c a n d y c o r n Chapter 1: officer honored at closedcasket service, a reservoir dogs fanfic

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#thestinkofdesperation

Apocalypse Now! vol. 1

SCENE: Mexico Borderlands, 002 A.A.

Refugee caravan crawling, week by long and bloody lurching week, closer to the coast in constant search for supplies and survivors. The stars among the operating crew are The Sheriff (not a real Sheriff, but nobody else had the boots for the job), The Chef (actually a chef), The Mayor (kept the paperwork and oversaw supplies) and The Doc (not a real doctor, but could perform medically necessary tasks without vomiting).

The Doc is the newest acquisition of the crew; another haggard soul the wasted landscape had chewed up and spat back out. Leathered in the tannery of Justice and deemed fit to survive until such a thing as a natural demise, as the pamphlets said. Sheriff didn't care if the Doc had kind eyes or was good with kids or not. The Doc could knife a lumber-goon with every inch of his low center of gravity like the earth itself was reaching through him to behead his enemies. He carried an old Safari hunting rifle nearly as tall as his own meager self, and didn't shirk duties or give lip.

So when some tall drink of water wanders in through the camp, claiming the Doc was the man who had once shot him clean through the heart, well, the passengers of the caravan find that more than a little difficult to believe.

The Sheriff doesn't give a shit either way. They'd all met their judgement, and all who had been called away had gone away and it was up to those who were left to take the world back for themselves and no pre-war bullshit was going to fuck that up. Not on Sheriff Darling's watch.

The Doc had simply turned away from the bread line and dodged the stranger's approach, muttering that he didn't believe in ghosts.

The Santino Arc vol. 1

SCENE: OFFICE I

Dusty's Garage and Spare Wholesale.

Clean, ugly little back office. Folding chairs and dixie-cup beers. Nice-Guy Eddie is explaining the situation while Messrs Orange, Blonde, White and Chartreuse try to get comfortable with cigarettes and unbuttoned jackets. Navy is perched near the door, hawk-eyed over the keg while he fiddles with his AA coin.

Blonde keeps egging Navy on, in between Eddie's little side-arguments with White. "Take a beer or don't, Pearl. Either way, stop hoverin'." Blonde levels a stare at Eddie's wordless protest. "I don't like hovering, Nice-Guy. Tell Mr. Pearl Harbor over there why I don't like hovering."

Eddie blinks, head jerking back as if he'd just been slapped with a frayed shoelace. "You can tell him yourself. After I'm done talking, maybe, and as a favor to me, right now? All I ask is that you could both sit down and shut the fuck up? Maybe?"

Blonde's smile twitches, and he drops his gaze and slowly folds his hands together. Blonde calls Navy 'Pearl Harbor' because Mr. Navy is Japanese – Navy, Pearl Harbor, get it? If you didn't get the joke you were probably just trying to be polite, and nobody in that room would ever really concern himself with being politically correct. If you got the joke, but didn't laugh, it was because you'd been on the end of Blonde's ruthless needling once or twice yourself and were mired in commiseration with the struggling alcoholic. If you got the joke and laughed, then you'd probably known Blonde for years already and understood his ways of 'making friendly'.

Or else you got the joke and didn't like it, could smell Blonde's bullshit a mile away, and laughed along with Eddie just to ease the tension in the room.

Orange was the only one who laughed when Blonde and Eddie went toe-to-toe, but then he was also the only one who laughed when White was being particularly caustic, or whenever Chartreuse countered someone with wry sarcasm. Orange's laugh was nearly always nervous. Orange was kinda one of those twitchy guys you'd think to look out for; nasal when he did speak, expressive and high-energy even as he listened. His face was always moving, eyebrows hitching up and down and together as his birdy profile swung from one speaker to the other. He'd proven himself well enough with the Santino Job, though. Steady shot. Cool head. None of the usual twitchy toady giggling bullshit.

SCENE: DOCKSIDE II

Back lot to shipping warehouse. Night; moths collect around wide-brimmed corridor lamps. A heavy windowless door is open to the warm light of the warehouse office, casting Mr. White and Mr. Orange in reclining shadows. From a distance, a witness might not notice all the blood on Orange's persons.

From his perspective, Mr. White can't take his eyes off the stains. "Hey, pal." A lit cigarette, passed between easy friends. "You all right?"

"Yeah," Mr. Orange is back to his usual sneering, abject self. He hitches his suit jacket closer and tries to brush a splatter of gore from his sleeve. "We got about seven more minutes." As if on cue, the scraping shuffle just inside the office pauses to let out a wet moan. "What about you?" Orange offers the cigarette but White hesitates in taking it. "This ain't your usual line of work."

"What do you know about my line of work?" White grudgingly counters, snubbing the cigarette out just because he has to extinguish something and can't quite bring himself to finish Orange's little project. Morbid curiosity mingles with frustration; regret and pity lurking around White's new batch of suspicions. "Sure, I don't usually do hits. Neither do you, in case you forgot. But I overseen enough many retributions gone wrong that I know the difference between Personal and Nothing Personal; and buddy, lemme tell you, you gotta be operatin' as far away from Nothing Personal as I've ever seen. How the fuck do you know Sant – "

Orange's answer is so sharp and low that White's stomach gives a little twist, like he's just been let in on a secret. "Goddammit Larry, it don't matter."

And Mr. White thinks that maybe he has been let in on something. Something deeply awful that maybe pisses him off and makes him wanna reach over and hug the kid and tell him it never happened so maybe he could go back to being twitchy and nervous and gun-shy and regular. Something a friend might ignore, might get the hint about and drop from conversation in order to leave Orange some dignity. White takes a deep breath. "We'll talk about this later, Freddy."

Orange scoffs. "Ain't nothin' to say." He doesn't wait the remainder five or so minutes Santino has left, reloading his pistol with a violent confidence White can't help but take pride in. In the next moment, Orange isn't just a tweaking smuggler with goofy rabbit eyes – he is a vindictive, tough little turd with a steady killing hand and the eyes of a stranger.

SCENE: OFFICE II

Dusty's Garage and Spare Wholesale.

"Mr. Navy? Please? Take a seat, pal. Join the conference." Eddie leans back in his own cheap fold-away, wincing as the cold metal squeaks under shifting bodies.

During the interim of a settling room, Mr. Orange had caught Mr. White's expression and gone completely still. Mr. White is studying Mr. Orange from head to toe, carefully as if trying to pull up a memory. Mr. White lifts a hand to interrupt Nice-Guy Eddie before Nice-Guy Eddie even has a chance to get started. "'Scuse me," Mr. White gruffs. "Excuse me, Nice-Guy, I just have to ask this one thing and then we can get this grift assignment sorted." Mr. White leans forward, eyes pinching up in scrutiny and concern as his voice drops. "Heya, Orange? About how long you had them shoes?"

The room stills, half in confusion and half in irritation. Only Blonde sits forward avidly, sharp blue eyes snapping bright between every face.

Orange blinks slow, large green eyes untroubled under pale eyebrows. "Um." A snort. A nasal grunt. "What."

"Yeah, shoes." Mr. White turns over his shoulder as if Eddie is supposed to know what he's talking about. Like he could maybe fucking contribute to the academic point or some shit, and you can just feel the exasperated, unspoken obscenities in the air already. "Yours. About how long have you been wearing them? Since this morning?"

Orange scoffs, leaning back to cross his arms. Confusion has been shuttered over by defense. "Yeah. So what about it?"

At this point, Eddie explodes, "WHO FUKKEN CARES?" As if summoned by this outburst, Blonde has downed his beer and stands to Eddie's side. Eddie stands to match it, jabbing a finger at Mr. White while the metal chair clatters behind him. "I don't even want to KNOW what is going on with you right now, Mr. White, I really don't; for fear it's fucking contagious."

Mr. White blinks, appealing to Chartreuse and Navy and even Blonde. "Was a simple question. All I wanted to know, and the kid answered it." White props his elbow on one knee, cigarette ashing forgotten between his fingers as he gestures. "I seen everybody's shoes in this whole goddamn room, and it is by simple deductive assumption that none of you have switched gear in the past hour or so. I got my answer." Mr. White does not seem to take much joy in the discovery, though. Expression stormy and posture radiating a dangerous mockery of relaxation.

For once, Orange's face doesn't twitch into some new and telling expression. For once, he doesn't laugh. It's not like the Santino Job, though. He isn't shooting anyone. There isn't any of the hard stone to the cut of his jaw. He looks defeated in some places, thin and slumped, the dark circles under his eyes finally showing through on a face stilled of its animation.

"I have my answer, yeah." White repeats, glancing over Orange.

"So happy to oblige!" Eddie spits, hands thrown up like he wants to strangle something. Mr. Blonde has drifted to the door, matching Navy's post at the keg again. Eddie begins to pace. "So here's the fucking deal, you mooks. Ten-Trees just got sent up on a bounty; that ain't news. But Ten-Trees comes back after his old lady gets him out on bond and says our fellas what got sent up the coast for reference have been dropping like flies. Like, dead-wise. Now, by a show of hands I just need you guys to – "

"Only," White has leaned forward once more, flicking his cigarette at the nearest potted plant. "I hope those aren't your shoes, Orange. I hope you robbed some unfortunate sonovabitch to get those wingers, and for Blondie's sake it better have been right the fuck before you showed your face in this room here today."

Nice-Guy looks like he's about to go apoplectic, but he snaps into a state of total dead-pan. "Oh, so now Blonde is an element in the great footwear caper. Color me surprised. Mr. White?" Eddie waits for White to acknowledge him. "Mr. White, I can't even begin to give a fuck about your next interruption. Maybe you don't like Navy's haircut. Maybe the tie on Chartreuse ain't quite black enough. Whatever the fuck it is, I'm going to ask you girls to take it outside while the adults conduct business."

Blonde chuckles, pulling the toothpick from his mouth like it's a cigarette.

SCENE: DOCKSIDE I

The car horn startles Orange; he nearly drops his beer.

"We got pickup," White grins from the window, easy cruisin' as he bangs on the side of the car. "And hey lookit that, you're dressed for a job already. You just get back from a funeral or somethin'?"

Orange's heart is pounding in his brain, and the forty in its paper bag is cold and dead in his hands. "Yeah, a funeral." A weak, ill grin that White can't see in the glare of the Californian afternoon. Marvin Nash's funeral, at which Orange was not technically allowed to be seen. "Buddy 'a mine, died young." Orange slides into the passenger seat and glaces around the street before taking another pull on his beer. He'd already had three of those little gas-station tequila samplers, thoughts bogged in the late heat of fall.

"Hey, that's too bad. Another overdose?"

"Nah. Got shot over some bullshit." Orange fishes his sunglasses out of his pockets and unearths his cigarettes in the process. The forty is decimated, the bottle thrown from the window of the cruiser while they hurtle down the highway.

By the time they reach the port, Orange is in a bitter mood. White had taken up much of the conversation detailing the assignment; escort and checkup, runners for a heavy payment one of Papa Joe's old contacts held in backed debt. Who had been sent ahead to scout the deal with Marc-Angelo Santino but Mr. Blonde, along with a hired gun who had been dubbed Mr. Chartreuse – and may or may not have been the ugliest woman Orange had ever seen. Woman (man?) could have given Mick Jagger a run for his money, but he was quiet and professional in that dead-eyed way in which Blonde seemed incapable.

Blonde, who was already complaining over the blood he was getting on his knuckles. Blonde, who shook dark sweat-limp hair form his eyes to laugh as if in relief. "See if you can't talk some sense into the man," Blonde, who patted White's shoulder in greeting and in plea, completely ignoring the suspicious glare.

"What happened to his men?"

Blonde lifts his chin toward the two corpses stacked near the back exit. "Why? They lookin' a little... green to you?" An exaggerated leer, to which Orange and Chartreuse both roll their eyes.

White hocks a loogie to the pavement, wiping his chin and regarding the bodies over the hill of his sleeve. "They're lookin' a little dead, you fuckin' lunatic."

While White and Blonde bicker over who drew whose guns first, Orange begins to circle around an injured, overweight old man laid out in a four-hundred dollar suit on the grimy floor of the docking warehouse. Santino is clutching a rosary. Orange's bile rises.

There wasn't a detective alive on the entire west coast that didn't know about the Santino family; they were the Borgias of the underworld and their corruption spread from Mexico to Canada, from human trafficking to organ theft to kiddie porn. There was no possible evidence to collect against this Santino patriarch that could get him behind bars, not just then. Nothing in the forefront but some long-owed cash not yet laundered to Cabot's ends.

No way to see this monster nabbed or tagged, no information to be gathered here for the greater good. Blonde would beat the guy up, Chartreuse might help; hell, even White seemed ready to do whatever was needed to get the job done so he could go home. Did any of them know? They had to. A rap sheet as long as Orange's arm; that kinda shit didn't go unlauded. Did any of them actually give a fuck, even if they did know? Orange didn't want to examine that question too closely. If they knew, and they gave a fuck, the guy would probably already be dead. No, they just wanted what was owed Joe (and by extension, what was owed Eddie, and by further extension what was actually owed them) and apparently the drop-off had been light.

Orange gave a fuck, but not about the money. He gave a fuck about Babette, Nancy, Carmicheal and Jesus. Galilee DeLoria, Timothy Smithe, Rodriguez Lallo. He gave a fuck about the teenaged runaways and the drunk collegiates that disappeared down Sunset Strip in broad daylight, only to resurface in the ocean or never. He gave a fuck about the strung-out mothers bawling into their bony knuckles because they shoulda done this or that or paid more attention or smoked less crack or some fucking thing. Orange gave a fuck because Freddy Newandyke gave a fuck, and it was getting harder and harder to separate the two of them; near impossible whenever a gun was settled warm and heavy in their palm.

The first cracking shot silences the room; Orange had stepped on Santino's wrist to hold his arm out straight, the aim of the gun a solid line from shoulder to arm to wrist to finger to trigger to bullet to the joint of Santino's elbow. A wet pop; the first mist of blood. Santino's agonized screams spur Orange to the other side of his bulk, kicking him over until the second arm is pried and pinned. Orange tries to soothe the old pervert into some semblance of cooperation so he can get a clear shot. The kneecaps follow, significantly easier to expose, pop, pop.

"'Scuse me," Orange waves Blonde away from the door. Orange kicks the door open wide; a heavy rusted thing that scrapes and screeches on tired hinges. "Mr. Santino," Orange repeats the man's name until the sobs die down to inquisitive grunts. "Mr. Santino, if you can make it out of this door in thirty minutes or less, we'll let you live. Shit," Orange beams at his team, who had fallen into the stunned grip of intense curiosity. "You make it even halfway out, I'll call you an ambulance."

Lighting their cigarettes one by one, Eddie Cabot's men dutifully settle in to watch the heavy man flop his bloody limbs like a half-brained walrus. Chartreuse remains impassive, Blonde forever chuckling with some fresh pun; Mr. White holds up the hard edge of re-appraisal and Mr. Orange is carefully ignoring the attention.

SCENE: OFFICE III

Dusty's Garage and Spare Wholesale.

Clean, ugly little back office. Folding chairs and dixie-cup beers. Nice-Guy Eddie is staring at the seats White and Orange have vacated. Navy is perched near the door, hawk-eyed over the keg while he fiddles with his AA coin. Blonde shifts from foot to foot, expressly forbidden to leave the room on the grounds that he was a meddlesome fuckwit who was always undermining Eddie's authority and it would serve him right if White actually shot his dumb ass. Chartreuse is detailing her report on Gregoria's last few drops before he disappeared.

Blonde's attention has wandered out of the tiny office window to the yard beyond. He starts to chuckle.

Orange is not ready for the blow. Mr. White seems to change his mind between a fist and an open-hand slap, effectively clubbing Orange broadsided with a hand not quite wholly curled. It's the noise of it more than the pain, a bright thundering interruption of Orange's whirring thoughts. Orange doesn't stumble, and the hard sick thing inside of him retaliates automatically, punch weak and hesitant even as Larry catches the bony fist and headbutts Freddy to his knees. The second blow is a rock-solid fist, splitting Freddy's lip wide open and nearly throwing him from the desperate clutch he's got on Larry's shirt front.

Mr. Orange doesn't ask any questions, having been silent the whole walk from the office through the garage to the junk lot. He maybe grunts once or twice, a breathless acknowledgment of physical pain. Biting back on the bone-deep ache that threatens to have him sobbing like a little bitch because it was Larry who was kicking the snot out of him, Larry who was shaking Freddy to a stand only so he could knock Freddy down again.

Larry wanted it to be known out loud, that he couldn't fucking believe any of it, that he didn't want to, that Freddy better goddamn speak up and deny it or he'd kill that sonovabitch mad-dog and give the same to anybody who'd be stupid enough to tell him not to.

The scuffle was over in as many moments as it took for Orange to reconcile his panic, Nice-Guy's height and bulk prying itself between them. Orange realizes he has to let go of Larry's shirt in order to save his own damn self, but he doesn't want saving just then.

"AWRIGHT!" Eddie thunders. "Its fucking done now!" He has to repeat himself because White is still trying to reach for Orange, either to stand him up or throttle him. Eddie wields his height to push White all the way back to the chain-link fence. "It's done, man. You had your say. Let it fucking rest, whatever it is that happened; just let it fucking be done now. No changing nothing. Just let it go."

"No changing it," White echoes hollowly, fixing the array of his shirt and brushing at the spots of blood as if they would fall away like crumbs.

"No changing what's done; so it's done. Whatever the fuck it was," Eddie steadies White's hard lean against the back of the fence. "I mean hey, I could care less, right? But we need Orange in one piece, you know?" An elbow, raised eyebrows, Eddie chuckling. White bends as if he's been winded, hands on his knees and peering around Eddie's interference to inspect the bloody mess he'd made out of Orange. Eddie stands White back up with a wide hand. "Breathe, old man. What, you're gonna tell me Orange killed yer mother? Fucked your daughter? The way you were beatin' on him, and that business with shoes, I'm thinkin' you found a set of incriminating footprints? Fuck man, do you even have kids?"

White glares, easily baited. "No kids, you asshole. If I did I wouldn't have any old enough for Orange to – " He bites off the word, expression darkening despite Eddie's plea against staying riled. "If I see that cocksucker Vega again, I'm shooting him. You don't call me for no jobs with that maniac, you hear me Junior?" White is fixing his hair by now, breathing hard but composing himself. "I'm telling you now, it is only with respect for your father that I ever stuck with this team. I'll work with Orange because, like you said, what's done is done. But you keep Vega away from me if you want to keep Vega breathing."

Eddie is laughing at the absurdity, glancing around the lot for any grasp of a clue. "You ain't gonna tell me what this is even about, then?"

Orange has picked himself up and is leaning heavily against a stack of tires by now. He glances up to catch White's gaze and tries to cover his reaction with a nicotine cough. The sniffle could be a bloody nose more than it could be tears, but then it could just as easily be tears from the pain of the beating rather than tears to douse the sharp sting in his gut. His face hangs toward the ground like it's going to fall off, mouth stuck open in an unvoiced question and split brow heavy over eyes clouded with utter and all-consuming shame.

White hums and nods to himself. "That's between me and Orange and Blonde. I'm sorry, Eddie. I'm sorry it had to be this way."

"Woah, woah!" Eddie waves his hands in wide, exasperated arcs. "Nobody's sayin' goodbye! Nobody's shootin' nobody else, neither! You're gonna go home and cool off and then you're gonna come 'round my office 'cos I got some words Papa wanted me to pass on to you and then we're gonna talk, you and me."

"Ain't nothin' to talk about," White counters, loud enough for all to hear. Orange winces with his whole body, giving in to the pain to curl into a sit at the base of the tire stack. White's parting words drop like stones in the clarified depths of Orange's thoughts. "It's done. There's no changing it."

SCENE: DOCKSIDE III

The four take a late meal at a greasy spoon diner named after its truckstop. The waitress is old and cynical and chats White up like she wants something from him. Orange has settled deeper into the corner booth, knee against Larry's warm thigh and shoulder encroaching the perfumed territory of Chartreuse's arm. Orange is a sprawler who glares insolently out at the rest of the diner as if it were the looming hangover. He'd lost his gory clothing for conspicuous reasons, a little bit vain over the fact that he got to be that hardass in an undershirt surrounded by well-pressed tuxedo shirts with open collars and immaculate suit jackets. A little bit vain over the fact that he knew he looked like hell and felt like hell and the truckers couldn't meet his gaze for very long.

Maybe the waitress just wanted to get to know White because White was the only one at that table who didn't actually look like he made a habit of killing people. After she leaves with their drink orders (water, water, coffee, got any booze in this joint?) Orange and White's questions nearly collide. Orange is a bit quicker that evening, though he wants to ask White how he manages to be Joe freaking Cool all the damn time, all he can focus on was that waitress and her leathery smile. "You know that girl?" It comes out of Orange just like that, as if the forty-something woman had only to put her hair into a ponytail and wear tennis shoes to be a teenager.

"She reminds me of every woman I'm related to. Aunts, mother, sister. All of 'em. They even speak the same; wonder if she's from the East coast or what." White rubs his face and forehead as if to clear it of cobwebs.

Blonde, in one of his more contemplative moods, counters slowly. "Maybe she just has one of those faces..."

White twists his jacket open and throws his elbow to the back of the seat like he's fed up, neck craning to scope for any approaching drink tray. "Yeah, sure does. One of those faces like she been through hell and back but is ready to lie her ass off and tell us all the world ain't so bad. Serve us some fucking pie and pretend not to notice the bullet scars."

Orange shifts uncomfortably, pale arms exposed to the scrutiny of sharp diner waitresses. The spidering scar on the right shoulder, that one was the worst because the surgeon had to fish around for shrapnel and bone and then try and stitch his muscle and tendon back to its rightful order. Orange coughs into a curled fist, faking a scoff. Faking a laugh. "Yer some kinda sap, White."

Instead of the expected defense, White glances sharply back at Orange like he'd forgotten he was even there. "Where the fuck did you even learn to shoot like that?"

Blonde snorts. "Yeah tell us Orange; did you go to Harvard - or Yale - for your degree in Point-and-Squeeze?"

White jabs a finger over the table at Blonde "If I wanted an answer from Casual Homicide's poster boy, I'd ask you. But I don't, so shut the fuck up. Orange-?" A helpless hitch of his shoulders, Larry pulling his elbows in and chopping the air with his hands like he's just laid his confusion out next to the napkins and doesn't know what to do with it.

Orange shrugs the unscarred shoulder. "Would you believe me if I told you Columbia, on a snow job?" Holdaway had been right; Freddy Newandyke was a natural at Improv. All those cheesy noir films and low-budget crime dramas seeped into the veins of his character while so much wide-eyed comic-book reading had kept his day-to-day facade fresh and original. New. Believable. Mr. Orange was a tweaky little fuck, but sometimes a bit of Columbia showed through in his grasp of Spanish, in the corded tension of muscle, in the way he could shoot a man. The people at that table, they don't know that Orange can speak passable Spanish because Freddy went to a guido school nearer the border, nor that Freddy's muscle was gained from years at Police Academy, rather than Orange laboring away in a sunless coca factory. And where Orange had learned to shoot, well, Freddy Newandyke hardly knew himself. Freddy Newandyke had shot plenty, and it always left him cold and hard and humorless.

White's tension builds for a few seconds, then ebbs away as quickly as it had come. He chuckles, shaking his head. "This fucking guy..." A nod to Chartreuse, who is smirking to an unfathomable end. "All right, kid." White digs up a cigarette. Lights it. Hands it over. "All right."