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Sep. 10th, 2005 11:54 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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ds_flashfictionThis is my first offering in the comm. This bunny came to me tonight and seemed to fit the challenge so I posted it. It's unbeta'd so all mistakes are mine.
Title: Powerless
Summary: Armando Langoustini always reads the news out of Chicago.
Rating: PG-13 for language
Genre: Angst, POV (RayV)
Warnings: Dark
It was a lovely Sunday afternoon today at my lovely desert palace. Of course, when I say ‘lovely desert palace,’ what I really mean is run down fixed up out of the way backwater hellhole. But I got to spend a fortune of Boss Maroni’s money on it, and it kept me from having to associate too closely with the scum I’m supposed to associate with. That’s a win-win situation if you ask me, even if it royally sucks.
Well this particular afternoon I have free. I’ve just come from another meeting with Maroni. When I say ‘meeting,’ what I really mean is lunchtime powwow wherein the fate of seven men were decided over badly undercooked lasagna. I somehow managed to convince the Boss that killing them all outright would look suspicious and that a more prudent plan—Ha! Can you believe I just used the word ‘prudent’ in a sentence? See the type of influence mild mannered Canadians can have on a person? My rep has been irrevocably shattered.
Anyway, I managed to convince the Boss to find out exactly which one of them was the traitor before taking action. Of course, that traitor was a Vegas PD plant who got in over his head, and this delay is the best escape I can offer him. If he doesn’t take the hint, or if his captain doesn’t let him pull out, they’ll find out he’s the rat and put a bullet in his brain and I’d be powerless to stop it. The feds don’t want me blowing my cover. Not yet anyway.
Lovely job, ain’t it. Can you tell how much I hate it? How much I hate being here? How much I want nothing more than to board the next available flight to O’Hare and kiss this sorry desert goodbye? But at least I get my afternoon free today. I’m not needed by anyone until this evening. This evening I have a date with the prettiest piece of white trash this side of the Mississippi. More plastic than flesh and more lipstick than brains, but she’s the type Armando drools over and so I have to start drooling at seven tonight at some fancy downtown restaurant. Oh, the things I do for my country!
But until then, my afternoon is free, and what a wonderful afternoon it’ll be.
You see, with my position as advisor to Boss Maroni, I’ve convinced him that it would be prudent—ha! There’s that word again. Boy, Fraser has a way of sticking with a person, even if he is a thousand miles away. And speaking of Fraser, that’s what I plan to do with my free afternoon. You see, Armando Langoustini can’t exactly pick up the phone and call the Canadian Consulate in Chicago to find out how one Benton Fraser, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, is doing these days. But he can convince his mob boss that it would be a good idea to stay up to date with the goings on of organized crime in other major metropolitan areas of the country. This gets me the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the New York Times, the Miami Herald, and the Chicago Sun delivered by courier for my reading pleasure. Of course, all but the Sun are immediately destined for the trash. Fortunately Detective Raymond Veccio still has a remarkable if slightly outlandish arrest record, and the Sunday papers carry the past week’s police blotter.
I grab the Sun and head into my office—easily as large as the entire squad room back home. I drop the paper on my embarrassingly large executive’s desk and sit in my overstuffed leather rolling chair. You know, of the few things I might actually find myself missing when I get the heck outta dodge, this setup is going to be at the top of the list.
I skim the paper lazily, checking for familiar names and places, checking the obituaries—just to be sure. Thankfully my replacement hasn’t had to replace me at any important funerals since I’ve been out here. If one of the Veccio clan bites it while I’m gone I don’t think even Fraser could walk that poor shmuck through it.
I’m not jealous, mind you. Just concerned.
Ah, the obits are clear. Nothing of interest in this paper so I drop it into the trash bin next to my desk. Mickey Sikes, my top mook, is kinda an environmental nut. He’ll pull it out of the trash and see that it gets recycled so I don’t have to be bothered. I’m not really concerned about the environment right now, anyway. I’ve got the tabloids in front of me right now, and they cover those stories in much more—surprisingly accurate—depth than the papers. This is the real way I get to find out how Fraser’s doing. It’s not much, but for being a thousand miles away in deep cover, it’s the best I can do.
Voodoo cult attacks police.
I laugh aloud at that one. “Voodoo, Benny?” Well we’ve had everyone from the local mafia to used car salesmen after us before. Why should I be surprised that a Voodoo cult has added its name to the long and distinguished list? Well, I’m not really surprised. Just highly, highly amused. I gotta make a note to ask him about that one when I get back. The real story’s gotta be a winner.
God I wish I was back there to live it, not stuck out here in the damn desert undercover. Mickey Sikes’s tendency to fish paper products out of the trash only makes me want to punch him in the mouth, not like when Fraser picks up a piece of litter and trashes it without thinking anything of it. If he starts wearing a Stetson and tells me that he first joined the mob to hunt down his father’s killers I may just have to pop him one and leave his body in the desert.
Did I mention yet how much I want outta here?
These are the types of thoughts I try to shove aside. I’m stuck here until the feds tell me differently, and right now they’re too happy with me to pull me out. Of course, I’ve always wondered if my ticket outta here was through a one-way door into the witness protection program. I’ve woken up from nightmares of having to live the rest of my life in Fraser’s father’s cabin in the middle of the great white nowhere as my only refuge from vindictive mobsters. He’d protect me, of course. Or try to. Good old Benny. I can just hear him now. ‘I first came to Vegas on the trail of my former partner’s killers and for reasons that have no relevancy at this juncture I’ve stayed due to a rather unhealthy addiction to blackjack.’
God, Benny. If I ever thought I’d miss you this much… But hey, what are you gonna do, right?
Move on to the next tabloid. Maybe the Chicago Tattler will have something better than Voodoo cults.
I stare at the front page blankly, my eyes not seeing. No, no my eyes are working fine. It’s the tabloid that’s broken. That can’t be right. It can’t be!
Chicago’s favorite Mountie slain in the line of duty.
“No…”
Now I’m on my feet, barely feeling the greasy magazine pages as I flip through, searching for the cover story.
“No-no-no-no-no,” I barely hear my voice punctuating every page flip until I find it, and when I do… I wish I hadn’t.
Why the Chicago PD attempted to cover up the Mountie’s death isn’t clear, but rest-assured we will have details, including cause of death, in the next issue.
This caption below a half-page picture of a sadly familiar Mountie in a red serge lying in an open casket, a very convincing profile of a grieving Meg Thatcher on Turnbull’s arm adding to the story’s credibility.
“No…” A hoarse croak, torn from the depths of my soul that I feel rather than hear and suddenly I’m sitting again, eyes still focused on that picture. On the face on the body in the casket…
Oh, God…
The picture was shaking. Why is the picture shaking? We don’t get earthquakes in Nevada why is the goddamn—suddenly it isn’t the room. My hands are shaking. I don’t feel it, but I see them. I’m holding them in front of me, and they’re definitely shaking.
Benny…
I tossed the tabloid down onto the desk and stared transfixed at my quaking hands. Suddenly I think I’m having some sort of seizure and I ball my hands into fists, trying to stop the tremors. It’s not working and I squeeze them tighter.
No. No, Benny…
Now it’s my forearms. My damn forearms are shaking! Twitching right up to the elbows—look at that! Why can’t I stop shaking? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME?!?!
Somehow I’m standing again. Why am I standing now—I don’t remember standing. I find myself staring down dizzily into the tabloid picture but I’m not really seeing it. I’m seeing Benny, hit by a bullet, hit by a car, hit by a falling meteorite, falling to the ground, falling onto the damn cold Chicago pavement, breathing his last—
I screamed. I know I did. I can’t breathe, my arms are shaking and my chest feels like an elephant’s jumping on it. It feels like I’m having a goddamned heart attack and I felt myself scream but I didn’t hear it. It hit the lump my heart had formed in my throat and now my head is spinning.
Oh please, no…
I tumble forwards hard onto my desk, bracing against my hands as they flat palm at the last second. I try to bring my ragged breathing under control. I’m no good to anyone if I die of a goddamn heart attack in the middle of the Nevada desert.
Not that I was any good to Benny all the way out here.
Benny… Oh God…
The tightness in my chest releases like a gunshot and suddenly I know why. It’s all I can do to stumble back the three paces to the sink in the wet bar and there comes that damned undercooked lasagna, back to haunt me. I wretch until my lungs are burning and I’m sure my throat is bleeding from the constant acid but I don’t care. Right now my body’s roughly under my control and it needs to stay that way. I wipe an Armani sleeve across my mouth and stumble back towards the desk.
Blood. There are bloodstains on my desk. Two beautiful white pools in my table blotter. Red blotches in the white and suddenly that’s what I’m seeing. Red blotches in the white of the pavement. Fraser lying on the platform, a pool of blood forming under him, reciting a poem as he bleeds to death in front of me. Bleeding from my bullet.
Not that I was much help to Benny when I was back in Chicago.
I shake my head, squint my eyes shut and bring my fingertips to my temples. I shove that image out of my mind only to open my eyes again to see that damn picture again. That picture of Fraser lying dead in his casket and I think I’m going to be sick again. My hands ball back into fists of their own volition and I feel something warm and sticky on my fingertips. I open my hands again and stare at them intently.
For some God-unknown reason, my hands are perfectly steady now. Only now they’re covered in blood and even though the last vestiges of my rational mind remind me that it’s my own blood—that Armando’s perfectly manicured fingernails broke the skin of my palms, my eyes are seeing Fraser’s blood. Fraser’s blood is on my hands. I don’t care who killed him—I killed him! I killed him by leaving him there. I left Chicago—I never wanted to leave Chicago! I knew that if I left there’d be no one there to look after Fraser and Fraser needs looking after—God dammit! Someone was supposed to look after Fraser!
I was shaking again. I barely felt it but only because the room was spinning. It was stifling hot in here. I was sweating all over. No, no that can’t be right. I’m shivering! It’s so damn cold in here that I’m shivering now! How the fuck can I be sweating and shivering at the same time?!?!
A strange gasping sound. Suddenly I know it’s me making that noise. I’m hyperventilating. I’m sweating and I’m shivering and I’m bleeding but it’s Fraser’s blood, on my hands, like it was on the platform that night when I shot him—Oh God! Fraser’s been shot! Fraser’s—
Dead.
Fraser’s dead. The realization hit me square in the gut and I swore I was going to be sick again. I bent forward like people do when they intend to vomit all over themselves but then suddenly I’m on the floor. I didn’t even notice my own knees buckling but I sure as hell noticed my desk when it hit me upside the head. I’m on the floor and my head is spinning and I’m sweating and shivering and hyperventilating and—
I should have been there! Oh, God, I should have been there. Fraser licks things that could kill him and stands in front of men with guns and leaps in front of oncoming cars—
“Fraser!”
I shouted. I know I did. I heard myself that time. Only, it wasn’t myself. It sounded nothing at all like me. Not even like that pathetic Armando Langoustini-me. My throat was dry and the sound was strangled but now I don’t care because I managed to drag the damn tabloid off the desk with me and it fell open to the damn photograph again—that picture of Fraser lying dead in his coffin surrounded by tragic mourners only I can’t make out their faces now because the picture’s gone all blurry and I reach out to touch the image on the page but I only smear it with the blood on my fingertips and—
Oh God, Benny! BENNY!!!
My mind is screaming at me because my voice won’t work. It’s screaming at me so loud that I can’t think but suddenly I’m grateful for that because if I started thinking I’d be thinking about how I never wanted to leave Chicago—how I wouldn’t have left if they hadn’t a made me—how I never, ever wanted to leave him back there, lost in that big city and left to his own devices. He’d get himself killed without me there to look after him!
But then my mind kicks back in and I see him in the hospital on the gurney being wheeled away, his eyes staring vacantly ahead, not seeing me—not seeing anything as his vitals bottom out because he’s lost too much blood because I shot him and he’s dying and—
Oh God! I killed him! I KILLED HIM!!!
I’m hyperventilating still. Or maybe again. I just know that the room is fading out and it hurts a lot to breathe but that damn rasping sounds in my ears and reminds me of Fraser’s labored breathing when Zuko’s punks kicked the shit out of him. The other time my best friend’s blood was on my hands. The other time he nearly died because of me.
My breaths are coming in hitching gasps and it finally dawns on me that I’m not hyperventilating. I’m crying. I’m huddled into a ball beneath my god damned executive’s desk bawling my eyes out like a little baby. Somehow this realization unlocks my voice and I hear my own sobs now. Part of me can’t believe it. I mean, I haven’t cried since—well, since Irene died, but that was nothing like this. I’m crying hysterically like I haven’t done since I was a kid and that thought suddenly reminds me why I’m crying and then I lose it completely.
God I knew I shouldn’t have left Chicago. If I ever left there’d be no one to look after Fraser. Fraser jumps out of windows and digs through dumpsters and gives hardened criminals the benefit of the doubt and—
Fraser’s dead! Oh, God, Fraser’s DEAD! Fraser’s dead because I wasn’t there. I was all the way out here in this slime-ball city in a reconstructed palace with a terrace and a swimming pool and more money than I could ever spend and more designer goods than a department store and oh, God, Fraser’s dead! I’m out here in this disgusting paradise and Fraser’s dying in Chicago—
Died. Past tense. I hear him correcting me in my head and he laughs, like it’s prudent of me to use correct grammar. I laugh at the thought. I actually laugh. My best friend is lying in a casket in Chicago and I’m huddled under an executive’s desk in a palace in the desert laughing I think because I’ve cried too much, but then I remember the fact that I was crying and that reminds me of the why I was crying and oh God I’m crying again.
Fraser’s dead because I wasn’t there. I’m powerless to help him from all the way out here, even though I know he’d have managed to save my life from that God damn Run-a-muck-luck village of his. I knew that the minute I accepted this shit assignment that Benny was on his own and when left to his own devices he tells the truth and champions lost causes and GETS HIMSELF GODDAMN FUCKING KILLED!!!
No. No-no-no-no-no-no-NO! Fraser didn’t get himself killed I got him killed. I killed him by leaving. I might as well have signed his Goddamn death warrant. Out here in the desert I’m powerless to help him. Powerless…
I’m laughing again. At least, I think I’m laughing. My vision’s clearer now, but the damn picture has been smeared beyond recognition. And my chest is heaving and my constricted throat is making weird sounds but I’m pretty sure I’m laughing. I’m sure because I want to laugh now. Laugh at my own rambling thoughts. Back when I was in Chicago Fraser’d gotten himself beaten, stabbed, and shot twice—once by me even. I was right behind him each time—or at the wrong end of the gun. I was right FUCKING THERE and I felt just as powerless then as I do at this very second, sitting beneath my desk with bloodstains on my hands and a crumpled tabloid and suddenly my hands are hurting and it actually takes me by surprise because why would having Fraser’s blood on my hands cause pain but then I remember that it’s my blood. My blood because my hands are bleeding. Bleeding because I’d jammed my fingernails into my palms without thinking—
Again.
Oh.
I uncurl my fists again and now they’re a right bloody mess. It looks like the fucking stigmata and I laugh again because I’m not Christ I’m Judas who betrayed his best friend and left him to die, knowing all along who was the better man and Fraser’s dead and I’m sitting here bleeding on the floor of my office in the desert laughing because I know that if I start crying again I just might never stop and what type of mobster would I be then?
Suddenly my laughter stops.
My face freezes in its sickly comical grin for a moment before the smile fell. I blink a few times, feeling my lashes bat through what I somehow instinctively know will be my last tears for quite a while. Perhaps even forever. Ray Veccio has had his time to react to Fraser’s death. Now—I laugh again—it’s Armando Langoustini’s turn.
Armando Langoustini is a mob enforcer turned advisor. Armando Langoustini tackles his problems with a cold, critical eye and an itchy trigger finger. Armando Langoustini… doesn’t know the meaning of powerlessness.
I feel my grin returning. It spreads across my face like a stain—the same one I force myself to wear when we discuss putting bullets into people’s brains. It had always disgusted me back then, the Armando Langoustini disguise. Now… Now it slips on like an old glove. Now Armando Langoustini absently wipes the blood off his hands onto his Armani pants, their origins already forgotten. Armando Langoustini has money, manpower, and the entire underworld and federal networks at his disposal. Armando Langoustini is far from powerless.
And he always wanted to take over Chicago.
Maroni hated Zuko, just like everyone else. It wouldn’t be hard to come up with a plan that would convince the boss that Zuko needed to go so that they could rule Chicago. It would be bloody—Zuko wouldn’t go down without a fight. He’d probably catch hell for it with the feds—he was supposed to stay in Vegas, not start an interstate mob war. But that was Ray Veccio’s problem. Veccio was a sniveling, powerless runt who collapsed into tears only moments ago and Armando Langoustini was hardly interested in the tears of powerless men.
Armando Langoustini was interested in Chicago. With Maroni in control of Chicago it would be cake to find out who had killed the Mountie and any thoughts anyone would have had that old Armando had gone soft would be washed away in the blood he would spill from Benny’s murderers. By the time he was through with them those sons of bitches would know the true meaning of ‘powerlessness.’
By way of the many and varied meanings of pain.
Bloody, disheveled, and dry-eyed, Armando Langoustini stood powerfully from the floor and adjusted his Armani jacket, casually smearing even more blood on the lapels. It was time to make some phone calls—find out what exactly is going on in Chicago. Maroni won’t bite unless it’s something damn appetizing.
Everything looks dead. My eyes especially. There’s a haze over everything and I can’t quite place what’s different. Somewhere in the back of my mind—the Ray Veccio part of my mind—I know it’s me. I’m different. But as I reach across my desk for the phone I gloss over the realization that I really truly don’t care.
Then my outstretched arm upsets the pile of tabloids on the desk and a sudden pain strikes my chest like a gunshot wound. My knees go weak and suddenly I’m sitting again, barely catching myself in my damned executive’s rolling chair. And I’m shaking again. Shaking and shivering and hyperventilating—the whole nine yards but now instead of crying again I’m laughing hysterically—laughing until the tears stream down my face but I don’t care. I could die laughing at this very moment and I wouldn’t care a bit.
Mountie fakes death to go undercover at a funeral home.
The very next tabloid in the stack.
I would have seen it if I’d opened my eyes before falling to the floor and that fact is the funny thing in the entire fucking world right now.
Fraser’s alive!
I’m laughing and I’m crying and I’m shivering and shaking and powerless to prevent it but not even capable of caring in this moment.
FRASER’S GOD DAMN FUCKING ALIVE!!!
And right now I’m powerless to think about anything else.
EPILOGUE:
"Hey, Fraser, this came for you."
"Oh?" Fraser took the manila envelope from Kowalski's hand. "Thanks Ray."
Fraser opened the envelope and the contents slid out onto Veccio's desk. His mildly inquisitive expression evaporated.
"Hey Fraser, what'd you..." Ray's voice trailed off when he saw what Fraser saw. A tabloid picture of the Mountie's funeral. They both recognized it. Ray had even tried to get Fraser to pursue legal action because of it-not that the Mountie would have. Of course it wasn't the photo that got their attention, it was the post-it note attached to it.
Do that again and I'll kill you myself.
Scrawled in oddly familiar handwriting.
"Ray." Fraser announced.
"Yeah, Fraser?"
Fraser merely looked at him.
"Oh."
Title: Powerless
Summary: Armando Langoustini always reads the news out of Chicago.
Rating: PG-13 for language
Genre: Angst, POV (RayV)
Warnings: Dark
It was a lovely Sunday afternoon today at my lovely desert palace. Of course, when I say ‘lovely desert palace,’ what I really mean is run down fixed up out of the way backwater hellhole. But I got to spend a fortune of Boss Maroni’s money on it, and it kept me from having to associate too closely with the scum I’m supposed to associate with. That’s a win-win situation if you ask me, even if it royally sucks.
Well this particular afternoon I have free. I’ve just come from another meeting with Maroni. When I say ‘meeting,’ what I really mean is lunchtime powwow wherein the fate of seven men were decided over badly undercooked lasagna. I somehow managed to convince the Boss that killing them all outright would look suspicious and that a more prudent plan—Ha! Can you believe I just used the word ‘prudent’ in a sentence? See the type of influence mild mannered Canadians can have on a person? My rep has been irrevocably shattered.
Anyway, I managed to convince the Boss to find out exactly which one of them was the traitor before taking action. Of course, that traitor was a Vegas PD plant who got in over his head, and this delay is the best escape I can offer him. If he doesn’t take the hint, or if his captain doesn’t let him pull out, they’ll find out he’s the rat and put a bullet in his brain and I’d be powerless to stop it. The feds don’t want me blowing my cover. Not yet anyway.
Lovely job, ain’t it. Can you tell how much I hate it? How much I hate being here? How much I want nothing more than to board the next available flight to O’Hare and kiss this sorry desert goodbye? But at least I get my afternoon free today. I’m not needed by anyone until this evening. This evening I have a date with the prettiest piece of white trash this side of the Mississippi. More plastic than flesh and more lipstick than brains, but she’s the type Armando drools over and so I have to start drooling at seven tonight at some fancy downtown restaurant. Oh, the things I do for my country!
But until then, my afternoon is free, and what a wonderful afternoon it’ll be.
You see, with my position as advisor to Boss Maroni, I’ve convinced him that it would be prudent—ha! There’s that word again. Boy, Fraser has a way of sticking with a person, even if he is a thousand miles away. And speaking of Fraser, that’s what I plan to do with my free afternoon. You see, Armando Langoustini can’t exactly pick up the phone and call the Canadian Consulate in Chicago to find out how one Benton Fraser, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, is doing these days. But he can convince his mob boss that it would be a good idea to stay up to date with the goings on of organized crime in other major metropolitan areas of the country. This gets me the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, the New York Times, the Miami Herald, and the Chicago Sun delivered by courier for my reading pleasure. Of course, all but the Sun are immediately destined for the trash. Fortunately Detective Raymond Veccio still has a remarkable if slightly outlandish arrest record, and the Sunday papers carry the past week’s police blotter.
I grab the Sun and head into my office—easily as large as the entire squad room back home. I drop the paper on my embarrassingly large executive’s desk and sit in my overstuffed leather rolling chair. You know, of the few things I might actually find myself missing when I get the heck outta dodge, this setup is going to be at the top of the list.
I skim the paper lazily, checking for familiar names and places, checking the obituaries—just to be sure. Thankfully my replacement hasn’t had to replace me at any important funerals since I’ve been out here. If one of the Veccio clan bites it while I’m gone I don’t think even Fraser could walk that poor shmuck through it.
I’m not jealous, mind you. Just concerned.
Ah, the obits are clear. Nothing of interest in this paper so I drop it into the trash bin next to my desk. Mickey Sikes, my top mook, is kinda an environmental nut. He’ll pull it out of the trash and see that it gets recycled so I don’t have to be bothered. I’m not really concerned about the environment right now, anyway. I’ve got the tabloids in front of me right now, and they cover those stories in much more—surprisingly accurate—depth than the papers. This is the real way I get to find out how Fraser’s doing. It’s not much, but for being a thousand miles away in deep cover, it’s the best I can do.
Voodoo cult attacks police.
I laugh aloud at that one. “Voodoo, Benny?” Well we’ve had everyone from the local mafia to used car salesmen after us before. Why should I be surprised that a Voodoo cult has added its name to the long and distinguished list? Well, I’m not really surprised. Just highly, highly amused. I gotta make a note to ask him about that one when I get back. The real story’s gotta be a winner.
God I wish I was back there to live it, not stuck out here in the damn desert undercover. Mickey Sikes’s tendency to fish paper products out of the trash only makes me want to punch him in the mouth, not like when Fraser picks up a piece of litter and trashes it without thinking anything of it. If he starts wearing a Stetson and tells me that he first joined the mob to hunt down his father’s killers I may just have to pop him one and leave his body in the desert.
Did I mention yet how much I want outta here?
These are the types of thoughts I try to shove aside. I’m stuck here until the feds tell me differently, and right now they’re too happy with me to pull me out. Of course, I’ve always wondered if my ticket outta here was through a one-way door into the witness protection program. I’ve woken up from nightmares of having to live the rest of my life in Fraser’s father’s cabin in the middle of the great white nowhere as my only refuge from vindictive mobsters. He’d protect me, of course. Or try to. Good old Benny. I can just hear him now. ‘I first came to Vegas on the trail of my former partner’s killers and for reasons that have no relevancy at this juncture I’ve stayed due to a rather unhealthy addiction to blackjack.’
God, Benny. If I ever thought I’d miss you this much… But hey, what are you gonna do, right?
Move on to the next tabloid. Maybe the Chicago Tattler will have something better than Voodoo cults.
I stare at the front page blankly, my eyes not seeing. No, no my eyes are working fine. It’s the tabloid that’s broken. That can’t be right. It can’t be!
Chicago’s favorite Mountie slain in the line of duty.
“No…”
Now I’m on my feet, barely feeling the greasy magazine pages as I flip through, searching for the cover story.
“No-no-no-no-no,” I barely hear my voice punctuating every page flip until I find it, and when I do… I wish I hadn’t.
Why the Chicago PD attempted to cover up the Mountie’s death isn’t clear, but rest-assured we will have details, including cause of death, in the next issue.
This caption below a half-page picture of a sadly familiar Mountie in a red serge lying in an open casket, a very convincing profile of a grieving Meg Thatcher on Turnbull’s arm adding to the story’s credibility.
“No…” A hoarse croak, torn from the depths of my soul that I feel rather than hear and suddenly I’m sitting again, eyes still focused on that picture. On the face on the body in the casket…
Oh, God…
The picture was shaking. Why is the picture shaking? We don’t get earthquakes in Nevada why is the goddamn—suddenly it isn’t the room. My hands are shaking. I don’t feel it, but I see them. I’m holding them in front of me, and they’re definitely shaking.
Benny…
I tossed the tabloid down onto the desk and stared transfixed at my quaking hands. Suddenly I think I’m having some sort of seizure and I ball my hands into fists, trying to stop the tremors. It’s not working and I squeeze them tighter.
No. No, Benny…
Now it’s my forearms. My damn forearms are shaking! Twitching right up to the elbows—look at that! Why can’t I stop shaking? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME?!?!
Somehow I’m standing again. Why am I standing now—I don’t remember standing. I find myself staring down dizzily into the tabloid picture but I’m not really seeing it. I’m seeing Benny, hit by a bullet, hit by a car, hit by a falling meteorite, falling to the ground, falling onto the damn cold Chicago pavement, breathing his last—
I screamed. I know I did. I can’t breathe, my arms are shaking and my chest feels like an elephant’s jumping on it. It feels like I’m having a goddamned heart attack and I felt myself scream but I didn’t hear it. It hit the lump my heart had formed in my throat and now my head is spinning.
Oh please, no…
I tumble forwards hard onto my desk, bracing against my hands as they flat palm at the last second. I try to bring my ragged breathing under control. I’m no good to anyone if I die of a goddamn heart attack in the middle of the Nevada desert.
Not that I was any good to Benny all the way out here.
Benny… Oh God…
The tightness in my chest releases like a gunshot and suddenly I know why. It’s all I can do to stumble back the three paces to the sink in the wet bar and there comes that damned undercooked lasagna, back to haunt me. I wretch until my lungs are burning and I’m sure my throat is bleeding from the constant acid but I don’t care. Right now my body’s roughly under my control and it needs to stay that way. I wipe an Armani sleeve across my mouth and stumble back towards the desk.
Blood. There are bloodstains on my desk. Two beautiful white pools in my table blotter. Red blotches in the white and suddenly that’s what I’m seeing. Red blotches in the white of the pavement. Fraser lying on the platform, a pool of blood forming under him, reciting a poem as he bleeds to death in front of me. Bleeding from my bullet.
Not that I was much help to Benny when I was back in Chicago.
I shake my head, squint my eyes shut and bring my fingertips to my temples. I shove that image out of my mind only to open my eyes again to see that damn picture again. That picture of Fraser lying dead in his casket and I think I’m going to be sick again. My hands ball back into fists of their own volition and I feel something warm and sticky on my fingertips. I open my hands again and stare at them intently.
For some God-unknown reason, my hands are perfectly steady now. Only now they’re covered in blood and even though the last vestiges of my rational mind remind me that it’s my own blood—that Armando’s perfectly manicured fingernails broke the skin of my palms, my eyes are seeing Fraser’s blood. Fraser’s blood is on my hands. I don’t care who killed him—I killed him! I killed him by leaving him there. I left Chicago—I never wanted to leave Chicago! I knew that if I left there’d be no one there to look after Fraser and Fraser needs looking after—God dammit! Someone was supposed to look after Fraser!
I was shaking again. I barely felt it but only because the room was spinning. It was stifling hot in here. I was sweating all over. No, no that can’t be right. I’m shivering! It’s so damn cold in here that I’m shivering now! How the fuck can I be sweating and shivering at the same time?!?!
A strange gasping sound. Suddenly I know it’s me making that noise. I’m hyperventilating. I’m sweating and I’m shivering and I’m bleeding but it’s Fraser’s blood, on my hands, like it was on the platform that night when I shot him—Oh God! Fraser’s been shot! Fraser’s—
Dead.
Fraser’s dead. The realization hit me square in the gut and I swore I was going to be sick again. I bent forward like people do when they intend to vomit all over themselves but then suddenly I’m on the floor. I didn’t even notice my own knees buckling but I sure as hell noticed my desk when it hit me upside the head. I’m on the floor and my head is spinning and I’m sweating and shivering and hyperventilating and—
I should have been there! Oh, God, I should have been there. Fraser licks things that could kill him and stands in front of men with guns and leaps in front of oncoming cars—
“Fraser!”
I shouted. I know I did. I heard myself that time. Only, it wasn’t myself. It sounded nothing at all like me. Not even like that pathetic Armando Langoustini-me. My throat was dry and the sound was strangled but now I don’t care because I managed to drag the damn tabloid off the desk with me and it fell open to the damn photograph again—that picture of Fraser lying dead in his coffin surrounded by tragic mourners only I can’t make out their faces now because the picture’s gone all blurry and I reach out to touch the image on the page but I only smear it with the blood on my fingertips and—
Oh God, Benny! BENNY!!!
My mind is screaming at me because my voice won’t work. It’s screaming at me so loud that I can’t think but suddenly I’m grateful for that because if I started thinking I’d be thinking about how I never wanted to leave Chicago—how I wouldn’t have left if they hadn’t a made me—how I never, ever wanted to leave him back there, lost in that big city and left to his own devices. He’d get himself killed without me there to look after him!
But then my mind kicks back in and I see him in the hospital on the gurney being wheeled away, his eyes staring vacantly ahead, not seeing me—not seeing anything as his vitals bottom out because he’s lost too much blood because I shot him and he’s dying and—
Oh God! I killed him! I KILLED HIM!!!
I’m hyperventilating still. Or maybe again. I just know that the room is fading out and it hurts a lot to breathe but that damn rasping sounds in my ears and reminds me of Fraser’s labored breathing when Zuko’s punks kicked the shit out of him. The other time my best friend’s blood was on my hands. The other time he nearly died because of me.
My breaths are coming in hitching gasps and it finally dawns on me that I’m not hyperventilating. I’m crying. I’m huddled into a ball beneath my god damned executive’s desk bawling my eyes out like a little baby. Somehow this realization unlocks my voice and I hear my own sobs now. Part of me can’t believe it. I mean, I haven’t cried since—well, since Irene died, but that was nothing like this. I’m crying hysterically like I haven’t done since I was a kid and that thought suddenly reminds me why I’m crying and then I lose it completely.
God I knew I shouldn’t have left Chicago. If I ever left there’d be no one to look after Fraser. Fraser jumps out of windows and digs through dumpsters and gives hardened criminals the benefit of the doubt and—
Fraser’s dead! Oh, God, Fraser’s DEAD! Fraser’s dead because I wasn’t there. I was all the way out here in this slime-ball city in a reconstructed palace with a terrace and a swimming pool and more money than I could ever spend and more designer goods than a department store and oh, God, Fraser’s dead! I’m out here in this disgusting paradise and Fraser’s dying in Chicago—
Died. Past tense. I hear him correcting me in my head and he laughs, like it’s prudent of me to use correct grammar. I laugh at the thought. I actually laugh. My best friend is lying in a casket in Chicago and I’m huddled under an executive’s desk in a palace in the desert laughing I think because I’ve cried too much, but then I remember the fact that I was crying and that reminds me of the why I was crying and oh God I’m crying again.
Fraser’s dead because I wasn’t there. I’m powerless to help him from all the way out here, even though I know he’d have managed to save my life from that God damn Run-a-muck-luck village of his. I knew that the minute I accepted this shit assignment that Benny was on his own and when left to his own devices he tells the truth and champions lost causes and GETS HIMSELF GODDAMN FUCKING KILLED!!!
No. No-no-no-no-no-no-NO! Fraser didn’t get himself killed I got him killed. I killed him by leaving. I might as well have signed his Goddamn death warrant. Out here in the desert I’m powerless to help him. Powerless…
I’m laughing again. At least, I think I’m laughing. My vision’s clearer now, but the damn picture has been smeared beyond recognition. And my chest is heaving and my constricted throat is making weird sounds but I’m pretty sure I’m laughing. I’m sure because I want to laugh now. Laugh at my own rambling thoughts. Back when I was in Chicago Fraser’d gotten himself beaten, stabbed, and shot twice—once by me even. I was right behind him each time—or at the wrong end of the gun. I was right FUCKING THERE and I felt just as powerless then as I do at this very second, sitting beneath my desk with bloodstains on my hands and a crumpled tabloid and suddenly my hands are hurting and it actually takes me by surprise because why would having Fraser’s blood on my hands cause pain but then I remember that it’s my blood. My blood because my hands are bleeding. Bleeding because I’d jammed my fingernails into my palms without thinking—
Again.
Oh.
I uncurl my fists again and now they’re a right bloody mess. It looks like the fucking stigmata and I laugh again because I’m not Christ I’m Judas who betrayed his best friend and left him to die, knowing all along who was the better man and Fraser’s dead and I’m sitting here bleeding on the floor of my office in the desert laughing because I know that if I start crying again I just might never stop and what type of mobster would I be then?
Suddenly my laughter stops.
My face freezes in its sickly comical grin for a moment before the smile fell. I blink a few times, feeling my lashes bat through what I somehow instinctively know will be my last tears for quite a while. Perhaps even forever. Ray Veccio has had his time to react to Fraser’s death. Now—I laugh again—it’s Armando Langoustini’s turn.
Armando Langoustini is a mob enforcer turned advisor. Armando Langoustini tackles his problems with a cold, critical eye and an itchy trigger finger. Armando Langoustini… doesn’t know the meaning of powerlessness.
I feel my grin returning. It spreads across my face like a stain—the same one I force myself to wear when we discuss putting bullets into people’s brains. It had always disgusted me back then, the Armando Langoustini disguise. Now… Now it slips on like an old glove. Now Armando Langoustini absently wipes the blood off his hands onto his Armani pants, their origins already forgotten. Armando Langoustini has money, manpower, and the entire underworld and federal networks at his disposal. Armando Langoustini is far from powerless.
And he always wanted to take over Chicago.
Maroni hated Zuko, just like everyone else. It wouldn’t be hard to come up with a plan that would convince the boss that Zuko needed to go so that they could rule Chicago. It would be bloody—Zuko wouldn’t go down without a fight. He’d probably catch hell for it with the feds—he was supposed to stay in Vegas, not start an interstate mob war. But that was Ray Veccio’s problem. Veccio was a sniveling, powerless runt who collapsed into tears only moments ago and Armando Langoustini was hardly interested in the tears of powerless men.
Armando Langoustini was interested in Chicago. With Maroni in control of Chicago it would be cake to find out who had killed the Mountie and any thoughts anyone would have had that old Armando had gone soft would be washed away in the blood he would spill from Benny’s murderers. By the time he was through with them those sons of bitches would know the true meaning of ‘powerlessness.’
By way of the many and varied meanings of pain.
Bloody, disheveled, and dry-eyed, Armando Langoustini stood powerfully from the floor and adjusted his Armani jacket, casually smearing even more blood on the lapels. It was time to make some phone calls—find out what exactly is going on in Chicago. Maroni won’t bite unless it’s something damn appetizing.
Everything looks dead. My eyes especially. There’s a haze over everything and I can’t quite place what’s different. Somewhere in the back of my mind—the Ray Veccio part of my mind—I know it’s me. I’m different. But as I reach across my desk for the phone I gloss over the realization that I really truly don’t care.
Then my outstretched arm upsets the pile of tabloids on the desk and a sudden pain strikes my chest like a gunshot wound. My knees go weak and suddenly I’m sitting again, barely catching myself in my damned executive’s rolling chair. And I’m shaking again. Shaking and shivering and hyperventilating—the whole nine yards but now instead of crying again I’m laughing hysterically—laughing until the tears stream down my face but I don’t care. I could die laughing at this very moment and I wouldn’t care a bit.
Mountie fakes death to go undercover at a funeral home.
The very next tabloid in the stack.
I would have seen it if I’d opened my eyes before falling to the floor and that fact is the funny thing in the entire fucking world right now.
Fraser’s alive!
I’m laughing and I’m crying and I’m shivering and shaking and powerless to prevent it but not even capable of caring in this moment.
FRASER’S GOD DAMN FUCKING ALIVE!!!
And right now I’m powerless to think about anything else.
EPILOGUE:
"Hey, Fraser, this came for you."
"Oh?" Fraser took the manila envelope from Kowalski's hand. "Thanks Ray."
Fraser opened the envelope and the contents slid out onto Veccio's desk. His mildly inquisitive expression evaporated.
"Hey Fraser, what'd you..." Ray's voice trailed off when he saw what Fraser saw. A tabloid picture of the Mountie's funeral. They both recognized it. Ray had even tried to get Fraser to pursue legal action because of it-not that the Mountie would have. Of course it wasn't the photo that got their attention, it was the post-it note attached to it.
Do that again and I'll kill you myself.
Scrawled in oddly familiar handwriting.
"Ray." Fraser announced.
"Yeah, Fraser?"
Fraser merely looked at him.
"Oh."
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Date: 2005-09-11 05:44 am (UTC)Very nice job!
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