Who: Joey following various couriers. What: A confrontation followed by handcuffs. The beginnings of some life changing event ness. Where: The streets. When: Last night. Warnings: Violence.
At least while he'd been imprisoned there was all the monotony to count on. A weird brand of comfort came with knowing that he didn't have anything but time to waste.. although if he'd any idea of the trouble his family had gone through while he was locked up, it would have made his sentence a whole hell of alot harder. But nobody ever visited, and after awhile, even if they'd tried, he wouldn't have shown up for visitor's day. Ain't no point in getting all sentimental when you're still strung up in barbed wire.
But he was here now, and all of the pent up energy that developed behind bars wasn't going to let him sit idly by and twiddle his goddamn thumbs when somebody had just attacked his kid sister. He'd always been more of a rabid dog than a domesticated man, and these days his blood was churning up a junkyard of iron ore and grim outlooks. Sam was unstable as water, Iris was fucking nuts, Tess was off doing hell knows what, and Louis -- well, Louis was a brother and could theoretically take care of himself. Joey was just about out of helping hands as it was, and he sure as hell didn't need to be worrying about that fucking one too. He just had to organize and deal with one thing, one sibling at a time, until everybody was nice and clean and in fucking line. Tomorrow, he'd deal with Iris, but today.. today was about Sam.
Sam had given him a basic(albeit vague) bullet list of who to look for. Maybe blond, maybe blue uniform, maybe ballcap. Yeah, that shouldn't have been a problem in a metropolitan city of a half million people with what seemed like twice as many transient tourists. So Joey spent the rest of the day compiling a list of courier business addresses that he collected from a telephone book page ripped clean from its fostered glue. He took to the bike that morning and hit them one at a time. Brown uniforms were struck through or torn away, then red, then black. Paper squares of half-off coupons boasting their business names left crumpled in the dust of every gutter as he prowled on.
As it turned out, there was only one courier company that operated with a blue uniform. The men that he saw coming and going through the doors didn't wear ball caps, and more than could have qualified as blond like dishwater on a polluted day. He followed them all, one by one. One stopped by a church on his lunch break to attend an AA meeting, one hit the gay clubs as soon as the sun went down, and the last one seemed average enough as he shuffled home from the corner store with a gallon of milk under one arm. But Joey didn't come all this way to sit and stare, so he parked his bike by the curb and dropped the strap of his helmet onto a handlebar.
"Hey, you," Joey called out with his approach, pulling the sunglasses off and twisting their plastic up in his fist. The man stopped with hesitation and awkward eyes, like he wasn't sure if he was about to be mugged or asked if Jesus was his savior. As a felon with ink crawling up one side of his neck and a handful of height on him that made it impossible for the average man to look down on him, Joey was used to people backing off with shoulders itching higher. Nobody wanted to share the sidewalk with him, not even on a Sunday afternoon with the sun out and the birds whistling Mary Poppins, but this guy didn't flinch back.
"Yeah?" The man asked it like he was tired of giving the same directions to the same cathouses.
Joey pressed his tongue against the grooves of his sharp teeth and tasted sand while he sized the guy up. There were bags under his eyes and shadows on the face that said he hadn't seen a razor in a couple of days. Probably one of those guys who blew their life savings while on vacation with the boys and never went back to their families because of it. Probably spent all night at the tables until it was time to punch the time card again. Joey clicked his teeth together as the man stared on expectantly, and it was a contemplative tune before he asked, "You deliver messages to helpless girls.. or just certified letters to businesses?"
And then, maybe it was the dark, but Joey could have sworn that he saw a smirk. Just an inkling of one, but one that Joey felt knew what he was talking about.
The milk hit the ground first, busted plastic and spraying white on the concrete and grime. The man went the same way a moment later, and the only thing that kept his skull from snapping back into the unforgiving ground was a wide set hand caught in the guy's collar. The asphalt cradled them as the hits came again and again. "Did you fuck up my sister?" The demand was punctuated by another hard jab across an already gushing face. "Did you?!"
But the man was already unconscious, and no answer came. Only more blood. The hits became methodical, and even when he was distantly aware of the fact that he was hurting himself now(he'd definitely broke something in his right hand), he couldn't stop. His punches came from the left, again and again, it felt like he was chasing his rage down to the bottom of a vortex. Down to the bottom of the sea, or the bottom of everything, just down, and he wasn't sure if he was ever going to find his way out again.
But he did stop finally. Somebody was screaming about how they'd called the police, and Joey sat back against a brick wall as he pulled out a cigarette. The cops would be here in a second, and he was suddenly exhausted to the point that he just wanted to smoke. But his busted hand couldn't work a lighter, and he had to settle for chewing on the filter as he blue lights pulled up. He kept going over it again in his mind, and he still didn't know. That was the worst part, really. He still didn't know if he imagined that smirk or not.