by Reid Astor
"Yeah, well, I didn't see you volunteering your bike any time back there," the man refutes, sucking on his cigarette. Niklas opts not to comment how the white button-up and suit jacket makes him look straight up like either some Sicilian gangster movie trash, or a wannabe federal agent. Neither are a good combination for this neighborhood. "Look around," he says, "and check out these poor shits. Lana gets money off of these people, Nikky, off their vices and addictions and their damn food stamp money. Maybe not directly, but she has strings on everyone who does."
They roll over a bridge into what looks like a long row of terrace homes on one side and a shelter on the other. He catches eye of a 'No Littering' sign posted on one of the thick concrete-and-iron walls of the shelter, and the pileup of trash placed ironically below it, and sighs. "Even back then, I didn't try going to shitholes like this unless I had to find someone in them," he says, shutting his eye. "Or sell something."
"Well, tonight we're buying," Lars says cheerfully as he brings the car round to park on the sides of the home and kills the engine. Instantly he reaches over to the glove box, snapping it open and pulling something out to throw on Niklas' lap. "Here. I mean, aside from not being able to tell if it's loaded or not, you got a rough idea on how to shoot it, right?"
The Glock gleams, heavy on his legs. He stares at it, and looks to Lars, feeling his face twisting up in disgust. "Are you joking?"
"Is that a yes or a no?" Met with an angry silence, Lars sighs. "Nikky. Come on. I can't take you around with just that taser of yours. It's this or the good old crowbar." Demonstratively, he reaches under his seat and brings to light an iron, withered crowbar, waving it in his sight. "Please don't fuckin' tell me you want the crowbar."
"I won't tell you then." He sticks the gun back in the glove pocket with ferocity and grabs it, hefting its weight in his hands, and looks at Lars expectantly. "Well?"
The man shrugs and pats his own gun holster beneath his jacket, then steps out of the car. "Okay, tonight-" he starts out barking to the air, then lowers his voice as it plunges in an uncomfortable echo down the cramped and polluted streets. "Look, we got two objectives tonight."
Niklas slams the car door shut and listens to the locks click. The air is wet and the smell of street filth blends with sweet, chilly ozone- a rain is coming. "Two objectives. Go on."
"Among those files Ray got me were some good stuff on a lawyer who can get us started."
He looks around, and frowns. "In this place?"
The man takes a drag. "Walk with me, Nikky." And starts down an alley, boots clicking a rhythmic song of confidence even as he passes a cardboard shelter. Niklas hesitates, gripping the bar in one hand and keeping another in his pocket, but then thinks- Fuck it, he's already here, and follows. Lars is saying, "We're here for two reasons- First, to locate one Mr. Daniel DeLane, the dirtiest property lawyer the police has seen in decades. Second, to twist Mr. Daniel DeLane's arm so hard he backs your project with all his corpulent might, and, if and when Lana tries to turn this all on you, backs you with all his corpulent might. Got it?"
"Understood." The trash he can't see in the darkness is felt under his soles and pungent in the air as he follows Lars' swaggering down the alley. When he catches up, he looks round wildly at the back-alley entrances lining the sides of this rapidly narrowing, claustrophobic passage, and tells himself to breathe. "This is a rat's home," he remarks, as quietly as he can.
"You have some issue with rats you're not telling me about? Jesus, Nick, trust me," Lars hisses as he looks straight ahead, not seeming to notice the irony in asking for his trust.
Where there didn't seem to previously be an end to the alley beyond the darkness, Niklas finds them coming to a strange shack-like edifice and a noticeable shift in the atmosphere. There's something... alive beyond this place, he can feel it, and it disgusts him. He realizes why- the ground is reverberating ever so slightly and the slightest pitches of song are clambering their way out of the rusted steel sheets piled against the wall here.
Beside him, little more than a tall shadow now, Lars gives a small sound of pleasure. "There always has to be a backdoor to a den of lions. What else would they do if the place got smoked out?" he says, seemingly to nobody in particular. Then, addressing Niklas, "I advise you put that stick in your jacket or somewhere nobody can see it later. We're about to be in a rather sensitive crowd."
Hesitantly, he does as the man says, shoving the crowbar under his turtleneck and jacket and hooking its head against his belt loop for extra measure. It digs cold and harsh against his ribs and he knows that in good light and without his overcoat, it would be desperately obvious, but he has a feeling it won't be where they're about to go. "Any other words of advice?" he asks, only partly sarcastic, as Lars heads to the pitch black hole that seems to be a pathway.
The man turns and, even in the shadow, seems to look him over. "No. You're good." Somewhere over his head the slightest growl of thunder pricks through the air. Lars turns back and enters the shadows, and Niklas follows, feeling the bass beat approaching and enveloping the shed as he enters. By the sound of the clicking of metal, the angry muttering and the clatter of paraphernalia close to the ground, he gathers that Lars is fumbling with a trapdoor, and stands back. "Minchia... can't see shit... As if it's not enough to hide a secret exit in an alley of shit-" He catches a couple words in.
It's a little amusing, honestly, to see Lars so bothered by the darkness when he's had to live with it for years in his right eye and make up for it by paying more attention to sound and feeling. "You sound like you need help," he comments, trying not to let on in his voice how it's almost cute to hear the man struggling.
"I'm seriously tempted to shoot this lock mechanism off, so yeah, I might," Lars grunts.
He kneels, brushing his hand across the floor over countless piece of trash until he finds it- the slightly raised and hard metal magnetic lock and its handle. "You'd probably just sound an alarm if you shot this," he observes.
There's a sigh of annoyance, and Lars pulls out his phone and flicks on the screen, bringing a white light over his face like a ghastly highlight before bringing it on the offending trapdoor. "Yup," he says, "looks like you're right, Nikky. But look at this," he brings the phone's light over the pronounced gaps in the door. "Lazy work. We could just shimmy something in there and open it practically from the inside."
Wordlessly, he slides out the crowbar from under his shirt and doesn't wait, jamming the head in and angling it with some pressure. No, officer, it was honestly just a bit of Saturday night fun, he can already hear himself saying in the future under a violent fluorescent light. The good investigator and I thought it was a sewer grate. We were gonna try sewer spelunking.
It's with a long, deep moan of protest that the trapdoor gives, lurching upward, and a relentless bass beat rises up to meet him. Like the doors to some surreal fantasy land have been opened, an azure light pours up and illuminates Lars' face, basking his delighted expression into shades of neon. Niklas tries to feel triumphant as he stows the crowbar and watches the man plunge down the hatch into the veritable rabbit hole.
He clambers down with effort, feeling his body strain at the drop until he reaches, and grabs, the ladder bars. They groan in complaint; this exit is obviously seldom used. When Niklas makes it to his feet he finds that the deep blue light penetrates down this entire hallway, with doors on every side and a strange feathery drapery running all along the ceilings. The floor is linoleum and patterned in black and white, and down here, the music is tangible and blaring through the walls. He can almost choke on the smoke and incense in the air- this place is tacky.
All Niklas can think is that he would hate to be high here. He shudders when Lars draws closer and speaks into his ear, one hand round his arm. "These are private backrooms. This whole club has guts, Nikky. Isn't that neat?" As if neither of them know what's going on behind the doors lining this hall. "Our guy should be here."
He drops his head, spying through the gi
lded plastic art-nouveau framing of the doors figures moving through rippled glass. "We can't go to his office like normal citizens?" he mutters, but Lars just laughs and starts walking, checking something on his phone as he goes.
At the end of the hall, the man tests the large, Spartan door and slips through, motioning for Niklas to follow.
It's darker on the other side, choking and so loud his head feels invaded by reverberations- Niklas thinks he may have discovered hell, and it's even conveniently worming somewhere in Couer's subterra. And ah, it's so blaringly familiar, down to the bodies he sees writhing in the constantly flickering lights down on what must be the dance floor.
To his right, he turns to see Lars coming up to a mammoth of a man and saying something to him.
Uninterested, he drifts to the edge of the balcony, staring down at the pit of skin bouncing and worming to a deafening beat. It looks almost Biblical, something of men consolidated into a body, a Legion, and it's arresting... I pulled myself up from there, once, he thinks. He wonders if they're enjoying themselves. If they know what they look like from up here.
He doesn't hear Lars come up right next to him over the music, so it startles him when the man's hand grips his wrist and pulls him in to the side. When he swings round and looks, he realizes just how close he is- his face is literally inches away, and Niklas was deaf to him altogether. He's not sure if it's the song they're playing with its electronic raving pulsations hitting his chest then or just the plain surprise.
Lars leans in and speaks into his ear as he cuffs his wrist, "I found him.” And from the way he breathes and touches him, he just knows he wants to be paid.
And Niklas wants to say, We never agreed on this payment system working for this new arrangement. Or, Just what the hell do you think you're doing? But words are useless and the man's lips are already brushing his ear, tugging on his piercings and breathing warm air against sensitive skin.
It's not easy to resist, this time, half-blind and mostly deaf. At least that's what he's telling himself as Lars' lips find his and the man is coaxing him open against heat and firmness. Reality falls on Niklas Baranov hard, like a punch to the sternum- he's kissing Lars, he's kissed Lars before, but he's...
He reaches up and seizes the man's hair, dragging him in hungrily and feeling the vibration of Lars' throat on his palm as the man makes a noise of surprise into his mouth.
He's really kissing him. Niklas shuts his eye and feels the man's hands slip beneath his shirt, around his thigh and ass and tug him, no, grind him against the balcony fencing. He can feel the stiffness of Lars through his pants, for fuck's sake, and there he is, letting him bite his lip and drag him and pull on him and all but fuck him up against this parapet for that giant man by the door to see and feast his eyes on.
His hands are warm, groping over and slipping under his clothes ever so slightly, his lips are crushing his, and Niklas thinks, Give this man enough time and freedom with me and he'll make my body a book written in the language of bruises.
He's not sure what Lars says when he pulls away, bottom lip adorned with a trophy stain of violent red, but he's pretty sure it's along the lines of Jesus fucking Christ. The man spins away, wiping at his lips, and Niklas mirrors him, feeling his own mouth aching and wet and needing to be cleaned as soon as possible.
Play him, Germaine had said. He watches the man's hands shaking as he lights up right there on that filthy upper balcony, back to him, cracking some joke to the security, missing his pocket twice as he tried to put his lighter away.
Even with the slightest control over the situation, it was still breathtaking to even imagine kissing Lars Verdura. Much less do it.
When the man looks back at him, Niklas catches something in his expression and thinks in a moment- a fleeting moment- that it could be pain. But that moment is gone in less than a second and his face melts into an infuriating smirk, and he turns away again, sauntering down the stairs of the balcony.
Lars stalks the darkness like a seasoned predator, weaving in and out of the couples that speckle the stairway and not checking if Niklas can keep up. Soon enough he is just a patch of black spiraling away, but Niklas doesn't let himself be bothered by it. It's all one destination in the end, he thinks, and it's that lawyer of ours.
Down on the floor, Niklas feels like he's sweeping through a riptide. He's fairly certain Lars had cut around a wall to make it to the far end, but at this point, nothing is certain but the sweaty masses laid out before him. And frankly, it's claustrophobic- when he looks around, he's fully aware of how narrow his field of vision is. Someone could easily ambush him here. Sweating, he keeps to the wall, pressing through the masses of clubgoers on his way through.
Lars, he finds, has taken a seat in a lounge just by the dance floor, and stands encumbered by a circle of drunk men. He's laughing with them, and a beer has materialized in his hand, but Niklas can just tell that he doesn't trust them for one second. The man catches his eye, and the smile on his face falls off as he gestures for him to stay back with a flick of the hand- and then he is all joviality again, patting one of the guys on the shoulder and saying something in a loud, obnoxious tone. At one point, he even jabs a finger in his direction, saying something to the raucous laughter of the group. A girl sidles up to him, bright hair flashing in the dance floor lights.
Biting back annoyance at the delay, Niklas saunters to the bar and checks the rates. $15 for a cocktail- he winces and orders three shots of Grey Goose instead. Whatever Lars is doing, certainly he's got enough free time to let him have these. He lines them up, ignoring the leers he's getting from either sex through each end of the bar- it's either the eyepatch or the way he's dressed that's garnering stares, but he's not going to stick around long enough to find out.
The Grey Goose fights him on its way down in the first shot, but he handles it, knocking it back until it's gone and setting it down. It leaves a strong, hot vein all the way down his throat, smoother still than the cheap vodka he keeps in his fridge but harsher as well when it reaches his belly. He only notices Lars when he puts down his last shot, and the burn still isn't even gone from his face when the man takes him by the shoulder and leads him away.
He doesn't think to protest when Lars shoves him against the wall, of the club, one hand sweeping beneath his shirt. He does, however, bring up a fist to resist him- only for it to be caught and twisted away. Something thwips through his torso and suddenly he feels sore and naked along a whole stretch- and he realizes, Lars has not only felt him up, he’s taken the crowbar.
With one hand still round his wrist the investigator drags him down a new hallway, this one lit up in halogen red like a dungeon run on backup generators.
They encounter a glass door laden with the same tacky nouveau Niklas found upstairs, only this time with a magnetic security card scanner on the right by the handlebar gleaming the same red as the rest of this damned place. Lars stops then, drawing a card from his pocket. The crowbar swings ominously in the air as he fits both in his hand.
"You found him, then, finally," Niklas says.
"Give yourself some credit, Nikky. We're finding him."
"You haven't let me do anything." He tries not to think that he's sounding pouty- it's just the truth. He's been made to hang back the entire time since they got here.
Lars pauses in mid-sweep over the door, looks at him with an unreadable expression. A green light rings out between them, and he presses it open. "You kinda did help me back there."
"How?"
"Er- You helped me spin my story." Lars smiles, but the look in his eyes is uncomfortable. He grips the crowbar closer, and looks like he considers giving it back for a moment. "Look, the place we're about to go into- We're getting in for a reason."
Niklas steps through the door he's holding open, looking left and right. The interior of the room is far more spacious than the outside hallway, and no neon lights penetrate the area. Instead, small lanterns draped around cord string across several intricate iron lattice
s, and a skylight rests abovehead. At the end of the atrium, a soft, feminine voice ripples through.
He hears the soft click of the lock behind him, and Lars presses the crowbar into his hand. "We have two choices on how we're gonna handle this. Mr. DeLane is a pretty infamous case for his, ah, tastes, and-" he saunters closer, and whispers, "We're here to perform for him. That's how we got in. You choose- play bull or possum. If we charge now, I don't know how much he'll like us, but he'll comply. And I’m pretty sure he has a fuckload of security, so we may fuck ourselves, but we may also impress him with the sheer audacity of it. I honestly like it myself. The other way- well, we'll show him how good we are at playing his games, and we'll get a scope for the area, because I have no fucking clue what's in there and what tricks he's got up his sleeve. Either way, we're in, Nikky."
