Relationship Matters by InSilva
Disclaimer: did not create the characters in the Ocean films.
Chapter Thirty-eight: Conversations
Callahan stared impotently at the door that Ryan had disappeared through and felt the dissatisfaction of an unfinished job rise up within him. Ryan had a story to tell, that much was obvious. Callahan hadn't made his mind up yet whether it was as a spectator or an instigator.
The trick with the piece of paper had worked as it so often did. Shook out a bit of information that wasn't otherwise going to be forthcoming. The 911 call. Ryan had suddenly offered up the fact that it wasn't made from his phone and Callahan felt sure that was the truth. Oh, he needed to pull in a few favours to check the records but he'd like to lay money that the call had indeed come from Rick Goodman's phone. And yet Rick hadn't been there when the response team had arrived.
Callahan took time out to contemplate Ryan and Goodman working together. Maybe between them they'd attacked the other three. It could work if they'd overpowered one of the men and threatened the girl… Maybe Ryan and Goodman were more than casual acquaintances. Maybe Ryan had got tired of the kid and traded him in for an older model. Possible, he guessed. Mind you, that was all he had. Possibilities and guesses.
He frowned, picked up the phone and dialled a number.
"Holt? Callahan. Do me a favour, would you, and bring me through all the paperwork on the Ocean case. Yes, I know the Feds are taking it over. Well, if they want the file, you can tell them where to find it."
Felicity was still sleeping when they walked back through the door. A glance at Rick, tense and pacing, told Rusty there was still no news on Danny.
"Who's this?" Rick demanded.
"Bobby Caldwell," Rusty explained. "Friend of a friend of mine. Bobby, this is Rick Goodman, Danny Ocean's partner."
Bobby nodded acknowledgement in Rick's direction and got a curt twist of a head by answer.
Callahan and the interview flashed before Rusty's eyes and he sighed. Rick needed to know.
"I've screwed up," he told him. "I had to tell the cops that I made the 911 call from your phone. Told them I couldn't find mine."
Rick stared at him for a long, long moment.
"You moron," he whispered.
Rusty said nothing. Rick was right. He'd been stupid. Truth was the easiest thing to sell. He'd been working to his original plan where he took Felicity into town and Rick stayed with Danny and he'd lost sight of the threads of the web he was weaving.
Rick walked up to him, invading his space, his face in Rusty's.
"You fucking moron!"
The last word was spat and with difficulty, Rusty refrained from flinching.
"Hey." Bobby insinuated himself in between them. "Lose the anger, Rick, we're all on the same side here."
"That remains to be seen," Rick muttered but he took a step back anyway. He glared at Rusty and scowled. "What am I supposed to do if they question me about it?"
"You could try going with rude and aggressive," Bobby suggested pleasantly. "You appear to have those two nailed."
Rick ignored him. "Do you know what I told them in my statement?"
The paragraph stood out as if it had been highlighted in bright yellow neon.
"Rusty told me on the phone that something had happened."
"Oh, no, he didn't," Callahan smiled grimly.
Amateurs. Lying took talent.
"Story number one," Rick said and he wasn't letting Rusty wriggle out of this one. "Story you came up with. Said that you rang me and told me about this almighty fucking mess!"
He looked at Rusty with contempt and hatred and he wanted more than anything to blame someone for what had happened. Why not Rusty? Why not? Since this fucking pretty-boy had pirouetted into his life, into Danny's life, then there'd been trouble. Leaving Danny to get beaten up, letting Danny get punched and kicked and worked over, fighting Danny… Why not now? Why not something Rusty had done that led to this unholy carnage…
Rusty's eyes stood up to the accusation and the anger. They told Rick that they understood the need to lash out, to find a focus for the pain that was raging through him uncontrollably.
For a moment, the fury almost won. For a moment, Rick imagined grabbing Rusty and punching and punching till he had him down on the ground, blood running freely… Then he looked again at the misery and guilt that Rusty couldn't hide even though he probably wanted to do so and he could see the look in Danny's eyes if he took advantage of that. It was the hardest thing in the world but he mastered himself. He swallowed hard and shrugged dismissively.
"Well, it's done now."
"It is," Bobby agreed, shooting a sideways glance at Rusty. "I'll work on it."
There still hadn't been any news on Danny other than the fact that he was still in surgery and that it was likely to be several hours still - early morning, in fact – before he came out.
"Felicity needs a proper bed," Bobby had murmured, smiling genially in her direction as Felicity stirred and sat up, blinking at the stranger.
Rusty nodded. He felt drained himself and he'd faced death before, seen death before: he couldn't begin to think what Felicity was going through.
"You need rest too." Bobby looked at Rick and Rusty. "You both do."
Both of them immediately shook their heads.
"I'm staying here," Rick said stubbornly.
Rusty opened his mouth to say the same and then he caught sight of Felicity staring at him, face tight and close to crying.
"Alright," he agreed. "I'll take Felicity back to the Imperial."
The night receptionist at the Imperial had been at first politely uninterested and then accommodating as Rusty had greased her palm with greenbacks; she rearranged bedrooms so that he and Felicity were opposite each other.
"If you need me, just phone my room or knock on the door," Rusty told her as they stood in their respective doorways.
Felicity gave him a quick smile and nodded. "Thank you, Rusty. For everything."
"No problem, Felicity," he smiled back at her. "Thank you for telling me everything. You don't need to go through that again now that I know. I'm the only person you need to tell."
She nodded again and then hesitated.
"He was very brave, you know," she said and Rusty's reassuring smile froze. "He didn't beg at all. Neither did Danny. At least…" her eyes clouded. "At least, not for themselves." She blinked several times and then added fiercely, "I want you to know how brave he was."
"I do," Rusty whispered. "He was."
"Good," Felicity said firmly. The little burst of energy left her. "Good," she said again and stepped inside the room.
Rusty stared at the closed door for infinite minutes before stepping into his own room and shutting out the world. He kicked his shoes off, dropped his jacket on a chair and lay down fully-clothed on top of the bed, pulling the counterpane up and round him.
"He was very brave."
Rusty gazed up at the ceiling in the half-light and wondered if there was some place past agony.
Bobby strode back through the doors of the police department and saw the keen cop – Callahan – still on duty, typing away on a keyboard.
"You working late?"
Callahan swung round and Bobby saw the recognition dawn.
"Sir, I know you're handling the Ocean case now, but there's some information you need to have."
Bobby put on his best professional face: smooth and polished exterior and giving nothing away.
"Well, let's find an office and you can tell me what you got."
"London?" Ed stared down at the plane tickets.
"London."
Eduardo's eyes lit up and Rusty's lips twitched.
"Something tells me you always wanted to go."
Ed grinned at him. "I always wanted to go."
"That's what I thought. That's not why we're going." Rusty's face grew serious. "I want to introduce you to a guy called Roman Nagel. Electronics genius and that's just his opinion. Don't be intimidated by him or he'll milk it for all its worth. He's expensive but he's quality. You can rely on what he gives you and he's honest enough to tell you if he can't deliver."
"And how often can't he deliver?"
Rusty smiled. "He's always managed it so far."
Roman had been dramatic as ever but beautifully mannered and Rusty had watched Eduardo, respectful but the right side of overawed, and Roman genuinely liked Ed and somewhere deep inside Rusty, some emotion rose up which with surprise he realised was pride.
Afterwards and they'd walked out of Roman's current dwellings on to Oxford Street and strolled in the sunshine with the shoppers for a while.
"This way," Rusty suggested and Eduardo followed him, trusting as ever.
The open top bus tour took them round all the sights. Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace… Sunglasses on, Rusty glanced over at Eduardo sitting next to him, grinning delightedly and he grinned back, reaching over and stealing a handful of potato chips.
"You've got your own bag," Ed pointed out with amusement.
"They taste better when they're someone else's."
It was true. They always did.
They'd gone to the Ritz for afternoon tea.
"The Ritz?" Ed murmured as a liveried doorman held the door open for them.
"Why not the Ritz?" Rusty shrugged. "Not like we're short of funds at the moment. Not like it would stop us if we were."
There'd been éclairs and cream tea and fancy cakes and bone china and Eduardo smiling back across the table at him and the happiness was rich and he didn't want a partner but Ed and he were partners now and Rusty would be lying if he said he didn't feel that happiness, Ed was happy and he was happy, he was-
Rusty woke up and the warmth of the dream memory flooded over him. London had been fun. Maybe Eduardo would want to visit again. Ed's choice, of course, Ed would have to-
Reality hit like a juggernaut.
His chest tight with painful pressure, he lay on the bed and he gasped in great gulps of air. It hurt, it hurt so much.
The airport. Running after him.
"For sure?"
"For sure."
If only…
Eduardo would have been on a plane. Eduardo would be with Carter. Eduardo would be a thousand miles away. Eduardo would be alive…
Ed would be alive.
Rusty's mouth twisted. His fault. He'd listened to ridiculous sentiment and he'd let it sweep aside years of the pragmatic and the self-sufficient. He'd listened to Danny. (Danny's fault?).
"Eduardo loves you."
Eduardo did. So very much.
His fault. If only.
And now Ed was gone.
He didn't think sleep would come again. He didn't think sleep would ever come again but he was wrong. His body betrayed him with tiredness and the only good thing was that there were no more happy dreams.
Rusty woke to a headache rocking through him, some vague thought of a missing detail and Carter perched on the edge of his bed, a soft smile of sympathy on his face.
"Hey."
"Carter…"
At once, he felt lighter as if just by having Carter there, the need to think and act and decide had lessened. As if Carter was some kind of miracle-worker.
"Sorry I couldn't get here any sooner."
"Bobby said you were away." Rusty sat up stiffly.
"Bobby's a good guy."
"Yeah. I like him."
Carter studied his face and Rusty was willing to bet he was reading everything that Rusty was feeling: the grief and the guilt.
"Think we've been here before," he said and Carter's face flickered with emotion.
"I'm just glad you're going to let me help this time."
Rusty said nothing.
"I'm sorry I never got to meet Eduardo."
Rusty felt in his pocket and pulled out the little box with the coin.
"We were going to bring this back to you today. Eduardo should have brought it back to you yesterday."
Should have. Would have. If only.
Carter took the Dollar from him and his brief touch was comfort offered. Rusty denied himself the comfort. He didn't deserve it.
"We should start by getting you some breakfast," Carter suggested.
"I don't want food," Rusty said immediately.
"You need food," Carter told him decisively. "Come on. Then we'll head back over to the hospital."
Felicity was awake when they called for her and she shook hands with Carter in a manner that suggested that she refused to be fazed by any number of friendly strangers. Still in shock, Rusty thought. He empathised.
Carter was the perfect gentleman. "We were planning on having a spot of breakfast, Felicity, and then heading over to see how Danny's doing. After that, perhaps I could run you back home so that you can pick up a few things?"
"Thank you," she said clearly and brightly. "I would appreciate that."
As they sat down at the breakfast table, the missing detail coalesced in Rusty's head.
"Reuben," he said by way of explanation as he pulled out his phone. "Reuben Tishkoff. Danny thinks of him like a father." His fingers dialled frantically. "He needs to know what's happened to him."
"Oh, Reuben," Felicity said, wide-eyed. "He'll be devastated."
Carter's hand closed around Rusty's.
"Reuben's on his way."
Rusty stared at him, believing but full of disbelief. "Reuben's…what the…how…?"
"After you called me, I called my friend, Scott. The one who mentioned Danny's name to me."
Rusty remembered.
"Scott knows Reuben and he said he'd call him. Reuben's on his way."
Carter Pryce. Miracle-worker.
The day before yesterday, Rusty would have said that Rick looked like hell. Only now, hell looked like something completely different.
Rick stared hostilely at Carter. "You one of Rusty's friends too?"
"Name's Carter." Carter held out a hand and Rick looked like he wanted to argue the social nicety but his shoulders slumped and he shook hands.
"How's Danny?" Felicity asked.
"They brought Danny out of surgery a couple of hours ago," Rick said tonelessly. "They said he'd been stabbed in the chest. Wound missed his heart by an inch. They said he was lucky."
(SomeWhere, there was a flash of a hollow smile.)
"How is he now?" Rusty asked urgently, trying his best not to complain about the fact that Rick hadn't called him.
"He's unconscious. They're keeping him that way for a while." Rick's voice shook a little.
Carter's phone rang, breaking the moment.
"Yes, Bobby. Yes, he is. OK. OK. Thanks." He snapped the phone shut.
"Bobby's on his way over. He wants to talk to you, Rusty. Rick?" Carter's voice grew gentle and persuasive. "You need to rest up. Freshen up." As Rick opened his mouth to protest, Carter went on, "Danny needs you strong and alert. There's nothing you can do and he's not even going to know you're gone. I'm running Felicity back home to pick up a few things. I can drop you at the Imperial. Makes sense for us all to be in the one place. Rusty will phone us if there's any change. Right, Rusty?"
Right. Carter had it all planned.
"Right."
It was at least two hours before he ought to be thinking about waking up but then Callahan's body clock had a mind of its own and he'd learned not to argue with it.
He rested his hands behind his head and traced the crack in his ceiling with his eyes. It was getting bigger, he was sure of it. Maybe the landlord would do something about it when the flat above landed in his bedroom.
Callahan thought back to last night's conversation with Bobby Caldwell. The man had impressed him. Serious, capable, professional. Exactly how an FBI agent should be. And he'd listened to Callahan, really listened. He hadn't dismissed any theories out of hand and he'd been very interested in the 911 call mix-up and in the out of place coffee cup they'd found.
"What's your name again, detective?"
"Callahan, sir. Without the 'g'."
Bobby has cracked a half-smile as if he understood that this was a regular explanation.
"Well, Detective Callahan, I think you have very good instincts."
Callahan had felt the swell of pride inside.
"I'll check all this information out personally," Bobby told him, "and I'll get back to you. Personally."
"Thank you, sir."
And that was a sign of class, Callahan thought, that Federal Agent Bobby Caldwell hadn't said "Call me, Bobby". Hadn't made the mistake of diluting authority with a desire to be one of the boys. There was a little respect being demanded here and Callahan was very willing to offer it.
Bobby stood up and shook his hand.
"Good job, Detective Callahan. You know, the FBI is always on the look-out for men like you."
Callahan smiled up at the cracked ceiling. There was no doubt in his mind that Bobby Caldwell wouldn't stop until the conflicting evidence was resolved.
Phoning home while he was away was a habit that Bobby didn't have to train himself to remember. The hard part was not wanting to jump on a plane and run back home afterwards.
For a start, Molly. And for another thing, Linus. He missed them. And that was without even hearing whatever current domestic incident was occurring. Seemed like Linus was determined to be the archetypal troubled teen and Molly never volunteered the stories but she knew better than to try and hide them from him. He'd definitely have been on the first plane back then.
As it was, he felt certain she didn't tell him the half of it. And she could handle it. He had every faith in that fact. She could handle it better than he could. Every time he tried to speak to Linus recently, he'd ended up coming over as more and more judgmental and that wasn't him.
He hoped that the day would come soon when Linus would look at him and not be convinced that his old man was a complete waste of space. So much to teach Linus. So much for Linus to learn.
His thoughts drifted back from the trials of being a parent as he walked in to the relatives' room and saw Rusty sitting on his own. He looked up as Bobby approached and his eyes had a haunted tinge to them which he did a good job of disguising as soon as he recognised Bobby.
Bobby smiled and sat down next to him.
"You'd think this room'd get more crowded," he said conversationally.
Rusty's smile was reflexive.
"How'd you get on?"
"Got Callahan onside, I hope. He's a good cop. Pity, because it would be easier if he was sloppy."
Rusty nodded as if in agreement on this point.
"Don't think it's anything to worry about. He's got a piece of circumstantial evidence that I reckon I can get round. And Rick's statement. Think I can work round that, too."
He did his best to project genuine reassurance. Rusty looked as if he was still beating himself up about letting his grasp of details slip.
"Anything you want to ask me?"
Rusty hesitated. "Can I…can I see Ed?"
Bobby's turn to hesitate. He'd seen Eduardo's corpse and even cleaned up, there was no hiding what the kid had been through.
Rusty's eyes told him that Eduardo couldn't look any worse than he had done yesterday.
"Sure thing. Later, though. Some things I need to do first."
Rusty nodded. "I'll be here, I guess."
Carter had suppressed the instinctive growl as Rick had climbed into the front seat of the hire car. All the innate chivalry inside him had expected Rick to offer up that front seat to Felicity and he had to tell himself not to say a thing. This was a man whose partner had nearly died. Who was perhaps still going to die. Recovery was by no means certain. Rick probably wasn't functioning anywhere close to normal.
"You have any idea who'd do this?" he asked casually and Rick shook his head.
"None. Some crazy gang. Like Charles Manson."
Well, it was a theory. Not one that Carter could imagine Rusty coming up with, but still.
There was silence for a while and then Rick's fist thundered into the dashboard, startling him and drawing a squeak from Felicity.
"I want to make them suffer," Rick said in a low voice. "For what they did." Twisting round, he glared at Felicity. "You sure you didn't see a thing?"
"No," she replied. "I told you. Danny pushed me in the cupboard before the men came in the house."
"You didn't look out the window? You didn't hear anything? You just sat in the cupboard and let it all happen in front of you and you can't tell me a goddamned thing-"
"Enough!" Carter snapped. "Leave her alone!"
Rick had the grace to look shame-faced.
"Sorry. I… Sorry," he said tiredly.
It was directed at him not at Felicity but it would have to do.
Carter pulled the car to a halt in front of the Imperial. "Get some rest, Rick. We'll see you later."
As he pulled away, he glanced at Felicity in his mirror. White-faced and shaken up and no doubt wishing that the past twenty-four hours could be bleached from her mind. Last thing she needed right at the moment was interrogation.
The phone call from Rusty had caught him in mid-con. A con that he'd abandoned immediately. Rusty needed him.
"There's been…Eduardo's dead. Danny Ocean…the man I told you about…he's really badly injured. And his wife, Teresa, she's been killed…"
He'd called Bobby first and then Scott. It seemed unlikely that there were two Danny Oceans. And even though it had been many, many years, he still remembered the glow in Scott's voice when he spoke about Danny. It took someone special to impress Scott.
"Reuben Tishkoff," Scott had said at once. "He's the closest thing to family that Danny has. I'll get in touch with him."
"He'll be taken to St Jude's."
"You make it your business to know every hospital in the country?" Scott sounded darkly amused.
"Scoped out a con nearby a year or so back," Carter explained. "Was going to use it as a cover but in the end, the con never happened."
"I'll get there as soon as I can. Anything I can do before I get there, you let me know."
It would be good to see Scott again. If only it didn't take catastrophe for that to happen.
They'd asked him if he wanted to see Danny. Danny wasn't conscious and it would only be for a moment, but did he want to see his friend? Danny was stable. Still critical, but stable. Did he want to-
"Yes," he managed. "Yes, I want to."
There was a bed and there were plastered limbs and tubes and monitors and wires and a very little tiny part of recognisable Danny. Face swollen. Jaws wired shut. Eyes shut. Shut off from the world. Shut off from everything and everyone.
His left arm was free and uninjured and Rusty reached out a tentative hand to brush against it. Danny felt warm.
"He's doing well," the nurse next to him said and then qualified, "As well as can be expected. The first twenty-four hours are the most critical."
Rusty stared down at the broken body in front of him. The blame he'd half-assigned to Danny for what had happened shrivelled away. This was no one's fault except...
You fight, he told Danny silently. You fight. And then we fight back.