Disclaimer: All characters belong to the creators of Life.
(Umm. Would that be God?)
A/N: Just a scene I would love to see.
The Friend of My Friend
The bar was dark and smelled of a thousand spilled beers and emptied stomachs. No one chatted, no one 'took your order', the game – any game – was turned up so loud you couldn't have heard yourself scream.
Good news for anyone who felt compelled to scream.
It was one of Dani Reeses' safest places. The place she went to drink, not one of the many she would go to and pick up men. This was where she went to be herself.
A drunk. And a drug addict. And Jack Reeses' screw-up kid. All of those things. But also, strangely, herself – the only person she knew how to be.
A good cop. A smart detective. And now, surprisingly, unexpectedly, a solid and trusted partner.
She sipped the black coffee in front of her, savouring the bite and burn of the acrid liquid.
She didn't even notice when the door blew open and a man sat down beside her.
"Scotch, double. Straight up."
The voice was familiar, and she glanced under her eyelashes before turning slightly away from the man now perched on a bar stool, one foot nervously jiggling up and down. His coat was wet – she hadn't even known it was raining – and his hand was clenched, the tight fist of the reformed smoker who no longer knows what to do without that comforting crutch clutched between nicotine-stained fingers.
She wondered if he had quit in prison. Or if he had started in prison.
"You want a warm up, Reese?"
She frowned at Frankie, the bartender, and put a hand over the coffee cup, waving him away, and silently shaking her head no.
"Detective Reese?"
She stifled a sigh and gave Ted Earley a sick smile. "Hi, Ted."
He saluted her with his glass, and drank down a good half before he spoke. "Good evening, Detective."
He swallowed the second half, and gestured to Frankie to fill the glass again. Impassive, the big man behind the bar filled the glass, then left the bottle on the bar an arm's length away.
Dani licked her lips. "What are you doing in these parts?"
In a cop bar, she meant. Nearly everyone in the cramped space was packing. Both a piece and a badge.
Ted looked around a little blearily. "I was in the neighbourhood." He toasted her with the once again nearly empty glass.
She frowned at him, turning back on the stool to face him more completely. "In this neighbourhood?"
Ted sipped the last few drops out of the glass, and lifted the bottle in front of him, sloshing a few drops of Scotch over his hand. "Yep. I was at the court house."
Dani nodded. Ted had been out for a while. Maybe his parole was up. Cautiously, she ventured a polite comment. "So. You a free man?"
She winced as soon as she had said it, but it was too late now.
Ted quirked an eyebrow at her. "For a while now."
She shrugged, "Sorry."
"No. S'okay. I know what you meant." He stared down into the glass. "My conditions for parole have been met. I no longer have to report to my PO. No more check-ins. I can get a job and not have to tell my employer that I can't leave the city without permission. Of course, no one will hire an ex-con…"
He drained the glass one more time, but Dani nipped the bottle away from his searching hand and signaled Frankie. "I'll take that refill, Frankie. And a cup for my friend here."
Ted dropped his head onto his hands clasped on the counter in front of him, but did not argue.
Dani looked at him with a little impatience. He could be so… feeble.
She knew he had survived Pelican Bay, which was no picnic. But she wondered how he would have managed without Crews looking out for him.
The game on the television over her head went suddenly quiet. "That's time, gentlemen. Ladies. Last call and I close up on you in 20 minutes." Frankie's tone of voice brooked no argument, and Dani slid off the bar stool she had been perched on for long enough that her feet tingled when they hit the floor.
"Forget the coffee, Frank. I think we'll go find a place to absorb a little of that Scotch, okay, Mr. Earley?"
For a small woman, she had a powerful grip, and Ted was halfway out of the bar before he had done more than shake his head. "Where are we going?"
Dani glanced around and steered Ted across the street to where lights from a small café blazed into the night. "Where's your car?"
Ted flapped his hand vaguely down the street, "I'm good to drive, Detective Reese."
She shook her head firmly, "The first thing you want to do after completing your parole is get picked up for a DUI?"
He stopped and looked at her with that droopy beagle-eyed intensity that so irritated her. "I'll go straight home. I'll be careful. No cops will catch me, I promise."
She stood squarely in front of him, her hand on her hip pushing back her jacket slightly to show the badge attached to her belt, and raised an eyebrow sardonically.
Ted followed the line of her hand and set of her mouth, "Oh. Right. Of course. You are …" He flushed and stopped. "I would enjoy having a cup of coffee with you, Detective Reese."
She turned without further comment and pushed open the door to the café.
"Dani!" The waitress behind the counter lifted a hand to wave, then continued on to a self-conscious patting of her hair as she caught sight of Ted Earley in his dark suit and power-red tie. "We haven't seen you around here for a while, sweetie. How's your mama? And Jack? We don't see him 'round here much anymore either. Retirement must be suiting him, though." Her voice was rich Southern cream pouring into the quiet room.
Dani sat in a booth and smiled, a smile that went all the way to the depths of her remarkable eyes, Ted noticed "I'm fine, LaVerne. Mama and Dad were both doing okay the last time I saw them."
LaVerne poured coffee into both cups without asking, and handed Ted a menu and a flirtatious smile, white teeth flashing in skin the same colour as the hot liquid filling the cup. "You want something to eat, sugar? You look like you could use something to fill your stomach, mister. Balance out the skinful you've been working on."
Ted flushed and looked down at the menu, his hand shaking a little as he reached for the little containers of cream, grabbing four. "I'm not hungry. Thank you very much."
The woman shifted on feet which obviously throbbed even in the comfortable white running shoes she wore, and snorted her disbelief. "Two eggs, sunny-side up, hash browns, bacon… no, sausage, I think. You just relax, honey. I'll fix you right up."
She turned her weary gaze on Dani, who struggled not to flinch under its weight. "And you'll have waffles. Like always." Her tone did not encourage discussion.
Dani waited until LaVerne had moved back behind the counter, yelling the order to Joe, the grill cook, before lifting her gaze to Ted's.
He ignored the hint of threat in them and spoke up in a falsely chipper voice, "So, it sounds like you come here a lot?"
She breathed in through her nose and let the breath trickle out over her lips, "I used to. When I was little."
Little enough to enjoy waffles covered in canned strawberries and gobs of edible oil product pretending to be whipped cream.
"With your father?" Ted twitched and shot a glance at her before his eyes were glued to the small carton of cream in his hand, stripping back the foil cover and pouring the contents carefully into his cup, meticulously waiting for the last drop to release from the sides of the container.
She nodded, and looked out the window. She did not want to talk about her father to Ted Earley.
"I guess you wanted to be a cop all your life, huh? Charlie did. He always saw himself as a cop, you know. Even in Pelican Bay, even in solitary, he still thought of himself as a cop." Ted kept peeling the lids off creamers and watching the heavy liquid pour into his increasingly pale coffee, stacking them on top of each other neatly once he was sure each was empty.
Dani sipped her coffee carefully, watching the nervous shaking hands with some fascination. She wondered how many teaspoons of cream could be added to the cup before it simply overflowed onto the table or became so diluted no one could possibly drink it.
"No," she said absently, "I didn't plan on becoming a cop."
"Your dad? He proud of you?" Ted picked up the glass jar full of sugar and began to pour it into his coffee, so slowly it seemed to Dani to drop out grain by grain.
"I guess." She could not take eyes off the sugar.
"My parents were. Proud of me, I mean. I was the local kid who did good, you know. Then one day … poof!" One hand flailed in the air a moment, and the sorrowful look intensified.
"Well, you did embezzle a lot of money, Ted." She tried to say it gently, rather than in her 'cop tone'. She didn't know why she was cutting him a break; she held no brief for a felon.
Usually.
Ted glanced up at her before his eyes were also drawn back to the sugar which continued to drip into his coffee. "I did. I know. A lot of money. I didn't mean to take so much. It was just…" he frowned and sighed, "It was just so easy. All that money just sitting there, waiting for someone to do something with it. I just reached out…"
Dani nodded. She did know a little something about getting drawn into something because it seemed easy.
"Pelican Bay was…" he went still for a moment.
Not just silent, Dani thought, although that was startling enough, but bone-set still, like a small animal scenting a predator. "I can imagine," she said kindly.
He looked up again, eyes blazing. "No." The simple word dropped and rang on the scarred table between them. "You can't."
For a moment, she simply stared at him. Then, "No," she said reflectively. "I can't."
He put the sugar container down with a sharp snap and stared hard at the pale shimmering liquid before taking up a spoon and stirring it.
"It's the boredom, you see." His voice remained quiet, but there was still a hint of frozen terror under the calm. "You think you can handle the guards, the other inmates, the food…." He shuddered and lifted the coffee to his lips.
Dani wasn't surprised when he pursed his lips and shook his head slightly. She was gob-smacked when he lifted the sugar container and poured at least another spoonful of sugar into his cup.
'You thought that kid, the one who killed the other kid, the one playing the guard," she was stumbling through, not sure how much she wanted to know, how far she wanted to delve into this strange, nearly broken man, a man she would normally have nothing to do with, "You thought he was a hero. He killed a kid, a 20 year old kid."
She was chilled again at the blaze in his eyes as he glanced at her and then away, the passion swiftly hidden again as he concentrated on the stirring of his coffee, "He killed a guard."
"It was an experiment," she insisted. "That's all. His professor was to blame – he pushed the kid."
Ted shook his head, "That kid didn't need pushing, Detective. Why do you think the professor picked that one to give the records to?"
Dani shrugged. This was not a conversation she wanted to have. Especially because a sneaking part of her agreed with Ted.
LaVerne returned and dropped two plates laden with food in front of the silent pair, automatically filling each coffee cup, and reaching into the stretched out pocket of her faded pink cardigan for another handful of creamers.
Dani scraped the mounds of whipped topping off to the side of her plate, and began cutting each waffle into precisely equal sections along the ridges. She glanced up at Ted, who was staring in a kind of sick horror at the crime scene on his plate: runny yellow and white eggs were not improved by the red of the ketchup he had instinctively poured over them.
She wanted to ask him about Charlie Crews – find out what his plan was, find out why he had come back to the LAPD instead of taking his money, that rich pile of guilt money, and going somewhere far away from Pelican Bay, from the memories of the life that had been torn out of him. She wanted to know if he was back for revenge. She wasn't sure she blamed him, but she didn't want to be caught short, either. If he was bent on taking people down, especially people she knew, people she loved, or had loved, or wanted to love, Dani Reese wanted to know. She wanted to be on her guard.
Crews was her partner, and in the heat of every moment on the job, she trusted him instinctively, completely.
It was only in the harsh light of the diner, with canned red-dyed strawberries staining her plate, that she remembered, no matter how he got there, Crews had survived 12 years as a con. Had survived not only for himself, but for this damaged person hunched in the booth across from her, nursing his doubt with Scotch, ketchup, and sugar.
Ted would trust the con, she thought. He would fear the guard, the cop.
She trusted the cop. She feared the con.
It was that simple.