In and around "Lucky Stiff" (part one)

N.B. The "boom-box" comment refers to the movie Say Anything. As for the Russian phrase…if you're so inclined, I'll just say that this is why the Good Lord invented google.

When they prosecuted Stan Klein for the murder of Vladimir Rezanov (aka Vic Russell), Connie, at least, had felt more than a pang of sympathy for the Klein's family. They had all seemed genuinely horrified by the crime and, later, by Klein's apparent motivation – a murder to cover up a biofuel scam. Klein's wife had even failed to provide him with an alibi for the night of the murder. Most family members, whether because they assumed their loved one was innocent (often in spite of substantial evidence to the contrary), or because they simply didn't want to see said loved-one go to jail, were willing to lie about that kind of thing. Or, if not lie, at least stretch the truth. Connie understood it, even such lies routinely made her job more difficult as she sought to discover the contradictions and implausibilities that inevitably appeared. Mike, being Mike, had markedly less patience for this kind of thing. ("Just assume everybody's full of shit, Connie," he once told her, very early on in their working relationship. "It'll make the job a lot less frustrating.")

What she and Mike didn't know, and what they discovered later, was that one family member didn't deserve the sympathy that Connie, at least, had felt. Chad Klein, it turned out, was an apple that hadn't fallen far from the tree.

So, on the day of the verdict, in which the jury found the senior Klein guilty of conspiracy and murder, Connie wrongly considered that the case had been put to rest, at least until the sentencing hearing. Mike had evidently felt the same when, a few hours later and three-quarters of the way through the outstanding paperwork from the trial, he'd dropped his pen on the table where they were both sitting and looked at his watch. She was aware of him doing so, but was too busy sorting through the papers for the date of Klein's initial arraignment, which had temporarily slipped her mind. She only looked up when he pushed back his chair, stood, and informed her that he was calling it a day.

"Shouldn't we…," she began, indicating the documents spread out in front of her.

"They'll still be here tomorrow," he said, holding out a hand to her. "Come on, Connie. Let's go get that drink."

Connie took it, and he pulled her to her feet. Checking her own watch, she was surprised to find how late it had become. From far off down the corridor she could hear someone stridently arguing over the phone with someone else (a significant other, from the sounds of it) that being delayed at the office was "not my fault, it's Cutter's" and then – after evidently receiving an earful – peevishly accusing the person on the other end of the phone of "not appreciating what I do." Mike had smirked at this, and then begun gathering up the files from the table, organizing them neatly, before tossing them in a careless pile on his desk.

"Give me five minutes," she told him, before walking to her own desk and pulling a small make-up kit out of her drawer. She'd started this several months before (prior to The Carly Thing), this freshening up before going out for a drink with him, and she had told herself it was only polite to do so after a long day in the office when she'd run her hands through her hair so many times that (as her sister would say) she looked like she'd been dragged through a hedge backwards.

Over the past month or so – since things had improved between them following the Winston case – she'd admitted the truth to herself: that while she always liked to look presentable, she didn't spend nearly as long in front of the bathroom mirror before going out for a drink with any of her other colleagues, male or female. And, okay, she liked the way that he would quickly, but unmistakably, cast an appreciative glance her way when she reappeared at his office door, coat in hand. We all need a little flattery from time to time, she told herself. Besides, apart from one or two passing (and, she suspected, carefully off-the-cuff) comments, it wasn't as if Mike had actually said anything about her looks. Nor was she the type of person who had ever craved comment on it. More than a few men had gone on at length about her appearance. Truth be told, she found it – and them – boring.

Still, when she tapped on Mike's doorframe a few minutes later, she couldn't help but feel a bit pleased when he turned from shrugging into his coat and looked her up and down briefly, a slight smile on his face. She smiled back at him and they left the building.

The place they ended up at was loud. He'd suggested somewhere farther away, but she'd insisted that it was too cold to walk far (rolling her eyes at him when he'd pointed out "all these yellow things called 'cabs' that'll take us places for a small fee"). So he'd given up and steered her towards a small bar a couple of blocks away, where they found a tall table with a couple of empty bar stools and sat down.

They made a toast to the successful case, he with a glass of scotch, her with a beer. The conversation had turned to other subjects, when Mike noticed that she was looking speculatively at her half-empty beer glass.

"Everything okay?"

Connie nodded. "I was just thinking…how often these cases turn on a dime. How often it's just sheer coincidence or outright luck that plays a part in it." She took a small sip of her beer and pondered for a moment. "Take Rezanov's watch…If it'd been another detective working the case, or if it'd just been Lupo there, no one would have figured out that the watch in Chad Klein's apartment was Rezanov's. But Bernard happened to know that what look like the letters 'BP' in English are actually 'VR' in Russian. He knew the Cyrillic equivalent and then made the connection, and almost anyone else would have missed it, because the characters for Rezanov's initials aren't, you know, only found in Cyrillic."

"Right," Mike agreed, draining the last of his scotch. "And on the other hand, if our Russian victim had had the initials 'FD', even Lupo would've made the connection."

"Leave him alone," Connie responded, almost automatically. Relations between Mike and Lupo had also got significantly better since the blow-up during the Winston case (and since Lupo and Bernard had thwarted Winston's attack on Mike), but Mike still seemed not to be able to resist taking the occasional (now mostly good-natured) potshot. She suspected that, when he was out with Bernard, Lupo did exactly the same thing to Mike. "Anyway, why 'FD'?"

"Because those initials would be more obviously Russian," Mike explained. He removed the cocktail napkin from beneath his empty glass and reached into his inside jacket pocket for a pen.

"This is an 'F'," he told her, drawing what looked to Connie like a capital 'I' with a circle across the vertical line. "And this is a 'D'." Here he drew what looked like an oddly-shaped triangle, with a tiny line protruding from the bottom of each side. He pushed the napkin over to her, and Connie gazed at it and then him.

"Don't tell me you speak Russian, too," she said, lightly.

He shrugged. "A bit. I can get by, sort of. I used to be able to get by. I'm a little rusty now."

She stared at him skeptically. "Say something then," she challenged.

"Like what?"

"Anything."

He thought for a moment, and then spoke a very brief phrase of what did, indeed, sound like Russian, a slight smile on his face. Despite herself, she was impressed, and asked him to repeat it. He did, speaking more slowly this time, and Connie listened closely, trying to remember it.

"Ti takaya…" she said, carefully, "kra…krasi…"

"Krasivaya," he finished.

"What does it mean?"

"It means I need another drink." Mike stood up, picked up his own glass, and indicated hers. "How 'bout you?"

"I'm still working on this one," she pointed out, thinking how strange it was to learn things about people you'd never suspected, particularly colleagues, about whose inner lives she seldom devoted much thought, but who often had random abilities or interests that seemed to come out of the blue. Like the time she'd first walked into Jack's office (back when Mike's office had been Jack's office), and found Jack happily tapping his fingers on his desk to The Clash. Other people didn't shock you in the least. Arthur Branch's fondness for going upstate to shoot ducks, for instance, hadn't exactly taken her by surprise.

She waited until Mike had returned with the drinks and settled back in his seat before she followed up. He looked a little unsteady, and she suppressed the urge to make a crack about how he couldn't hold his liquor. Or rather, how he'd get caught up with work, forget to eat, and then get tipsy off of one glass of scotch (a double scotch, in this case, but still.) She'd made such comments before and had found that they were usually unwelcome. Some male pride thing, she supposed.

"So how did you end up being able to 'get by' in Russian?" she inquired.

"My ex-fiancée's parents were Russian," he replied, casually. "She spoke it. I picked some up from her."

Connie nearly choked on the sip of beer she'd taken. "Ex-fiancée?"

"I was engaged once." He looked closely at her, a little confused. "I thought you knew that."

She shook her head. "What happened?" she asked, then instantly regretted it. Connie had always been a keen advocate of people minding their own business. She had to ask too many prying questions as part of her job – ironic, considering that she herself had a well-honed sense of privacy and tended to resent personal questions being asked of her. It was one of the hangovers of the job, she supposed, that her naturally watchful nature had become a little…over-developed. She even opened her mouth to retract the question, but Mike had apparently anticipated what she was about to say and held up a hand.

"It's fine," he told her. "Nobody got left at the altar or anything dramatic. It just didn't work out."

Connie's curiosity won out over her caution. "How come?"

Mike took a long pull on his scotch. "We agreed on all the big stuff. Careers, where to live…all of that. We were on the same page about definitely not having kids, too. And then one day we…weren't." He shrugged. "It's nobody's fault, but it's not like you can compromise on that one, either. Someone changes their mind, and that's pretty much that. So we ended it. I ended it."

Connie nodded knowingly. "She decided she wanted kids after all."

He blinked. "No. No, I did."

"You did?"

He flashed a grin at her and nudged her gently with his foot. "And here I thought you were above crass gender stereotypes, Rubirosa. Shame on you."

She smiled back at him, a little weakly. "Where is she now?"

"Westchester. With her husband and their two kids."

"Ouch."

Mike shrugged, a little too nonchalant. "God has quite a sense of humor, doesn't he?" Then, apparently noticing her expression, he added, "It was fifteen years ago, Connie. Water under the bridge. I'd rather focus on the fact that we won this case." He finished his drink (more quickly than he had the last one, she noticed) and placed the glass back down on the table with a thunk. "Another one?"

Connie shook her head, wondering why she felt so unsettled.

Mike sighed patiently, shaking his head. "Connie, we lose too many close ones. I learned a long time ago to celebrate my victories."

She smirked at him. "Your victories?"

The slight grin on his face widened. "Our victories," he said, leaning in toward her, his hand inches from hers on the tabletop, and close enough that she could smell the faint scent of his cologne. "Another beer?"

"Mmm." She nodded, wondering why she found herself acquiescing to him so often. Not that it hadn't always been that way. As he'd once told her, he was pretty good at arguing. He was also quite adept at turning on the charm when he needed to. Of course in the past, she reminded herself, she'd simply avoided the whole issue by not spending time with him outside the office – as if, deep down, she'd known that Mike Cutter's persuasiveness would eventually prove just as effective on her.

In the end, though, he'd only made it a foot or so from the table before her Blackberry chirped with a message, and Lupo gave her the news that both Stan Klein and his estranged wife had been found murdered in Klein's rented apartment. They'd hailed a cab and headed uptown to the crime scene, Mike sobering up with a cup of coffee he grabbed while they hunted down a taxi.

*******

The crime scene, as crime scenes tended to be, was horrific, chaotic. The bodies of Klein and his wife lay in the apartment. Mrs. Klein's daughter, hysterical despite the sedation that had been given to her earlier, was in the back of the ambulance, being comforted by Klein's son, Chad. As Mike and Connie walked up, the daughter, Alicia, informed the detectives that Stan Klein had been alive when she'd found them, and that he'd blamed the Russians.

Mike and Connie exchanged glances. Connie recalled Arshavin, the Russian mobster, stating in court that he would send Klein "a bill" for the money he now wouldn't be able to recover from Rezanov. The whole set-up seemed to make sense. On the other hand, there was something about it that struck her as a little ham-fisted, even for a mob hit.

She said as much to Mike as they left the scene. He mulled it over, thoughtfully.

"Maybe," he said at last, sounding doubtful. "But Klein's own step-daughter said he implicated the Russians."

"I know." Connie exhaled, watching as the steam of her breath vanished into the cold winter air. "Does Chad Klein seem a little 'off' to you?"

"Off?"

"I can't put my finger on it. Just…"

"A little detached?"

"Kind of, yeah." Connie yawned, suddenly thankful they hadn't stayed for that extra drink. She was craving her apartment, a cup of tea, and the soft new flannel pajamas she'd just bought. (Because apparently I'm eight-five years old, she thought ruefully. And any day now I'll start collecting unicorn figurines and stray cats.) She looked up and down the street. A few taxis cruised past, their roof lights off, passenger seats full. "Where have all the empty cabs got to?"

"You'll have better luck on Broadway," Mike pointed out, gesturing vaguely ahead of him. They walked along in companionable silence for a block, Connie pulling down her hat and then wrapping her arms around herself against the cold. The height of the buildings created an unpleasant wind-tunnel effect that seemed to drop the temperature another ten degrees. Her sister, who was arriving the next day to begin her job search and the slow process of leaving her boyfriend, was sure to set up a volley of complaints about the cold. Connie smiled to herself. Elisabeth was bound to have packed at least five suitcases for the four-day visit, none of which would contain any of the items she'd actually need.

She noticed suddenly that she was walking alone, and glanced back to find Mike about fifteen feet back, peering in at the window of an electronics store, where a football game was being played out on one of the TVs. She trudged back to him.

"Hey," she said, waving a hand in front of his face. "Aren't you supposed to be walking me to a cab?"

He turned towards her. "Sorry, just checking the score."

"Nice. Very gallant."

He shot her a side-long grin and tore himself away from the game. "Connie, never let it be said that I don't know how to show a woman a good time. A few drinks, a crime scene…"

She snickered. "You're a ghoul, Michael Cutter."

"…all rounded off with a case of hypothermia. Very romantic." They reached Broadway, and as he'd predicted, he was able to hail a cab easily. He opened the door for her.

"So this is how you impress the ladies, is it?" she teased.

"You tell me."

There was something in his voice that caught her attention. She looked up from her purse, where she'd been carefully checking to make sure she had her wallet. The expression on his face was one she'd seen before on other men, but not on him. She'd had her suspicions, seen hints of it, sure – events that could be explained away, brief flashes so quick that if she'd blinked she'd have missed them, nothing she could pin down and say: This. Unambiguously this. But now there he was, standing close to her – not invading her space, not backing away, either. The cab door was between them, the look in his eyes was unapologetically flirtatious.

She held his gaze, and rocked one hand from side to side in a so-so gesture. "Not bad," she admitted. "Just don't stand outside my apartment with a boom-box."

He laughed, and the moment between them was broken. They exchanged good-nights, and Connie got into the cab, instructing the cabbie to take her to Park Slope and ignoring the embittered sighs of protest that a request for a destination outside Manhattan always seemed to provoke, especially at this time of night. She settled back in her seat, relieved to be out of the cold air, and more than ready to get home, make that cup of tea, and climb into bed. She closed her eyes briefly, wondering why she wasn't more surprised at the conclusion she'd just drawn, more disconcerted. A year ago, even a few months ago, she would never have so calmly accepted that something happening between her and Mike was no longer a question of whether but when.

And yet, several weeks later, she would be surprised at how it happened. That the first time he kissed her wasn't the denouement of some dramatic set of circumstances (for instance, of the sort that had happened only a few weeks before, courtesy of Marty Winston) or some passionate declaration. That instead they'd be talking about something mundane, something about a case, and she'd say something, and he'd say something, and then he'd just lean in and kiss her, like it was the most obvious thing in the world to do, and still – still – she'd feel herself go weak at the knees. Now, on this night, when a case they'd both thought was closed had opened up again, she merely rested her head against the window of the taxi and watched world outside fly by.