Ain ∴ Rose (ex_reds113) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-02-09 23:24:00 |
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Entry tags: | rose red, spider-man |
Who: Ainslie and Connor
What: Discussing the Giacoma
Where: LVPD
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: Nope
Ainslie had not stepped foot in a police department in all of her vida. She had never done anything to be arrested for, as being the heiress to a large mafia familia was no crime without action. And, when the time had come, someone else had claimed her title. Si, she had the money, ill-gained all, but it had been left to her in offshore accounts and holdings in other countries. No, she had never stepped foot in a police department until this moment, because she had never had cause to do this. And perhaps she should be frightened. She knew the new Giacoma, the animales, watched everything. Of course, they knew that she had come here, and she would not be surprised to find them tailing her. But she had safety in dólares, and this was the best safety there could be. Si, it would have been safer to remain married, remain in Chicago with Jimmy in home she did not remember from a childhood that could have belonged to another little girl with hair the color of pennies. But she was not this person; she would not hide from life. It was not her way. And so she did not hide here, and she would not hide here. Let the Giacoma watch if they desired it; she would not stop them.
She walked into the station in a bright yellow sundress, a buttercup ballerina's shrug on her shoulders, and her hair up in a loose bun. She was twenty-two, but she looked to be younger, and her smile was untroubled and her blue eyes bright. She asked for Connor Baird without secrecy or concern, and she offered to wait allí, there, in the grey plastic chairs that lined the wall, as if there was no strangeness in a wealthy girl sitting in such a place and waiting on such an hombre.
She was lucky to catch him. Connor had been in and out of the precinct with decreasing regularity, recently, only a time or two a week. There was too much going on elsewhere, and he'd spent so much of his time chasing down leads on Olive that it had decentralized him. He'd missed standing between the criminals who had stolen her phone and driven her out of town and her, and she'd nearly been killed in the process. In the future, he had to work harder, and spend more time around his charges. That meant less time spent in the office.
He wasn't surprised to be approached by one of the officers, since the whole point of working amongst them was to be available whenever something came up. He was surprised, though, at the request. Generally speaking, people didn't come to speak to him directly. Informants rarely offered themselves up in situations outside of legal bargaining or offers made by undercover operatives. Not many people knew, either, that he worked regularly at the station rather than the branch office. A girl here to see him, a redhead. That clicked with a memory from a few months before. But it couldn't be the same girl. She'd left town, gotten married within the family, settled down.
There she was, though, sitting in a dim gray chair in the waiting room when he approached. "Afternoon," he said. "I'm Agent Baird. If you'd care to talk, we can step inside." He didn't know if she would recognize him, the stranger who had come into her dance studio. He had dressed down, then, purposefully grungy, and the contrast between that and the man in the suit was marked. As it had been then, she was a little like a ghost. She couldn't know how well he knew her. She couldn't know there had been an entry for her in his notebook as a teenager, when he'd carefully, meticulously researched the family. Ainslie Giacoma, so young when her parents had died. He wouldn't have touched her, had he had his chance. At the time, she had presented an inconvenience, primarily, an obstacle to find his way around. He would have to kill her parents and her grandmother when she was out of the house, off at school, perhaps. If things had gone according to plan, she would have discovered what had happened far from home, never seen the bodies. He had imagined she would be better off for it, even knowing what it meant to lose one's parents. People who didn't care about murdering children shouldn't be allowed to raise them. Then, of course, someone had gotten to them first, and all his planning had dissolved in smoke and blood.
She did not remember him from the studio. She knew him only through his interactions with Olive, and it was because of this that she was there. It was a bold move, one that was not the best planned thing she had done in a lifetime of impulsive choices. But she was not one to hide or be afraid, and she stood and gave him an unworried smile. "Gracias," she said politely, and she nodded for him to lead the way into this place "inside" where he wished to speak to her.
The police station was not as she expected it. On her isla, everything was stone and crumbling. The ocean was unforgiving, and the waves crashed onto the land during every summer season. It was a poor place, for those not living on estates like her abuela. And the police station there, which she had seen the evening she had been dragged out of her lover's casa, was the same as all the other squat buildings that had survived time and storms. It felt, the jail on her isla, like a place where many people had gone to die. This place did not feel like that at all. It felt like a hospital. Impersonal and medicinal, and she did not like it.
She slowed along the passage, and she glanced into the rooms without apology, a curious ballerina who had long since given up the stage, but who had retained that love of the spotlight on her skin. A man leered from behind an open door, and she smiled at him, as if she knew herself to be immune from whatever he might do to her. She was this way, and it was (perhaps) a bad way to be. But she did not feel the weight of mortality upon her shoulders, not yet.
She didn't recognize him, but, then again, why should she? Connor had undoubtedly only been one in a sea of people coming through her doors. He led her inside. On the walk, he noticed her slow gait, and her careful observation of what lay within the small offices. This was a girl who had never learned the damage curiosity could do. He wondered if she even remembered her parents, really.
There was no need to intimidate her with an interrogation room unless she actually wanted to make a statement about something, so Connor took her to his own small office instead. He pulled over a chair for her before sitting down behind the desk, setting aside the file he'd been sifting through. If she read carefully, she would see GIACOMA printed upside-down from her angle on one of the documents hanging partially outside the folder.
Looking directly across the desk at her, like this, it was difficult not to simply catalogue her features. There was something about her that he couldn't quite manage to put his finger on. Something that burned. Something very much living, and somehow unaware of all the dangers around her. She had to know what it would mean for her to come here if anyone in her family found out, yet she walked through the halls like she was dancing in a recital, light of foot and smiling easily at the lascivious cop a few doors down. Connor had always disliked him. He flirted with female suspects, and he has suspicions he might have accepted sexual favors for leniency on his beat. As they’d passed, he’d given the man a sharp look that had made his face fall. However good his pretense was, there was something behind Connor’s eyes that suggested it would be best not to test him. "You asked for me," he said. "Do you have a question or a story, Miss...?"
She took her seat with the delicateness of a ballerina, and the carelessness of a thing that is wild, but she did notice the name in all capital letters on the file. She noticed it in the way a person always heard their name when it was spoken in a crowd, and in the way their own name never failed to appear the most prominent thing in a block of text. That it did not surprise her was evident, and she made no attempt to hide that she had seen this thing. In fact, she reached out and traced the letters boldly, before sitting back again in the chair. "I have changed my apellido. Is this in your file?" she asked him, her blue eyes bright with knowledge. She did not continue on after this question. She waited for his answer; she would continue once she had it.
Well, that got that out of the way. Connor had fully expected that she knew what he did, though. It was more a surprise that she was just learning of it now. If she didn't know that he investigated her family, then why was she here? "Not yet," he said, smiling faintly, unreadable as anything but faint amusement. "What did you change it to?"
"Boyd," she said simply. He would know her madre's maiden name, si? It was already in this file of his. "My esposo was not what I thought. We are legally separated, but not divorciado. Would you like un momento to add this to your file?" she asked, her smile bordering on a teasing thing, as if this was not at all as serious as it was. If there was a hint of something deeper behind her blue gaze, well this was not an obvious thing, and only looking very, very closely would reveal it.
Of course he knew her mother's maiden name. It, too, had been in that notebook so long ago. "I'll remember for later," he said, with that same smile. "I have a good memory." He leaned back a little in his chair. "Why did you separate?" Now this was news. If she was separated from her husband, that might mean she was willing to inform. It still didn't explain, however, why she had come to him specifically if she didn't even realize he was working against the Family.
"Have you seen these new men who have taken over mi Familia?" she asked, and she left it at that. She would not be informing; she was too smart for this. She gave him a very long look, one that was assessing and unafraid of the silence that some would shy away from in a closed room with a stranger, but, allí, there it was, recognition in her blue eyes. "I have seen you before, though you did not look like this," she said confidently, no doubt once she had made the connection. "But this is not why I have come," she added. She did not make the connection before, and she saw no value in pretending she had.
"I have," Connor said, smiling fading as much as he would let it, as much as seemed appropriate. Her long stare was met with one in return. He didn't get uncomfortable, or shift. He remained as placid as he'd been since they sat down, not a ripple to betray a single thought in those dark, dark eyes.
There it was, she recognized Connor at last. "I don't know what you're talking about." There was no real reason to deny he'd seen her at the studio, but the tone made it a joke - he knew that she knew. "Did you come about the new management?"
"You joke about truths?" she asked directly, her own nature mercurial enough to mind something she might herself have chosen to do. But then he asked about her motivation, and she shook her head, copper hair sliding along the buttercup yellow shrug and catching on the thread. "I am not here to give you informacion. Lo siento," she explained. She would not become an agency's sacrificial lamb. "I came to tell you that Olive esta bien. This is all." And the truth remained, that if something happened to the animales that ran this Familia now, then she would have a choice to make. He knew it, and she knew it. When she was young, she had ignored this. Now, the time for lies was done.
"All the time," Connor said. It was interesting that she minded that. What did it matter, at this point? It was no disappointment to hear that she hadn't brought him information, though, since he'd already put that much together.
Olive, though, Olive got his attention. There was something then, a flicker of reaction so suppressed that it was almost not there at all. "You were acquainted?" Certainly a possibility, since Olive had taken over the studio when Ainslie left town, after all. He'd had no idea that they'd crossed paths, though. These gaps in his knowledge were a sure sign he needed better informants, or more of them. If he wasn't even hearing when a mob heiress separated from her husband and moved back into town, they weren't doing their jobs. She was exactly the sort of disillusioned girl who would ordinarily be ripe for the picking. Perhaps he could work on her over time, or she would grow angry enough with the new men running the family to betray them. If she did, he'd make sure to be there.
It sank in slowly, that Olive was safe. Connor had assumed so, since she’d disappeared so completely, but it made all the difference to know for sure. Rather than bringing him a wave of relief, or a surge of happiness, it was met with an almost imperceptible smoothing of the tension in his shoulders, one worry erased. The feeling was one of quiet contentment. That was good. She ought to be well. She had made some unfortunate mistakes in who she trusted, but she had been so sheltered, and so devoted to a man who had obviously strung her along. She had a right to get out, and to really live a life.
"You do not seem the type of man to joke," she said honestly; he did not. There were no laugh lines etched about his mouth, and no mirth drawing the feet of crows from his eyes. She did not believe that he joked at all, not beyond surface words that he did not truly feel. She did not believe he had ever laughed a laugh that made his belly hurt. She did not believe he had ever smiled a smile that made his cheeks ache.
"You do not know how Olive and I are connected? I believed your job was to follow my Familia. Was I mistaken?" she asked, then with a playful smile, she tapped her fingers on his file once more. "You are sure you do not wish to take notes as I speak?" She did not wait for a response before continuing, and there was a certain smugness to her tone, the power of knowledge in her grasp. "Olive's madre worked for my abuela. Her mama was my personal maid. She would braid my hair, and she would wash the stains from the knees of all my dresses, so my abuela would not know I had been running with the native children. She is still there, at my casa, old and rocking in a chair, watching the waves crash in the distancia and writing me cartas about her hija, who no longer speaks to her. Olive lived there as well, when we were children, though she was older than I, and I liked running free and she did not."
Ainslie stood, and she rounded his desk and leaned back against it. Her hip was near the arm of his chair, and her hands were back on the flat wood. "The hombre who helped her leave the estudio found her a place where she is safe, and where will not be followed, but I have a suggestion, si? The next time someone wishes to inform to you, ensure they know something of the world first, and can make this choice with knowledge. I know you do not make these choices, but you will pass this on to your jefe for me." It was not a question, but then many things with her were not.
Ainslie’s assumptions about Connor weren’t wrong, but it was easy enough for this lack to not matter to him. Happiness wasn’t a part of vision of the world, not for himself. It was as irrelevant as anything else that didn’t involve collecting on a debt of lives. He had goals, motives, morals, and he had long since stopped imagining anything could fill that empty place and make him walk in step with everyone else.
Connor hadn't known any of the history of Olive's early life. She had come on their radar because of Vicente, and aside from checking for risks, everything before that had been irrelevant. He listened, and he tucked all the information away, not that it mattered now. Wherever Olive was, she wouldn't be working for the mob again, and she wouldn't be going back to Cuba.
He watched Ainslie walk around the desk and plant herself in front of him. The move fit her, brash and unafraid, and he didn't appear perturbed by it, still smiling a little. "Things like knowledge of the world don't get taken into account," he replied. It wasn't unkind, but it was factual, with the implication it would not change. "Just relevance, usefulness, and willingness. And Olive agreed." On the basis of love for a man who had obviously cared about her like one cares about a pet, or a mistress, perhaps, though he had a hard time imagining Olive in that role.
"You will not argue with me?" she asked with a smile, one that said she knew arguing would be a futile thing. She was sure that she was right about him, and this was simply as it was. There were certain things she took in life as certainties, whether she liked them or not, and this was one of them. "How did you end up involved in this?" she asked, but it savored of a rhetorical question; she did not expect an answer from him. She expected him to do nothing for her; that was not the purpose of this visit.
In the end, she pushed away from the desk, from his hip, and she regarded him with an intelligent blue gaze. She did not demure; she was not raised for demurring. She did not intend to ever run this Familia that she had been born into, but she knew she had a part to play. She was the dinero, the money, and he would know this as well as any Giacoma. "They are not taken into account, but they should be," she said, solid in the conviction that this was la verdad. "There should not be Familias like ours, si, but the government should be better than them, they should not use people as if they did not matter, not when they claim to be better than we are," she said.
And then the smile was back, harmless and befitting the ballerina's shrug on her shoulders. "It was very nice to speak to you, Connor."
"No," Connor said. No, he was not going to rise to her bait of arguing with her when she clearly wouldn't be convinced. He let her question remain rhetorical, dark eyes still pinned on her, flat as skipping stones.
He watched her change of posture with interest. People only did things like that when whatever they had to say seemed to merit a shift in tone, when they wanted to draw attention to whatever was to follow. He continued to listen to her calmly, right up until the moment where she began passing judgement on him and the rest of the organization.Usually it took more than words to sink home, but the comparison between the government and the Families, that climbed under his skin. "They do matter," he said. Olive had mattered. The other informants he'd dealt with, the ones who weren't merely turning on the family to get shorter sentences and more lenient judges, they mattered. Even if the informants themselves were worthless, the people who they might save by coming under the government's protection, they mattered. His mother and his brother had mattered, even if his father had been the worst kind of opportunistic, bloodthirsty scum. There wasn’t anger behind his words, necessarily - if there was, it was buried too deep to see. But there was conviction.
He stood, before she could leave. "You care what happened to Olive," he said. It was strange enough to merit pointing out. Ainslie knew she had gone somewhere safe, and yet it seemed she had told no one, if she knew where that place was. "Are you turning your back on them?" She wouldn't inform, but he liked to think that a girl like this one, raised apart from the murderers, might manage to find her way out. People like Ainslie. Their lives did matter.
She did not expect him to stand. She did not expect any of her words to reach him. She was surprised when they did, and she did not hide the surprise from her face. "Perhaps," she conceded, "they matter to you. I do not believe they matter to this organization you represent," she said. She looked around at his office, at the walls, at the ceiling, and then at the file with her apellido on it. "We are only a name, si? A sticker on a folder, and this is all?" She shook her head, but she stopped when he said that she cared what happened to Olive. "Si. I do not want to tell her madre that she has died. She has made choices that were not smart, but this is no crime," she admitted, before turning toward the door. But, again, he stopped her with his question, and this time she gave him a smile. "You think this is so easy? It is not. All of the money, it is mine. I do not get to turn my back. If I am lucky, I get to live in peace. It is not as you would have it, but it how it is. If I am very lucky, these animales that run this Familia as if it was a cannibalistic fair will be overthrown, but I will not be the one to head this up, and I do not see anyone else in the Familia that can. Buenas suerte, Connor, but I do not believe you can win this war."
They were more than a name. Much more, but Connor could hardly admit that openly. He wondered to what choices Ainslie was referring - that Olive had turned on the family, or that she had become involved with Vicente. Or both, perhaps. He didn't like her rebuttal, but he could acknowledge, with a measure of regret, that she was right. With so much of the Family's money under her control, it could never be so simple as just walking away.
Her doubt struck against the steel of his conviction and rebounded. "But I will," he said, without doubt, because he knew himself. He knew what he was willing to do, what he was capable of, what he would give up, what he had let go of ever having. He would win. At whatever cost it took, he would win. “Good afternoon, Miss Ainslie.”