Chapter Text
He promised you dinner, but when you thought about it you realized that, with your tastes, it was impossible. You knew how much money he made a month and let’s just say that his compensation was inadequate. But there was a challenge to be had here and you’d be damned if you weren’t going to face it.
So you, Diamonds Droog, decided to meet Pickle Inspector for tea.
He arrives a half hour late, which you anticipated. The tea is still warm when he takes his seat. He nervously inquires about how much the bill will come to, but you assure him that it is within his budget before offering him a scone.
He’ll need it. He probably won’t have enough money left for dinner. You only promised he could afford the tea, after all.
You ask him about his recent cases. He prattles on about some broad who hired him for something entirely dull and you’re sure he’s not telling you what he’s actually working on. Probably because what he’s working on involves you and the rest of your gang. He finishes talking and scratches the back of his head, adjusts his hat, and asks how your crime is going.
“Oh…” You take a sip of your tea. “You know.”
He nods, furrowing his brow as though thinking what a stupid question that was. You do, in fact, suspect that he knows. Or maybe he doesn’t. You can’t actually figure out what he knows.
And therein lies the challenge. You’ve always prided yourself on being able to read people, on being able to figure out what they’re thinking and what they’re going to do and why they’re going to do it. It’s what makes you the fearsome gangster you are. Anyone can shoot someone—as dear Pickle Inspector has proven to you—but a ne’er-do-well without a certain sense will find himself with a bullet in his head rather quickly. In fact, you have enough of this sense to go around, as proven by the fact that you can more than make up for your crewmates’ complete lack of it.
When you think about it, you can’t think of any time when you haven’t been able to figure someone out. But here’s this nervous wreck sitting in front of you and for some reason you just can’t read him.
You start to wonder if he’s smarter than you.
It shouldn’t bother you as much as it does. You’ve always known that surely there are people out there who are more intelligent than yourself. You know that. But you’ve never actually met anyone that you considered your intellectual superior before now, and it’s him, and it’s maddening.
“Uh.” He puts his teacup down and steals a glance at you, avoiding eye contact. “M-Mister Droog?”
“Yes?”
“Are you alright?” he asks. You wonder if you accidentally let something show in your facial expression. Maybe you tried too hard in your efforts to look impassive.
“Of course,” you say.
“Does… does it hurt?” He motions at your side, where he shot you.
It does. It hasn’t even begun to heal, owing to the fact that you’re determined to hide your injury from your crewmates. As a result you’d been involved in much more strenuous activity than you really should have been in your condition. You keep reopening the wound, but you prefer that to letting Slick and the others know that you were shot by Pickle Inspector, of all people. Besides the laughs they’d have at your expense, they would eventually start to ask why you didn’t kill him in response.
You’re having a hard enough time answering that to yourself.
“Maybe you could, um.” He rotates his teacup about 35 degrees on its saucer, then back again. “T-tell them you have the flu? So you can get some rest.”
You look at him. Your expression is aggressively impassive. He wrings his hands.
“I—I saw you at the docks last night,” he explains. “You’re being so reckless.”
It isn’t too late to kill him, you think. You have your deck of cards in your coat pocket and everyone in this café knows who you are. Nobody would dare stop you.
“I have certain responsibilities,” you say to him. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
“So reckless,” he repeats.
“Exactly what were you doing at the docks?”
“Oh…” He looks up at you. “You know.”
“Most people would have better sense,” you say, putting down your teacup. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten, due to the ease with which you pulled off that lucky shot last week, but I am a very dangerous man.”
“Yes,” he says, looking down again. “Yes. I know. I’m sorry.”
He picks his teacup up again with shaking hands and takes a sip before saying, “You’re… yes. Very dangerous.”
You watch him put the tea down, take a bite of his scone, then take another sip of his tea. You speak, but you feel uneasy doing it. You are making a wild assumption and you have no idea whether it’s true, but you are determined to take the offensive in this exchange.
“Is that why you’re in love with me?”
The Inspector chokes on his tea. He puts his teacup down with a clatter, splashing tea on the tablecloth, before picking up a napkin and wiping his mouth. He takes entirely too long with it and you suspect that he’s trying to hide behind the piece of cloth.
“That’s—that’s not true, I—“
Under the table you clench your fists. You’ve guessed wrong and revealed how little you know. Damn it all!
“That’s not why…” he continues, his voice cracking. “I—I like you in spite of that, I…”
You relax.
He buries his face further in the napkin, clutching it tightly in his bony fingers. “Oh gosh, oh gosh… how did you know?”
You go over the checklist of emotions you should be feeling. Relief, that your bluff paid off. Confidence, in that you now have the upper hand. Anticipation, for all the clever manipulation you’re going to subject this poor man to now that you’ve extracted a weakness.
There’s another checklist forming in your head, but it’s less organized and you can’t make out the handwriting. You disregard it.
“The way you held my hand,” you mumble. You don’t usually mumble. You don’t usually explain your logic, either.
“I’m sorry,” the Inspector pleads. “I’m sorry, just… just forget I ever…”
You stand up. He looks up at you with his eyes wider than you’ve ever seen them. You can see a faint blush peeking out from under his napkin-shield. He whimpers under your gaze. You take a step to stand over him. Looming. Intimidating.
Then you take the napkin away and put your hand on his cheek. You force him to look up at you, even if his eyes still won’t meet yours.
And then you kiss him.
It’s a con, of course. You know that.
He hesitates before accepting the kiss wholeheartedly. He parts his lips, letting you slip your tongue inside.
This, too, is a con.
You move your hand behind his head, pulling him in closer. Keeping him from getting away.
Also a con.
You don’t normally have to keep reminding yourself that. You are perfectly capable of manipulating someone without repeating your purpose in your head over and over. That’s what stupid people do. That’s the sort of thing Clubs Deuce would do, and it wouldn’t work and he’d end up setting something on fire. Why do you keep doing that?
When you pull away and look at Pickle Inspector’s face, you understand.
This is not a con.
You start to be able to make sense of the second checklist. It seems you’ve just done the first thing on it, so that’s good. You still can’t make out the rest, so you wing it.
“My dear Pickle Inspector,” you say, still managing to keep your expression the same. “I have a spare ticket to the opera tonight.”
“I—I can come?”
“And I will treat you to dinner,” you add.
“That sounds… it sounds lovely, thank you,” he says, still blushing. “But I thought… you were, um… going to go with Mister Slick…”
“You know that too, do you?”
He nods. “He won’t mind, will he…?”
You walk back to your seat and sit. “He’ll be ecstatic.”
“Y-you aren’t… um… you know, planning any crime during it?”
A smile escapes your lips, albeit a faint one. “Are you going to shoot me again?”
“I—It’s not like I want to, no…”
“If it makes you feel better, you could probably disable me by giving me a good jab in the last bullet hole you gave me,” you say. “There’s no need to bother with that key of yours.”
He lets out a nervous chuckle. “Good to know, thank you.”
“I think you should meet me at my place first,” you say, pouring him another cup of tea. “I don’t suspect you have any clothes that won’t embarrass me, so I’ll have to dress you myself.” He blushes again. “I don’t think I have anything in your size, but anything I have would be better than…” you gesture at his clothes. “That.”
He looks down at his rumpled clothes. “O—Okay, if you think so…”
“I suppose you know where I live, too?”
He scratches his head, glancing upward in thought. “Oh, um… which place? The one with the, um…”
“The one on fifth,” you say.
“Yes, I think I know the one.”
“I thought so.”
He fidgets. “J-Just so you know, I—I’ve been trailing you for the sake of my job…” He wrings his hands. “It’s not because I… you know… I just… if you were planning anything against Sleuth or Dick or…”
“Obviously.” You finish your tea.
You look at your watch. The waiter comes back with the check. He hands it to you, which you then hand to Pickle Inspector. His eyes go wide at the price.
You stand up.
“Five o’clock, sharp. Don’t keep me waiting.”
He keeps ogling the bill. “M-Mister Droog, I can’t afford…”
“Of course you can,” you say, absently brushing dandruff off of his shoulder. “I know things too. Like the contents of your bank account.”
“B-but I—It was only tea and scones, why does it cost so—”
“Don’t worry about it,” you say. “I’m buying dinner, remember?”
He whimpers. You pat him on the back. “See you soon.”
You walk away as he reaches for his wallet. As much as you’re looking forward to your night at the opera, what you aren’t looking forward to is what comes after. After all, if he knew that you’d invited Slick to come… you were going to have to spend all day tomorrow pulling wiretaps out of the hideout’s walls.