"John?"
Finch sat back, staring at the screen, hands frozen on each side of the keyboard.
Waiting.
Silence met him on the other end of the line. He tried again, voice raising in volume: "Mr. Reese."
Root sighed loudly next to him.
"Relax, Harry."
Relax.
He turned stiffly.
There had been gunshots in his ear only moments earlier. A heavy commotion, some clatter. Reese's tone had been measured. Direct.
He'd needed an exit.
"The man is quite capable of taking care of himself. We have bigger things at stake here."
Finch stiffened at her words. He shifted in his seat, his gaze back to the screen in front of him. A slight shake of the head.
"About that, Ms. Groves..."
His eyes trailed the figures. Blueprints for the hotel, a schematic of routes and exits.
One could argue-
She was tapping at her own keyboard and he trailed off, eyeing her screen, her modification of the code.
"Line 43…" She looked up, giving him a knowing smile. "She'd like to change that. And… line 104." A pause. Scrolling. A hum of understanding, another quick edit.
"Ms. Groves-"
Root was reaching across his arm. She hit a few keys and the windows on the screen were replaced with the earlier programming.
"I think you already know what to do with lines 211-223?"
Finch skimmed the command functions. Reaching out to tap down a few lines. He frowned.
"Isn't this fun?" Root smiled as she said it, turning her head to catch Shaw's eye. Her smile sweetened despite the darkened expression there. Undeterred.
"So fun," Shaw muttered.
She'd had enough.
She was changing out of the damn dress and leaving them to it.
"Call me if something comes up, Finch."
"Ms. Shaw," he started, but she was already out the door. It closed behind her with a slam. He glanced to Root, who raised her shoulders in a shrug and gave him another bright smile.
"I guess it's just you and me, Harry."
Reese had once spent three hours in the back of a steaming garbage truck in Fallujah waiting on an kill order.
During a long night a few months back he had entertained Finch with the scene. Part of it. He'd painted it in an amusing light, the way you could only after the right number of years had passed.
It had been 106 degrees that day. He could still remember the smell. The flies. The heat.
The bloodshed.
On the scale of relative, this was better.
He rolled a shoulder. Peeling himself off of a moist garbage bag, shifting himself to an upright position.
Listening.
Sirens, no longer in the distance.
He tapped his ear com.
"Finch?"
Silence.
"Harold."
Nothing.
Tapping it again as he straightened his back. Still nothing.
Slipping his phone from his pocket, Reese stared at its cracked display.
He closed his eyes a second and then shifted, feeling something wet under him.
He managed his way to the inner edge of the dumpster, finding enough leverage to reach up and get a grip at the top of its wall. Swinging over, he landed gracefully enough, letting himself fall into a crouched position.
He waited there, surveying the scene. Even from the narrowed vantage point in the alley he could make out the throngs of people milling in the street. Shadowed in the streetlights.
Some annoyed at the evacuation, talking heatedly into their phones, others frantic and wide-eyed. Wedding guests, dressed to the nines. Others in bathrobes.
Ivanov and his Russian compatriots were surely long gone.
Reese started to rise and then sniffed as he came upright, frowning. Pulling off his suit jacket, giving it a critical look. City sanitation had won.
He tossed the jacket back into the dumpster he had come from.
Leaving the alley, blending with the crowd. The flickering red and blue of the cruisers.
Reese stalked the scene for a good ten minutes before finding the figure he was looking for. He tailed him from a distance first, amusement growing. He watched the man bark orders here, take a call there. Sip from a large soda everywhere.
Never wiser to his presence.
By the time the scene had cooled down, Reese had long abandoned distance. He blatantly followed to the cruiser and slipped into the backseat. Opening and closing the car door at the precise moment the detective did.
It wasn't until Fusco looked in the rearview mirror and jumped out of his skin that he spoke. "Sweet mother of-"
"Hello, Lionel."
"-Jesus."
Reese gave him a look. "You need to be more careful."
"Careful?"
"I followed you for almost an hour."
"A little busy, smartass. Some guy in suit shot up the-" Fusco stopped. Son of a- "Seriously?"
Reese raised his eyebrows. "Seriously?"
A glare.
Reese shook his head, gaze moving out the window. "Who gave you your intel, the Russian mob?"
Annoyed silence. With a mutter, Fusco started the engine and pulled away from the curb.
Fusco's quiet lasted all of thirty seconds.
"You stink," he said finally. "You know that?"
Reese turned his head, giving him a hard stare in the mirror.
"Just saying." The look of distaste hung on Fusco's face even after the words had faded.
Thousand dollar suit, Fusco was probably thinking, and he managed to smell like he'd been rolling around in garbage.
An electronic hum. The windows rolling down, front and back.
"Jesus. I gotta ride in this all day."
Ignoring him. "I need a favor, Lionel."
"This is your favor, partner. I'm gonna start charging your fare."
"I need you to pull a file. Erik Ivanov."
"Get in line."
"C'mon, Lionel."
"C'mon yourself." They stopped at a light and Fusco glanced over his shoulder at the slumped figure. "What happened back there?"
"Where?"
A pointed look. "Back there. You want info, I want info. Fair trade."
Silence.
Reese watched the traffic. Good luck, Lionel.
He wasn't even sure himself.
There was honking, somewhere in the distance. A siren, even further.
He rubbed a damp spot on his trouser leg as they moved again.
Fusco continued, "You know that doesn't work, right?"
Reese turned his head.
"You brooding, me giving in. Doesn't work."
Reese leaned deeper into the backseat. He wasn't brooding.
Fusco eyed him in the rearview mirror and he raised his eyebrows in return.
Not brooding.
The radio squawked with a call on the other side of midtown and Fusco listened with half an ear. Another crackling voice responded.
Reese watched him in the mirror. "Wanna grab a drink?"
Fusco eyed him suspiciously.
The ex-op raised his eyebrows suggestively. "Vodka? The Russian Samovar?"
In their reconnaissance of Ivanov, there was only one place he frequented.
Fusco hiked his own eyebrows at the name of the mob frequented establishment. "You're nuts, pal."
"My treat."
The detective shook his head. Certifiably nuts. "Whatever happened back there, they're fired up."
"Best time to get information."
"Yeah, well. As good as you smell, I got a mountain of paperwork back at the precinct."
"Next time then." They were stopped at another light and Reese was sliding to the opposite side of the backseat, reaching for the handle. Fusco twisted his neck to give him a look, shaking his head.
"Will you hold on? Geez."
The light turned green and Fusco pulled forward and out of the traffic, in line with the curb. He put the car in park, looking over his shoulder again as Reese opened the back door.
"I'll see what I can dig up, alright?"
"Thanks."
"And hey," Fusco called. "Guy."
Reese paused, turning his head back.
"Nice tie." The detective smirked, pulling away from the curb before he could hear the growled response.
The Russian Samovar had little curb appeal but its inside oozed of bourgeois grandeur. The narrow green-and-red tinged room boasted expensive decor, the walls lined with authentic art and poetry.
Reese, now less both tie and jacket, moved to the bar, his senses absorbing the room and its inhabitants.
Sight lines. Exits.
He eyed the menu of infused vodkas, ordering one absently and scanning the length of the restaurant. Seeing no one of interest he studied the doodles and poems that hung on the walls. He felt transported to another time.
Back then it was mostly kill orders and kidnappings. Justified, of course. On paper.
Sometimes he wasn't sure if things were simpler or more complicated now.
"Here, hun."
An old habit, he wet his lips with the drink the bartender brought. Waiting, he took a sip.
"Ivanov?" he asked her.
She was an older bartender, bleached hair that contrasted darkened brows and heavily made up eyes.
"No," she said with a shake of the head. But there was a tell he could read, and he knew she was lying. He could spot the way her eyes unconsciously flicked to the back stairs.
He didn't even have to ask.
He nodded into his drink, taking another swallow and then placing the tumbler down.
He stood, a few minutes later, under the pretence of looking for a restroom. Passing a surveillance camera mounted in the corner of the back hallway, he paused.
"Can you see me?"
He mouthed it, almost in jest, but the blinking red light in return made him rethink his humor.
Upstairs, there was a private room with the air of a St. Petersburg salon. Reese stepped in boldly, mentally tagging his options as he spoke.
He kept his tone smooth but was rethinking the direct approach when he noted the number of eyes on him.
"Oh hey, fellas."
Alek and Erik stared back in interrupted annoyance. A half dozen comrades around them, thick-armed, clearly packing.
Reese's own hand rested near his hip, at the ready.
"I was just wondering if you would recommend the borscht or the pelmeni-"
"Get rid of him."
It was said in Russian, but fluency granted him enough time to expect the blow from the nearest guard. Size wasn't everything; he knocked the larger man out with a single return blow to the head and turned again to the group with his hands raised.
"I just came to talk," he said.
"About?" Erik Ivanov stared at him, unblinking. Reese looked from his darkened expression to Alek's matching visage.
The two brothers seemed a team again.
"The firm you were talking to about NT&T."
A blank stare in return.
Reese looked back to Erik.
"I don't know what you're talking about," came the accented reply.
Two of the suited men stepped forward.
Reese clenched his fists. Bracing himself. He rolled a shoulder, fighting the urge to tap his ear com.
Down to the solo voice in his head for backup.
He loosened his hands at the ready.
It had steered him fine before.
A second man stepped forward, he downed him as quickly as the first.
A third, a fourth.
The fifth decided picking up a metal stool and slamming him in the back of the head would somehow be a fair option.
He blacked out, just for a second, and felt himself grabbed under the arms, dragged to the back of the room.
There was a back set of stairs, and he heard the sounds of the city explode as a door opened and the night air hit them. An alley.
There was a cool, sharp pain over his forehead. A punch to his stomach.
He fell to the pavement and the street began a sickening spin.
Then, nothing.
