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gonerunningaway) wrote2012-08-30 03:57 am
gonerunningaway) wrote2012-08-30 03:57 am
Tide-Water Dogs, Chapter Two
Title: Tide-Water Dogs, Chapter Two
Fandom: The Departed
Rating: NC-17
Word Count (this chapter): 1,715
Warnings this chapter (highlight to view): None.
Chapter Two
“I need to be out around seven on Thursday,” Sean tells Queenan on Tuesday afternoon. Robert called sometime in the morning and left a message, and Sean called back to confirm after he got it over lunch. So they’re on for Thursday at a restaurant he’s heard of but never been to. He knows he can walk to it from the department, but that’s not saying much; he can walk about anywhere in the city.
“That’s fine.” Queenan finishes signing off on something and sits back in his chair, taking off his glasses in a move Sean recognizes after so long working with him, a quick fold and slide into his shirt pocket. “Do you have a date, Detective?”
“Yeah.” Sean pauses a moment, but doesn’t let himself think too long because doing that keeps getting him in trouble inside his own head. Besides, Queenan’s door is closed, and he owes honesty to Queenan if he does to anyone, the number of times and ways Queenan saved his ass. “It’s with a guy.”
He has no idea how his captain’s going to react to that. As it turns out, he just gets a considering look and a nod. “All right. Enjoy yourself.”
Sean relaxes from that part of the tension over the whole thing and nods. “What do I need to know about Lori Hardison?”
“You’ve read her file?”
Sean nods. “There’s always shit not in files.”
“You’re catching on to how we do things here. By ‘here’, I don’t mean this unit. I mean the entirety of the Massachusetts State Police.” That gets Sean to crack a smile. Seems like this was Queenan’s goal because he smiles back. “Hardison is using the name Lori Acardi. She’s in with Nicastro.” This is the shit in her file, but it’s probably building up to something else. “She’s been in longer than you. Because she’s a woman, they’re not looking at her as someone who might be a mole. No guns in her face or anything like that, but she’s had other problems.”
Sean knows perfectly fucking well what that can mean. Lowlifes don’t respect ‘no’ much. “They hurt her?”
“Not that she’s told me and not that I can tell. She’s in Chicopee now, which is why we’re taking a ride to meet her in Franklin.” That’s the downside to this job, driving all over the fucking state to meet with people. At least it hasn’t been fucking Pittsfield yet. Franklin’s not too bad. “She moves a lot. She couldn’t say much over the phone, but you know how that is. It sounds to me like she might have information on some capos of Nicastro’s, though. We’ll find out more in an hour.” Queenan flips the file folder in front of him closed, opens his desk drawer, drops the folder in, and locks the drawer before he stands. “Get yourself a car yet?”
“I spend all my copious free time reading romance novels and eating chocolate,” Sean deadpans. “I haven’t gotten to it.”
Queenan shakes his head. “The T is going to get very old, Detective.”
“I know. This weekend, maybe.”
“Practice by driving today,” Queenan suggests, and tosses him the keys to his car.
Sean catches them easily and shrugs. “Yeah, okay.”
The good thing about working for Queenan is that he’s easy to talk to. Sean’s not good at silences, hasn’t been for as long as he can remember, and he’ll talk just to piss someone off if he has to. He respects Queenan too much to want to do that, though, and Queenan will hold a conversation without a lot of pushing. That means Sean can talk about actual things, even if they’re small, and that means his mind isn’t wandering to Thursday.
When they get to Franklin, they walk in quiet down a running path to a bench. “She’ll meet us here,” Queenan tells him, and they sit together, just two men on a break from their office jobs if anyone comes by.
“Any reason I haven’t met Hardison yet?” Sean asks.
“I didn’t want to subject her to you.”
Sean laughs, leaning back. “So what’s she like?”
He and Queenan talk for nearly an hour about their cases and their undercovers. Thirteen minutes after Hardison was supposed to show, Sean sneaks a careful look at his watch, his first of many. Thirty-eight minutes in, he catches Queenan doing the same. After that, he doesn’t care so much about being covert. “So where is she?” he asks at fifty-seven minutes.
“She’s the one who set it up.” Queenan’s shoulders look tight.
“We don’t have anything else for a while, do we?”
“We can wait,” Queenan agrees. “Another hour.”
That hour is more focused on Nicastro and what Hardison is investigating. Sean gets the meat of things, what she knows so far, and neither of them bothers to hide their glances at their watches.
“Shit,” Queenan mutters after they’ve fallen silent for a couple of minutes. Sean checks his watch; it’s been an hour. Queenan stands and pulls his cell phone from his pocket. “Let’s head back.”
This hasn’t happened in the time Sean has been working directly with Queenan, but he has an idea of what it might mean. “There were a few times I didn’t make it,” he points out on their walk back to the car.
“I didn’t like those times any more than I like this.” Queenan pulls out his cell phone and flips it open. He’s been checking it since they got out of the car, but it looks like he still hasn’t gotten a message they managed to not hear. “Damn it.”
Sean doesn’t think he could take it if Queenan started looking resigned, which makes it a damn good thing that he’s starting to sound pissed. He knows firsthand how much Queenan does for undercover cops, and it’s looking like this is going to show Sean more of the lengths he goes to.
As soon as they’re in the car, where no one watching in Hardison’s place might be able to see or hear, Queenan dials a number. Sean turns the key in the ignition, and Queenan starts talking.
They can’t put out a missing person’s on Hardison. It’s too soon, and if she’s not dead, her cover’s broken that way. They can’t put out a missing person’s on Lori Acardi, even if it gets to be seventy-two hours before she calls in. Lori Acardi doesn’t exist. But Queenan can put out feelers for any women arrested in the Chicopee area who are suspected of working with Nicastro and more for dead women, murdered or suspicious circumstances, except he extends that one through the state.
Sean really fucking hopes Hardison calls in soon so they don’t have to keep those feelers going.
Even so, they keep working. They have more cops out there than one woman who might be missing or dead or just fine and had to deal with bullshit instead of making a meeting. If they focus on Hardison instead of doing their fucking jobs, they could lose someone. Or another someone, if that’s the case.
Wednesday brings three meetings with undercovers in Boston and Cambridge. All of them make their meetings, the slowest maybe five minutes late, the fastest already waiting when they get there early. The meetings are uneventful, quick patdowns for the blue-collar types since they look more suspect talking to the cops than white-collar do, quicker reports that Sean commits to memory while he mostly watches and listens. He’s been on their side, and he knows how he sounded and looked when he needed pushing. Far as he can tell, these guys don’t. There’s just not much shit they know yet.
“Hey,” Easley, a guy dug into some corporate shit, the one who was early, says to Dignam, “did you do this?”
Sean glances at Queenan, who shrugs. “Yeah,” Sean says. “Almost five years, I did this. You’re doing good.”
Easley nods and glances around their meeting place under a bridge, making sure they’re not being watched before he strolls off, cool as anything in his Italian shoes and tailored suit. Sean hopes like hell he can bring down Van Kais, at least get it fined, if they’re paying people enough to easily afford that kind of thing.
Unlike Wednesday, Thursday doesn’t give a whole lot of out-of-office work. Sean has paperwork, and he does most of it in Queenan’s office. Both of them pretend it’s because he only started there about six months before and it relates to stuff he doesn’t know, but Queenan doesn’t hide how often he checks his cell phone or glances at his desk phone while he does his own paperwork. Around four, Queenan asks him, “When do you meet with the ADA again? What was her name?”
“Abigail Soares.” Sean scrawls his name at the bottom of a form he’s just filled out. He’s going to have to type most of a report based on this and have Queenan write the rest of it. “I see her tomorrow over lunch. More reviewing my testimony while they put together their case, I guess.”
Queenan nods. “Leave at five if nothing comes up before then.”
Sean isn’t turning down the extra time. He might spend it in the gym, but it’s still time that he’s not doing paperwork. “Last appointment with the shrink is tomorrow. It’s supposed to be the last, I mean.”
“You’ll have a busy Friday. In the morning this time?”
“Yeah. I got him to put me down for nine.” Sean smirks. “Start off his day with his favorite cop.”
Queenan smiles, but there’s something hollow about it. He checks his phone again, and Sean flips open his notepad to jot a reminder about that report. He’ll do it after seeing the shrink unless something comes up.
Fandom: The Departed
Rating: NC-17
Word Count (this chapter): 1,715
Warnings this chapter (highlight to view): None.
“I need to be out around seven on Thursday,” Sean tells Queenan on Tuesday afternoon. Robert called sometime in the morning and left a message, and Sean called back to confirm after he got it over lunch. So they’re on for Thursday at a restaurant he’s heard of but never been to. He knows he can walk to it from the department, but that’s not saying much; he can walk about anywhere in the city.
“That’s fine.” Queenan finishes signing off on something and sits back in his chair, taking off his glasses in a move Sean recognizes after so long working with him, a quick fold and slide into his shirt pocket. “Do you have a date, Detective?”
“Yeah.” Sean pauses a moment, but doesn’t let himself think too long because doing that keeps getting him in trouble inside his own head. Besides, Queenan’s door is closed, and he owes honesty to Queenan if he does to anyone, the number of times and ways Queenan saved his ass. “It’s with a guy.”
He has no idea how his captain’s going to react to that. As it turns out, he just gets a considering look and a nod. “All right. Enjoy yourself.”
Sean relaxes from that part of the tension over the whole thing and nods. “What do I need to know about Lori Hardison?”
“You’ve read her file?”
Sean nods. “There’s always shit not in files.”
“You’re catching on to how we do things here. By ‘here’, I don’t mean this unit. I mean the entirety of the Massachusetts State Police.” That gets Sean to crack a smile. Seems like this was Queenan’s goal because he smiles back. “Hardison is using the name Lori Acardi. She’s in with Nicastro.” This is the shit in her file, but it’s probably building up to something else. “She’s been in longer than you. Because she’s a woman, they’re not looking at her as someone who might be a mole. No guns in her face or anything like that, but she’s had other problems.”
Sean knows perfectly fucking well what that can mean. Lowlifes don’t respect ‘no’ much. “They hurt her?”
“Not that she’s told me and not that I can tell. She’s in Chicopee now, which is why we’re taking a ride to meet her in Franklin.” That’s the downside to this job, driving all over the fucking state to meet with people. At least it hasn’t been fucking Pittsfield yet. Franklin’s not too bad. “She moves a lot. She couldn’t say much over the phone, but you know how that is. It sounds to me like she might have information on some capos of Nicastro’s, though. We’ll find out more in an hour.” Queenan flips the file folder in front of him closed, opens his desk drawer, drops the folder in, and locks the drawer before he stands. “Get yourself a car yet?”
“I spend all my copious free time reading romance novels and eating chocolate,” Sean deadpans. “I haven’t gotten to it.”
Queenan shakes his head. “The T is going to get very old, Detective.”
“I know. This weekend, maybe.”
“Practice by driving today,” Queenan suggests, and tosses him the keys to his car.
Sean catches them easily and shrugs. “Yeah, okay.”
The good thing about working for Queenan is that he’s easy to talk to. Sean’s not good at silences, hasn’t been for as long as he can remember, and he’ll talk just to piss someone off if he has to. He respects Queenan too much to want to do that, though, and Queenan will hold a conversation without a lot of pushing. That means Sean can talk about actual things, even if they’re small, and that means his mind isn’t wandering to Thursday.
When they get to Franklin, they walk in quiet down a running path to a bench. “She’ll meet us here,” Queenan tells him, and they sit together, just two men on a break from their office jobs if anyone comes by.
“Any reason I haven’t met Hardison yet?” Sean asks.
“I didn’t want to subject her to you.”
Sean laughs, leaning back. “So what’s she like?”
He and Queenan talk for nearly an hour about their cases and their undercovers. Thirteen minutes after Hardison was supposed to show, Sean sneaks a careful look at his watch, his first of many. Thirty-eight minutes in, he catches Queenan doing the same. After that, he doesn’t care so much about being covert. “So where is she?” he asks at fifty-seven minutes.
“She’s the one who set it up.” Queenan’s shoulders look tight.
“We don’t have anything else for a while, do we?”
“We can wait,” Queenan agrees. “Another hour.”
That hour is more focused on Nicastro and what Hardison is investigating. Sean gets the meat of things, what she knows so far, and neither of them bothers to hide their glances at their watches.
“Shit,” Queenan mutters after they’ve fallen silent for a couple of minutes. Sean checks his watch; it’s been an hour. Queenan stands and pulls his cell phone from his pocket. “Let’s head back.”
This hasn’t happened in the time Sean has been working directly with Queenan, but he has an idea of what it might mean. “There were a few times I didn’t make it,” he points out on their walk back to the car.
“I didn’t like those times any more than I like this.” Queenan pulls out his cell phone and flips it open. He’s been checking it since they got out of the car, but it looks like he still hasn’t gotten a message they managed to not hear. “Damn it.”
Sean doesn’t think he could take it if Queenan started looking resigned, which makes it a damn good thing that he’s starting to sound pissed. He knows firsthand how much Queenan does for undercover cops, and it’s looking like this is going to show Sean more of the lengths he goes to.
As soon as they’re in the car, where no one watching in Hardison’s place might be able to see or hear, Queenan dials a number. Sean turns the key in the ignition, and Queenan starts talking.
They can’t put out a missing person’s on Hardison. It’s too soon, and if she’s not dead, her cover’s broken that way. They can’t put out a missing person’s on Lori Acardi, even if it gets to be seventy-two hours before she calls in. Lori Acardi doesn’t exist. But Queenan can put out feelers for any women arrested in the Chicopee area who are suspected of working with Nicastro and more for dead women, murdered or suspicious circumstances, except he extends that one through the state.
Sean really fucking hopes Hardison calls in soon so they don’t have to keep those feelers going.
Even so, they keep working. They have more cops out there than one woman who might be missing or dead or just fine and had to deal with bullshit instead of making a meeting. If they focus on Hardison instead of doing their fucking jobs, they could lose someone. Or another someone, if that’s the case.
Wednesday brings three meetings with undercovers in Boston and Cambridge. All of them make their meetings, the slowest maybe five minutes late, the fastest already waiting when they get there early. The meetings are uneventful, quick patdowns for the blue-collar types since they look more suspect talking to the cops than white-collar do, quicker reports that Sean commits to memory while he mostly watches and listens. He’s been on their side, and he knows how he sounded and looked when he needed pushing. Far as he can tell, these guys don’t. There’s just not much shit they know yet.
“Hey,” Easley, a guy dug into some corporate shit, the one who was early, says to Dignam, “did you do this?”
Sean glances at Queenan, who shrugs. “Yeah,” Sean says. “Almost five years, I did this. You’re doing good.”
Easley nods and glances around their meeting place under a bridge, making sure they’re not being watched before he strolls off, cool as anything in his Italian shoes and tailored suit. Sean hopes like hell he can bring down Van Kais, at least get it fined, if they’re paying people enough to easily afford that kind of thing.
Unlike Wednesday, Thursday doesn’t give a whole lot of out-of-office work. Sean has paperwork, and he does most of it in Queenan’s office. Both of them pretend it’s because he only started there about six months before and it relates to stuff he doesn’t know, but Queenan doesn’t hide how often he checks his cell phone or glances at his desk phone while he does his own paperwork. Around four, Queenan asks him, “When do you meet with the ADA again? What was her name?”
“Abigail Soares.” Sean scrawls his name at the bottom of a form he’s just filled out. He’s going to have to type most of a report based on this and have Queenan write the rest of it. “I see her tomorrow over lunch. More reviewing my testimony while they put together their case, I guess.”
Queenan nods. “Leave at five if nothing comes up before then.”
Sean isn’t turning down the extra time. He might spend it in the gym, but it’s still time that he’s not doing paperwork. “Last appointment with the shrink is tomorrow. It’s supposed to be the last, I mean.”
“You’ll have a busy Friday. In the morning this time?”
“Yeah. I got him to put me down for nine.” Sean smirks. “Start off his day with his favorite cop.”
Queenan smiles, but there’s something hollow about it. He checks his phone again, and Sean flips open his notepad to jot a reminder about that report. He’ll do it after seeing the shrink unless something comes up.