Amanda van Eeden (carabinadeases) wrote in remains_rpg, @ 2016-07-04 08:05:00 |
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Entry tags: | # 2019 [07] july, amanda van eeden, jane rusten |
Who: Jane Rusten and Amanda van Eeden
Where: the Capitol cafeteria
What: Amanda invites herself to sit with Jane
When: lunchtime, July 2nd
So long as you never left the halls of the Austin Capitol building, it was almost possible to forget the disaster area that was the rest of the city. Amanda favored the rotunda in particular, because it reminded her of Denver’s own capitol building. With the notable exception of one of those damned lone stars that Texans seemed obsessed with putting everywhere, which lay right at the apex of the domed interior. Today, though, there was no time for admiring the rotunda as she passed beneath it on her way to the Capitol cafeteria. One of the secretaries, sent to lunch with instructions to text the moment Sergeant Rusten appeared, had messaged just minutes before, and if Amanda was going to casually appear before the officer left, she needed to haul ass. Not that she was intentionally waylaying Rusten with an ulterior motive in mind. People simply had a tendency to be more relaxed when they were mentally “off the clock”. Coming in as an outsider, Amanda needed every advantage she could on her side as she attempted to It was late enough that the cafeteria was, thankfully, not as packed as it could have been. Showing only a hint of disgust in the curl of her lip, Amanda selected a serving of the nearest dish on offer -- what looked like a sad take on Italian wedding soup. She gave a gentle toss of her hair, using the motion to sweep the room with her gaze, eyes landing on the familiar, leggy blonde. Bingo. “In DC there was a restaurant called Le Diplomate.” With no further greeting, she sat herself down at the same table as the sergeant. Her pronunciation on the name of the French restaurant was letter perfect, of course. “They made a beautiful garden pot-au-feu, with ramps. My second husband used to take me there, so the fact that I can even talk about it without wanting to hurl is a miracle, but I do miss the food. How are you today, Sergeant Rusten?” Jane hadn’t exactly been enjoying the mealy goulash in front of her when Ms. van Eeden sat down at her table unannounced but she still objected to the disruption anyhow. Spoon halfway to her mouth when the newcomer went into her soliloquy, Jane stuck it back into the unappetizing, gelatinous mush and waited for the woman to finish her speech before responding. “Yeah, I understood about 40% of that,” Jane replied in a bald, artless monotone. She pushed her food around her plate and made a face. “But yeah, the food in the caf is a bit shit today. Still, beats starving.” Seeing that Ms. van Eeden wasn’t going anywhere, Jane set her utensil aside. She threaded her fingers together and set them on the table, studying her new lunch mate with a cool air and a practiced eye. “What can I do for you, Ms. van Eeden?” It wasn’t that she disliked Ms. van Eeden exactly. It’s just that Jane didn’t know her. Ms. van Eeden was one of many johnny-come-lately’s that had immigrated to Austin in the aftermath of Olinger’s impeachment. Having no shared experiences besides being on the new city council together, and taking into account her opening monologue peppered with impeccable French, it was clear to Jane that she had absolutely nothing in common with the glamorous government liaison. Unconcerned by Sergeant Rusten’s obvious displeasure at being interrupted, Amanda sampled some of the soup. The moment her spoon lowered again, the corners of her mouth drew down into an expression of unhappiness. As expected, it wasn't to her liking at all. Overdone, and practically flavorless. She made a mental note to be sure the cafeteria’s cooks had access to every available spice. The right seasoning could have made all the difference. Donna -- the secretary who had scoped out the sergeant’s arrival in the cafeteria, and who Amanda was seriously considering stealing to be her personal assistant -- had sworn up and down that the Capitol possessed the best resources of any shelter in Austin. But if this was the best it could do, then she shuddered to think what the residents in other locations were surviving on. Swallowing, she dabbed at her lips with her napkin. “It's a stew,” she replied, seemingly ignoring Rusten’s question. “Pot-en-feu means ‘pot on the fire.’ Often it's made with beef, but Le Diplomate included only vegetables. Which I why I thought of it in the first place, since if there's a scrap of meat left in this dish, I'll crown myself queen of the North Loop.” Tomorrow, she would have to be sure to arrive earlier in the mealtime, in hopes that would make difference. (She suspected it wouldn’t.) “Still, beats starving.” The echoing of Sergeant Rusten was done completely purposefully, and Amanda gave the other woman one of those smiles that said they were in on something together, even if it was only a low level meeting of the minds over the quality of their food. She took another spoonful, eating unhurriedly, as though all the time in the world lay before her. “What I want,” she said at last, giving the soup a gentle stir, “is to simply have lunch with a colleague. It’s nothing nefarious or underhanded, just my belief that a certain amount of familiarity can only make our on-the-job communication more effective. Do you disagree?” Not entirely sure that Ms. van Eeden was done conversing with herself, Jane waited to respond. She wasn’t especially verbose with people she liked, let alone virtual strangers, so Jane was almost of a mind to let her new associate carry out the entirety of this confab on her own. “I don’t disagree,” Jane finally responded. As innocuous as the nature of their conversation was, Jane figured that the sort of people most likely to point out how far from nefarious and underhanded they were were the sort of people you didn’t want to turn your back on. Still, Jane was willing to wait it out to see where Ms. van Eeden was going with all this. “Although I’d hold off for awhile before crowning myself queen of anything around here,” Jane advised. “Especially the North Loop. Have you been out there? The Main Line it is not.” Jane remembered the last she had ventured out to the North Loop all too vividly. Considering she had brought untrained addicts in to serve as backup, Mina in tow as an unarmed civilian, and had to lie to both her partner and the department about the details, the raid on the Las Nahuales safe house hadn’t gone completely gone tits up, which some might consider a win but not Jane. She hated the fact that she had lied, and had to keep lying, to do the right thing. It certainly wasn’t something she was looking to repeat and the fact that Ms. van Eeden named dropped the location only proved that she had done homework and not that she knew anything real about the city itself. Making a noncommittal noise, Amanda gave her soup a last stir and lifted a spoonful to her mouth to take another bite. She preferred these informal lunch meetings precisely because they gave her an opportunity to weigh her words without appearing to do so, interspersing conversation with food. There was an opportunity here to chase an answer on something that had been nagging at her ever since she read the official report about the clearing of the North Loop, but for the moment she let it lay. While she did want to know how a single officer had managed to arrest half a dozen members of an extremely hostile and aggressive gang, it was too soon in a supposedly benign conversation to raise such a topic. “There isn’t much of Austin that I’d crown myself queen over,” she admitted, and the candor in which she spoke redeemed her, if only slightly, in Jane’s eyes. The reference to Amanda’s opinion about the city was relayed without rancor, spoken more as a statement of fact than anything else. “I haven’t been to the North Loop yet, to answer your question. But it was my understanding that the danger there had been quelled.” Amanda paused to give a wry chuckle, amused by her own observation. “Or, at least, I heard that it's as safe as any other part of Austin can claim to be.” What the outbreak and the hordes hadn't decimated, the various groups of raiders and Reeves Olinger seemed to have split between themselves and done their level best to destroy. It was a miracle there was any part of this city left to salvage at all. Jane, not liking where the conversation was headed, took a moment to shovel food into her face while she formulated a reply. Jane knew she was a piss poor liar. She was fairly certain that the whopper she told in regards to the Las Nahuales raid only went over due to the confusion and upheaval in the department at the time. The APD as a whole basked in the success of the take down and coupled with the immense relief that the cats were finally out of their hair, no one had looked at the details too closely. “Having a few less scumbags off the streets is great and all,” Jane replied after swallowing her food. “But I wouldn’t hang out there for shits and giggles anytime soon.” Her tone didn’t invite for expansion on the subject. Just to be sure, Jane sucked on her teeth loudly, pretending to dislodge any food stuck in her chompers. She wasn’t sure if it was crass enough move to send Ms. van Eeden on her merry way or, at least, to dissuade her from continuing her seemingly inoffensive form of questioning but Jane lobbed it out there all the same. Amanda didn't even bat an eyelash at Jane’s language, or the uncouth noise that followed. There was nothing more coarse than a certain breed of male politician -- and she'd had so many interactions with that type that little could affect her now. And she had long ago found that the best response was none at all. “You make a good point, especially considering the ‘rogue’ Hellhounds running amok.” Even if she hadn't added the air quotes, the expression on Amanda’s face would have been enough to show just how little faith she had in the idea that the men responsible for vandalizing that home in the hospital’s district weren't operating under their president’s orders. Everyone kept claiming that the group had turned over a new leaf from their old marauding ways, but so far she'd seen very little sign of that rehabilitation in effect. “Between you and me and this soup spoon, I don't understand how a motorcycle gang can be so widely tolerated. Am I missing something?” Jane’s frosty chill, instigated by Ms. van Eeden and her forwardness and maintained at this point out of sheer stubborn will, seemed to thaw a bit when the glimpse of a kindred spirit began to shine through in her lunch partner. If Jane seemed at all reticent to discuss the North Loop raid, she was positively busting to talk shit on the Hellhounds. “No, you’re not missing anything,” Jane replied, her ire toward the motorcycle club became more and more apparent as she continued. “The Hellhounds are menace to this city. They are thieves, terrorists, and murderers; every last one wearing a silly ass wolf patch on their tacky leather vests is straight up dog shit. There are some people in Austin that have a hard on for them...think they are some cool, anti-establishment Robin Hood collective or whatever.” Jane took a deep breath and narrowed her eyes, laying her palms flat on the table to center herself, and keep from raising her voice in the crowded caf. Amanda’s eyebrows lifted slightly, this sudden animation from Rusten piquing her interest. So that’s what it took to get the sergeant to quit playing all her cards so close to the vest. They’d just needed to land on the right topic. “Do you know what they call their women? Their wives, girlfriends, the mothers of their children?” Jane paused. “Bitches. That’s their job title. Like, I’m a cop, you’re a government liaison, they are bitches. And they wear the honorific like a damn badge of honor.” Jane let out a rueful sound that might have been a laugh if it didn’t sound so disgusted. She picked up her spoon again and stabbed at her meal, more out of anger than hunger. “Think about that next time Bode Coldiron is sitting across from you at a council meeting and calls you darlin’.” “Bitches,” Amanda repeated. Her eyes followed the flash of Rusten’s plunging utensil without really seeing it. It was interesting that the sergeant went with the bitch thing to convince her that the Hellhounds were bad news, and not the theft of medical supplies or the explosion at La Quinta. The term, which was in keeping with the whole canine theme the motorcycle club seemed to have going on, came loaded with a whole background of misogyny, and so she understood why Rusten disliked it. It was also a word that had been thrown at her often enough that she’d come to own it. One might even accuse her of wearing it ‘like a damn badge of honor,’ but Amanda suspected that wasn’t quite what Rusten had meant when it came to the women of the Dog Park. Lips spreading into a smile, she said, “Just because Bode Coldiron has a set of fine, blue eyes and a country drawl doesn’t mean I’m going to let him and his gang have their way with Austin. It’s my hope that the Hellhounds -- renegade or otherwise -- will be nothing more than a footnote in the city’s history, when all is said and done. They’ll reform if they know what’s good for them. If they don’t, they’ll be arrested and deported back to Denver, same as Olinger.” Amanda raised her shoulders in a small shrug and turned back to her soup. The bottom of her bowl was visible through the broth, and she estimated maybe three bites remained. Jane looked up from her meal, her head cocked to the side, and appraised Ms. van Eeden for a quiet moment. Taking into consideration the liaison's stance on the Hellhounds and coupled with her sophisticated, no-nonsense air, Jane couldn’t help but think that she had possibly gone about this interaction the wrong way. Perhaps it would behove her to think of Ms. van Eeden as a possible ally at the city council instead of assuming she was an enemy. “If I know anything, it’s that the Hellhounds will show their true colors soon enough,” Jane replied with confidence. “And I’ll be waiting with the cuffs to collar them all.” She changed gears, her voice shifting to a cadence that might be even be considered friendly. “And in the meanwhile, if you come across any hidden gems in the city that serve pot-en-feu, or, at the very least, something that doesn’t resemble cat food, feel free to pass me along the information.” It wasn’t an olive branch; more of an invitation to continue the conversation in a different direction another time. Jane recognized the potential Ms. van Eeden had to become a powerful force in Austin and, possibly, a friendly face on the council. Sure, Jane didn’t know pot-en-feu from pot roast but she could see there was certainly more to Ms. van Eeden than a pretty face. With that, the conversation had come full circle. A shot of triumph went through Amanda as Rusten’s final words indicated that she might not object to further interaction. It might not seem like much to some, but in a place where she knew few people and had fewer allies, every step was a win. It would be invaluable to have a contact in the APD, and besides, Amanda liked the sergeant's attitude. This was no sycophant, not by a long shot, and thank goodness for that. There was something deeply untrustworthy in a person who only said what they thought you want to hear. “If I do find such a place,” she replied, “it’s a date.” Finishing the last of her soup, Amanda began to gather her things to make an exit from the cafeteria. “I appreciate that you allowed me to join you, Sergeant Rusten, and I wish you good luck with the rest of your day.” For all intents and purposes their conversation appeared to be at an end. Amanda rose to her feet, holding her tray in both hands, but something made her pause. “There's just one more thing I was wondering about.” She smiled again, an expression that implied what was about to follow was entirely harmless. And since this wasn't an official conversation, it very nearly was. There would be no record of whatever Rusten chose to say (or not say) in reply. “How did you manage to clear the North Loop on your own?” Jane stopped, clearly surprised by the ruthless, pointed inquiry. With her spoon paused halfway to her mouth, Jane blinked at Ms. van Eeden for a moment before setting the utensil down. There was no use trying to come up with a story; Jane knew her limitations and any fib she would try to spin at the spur of the moment would come out sounding like a fish story. No, it had to be a version of the truth if it was going to satisfy someone as discerning and smart as Ms. van Eeden. “Just good, old fashioned police work,” Jane finally replied. She cocked her head and smiled, though the upturn at the corner of her mouth a little less poised than she would have liked. She knew her answer wouldn’t satiate Ms. van Eeden’s curiosity forever but it seemed like it was enough...for now. “Ms. van Eeden,” Jane said without expression, turning back to her unimpressive meal without a second glance in the government liaison’s direction. It was a dismissal; not a kiss off but more than clear in its intension. There was more to the story, clearly, than Rusten was willing to let on. Before this lunch, Amanda might have been inclined to suspect that the sergeant had worked with Hellhound aid to clean up the North Loop, but clearly there was no love lost there. Something else, then, but exactly what remained unclear. Yet Amanda was prepared to swear from the top of her head to the bottom of her high heels that Jane Rusten was a damn fine cop. And so she was willing to let sleeping dogs lie. For the moment, at least. “Sergeant Rusten,” she replied, with considerably more warmth. Then Amanda left the other woman to finish her lunch. |