2020-04-09 - Past Meets Present

Two if By Sea is a much nicer establishment than the 'Last Chance' Hotel in Hoquiam, which was Vic Grey's last cover job while working for Felix Monaghan. This time, he's set her up as a bartender. She should be good at it since her dad owns a bar in Portland. She's not. Her dad is a jovial, kindly man who loves to talk to people. Vic is a borderline sociopath who gets paid to make sure Felix gets paid by any means necessary. The amazonian woman is sitting out on the deck where she can smoke, a cigarette between her lips and her phone in her hand.

She's in well worn jeans, tac boots, a white tank, and a burgundy leather jacket. Her hair, back when she was a Portland PD narcotics detective, had been short and very blonde. Today it is long, wavy, and caught somewhere between dark blonde and light brown. It's unmistakably her though. The beauty mark between her brows cements that. She's sitting at one of the tables, with one booted foot on the seat of another chair, frowning at texts. That may just be her natural expression.

Two if by Sea, TWIBS, the Twofer, or as it's sometimes more unfortunately known, the Deuce. It's de la Vega's go-to establishment for the procurement of alcoholic beverages, on account of his buddy who runs the place. So nobody bats an eye when the cop shows up in his standard off duty ensemble of ratty black tee shirt, dark cargos, shit-kicking boots and a battered leather jacket thrown over top. His ballcap's tugged off once he reaches the bar, but only for a moment, so he can scruff fingers through his hair while he waits to order. "Tequila, por favor," surprises no-one, least of all the 'tender behind the counter today, who greets him with a warm, hey, captain, how's it going?.

He's not yet spotted the brunette out on the deck, but given the patting down he gives his pockets until he finds his pack of cigarettes, it's only a matter of time before that's rectified.

A couple of Chads drop by Vic's table and ask if they can join her. She gives them a silent look that makes their faces go paler by three shades and they move off quickly, deciding they don't need a smoke afterall and the interior of the bar is a much saf- er better spot to drink. There's an aura about her, a sort of palpable tension, like an animal coiled and waiting to spring. If she had more than the faintest whiff of the Reader aspect of Glimmer, she'd likely present as some scary creature. Instead, she just radiates the cold, feral energy of a predator.

She pulls a zippo out of her pocket and lights up, the flame a bright point in the darkening evening out on the deck. If she's cold, she doesn't show it. Part of her posture still reads 'cop' from afar.

As the Chads are hustling themselves back into the bar, the middle aged Mexican in the ballcap is headed out onto the deck with his drink. He holds the door for them, amusement flickering across his expression for some reason or another, then prowls away to find himself a spot to sit. He doesn't seem to mind the touch of rain that's peppering the firepit seating this evening; it beats the cloistered air and the noise inside, at least.

He's just taking his first sip of tequila, when he spots what looks at first blush like any other attractive thirty-something woman, albeit with a fuck off vibe a mile wide. But a second glance has him pausing, and squinting slightly, steps halting a good ten feet away. Close enough that there' no chance she'd not spot him, in return. He doesn't speak, just stands there and stares at her with his glass touched to his mouth.

She's always had the awareness of a cop. She senses people nearby before she sees them. There is the slight flick of her dark blue eyes upwards, the light from her phone screen casting her face in pale shades, as she studies the man standing there staring. A slow, very unfriendly smile curves the corners of her mouth as the cigarette is plucked from her lips, and she exhales smoke into the air. "Hijo de puta, as I live and breathe. Javier de la Vega. Fancy meeting you here." Her tone is not friendly, instead almost taunting, like she knew he was here in town before she came. Because of course she did, Felix would have insured that.

She doesn't budge from her sprawl on the pair of chairs, flicking ash off her cigarette on to the ground with a swipe of a thumbnail to the filter end. "I see no one's killed you yet. The cartels aren't usually so sloppy about loose ends." She smirks.

The look on the cop's face could hardly be called friendly, either. Despite having the evening off, a glass of his favourite drink in hand and a box of ammunition calling his name in the trunk of his car, his expression's gone utterly cold. Which is never a particularly good sign for a hot-blooded man with a typically Latino temper.

He finishes his sip, swallows slow, and then runs the tip of his tongue over his teeth before easing in closer. The rain mists his dark hair and eyelashes and beard, dampens his tee shirt. He seems unconcerned. "No. Despite your best efforts, pequeña perra." Something dark and thoroughly unwholesome enters his voice with those last two words in Spanish, his eyes slivered with a nasty glint. The seat opposite her is settled into without so much as asking permission, his bulkier frame arranged lazily in it with his knees sprawled apart and his glass rested on one thigh. "What the fuck are you doing here?"

"Aw, is that a new pet name for me? How adorable," Vic retorts, sarcasm dripping from her words. "And if I'd given my best efforts, you'd be six feet under, Papi. I just told them who you were. You know how it goes, when you haven't had any of that pretty white powder in so very, very long, and you just can't go any longer without it. You DO know that feeling, don't you, Javi?" Oh yes, she's choosing her words specifically to push his buttons. She sold him out for blow? Well a shitton of money, but also blow.

She settles back in her chair, taking a long drag off her cigarette. "As for what the fuck I'm doing here? Work. Been up in Hoquiam for a few years, but my boss decided to send me down here to make sure business goes smoothly." Hoquiam? Another Monaghan stronghold. Her eyes stay on his, those lips curling as if in a dare for him to try anything.

Try anything? Him? Here? He's done some stupid shit in his life, but fucking with one of Felix's lieutenants out in public like this, would probably be tantamount to signing his death warrant.

The beginnings of a sneer, when she talks about the blow she sold him out for. A ripple of that hot temper she knows so well, has seen on multiple occasions. No reply whatsoever though, to the rhetorical question posed to him. You DO know that feeling, don't you, Javi? "Don't fucking call me that." His own pack of cigarettes is dug out of his jacket pocket, and one tapped out and tucked between his lips. His eyes come up when she says my boss, and he snorts softly. Then lights up, and shoves the zippo away again.

"Two years," he murmurs instead. A drag off his cigarette, smoke exhaled through lips and nose, dark eyes unwavering. "Two years we worked that case." He starts to say something else, stops.

"Two years," Vic agrees, glancing at his glass, seeing he hasn't changed his drink preferences since then. "And we got nothing from it. Nothing." Not for lack of trying but, the cartels didn't get ridiculously strong by being stupid. They were being ridden hard by the higher ups for the lack of useable evidence. Pressure was extremely high, the danger even higher. And then there was the coke. So much coke. They were destined to fail hard on that operation.

She finally shifts her gaze from the Mexican to the ocean, getting a far away expression. "It was going to go to shit with or without my help, you know that." She may have had reasons, but if so, she doesn't seem willing to share them.

The ocean has no more answers for her than he does; whitecaps are visible today, whipped up by the wind. The boats in dock bob and sway with each incoming swell, a distant melody of wind chimes and jostled trappings.

"Don't be so fucking naive," replies the cop, thumbing the end of his cigarette to loosen some ash from the tip. Dark eyes on the brunette across from him, gaze hard and unwavering. "If we'd had another six months, we'd have had a chance to take things out from the ground floor. You got impatient, and decided to cut and run while you could still get something out of it." His tone is acid, inked fingers tight around his glass.

And like the sociopath she may well be, Vic smiles again and shrugs. "Patience was never my strong suit." She has ink too, but it's all covered up right now. "Drink here often?" she asks, in amusement, tilting her head and giving him that expression that screams sarcasm. If she's asking that, there has got to be an unpleasant reason. She knows something he doesn't, clearly.

She takes a final drag from the cigarette, now burnt down to the filter, before stubbing it out in a metal ashtray. The rain darkens her hair but she doesn't seem to care. "How did you wind up in this podunk town, Javi?" Yes, she said it again. Come at her bro. She leans lowers her leg from the chair where it was resting and leans her forearms on the tabletop, staring at him intently, brow arching.

"Neither was subtlety," retorts the older man without so much as a glimmer of amusement. He's all taut muscle and hard eyes, tension strung through him like a livewire, no matter the apparent laziness in his spread-kneed sprawl. Like if she gives him even a shred of an incentive toward violence, he'll take it. Does she remember that mean right hook of his, or the fact that he hits like a freight train? Or that he's annoyingly quick, for a man of his age. Which hasn't stopped him, of course, from losing a couple of fistfights where she's concerned.

"Mm," is offered in non-answer to her question of whether he drinks here often. Surely she already knows the answer to that.

He leans in then, settling his elbows on his knees, jacket shifting and crackling with his movement. His dark eyes bore into her blues. "Wanted a quieter life. Settle down, slow down, maybe retire soon." He's fucking with her, of course. Slow down isn't really in his vocabulary.

"You are still a shitty liar. I'm not sure the cartel even needed me to out you to them. Transparent as a fucking window, Javier." Vic gets to her feet and rounds the table, leaning down to get within centimeters of his face, the smell of cigarette smoke like a perfume halo around her. "Then get used to seeing me. I'm going to be Easton Marshall's newest bartender, Papi. I'll try not to piss in your Patron too often."

A chuckle, finally, when she accuses him of being a shitty liar. His dark eyes sliver into crow's feet at the corners, though there's no warmth to be found in them. "Get the fuck out of my face," is his low, ice cold murmur when she leans down to speak quietly to him. There might be a flinch as Easton's name is mentioned, but then again it might just be the cold biting through his layers of clothing. He blows smoke right at her, if she doesn't happen to move fast enough.

Vic doesn't bother moving, and just continues the predatory stare as the smoke curls around her in wisps. It lends her an even spookier air. "See you around, Javi," she whispers to him. She manages to make that sound like a threat, though anyone watching might think it looks intimate. Then she straightens and saunters with a sway of hips back inside, for her unnecessary interview with Easton. Felix has already 'encouraged' him to hire his Enforcer.