oo3. how to. Who; Dan and one of Scarlet’s “honored guests.” What; An attempt at infiltration goes terribly right, and how to end a life (with some plot points thrown in for good measure). Narration. When; Wednesday, April 14th. Around 9:30 PM. Where; The Roof Garden, V.I.P. Jazz Room. Warnings; Unglorified death, language, allusions to sex/uality.
It started with a snip, and Dan put another tick on his list of debts to be paid in the afterlife. The sharp scent of freshly cut greens mixed with the softer one of the oleander that had just dropped into his hand, its white petals curving upward in the soft cradle of Dan’s palm like a child reaching for its mother or a stranger offering a comforting embrace. Using the soft green tissue paper he’d taken from one of Scarlet’s cupboards, Dan covered the funeral flower and tucked it gently into his breast pocket.
Sentimental wasn’t a form Dan usually found himself in, and this case was not an exception. As much as he understood the erroneous assumption on the part of the Oleanders that made them think they could plant a spy and get away with it, he also understood the sheer cunning of his own den mother. Scarlet had earned each and every nickname that she’d ever been given, and some that she had not. The only appropriate emotion to feel in regard to the spy, then, was pity.
Dan felt it.
He took the elevator down from the top floor and took deep breaths to ease the transition from humid heat to the cool, dry air of The Roof Garden’s underground levels. At the chime that signaled his arrival on the bottommost floor, Dan stepped into the murky dark of the Hibiscus club and paused to let his eyes adjust.
The bottom floor of Scarlet’s Garden was a tropical jungle of exotic plants and flowers, each of which that could only be seen when the clothes came off and the spotlights on. It was impossible to walk more than a few meters through the crowd without scratching someone’s tattoo, and most wore a certain attire that showed proudly that fact. Dan didn’t even have to roll up his sleeves; every face that turned toward him registered recognition at his features.
“Can I get you a drink, Dan?” one of the night’s runners said as Dan was just getting ready to head through the crowd. In the dim light, her ginger hair looked almost like toxic waste, and the black lighting filtering in from the ceiling made the exposed skin of her neck, chest, and the round of her breasts glow.
Dan clicked his tongue. “Two gin and tonics. Hold the gin on one and bring the tray—I’ll be outside the Jazz Room.”
She turned away with a knowing look lifting the corners of her full lips, though Dan was certain that among Scarlet’s bartenders and waitresses, she was probably the least likely to have any idea of what actually was going to go on tonight. Most in the club wouldn’t—many saw Dan as a glorified lapdog simply because he refused to talk about his kills. Reticence earned a few nice nicknames on its own.
It was nearly nine thirty when Dan stationed himself outside the double doors that led into the room Scarlet had dropped for him less than a week before. Shelia returned with the drinks just as two men stumbled out of the room, their drunkenness affected and their voices loud. One gave Dan a thumbs up after the door had swung shut, as if to say, All yours.
Shelia handed him the tray with a strained smile, and Dan wondered what had changed her attitude.
The metal handle of the door felt cold and firm under Dan’s fingertips, and he tugged back smoothly enough that it took a single step to bring him into the room and the door back into place in tandem. Still, there wasn’t even enough time to register the baby-soft features of Scarlet’s “guest” before the man was sliding out of his seat and weaving toward Dan in a distinctly deliberate way. If he could even be called a man.
The boy couldn’t have been much older than Dan himself, though he’d always had a difficult time judging the ages of Caucasians. His hair was charcoal dust black and his eyes a startling shade of blue, more like the color of the sky before a storm than the typical ocean blue. He looked more like an actor than a criminal, and for that, Dan almost pitied him. Scarlet must have had herself a good laugh when she’d inducted this one—he read Oleander like a flashing billboard sign complete with audio in stereo. The Godfather was either getting senile or some idiot had managed to slip this kid past him, because any trained eye would have pegged him for a mole without taking another glance.
“You read my mind! I was just gonna order another one!” His body lurched toward Dan like a weight, and Dan held the tray away as the hand darted out surprisingly quickly for a drunk. “Heyyyy…”
Dan felt his jaw muscles tighten in annoyance. They had to get him totally smashed—letting a man die with some dignity was apparently too damn human for them.
“You should sit down. Let’s sit.” He followed the weaving Oleander back to the table and sat down next to him, pushing the tray with the drinks across the polished mahogany table and out of reach.
“Heyyy, that’s mine.”
Dan responded to the whine with a lifted brow. “I suspect you’ve had enough.”
“I suspect,” the unhappy drunk remarked, “that you aren’t the boss of me. I suspect that waiters and call boys don’t get ‘ta make these kinds’a decisions in this kinds’a places.”
“I’m not a waiter,” said Dan, eyes narrowing as he shifted slightly in his seat, moving to face the other man across the arm of his chair. “Why did you say that?”
“Huh? ‘Cause you brought me drinks.” He tried again to reach for the gin and tonic.
Dan pushed the tray further back. “No. Why did you say I was a call boy?”
For a moment, the spy stopped reaching for the drink and looked as levelly at Dan as it was possible for someone as drunk as he to do. Then, his mouth opened in a wide smile that showed straight white teeth and somehow made his innocent face seem slightly less so.
“You are, aren’t you? I saw you at that bird club, but I didn’t know you were one’a Scarlet’s. Anyway, gimme my drink.”
“No. So you don’t know who I am.” Like suddenly becoming aware of another part of his body, Dan felt his knife shift against his back, beneath the band of his pants where he’d slid it earlier that day. It wasn’t so much a reminder as it was an affirmation.
“Nooooope. Who are you? Besides the guy who won’t give me my fucking drink?”
“I’m Dan,” he offered a small smile that lost its form slowly as the color drained from the Oleander spy’s face, leaving his complexion wan and sallow. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he took a hard swallow.
“So you’re one of Scarlet’s.” The blue eyes fell slowly to a junction in the carpet where red met black, where they stayed for a long moment before he began to chuckle.
Dan said nothing for almost a minute, until the man raised his eyes again, looking more and more worried as the seconds ticked by and Dan did nothing. Then, Dan rose smoothly from his seat and crossed the small space between them, sliding one leg over each side of the man’s thighs so that he was sitting on his lap. Beneath him, tense muscles pulled tighter, and if there had been any question of this man’s identity, it would have disappeared. An innocent body had an entirely different feel to it.
He slid his hands down the taut, overheated muscle that sweated through the man’s shirt until his fingers touched the hilt of a gun, which Dan removed and disarmed. He slid the knife out of his pants while his hands were behind him—it was small and warm.
“Shit.” The man swallowed again, his fingers suddenly clenched tight in the fabric of Dan’s shirt, just at his hips. “I heard…I heard you’re as likely to kiss as to kill. Which is it?”
With a single, fluid movement, Dan slid his knife into the base of the man’s skull, severing the brainstem and killing him instantly. His blue eyes remained open, staring in eternal perplexity like starlight from an already dead celestial god.
“The latter,” Dan said.
He unwrapped the white oleander and left it on the tray with the drinks.