You're all dead-on with your descriptions of horrible bad luck, and yeah, nothing (well, almost nothing) in this story is a positive coincidence, at least. If there are coincidences, they're usually going to be for the worst. . .
Now we have Warrick, interspaced with some Greg, and then the next chapter is to be Catherine, then the conspirators-POV, and then, part two.
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Chapter Eleven: Shots (WARRICK)
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The whole place smelled like cigarettes, but neither one of them was smoking. They rounded the pool table, holding the billiards delicately between their fingertips, and making their shots against the green felt. Greg looked sallow in the dull yellow lights, and the blue chalk on the palms of his hands made them vanish when he dropped them low over the table. Warrick watched him, admiring a quality he had never seen in Greg before; a certain caged stillness. Greg looked restless, but focused, as if his entire world had narrowed to the scope of the single game. His mouth was a thin, white line.
"Something wrong?" Warrick waved away the passing waitress's offer of another drink. The first two beers were already buzzing between his temples, and he wanted to be safe for the drive home. "You're being quiet."
"I'm concentrating," Greg said shortly.
"You talked to Grissom, didn't you?"
Greg lowered his cue to the table, drew it back between his finger, and tapped it against the cue ball. The striped nine dropped into the corner pocket. He didn't look up, even as the ball thudded into the leather basket with the others.
"What's there to talk to Grissom about?"
"This Zimmer thing," Warrick said. He licked his lips and searched for a good shot, but couldn't find one on the table. He leaned his billiard against the table and took some time to chalk up. "You've got that look."
"I don't have a look. Make your shot."
"And you've got that tone," he said. He felt more confident around Greg, glad that he had regained the control he'd lost around Catherine and Sara. Greg, as silent and unnerving as his mood was at the moment, was not likely to toss him off-balance. "You sound like a puppy that just got kicked back to the curb. So I'm guessing that you tried to tell him something that he didn't want to hear, and he told you off for it."
"He didn't tell me off," Greg said. "He just didn't listen."
"That bugs you?"
"That doesn't surprise me. But yeah, it bugs me. A little." Greg, too, leaned his billiard against the table. The closed look was leaving his face, being replaced by a kind of desperate earnestness that Warrick didn't like much, either. "I was trying to help him. Do him a favor. There's something weird going on right now."
"There's a lot of weird going on right now."
"I tried to tell him, but he wouldn't listen. He thinks I'm paranoid."
"Are you?"
"Probably. Does it make any difference? He's still in trouble, whether I'm paranoid or not."
"No," Warrick said, thinking about the shine in Catherine's eyes when they had talked. "No. There's not really a difference." He picked up the billiard and made a useless shot. The ball skidded over the felt, hitting nothing, changing nothing. The constellation of stripes and solids didn't move across the table. He hadn't managed to change the fates or rearrange the stars by a single shot, and he felt absurdly disappointed.
"You want to tell me what's bothering you, then?" Greg stood at the corner, evaluating his shot. The openness had left him; he was still again, but in the shadows, his face looked softer, more innocent. "You've got a problem, too."
"Nick, I guess."
The screen of calm around Greg shattered. He leaned forward on the table, his hands pressing against the wooden border and smearing blue chalk over it. "Nick? I haven't seen him all day. Where is he?"
"Boston."
Greg whistled. The sound came out low and impressive between his teeth. He accepted another drink - - his second - - from the waitress, and then went back to staring at Warrick. "Grissom sent him, right?"
"Right."
"So Grissom trusts somebody."
"Yeah."
"Just not us. And that's what's bugging you." Head down, until the nape of his neck glowed in the lemony light. The billiard back, and then released. It was a clean shot - - he sent the cue ball rolling into the twelve, and tapping it straight into the pocket. Greg smiled. "We're dead even. And there's the eight."
The eight ball perched in the middle of the table. It was dull and scratched, but it cast a wide, lumpish shadow all around it, and, looking at it, Warrick felt something tighten in his throat, like a corkscrew. He was glad that his one remaining ball, the six, was far from it, and unlikely to collide. The eight looked filthy. He didn't want anything touching it.
"Yeah," he said. "That's bothering me."
Voice melodious, controlled. Cool. He had this down.
Grin in place, he made his shot, but the cue ball clipped off the six and it stopped just short of the corner pocket. He muttered a curse, straightening up, feeling the muscles uncoil in his back and shoulders - - he'd been so tense for that shot - - and saw Greg glancing at him, pleased, and trying to hide it.
"Tough luck," Greg said, with a smile in his voice.
"Oh, piss on that," Warrick retorted, still grinning. "Your turn, man. See if you do any better - - that's an impossible shot if I ever saw one."
"Yeah, but I'm a master at pool." Greg called his pocket, then bent almost double over the table, his head so slow that his nose was almost touching the felt. His eyes were cocoa-dark, and fixed straight ahead on the impossible shot. If he made it, Warrick would be one of the converted. Greg's red-striped ten was almost against the edge of the table, and his one hope was to bounce the cue off the current side and hope it ricocheted back at the most impossible angle ever.
"Not a chance, master," Warrick said.
Greg didn't lift his head - - that same focus had overtaken him again. He drew his billiard back and struck it against the cue with a loud snapping noise.
Warrick watched it, knowing the shot was hopeless but somehow chained to it anyway. The cue ball cracked against the felt and tore backwards over the table, and he drew in a deep breath, thinking, Well, he won't make it, but it'll be damned close, anyway. The cue collided right next to the ten, and Greg, who had been standing at the edge with his eyes blazing and his fists curled, let out a soft sigh and relaxed.
"Tough - - " Warrick began, and meant to end with, "luck," and turned to pick up his billiard when he heard the cue crack again.
Rotating on his heels in a motion that could have burned rubber, he saw the cue resting an inch from the left side pocket, and the black idol - -
(I mean the eight ball, the fucking eight ball, what am I talking about?)
- - had vanished neatly from the table.
Greg, next to him, dropped down into almost a hunch over the table, head cradled in his hands. "Oh damn," Greg said, in a childishly proper voice that sounded innocently amusing to Warrick, even in his distraction. "I'll buy your next drink, I guess." He grinned. "Tough luck for me, right?"
"Bad luck," Warrick said. "My grandma always told me that hitting in the eight ball isn't just how you lose the game, it's how you get bad luck. Old superstition. Like stepping on cracks or breaking mirrors."
"Walking under ladders."
"Spilling salt."
"Black cats crossing your path."
"Yeah," Warrick said. "Like that. I mean, don't let it get your hackles up, man." He clapped Greg on the shoulder, feeling unexpectedly jovial and almost high from his win, even if Greg's accident had won it for him. "Just save your beer money and buy yourself a lucky rabbit's foot. I should get home anyway."
"Yeah," Greg said slowly, still looking at the table, bare except for the three remaining balls. "Me too. Need some sleep. Today was a long day, and tomorrow's gonna be worse."
"Don't I know it," Warrick said, grimacing. "Catherine and I are scheduled to talk with Covallo tomorrow about maybe having the lab cough up some settlement money for Grissom. Technically, it's unethical, and we'd have to hush it up - - but Covallo's kept a reserve in our cash storage since the eighties, and Grissom would, you know, reimburse him."
"I'd like to get this all out of the way," Greg said, cleaning off the table. "Sooner the better. It's making me antsy."
"Antsy is your natural condition," Warrick said indulgently.
"Hey, tomorrow, stop by the lab and tell me how it went with Covallo. I hate being in the dark." Greg frowned. "And maybe tell me where I can buy a rabbit's foot."
"Novelty shop, but, seriously, calm down."
"I'm calm. I'm cool. I'm in control. I just want a lucky rabbit's foot so I don't wake up with leprosy or something. That's not superstition, that's just - - well, okay, it's superstition. Just don't tell anyone, okay?"
"You're the one calling the shots," Warrick said.
Greg lifted the eight ball out of its pocket and stared at it, grimly. "Didn't call this one."