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[FIC] Where There's Smoke (Lackadaisy)
I guess this is what happened instead of my theory post. (This is also partially what happened while the internet was too down to do internet-necessitating work-work a few hours ago.) Also, this is what keeps happening instead of being actually productive writing-wise, so instead you can have -- this? :D
Title: Where There's Smoke
Fandom: Lackadaisy
Characters/Pairing: Dorian Zibowski/Mitzi May, Mordecai Heller/Mitzi May (sort of)
Rating: PG
Summary: Zib collected friends like ornamental tchotchkes, but even he could admit that he never befriended the New Yorker. What was there to befriend?
Wordcount: 4169
Notes: I don't know what possessed me to think I had even a snowball's chance in hell at writing Dorian Zibowski correctly. Also at AO3 as usual.
~
Zib collected friends like ornamental tchotchkes, but even he could admit that he never befriended the New Yorker. What was there to befriend? The way he saw it, saxophonist and triggerman were at about the opposite ends of speakeasy employment no matter how you sliced it -- the former got his paycheck for dazzling form and just about no function, the latter, well, self-explanatory. Theoretically speaking, they had practically nothing in common. So sure, after it all fell apart it was fashionable to say you never liked the man, but the honest truth was that Zib never knew the man.
Kind of.
The honest truth was -- well, what the hell was an honest truth, anyway? He could stick to his original story, though, and that was inarguable: Dorian Zibowski was never Mordecai Heller’s friend.
It was a drunken wager he met him over, though, defining ‘met’ as the level of acquaintance just above ‘seen around’; in truth Zib saw him around long before he knew what his name was, gossiped about him to Mitzi a couple of times, but what of it? If Atlas had kept around any other lackeys who dressed like morticians, he would’ve pointed ‘em out too.
He was offstage on New Year’s, though, which meant he was drunk, and Mary Ellen was dancing with her old man, which really meant he was drunk. So he sat down with a cigarette at the bar next to the triggerman he’d never spoken to and glanced at him, and Mitzi and Atlas, and him again, and then them. Mordecai was watching the Mays too with no particular expression, leaning on his elbows against the bar. Probably he was the only sober man in St. Louis that New Year’s Eve. If Zib were a little drunker he’d have taken him for Mormon.
Zib glanced at him, though, and he didn’t glance at Zib. It was a slinky dress Mitzi was wearing today and on a last-minute whim she’d put pearls in her hair. It was a whim that made Zib speak up too. “Fifty cents,” he said, “says you’re getting in over your head there, buddy.”
Mordecai glanced at him sideways before he replied. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said.
“I’m just saying --” Zib gave a half-smile through the slurring and the cig. “If you get in too deep,” he nodded to the dancefloor, “and take it from a man who knows -- you owe me fifty cents, is all.”
“You’re drunk,” said Mordecai with a shrug.
“Yeah,” said Zib. “I am.”
His new companion fixed him with that old side-eye of his again, the one that was probably the last thing a bunch of people saw. Ask our green-eyed monster, said Atlas once or twice with an affectionate ruffle of the young man’s hair. That had the potential to be a marvelously cruel joke. Or a completely worthless one. Hah. God bless moonshine and the existence of bathtub gin, but the topic of Zib’s inebriation or lack thereof had to be reaching its natural zenith right about now.
Eventually Mordecai had to come to the same conclusion too, though, because he shook his head and looked back over the floor. “I hope you don’t have to play any more tonight,” he said. “Well, more to the point, I hope you’re not receiving money to play any more tonight.”
“Heller. Buddy. Look at it this way.” Zib put his hands up. “If you actually have no idea what I’m talking about, then I’ll owe you fifty cents. Sooner or later. So don’t kill me, all right, either way it’ll turn out good for you -- well, unless you owe me. Anyway, relax, all right?”
In what universe that imperative was supposed to have any effect on Mordecai Heller he wasn’t retroactively sure. But it seemed funny at the time -- well, funny to Zib, as Mordecai did in fact knock back his drink and stand up in a rustle of black clothing a moment later. He disappeared into the crowd of well-dressed tipsy people, but not before informing Zib at the bottom of his voice, again, “You’re drunk.”
~
Which he was. Come to think of it, Zib always seemed to be drunk when he had to talk to Mordecai. It likely didn’t contribute to the cause of their becoming friends, but what could you do?
People were shouting “RAID” left and right, which probably meant there was a raid -- which was bad timing, because Zib was currently engaged in the important task of being sprawled backstage with Rocky and a stumped-out smoke as they both hoisted another mutual sheet to the wind. When the alarm went off, though, Rocky apparently wasn’t that drunk, because he hopped to his feet with a chipper, “come on, Zib!” and then made himself scarce. Thanks, Rocky.
Zib was arming himself for another restful night in the drunk tank when Mordecai materialized from bats or whatever it was he did and knelt down next to him. “Up,” he demanded. “I’m not carrying you.”
“If ‘up’ were within my capabilities at the moment,” Zib was still blinking, “I’d already be there. Also ‘out.’”
“Then lean on me,” Mordecai rolled his eyes and pulled Zib’s arm over his narrow shoulders in what seemed to be the snidest and most painful way a person could do this thing, “but I’m not dragging you, Zibowski.”
“I never knew you cared so much,” remarked Zib a bit philosophically to the ceiling, but he wasn’t ungrateful -- he tried to find his feet as soon as he was halfway upright with the shorter man’s help, it was just it seemed he’d mislaid them somewhere. “Have you ever considered the band? I hear they’re going to be needing a new violinist --”
“I don’t care,” snapped Mordecai, never one to stand by and watch his heartless honor be impugned that way. “I just don’t think it would be to Mitzi’s liking to hear that you’d landed yourself in jail because we didn’t have any warning on a raid and you’re fool enough to let yourself be incapacitated working in a business like this. Personally, I don’t think that the rest of the Lackadaisy would actually give a tinker’s dam if you were arrested for your own staggering incompetence,” he steered them both towards one of the exits at a faster clip than Zib’s stomach cared for, “but I don’t work for the rest of the Lackadaisy, now, do I?”
Zib’s head lolled against his shoulder. “Actually, you work for Atlas,” he pointed out.
The ensuing silence from Mordecai ought’ve been funny, but in fact it made Zib feel like vomiting all over the floor or his shoes or Mordecai’s shirt. It was the liquor too. Maybe it was just the liquor.
Mordecai shoved him first through the opening to the night air and then caught him. “So I do,” he said.
“Oh, you poor son of a bitch,” said Zib brightly and with honest to God sincerity. “You poor, poor thing.”
His rescuer did not, in fact, bristle like a fearsome Yankee porcupine, but reached over with the butt of his pistol and matter-of-factly clocked him over the head. That was okay, since he was pretty sure that tipped him over to being sick all over said rescuer’s snow-white shirt. The next day Mordecai claimed that Zib had passed out along the way and, frankly, Zib’s memory was spotty enough that he wasn’t entirely sure that Mordecai was lying. Technically the entire conversation could have been a fabrication of his own intoxicated brain. Zib nursed his hangover and the bump on his skull along with his doubts.
~
But he didn’t think about it that much, because he didn’t think about Mordecai that much. Frankly, there were a few more decades of jail time ready and waiting for knowing too much about what Mordecai was up to. So it kind of crept up on him like a headache or an overdue bill: one moment he was just putting it down for granted, just one more of Atlas’s reckless boys a little bit in love with Mitzi, one of those desperate strays the old man could count on to come crawling on back to the Lackadaisy. Sometimes Zib even wondered if Atlas married her knowing that. But he didn’t even worry about that then, not about Mordecai Heller or Roark Rickaby or any of the host of young men with nothing better to do. Zib had to admit that of himself. He never actually saw things coming.
Then he turned his head on a streetcorner and saw Mitzi standing looking at her handbag while her husband’s hired gun brushed past Zib on his way out, and he did.
“Hey,” he hailed her with a smile, chucking her under the chin. “Why the longer-than-usual face?”
She returned the smile, but it was a cursory little drop of her charm. Already she was gathering up her bag and her furs and getting ready to go back inside, with nary a look to wherever Mordecai had disappeared to. “It’s chilly a little early for St. Louis, don’t you think? What do you say we go get dinner somewhere?”
Zib nodded and lit up, but his curiosity wasn’t dismissed quite that easily, particularly if Mitzi was the one dismissing it. “Are diner cafes too cheap for us now?”
“Yes,” said Mitzi with an indelicate snort, making him grin. “Unless you’re buying, can we find some actual food, made after we order it?”
“As my lady commands,” he said through a breath of smoke. “You know, I didn’t know Heller was in the habit of making new friends.”
That was the heart and soul of this little conversation, of course, and they could both tell when he’d gotten to it. She took a little more time with something in her bag and let him wait for her reply; she produced her powder and mirror and re-dusted her face with the aid of the shop window while he looked away into his own winding spiral of cigarette smoke. “Mordecai’s hardly a new friend,” she said when she was finished, dainty and disinterested. “But if you’re pining, I’m afraid you probably taste a little too much like tobacco for his liking.”
He breathed in and let his bad habit soothe the slightly-too-deep cut of that remark: it was deeper than she’d meant either, though, and he could tell she knew it, because it cut both ways. “Doesn’t anyone like a girl who smokes any more?”
“Zib,” and suddenly there she was, the girl he knew, with all her hedgehog quills standing straight up, “do you really think I’d carry on with my husband’s protege right under his nose? Is that what you’re trying to imply?”
No, he wanted to say, what I’m implying is that whatever you’re doing with Mordecai, if it was a good idea, you’d be doing it in front of Atlas.
“I just hope you know what you’re doing,” he said with a tired, forgive-me sort of smile.
“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” said Mitzi with a sigh, heaved her shoulders in a way that indicated that the subject was now dropped, and offered her arm chastely. He accepted, well enough accustomed to his place in her St. Louis life, and set about finding some actual food, made after they ordered it.
It was supposed to rain that night: the clouds were thick in the sky, but held out, the puffy misers. They didn’t let loose for a while after that. When they did, it was the city’s rainiest day in months, Atlas was splattered all over the cobblestones of an alleyway, and Mordecai was gone. So whatever they’d been doing, it wasn’t a good idea at all.
~
Zib was in a part of town he didn’t like on an errand he liked even less when he ran into him again, finally, months later. He was skulking -- seriously, it was skulking, there was no better word for it -- down a street at dusk with his hands in his pockets and his hat’s brim pulled down over his eyes when he stopped at the corner of a wall and peered around to scout ahead of himself, wishing Viktor had been available for this job, when he leaned against the ugly brick and took the time to light himself a cigarette for his nerves. The hand that grabbed him by the shoulder might as well have materialized from bats.
He whirled around in a panic, and there was Missouri’s favorite assassin like he’d never left: suit, tie, hat shading his own face but for the menacing glint of his bottle-green eyes. There was no real reason for Mordecai to have changed in the meantime. This wasn’t spectator sports. If you jumped from the crumbling Lackadaisy onto the thriving Marigold, you didn’t exactly have to switch team jerseys. He did look a little better-dressed, though, if Zib wasn’t mistaken. Probably better-paid, he thought glumly. Zib stared, not in the least in the process of wondering whether Asa Sweet had any particular reason to want him dead, but he still would’ve stared.
Mordecai didn’t participate in this little carnival of staring. He probably got in all his reunion surprise lurking in the shadows, anyway. Instead he glared, which was one of his favorite activities.
“You’re packing,” he said in lieu of ‘hello.’ “That is the worst attempt at concealing a gun that I’ve ever seen. If you’re just going to jam it down the back of your trousers, at least invest in clothing that’s thick enough so the shape wouldn’t be obvious to a two-bit copper on his first day working this beat, and it helps if it fits you, too. Move it closer to the small of your back, that’ll remedy the problem slightly. And get a firearm small enough for your frame next time.” He sounded like a disappointed math teacher. “You’re even narrower than me.”
Hi to you too came to mind. That is the worst attempt at concealing a Brooklyn accent that I’ve ever seen. And, You know, the first time I fired a gun was long before I set eyes on this sorry city, actually, has it occurred to you I might have the slightest idea what I’m doing? And, You know, you did not actually invent guns or weaponry or death, Mordecai. America had those covered long before you came along.
But Zib gave a shaky nod and stepped on the burning cigarette so it went out, leaving a little tendril of smoke. Then he -- with hands palm-up and facing out, to prevent any lethal reflexes on Mordecai’s part in the direction of his death-laced trenchcoat -- reached back and moved the gun in his waistband so it was centered a little vulnerably in the small of his back.
Mordecai watched him. Then they both met eyes and had trouble breaking that, as if on cue, like they both sensed exactly when the awkward moment in this conversation had arrived, which they probably had: Zib was Zib and Mordecai was some kind of bloodthirsty criminal, but not a fool. He might’ve been waiting for Zib to say something, and it was a reasonable expectation. But for once, Dorian Zibowski didn’t feel like he had anything appropriate to say.
So Mordecai looked away first, impassive and casual again, and glanced down the alleyway with familiar disinterest. He ruled this roost, that much was clear. It occurred to Zib that he’d never had the opportunity to consider how many shitty crime-filled roosts it was possible Mordecai ruled. When he was finished with his once-over he spoke up again. “What kind of business brings you here?”
Zib blinked and made a face that he thought conveyed the reasonable reaction to this question and who was asking it: in this case, raised eyebrows.
He got an eyeroll in response. “I’m not interested in the new classified secrets of your organization,” said Mordecai, “and, heaven forfend, if I was, that wouldn’t be how I’d go about getting them.”
“I’m sure.” Zib cracked a smile.
“I’m asking how long you imagine this is going to keep you.” Mordecai closed his eyes. “Is this urgent or can it wait until nightfall in full, when you’re less likely to summon the attention of the police if whatever high-risk negotiation you’ve been sent for goes as ugly as it appears you fear? You don’t have to tell me. You’re free to go and get yourself killed with aplomb if you like.”
Zib blinked some more and struggled to re-light a cigarette, but the match was being stubborn.
“I guess it can wait,” he said.
It wasn’t prime real estate, the neighborhood they were in, but the diner they went to had to be the lowest-rent dive in a few blocks even by those standards. The woman working there nodded to one or both of them and disappeared into the back. Mordecai took a seat at the counter, one with a folded newspaper in front of it, after checking around the empty diner in what had to be habit. Their waitress came back with coffees for them both. Zib looked into his cup with dismal expectations.
Typically enough, his ex-coworker didn’t resume the conversation, but opened the newspaper and laid it out in front of him to read as he drank his coffee. Zib tried his: surprisingly strong and very bitter. Then again, he considered who brought him here. Mordecai looked unconcerned, looking over the classifieds and obituaries as if he were here alone. After a moment Zib started to wonder if he might as well have been.
So he took a moderate sip of his own coffee and breached the silence. “Things are going all right back at the Daisy,” he said. “A little -- bumpy, sometimes, with finances, but you have to expect that with turnover. Stormy weather.”
“Yes,” said Mordecai, “well, you can’t very well resurrect the dead.”
Zib winced and picked up his mug to study the ring at the bottom, turning it this way and that. “How’s old Asa faring?”
The other man shrugged, which was just a slight motion with one of his shoulders under his coat. “I’m not the one to ask. The work’s the same wherever I get it, save that my new employer’s among the living.”
“Viktor’s doing well,” Zib volunteered, not without a miniscule grain of spite. “Believe it or not.”
If that bait was enticing at all, Mordecai didn’t rise to it regardless. Or not in the way that most people might have, anyway. He didn’t even look at Zib, just squinted down at the newsprint through his spectacles. “Not everything I do can be a success.”
Just like that, Zib was sick of Mordecai. It was marvelous that it'd taken this long, considering the years he'd spent in the man's nominal company, but the feeling was rising anyway. He looked at him askance, sitting next to him by the counter, but mostly at his stupid finicky little glasses and the five layers of expensive clothing he justified for hiding two guns and the pretentious little furrow in his brow. He was sick of Bed-Stuy pretending to be the Hamptons, and of mysteriousness that always seemed to amount to no answers. Of other people's time wasted on his endless self-important games. Of Viktor's hobbled gait these days, and, if he was going to be entirely honest, of the fact that Atlas May was not about to pop out of nowhere and explain his plan all along and fix all their lives again, which Zib put down to Mordecai's fault one way or another. Generally, he thought he had the right to be pretty damn tired of Mordecai Heller's bullshit.
"Look," he said after a moment, raising his eyebrows. "I'm appreciating the reunion and all, but if we're just here to catch up, there's always the telephone."
"No," said Mordecai suddenly, practically reflexively.
That wasn't helping, Zib reflected. What did you say to a child armed to the teeth and petulant about his toy getting taken away? He settled on a puzzled, "Yes, actually."
"No," Mordecai repeated, staring straight ahead. "I need you to do something for me."
Of course he did. There was no saying 'no' to these things. Well, story of Dorian Complete Sucker Zibowski's goddamned life, anyway -- "Yeah? What can I do for the Marigold Speakeasy, then?"
"It's not for the Marigold Speakeasy and if you'd stop your wisecracking for ten or fifteen seconds you'd have realized that by now," came the gritted monotone answer rattled out faster than an engine. "I said I needed you to do something for me."
Zib cocked his head to one side, listening.
Mordecai didn't choose to focus all his intimidating hackles on him at this moment, which, in retrospect, should've been a little more telling than it was. Instead he focused them on his near-empty coffee cup. At the moment it looked like he had a serious problem with that cup. That cup was going to die. "Zib," he said. "You are going to tell Mitzi that --"
Zib waited.
Mordecai had a sedate way of sitting around frozen, but his fingers had tightened enough around his cup that it looked like he was about to shatter the ceramic into a handful of bloody shards any second now. He said nothing, looking for once utterly nonplussed for how to say what he wanted to say. He was going through a range of stilted expressions, with the air of someone half-paralyzed in the face, maybe expressions it had never had the challenge of trying to make before. But he didn't say anything, even as the waitress refilled both their cups and then wisely left them alone again. It wasn't like Zib didn't wait, either.
Eventually Zib thought better of it, though, and knitted his brows together and raised a careful hand. He settled it on Mordecai's shoulder awkwardly, like it might get bitten off any moment. "You look like you got in a little too deep," he said.
That was ignored, which was probably the best possible outcome, really. The spell was broken, though, and Mordecai downed another impressive swill of toxic coffee. Well. New York. "You'll understand why I don't convey my regards to the crew," he stated.
"You can pretend like I gave you theirs," said Zib, risking a peep over his shoulder. "Is it dark out already?" For once he didn't mind the prospect even in the ramshacklest part of St. Louis he knew. Any exit from this conversation was looking attractive.
Mordecai's eyes flickered down to a golden pocketwatch he had on a chain: just a glint from Zib’s perspective, a round bauble half-hidden by the gloom. "Most likely," he said without looking outside.
Zib removed his hand with similar trepidation and then, like he was being held at gunpoint, slid carefully off his stool and shrugged himself back into his jacket. Now that it'd been pointed out, he couldn't stop obsessing over whether he was properly stowing his firearm. This would basically be the stupidest thing to get picked up by the cops for. "You look good, Mordecai," he said in lieu of a goodbye, rummaging in his pockets for enough change to pay for the coffee at least.
He was pre-empted -- Mordecai held out his hand and dropped two coins neatly onto the counter, then spun both at exactly the same time, in afterthought. They both came to a rest heads-up. As it turned out, both their coffees added up to something like a neat little price in sum total. Two twenty-five-cent pieces.
"Consider the taxi you take home to be on me," he said. "If you get arrested and inform on all of us I'll have to literally die of embarrassment."
"Can't have you flummoxing the coroner like that," Zib agreed, wondering if Mordecai's command of the word 'literally' was as hyperbolic as ever. He gave his once-associate a more impersonal clap on the back and then looked around once more for anyone waiting to murder him, just in case, before leaving the creepy little diner where he'd found it.
The sidewalk welcomed him back now that it was darker and posed a greater chance of getting him mugged, and there was still an errand to do -- he shoved his hands in his pockets, partly to count how much he had on him to get mugged for and partly to feel the dirty coins under his fingers. Fifty red cents. That was enough to buy him a ride back to Mitzi, or more smokes, or a lot of things, really. What a man did with fifty cents was a lodestone for his character, if you thought about it.
He did cast a look back behind him through the windows of the diner to see how fast his fifty-cent benefactor had disappeared into the night this time. But he hadn't stirred, actually, or looked outside, but was checking the time again on his golden watch.
Title: Where There's Smoke
Fandom: Lackadaisy
Characters/Pairing: Dorian Zibowski/Mitzi May, Mordecai Heller/Mitzi May (sort of)
Rating: PG
Summary: Zib collected friends like ornamental tchotchkes, but even he could admit that he never befriended the New Yorker. What was there to befriend?
Wordcount: 4169
Notes: I don't know what possessed me to think I had even a snowball's chance in hell at writing Dorian Zibowski correctly. Also at AO3 as usual.
Zib collected friends like ornamental tchotchkes, but even he could admit that he never befriended the New Yorker. What was there to befriend? The way he saw it, saxophonist and triggerman were at about the opposite ends of speakeasy employment no matter how you sliced it -- the former got his paycheck for dazzling form and just about no function, the latter, well, self-explanatory. Theoretically speaking, they had practically nothing in common. So sure, after it all fell apart it was fashionable to say you never liked the man, but the honest truth was that Zib never knew the man.
Kind of.
The honest truth was -- well, what the hell was an honest truth, anyway? He could stick to his original story, though, and that was inarguable: Dorian Zibowski was never Mordecai Heller’s friend.
It was a drunken wager he met him over, though, defining ‘met’ as the level of acquaintance just above ‘seen around’; in truth Zib saw him around long before he knew what his name was, gossiped about him to Mitzi a couple of times, but what of it? If Atlas had kept around any other lackeys who dressed like morticians, he would’ve pointed ‘em out too.
He was offstage on New Year’s, though, which meant he was drunk, and Mary Ellen was dancing with her old man, which really meant he was drunk. So he sat down with a cigarette at the bar next to the triggerman he’d never spoken to and glanced at him, and Mitzi and Atlas, and him again, and then them. Mordecai was watching the Mays too with no particular expression, leaning on his elbows against the bar. Probably he was the only sober man in St. Louis that New Year’s Eve. If Zib were a little drunker he’d have taken him for Mormon.
Zib glanced at him, though, and he didn’t glance at Zib. It was a slinky dress Mitzi was wearing today and on a last-minute whim she’d put pearls in her hair. It was a whim that made Zib speak up too. “Fifty cents,” he said, “says you’re getting in over your head there, buddy.”
Mordecai glanced at him sideways before he replied. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said.
“I’m just saying --” Zib gave a half-smile through the slurring and the cig. “If you get in too deep,” he nodded to the dancefloor, “and take it from a man who knows -- you owe me fifty cents, is all.”
“You’re drunk,” said Mordecai with a shrug.
“Yeah,” said Zib. “I am.”
His new companion fixed him with that old side-eye of his again, the one that was probably the last thing a bunch of people saw. Ask our green-eyed monster, said Atlas once or twice with an affectionate ruffle of the young man’s hair. That had the potential to be a marvelously cruel joke. Or a completely worthless one. Hah. God bless moonshine and the existence of bathtub gin, but the topic of Zib’s inebriation or lack thereof had to be reaching its natural zenith right about now.
Eventually Mordecai had to come to the same conclusion too, though, because he shook his head and looked back over the floor. “I hope you don’t have to play any more tonight,” he said. “Well, more to the point, I hope you’re not receiving money to play any more tonight.”
“Heller. Buddy. Look at it this way.” Zib put his hands up. “If you actually have no idea what I’m talking about, then I’ll owe you fifty cents. Sooner or later. So don’t kill me, all right, either way it’ll turn out good for you -- well, unless you owe me. Anyway, relax, all right?”
In what universe that imperative was supposed to have any effect on Mordecai Heller he wasn’t retroactively sure. But it seemed funny at the time -- well, funny to Zib, as Mordecai did in fact knock back his drink and stand up in a rustle of black clothing a moment later. He disappeared into the crowd of well-dressed tipsy people, but not before informing Zib at the bottom of his voice, again, “You’re drunk.”
Which he was. Come to think of it, Zib always seemed to be drunk when he had to talk to Mordecai. It likely didn’t contribute to the cause of their becoming friends, but what could you do?
People were shouting “RAID” left and right, which probably meant there was a raid -- which was bad timing, because Zib was currently engaged in the important task of being sprawled backstage with Rocky and a stumped-out smoke as they both hoisted another mutual sheet to the wind. When the alarm went off, though, Rocky apparently wasn’t that drunk, because he hopped to his feet with a chipper, “come on, Zib!” and then made himself scarce. Thanks, Rocky.
Zib was arming himself for another restful night in the drunk tank when Mordecai materialized from bats or whatever it was he did and knelt down next to him. “Up,” he demanded. “I’m not carrying you.”
“If ‘up’ were within my capabilities at the moment,” Zib was still blinking, “I’d already be there. Also ‘out.’”
“Then lean on me,” Mordecai rolled his eyes and pulled Zib’s arm over his narrow shoulders in what seemed to be the snidest and most painful way a person could do this thing, “but I’m not dragging you, Zibowski.”
“I never knew you cared so much,” remarked Zib a bit philosophically to the ceiling, but he wasn’t ungrateful -- he tried to find his feet as soon as he was halfway upright with the shorter man’s help, it was just it seemed he’d mislaid them somewhere. “Have you ever considered the band? I hear they’re going to be needing a new violinist --”
“I don’t care,” snapped Mordecai, never one to stand by and watch his heartless honor be impugned that way. “I just don’t think it would be to Mitzi’s liking to hear that you’d landed yourself in jail because we didn’t have any warning on a raid and you’re fool enough to let yourself be incapacitated working in a business like this. Personally, I don’t think that the rest of the Lackadaisy would actually give a tinker’s dam if you were arrested for your own staggering incompetence,” he steered them both towards one of the exits at a faster clip than Zib’s stomach cared for, “but I don’t work for the rest of the Lackadaisy, now, do I?”
Zib’s head lolled against his shoulder. “Actually, you work for Atlas,” he pointed out.
The ensuing silence from Mordecai ought’ve been funny, but in fact it made Zib feel like vomiting all over the floor or his shoes or Mordecai’s shirt. It was the liquor too. Maybe it was just the liquor.
Mordecai shoved him first through the opening to the night air and then caught him. “So I do,” he said.
“Oh, you poor son of a bitch,” said Zib brightly and with honest to God sincerity. “You poor, poor thing.”
His rescuer did not, in fact, bristle like a fearsome Yankee porcupine, but reached over with the butt of his pistol and matter-of-factly clocked him over the head. That was okay, since he was pretty sure that tipped him over to being sick all over said rescuer’s snow-white shirt. The next day Mordecai claimed that Zib had passed out along the way and, frankly, Zib’s memory was spotty enough that he wasn’t entirely sure that Mordecai was lying. Technically the entire conversation could have been a fabrication of his own intoxicated brain. Zib nursed his hangover and the bump on his skull along with his doubts.
But he didn’t think about it that much, because he didn’t think about Mordecai that much. Frankly, there were a few more decades of jail time ready and waiting for knowing too much about what Mordecai was up to. So it kind of crept up on him like a headache or an overdue bill: one moment he was just putting it down for granted, just one more of Atlas’s reckless boys a little bit in love with Mitzi, one of those desperate strays the old man could count on to come crawling on back to the Lackadaisy. Sometimes Zib even wondered if Atlas married her knowing that. But he didn’t even worry about that then, not about Mordecai Heller or Roark Rickaby or any of the host of young men with nothing better to do. Zib had to admit that of himself. He never actually saw things coming.
Then he turned his head on a streetcorner and saw Mitzi standing looking at her handbag while her husband’s hired gun brushed past Zib on his way out, and he did.
“Hey,” he hailed her with a smile, chucking her under the chin. “Why the longer-than-usual face?”
She returned the smile, but it was a cursory little drop of her charm. Already she was gathering up her bag and her furs and getting ready to go back inside, with nary a look to wherever Mordecai had disappeared to. “It’s chilly a little early for St. Louis, don’t you think? What do you say we go get dinner somewhere?”
Zib nodded and lit up, but his curiosity wasn’t dismissed quite that easily, particularly if Mitzi was the one dismissing it. “Are diner cafes too cheap for us now?”
“Yes,” said Mitzi with an indelicate snort, making him grin. “Unless you’re buying, can we find some actual food, made after we order it?”
“As my lady commands,” he said through a breath of smoke. “You know, I didn’t know Heller was in the habit of making new friends.”
That was the heart and soul of this little conversation, of course, and they could both tell when he’d gotten to it. She took a little more time with something in her bag and let him wait for her reply; she produced her powder and mirror and re-dusted her face with the aid of the shop window while he looked away into his own winding spiral of cigarette smoke. “Mordecai’s hardly a new friend,” she said when she was finished, dainty and disinterested. “But if you’re pining, I’m afraid you probably taste a little too much like tobacco for his liking.”
He breathed in and let his bad habit soothe the slightly-too-deep cut of that remark: it was deeper than she’d meant either, though, and he could tell she knew it, because it cut both ways. “Doesn’t anyone like a girl who smokes any more?”
“Zib,” and suddenly there she was, the girl he knew, with all her hedgehog quills standing straight up, “do you really think I’d carry on with my husband’s protege right under his nose? Is that what you’re trying to imply?”
No, he wanted to say, what I’m implying is that whatever you’re doing with Mordecai, if it was a good idea, you’d be doing it in front of Atlas.
“I just hope you know what you’re doing,” he said with a tired, forgive-me sort of smile.
“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” said Mitzi with a sigh, heaved her shoulders in a way that indicated that the subject was now dropped, and offered her arm chastely. He accepted, well enough accustomed to his place in her St. Louis life, and set about finding some actual food, made after they ordered it.
It was supposed to rain that night: the clouds were thick in the sky, but held out, the puffy misers. They didn’t let loose for a while after that. When they did, it was the city’s rainiest day in months, Atlas was splattered all over the cobblestones of an alleyway, and Mordecai was gone. So whatever they’d been doing, it wasn’t a good idea at all.
Zib was in a part of town he didn’t like on an errand he liked even less when he ran into him again, finally, months later. He was skulking -- seriously, it was skulking, there was no better word for it -- down a street at dusk with his hands in his pockets and his hat’s brim pulled down over his eyes when he stopped at the corner of a wall and peered around to scout ahead of himself, wishing Viktor had been available for this job, when he leaned against the ugly brick and took the time to light himself a cigarette for his nerves. The hand that grabbed him by the shoulder might as well have materialized from bats.
He whirled around in a panic, and there was Missouri’s favorite assassin like he’d never left: suit, tie, hat shading his own face but for the menacing glint of his bottle-green eyes. There was no real reason for Mordecai to have changed in the meantime. This wasn’t spectator sports. If you jumped from the crumbling Lackadaisy onto the thriving Marigold, you didn’t exactly have to switch team jerseys. He did look a little better-dressed, though, if Zib wasn’t mistaken. Probably better-paid, he thought glumly. Zib stared, not in the least in the process of wondering whether Asa Sweet had any particular reason to want him dead, but he still would’ve stared.
Mordecai didn’t participate in this little carnival of staring. He probably got in all his reunion surprise lurking in the shadows, anyway. Instead he glared, which was one of his favorite activities.
“You’re packing,” he said in lieu of ‘hello.’ “That is the worst attempt at concealing a gun that I’ve ever seen. If you’re just going to jam it down the back of your trousers, at least invest in clothing that’s thick enough so the shape wouldn’t be obvious to a two-bit copper on his first day working this beat, and it helps if it fits you, too. Move it closer to the small of your back, that’ll remedy the problem slightly. And get a firearm small enough for your frame next time.” He sounded like a disappointed math teacher. “You’re even narrower than me.”
Hi to you too came to mind. That is the worst attempt at concealing a Brooklyn accent that I’ve ever seen. And, You know, the first time I fired a gun was long before I set eyes on this sorry city, actually, has it occurred to you I might have the slightest idea what I’m doing? And, You know, you did not actually invent guns or weaponry or death, Mordecai. America had those covered long before you came along.
But Zib gave a shaky nod and stepped on the burning cigarette so it went out, leaving a little tendril of smoke. Then he -- with hands palm-up and facing out, to prevent any lethal reflexes on Mordecai’s part in the direction of his death-laced trenchcoat -- reached back and moved the gun in his waistband so it was centered a little vulnerably in the small of his back.
Mordecai watched him. Then they both met eyes and had trouble breaking that, as if on cue, like they both sensed exactly when the awkward moment in this conversation had arrived, which they probably had: Zib was Zib and Mordecai was some kind of bloodthirsty criminal, but not a fool. He might’ve been waiting for Zib to say something, and it was a reasonable expectation. But for once, Dorian Zibowski didn’t feel like he had anything appropriate to say.
So Mordecai looked away first, impassive and casual again, and glanced down the alleyway with familiar disinterest. He ruled this roost, that much was clear. It occurred to Zib that he’d never had the opportunity to consider how many shitty crime-filled roosts it was possible Mordecai ruled. When he was finished with his once-over he spoke up again. “What kind of business brings you here?”
Zib blinked and made a face that he thought conveyed the reasonable reaction to this question and who was asking it: in this case, raised eyebrows.
He got an eyeroll in response. “I’m not interested in the new classified secrets of your organization,” said Mordecai, “and, heaven forfend, if I was, that wouldn’t be how I’d go about getting them.”
“I’m sure.” Zib cracked a smile.
“I’m asking how long you imagine this is going to keep you.” Mordecai closed his eyes. “Is this urgent or can it wait until nightfall in full, when you’re less likely to summon the attention of the police if whatever high-risk negotiation you’ve been sent for goes as ugly as it appears you fear? You don’t have to tell me. You’re free to go and get yourself killed with aplomb if you like.”
Zib blinked some more and struggled to re-light a cigarette, but the match was being stubborn.
“I guess it can wait,” he said.
It wasn’t prime real estate, the neighborhood they were in, but the diner they went to had to be the lowest-rent dive in a few blocks even by those standards. The woman working there nodded to one or both of them and disappeared into the back. Mordecai took a seat at the counter, one with a folded newspaper in front of it, after checking around the empty diner in what had to be habit. Their waitress came back with coffees for them both. Zib looked into his cup with dismal expectations.
Typically enough, his ex-coworker didn’t resume the conversation, but opened the newspaper and laid it out in front of him to read as he drank his coffee. Zib tried his: surprisingly strong and very bitter. Then again, he considered who brought him here. Mordecai looked unconcerned, looking over the classifieds and obituaries as if he were here alone. After a moment Zib started to wonder if he might as well have been.
So he took a moderate sip of his own coffee and breached the silence. “Things are going all right back at the Daisy,” he said. “A little -- bumpy, sometimes, with finances, but you have to expect that with turnover. Stormy weather.”
“Yes,” said Mordecai, “well, you can’t very well resurrect the dead.”
Zib winced and picked up his mug to study the ring at the bottom, turning it this way and that. “How’s old Asa faring?”
The other man shrugged, which was just a slight motion with one of his shoulders under his coat. “I’m not the one to ask. The work’s the same wherever I get it, save that my new employer’s among the living.”
“Viktor’s doing well,” Zib volunteered, not without a miniscule grain of spite. “Believe it or not.”
If that bait was enticing at all, Mordecai didn’t rise to it regardless. Or not in the way that most people might have, anyway. He didn’t even look at Zib, just squinted down at the newsprint through his spectacles. “Not everything I do can be a success.”
Just like that, Zib was sick of Mordecai. It was marvelous that it'd taken this long, considering the years he'd spent in the man's nominal company, but the feeling was rising anyway. He looked at him askance, sitting next to him by the counter, but mostly at his stupid finicky little glasses and the five layers of expensive clothing he justified for hiding two guns and the pretentious little furrow in his brow. He was sick of Bed-Stuy pretending to be the Hamptons, and of mysteriousness that always seemed to amount to no answers. Of other people's time wasted on his endless self-important games. Of Viktor's hobbled gait these days, and, if he was going to be entirely honest, of the fact that Atlas May was not about to pop out of nowhere and explain his plan all along and fix all their lives again, which Zib put down to Mordecai's fault one way or another. Generally, he thought he had the right to be pretty damn tired of Mordecai Heller's bullshit.
"Look," he said after a moment, raising his eyebrows. "I'm appreciating the reunion and all, but if we're just here to catch up, there's always the telephone."
"No," said Mordecai suddenly, practically reflexively.
That wasn't helping, Zib reflected. What did you say to a child armed to the teeth and petulant about his toy getting taken away? He settled on a puzzled, "Yes, actually."
"No," Mordecai repeated, staring straight ahead. "I need you to do something for me."
Of course he did. There was no saying 'no' to these things. Well, story of Dorian Complete Sucker Zibowski's goddamned life, anyway -- "Yeah? What can I do for the Marigold Speakeasy, then?"
"It's not for the Marigold Speakeasy and if you'd stop your wisecracking for ten or fifteen seconds you'd have realized that by now," came the gritted monotone answer rattled out faster than an engine. "I said I needed you to do something for me."
Zib cocked his head to one side, listening.
Mordecai didn't choose to focus all his intimidating hackles on him at this moment, which, in retrospect, should've been a little more telling than it was. Instead he focused them on his near-empty coffee cup. At the moment it looked like he had a serious problem with that cup. That cup was going to die. "Zib," he said. "You are going to tell Mitzi that --"
Zib waited.
Mordecai had a sedate way of sitting around frozen, but his fingers had tightened enough around his cup that it looked like he was about to shatter the ceramic into a handful of bloody shards any second now. He said nothing, looking for once utterly nonplussed for how to say what he wanted to say. He was going through a range of stilted expressions, with the air of someone half-paralyzed in the face, maybe expressions it had never had the challenge of trying to make before. But he didn't say anything, even as the waitress refilled both their cups and then wisely left them alone again. It wasn't like Zib didn't wait, either.
Eventually Zib thought better of it, though, and knitted his brows together and raised a careful hand. He settled it on Mordecai's shoulder awkwardly, like it might get bitten off any moment. "You look like you got in a little too deep," he said.
That was ignored, which was probably the best possible outcome, really. The spell was broken, though, and Mordecai downed another impressive swill of toxic coffee. Well. New York. "You'll understand why I don't convey my regards to the crew," he stated.
"You can pretend like I gave you theirs," said Zib, risking a peep over his shoulder. "Is it dark out already?" For once he didn't mind the prospect even in the ramshacklest part of St. Louis he knew. Any exit from this conversation was looking attractive.
Mordecai's eyes flickered down to a golden pocketwatch he had on a chain: just a glint from Zib’s perspective, a round bauble half-hidden by the gloom. "Most likely," he said without looking outside.
Zib removed his hand with similar trepidation and then, like he was being held at gunpoint, slid carefully off his stool and shrugged himself back into his jacket. Now that it'd been pointed out, he couldn't stop obsessing over whether he was properly stowing his firearm. This would basically be the stupidest thing to get picked up by the cops for. "You look good, Mordecai," he said in lieu of a goodbye, rummaging in his pockets for enough change to pay for the coffee at least.
He was pre-empted -- Mordecai held out his hand and dropped two coins neatly onto the counter, then spun both at exactly the same time, in afterthought. They both came to a rest heads-up. As it turned out, both their coffees added up to something like a neat little price in sum total. Two twenty-five-cent pieces.
"Consider the taxi you take home to be on me," he said. "If you get arrested and inform on all of us I'll have to literally die of embarrassment."
"Can't have you flummoxing the coroner like that," Zib agreed, wondering if Mordecai's command of the word 'literally' was as hyperbolic as ever. He gave his once-associate a more impersonal clap on the back and then looked around once more for anyone waiting to murder him, just in case, before leaving the creepy little diner where he'd found it.
The sidewalk welcomed him back now that it was darker and posed a greater chance of getting him mugged, and there was still an errand to do -- he shoved his hands in his pockets, partly to count how much he had on him to get mugged for and partly to feel the dirty coins under his fingers. Fifty red cents. That was enough to buy him a ride back to Mitzi, or more smokes, or a lot of things, really. What a man did with fifty cents was a lodestone for his character, if you thought about it.
He did cast a look back behind him through the windows of the diner to see how fast his fifty-cent benefactor had disappeared into the night this time. But he hadn't stirred, actually, or looked outside, but was checking the time again on his golden watch.