Disclaimer: Don't own Gambit; do own pretty much everyone else.
A/N: Apologies for the delay in posting, but I had a berevement in my close family that knocked me for six a little. Thank you so much to all the kind reviewers who flooded my inbox with wonderful messages in the few weeks I have been away, I am very grateful. Please read and review?
08
"Where have you been?" Electra hissed as Blaze walked into the apartment mere minutes before Henrick was due. "And why are you wearing a guy's t-shirt?" If Gambit had given the impression he wasn't interested in Blaze's arrival, he suddenly was at the mention of her new clothing. His head snapped up from looking at the table where he had been checking the drugs for Fallon. He scowled at Blaze, who blanked both him and Electra as she diligently tied a knot in the offending t-shirt to stop it from drowning her. It was blue-grey, printed with a stylised surfer motif.
"Dat ain't mine," Remy growled, making both girls pull their faces at him. "Who…" The door opening for Henrick stopped his question. Quickly Gambit tipped the drugs to rest on the scales they'd 'borrowed' for this purpose.
"What time are you meeting Fallon?" Blaze asked the brute of a man by way of a greeting.
"At one, half a mile from here. You want me to come back here with the money?"
"What did you think we were going to do, follow you?" Blaze smiled darkly. "You can see what it weighs, it's a fair deal. You'd better get going." Henrick nodded and took the goods. They waited until he'd gone down the hall again before Gambit tossed Blaze a mobile, which she caught with a flourish. He had three words for her, "Don't lose him."
"Don't leave anything for the police to find," Blaze returned. "I'll call you. Number on redial?"
"Oui," Remy affirmed. Blaze grabbed a rucksack from behind the sofa and jogged out of the door.
"Well," Electra crooned, hooking an arm around Gambit's waist. "Maybe she does have her uses. Are you sure she's not going to fuck this up?"
"Lay off her Cherie," Gambit pushed Electra away. "I trained her, she's good. Let her do her job, we gotta do ours, non?"
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"Hello…" Lance mumbled, sitting up straighter in his seat. "What's Henrick up to?"
"No idea," Gus replied as both cops watched the mule stride single-mindedly across the street. He hadn't seen them. Henrick rarely saw beyond the end of his own nose. Lance glanced about. There were few people on the streets; it was too hot. A blonde sat on a wall talking into her mobile. Something about her seemed familiar, but she had her face turned away from the cops so Lance couldn't be sure.
"Park up," he suggested to Gus. "I think we need to take a closer look."
"You bet," Gus affirmed, turning the wheel and taking the unmarked car down a side street. When they walked back around to the main road, the blonde was gone.
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"Regardez," Blaze instructed Gambit over the phone as the Cajun and Electra finally took up their places. The 'blonde' had abandoned her wall at the first sign of the cop car and had instead climbed onto the roof of a nearby building to watch proceedings. Henrick had done a rather limited sweep of the area and was moving into where they could only presume Fallon was waiting. Of course the cops had started to swarm the area. The original unmarked patrol car must have sensed something big and called for backup. "I see," Gambit breathed. "Cops everywhere, he got 'bout t'ree ways outta there with that cash, providing they don't blow it an' raid before its done."
"It not about three, its exactly three," Blaze corrected. "Alley to the back right as you're looking at it, the flats and the fire escape to your left, and the junction up the street."
"You were right," Electra grumbled, "She is good."
"Take the junction," Gambit told Blaze. "We'll cover the alley an' the flats. He gotta bring that money to one o' us." He hung up and put the phone away. Across the rooftops he could see the blonde-haired Blaze move to climb down again. The disguise had enabled her to track Henrick thus far without being noticed. Gambit and Electra also moved to street level, splitting up to cover the escape routes. Gambit couldn't help himself as he passed the car in the side street. It may have been unmarked, but it still screamed police, especially in this neighbourhood. A finger traced down the paintwork made the vicinity throb and glow. Then with a pop and a crackle the traced line exploded leaving a black and silver tear in the fabric of the car's chassis. Gambit allowed himself a thin smile, but barely looked back. Time to earn a livin', n'est-ce pas?
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Henrick withstood the humiliation of Fallon's bodyguards groping him to make sure he didn't have a weapon. For once he was unarmed, he would have been stupid to have a gun here. Every step he took into the lion's den was a step made with borrowed time. At any moment these brutes could shoot him, take the drugs and no one would care. Henrick swallowed hard. He had to hope they were in a generous mood, Fallon especially.
Finally admitted past the bouncers in the door, Henrick followed a stooge through Fallon's building. There were a lot of people here, though most of them were not in any state to be a threat to him. A young girl, maybe seventeen, ebony skinned and her long black hair in braids, sat barefoot on the floorboards. Her skinny feet were so shrivelled that the veins stood out from the tops. The needle punctured one with no difficulty, her eyes rolling back in her head as she depressed the plunger on the syringe and injected the heroin. Henrick was fascinated in much the same way as he had been with the blue-haired mutant chick. The girl wouldn't know, wouldn't have a fucking clue what he did to her…
The stooge cleared his throat and spat impatiently on the floor. Henrick remembered what he was doing and scurried along to catch up. Fallon was sat counting notes with his close circle at a rickety wooden table. They were all smoking, drinking and laughing in a room where the windows had been shoddily boarded up. A guard with a semi-automatic machine gun stood against the back wall, and all the men carried guns. Henrick hadn't arranged the trade with Fallon himself, everything was done through 'mutual friends'. It didn't mean that Henrick had difficulties working out who Fallon was. Fallon was one of a kind, a mutant.
A monster of a man, Fallon was almost seven feet tall. His hawk-like eyes were piercingly acute and unpleasant to have rest on you. His tanned skin was almost exactly the same shade as his shoulder-length wispy chestnut hair. Yet none of these things, or his smarmy too-handsome face, mattered when looking at the mutant. His ten-foot spanning eagle's wings, brown with yellow and white primaries, tended to dominate the view. On close inspection, his fingers were tipped with black claws, talons. He turned his head as a hawk might, to gaze unblinking at the intruder with yellow eyes. Henrick gulped, and then steeled himself like the idiot he was and foolishly stepped forward.
"I'll take that," one of Fallon's circle snatched the drugs out of Henrick's hand. Henrick tried to protest, but the man armed with the machine gun shook his head solemnly, patting his weapon. Henrick stood still again. All went quiet. Somewhere behind him in the building someone was retching violently. Henrick could smell the vomit and bile from here. He could smell other things too as he flared his nostrils and kept his mouth shut. Smoke from tobacco and marijuana, sweat from men who hadn't washed, blood, urine and faeces. Corpses emptied their bowels and bladders after death. That sickly sweat death smell was here too, and Henrick wondered who they had under the floorboards. Was it the last man to try and sell them such a paltry offering? He swallowed again as the drugs he'd brought were poured onto a digital scales diligently. All attention was on the figures it produced.
After an age, the scales settled. No one said anything still as one of the circle picked up one of the pills and did as Electra had done, resting the tablet on his tongue. He looked thoughtful, holding the tablet there a few moments. Then he took it back in between his fingers, and rubbed it between his forefinger and thumb until it crumbled. Only then did he turn to Fallon and give him the nod. Henrick let out a slow sigh of relief. It was going to be okay after all. The questions that remained was how much they would pay him, and whether he wanted to keep it, or spend it on a couple of mutant whores with delusions of grandeur.