Leo Paulson // Mr. Wednesday // Odin (mrwednesday) wrote in thereincarnates, @ 2010-10-01 12:08:00 |
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Entry tags: | leo paulson, sam victorio |
Who: Leo Paulson and Sam Victorio
What: Seeking allies
When: Friday Afternoon
Where: The Paulson home in Chicago
Sam had wondered at first if she had the wrong Leo Paulson. The old man seemed friendly and harmless, not like someone who would be a regular and not particularly secret contact for the highest ranked members of CORE. There was a keen intelligence behind those twinkling eyes though, and a sly tone to all his words, as if everything he said was some secret and hilarious joke that only a lucky few were in on. Whatever the joke was, it was a dark one. Once she got the sense of it she almost missed when she thought he was merely a harmless mistake.
He served her dark, bitter coffee in the mansion's large study. It was an unquestionably masculine room: heavy leather furniture, large wooden beams overhead, and the mounted heads of thick furred northern creatures mounted on the dark walls, their eyes just a little too lifelike. It made her feel small and feminine and out of place. Those weren't feelings Sam had very often. Still, she'd tried to keep her composure throughout the meeting, never letting her unsettled feeling show.
"Please, Mr. Paulson..."
"Please, call me Leo."
"Very well. Leo. We need your assistance. I know what you can do, what connections you bring with you. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and if we join forces..." He didn't allow her to finish. Not that she hadn't asked as much in different words at least twice already.
"No. I'm sorry, my dear. I don't join, it's simply not my way. Help, yes. Employ, often. Lead, occasionally. But I never join. Now should you find your situation changed, please do contact me. I'd welcome your help for my own purposes. You and your associates seem exceedingly useful, and I don't rule out the possibility that we might work together, if the goal suits us both. I'm not interested in joining your group or attending your little gathering though." His eyes were the most unsettling thing, she decided. One was just a bit paler than the other, and seemed to look through her, rather than at her as he talked to her. "I doubt you need me anyway. You seem to be doing quite well for yourselves. I assume congratulations are in order?" He looked at her expectantly, not hiding how keenly he was observing her reaction. Sam didn't know how to reply to that.
"Congratulations?"
"Matthew Morgan. I just heard this morning about his untimely demise. I merely assumed you might have had something to do with that."
Sam tried to hide her surprise, and her irritation. She replied as calmly, evenly, and evasively as she could. "I would have assumed the same thing."
One of the large wolfdogs (or were they just wolves?) perked up its ears and went running to the back window, perching its enormous paws on the windowsill and pressing its nose against the glass, whining softly as if it were any harmless household pup.
"Excuse me," the man rose from his chair, smoothly and fluidly, like a much younger man, and went to pat the wolf affectionately on the head and peer out the window. "That'll be my grandson arriving that Freki has noticed. I'm expecting a very important delivery from him. I trust you can find your way off the property yourself."
The immediately was implied. As was the or else. Sam was all too happy to show her self out as quickly as possible.