Al Capone had, over the course of his life, driven many different vehicles. It had started with a newly minted Ford he and some boyhood friends had discovered on the outskirts of the city and subsequently taken on a joyride- Capone's idea, of course. He retained the American love of the automobile all of his days, and even though his rides changed over time, his methods of acquiring them differed only in their level of illegality- the term 'ride it like you stole it' was probably coined with him in mind. His most recent catch was no exception.

And if he had though the rush of air that had first breezed past him outside the Museum was a welcome return to life, then by comparison the face-slapping current he was blasting through now was a near-epiphany. The machine thrummed joyously underneath him, its engine sending a reverberating roar through his entire being, a wonderful thing that expressed itself as a wide and wild grin plastered onto his face. A grin that stayed on his face all of about one glorious minute, until he had the unfortunate luck to glance away from the road at the exact moment a rather low roadsign came into the perfect position for smacking him in the face and off the bike.

Behind him a good mile by now, Rick and Jake stood staring in a relatively useless fashion at the road before them. Infuriated a good deal more than his friend, Rick eventually took it upon himself to snatch his baseball cap off and fume, screeching insults and reproaches in English, Spanish, and the variety of pidgins most New Yorkers are students of.

Jake, who wasn't anywhere near Rick's level of frustration and saw that this was quite a useless exercise, sought to silence the guy's ever-loving trap. "Rick. Dude. Chill out."

All he succeeded in was getting Rick even more steamed, if that were possible. "Chill out? Chill out? Why in the name of Quentin Tarantino should I chill out? I was just assaulted by a dangerous criminal! ME! A cop! That's a federal offense! The whole squad should be chasing after that punk right now!"

"I really don't think the office would be willing to chase down somebody on our account. Remember what happened that time Viktor Fillmore stole your girlfriend and we told the brass he was conspiring to blow up the Hudson Bridge? Not pretty."

"Stealing the only girl I ever managed to hook up with was a federal offense! It's in the books. I petitioned on the Senate floor for the law to pass and it did."

"You've never been out of New York, Rick."

"You don't know that!"

"Actually, I do. We met in pre-K, remember?"

Rick pointed sternly at him. "You are trying to get my mind off of that criminal that just assaulted me. It ain't gonna work. He threw the first punch. He's going behind cold steel bars or my name isn't Richard Gutierrez the Second!" he turned his face back to the road. "YOU HEAR THAT, PUNK?"

Jake glanced down at the finger three inches away from his nose and shoved it aside. "Rick. Dude." he repeated, "This isn't helping anything."

His friend ignored him and returned to yelling derogative terms at Capone's family tree. Jake gave up for the time being.

When Capone came to, he knew one thing and one thing only.

His head hurt.

Bad.

In fact, his head hurt really bad, even worse than the hangover he had gotten in SoHo back in '22 on New Year's. For several minutes most of his attention was diverted to the throbbing in the center of his forehead and evaluating it against the various hangovers he had gotten, chronologically by year, ignoring the fact that this particular headache wasn't a hangover or even remotely related to alcohol.

As the rest of his senses faded in, he became aware of a low puttering, which he took to be the still-running engine of the moped, a rather odd hissing noise accompanied by a suspicious acrid smell, and over that a piercing, constant wailing that sounded alarmingly familiar... alarmingly... why that adv- alarm! He cursed and sat up abruptly, forcing his eyes open and staring at the broken glass of the storefront his hijacked ride had just bursted through in an action-flick like manner.

Having a quick mind when it came to matters of law-breaking and general crime, Capone spent all of three seconds gaping at the scene and whirring through possible reactions. Coming to a conclusion, he jumped up- "Achh! Backache!"- or at least tried to, and limp-jogged into a convenient nearby alleyway. Once out of the immediate crime scene, he allowed his rattled mind to follow a more coherent line of thought, which included many unprintable explicatives concerning headaches. And the realization that he had no idea where he was.

More explicatives followed.

It had taken Capone at least seven geological epochs of walking block after endless block, but he finally managed to find a pay phone moored at the edge of a lonely and decrepit gas station. It was his intention to call Daley, or at least a cab, and return to some part of this blasted city he actually knew about. Bluffing about your knowledge of city streets and then getting lost in them is not a smart thing to do, as he had learned.

Capone scowled at the machine and gave it a once-over. There had been thousands of them in NYC even back in the 20's, and in his youth he had lost many hard-earned coins to the out-of-service ones people kept around to make easy money. This one appeared to be working, though, as it was lit up bright enough to make his eyes smart. He began to look for change on the surrounding ground, had no luck, and so began to rife through his borrowed clothing.

His hand paused over the $20 momentarily, but then moved on- the machine didn't seem to take bills, and he wasn't about to give it up after the crap he had gone through to keep it.

That, and there was no way in heck he was dropping that much money into a pay phone.

He spent a good amount of time exploring each and every corner of each and every pocket of the jeans with increasing desperation. Luck was smiling on him for once that night, though, as he found a lightly tarnished New Hampshire state quarter hiding in the last pocket he searched.

Capone cackled in triumph and shoved the coin into the machine, then picked up the phone and pressed it to his extremely smug face.

And waited.

And waited.

He frowned and looked a bit closer at the directions.

Please deposit a minimum of 50 cents to begin a call.

The proprietors of a certain New York city pay phone would later find its receiver ripped violently away from the base and lying thirty yards away in a storm gutter, as if someone had thrown it there in a fit of extreme anger.

It had been upwards of half an hour, most of which Jake had spent texting, but Rick finally seemed to have exhausted his supply of insults. Jake asked him as much.

Rick responded with a growl and crossed his arms. His throat was starting to hurt.

"You finally chilled out?"

"Yes, since revenge is a dish best served cold."

"Oh, yes, Rick, wonderful, now please tell me how in the heck are you going to take revenge on a guy you know nothing about?"

As it turned out, Rick did know something about him. It was the result of having to accompany his little sister on a tour of the MNH. He had sleep-walked through most of it, of course, but recalled just enough to make him suspicious. "I've seen him before. I remembered where. Museum of Natural History. He plays their Al Capone. Looks like he walked out of Casablanca. That's why he was made up all black and white."

"So that's why he looked weird. Hunh. I thought I might have gone colorblind there for a few minutes. Seeing movies late at night will do that to you."

"Stop getting off the subject, Jake!"

"That isn't off the subject!" he said indignantly. "I was seriously worried I might have had colorblindness, especially when you didn't say anything to the guy about being gray!"

"That's because there were more important issues at stake. He assaulted me, remember?"

"Well, you certainly aren't letting me forget it."

"Whatever. I'm going to give that guy a piece of my mind ASAP!"

It would appear Rick was in the mood for more cat-screeching and subsequent getting his butt handed to him on a plate.

"In his own territory? Bad idea. Guy probably has friends there."

"Friends schmends. You make sound like he's got a mafia going in a public museum."

"Hey, you never know."

It took Capone a little while- okay, a long while- to bring himself down to a manageable level of calm and fully decimate the pay phone to his liking. When he was finished, he grabbed the ragged phone book, ripped out the pages he needed, turned to leave, and smacked head-on into someone for the second time that evening.

(His poor head really was taking a beating, if you think about it, what with the moped wrecks and the bumping into things and so forth. I wouldn't worry if I were you, though. It's doubtful anything short of a rocket launcher could harm something as thick as Al Capone's skull.)

At any rate, back to our loveable protagonist, who had recovered from his- what, fifth accident tonight?- by now, albeit with the aid of numerous words his mother would have slapped him for using, and turned to apologize for the collsion and subsequent cursing to whoever it was.

He proceeded to choke on his own spit.

It was the floozie from earlier, and she was grinning past the bruise on her nose like she had just met her soul mate.

Author's Note: As a general announcement, I really don't mean to offend anybody with the curse words. They're just what I think Capone would say given the situations and his character. I haven't had any complaints or anything but I wanted to make a point of mentioning that for any future readers.