tried to remember whether she had seen or used the planner since going there, only to find that she could not recall.   The idea of it sitting among the wreckage, waiting for some city worker to discover it and invade information that was not theirs had made itself at home in her head as hours passed, needling at her more and more.    By the time five rolled around, she had started to wonder if it might be possible to go and check for it.

By seven, she had made her decision, and by seven-thirty, she was parking her rented volkswagon as close to the wreck that had once been the coffee shop as she was able.   The ceiling having been removed meant no immediate threat of cave-ins, which went a long way toward encouraging her to pick her way toward the collapsed mess that had once been a back hallway. If her planner was anywhere, she'd reasoned, it would be in the back "office".     ....however, her efforts at making progress had been prematurely abandoned at the sound of nearby footsteps on the pavement.    A look outside had found a roving officer training his flashlight's beam over her car.

Belle of a few months ago would have readily stepped out to meet him, explained what she was doing, and asked for help.     However, this Belle - the one who was aware of secret numbers, impossible powers and forms, and who had narrowly escaped grievous injury twice-over in the last two months by means she could not explain, had gone with an impulse.    As the officer had swept his flashlight's beam into the coffee shop, she had hidden from him.   As he'd advanced, she'd retreated, carefully matching his steps with her own to remain out of sight.    Their brief game of cat-and-mouse had ended abruptly when his radio had crackled to life with an officer requesting relief from his guard post in the downtown area.    Her would-be pursuer had, thankfully, stepped out of the wreckage to offer to be there shortly.

As they discussed the specifics, Belle had continued to back away, slipping out of Expresso Yourself entirely by way of a broken wall, across a narrow alleyway, and into the toppled husk of its neighboring building.    There had been a stairway leading downward and she'd taken it, relying on her instincts to lead her somewhere safe.

The basement level of the building was dark, but not nearly as damaged as the upper floors had ended up.   Employing her phone's screen as a flashlight, Belle had found herself in a long, dark hallway, serenaded by the backdrop of a broken pipe's running water.

Behold the sweetfish river running through my beloved hometown.

The words had surfaced in her head so deliberately, she had startled, wheeling around to see if someone had spoken to her.

You who seek the Golden Land, follow its path downstream in search of the key

She had stood there, stark-still in the darkness for several minutes trying to make sense of it.   There was no river, and no "downstream" unless...

At the end of the hallway had been a door, hanging slightly ajar. Under normal circumstances, she would have found it offputting, but present ones drew her to it, wondering if something within might provide her an answer as she'd traveled the length of the hall.    Instead, waiting to greet her on the other side, had been a jumble of custodial tools, spilled chemicals, and various other debris.    Disappointment had welled in her, realizing it hadn't even been worth getting her hopes up over.

It wasn't until she'd turned to shut the door again that she'd seen it.   On top of the overturned janitor's cart, something that she was sure hadn't been there a moment ago, glinted in the dim light her phone offered.     It was an easily-recognized object she'd seen countless times in cartoons and movies, but never in person. The gold bar shone proudly, devoid of dust or debris, as if it had been put there for her to find it.

In the end, her planner had been completely forgotten, and she'd returned home with it cradled in her jacket.    Current circumstances found her in the living room, with the gold ingot placed on the coffee table in front of her, staring at it intently, and realizing that now that she'd gotten it home, she had no idea what to do next.

She didn't want to entertain the idea that it might be real, as that would present an entirely new set of problems for her.    With the city in disarray and people displaced from their businesses (some from their homes, most probably) something like this was very dangerous to have.   A finger reached out to trace the engraved figure on its face.   It looked to be a one-winged bird...or at least a bird being shown at an awkward angle.    As for how it related to her...

....well, she had no idea.

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"Always. There's an Arby's that's well-trafficked and doesn't draw much attention or suspicion. Let me call him and see if we can't take care of this tonight."

She drew a breath, letting it out slowly and forced herself to nod. As much as she disliked the idea, the other course of action for getting it out of her apartment was attempting to turn it over to the authorities....who would want to know where she'd gotten it, what had made her think it was fine to just walk off with it, and a variety of other questions she wasn't sure she could provide a satisfactory answer to.

This way, at least it was leaving...and very unlikely to be found again.

"Let me see it while you do that." she said, holding out her hands for the ingot. "I want to take some pictures of the engravings."

L handed it back, reaching for his cell phone.

"If you drive me there, you can even watch me the entire time, if it would put your mind at ease."

Dialing the number, he turned his back, drifting into the hallway with his shoulders curled and his head down.

"Mack? Yeah... hi."

Knew you'd call me. Good to hear from you, buddy. Do I have something you need?

"Maybe. I've got a bar of gold. If you can move it for me, no questions asked..."

No questions? No other way. You streak it?

"Yeah. Vinegar, too. It's genuine. You'll see."

I'm thinking Arby's. An hour. You dig?

"...yeah. See you then."

Though the conversation was one-sided, whoever was on the other end of it seemed very ready to believe L when he said he'd come by something as unlikely as a bar of gold. Especially when, just a couple of months ago, he had been circling the homeless drain and fighting people for food at the shelter.

Belle quietly decided that she distrusted whoever it was L was speaking with as she fetched a white towel out of the linen cabinet and laid it out on the coffee table to place the ingot on top of. By the time L finished the conversation, she was busily photographing it from every angle, just in case one might be more relevant than another.

"An hour," he announced, ending the call and stuffing his phone back in his pocket as he shuffled out into the living room. "We're going to meet, eat, and catch up a bit, and he'll take it off our hands. You won't see it again."

It was something, at least.

"I assume he thinks you're coming alone..."

At least, she didn't hear him mention that someone would be going with him.

"He knows better than anyone that I can't stand the police; he won't think that you're a cop, if that's what you're concerned about. But if it makes you feel safer, you can leave me there and I'll take a taxi home."

It wasn't what made her feel safe that she was concerned with, presently.

"I'd rather not leave you there, no." she said, pausing to investigate the library of pictures in her phone to ensure they'd come out well enough. A part of her, in fact, hoped they hadn't in order to have an excuse to delay the outing while she took them again.

...unfortunately the one-winged bird, the kanji characters, and the serial number all had come out with stunning clarity.

"It's ultimately up to you, but... believe me when I say that he won't hurt me. Mack's fond of me. He's protected me before. He's helped me before. The night I ODed, he took me to the hospital at great personal risk."

What it came down to, ultimately, was whether she wanted to shadow him there out of her own concern and deepen his dependency on her in the process...

...or whether she wanted to take him at his word and potentially send someone recently recovered from a concussion into harm's way.

"I'll drop you off." she said at last, trying not to sound grudging in her decision.

"All right. Great; I'll get my coat and my staff. Would that make you feel better, if I was armed?"

"There's no reason to aggravate things needlessly. You clearly know him better than I do. These are just....very unusual circumstances. That's all."

"To you, maybe, but... I guess that's all right. It's unlikely you'll meet them, since I don't really associate with them anymore. When we did associate regularly, though... they called me 'Chess Man.'"

"...'them'?" she questioned. Broaching Lazarus' earlier life in sessions was always touch and go. Usually, he stayed shut up tightly about it, but if he was feeling generous, he'd give her a small something to work with.

She knew that his parents were dead, and had made guesses that his uncle had been fairly overbearing, contributing to many of his neuroses. Other than that, though...

Edited 2014-03-24 21:19 (UTC)

"Mack, and Mack' s people," L replied, an edge of impatience in his voice. "After White Pines and after the police, the friends I made weren't good influences, but they were friends. And they can get rid of this for us. Trust me," he urged. "I'm being honest about this because they aren't going to affect me the way they did back then. I give a damn now."

She bit back the urge to remind him that even friends could act irrationally and hurt one another when it came to unexpectedly large sums of money. She was not in the mood to argue with him.

If anything, this Mack guy was likely to offer him a severely-undercut price out of personal interest in making a profit.

"Then I believe you." she replied simply. "Get your jacket."

He left and returned quickly with his grey trench coat, leaving his ice staff in his room.

"Be honest... do I look OK? Healthy? If you saw me two and a half years ago and you were my friend, would you think I look better and be glad for me?"

That was hard to answer...stable shelter and regular meals had certainly improved him from what he'd been when he'd moved himself in. The injuries he'd sustained from the recent attack on the business district, however, had made him appear rough and ill cared-for all over again.

"You still look like you're recovering." she told him. "But, if I'm honest, it's a sight better than you were when you were still living in that studio apartment..."

He brightened noticeably, considering it good enough.

"Good. I hope he remarks on it," he said. "I want him to know that things are going well for me. He always said that I'd..."

He bit his lip.

"...doesn't matter. He'll expect me there exactly when I said I'd be, so... we should really head out."

Belle took the opportunity to wrap the ingot in the towel she'd posed it on, careful to fold the edges in such a way that none of it was visible.

"I'll drop you off in the parking lot." she said, fetching her coat off of the back of the living room's armchair. "If you need a ride afterward, you can call me. Otherwise I'll see you back here."

She was saying these things because they were sensible things to say, and created a sort of structure for the proceedings to follow. Even pretending she was in control in an otherwise chaotic situation was soothing.

The ride to the Arby's was fairly quiet, and once they'd reached the parking lot, he glanced around for one of four cars he knew that Mack's people would be driving. He noted, fairly quickly, that they'd opted to bring the foreboding, windowless van, and that the parking lot was otherwise almost completely deserted.

Nodding briskly, he left the car and made his way into the restaurant, ordering the first thing with ice cream he noticed on the menu and joining the dark-haired, lopsidedly grinning man at one of the tables.

Mack stood up, drawing L into a tight embrace, which L returned almost automatically.

"Chess Man. You look like shit," Mack laughed, puffing tobacco-scented breath close to L's ear. "Better than the last time I saw you, though. Have a seat."

L did so, smoothly going through the motions of their well-practiced hand-offs.

"Be right back. Bathroom," Mack said, slipping the ingot into his pocket. A tense few minutes passed as he presumably verified, himself, that the gold was real. When he returned, he was beaming.

"Finish your ice cream. I've already told my guys what to put together for you. We can't give you quite what it's worth, but fuck, I've never seen gold that pure. After this... I hope we're square, for what I let happen to you."

L chewed his lip, staring at the tabletop, giving two slight nods. "Yeah, we're square."

"I've missed you, Chess Man. Glad to hear it."

Twenty minutes later, L's slender frame was swallowed up by the van, and a duffle bag was nudged toward him. Mack mouthed "call me," and he was left, alone, with a heavy duffle stuffed with cash.

He had called the taxi well in advance, so fortunately, it arrived promptly. Paying the driver, he lugged the bag up the stairs, letting himself into the apartment and softly closing the door behind him, in case Belle was already asleep.

As it happened, she was not asleep. In fact, relaxing had been the last thing on her mind since she'd pulled out of the Arby's lot and tried to convince herself she'd done the right thing by leaving L to tend to this by himself.

It had been her pulse that had brought the damned thing into the world, after all...even if it was his connections that would ultimately see it safely gone from the apartment.

In the end, she had gone back to the apartment and forced herself to sit and watch TV, determined that if he did not turn up by eleven-thirty, she would get SOME description of a search going for him.

She had so convinced herself that this was inevitable as time had ticked on that she almost didn't believe it when she heard the front door open, close, and lock, followed by a familiar, uneven shuffling gait.

"L?" she asked, fumbling for the remote to turn the television off.

"Yes, back," he announced unnecessarily, leaving the bag in a blind spot near the door. "You didn't have to wait up, or anything... were you really that worried?"

He knew that she would be, if he actually told her about the encounter and the amount of trust he placed in hardened criminals... but there were some things she didn't need to know.

"I didn't want to be unavailable if you ended up needing a ride.." she said, getting off of the couch to approach him, ensuring for herself that he was no worse for wear than he'd been when she'd dropped him off.

He no longer had the ingot, anyway...

"Did the two of you come to an agreement...?"

"Yes... you'll be glad to know that the ingot won't be seen again anywhere near this apartment. He came through for us," L said, recalling the distrustful way she seemed to have regarded L's associates and feeling a strange desire to set the record straight on some level.

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