Commedia

Part One: Inferno

Chapter One: The Case of the Awkward Reunion

The nightclub was called Inferno.

The damp heat of too many sinners pressing in on one another in the sweltering July heat had me wishing I was at home on the settee in the midst of an all-nighter with Call of Duty 4. Sweat collected behind my goggles, moistening my cheeks and nose. It was too hot to wear them but it was either that or make eye contact with drunk strangers. I wasn't one for crowds or for loud dance music, which was so invasive I could swear my very eardrums were vibrating in tempo. It was the money that brought me to this hellhole in the middle of the L.A. night, the money and a recent personal tragedy and a little curiosity.

I was piss poor, living in one of the most expensive cities in the U.S. in a shithole flat where the bathwater ran scalding hot for five minutes and freezing the next three. I still hadn't figured out how to stop myself looking boiled every time I showered. But my perilous plumbing wasn't the worst of it. Two days ago someone had broken into my place and taken my beloved X-Box 360 and my PS3, and—most devastating of all—my brand-new Nintendo Wii with additional Wiimote and Nunchuck, as well as the wireless guitar I'd bought for Guitar Hero 3 only that afternoon.

Bastards. I never even got to rock out once.

Point being, there were only so many times I could play Mario Kart alone until I lost interest. I was in serious need of some green. I had enough money saved over from my last job (a thankfully short-lived private contract with the Federal Bureau of Intimidation) to pay the rent for the next few months. Restricting oneself to the N-64 in 2009 is no way for a man to live, but I wasn't dim-witted enough to spend my rent money replacing my systems. So when the email came through to my private work account cordially requesting my "presense" at Inferno, I grabbed my keys and bolted.

Well, I smoked a fag and dug around the cushions of the settee until I found my keys, and then I sauntered. Let it never be said I don't do things in my own bloody time.

It was a quick saunter, though, because if the grammatical state of the email was any indication, I was being offered a contract with a firm long established, long dreaded, long subjected to interpretation by pop culture. The Godfather. The Untouchables. Goodfellas. Mickey Blue Eyes.

Matt, meet the Mafia.

Although I'd better not mention that last film when I finally did.

The owners had made the most of their theme. The ugly red and yellow of the wall paint was brighter and more garish still through the orange lenses of my goggles. On a platform above the dance floor swayed hired girls in sequined horns and tails. Flickering streamers simulating flames encircled them, blown endlessly upward by what I supposed were fans set into the floor. The DJ was in another corner, one hand hovering over his turntable and the other on the large purple headphones nestled in his rather fluffy hair.

Lounging at the bar on an uncomfortable wrought-iron barstool, fag in one hand and a thankfully cold Negra Modelo in the other, I breathed a silent prayer for Dante Alighieri. The poor man had surely been turning anguished back-flips in his grave since this literal hellhole opened two weeks earlier.

A fog machine near the bar belched out a veritable wall of dry ice, preventing my seeing the dance floor. Well, I thought, at least they won't try to throw me out for smoking. Christ, what a hole.

I checked the clock over the bar, barely visible between the fog and the glare of the neon Yuengling sign right under it. Twelve-thirty. Fifteen minutes until my meeting with my prospective employer. Good job I wouldn't need to be there much longer. The air in the place was thick with dry ice and disappointment, and my bum was getting a little too well acquainted with the complex whorls and points of the wrought-iron barstool. I noticed with some disappointment that my fag had burned down to the filter while I observed the club. An inspection of my pack revealed it was about half full, affording me plenty more smokes so long as the meeting didn't run too long. I'd still probably need to hit the Quik-Stop on the way back to my place so as to make certain I'd have some tomorrow morning.

I threw the pack down on the counter and prepared to smoke another fag. Couldn't find my lighter. Blast. That was the third I'd lost this week. The bird on the stool to my left—sequined sandals in a popular style, face pretty but blurred with too much makeup, massive bazonkas, but hey, this was L.A. and everyone had great tits—offered me a light, which I accepted. She smiled at me long and slow with her glossy lips.

I might have tried to take her home had I been the same as I was during my first months back in L.A., a nineteen-year-old kid overwhelmed by the shine and the speed and the beautiful, beautiful people. I would have charmed the short skirt right off her with the British mannerisms that American girls absolutely drool over, let her play with my proverbial joystick before sliding her over me. Now I felt a bit sorry for her. She was just a girl, alone in a second-rate nightclub stinking of shitty alcohol and sweating bodies and, though far stronger near the back patio, of vomit.

But then, I was Nobby No-friends myself. Not that I minded. I did have some basic social interaction while working. Odd tech jobs, some legal and many more not, kept me in games and cigarettes. Almost all could be performed at a computer from a remote location. Often I met with my employers only once to sign the contract and arrange payment. For a year I had ventured out of my L.A. flat only for groceries and cigarettes. Even at Wammy's, I spent most of my time in solitary activities: gaming, hacking, avoiding the struggles between the most competitive of the Wammy's kids. I was long used to isolation.

The girl was eyeing me with a bit more interest now. Damn. I enjoyed the attention—sometimes it is just nice to have a girl look at you in that way, whether you plan to act on it or not—but I was here on business that was likely both illegal and dangerous. The absolute last thing I needed was some girl with a detailed memory of my face should things go to shit. I had to get her off the scent.

The first, and probably most effective, method that came to me would require a bit of self-debasement. Not something I usually mind, as I hoped never to return to the Inferno after this meeting, but after all, one doesn't want the Mafia to think one is an enormous poofter. If they happened to catch wind of my little act in the next eleven minutes, it might put me rather at a disadvantage when they finally approached me. The Mafia, like most hyper-masculine private organizations in the United States, probably doesn't take kindly to men who appreciate other men.

The girl placed her chin on her hand and leaned toward me. Oh, hell. Had to do something. I tried to glance surreptitiously into the masses around me to make certain no one else was watching a little too closely. Hard to say if I was being observed. I couldn't see anyone watching but that didn't mean they weren't.

Oh, fuck it. I leaned across the bar, popping one flirtatious foot into the air behind me. "Can I get another Negra, luv?" I yelled over the roar of the club to the decidedly masculine barman, who reached one brawny arm into the cooler beneath the bar. The cold bottle made a sharp thunk against the counter.

"Just a mo', I've a fiver in my wallet." I made a big show of scribbling on the five-dollar bill before leaning over the bar and tucking it into his apron with a wink. He took the bill from his apron and read what I'd written.

Sorry about this, mate.

His red-rimmed eyes met mine and then crinkled into a smile. "Thanks,' he said slowly before moving away to help another patron. The girl tapped her cell phone nervously on the counter a few times. Finally, she seized her mojito and hopped down from her seat. I meant for her to assume I'd given the barman my number. Seemed it worked. Poor girl. I watched her back until she lost herself among the others on the dance floor, then raised my eyes to the club's second level. A few security personnel in red t-shirts stood largely inconspicuous behind the DJ and dancers. The iron barstool creaked under me as I twisted around to face the clock behind the bar again. Twelve forty-two. Not much longer, then. The Negra was cold and smooth and perfect. I picked at the label with my thumb.

Someone spoke behind me. "Mr. Rogers?" I winced inwardly. It had seemed such a good alias at the time. Inconspicuous. Easy to remember—Roger had practically raised me. I loved the man. And, in the event the client recognized the allusion, they already understood that my work was sensitive and so, yes, I used an alias. But I knew from experience I'd spend the next three hours whistling "It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood."

The barstool let out another harsh groan as I shifted myself to face him.

"I'm Ray Salvatore. I'll be acting as a representative for Mr. Grieves, the owner of this establishment." Salvatore had a florid face and meaty hands, one of which he offered to me. We shook.

"Mr. Salvatore," I said pleasantly. "Fred Rogers. What can I do for you."

If the name was familiar to Salvatore, he didn't show it. "Mr. Grieves wishes to meet with you in his office, to which I will direct you. However, before you meet with him—" He paused. I took another drag and blew the smoke slowly from one corner of my mouth, waiting for him to continue. Salvatore seemed surprisingly well-spoken for a Mafioso. I supposed he was one of their law boys, the select few out of each generation who attend law school and represent the firm in court should the need arise.

"Our work is delicate," he said. "Before you decide to accept or decline our offer, I should impress upon you the seriousness of our request. After you have completed the task we set you, and its ultimate purpose has been consummated, there will be legal ramifications. You will almost certainly be called in to testify."

Blimey. I sucked at the end of my fag and blew out again. I needed the money, but I wasn't sure I needed it this badly. "A few questions. How much were you planning to invest in my services?"

He named a figure with more zeroes than I have incarnations of Pokemon for my Game Boy (I've four). It was by far the most I'd ever been offered for a job. My eyes widened behind my goggles.

"And what—" I cleared my throat. "What, exactly, is it that your employer would like me to do?" For that sort of money I would hack the fucking Pentagon mainframe, I thought, but didn't say.

Salvatore looked me dead in the eye. I sucked in another breath of the stinking air, held it. Waited.

"He would like you to install security cameras around the perimeter and interior of this establishment, as well as set up two stations from which the cameras may be monitored—one on site, another some distance away."

Bloody what? "Pardon?" I asked, thankful for the goggles keeping my disbelieving eyes mostly concealed. I didn't want to seem like an ass, but that was rather a wind-up for security cameras. Christ.

His gaze shifted from me to somewhere beyond the bar. "As I said, your part in this may very well end up going beyond the realm of the strictly technical into the legal sphere. Should you choose, of course, to accept our offer."

I pulled out another fag and tapped the filter on the bar. My hands shook slightly as I lit it with the butt end of my last. Seven hundred fifty. I could buy seven hundred fifty brand-fucking-new PS3s with that sort of cash. I could pay my rent for years. Taking another deliberate drag, I watched the smoke dissolve in the moist air of the nightclub. I knew I seemed to be stalling but I had no decision to make. The money had made it for me.

Salvatore was watching my face. "We will, of course, reimburse you for all necessary materials," he said as quietly as he could over the roar from the dance floor.

"Of course," I repeated.

"Would you like to meet with Mr. Grieves now?" he asked gently. I nodded and rose. Seven hundred fifty PS3s. Sometimes the good Lord smiled, even on gentlemen of questionable ethics like myself.

My beer forgotten, I followed Salvatore beyond the humid, pulsing dance floor to a door blended well into the wall. I would have missed it entirely had he not opened it and led me through. As we passed from the nightclub proper into a dimly lit hallway, I sort of came back into myself. The fag I held was no longer only something for me to do with my hands, which might, I thought, have shaken and gestured helplessly about had I not used the cigarette to occupy them while listening to Salvatore's proposal. That was one of the nicest things about cigarettes. I was never at a loss for what to do with my hands.

We stopped before a door almost, but not quite, at the very end of the hall. Salvatore waved me forward and knocked twice on the door.

"Mr. Grieves," he said, his voice now so low it was nearly a whisper, "will see you in a moment."

He left me slouching in the middle of the dim hallway, taking in the pattern of grime on the pale gray walls. It seemed, I noticed, to darken considerably nearest the floor and then blend the wall into the cheap, darker gray carpet. I was struck by the sudden impression that the carpet was gradually swallowing the walls—that it had been doing so quite slowly for years and would continue after I left later that night.

Although I wasn't sure when that time would be, exactly. It was nearly one as it was and the illusory Mr. Grieves had not yet opened the door.

I knocked on the door in an imitation of Salvatore's two-knock salutation, this time slightly louder. When no one answered, I pushed the door open with the knuckles of my non-cig hand.

In retrospect, it was a rather shabby idea on my part. I was in a nightclub owned by a man who may have connections to the Mafia—not known for being the most peaceable blokes, for God's sake—skulking around a back room and generally wandering in areas I hadn't been specifically instructed to wander. Not one of my best. But the evening had been a bit surreal and I'd had a few beers as I waited at the bar and felt a little squiffy as well, and so, I sallied forth.

As the door inched inward, I was greeted with an absolute vision: the most delectable ass I'd ever seen, clad in tight black skinny jeans. Its owner was bent over a roll-top desk opposite the door, presumably examining several blueprints spread over the desk's surface. A gun was tucked securely into the waistband, though how anything fit in those trousers besides that prepossessing posterior was anybody's guess. I leaned forward a little to get a better look at it. A Beretta 92FS. Sexy choice.

But I forgot all about the gun as the posterior's possessor slid one slender hand in an expensive-looking leather glove up the back of a slim thigh and hooked the thumb into the waistband of those blooming tight trousers.

Well. Hello, you.

"If you're finished staring," someone said. It took me a moment to realize the speaker was the owner of the bum before me. Oh, Christ. I'd spent the past several seconds admiring the (admittedly very nice) ass of some bloke.

I was absolutely mortified, not that you'd know it. I stayed cool—an invaluable trick I'd long admired in others and finally cultivated for myself. I leaned against the doorpost and took another hit off my fag, relaxing my mouth as I blew a stream of smoke into the room.

He stood up slowly, shifting his weight to one hip as he rolled the blueprints. "If you're finished staring," he repeated, dropping the prints into a cardboard cylinder propped against the desk, "perhaps we can talk business."

I didn't respond. There was something odd about this man. In addition to the tight black trousers, he wore a short red quilted vest that left his slender midriff exposed. His blond hair fell in a straight sheet to mid-neck. From the back, I might have taken him for an attractive slim-hipped girl.

This guy was Mafia?

"Have a seat, if you would, Mr. Rogers," he said, the command in his tone belying the polite words, and I knew—I fucking knew—what it was about him that had me so unsettled. I couldn't move myself to sit. The beer that had me so brave on entering the office was sloshing around in my stomach. I moved my hand to my face to wipe away the nervous moisture collecting on my forehead, but sucked at the end of my fag instead. Couldn't let him see me uncomfortable. Couldn't let him see me shake. I left the cigarette in my mouth and shoved both my hands deep into the pockets of my jeans. Fuck. Oh, fuck.

He turned around. My churning gut went icy.

Mello.

His eyes widened. For a moment he looked like his younger self, the Mello who had talked me into running a loop of pre-recorded footage on the orphanage security cameras so he and I could sneak out into the nearby village and coerce drunks stumbling out of the local pub to do our shopping: chocolate bars for Mello, cigarettes for me. He was the sensitive boy who convinced me time and again that there were no greater virtues than justice and integrity, and the havoc we wreaked upon Wammy's was somehow invaluable practice for our assumption into the ranks of world-renowned detectives. Gossiping about test scores. Trading case histories like ghost stories until all hours. Tapping out Morse code with our pens, our version of passing notes in class.

But then the gray eyes narrowed and it was like a punch to my sickened gut. I saw how he'd aged. He was still thin, but taller, nearly as tall as I was. His angular jaw was stripped of its boyhood softness. His chin was sharper. And, as he shifted himself to lean back against the desk, as he languidly crossed one long leg over the other, I realized what it was about him that had me shaking and sweating.

Mello was sexy as hell. And he fucking knew it.

I steadied myself, pulled one hand from my pocket to lift the cigarette from my mouth, exhaled smoke slowly. He didn't move, only watched me. I waited as long as I could stand to wait while he scrutinized me, the silence thick, until I could no longer stand the gray eyes on me and the tightness in my chest and the backbeat still audible from the nightclub proper.

"Are you Grieves?" My voice sounded hoarse. I cursed inwardly.

Mello didn't flinch. "I'm Mr. Grieves. Have a seat." He nodded to a straight-backed wooden chair against the wall, thankfully close. I sank onto it.

He studied me again for a few long seconds. "I assume Mr. Salvatore has filled you in on all the pertinent details." Mister Grieves. Mister Salvatore. These Mafia types were so fucking polite.

"He has." I drew my cigarette away from myself and, hardly daring to believe my own audacity, tapped my forefinger lightly on the butt end of the fag. He watched the ash fall to the floor.

"You have decided to accept our offer."

"I have." So that's how he'd decided to play it. No big to-do. As if he ran into estranged childhood friends so often it wasn't even worth mentioning any longer. He hadn't bothered to make a sign to warn me that someone might have been listening in on our conversation or frighten me into following his lead. It irked me, but I had to go along with it. After all, he had the gun. Blast from the past or not, I wasn't sure he wouldn't use it if provoked. Young Mello had a violent temper, and I didn't yet know whether or not he had mellowed with age. Eurgh, what a horrible irony if he'd taken the alias as a suggestion. No, I doubted he had.

But even in his confidence that I would submit to his handling of the situation, I was reminded again of the boy Mello. It was like him to have the upper hand.

No. It was like him to need to have the upper hand. Hell, it'd been his need to be the best, to maintain control, which drove him from Wammy's in the first place. Here, now, in this tiny office, Mello had it. And it wasn't just the stupid gun.

Which idiot gave Mello a gun, anyway? If he'd had one when I knew him, there would have been at least one severely injured white-haired child detective I could name—probably more. I wondered if he'd ever used it and banished the thought immediately. Of course he'd used it. The man had dangerous elbows, for Christ's sake.

The long silences were unnerving. Mello never used to shut the fuck up.

I looked down at my fag. The cherry was too close to the filter. I'd have to put it out soon. If I lit up again, it would become obvious that I was chain-smoking. Mello might take that as an indicator of my unease. Very well. This would be my last until I left the club.

But I'd need another, and soon. I hated to let him fucking out-wait me into speaking first, Mello, who'd had all the patience of a car alarm in a church parking lot, but I didn't know what I might do if I had to play along much longer. Probably nothing. I was passive to a fault. Always a first time, though. I had to move the charade along.

"Mr. Salvatore mentioned security cameras," I said by way of asking for more information.

Mello nodded and pursed his lips thoughtfully, gazing somewhere above my right ear. His scrutiny had unsettled me, but his refusal to look me in the eye pissed me right off. "You'll install security cameras in the interior and around the perimeter of the building. The grainier, the better. Buy them secondhand if you can. They must work—but not well."

I raised an eyebrow, which he either missed entirely behind my goggles or else he chose to ignore.

"I've set aside a back room in the club as a security station. I'll expect you to be able to monitor the camera feed from an offsite location as well. Doesn't matter where, so long as I know where to find you."

"All right," I said. My fag had burnt down to its filter. I looked back up at Mello who was, once again, watching me. I flicked the butt of my fag. From the periphery of my vision I saw the cherry fall and bounce twice on the floor. Eyes still locked with his, I ground the cherry into the carpet with my foot. The steady throb from the club's dance floor filled another long moment. Mello looked away.

"I'll be in touch when we're ready for you to begin the installations."

He turned his back to me and shifted some papers on the desk. Evidently I was dismissed. I wanted to shout and overturn the chair—anything to force him to look back and acknowledge me, not as some hired techno whiz kid but as Matt, as myself. I looked at the gun tucked into his trousers. The boy Mello, I knew; the boy, I'd loved, so much as one fifteen-year-old boy can love another. The man Mello was a stranger. I took particular care to shut the office door silently.

I rolled down the windows of my red Caddy before pulling out of the parking lot. I needed the clarity of the cool night air. The heat and noise and awful stench of the nightclub had muddled my thinking.

Mello. I hadn't seen Mello since L's death, since he stormed out of Wammy's House angry and grieving. We hadn't heard from him since, though plenty of rumors passed through the halls of the orphanage concerning his whereabouts: he'd joined a circus touring seaside villages, he'd been picked up by Her Majesty's Secret Service and was training to become the next Bond. In none of the rumors had he left the country. In none of them had he joined a crime syndicate. But now it seemed that was almost certainly the case. I would never have believed it of him.

But then, I wouldn't have believed it of myself either.

I had told myself that, in this economy, finding a legitimate and permanent tech job would be next to impossible. I needed to eat, and I couldn't depend on some massive American corporation that might outsource my job one week and fold in the next.

The truth was, I still subscribed to the dream of little Matty the world-class detective. I needed a life more interesting than the one I would have as a desk jockey supplemented only by games. If I had to work on the wrong side of the law for a while to get it, then so be it. I had planned to work as a freelance tech whiz only so long as it took me to gather funds enough to begin my own detective agency. I'd been a mercenary for more than a year, and I still hadn't succeeded in putting aside savings for anything but the necessities.

Mello had wanted to be L's successor, possibly because the competition was the main event for Wammy's kids. But I had always liked thinking that, somewhere beyond his fiercely competitive nature, beyond his insatiable drive to be the best, Mello had wanted more than anything to put the universe back in its proper working order.

And little Matt had wanted, so much more than any number of brand-new as-yet-unbeaten video games, to help him do it

A/N: Hello all and welcome! This is the first fanfic I've written in some time. I've already mapped out the bulk of the plot, now all's left to do is actually write our way there—it's going to be an adventure, I promise you. Updates Sundays. Please feed the author, and I sincerely hope to see you again next week. Ta!