![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A bit more detailed version than the concept sketch, including most of the cast. Five meetings, and one very bad day. Will possibly be continued, but again, I can make no promises.
Title: Five Meetings (Steps in the Fall and Rise to Grace)
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Good Omens (AU)
Characters/Pairings: Ensemble cast, Crowley POV. Gen so far, really, but including Newton/Anathema, Shadwell/Tracy, possibly Adam/Pepper and Aziraphale/Crowley later
Summary: Bad things are brewing in the City of Angels, and one tired ex-cop is stuck in the middle of it
Wordcount: 4139
Warnings/Notes: Inspired by LA Confidential, and set in 40s LA, I think
Disclaimer: Very not mine -_-;
Title: Five Meetings (Steps in the Fall and Rise to Grace)
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Good Omens (AU)
Characters/Pairings: Ensemble cast, Crowley POV. Gen so far, really, but including Newton/Anathema, Shadwell/Tracy, possibly Adam/Pepper and Aziraphale/Crowley later
Summary: Bad things are brewing in the City of Angels, and one tired ex-cop is stuck in the middle of it
Wordcount: 4139
Warnings/Notes: Inspired by LA Confidential, and set in 40s LA, I think
Disclaimer: Very not mine -_-;
Five Meetings (Steps in the Fall and Rise to Grace)
"We've heard ... interesting things about you, Mr Crowley," the elder of the two drawled, leaning back in his wide, leather armchair, holding his thick, stubby cigar between his thick, stubby fingers. Harry Dowling, he was, television magnate and producer of Badge of Honor. And thoroughly nasty customer, in that dull, glittery way only the rich could pull off. "Very interesting things indeed."
Crowley felt his smile slip, a little, felt something cold and hard as a skirt's heart settle in his belly as he met those piggy little eyes, but he'd had harder sells than this. He could sell anything, to anyone. Always could, always would. Mama was right. He should have been a salesman from the start.
So he fixed his bright, charming smile, curved it a little to look like he was sharing a secret, to invite this fat, pasty man into his confidences, and asked: "Really?"
"Really," the third man cut in, with a sharp little smile that didn't look at all right on his handsome, steel-jawed face. Warlock Dowling. The actor slated to play the lead in his Daddy's new show, a nice, innocent young man with perhaps a tendency to stray to the wrong side of the street, if Crowley heard right. And he usually did. A young man who'd spent too many years poised between the heroes of the screen and the sordidness of real life, between Daddy's wealth and old diplomatic connections, and the seedier underbelly of show business. He'd be perfect enough for the role of heroic, run-down cop, Crowley thought. If only he had just a touch more brains.
"I'll tell you what," he decided, looking at that handsome, fresh face and feeling suddenly very, very tired. "How about we put our cards on the table, gentlemen?" He looked at them, corpulent businessman and child-turned-actor, and spread his hands disingenuously. "You've heard who I am. You've heard I used to be a cop, maybe heard why I'm not anymore. You're wondering if you should hire a shady character like me to advise on a squeaky-clean show like Badge of Honor, when obviously I've never been honourable in my life. Right?"
He screwed his grin a little tighter, leaned forward and lowered his voice, made it vibrant, made it passionate, the perfect pitch for a sale, and did his best to ignore the squirming in his belly, the bile in his throat.
"I'll tell you why you should," he murmured, watching their eyes, seeing the interest. "Because I do know honour, sirs. I know what it's like to hold the badge, and swear the oath, and do your best to live up to it. But more than that. I know what it's like to lose sight of it. To make that one little step that separates the good cops from the bad ones, and to not even realise you were doing it. I know what it's like to see honour and know you've lost it. And I can give you that. I can show you that. I can tell you how the system works, and how the badge feels, and what it's like to stand on the edge of losing it. And that, sirs ... that is television. That's drama. That's what your audiences want to see. To see the hero go that far and no further, to fight back from the fall. All that. And I can show you how. But only, my good sirs, if you hire me."
He stopped, waiting, something slick and cold in his chest, his tongue numb from saying those words, from letting the lie slip too close to the truth, but it was done now. It was said now, and if it got him a damn pay-check, well ... whiskey'd warm up the chill inside him soon enough. And the look in those glittering eyes ... Numb his tongue may be, but it was still made of silver. He was still the slickest salesman on the block, the very angel of temptation, like mama always said.
"You are a very interesting man, Mr Crowley," said Dowling, pulling a pen out of his pocket and holding it out, smiling a nasty little smile while his son looked on with naive interest. "A very interesting man indeed."
***
You're a very interesting young man, Officer Crowley. A very interesting man indeed.
His first meeting with the now ex-Commissioner Lucifer had seemed so innocent, at the time. He'd been young, then. Wet behind the ears, an earnest young mama's boy with a silver tongue and a knack for Vice. Only from the point of view of tracking it down and stamping it out, of course. Then, anyway. Then. Things ... had changed, later, and nothing for the better. He'd been young. He'd been so damn young.
An interesting young man, the Commissioner had called him. While he'd been standing, quaking in his uniform shoes, before his desk, with an accusation of taking bribes hanging over his rookie, innocent head, and the man's cold, cheerful eyes burning a hole in his forehead. While the rest of the Hearing Council looked on him with slow contempt, the so-called 'Dukes' sitting at the Commissioner's side and smiling coldly. While Crowley had been marshaling every potentially helpful lie he could manage through the panic, and waiting for judgement that hadn't come. Later, years later ... he almost wished it had.
"I have ... uses, for interesting young men," Commissioner Lucifer had said, warm and paternal, inviting Crowley to sit down, smiling shallowly when Crowley obeyed out of pure shock. "I've been watching you, young Crowley. Very closely. And I think I see something I like. So. What do you say? Would you be willing to do maybe the odd little job for me, in return for making these unfortunate charges ... go away?"
"Jobs?" he'd quavered, with a spark of survival instinct latching onto any way out, and a worm of something that would later grow into terrible suspicion in the back of his mind, that was ignored, always ignored, until far too late. "What kind of jobs?"
And Lucifer had smiled like a shark, and explained his vision of a Los Angeles without the filth of all those undesirables staining its shining image as the City of Angels, explained to an innocent young man how the simplest of things, just little things, forgetting a word here or there, slipping some evidence once in a while, could help them achieve this wonderful goal. It was the best damn sales pitch Crowley'd ever heard.
It had ruined his life. But he hadn't known it then. He'd been just too damn stupid then. Too damn young.
***
Adam Young was waiting for him in his office when he got back from the meet with Dowling. Adam Young, and all three of his top enforcers, the four of them making themselves quite at home with Crowley's furniture and, most importantly, his alcohol. He wasn't happy about that. He wasn't happy about that at all. But he didn't say anything. You didn't, not to Them. Not if you liked your limbs in the order they came in.
"Do come in, Mr Crowley," said the nice, friendly young man who had most of LA's underworld in a stranglehold, waving a magnanimous hand at the chair on the other side of Crowley's desk. Like he owned the place, but careful, careful, because this one just might.
Crowley glanced around warily, taking in the cheerful bulk of a Mr Brian by the doorway, grinning at him conspiratorially; the narrow figure of the young woman known only as 'Pepper' leaning against his filing cabinet, twirling a heavy baton nonchalantly; the serious, bespectacled man at Adam's right-hand side, looking twenty-eight-going-on-fifty, and going by the mysterious name of 'Wensley'. He looked at them, the group of four known only as Them, because you never, ever named names, not in this city. He looked around, took them in.
And then he sat down. Tiredly, cautiously, and with a queasy smile that got nothing but a snort of contempt from the woman, and a small, gentle smile from Adam that sent the shivers running up Crowley's spine. Exactly the way they had with the kid's father. Because Someone, somewhere, had to have it in for him.
"I've been looking for you, Mr Crowley," Adam said, almost gently. "Brian tells me you're making quite a name for yourself, around here." He smiled, his father's shark-like grin, and oh, it looked so wrong on that face, that cheerful, youthful face. But the eyes. Oh, the eyes gave the truth to that smile. Those eyes had seen a world, and all the power it had to offer, and turned it down with that same, faint smile, only taking this one patch, this one city, for himself. All his father's political wranglings, and Adam Young had chosen Los Angeles, and a modest criminal empire for his own.
"Just trying to pay the bills," Crowley said to Lucifer's son, without much hope. Still. He tried his best smile, knowing it floated uneasily at best over the old, tired fear in his eyes, but he'd been around this block before, and the worm of suspicion that had seeded all those years ago had become a full-blown, weary cynicism. No point trying to lie to the kind of person Adam had become. They'd get what they wanted either way.
"I'm sure," Adam murmured, and there was a look in his eyes that was almost sympathetic, almost ... caring. Crowley stared, just a little. "Listen, Mr Crowley. I'm not here to make life difficult for you. I'm not here to shake you down. I just need a few answers from you. And ... to give you a warning. Alright?"
"Uh ... Sure?" he managed. Eloquent as ever. And then flinched, a little, as the other three drew close, and cheerfully, immovably, boxed him in, pinned him beneath Adam's odd, gentle stare.
"You knew my father, Mr Crowley," the young man said, raising an eyebrow in prompt. Crowley flinched, bone deep, and his nod now was staggered, shaken by the knot of dread in his belly. "Wensley here got his hands on your old records. And my father's old notes. It makes for ... interesting reading, Mr Crowley."
"I'll bet," he rasped, mouth dry as a salt-pan, hands knotted together in his lap to disguise the shakes. "Always had a way with words, your father."
"Yes," Adam said softly, watching him. "And a way with people, too. Did you even know what you were getting into, Mr Crowley? Did you have any idea?" And his voice was soft, compassionate, a tone Crowley'd never heard from the father, and there was a look in Adam Young's eyes as he spoke, a look Crowley'd gotten used to seeing in the mirror, old and tired. A knowing look.
"If I had," he said, equally soft, prompted to rare honesty by that look, "If I had, Mr Young, I wouldn't have gone within a mile of your father. I'd've run the moment I heard his name, and never looked back. God's truth."
"Coward," the woman spoke up, suddenly, voice rough with contempt, but not ungentle despite it.
"Sensible," Adam countered softly, turning to smile faintly at her. "Not everyone has your ... unique outlook, Pepper."
"Lucky for all of us," the spectacled man muttered under his breath, and Crowley stared at them. Stared at all of them, but Adam most of all. At the softness that appeared in his eyes as he watched his supposed servants snipe at each other, at the laughing exasperation as he held up an imperious hand to stop them. Crowley stared, and didn't think to hide it when Adam looked back his way, and smiled softly.
"Just to warn you then, Mr Crowley," he said, mouth curling slightly. "Since you're so sensible." Then he sobered, darkened, became again the young man who had looked on his father's ruined empire, and taken what he wanted for his own. "There are certain people who have been looking into my father's old ... assets. Looking to acquire them again. Perhaps, I suspect, looking to rebuild what was lost when he fell from power. As one of those assets ... You'd do well to be careful, Mr Crowley. To run, perhaps, when you hear the right names." He smiled darkly, shaking his head. "I don't think I'm the only one who doesn't wish to see my father's mistakes repeated, yes?"
Crowley swallowed. Hard. "There are other ways to prevent that," he noted quietly, one tiny, self-preserving part of his brain screaming at him for it, for putting idea's into people's heads. But when he looked up from his white-knuckled hands, when he looked up at Lucifer's son ... Adam only smiled, and said very, very gently:
"Not for me, Mr Crowley. Not for me."
Then he stood, and gathered his people, and left. Left Crowley shaking in his chair, left one more remnant of his father's world quaking behind him, and returned to the forging of a new and gentler empire all his own.
And Crowley, while his hands grasped desperately for the bottle on his desk, for the first time, actually wished him well.
***
"Why, Mister C, you look just about done in!" Madame Tracy stopped behind him, in full regalia for the coming evening, leaning heavily on her husband's arm and frowning at him in concern. Shadwell, for his part, was glaring at him, but in Crowley's experience, Shadwell glared at everyone.
Crowley looked up at her blearily. Very blearily. He'd only had the two drinks so far in the bar, but he'd gotten in a good head-start back at the office, and had continued to advance on it under the dubious gaze of one Newton Pulsifer, the Painted Jezebel's barman and general money-manager. Nice kid, aside from the odd obsession with all things electrical, but he'd no floor presence, and no strength to back up a comment that 'maybe you've had enough, sir'. Not without Shadwell's belligerent presence, anyway, and the bouncer had been ... busy. Madame Tracy was always a bit bouncy on a Thursday night.
"M'fine," he muttered, feeling an urge to shuffle like a kid caught where he shouldn't be, and shoving it down in annoyance. And he was, more or less. Aside from having been scared out of his wits by a visit from the local mob boss, anyway. He'd always been able to hold his liquor. Always. "Jusssst a bad day, that'sss all."
He'd never quite figured out the lisp, though.
"I can see that, Mister C," the Madame frowned reprovingly. Not because he was making a scene, which would be the case on most evenings, but it was too early yet for the usual crowd, though a few of the girls were loitering provocatively, just in case. More in concern, he thought, and felt oddly warmed. Even Shadwell, beneath his pugnacious brow, was looking at him with a gentle enough twinkle in his eye.
It'd been a stroke of pure luck, landing here after the scandal over the ex-Commissioner had wiped out more or less everything about his old life, and the innocent young idiot he'd used to be. Pure luck, to wind up wheedling a room at the dolly house in desperation, and meeting Madame Tracy and her religious, belligerent, mildly insane husband. In no other relationship, after all, could the phrase 'you painted jezebel' be a term of endearment.
"Sssome old friendss dropping by, iss all," he managed eventually, waving a still-shaking hand. He frowned at it a bit. Would have to get that under control soon, he thought. Not the right look, a suave bit of kit like himself. "Bringing up the passst, you know?"
"I do," she said, a vast, motherly presence beside him, and reached out to pat his hand gently. "But you'll do yourself no good, carrying on like this, Mister C. Now go get yourself a nice cup of tea, and sort yourself out, will you?"
"Mightn't get the chance," another voice cut in, hard and female, though not quite as hard as another broad he'd heard that day. Crowley still flinched a bit, looking over at Newton's girl, the redoubtable Anathema. He always did, with her. Given that their first meeting had involved his mistaking her, rather reasonably considering she worked in a dolly house, for a pro skirt, and her disabusing him of the notion with a foot-long bread knife she apparently carried at all times.
It had been a whirlwind introduction, his coming to the Painted Jezebel.
"What d'you mean, dearie?" Tracy asked, moving aside for her. Crowley'd never quite figured out what their relationship was, or what, exactly, Anathema did for the madame, besides keep her money-man happy and reasonably sane, but Anathema had an uncanny knack for knowing what was coming, and they all knew it.
Anathema smiled thinly, and looked him over. "Should maybe try the tea anyway," she commented, and Crowley considered flipping her off, but paused at her next words, that little voice in the back of his head screaming at him again. "Think he's going to need a clearer head, dealing with the flattie upstairs."
"Hmpf!" Shadwell snorted explosively, pulling Crowley's shaky attention back around. "Southern nancy!" he declaimed, shaking his head in obvious dismissal. "Wouldn't worry. Not him."
And Crowley frowned, feeling the fog clear a bit from his head, though the ball of ice didn't move from his stomach, didn't shake clear of the nice little home it'd made for itself. The Law was never a good guest to have drop 'round. Especially not for him. The Law never looked kindly on its own fallen. But this one ... There was only one cop Shadwell talked about that way, and Crowley'd been looking to meet him for a while now. Admittedly, not on the heels of the kind of day he'd had, but beggars couldn't be choosers. That, he knew all too well.
He stood, wavering only slightly, and squared his shoulders against Anathema's cold stare and Tracy's vague concern, moving slowly but steadily upstairs.
Lets just see what, exactly, Detective Fell wanted with a smooth ex-cop, shall we?
***
The Detective was sitting on Crowley's sofa when he made his slightly woozy way through the door. Only slightly, only very slightly. He'd taken coffee over the offered tea, and done his level best to sober up a touch before coming up here. Coming up here to see the man sitting in the half-light of his room, almost primly, looking as stiff and out of place as any man ever had in a bordello. He looked ... shiny. Clean. Bright as his damn badge.
Crowley decided to hate him on the spot, but was too tired to really do anything about it. Not right then.
"Can I help you?" he asked wearily, staggering over to the hob and fumbling with the kettle. Pulling a can of beans down out of the cupboard. If the man decided to show up in Crowley's home instead of the office, he could damn well pay the price.
"Mr Crowley?" the man asked, uncertainly, coming to his feet and watching Crowley shuffle around with some confusion. Though Crowley stopped shuffling at his next question. Froze solid, right enough. "Do you remember me, Mr Crowley?"
Remember him. Damn it, not again, not today. But Crowley turned, turned to rake eyes over the solid, soft-looking figure standing in front of his sofa. To take in the warm, wide face, and the blue eyes with their oddly knowing twinkle, and the way there was a hint, just a hint, in the way he stood, that said he wasn't quite as harmless as he might appear. Not quite so harmless at all.
Crowley looked at him. Weighed him up, and measured him against the stark, white memories of those he'd known in his old life, measured him against the faded faces of people he'd once served beside.
And came up with only one match.
"Sonofa!" he snarled, dropping the can and stalking forwards. His hands, shaking, curled themselves into fists. He remembered, alright. Oh, he remembered. Not the name. He'd never remembered that, until now. But the face. Those eyes. Oh yes. He remembered. "Officer Fell. At the hearing. You gave them the evidence from the Eve case. You son of a bitch!"
"I did what was right!" the detective shot back, hotly, a flush appearing under his stiff collar. "You lied to that young woman! I heard you do it. You lied to her, and got her husband arrested, when the fault was yours. If you hadn't offered her that bribe, given her the wrong information ..."
"She'd ssstill have fallen," Crowley hissed, but not as fiercely as he might. Too tired. He was too damn tired for this. "Trussst me. She was in the way of something important people wanted. Whether it was me, or sssomeone else ... Nobody got in that man's way, and made it out unscathed. Nobody. And I wasssn't the worst she could have gotten."
He hadn't been. Heaven help him, he hadn't. And he'd seen what the likes of the Dukes could do, back then. Unimaginative. Brutal. But very, very effective. No. He wasn't the worst that poor broad could have gotten. Not by a long shot.
The cop paused, the righteous indignation fading a bit, and shuffled awkwardly under Crowley's stare. Stiff, and uneasy, and Crowley could feel his gut tightening all over again. That kind of day. That kind of day, but there was something about this man that suggested it wasn't easy to knock him off his game, and Crowley really didn't want to know what made a straight, clean cop like this come to him.
"I know that," Fell said at last, to the floorboards. "I know you weren't, Mr Crowley. I know that now. And I ... I need your help. I need your knowledge, your experience with ... that kind of thing."
Crowley's stomach twisted, Adam Young's voice sounding softly in the back of his head. You'd do well to be careful, Mr Crowley. To run, perhaps, when you hear the right names.
"And why," he asked softly, "would you need that, Detective? Why would a bright, shiny badge like yourself need a wrong-side copper like me?"
Fell looked up at him, that cheerful face gone narrow and strained, and a look in those eyes that Crowley remembered all too well, and maybe hated a little, for how long it had been since he'd shown it himself. A stalwart determination, and a sure knowledge of what was right, of what needed to be done.
"Because," the detective answered softly. "Because things have been happening, Mr Crowley. Because things have been done, things I don't think any police officer should be proud of, and no-one is seeing it. Or no-one is speaking out against it, if they are. People are dying, Mr Crowley, and people are being locked away, and I don't think they're committing the crimes they're being locked away for." He paused, took in the sick realisation slowly dawning on Crowley's face, the old fear rising slowly and steadily to the surface. "Someone is doing things the old way again, Mr Crowley. And I need your help to stop them."
Crowley sat down. On the floor, and mostly in a heap, but he couldn't help that. He couldn't help it. He knew where this ended. He knew where this was going. Run away, said Adam's voice. Get the hell outta here, said the voice of survival always whispering in the back of his mind. Not again, whispered the old, tired thing where once there had been a young, innocent copper.
But he looked up at the detective, at this soft copper who wasn't at all as harmless as he appeared, and he remembered. He remembered the look in those blue eyes, as innocent then as they were now, as steady, as sure. He remembered that this one had always been clean, that even at the height of the ex-Commissioner's corruption, when it seemed every other cop was in it in some way or another ... this one cop had always followed the straight and narrow.
And he remembered, too, what happened to cops who stuck to the straight-and-narrow under Lucifer. He remembered what this one had been lucky enough to avoid, last time. And he thought about Adam Young, and assets being collected, and what might happen to a clean copper if someone really was going back to the bad old ways. Thought about what would happen to Detective Fell, who would never be anything but clean. And it was too much. Crowley held his grudges, nursed them, and the man had cost him his second chance. But some things went beyond the scope of a grudge, and the knowledge that someone should be your enemy. Some things went beyond.
"What do you need to know?" he sighed softly, and tried not to feel it when his words brightened those vibrant eyes.
He'd been young and stupid then. He was young and stupid now, too.
"We've heard ... interesting things about you, Mr Crowley," the elder of the two drawled, leaning back in his wide, leather armchair, holding his thick, stubby cigar between his thick, stubby fingers. Harry Dowling, he was, television magnate and producer of Badge of Honor. And thoroughly nasty customer, in that dull, glittery way only the rich could pull off. "Very interesting things indeed."
Crowley felt his smile slip, a little, felt something cold and hard as a skirt's heart settle in his belly as he met those piggy little eyes, but he'd had harder sells than this. He could sell anything, to anyone. Always could, always would. Mama was right. He should have been a salesman from the start.
So he fixed his bright, charming smile, curved it a little to look like he was sharing a secret, to invite this fat, pasty man into his confidences, and asked: "Really?"
"Really," the third man cut in, with a sharp little smile that didn't look at all right on his handsome, steel-jawed face. Warlock Dowling. The actor slated to play the lead in his Daddy's new show, a nice, innocent young man with perhaps a tendency to stray to the wrong side of the street, if Crowley heard right. And he usually did. A young man who'd spent too many years poised between the heroes of the screen and the sordidness of real life, between Daddy's wealth and old diplomatic connections, and the seedier underbelly of show business. He'd be perfect enough for the role of heroic, run-down cop, Crowley thought. If only he had just a touch more brains.
"I'll tell you what," he decided, looking at that handsome, fresh face and feeling suddenly very, very tired. "How about we put our cards on the table, gentlemen?" He looked at them, corpulent businessman and child-turned-actor, and spread his hands disingenuously. "You've heard who I am. You've heard I used to be a cop, maybe heard why I'm not anymore. You're wondering if you should hire a shady character like me to advise on a squeaky-clean show like Badge of Honor, when obviously I've never been honourable in my life. Right?"
He screwed his grin a little tighter, leaned forward and lowered his voice, made it vibrant, made it passionate, the perfect pitch for a sale, and did his best to ignore the squirming in his belly, the bile in his throat.
"I'll tell you why you should," he murmured, watching their eyes, seeing the interest. "Because I do know honour, sirs. I know what it's like to hold the badge, and swear the oath, and do your best to live up to it. But more than that. I know what it's like to lose sight of it. To make that one little step that separates the good cops from the bad ones, and to not even realise you were doing it. I know what it's like to see honour and know you've lost it. And I can give you that. I can show you that. I can tell you how the system works, and how the badge feels, and what it's like to stand on the edge of losing it. And that, sirs ... that is television. That's drama. That's what your audiences want to see. To see the hero go that far and no further, to fight back from the fall. All that. And I can show you how. But only, my good sirs, if you hire me."
He stopped, waiting, something slick and cold in his chest, his tongue numb from saying those words, from letting the lie slip too close to the truth, but it was done now. It was said now, and if it got him a damn pay-check, well ... whiskey'd warm up the chill inside him soon enough. And the look in those glittering eyes ... Numb his tongue may be, but it was still made of silver. He was still the slickest salesman on the block, the very angel of temptation, like mama always said.
"You are a very interesting man, Mr Crowley," said Dowling, pulling a pen out of his pocket and holding it out, smiling a nasty little smile while his son looked on with naive interest. "A very interesting man indeed."
***
You're a very interesting young man, Officer Crowley. A very interesting man indeed.
His first meeting with the now ex-Commissioner Lucifer had seemed so innocent, at the time. He'd been young, then. Wet behind the ears, an earnest young mama's boy with a silver tongue and a knack for Vice. Only from the point of view of tracking it down and stamping it out, of course. Then, anyway. Then. Things ... had changed, later, and nothing for the better. He'd been young. He'd been so damn young.
An interesting young man, the Commissioner had called him. While he'd been standing, quaking in his uniform shoes, before his desk, with an accusation of taking bribes hanging over his rookie, innocent head, and the man's cold, cheerful eyes burning a hole in his forehead. While the rest of the Hearing Council looked on him with slow contempt, the so-called 'Dukes' sitting at the Commissioner's side and smiling coldly. While Crowley had been marshaling every potentially helpful lie he could manage through the panic, and waiting for judgement that hadn't come. Later, years later ... he almost wished it had.
"I have ... uses, for interesting young men," Commissioner Lucifer had said, warm and paternal, inviting Crowley to sit down, smiling shallowly when Crowley obeyed out of pure shock. "I've been watching you, young Crowley. Very closely. And I think I see something I like. So. What do you say? Would you be willing to do maybe the odd little job for me, in return for making these unfortunate charges ... go away?"
"Jobs?" he'd quavered, with a spark of survival instinct latching onto any way out, and a worm of something that would later grow into terrible suspicion in the back of his mind, that was ignored, always ignored, until far too late. "What kind of jobs?"
And Lucifer had smiled like a shark, and explained his vision of a Los Angeles without the filth of all those undesirables staining its shining image as the City of Angels, explained to an innocent young man how the simplest of things, just little things, forgetting a word here or there, slipping some evidence once in a while, could help them achieve this wonderful goal. It was the best damn sales pitch Crowley'd ever heard.
It had ruined his life. But he hadn't known it then. He'd been just too damn stupid then. Too damn young.
***
Adam Young was waiting for him in his office when he got back from the meet with Dowling. Adam Young, and all three of his top enforcers, the four of them making themselves quite at home with Crowley's furniture and, most importantly, his alcohol. He wasn't happy about that. He wasn't happy about that at all. But he didn't say anything. You didn't, not to Them. Not if you liked your limbs in the order they came in.
"Do come in, Mr Crowley," said the nice, friendly young man who had most of LA's underworld in a stranglehold, waving a magnanimous hand at the chair on the other side of Crowley's desk. Like he owned the place, but careful, careful, because this one just might.
Crowley glanced around warily, taking in the cheerful bulk of a Mr Brian by the doorway, grinning at him conspiratorially; the narrow figure of the young woman known only as 'Pepper' leaning against his filing cabinet, twirling a heavy baton nonchalantly; the serious, bespectacled man at Adam's right-hand side, looking twenty-eight-going-on-fifty, and going by the mysterious name of 'Wensley'. He looked at them, the group of four known only as Them, because you never, ever named names, not in this city. He looked around, took them in.
And then he sat down. Tiredly, cautiously, and with a queasy smile that got nothing but a snort of contempt from the woman, and a small, gentle smile from Adam that sent the shivers running up Crowley's spine. Exactly the way they had with the kid's father. Because Someone, somewhere, had to have it in for him.
"I've been looking for you, Mr Crowley," Adam said, almost gently. "Brian tells me you're making quite a name for yourself, around here." He smiled, his father's shark-like grin, and oh, it looked so wrong on that face, that cheerful, youthful face. But the eyes. Oh, the eyes gave the truth to that smile. Those eyes had seen a world, and all the power it had to offer, and turned it down with that same, faint smile, only taking this one patch, this one city, for himself. All his father's political wranglings, and Adam Young had chosen Los Angeles, and a modest criminal empire for his own.
"Just trying to pay the bills," Crowley said to Lucifer's son, without much hope. Still. He tried his best smile, knowing it floated uneasily at best over the old, tired fear in his eyes, but he'd been around this block before, and the worm of suspicion that had seeded all those years ago had become a full-blown, weary cynicism. No point trying to lie to the kind of person Adam had become. They'd get what they wanted either way.
"I'm sure," Adam murmured, and there was a look in his eyes that was almost sympathetic, almost ... caring. Crowley stared, just a little. "Listen, Mr Crowley. I'm not here to make life difficult for you. I'm not here to shake you down. I just need a few answers from you. And ... to give you a warning. Alright?"
"Uh ... Sure?" he managed. Eloquent as ever. And then flinched, a little, as the other three drew close, and cheerfully, immovably, boxed him in, pinned him beneath Adam's odd, gentle stare.
"You knew my father, Mr Crowley," the young man said, raising an eyebrow in prompt. Crowley flinched, bone deep, and his nod now was staggered, shaken by the knot of dread in his belly. "Wensley here got his hands on your old records. And my father's old notes. It makes for ... interesting reading, Mr Crowley."
"I'll bet," he rasped, mouth dry as a salt-pan, hands knotted together in his lap to disguise the shakes. "Always had a way with words, your father."
"Yes," Adam said softly, watching him. "And a way with people, too. Did you even know what you were getting into, Mr Crowley? Did you have any idea?" And his voice was soft, compassionate, a tone Crowley'd never heard from the father, and there was a look in Adam Young's eyes as he spoke, a look Crowley'd gotten used to seeing in the mirror, old and tired. A knowing look.
"If I had," he said, equally soft, prompted to rare honesty by that look, "If I had, Mr Young, I wouldn't have gone within a mile of your father. I'd've run the moment I heard his name, and never looked back. God's truth."
"Coward," the woman spoke up, suddenly, voice rough with contempt, but not ungentle despite it.
"Sensible," Adam countered softly, turning to smile faintly at her. "Not everyone has your ... unique outlook, Pepper."
"Lucky for all of us," the spectacled man muttered under his breath, and Crowley stared at them. Stared at all of them, but Adam most of all. At the softness that appeared in his eyes as he watched his supposed servants snipe at each other, at the laughing exasperation as he held up an imperious hand to stop them. Crowley stared, and didn't think to hide it when Adam looked back his way, and smiled softly.
"Just to warn you then, Mr Crowley," he said, mouth curling slightly. "Since you're so sensible." Then he sobered, darkened, became again the young man who had looked on his father's ruined empire, and taken what he wanted for his own. "There are certain people who have been looking into my father's old ... assets. Looking to acquire them again. Perhaps, I suspect, looking to rebuild what was lost when he fell from power. As one of those assets ... You'd do well to be careful, Mr Crowley. To run, perhaps, when you hear the right names." He smiled darkly, shaking his head. "I don't think I'm the only one who doesn't wish to see my father's mistakes repeated, yes?"
Crowley swallowed. Hard. "There are other ways to prevent that," he noted quietly, one tiny, self-preserving part of his brain screaming at him for it, for putting idea's into people's heads. But when he looked up from his white-knuckled hands, when he looked up at Lucifer's son ... Adam only smiled, and said very, very gently:
"Not for me, Mr Crowley. Not for me."
Then he stood, and gathered his people, and left. Left Crowley shaking in his chair, left one more remnant of his father's world quaking behind him, and returned to the forging of a new and gentler empire all his own.
And Crowley, while his hands grasped desperately for the bottle on his desk, for the first time, actually wished him well.
***
"Why, Mister C, you look just about done in!" Madame Tracy stopped behind him, in full regalia for the coming evening, leaning heavily on her husband's arm and frowning at him in concern. Shadwell, for his part, was glaring at him, but in Crowley's experience, Shadwell glared at everyone.
Crowley looked up at her blearily. Very blearily. He'd only had the two drinks so far in the bar, but he'd gotten in a good head-start back at the office, and had continued to advance on it under the dubious gaze of one Newton Pulsifer, the Painted Jezebel's barman and general money-manager. Nice kid, aside from the odd obsession with all things electrical, but he'd no floor presence, and no strength to back up a comment that 'maybe you've had enough, sir'. Not without Shadwell's belligerent presence, anyway, and the bouncer had been ... busy. Madame Tracy was always a bit bouncy on a Thursday night.
"M'fine," he muttered, feeling an urge to shuffle like a kid caught where he shouldn't be, and shoving it down in annoyance. And he was, more or less. Aside from having been scared out of his wits by a visit from the local mob boss, anyway. He'd always been able to hold his liquor. Always. "Jusssst a bad day, that'sss all."
He'd never quite figured out the lisp, though.
"I can see that, Mister C," the Madame frowned reprovingly. Not because he was making a scene, which would be the case on most evenings, but it was too early yet for the usual crowd, though a few of the girls were loitering provocatively, just in case. More in concern, he thought, and felt oddly warmed. Even Shadwell, beneath his pugnacious brow, was looking at him with a gentle enough twinkle in his eye.
It'd been a stroke of pure luck, landing here after the scandal over the ex-Commissioner had wiped out more or less everything about his old life, and the innocent young idiot he'd used to be. Pure luck, to wind up wheedling a room at the dolly house in desperation, and meeting Madame Tracy and her religious, belligerent, mildly insane husband. In no other relationship, after all, could the phrase 'you painted jezebel' be a term of endearment.
"Sssome old friendss dropping by, iss all," he managed eventually, waving a still-shaking hand. He frowned at it a bit. Would have to get that under control soon, he thought. Not the right look, a suave bit of kit like himself. "Bringing up the passst, you know?"
"I do," she said, a vast, motherly presence beside him, and reached out to pat his hand gently. "But you'll do yourself no good, carrying on like this, Mister C. Now go get yourself a nice cup of tea, and sort yourself out, will you?"
"Mightn't get the chance," another voice cut in, hard and female, though not quite as hard as another broad he'd heard that day. Crowley still flinched a bit, looking over at Newton's girl, the redoubtable Anathema. He always did, with her. Given that their first meeting had involved his mistaking her, rather reasonably considering she worked in a dolly house, for a pro skirt, and her disabusing him of the notion with a foot-long bread knife she apparently carried at all times.
It had been a whirlwind introduction, his coming to the Painted Jezebel.
"What d'you mean, dearie?" Tracy asked, moving aside for her. Crowley'd never quite figured out what their relationship was, or what, exactly, Anathema did for the madame, besides keep her money-man happy and reasonably sane, but Anathema had an uncanny knack for knowing what was coming, and they all knew it.
Anathema smiled thinly, and looked him over. "Should maybe try the tea anyway," she commented, and Crowley considered flipping her off, but paused at her next words, that little voice in the back of his head screaming at him again. "Think he's going to need a clearer head, dealing with the flattie upstairs."
"Hmpf!" Shadwell snorted explosively, pulling Crowley's shaky attention back around. "Southern nancy!" he declaimed, shaking his head in obvious dismissal. "Wouldn't worry. Not him."
And Crowley frowned, feeling the fog clear a bit from his head, though the ball of ice didn't move from his stomach, didn't shake clear of the nice little home it'd made for itself. The Law was never a good guest to have drop 'round. Especially not for him. The Law never looked kindly on its own fallen. But this one ... There was only one cop Shadwell talked about that way, and Crowley'd been looking to meet him for a while now. Admittedly, not on the heels of the kind of day he'd had, but beggars couldn't be choosers. That, he knew all too well.
He stood, wavering only slightly, and squared his shoulders against Anathema's cold stare and Tracy's vague concern, moving slowly but steadily upstairs.
Lets just see what, exactly, Detective Fell wanted with a smooth ex-cop, shall we?
***
The Detective was sitting on Crowley's sofa when he made his slightly woozy way through the door. Only slightly, only very slightly. He'd taken coffee over the offered tea, and done his level best to sober up a touch before coming up here. Coming up here to see the man sitting in the half-light of his room, almost primly, looking as stiff and out of place as any man ever had in a bordello. He looked ... shiny. Clean. Bright as his damn badge.
Crowley decided to hate him on the spot, but was too tired to really do anything about it. Not right then.
"Can I help you?" he asked wearily, staggering over to the hob and fumbling with the kettle. Pulling a can of beans down out of the cupboard. If the man decided to show up in Crowley's home instead of the office, he could damn well pay the price.
"Mr Crowley?" the man asked, uncertainly, coming to his feet and watching Crowley shuffle around with some confusion. Though Crowley stopped shuffling at his next question. Froze solid, right enough. "Do you remember me, Mr Crowley?"
Remember him. Damn it, not again, not today. But Crowley turned, turned to rake eyes over the solid, soft-looking figure standing in front of his sofa. To take in the warm, wide face, and the blue eyes with their oddly knowing twinkle, and the way there was a hint, just a hint, in the way he stood, that said he wasn't quite as harmless as he might appear. Not quite so harmless at all.
Crowley looked at him. Weighed him up, and measured him against the stark, white memories of those he'd known in his old life, measured him against the faded faces of people he'd once served beside.
And came up with only one match.
"Sonofa!" he snarled, dropping the can and stalking forwards. His hands, shaking, curled themselves into fists. He remembered, alright. Oh, he remembered. Not the name. He'd never remembered that, until now. But the face. Those eyes. Oh yes. He remembered. "Officer Fell. At the hearing. You gave them the evidence from the Eve case. You son of a bitch!"
"I did what was right!" the detective shot back, hotly, a flush appearing under his stiff collar. "You lied to that young woman! I heard you do it. You lied to her, and got her husband arrested, when the fault was yours. If you hadn't offered her that bribe, given her the wrong information ..."
"She'd ssstill have fallen," Crowley hissed, but not as fiercely as he might. Too tired. He was too damn tired for this. "Trussst me. She was in the way of something important people wanted. Whether it was me, or sssomeone else ... Nobody got in that man's way, and made it out unscathed. Nobody. And I wasssn't the worst she could have gotten."
He hadn't been. Heaven help him, he hadn't. And he'd seen what the likes of the Dukes could do, back then. Unimaginative. Brutal. But very, very effective. No. He wasn't the worst that poor broad could have gotten. Not by a long shot.
The cop paused, the righteous indignation fading a bit, and shuffled awkwardly under Crowley's stare. Stiff, and uneasy, and Crowley could feel his gut tightening all over again. That kind of day. That kind of day, but there was something about this man that suggested it wasn't easy to knock him off his game, and Crowley really didn't want to know what made a straight, clean cop like this come to him.
"I know that," Fell said at last, to the floorboards. "I know you weren't, Mr Crowley. I know that now. And I ... I need your help. I need your knowledge, your experience with ... that kind of thing."
Crowley's stomach twisted, Adam Young's voice sounding softly in the back of his head. You'd do well to be careful, Mr Crowley. To run, perhaps, when you hear the right names.
"And why," he asked softly, "would you need that, Detective? Why would a bright, shiny badge like yourself need a wrong-side copper like me?"
Fell looked up at him, that cheerful face gone narrow and strained, and a look in those eyes that Crowley remembered all too well, and maybe hated a little, for how long it had been since he'd shown it himself. A stalwart determination, and a sure knowledge of what was right, of what needed to be done.
"Because," the detective answered softly. "Because things have been happening, Mr Crowley. Because things have been done, things I don't think any police officer should be proud of, and no-one is seeing it. Or no-one is speaking out against it, if they are. People are dying, Mr Crowley, and people are being locked away, and I don't think they're committing the crimes they're being locked away for." He paused, took in the sick realisation slowly dawning on Crowley's face, the old fear rising slowly and steadily to the surface. "Someone is doing things the old way again, Mr Crowley. And I need your help to stop them."
Crowley sat down. On the floor, and mostly in a heap, but he couldn't help that. He couldn't help it. He knew where this ended. He knew where this was going. Run away, said Adam's voice. Get the hell outta here, said the voice of survival always whispering in the back of his mind. Not again, whispered the old, tired thing where once there had been a young, innocent copper.
But he looked up at the detective, at this soft copper who wasn't at all as harmless as he appeared, and he remembered. He remembered the look in those blue eyes, as innocent then as they were now, as steady, as sure. He remembered that this one had always been clean, that even at the height of the ex-Commissioner's corruption, when it seemed every other cop was in it in some way or another ... this one cop had always followed the straight and narrow.
And he remembered, too, what happened to cops who stuck to the straight-and-narrow under Lucifer. He remembered what this one had been lucky enough to avoid, last time. And he thought about Adam Young, and assets being collected, and what might happen to a clean copper if someone really was going back to the bad old ways. Thought about what would happen to Detective Fell, who would never be anything but clean. And it was too much. Crowley held his grudges, nursed them, and the man had cost him his second chance. But some things went beyond the scope of a grudge, and the knowledge that someone should be your enemy. Some things went beyond.
"What do you need to know?" he sighed softly, and tried not to feel it when his words brightened those vibrant eyes.
He'd been young and stupid then. He was young and stupid now, too.
Tags: