The Necromancer's Gambit: The Penn

[Nicolas Wilson]

NOTE: Posting on "Banksters" had been spotty, but the rest of the story should autopost on the blog:

 

www.nicolaswilson.com/index.php 

 

“Thomasina McGoohan, my favorite Fed.”

“Never marry a man named McGoohan, no matter how big a dick he’s got.”

“This state wouldn’t recognize it even if I did.” I smile at our server, “A salad, Caesar or the closest facsimile.”

“And it’s Tamsin,” Thomasina corrected me. “Cordray.”

“That’s not what’s on your driver’s license.”

“Should we talk about what’s on yours? Of course, it isn’t a federal crime to have a license under an assumed name. But Maureen might take an interest.”

“You know, you take all the fun out of ball-busting.”

“I was about to say the same thing about you, only the word I was going to use was ‘balls.’”

“Neat. But we should make this quick. I’m meeting with three bears today. And you’re just bitchy, the baby bear of this story.”

“So in this story you’re Goldilocks?”

“I was hoping you’d gloss over that part.”

“No, I think this opens up an interesting avenue, as to why you think you’re a Shirley Temple of a porridge thief.”

“I don’t look at it as porridge thievery, so much as porridge socialism, to each according to their hunger.” Right on time my salad arrives and I run a few leaves through with my fork. “Do we know anything more about Han?”

“I’ve read Maureen’s ‘report’ of his capture. She lists a CI, I’m assuming you, but claims she made the collar. So why didn’t you just let her shoot him in the face and save all of us the trouble.”

“Vergara isn’t really a shoot the captives kind of cop.”

“Vergara? Does that ‘professional’ distance make it easier to screw around with her without compromising yourself?”

“Like I said, I’m going to go through this particular wringer three times today, and you’re, and I mean no disrespect, but the least horrible of the bunch. So is there any chance we can just eat our lunch in solitude, and the comfort of one another’s company. Maybe even pretend this is before you started hating me.”

“You mean before you started lying to me?”

“Actually I was lying to you before. When I stopped, you don’t like the truth. So now you Scully everything I show you, no matter how ridiculous and strained your explanations.”

“How about you stop lying to me now: you aren’t here to repair our damaged rapport, you’re here for Han. I assume he’s poppa bear, too hot?”

“I’m not actually sure, on that one; only time will tell.”

“Speaking of telling, here’s the file on the incident with the guard.” She slides a thin folder across the table.

“What about the nurse?”

“That one’s still pending. See, things got fucked up so thoroughly, that they haven’t figured out how to paper over it yet. Report writing is the art of ass-covering gracefully. But this one’s interesting reading. It rained, indoors. All of the food in the cafeteria went bad, all of it, overnight, some of it less than a week from the distributor. Several of the convicts complained of blood running instead of water in the sinks- though the building engineers blame old, rusted pipes for that one. And that’s the shit they thought was sane enough to write down. I’ve had various reports, ranging from a plague of locusts to talking fireballs. This asshole’s trying to cram the entire Old Testament into one cell block. But to bottom line it for you, he’s a feather in a lot of caps, and one, world-class sociopath out of circulation. He needs to stay out of circulation.”

“I’ll need to see him, face to face. Alone, unsupervised.”

“It’s already set up for this afternoon.” 

“That easy, huh?”

“I remember how you work. Just don’t try to work me on this, and we’ll be fine.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I tell her, as I finish the last of my salad. “But like I said, big day.”

“Try not to choke,” she tells me as I get up to leave, “on all that porridge.” 

It isn’t until I get back to the car that I realize how damned much I don’t want to be here. There are so many places I’d rather be, most of them involving women and oil, and sometimes beaches. Not that I want to be back home, either. Home’s nearly as bad.

But sometimes the wages of life are work, so I put my foot down on the pedal.

Mama bear’s place is different than I remember, just a little bigger, a little better kept. Perks of ‘leading’ a coven. I plan to sit in my car for a moment, gather my thoughts, but she’s standing just inside her screen door, waiting as I pull up.

Sister Magdalene. She’s been an institution in Oregon, though for the last fifteen years I think the rest of us would have been happier if she’d been inside an institution in Oregon.

But if you’re building a political Trojan horse, I can’t think of a better person to have inside than Magdalene. Even knowing she would likely say no, even knowing you probably don’t actually want her in- scheming, double-dealing and always working her own agenda- it’d be a damn fool mistake to piss her off not giving her the chance to refuse you.

She smiles at me as I walk to her door, and someone who didn’t know her might think she was remembering me fondly, and wanted to cooperate. “I’ve got a long day ahead of me, so I’d consider it a personal favor if you skipped the part where you deny what I’m about to say, and we run around in circles until you pretend to remember it, after all.”

“I don’t know that I owe you any favors- at least non-naked ones- but go ahead.”

 “When the Black King was casting his net, forming his Shadow Gambit, he asked you. He had to. A new Gambit, one that beat out the old one, they’re not going to have a lot of allies nationwide. So they were going to need you, or at least your approval- tacitly, if nothing else. So they came to you. And you never told me. Never told Rook- even though you were sending her into the lion’s den.”

“I think you’re screwing up your Christian analogies. I sent her to you- so at worst, I let her have a sleepover with a lecherous Daniel.”

“I haven’t touched her.”

“But the fact that you feel compelled to deny it speaks volumes, doesn’t it? And just like in my superior metaphor, I had no reason to think you were about to be thrown into the lion’s den, along with my apprentice. I was approached about the vague notion, given an in to the ground floor, which I declined.”

“Of course, why serve in Hell when you can rule in Heaven.”

“Now that’s a more apt Christian analogy. Sticking with that mythology: though shalt not steal. I want my Rook back.”

“She’s been filling in for us, but she’s welcome to come home whenever.”

“She might be free to leave, but is she going to stay? You’re an able hand at reading people.”

I hesitate, because I know she won’t like the answer I’ve got. “It may shake out that way. Look, I wasn’t trying to take anything away from you- I was trying to give, remember? I was doing you a favor, showing her the ropes. But she’s been with us during a crisis. I’m not sure that bell can unring. If it helps you can have Pawn.”

“No one wants Pawn,” she says. “Even Pawn doesn’t want Pawn.”

“I don’t know if someone can not want themselves but still touch themselves as often as he does.”

“I think he could; all it really takes is being such a selfish lover that you don’t care what anyone else wants, so long as you get your rocks off. Just because he’s, screwing himself, in that exchange, doesn’t change the proposition.” There’s something in her eyes that tells me she doesn’t feel the venom she’s trying to spew.

“You okay?”

“She wasn’t just some apprentice.”

“Or just any protégé. You liked this girl. Took her in. She became family.”

She glares at me. “I never wanted kids.”

“You couldn’t have them; not even remotely the same.”

She smiles at me, but there’s a sadness to it. “It’s been some time since anyone’s been under my skin.”

“You never stopped being under mine.” 

“I’m not trying to be cruel. You weren’t the only one who left. But those who stayed, none of them challenge me.”

“And I do remember how much you love a challenge.”

“Maybe more than most, but everyone likes to be challenged. To grow, change, excel. There are two forces in this world: growth, and death; we are constantly in their thrall, and I always prefer the former to the latter.”

“You could have warned me, that death was coming knocking at my door.”

“I didn’t want to pick a side. Telling you, that would have been picking a side. And it would have put my entire coven in danger. And,” she hesitates, “he scared me.”

“You don’t scare.”

“I don’t scare easily. And maybe I didn’t scare before. I don’t know. But he scared me.”

I haven’t seen her vulnerable in fifteen years, and it’s almost enough to take me back then, to the woman she was, the woman I loved- to make me forget how very much I hate her now.

She ruins it by talking. “Would you like to fuck me? I have no lingering interest in you personally- if anything I find you awfully tedious- but if memory serves you weren’t a bad lay. And if you truly haven’t been screwing my Rook, and I imagine you’re still pretending to be too upstanding to pursue Bishop, and probably not enough of a man for the seer, to say nothing of the number of the more mundane humans I’m certain you have a flirtation with but haven’t had the stones to let into your life, I imagine you get quite lonely.”

I’m disturbed how much she’s still keeping tabs on me; Devi, in particular, ought to be off her radar. “I think the non-euphemism is horny. And I dislike you enough that, despite you retaining about the same level of physical beauty in a somewhat miraculous, Helen Miren kind of way, I loathe you enough that, I’m having trouble talking while keeping the bile down. Uhl, think some of it got in my lungs.”

“I know you think your circuitous ‘no’ to be hurtful, but I suspect you doth protest too much.”

“My eyes and my hips may cry ‘yes yes,’ but my guts are pretty firmly telling me, ‘I’ll ruin the carpet and your shoes with our lunch if you so much as think about it.”

“Did I really wound you so deeply?”

That’s clever. Rather than twist the knife anymore, she’s offering me a go at it; and I just can’t resist. “All I wanted was to proceed with the coven into the twentieth century. You might have disagreed with me on the politics, but I loved you, and you tried to ruin my life- no, it went further than that- you used the fact that I loved you to try to ruin my life. That’s not the kind of thing time washes away on its own.”

“So that’s a no to the quickie; I had the sheets laundered, and everything. Oh well, that’s what initiates are for, well, that and cleaning the gutters.”

“Tomayto, tomahto.”

“Zing. Now leave, so a man half your age can pleasure me.”

I pretend to count on my fingers. “Ew.”

“Hush. I think he’s eighteen. Give or take.”

I walk back to my car. The Penitentiary isn’t far, and my meet isn’t for another hour, but I have no place else to go. So I call Rook. “Everything okay on your end?”

“Kosher,” she says. 

“My butt hurts,” Queen says, and that’s when I realize I’m on speaker. I don’t know what to say that, and he notices the lingering quiet. “No, not for gay reasons- because we’ve hardly been outside this car.”

“Staying moving, that’s smart.”

“I think the first several hours, that was smart, and prudent. Everything since then has been ass-numbingly torturous. Did you know there’s something past pins and needles, where those go away, and there’s an eerie kind of stillness? Well I have that. In my ass. This is ass-death. I’m experiencing ass-death.”

“And we all know how important your ass is to you,” I say. 

“It’s not funny. This has implications for my sex life and for my ability to not shit myself.”

“So it’s an anal aneurism?” King offers.

“A rectal infarction,” Queen says.

“An infart-ction?” Rook offers. 

“I’m not talking to you anymore,” Queen says, “Ever.”

“Well,” I start, “you should find some place to pull over. Get out. Stretch your legs. Because I may need to call you in for back-up. Everything all set?”

I go into the prison early. The guard in charge even has instructions not to frisk me, on the authority of the FBI, which I can tell doesn’t sit right with his staff. Makes sense; any contraband that comes in threatens them in their day to day. So I try and not be a dick about it. Of course, it’d be silly of me to expect the same coming back my way.

“Agent Cordray said you personally requested we leave ‘Han’ off the chain. We usually cuff a violent offender to the table, but she said you don’t work that way.” Lovely. But if I reverse that course midstream, it ruffles everybody’s feathers, and makes me look weak in front of Han.

The guard unbolts the door into the room for me, then locks me inside. Han’s sitting opposite me at a conference table. It’s the first time I’ve seen him in good light. He’s a patchwork of places people tried to murder him and failed. “Welcome to my parlor,” he says. 

“Funny, your parlor looks a hell of a lot like the jail I put you in.”

He smiles at me, a big, toothy grin, only interrupted by the one canine broken in half on the top. “I’m going to wear your face for a condom when I rape that sweet little Bishop of yours.”

“Consider that your one warning; and I think the only one who needs to worry about rape right now is you, pal. But you should know, the National Gambit accepted transfer papers for you yesterday. As soon as we’ve got the facilities to receive you. I’m going to enjoy watching Bishop cut out the parts of your brain that let you think.”

“Then you are here for negotiation.”

“You misunderstand. That stays on the table; you’re a vegetable. That happens. The only difference, is whether or not I flood the prison with these.” I put one of Bishop’s vials on the table. “It’s a kimia, keyed to you, specifically. I’m sure you noticed that hole in your arm, we took a lot of blood out of you for this and… related purposes. The kimia’ll render you pliable. Open to suggestion- anybody’s suggestion- even those that end with a spitting or swallowing dilemma. So really, the only question is whether you’ll spend your last days as a nonsimpleton being passed around as the prison bicycle. You’re going out- I wouldn’t lift a finger to stop that. But whether you’re going out on your hands and knees is another story.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“Your o-ring virginity really worth betting on that?”

“So it is a negotiation. You would simply like to barter from a better position.”

“No, that was the bartering. You’re talking now.”

“And what would you like to know?”

“We’ll work our way towards everything, but start at the Black King.”

“He’s a necromancer. But this you know. Comes from Ohio. Scary, right? He wants to take over.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t think to ask.”

“What’s his endgame?”

“He’ll render you irrelevant, or render you dead. Whichever’s easier.”

 “Do you know anything that would keep me from giving your cell mate the ultimate date rape drug?”

“I’m a mercenary. A weapon you purchase, and point where you want death to happen. Unfortunately for the both of us, I was never given a target.” I put the vial back in my pocket. “But a useful thing: that is why you’ll lose. It would not be correct to have me raped for not knowing what you wish I did. The Black King has exploited that weakness. He’ll continue to. And unless you can counter, he will win.”

“And how do we counter that?”

“You don’t fight fire with rules and social mores, and certainly not with social functions.”

“Fine. And this haunted house crap you’ve been pulling. It ends.”

“You heard about that? Yes, once I figured out Bishop’s little trick with the henna, it just took a little trial and error. Some spells redirect real easy. Others, bleed through. They all hurt, and that’s why I owe her some pain, humiliation.”

“You had your mulligan; I’m breaking some ribs for that.” I reach into my pocket, squeeze a doll. He screams. But he’s quicker than I thought, manages to get a hand inside my pocket, and tears the doll away.

“Voodoo shit. You don’t talk so big without your dolly.”

“Quit hitting yourself,” I tell him. He starts to laugh, until his own big meaty fist smashes into his stupid fucking grin. He looks down at the doll, then to my hands, out in the open. “It’s just a visual aid.” I turn my head so he can see the Bluetooth in my ear.

“So you got friends. Just more people I get to hurt, later.”

“Tell yourself whatever you need to get through the night. But we have you the way even the beefiest man inside this prison never will. We want your neck to snap,” his head starts to twist, “and it happens.”

“Please,” he whimpers, then the tension goes out of his neck. I don’t say another damn word to him.

“I need to get out, now,” I yell to the guard. He unlocks the cell and I step back into the cell block. I switch Rook off mute. “Have you got the anatomically correct parts of that voodoo doll finished?”

“Yeah, but do you have any idea how difficult it is to sew little canvas genitals- and I do mean little?”

“Well it’s the last time you’ll have to sew them for him. He threatened to sexually assault Bishop. Geld the bastard.”  

“You can’t be serious.”

“I hate to be paraphrasing Frank Miller, but you take away their weapons. All of them.”

“I’m not sure I’m comfortable doing that to a man- any man.”

“Then give me that,” Queen says. “Because I am.”