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When he’d called out Len’s name in front of the etched-glass doors to the Nativebrook Art Museum, he’d seen the way that Len’s muscled goons (you probably called them ‘retinues’ when you purchased them legally) tensed, and Mick had tensed in return.
Things had changed. He was scruffy and scorched under his ratty sweater, and Len was smooth edges and sharp tailoring, and there were walls that were supposed to be between those two types of people. Mick tried to carefully formulate his thoughts against Len in case Len pretended not to know him, or flinched at his presence in horror before coming up with that placidly happy expression Mick saw whenever the news cameras scanned across the face of the campaign manager for former-candidate current-mayor Lisa Snart.
(Jesus Christ, Mayor Lisa Snart. What the heck had the world come to.)
But there was none of that when their eyes met. Len instantly flashed that familiar cocky smirk, smooth as ever, like nothing had changed. “Hey, Mick.”
“Hey, Len.” Len jerked his head towards the doors and Mick, as Mick always did, followed.
“Didn’t think you cared for art,” Len said as they passed the door guard that narrowed his eyes at Mick but said nothing.
“I don’t. But I heard some good things about the guest speaker.”
“Really. I heard he was a real bastard.” And the way Len rolled the crass word across his tongue, dressed in that fancy suit that managed to look sleek instead of pompous on him, instantly made Mick relax. At least he hadn’t totally been brainwashed by politics.
As they entered, Len was immediately beset by a flock of hangers-on eager to welcome him and ask after him, and every time Mick tried to move away Len had taken a step closer to stay by his side. Mick could feel their eyes judging him but Len ever so carefully sheparded him to the pop-up bar and then stood with his back to Mick as if to shield him from raised eyebrows and judging looks while he finished his greetings.
“Back in a moment,” he muttered over one shoulder. “FYI, it’s an open bar.”
Len flowed through the crowd like a patient shark and ascended his way to the podium. He told one or two poor jokes that neglected to have a single mention of genitalia and then recited some pablum about youth enrichment. Mick lurked by the buffet eating his way through a sapling’s worth of toothpicked meats and being cautiously shunned by everyone else. The champagne was weak as piss, so he made sure to drink at doubletime to compensate. Len went down a gauntlet of shaken hands as he descended, until he was back by Mick’s side again and being ignored in favor of a gaggle of dancing costumed children singing in a language he neither understood or cared about.
“Doesn’t all that gladhanding make your wrists tired?” Mick grunted.
Len lowered his voice, letting it be hidden by the blaring trumpets and drums. “I find it helps if you think of them as marks. It’s good to see an honest face around here, at least.” Same drawl, so familiar to Mick’s ears and so dissonant from the formal, faux-passioned statements he’d been making about nurturing an interest in the arts in children. “But the booze really isn’t worth the trip out. What really brought you over?”
“Wanted to see Leonard Snart in his natural element.”
“This isn’t my element, Mick. This…” Len turned away from the crowd to give a dismissive wave to his suit, then set his face into a media-pleasing grin and gave it a similar wave. “This is my gear. That out there’s the heist. Me and Lisa, we’re the crew. All I did was train myself enough to blend in and make them think I’m their type.”
“So what’s your type now?”
Len sipped his champagne. “Same as it ever was. A crook, a thief, a trickster. Now I’m just one who’s decided that stealing material objects wasn’t enough of a challenge and set his sights on more abstract prizes.”
An old white man in a tux who looked like the embodiment of what Lisa called ‘privilege’ wandered towards them, and Mick saw the false smile snap onto Mick’s face. “Alderman Blood! Great to see you again.” The handshake was hearty, and Blood’s own smile was nearly identical. It was like room full of masks that no one wanted to admit were there. Creepy as shit, in Mick’s opinion.
“Same, Lenny, just the same. How’s Lisa?”
“Cutting the ribbon at the particle accelerator. I’m really hoping it doesn’t end the universe, you know? I like living here.”
“Haha, me too, me too.” Blood was practically saying the ‘haha’, like a bad actor reading off a script.
Len clapped his hand to Mick’s shoulder. “And of course you remember Michael Rory,” Len said, ever so casual. “From Prothero’s talk back in March?”
The alderman blinked, smile almost falling before he snapped it right back on again. “Of course, it’s great to see you again, Mr. Rory,” he said chipperly, offering his hand for another shake. Mick stared at it, then cautiously took it.
“Yeah…”
“You’ve been well?”
“Pretty dandy.” Mick’s voice was rough, unpretentious, and the alderman was forcibly unphased as he turned back to Len.
“By the way, Len, I was wondering if we could have a quick chat about the Glades zoning issues?”
“Love to, but I’ve got somewhere to be after this. Why don’t I have lunch set up and we’ll go over it a little more in depth?”
“Great, great. I’ll catch you then.” And the alderman swanned back off to the rest of the gathering, to break into a conversation between two women in dresses that looked just ridiculous enough to be high fashion.
Mick leaned in and whispered, “Who the hell’s Prothero?”
“Absolutely no one.”
“I’ve never met that guy in my life, Len.”
Len turned his back to the room and the real smile returned again, the charming roguish smirk that swayed Mick over nine times out of ten no matter what the heist was. “You definitely haven’t. It’s amazing how much you can get people to dance when they want something from you.”
Marks, huh. Mick rolled his eyes and threw back another glass of champagne. “How long before we can blow this joint? I was thinking we needed to talk, with or without some decent alcohol on the side."
Len slowly craned his neck to one side, seemingly to stretch, indicating a side door just behind the sliding wall concealing the rest of the museum. “Oh, who says we have to leave?”
The tension between them began deflating as soon as they were out of public view. Len’s nice shoes clicked softly on the tiled museum floor as they walked past the darkened paintings, Mick’s boots making soft thuds alongside him. Mick read the little labels next to the pieces and wondered how much the seemingly meaningless smears of color on canvas would be worth in dollar signs. Like the working class asshole he was, Mick thought. A quick jimmying of the maintenance door lock took them into the back room, beneath the thick steam pipe that tangled with sprinkler pipes above a large fuse box.
Mick took a deep breath. "Look, Len, I–”
Then, though Mick wouldn’t be able to understand the instigator of the flash and the roar and the shock of burning bone-deep cold until he woke up in the back room of Our Lady of Mercy Hospital, the particle accelerator blew up.