Under the wire...

[katallison.livejournal.com]

Um, I didn't think I was going to get this finished in time, but since Ces hasn't lowered the gate yet--

Vecchio, gen, over the word limit, un-beta'd, the usual.

And very imaginatively titled

SCARS


"OK." Flip, and a photo lands face-up in the pile, glossy surface catching the glare of the lights. "This one?"

You flick it a glance. "Jimmy Fiore. Married Vito Iguana's daughter Sophie." This is easy, you think, feeling smug, feeling like, Hey, gold star for me. This is pie.

Jensen nods, and then tosses down another photo, flip, smooth as someone dealing poker at the high-stakes table.

"Uh, guy's a soldier with the Perettis, did the legwork on a weapons deal with the Iguanas, uh--" You take a breath, remember. "Arnie Eddows."

Jensen tilts his head and gives you a look. You hard-eye him back, and he sorts through the stack of photos with his thumb, pulls one out, considers it, and then deals it down in front of you, giving it a little spin.

"Uh." Dammit, who the hell is this? "Yeah, OK. That's--uh--"

Henson starts making the tick-tick-tick noise with his tongue, which is pissing you off, and keeps you from being able to think past the fact that this guy in the photo, whoever it is, looks just exactly like Rico Delgado, that scumball from Pilsen that you and Fraser took down for--

"Name. Come on."

The tick-tick-tick is getting louder, faster, and the knuckle you're banging against your forehead to try to jolt something loose isn't actually helping. "I'm trying, dammit!"

And then Henson's making the bzzzzt noise, the Buzzer of Failure, you throw your hands up in the air, and Jensen says, "Trying? Not hard enough. Oh, and--" He points a finger at you, cocking his thumb, pulling the trigger, making a soft noise of explosion in his throat. "By the way, Vecchio--you're dead."

They only call you "Vecchio" when you screw up. Getting your own name thrown at you, that's your punishment. On the occasions when you've done really well, they call you "Armando," and that's supposed to be your reward.

Most of the time they don't call you anything at all.
_____________________________

The physical you don't mind so much, you're used to getting them for work, although you're not used to getting one from a guy who looks a whole hell of a lot like Mort. And usually the doc focuses on your insides, you're not used to having the outside looked at quite so close.

"There is really no time to do anything about the nose, the nose is--idiosyncratic," the doc murmurs, and damned if he doesn't sound a little like Mort too. "But really, it resembles the nose in question closely enough that unless someone were to be--oh, comparing measurements, for instance, or photographs--"

"We're not worried about that so much,' Jensen says. "The problem is that the scars are wrong."

"Whaddaya mean?" They don't really like you interrupting, but damned if you're going to sit here like a piece of furniture that needs reupholstering.

Henson steps up beside you, points to your left shoulder. "OK, that scar there--" He pauses. "Where'd you get that, anyway?"

You answer without really thinking. "Bomb in a Chinatown apartment, booby-trap. We were chasing a guy, me and the Mountie, and--"

"Bzzzzzzzt!" And by now you are really, officially hating that noise.

"See, the thing is..." Jensen is leaning in close on your other side, talking quietly. "There's no Mountie. You never knew any Mountie. You never wanted to know any Mountie. Who the hell's got anything to do with a Mountie? Right?"

"Right. Sure." You're nodding, but your fingers steal around and rub over the scar just once, before dropping in your lap.

Henson's talking to the doctor. "So the problem is, we got this scar over here, but what he's supposed to have is one here instead." A touch on your right shoulder, fingers moving over your skin and then away. "About two inches long, kind of stretched-looking, if you look at the photo you can see--"

"So how'd it happen, anyway? That's something I oughta know, right?" You're butting in again, but hey, it's your skin here.

Henson and Jensen glance at each other, then Jensen talks, still quiet, crouched down next to you. "You were just a kid. Guy in the neighborhood, hard guy, older than you, he starts pounding on one of your buddies. You tell him to cut it out, he pulls a knife, you and him mix it up. He got you in the shoulder, you got the knife away and put him in the hospital." He pauses. "Pretty ballsy."

You want to say No, actually not. Actually, I didn't. Instead, after a minute, you say "How do you know that stuff? I didn't see it in the files."

Jensen lifts a shoulder. "Juvenile record, he got it sealed. But we know stuff."

"All kinds of stuff," says Henson.

"About him."

"And about you."

"About the both of you."

They could go on like that for a while, you know that by now, but thankfully the doctor steps forward and cuts in, his eyes going back and forth from your right shoulder to the photo he's holding. "Yes. Well, we can certainly reproduce this without any difficulty. And as for this one--" He bends and studies your left shoulder, the mark there, one of those presents from Benny that you figured you'd carry to your grave. "The laser may not remove it entirely, but it will be much less perceptible."

"Look, can you tell me something?" You're throwing your hands around again, you know you're not supposed to do that, and you can feel your voice climbing up the register, wrong, but you don't care. "Can you tell me just why exactly this makes any difference whatsoever? It's not like anyone ever sees--" Your lips are pressed together to say me, and you catch yourself, you press them even tighter for a second and then you go on, "Ever sees the guy naked, except for the hookers, and so why does this matter so goddam much? Hah?"

(They'd told you that early on: "Langoustini, he's got a system, a woman three times a week, Saturday, Tuesday, and Thursday nights. Never the same woman twice."

While you'd digested that little fact, Henson had said, "You think you up for that? Three times a week, all those different women, think you can handle that?"

And when you'd yelled "Why the hell shouldn't I be able to handle it? You think I'm gonna have any problems with that?", Henson had put on his tut-tut face and said "Shrill, Vecchio, you're getting shrill again, you can't do that." And Jensen had said, "No reason we know of, just ... you don't have much of a track record the last few years to judge by. Right?" And Henson had chimed in, "Yeah, spend all your free time hanging around with that Mountie, and--" They'd both shrugged, in unison. "Hard to tell about you, Vecchio. But you're just gonna have to step up to the plate.")

Now Henson only said, "Hookers, they talk, you know? They talk in considerable detail. They'll talk about you, for sure. And we want to make sure they're saying the right things." And then he gave you a really strange kind of wink, a wink that creeped you out. "You got some big, uh, shoes to fill, from what we hear. Better start eating your oysters, y'know what I mean?"

You give him a hard grin. "Hey, no problem here. Sounds like I lucked out, huh? Do whatever you gotta do here--" You tap your bare shoulder. "And bring 'em on." Not letting even a flicker on your face, a twitch of your skin, reveal that actually, your balls are kind of crawling back up into your body.

_____________________________


The bald-headed tattoo guy is the first person you've seen since you got here who's not wearing a suit, and you're amazed at how nice it is to see that, especially considering that all in all he's kind of a freak.

He's got a Thin Lizzie t-shirt on with the sleeves rolled up. Flames are licking up his one arm, red and yellow, flames with skeletons dancing in them, and the other is covered with twining snakes, all scales and fangs and little beady eyes. He didn't say a word to you as he shaved you down, swabbed you off, mixed up ink in the little plastic thimbles, and it was such a huge goddam relief not to have someone yapping at you that you just sort of wallowed in it. But finally, when he's bent in and making little marks on your skin, and he's so close you can smell him, feel his breath, it just starts feeling too weird to not say anything, and so you say, "Kind of a weird gig for you, huh?"

He just moves his head a little, so you can see the light glinting off the bumps on his gleaming skull, and you figure he'll leave it at that. But after a minute he says, "You don't know what's weird yet."

"Whattaya mean?"

He's still making marks, studying, like, every pore in your shoulder. "You're just heading out, right?"

"Yeah." Is it that obvious? Am I showing nerves or something? Before you can stop yourself, you blurt out, in this stupid excuse-making tone of voice, "I never had a tattoo before."

That gets him to look at you for the first time, with his weird pale eyes. Amused. "Duh." Then he turns away again. "You know what they say, first one's free." He picks up the whirring needle-thing, revs it once. "Any marks you pick up after this--they go on your tab, you pay that when you get back." You close your eyes, waiting for the pain to start. "Once you get back--then you'll know about weird."

And then the pain comes, little biting flickering prickles of pain, over and over, like flames licking your skin, like the night fears that won't go away, each tiny bite of hurt making a scar that's not yours, that you never earned.

_____________________________


"You ever kill a guy?"

Something about the way Henson asks leaves you not entirely sure who he's talking to, but even though it's lunchtime, and he's talking around a mouthful of sandwich, you figure it's safest to assume you're still on the clock. "Hell yeah. Iacono, Mikey G., that punk Rinaldi--"

"Nah." Henson's shaking his head. "Nah, that's OK, give it a rest. I meant you. You ever pick up your gun and put a guy down?"

The food is disgusting, you can't touch it, two thin slices of fatty beef on limp white bread, nobody outside of Chicago apparently knows how to make a roast beef sandwich. "Look, would you do something for me, would you just let me know when I'm supposed to be him and when I'm supposed to be me?"

Henson is still chewing, cow-like, giving you a flat opaque stare. "You're always just you, cowboy."

You're so angry, so goddam pissed off at the revolting sandwiches and the endless questions and the way all the lights are always too bright in here--but you don't pop, you don't start yelling, you don't get shrill. Instead you clench your hands up into fists, raise them up hard and steady, chest high. "I put some guys down with these. Cowboy."

Jensen nods, opening his bag of chips. "Guy Rankin. Maurice Jackson."

"Frank Zuko." You like the way that came out, low and hard; you like the way that grabs their attention.

"We didn't hear about that one," Henson says, accusingly.

"Yeah, well? Maybe you don't know as much as you think you do." And god, you like the way that feels.

They don't like it, obviously, and with clear intent to change the subject Jensen says, "How's it doing? The tattoo?" He reaches over toward your shouder, but you smack his hand away and give him the look, the one you've been practicing, that's starting to feel like it fits you.

"The hell you think you are? You think you get to fuck with that? You don't get to fuck with that."

They look at you, then at each other, then back at you, and finally, slowly, Jensen cracks a smile. "OK, Armando. I apologize. I was outta line."

You just keep staring at him. "Better not happen again. Because if it does?" You raise a hand, point a finger at him, cock your thumb, and make a little click noise with your tongue. "You're dead."

_____________________________


The engine noise gets lower, and you can feel the little plane start to bank downward. You've been working most of the flight, studying spreadsheets of receivables and deductibles and amortization. The Bookman's always got the numbers in his head, right, so you study up, but the stuff is actually kind of interesting, and it doesn't even freak you out much that you find the stuff kind of interesting.

As the plane tilts and wheels, you look out the window, and -- by god, there it is, sparkling down there on the ground, a million needles of light flickering, almost hurting your eyes. Your city. Showtime. You touch a hand to the bandage on your right shoulder, absently, and then pull it away before you can start scratching. You're ready for your closeup.

You can hear the pilot radioing down, checking to make sure Mr. Langoustini's car is ready and waiting, and all of a sudden you--remember? something whispers into your mind, somehow, that the last time you flew in, Ronnie was late with the car (how exactly do you know this?) and you had to take disciplinary steps (wait, now, who told you this?).

You're trying to remember--did Jensen tell you, was it in the notes?--and you're starting to sweat a little, getting way too bothered by the fact that you can't remember where you picked that up. And all of a sudden you hear a voice--not the pilot, not the co-pilot, not Enrique in the seat behind you, but somebody, sombody who sounds very amused, somebody who sounds like he's right in your head. The voice is saying "Nice tattoo."

When you whip your head around there's no one there, nothing at all but empty air, and through the airplane window you can see the ground now, rushing up at you, and you're falling, falling, falling, and when you hit the ground? Click. You're dead, Vecchio.