Post by Matt Knox on Feb 27, 2024 19:03:24 GMT -5
GUMSHOE 11
From Here..
The wound of his failure burned deeper than the gunshot wound Red had left him as Matthew Knox cleared out his desk in the Thunderhead police department. Each item he packed away felt like another nail in his coffin, sealing his failure to bring down Vaughn. It was a bitter pill to swallow, one that left a foul taste in his mouth.
He’d try to do right, really right. Righter than anyone in his family had ever tried and where had it gotten him?
The ‘clank’ of a photoframe sounded the final nail in everything but his resolve. A resigned sigh left him as he leaned over the desk, propping himself up with his knuckles as he let his eyes roam the space one final time. Soft outlines where once headlines of his successes hung proudly. Outlines that’d be gone within a month.
How quickly he could become a ghost again…
The Thunderbuddy Gazette’s headline left little to the imagination:
District Attorney Tact resigns in shame, faces possible criminal charges.
The snake got into the chicken coop, and was helping itself to every egg it so desired. Now was about making sure he wasn’t among the consumed.
As he made his way out of the station, the sympathetic glances from his colleagues felt like daggers in his back. They could all see it written on his face – failure. He met none of their eyes; he couldn't bear the pity, not now.
Passing by the evidence room, Knox's steps faltered. A glint of light caught his eye – the SEX cup case files. With a bitter resolve, he ducked into the room, the familiar scent of stale coffee and cigarette smoke burning his nostrils..
Rifling through the folders, Knox couldn't help but feel a sense of bitterness wash over him. Names familiar to him for the most part. A small sneer at The Cabal. But there were 2 that he was keenest upon.
The Bogeyman and the Gosh Dang Fool.
But as he sifted through the files, something stirred within him. A spark of defiance, a flicker of determination. These cases might have slipped through his fingers once, but not again.
Knox snagged the dossiers, swearing to himself in the quiet of his own skull – he'd cling to these cases like a lifeline, a stark reminder of where he'd bungled. It was his cross to bear, his own way of squaring things with the ghosts of his checkered past.
Thunderhead might've chewed him up and spit him out, but the joint was still his turf. And he'd be a lousy sap to watch it crumble on his dime. With the papers clutched tight under his wing, Knox pounded the pavement into the hard-bitten streets.
The sting of defeat was a constant companion, but underneath the surface, there was this flicker, see? A shot at redemption. Straightening out the rackets wouldn't be a cakewalk, and it wouldn't win him any beauty contests either. But it was a bout worth throwing his hat in the ring for. It had to be.
With a heart heavy like lead and guts of steel, he melted into Thunderhead's gloom, making tracks to his humble digs in the East end. It felt like diving headfirst into the abyss of his own screw-ups. The all-too-familiar reek of still air and rotgut booze hit him as he crossed the threshold, the burdens of the day—or maybe a lifetime—bearing down on him.
Outside, some alley cat let out a sorry yowl, peepers on the hunt for a handout. Knox tossed it a nod before ducking inside, shutting the door with a thud that echoed through his bones.
The walls of his small apartment were adorned with photographs – his children, his grandchildren, reminders of the family he had left scattered in the wake of the path carved by his own ambitions disguised as some greater good that kept spitting in his eye
It panged him, knowing the smiles in those photos weren’t shown for him.
The place was a mess, a sprawl of takeout remnants and spent whiskey soldiers, a dead giveaway to any shamus worth his salt that Knox was riding solo. With a grunt that spoke volumes, he cleared a spot on his desk that was swimming in clutter and plunked the files down, stirring up a cloud of dust and spent smoke.
He splashed a stiff one into a glass and cranked up the phonograph, the hiss and pop of Glen Miller's Moonlight Serenade seeping into the joint. Over by the record player, a fractured frame housed a memory—a wedding picture, him and a sharp little number from Japan—a snapshot he couldn't seem to give the high hat, even if he tried.
Back at the desk, Knox got down to brass tacks, the lamp throwing shadows that stretched like guilt across the room. Each leaf he flipped, every moniker that met his eyes, stoked the fire in his belly—a hard-nosed resolve to square accounts, come hell or high water.
The hours rolled by to the tune of that crackling melody and the odd serenade of the alley cat's caterwauling.
That is, until the rat-tat-tat of three knocks hit the front door.
The Camera fades into a simple studio set with two directors chairs set upon them. Seated in those chairs, dressed in their get ups from Gumshoe are none other than the members of Never//More, Matthew Knox and Amber Ryan. As usual, one looks more chipper than the other.
And as usual, Knox speaks first.
“Isn’t this a nice change of pace? Bit of reality, instead of me projecting my issues into allegory…No, see that couldn’t work this week because of the unique nature of the match up. Old skeletons, family trees…Its more dramatic than anything I could drivel onto a page.
Shawn. God, its been a minute hasn’t it? Back when British Ravens cawed, Honor was a group Project and you were a Tyrnnical double champion who couldn’t get booked over a pencil necked sex pest or a racist biker obsessed with Blood Eagling.
Well…okay, some of that was after my time. But I had to point out your accolades and since then…what have you done, Shawn? I mean yes you had your time in FIGHT but that was spent chasing Dickie Watson so that’d just be like covering Project Honor Twice and for all my flaws, I try not to be redundant. Then there’s Arcadia but I was gone before you showed up So..
But you’re here now. The outsider in My house.’ a pause, a chuckle “Wild how life works, how the table turns….See, I’m willing to bet you’ve given your opinion on who I was three years ago just as much as I have but you’re not fighting that man anymore than I am. You’re neck deep in waters you never should have dove into, Shawn.
You can thank Cashe, right before your lungs stop working and the darkness takes you back to wherever you’ll go when this doesn’t work out, although I suppose the trip won’t be booked until a third place finalist match for the losing team in the Triad is done, right?” he pauses “Crap…think I got some blowback on that one..”
“I’d ask you to forgive my partner’s grace, but we all know he’s unforgivable.
Jason I do love you. We aren’t blood, but we’re family. Because I love you, I won’t disrespect you by pulling any punches.
You and I both know how this goes. You’re going to lose, you’re going to act like it doesn’t bother you and at the same time you’ll purge TPW from your social media and I won’t get those ‘smoked too much at 4 am’ texts. And that’s fine, Darl. I understand. We all have scars and crosses that we are forced to bare.
I have to carry Knox.
You have to deal with being the clown. Sure, sometimes the clown does good and overachieves. But in the end? You can’t help yourself from telling the same old joke through making the same old mistakes and ending up exactly where we always see you.
Above it all, and absolutely unbothered.’
“Neither of you want to be where you are anyway…So please, allow us.
Hell.
You can even Thank Us, if you fee so inclined.”
RED
There was a quaint self-satisfaction in always being right.
Even if you were the only one who knew it.
Hell, if word hadn’t spread like the clap through a brothel- the face of thunder that answered the door would have been more than telling alone. Only the word had spread, and Red had learned of the Gumshoe’s fate even before the words had even been uttered.
A silence passed between them, the kind that even Red had the good sense to turn down her level of smugness for, a moment just long enough to allow the fact of the matter to settle between them and the realizations that accompanied.
“Tell me, did they hit you with the ‘it's not you, it's us’ line on your way out?”
Delivery with a strand of crimson being lazily twirled around a finger as she leaned in the doorway with a self-satisfied half smile crept back across Red’s freckled features. Deep down they both knew this was the best thing that could have realistically happened- if one considered the other options to be a quick death, or a slightly more prolonged version vindicating a long known inevitability.
Still, a little salt in the wounds never hurt anybody.…
A raised eyebrow and a knowing glance past the Gumshoe’s resigned, now unemployed frame lingered on what little of the desk she could see from her angle before casually sidling past as though she had every right to be there- cause she did. Even if he wasn’t willing to admit it.
Besides, it wasn’t as though he was going to call the cops…
“At least tell me you had the good sense to…”
Red beelined for the desk- the cleared space indicative of urgency, and the jenga-esque nature of boxes from whichever takeout joint nearby hadn’t gotten to the point of silently judging the frequency of his orders yet signified that it was recent.
If only cause the faint brown stains of whatever sauce or dressing hadn’t quite leeched through staining the desk yet. Dropping idly into his chair, ignoring the body warmth that still lingered, she immediately swiped up whichever case file had been haphazardly left open.
“Ah yes... rob the pigs blind on your way out. Seems kinda poetic really.”
She knew for a fact that his eyes had stayed on her the entire time- if only for the fact he couldn’t really afford not to. Last time he took his eyes off her, she shot him. Time before that? He tried to arrest her and almost got himself riddled with bullets for the effort.
Perhaps lessons were finally being learned, she mused silently as his eyes continued to linger on the way she slumped further into his chair- although even she didn’t have the heart to tell him that it would never change anything.
Hope was for two kinds of people.
They were neither.
Gently perusing the case file as though she were somehow unfamiliar with their contents, the messy cacophony of grayscale photography compiling a whos who of middling trash and small time big shots and reports each ending the with the same tired rhetoric in the most pedestrian inoffensive language purporting the same conclusion.
‘Suspect goes free’.
Even Red found herself irritated by the continued ambivalence, the determination to do the bare minimum in the face of cheap gang warfare, the same inability to accept that the only results were those that ended permanently.
Everything else was just a sequel to a scene no one asked for.
“I hope you realize that it's actually quite unprofessional to simply leave these things laying around. Never know who might find them, after all.
It's really no wonder that they dropped you at the first opportunity, or second… or fifteenth.”
Levity. It wasn’t her forte but it was the only other resonance that made sense in the tension that left them tethered and dangling at the edge of a moment.
“Too soon perhaps.” Another sideways glance, if only to make sure it landed with the silent thud she’d anticipated.
“Didn't you shoot me?” Came to the dry observation from where he stood, eyebrow arched and empty glass in his hand. He set the container down before striding toward his previous perch at the old desk.
“They hit me with plenty, and with plenty more to come, probably. Got a real way with people lately. “
“That's one way of putting it.” Came the reply, as dry as the glass in his hand and sharper than the shards of glass that might explode forth if he clutched it any harder. “More importantly though, unlike the contents of your files here… I didn’t miss.”
Verbal shards, death by a thousand cuts delivered from the edge of her tongue on each venomous syllable. Not intentional to maim, only to wound… a stinging reminder of the oldest of proverbs that ended with ‘find out’.
Red paused as a familiar mugshot peeked from between the inked sheets- a faintly obnoxious smirk bordering on goofy, light-heatened delinquency meeting hard-headed impulsiveness.
“... and you wonder why you get shot, huh?” Red murmured to the space between them, fingers drawing the mugshot clear, confirming suspicions that tightened the knot in her chest.
“First, my husband…” The syllables dragged deliberately as she paused, allowing that tension to grip around the throat of whatever bullshit might have been formulating at the base of the Gumshoes throat, a seriousness overtaking the otherwise needling ‘told-you so’. “Now, my ‘brother’. It's almost like you actually want me to shoot you again…”
“What I'd like…” He began, his own tone decidedly free of whimsy or any emotion aside from the nigh constant gruff irritation “Is for the people in your life to quit upending mine.”
He shifted, unlike his eyes which held her gaze where so many others would, and had fled from it.
“Your husband is a vile serpent and your brother is an over-ambitious snitch who should be begging for me to bring him in, before this latest scheme of his blows up in his face.
Whatever it is.”
A coy smile, the kind that prefaced things as exciting as they might be unpleasant drifted across Red’s eyes. Gently, she closed the case file as though preserving a memory between it's pages.
“Have you considered, and bear with me on this…” Lightly, Red rose to her feet, placing the file on the desk with a deliberate care unheard of in this conversation until now and stepped softly towards the Gumshoe.
“Staying in your Godforsaken lane.” Her words came as a hiss, the same way a gas leak might reach the ears of someone holding a cigarette microseconds too late. “You’re the only one stupid enough to keep sniffing the wrong assholes, then wondering why the stench follows you.
See, none of this blew up before you got involved. No one got hurt till you decided to start hurting people- and now, you think that hunting around my family is the way that your life continues in it's mediocre, self-serving cycle of booze and failed marriages.``
She didn’t owe him the warning, as though he’s ever managed to heed any- however due diligence being what it was, and the idea of another body getting attributed to her growing tally unnecessarily did less to bolster reputation than many thought.
“You’re right- my brother is an ambitious shithead stoner, he’s the walking epitome of Waffle House at 3am on Christmas Eve. However his harebrained schemes are doing little more than causing splinters in the asses of men too painfully self-centered to realize that they’re being trolled.
He’s like the real-life ACME advertisement, chasing ‘road runners’ on a peyote trip. He doesn’t have the capacity to do the kinda damage you’re pretending he does- and hunting around him leaves you only catching venereal diseases that science hasn’t yet classified.
Most importantly though- he’s my damn brother and I’ll see fit to deal with him as necessary.”
“You” He stood now, a farcical move to the naked eye but even as tall as the Gumshoe stood he was dwarfed by her gaze alone “Are lucky you're not rotting in a cell waiting to see him dragged in…”
He turned to the files she'd so recklessly assaulted, plucking another file from the maelstrom and plucking the mugshot of a more sinister figure from within.
“You know your brother is working with this sort?” He dared wave the photo toward her face “Warstein. Vicious, Self serving bastard just needing a goon to soak the bullets”
He dropped the photo onto the desk, leaning over it and giving her his back as he stared at the whole mess.
“My lane…” He repeated her sentiment, before scoffing “Whole damn road is my lane Red. I'm just trying to get all the clutter from it.”
A small chuckle emanated from somewhere deep in Red’s chest, guttural and instinctive.
“I’m lucky? Yeah, that's right cause the last time you tried to arrest me worked out so well for you, right… I don’t condone the sort he’s working with, never claimed the man to be a strategic geniius by any means and hell- if professional bullet sponge were a job title, you’d both be competing for the top spot.
That being said- your ‘road’ is off the track and deep into the places they don’t build roads for a reason, they don’t have speed limits or yield signs to abide by. You can’t start enforcing limits where they don’t have them.”
Red shook her head vehemently, turning her back on the Gumshoe.
“You know damn well I’m aware of the sort my brother is working with- and I know damn well that you won’t do nearly enough of anything about it.
My brother might be an absolute moron on the best days, but he is fiercely loyal and determined- he trusts these bastards, even the ones he knows are using him as a glorified meat shield. I made promises to have his back, and frankly if putting him down means someone else doesn’t…” Red trailed off thoughtfully.
“Hell, Cashe is a lot of things. Not many of them are positive and most of them would probably make his sweet mother cuss him out- but he’s the far lesser of two evils. You might wanna cleanse the board of all the pieces, but sometimes you really only need to remove one.
Although, you’ve already proven that you aren’t willing to even do that- and that's why you keep me around.”
"That why?" His question hung in the air, skepticism etched on his face as he reached for his glass, the ice inside singing its swan song. He took a few steps toward the icebox, intent on a fresh bottle, but halted, locking eyes with her.
Red laid her hand on his, a whisper of contact, her fingers deftly slipping the Mickey into his drink under the guise of a gentle touch. No words were needed; her gaze offered all the distraction necessary, a silent siren's call loud enough to distract from the sleight of hand as she let the sedative tumble into his glass.
"I'd never cross him like that. You know it, Red," he muttered, his voice a gravelly rumble. "But this whole SEX cup fiasco? The jokers eager to lay their mitts on it, to parade like they're top dog? They wouldn't think twice. Warstein'd feed him to the wolves, just on a whim."
The Gumeshoe's eyes started to swim as the juice worked its wicked charm, his frame sagging against the unforgiving wood of the chair. Red's words, they swirled around his noggin', a twisted serenade that clashed with the numbness that was creepin' into his meat hooks and pins.
He hankered for a chuckle, but all that came out was a weak quirk of his kisser. She had him dead to rights, and wasn't she just the cat that got the cream. This freeze-out was her way of sendin' a message, clear as day.
“Red…” The plea followed the shadow that crept away as the door clapped shut on her heels, snuffing out the blaze of her aura, the flatfoot had the itch that he was playin' with a short deck. She wouldn't rub out her own flesh and blood, not without her back against the wall.
The room seemed to shrink, the shadows inchin' in, mutterin' secrets he couldn't quite suss out. He laid there, gawkin' at the ceiling, the fan overhead casting a dizzying reel of light and shade. The game was gettin' a new shuffle, and he was laggin', a chump in a chess match where the Queens ruled the board.
‘Damn Fool.”
