Work Text:
Patrick Sloan was one of the top private eyes in the city. He was the sort of guy who knew how to ask the sort of questions that would upset a certain sort of person and please a different sort, and he never shied away from a brawl or a business negotiation gone sour that required his special brand of diplomatic flair. It wasn't long ago that solicitations for his service were more than numerous in quantity, the compensation being adequate to even sustain a few pro-bono jobs here and there, or some spur of the moment interior decorating decisions, or a few minor fiascoes involving some difficulties he had encountered with the old wooden door to his office that led to some rather embarrassing moments that he'd really rather not dwell on.
But that was then. This, rather unfortunately, was now. Or at least as now as now can get while still having been in the past tense. And now was certainly not the most ideal now that Sloan could imagine. While his ideal now featured a phone ringing off the hook with the chatter of hysterical dames and one or two hearty steak dinners every night, the actual now featured an unemployed detective who had to hock various parts of his phone for rent money and had to sneak into the dumpster behind Mariano's from time to time.
Sloan had to face the facts: business had dried up. He hadn't had a paying gig in weeks. Or maybe it was months – Sloan had no way of checking ever since he sold his calendar for a box of old chicken wings. But it was unsettling the way it'd happened.
Not long ago, it had been business as usual, nothing but skittish beauties needing protection from some overentitled hulk of an ex-boyfriend, or small business owners asking for information on shifty-looking potential partners, or weeping housewives wondering why their husbands didn't come home last night. Everything seemed fine, until one time a client vanished off the face of the map. Sloan beat himself up about it for a couple days, but he chalked it up to carelessness. He'd just have to try harder and be more careful when it came to the lives of his clients. From a moral standpoint, he might as well have been responsible for their death. And from a financial standpoint, he lost out on however much they were going to pay him. This was a fluke, he thought; he'd be damned if he'd ever let it happen again.
But it did.
In fact, it kept happening. Every time someone would come to him with a case, they'd go missing within a few days, never to be heard from again. Sloan could hardly believe it. He tried everything to stop it, to find out what was going on. But every lead turned up a very dead end.
The only breakthrough he could get came from his neighbor down the hall, an easily distracted but highly imaginative younger detective named Peter Inesco. Sloan had worked with Inesco before, and the two of them had a very strong mutual respect these days. Sloan admired the way Inesco could reach dead accurate conclusions from the sparsest and most unrelated information, an abstract thinker able to see connections that even the cops or the feds could have missed. And Inesco almost envied Sloan's dedication and focus, the way he could shake down a perp or saunter into the middle of a firefight without once losing his nerve.
Inesco had heard rumors on the street of a new face in town. It wasn't much: a whisper here, a robbery there, a couple hundred from assorted bank accounts gone missing, never so much to raise too much suspicion, and never from anyone who would care too terribly. But the pieces came together for him on evening as he accompanied his friend “Ace” Dick Dunn on a drug sting. Inesco and Dunn worked together frequently, especially in situations that required a healthy mix of both brains and brawn.
The bust started out like any other, money changed hands, words were explained, discussion got a little heated, and creative mediation took place. In the heat of the moment, when Dunn was otherwise occupied with instructing a suspect on the finer points of his fist, Inesco managed to remove himself from the bulk of the soiree and locate a hidden supply of drugs that his informants hadn't mentioned. After the suspect graciously acquiesced to Dunn's five-tier argument, Dunn helped Inesco take the drugs back and inspect them.
In this respect, it was almost a stroke of luck that Sloan was short on cash. Unable to afford rent for both an office and an apartment, Sloan had taken to turning his desk into a fort and holing up each night. That night, Sloan was woken by the clattering of Dunn and Inesco – well, okay, it was mostly just Dunn doing the work – carrying the shipment back to the office down the hall. In a flash, Sloan was out of his fort, under his hat, and into the hallway to sniff around the shipment for clues.
Turns out the search was fruitful. With the three of them examining the drugs, they found a wealth of information. Nothing clearly marking anyone, but enough to give a codename and a few ideas. A little more digging around, a few payments for information here and there, and Sloan knew everything he was likely to learn on his own about the new, mysterious mobster kingpin known as The DMK.
Realizing that there was nothing for it except to bring in some outside help, it was with some personal reservations and more than a little dissension from the others that Patrick Sloan decided to call in some outside muscle.
“This is a bad fucking idea, Sloan,” Dunn had told him the night after they paid a visit to the Midnight Crew headquarters.
“I agree,” Sloan replied.
“Then why the fuck are you doin' it?”
“Because, Ace,” Sloan said as he started pacing around Inesco's desk, which was covered in files and photos of The Midnight Crew and The Felt. “Because we ain't got options. Because a lot of innocent people are gonna keep dying unless we do something about this and because we can't do anything about this on our own. The only hope we got of cracking open this case and bringing down the DMK comes unfortunately with hiring the Midnight Crew.”
“I understand that, Patrick,” Inesco spoke softly.
Sloan grinned. “Ah, see? That's what I like to hear, Petey.”
“But,” Inesco interrupted as politely as possible, “it's still a bad idea.”
Sloan rolled his eyes. “Well of course it is. But I already said we don't got a choice.”
“And I already said I understand that.”
“Then what are we doing standing around here repeating ourselves for?”
“I wish to be clear,” Inesco began. “This is a dangerous course of action. We may have no other choice, but we cannot take this lightly. We have already taken incredibly risky steps, but tomorrow afternoon, you take the riskiest yet.”
Sloan laughed. “You kiddin' me? Compared to storming an underground bunker, rigged to blow, with guns blazin', an afternoon cookout at Diamond Estate will be a walk in the park.” He thought for a moment. “A walk in the park that ends in a cookout.” He laughed at his own joke. “See? Piece of cake.”
But Inesco did not look anything but serious. “No, Patrick.”
“Why not?”
“I have a very bad feeling.”
Sloan smirked. “You're a real scientist with answers like that.”
“His bad feelings ain't never been wrong before,” Dunn butted in.
Sloan thought about that and sighed. “Well you've got a point there, Ace. Okay Pete, tell me more.”
Inesco cleared his throat. “This Mr. Diamante – Diamonds Droog, I believe he's called?” Inesco shuffled through a few files. “Have you read any of this? Didn't you get an awful sense from him? He worries me.”
“Well of course he worries you, Pete,” Sloan said. “He's a bad guy. Bad guys never give you the warm fuzzies.”
“It's more specific than that,” Inesco said, undeterred. “You were there, didn't you see? That Diamonds Droog has a lean, hungry look about him. Simply put, I just don't trust him.”
“I don't trust any of them, Pete.” Sloan put on his jacket. “They're mobsters. You can't trust a mobster as far as you can throw 'im. But if this man's knows a way as we can take down the DMK, I'm going to listen to the things he says.” Sloan put on his hat and moved to the door. “Now, unless there's anything else we can say that hasn't already been said, I think I'm gonna head back to my office for a little shuteye. Got a big day tomorrow and all that.”
“Patrick,” Inesco called after him. Sloan stopped and turned to face him. “Just be careful. There's a lot we don't know about these people. There's a lot we don't know about this man.”
“Well we're lucky I'm so diplomatic, then,” Sloan said, flashing a grin as he turned to go out the door. “There's a lot you can learn just by asking.”