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Jul 17

Fear Itself (Part 15)

Tw: in this chapter nothing too crazy, violence, drinking, drugs in the background.

Part 15 -

The descent from the hotel balcony was both embarassing and terrifying in equal measure - with the batman insisting on putting me over his shoulder firefighter style as he stepped off into a freefall. It took every thing in me not to scream, which would have defeated the point of the stealthy exit, but somehow I did manage it. The cable we descended from seemed to have some kind of a counter measure that whirred into life and slowed us as we neared the bottom of an alley at the back. There was a light on in the hotel kitchen but no one seemed to be around to notice us, so he simply set me on my feet again and waved me after him as he strode fearlessly through the dark winding passageways, past overflowing trash bins and vents spewing steam into the already stifling night air. It struck me, in an ironic way, how like the joker that was; the fearlessness, moving through the city like they were a natural part of it. I envied it as I had to intermittently jog to keep pace, almost tripping in one of the many potholes when a couple of startled rats darted across the alley in front of me, making me jump.

By the time we arrived at the club, even though we had driven most of the way, I was already cursing the high heels I was sporting as part of my cover outfit. I had opted for a chunkier base, not confident in the batman's plan and wanting to have some chance of running without breaking an ankle - but they were still uncomfortable. I'd also been careful to pick out a pair of boots, as I figured that was the best way to smuggle in the switchblade I'd picked up from the back room of a shady corner store. I could feel the cold metal against my ankle.

I was not prepared to go into the lion's den totally unarmed, however adamant the batman was that I wouldn't need to be. As we sat in his tank-like vehicle, in yet another shadowy back-alley, he handed me a tiny ear piece and a map detailing the route to the Galante's underground records office. I stared at the paper in front of me, dread suddenly gnawing at my stomach. I scanned and re-scanned it, trying my best to commit it to memory.

"Put this on" he said gruffly, handing over a silver bracelet too.

I frowned.

"You don't think I did a good enough job on the outfit?"

"No. Look here," he said, flipping open the heart charm to reveal a concealed button.

"Let me guess, if - when, it all goes south, I press that and you'll come to my rescue?"

"If you need it. Yes," he answered flatly.

I grabbed it and struggled to attach it to my wrist, adamant that I wasn't going to ask for help.

Once I managed it, I grabbed my purse and gestured for him to let me out of the vehicle. With a hiss of hydraulics the door drew upwards and I stepped out onto the patchy asphalt. The summer night air was hot and dry.

I pulled down the hem of my dress and took a breath to steady myself, before stepping forwards on unsteady legs. By the time I reached the corner and turned onto the street, I had steeled my nerves enough to project a kind of confidence, striding towards the distant queue of party-goers on the street.

The bouncer looked over my ID and waved me through with an unchanging expression, and the muffled music greeted me as I entered the lobby leading to the club floor. I paid my fee to a woman in a ticket booth, gave her colleague my purse so they could do a half-hearted bag search. They waved me along with just as much enthusiasm as their colleague, and I soon passed by the cloakroom and over the faded art deco tiles, up an ornate angular staircase to the interior of the club. At the leather padded doors, I slipped past two people stumbling out and the thumping bass, punctuated by red and blue strobing lights, hit me like a shockwave.

This nightclub was different to the ones I'd been in before, the music seemed far more aggressive. The crowd was diverse but mostly uptown - the boujie avant garde crowd, bankers, and trust fund kids.

The vibe was more new money than old, in contrast to the fine skeleton of the art deco ballroom it used to be. The people nearby had plenty of gaudy displays of their wealth, primarily through designer labels and flashy watches. It was clearly a place to come and be as decadent and wild as possible. I assumed that was why security seemed so casual. I doubted their patrons would be too happy about running all their flashy jewelry through a scanner and walking through metal detectors to get in. With a bang, I dodged a flying champagne cork. Turning to see where it had come from, I was met with the sight of a young guy with his undone tie hanging around his shoulders, his shirt half unbuttoned and a pair of raybans balancing askew on his head. He cheered and sprayed the people in his booth with the jet of foaming bubbles as the women shrieked in protest at him getting it in their hair.

Moving on, I walked down the row of booths that skirted edge of the busy dancefloor. I saw more than one person openly snorting white lines from the black polished stone of the tabletops and tried not to stare. The nearer I got to the wall of speakers at the front, the more I could feel the air inside my lungs vibrate with each beat. The darkness in this section of the vast dancefloor was so intense that I could only see snapshots of peoples' bodies as they moved around me - like a flip book animation. I felt dizzy and disoriented as I pressed on, weaving in and out of them toward the back of the venue.

Before I could break out of the crowd I felt a hand on my arm.

"Dance with me," said a voice as a pretty woman with slick back hair drunkenly pulled me into her.

I wanted to protest as I quickly realised she was high as a kite, but she began to sway as she clung to me.

"Don't you just love this music?" She yelled in my ear over the thumping bass.

"Uh, sure..." I said trying to grab ahold of her arms so I could put some distance between us.

"The DJ is from Berlin, he's played Berghain. Have you been?" She said, still clinging closely to me.

"To Berlin? No."

"Oh you'd love it!" She yelled back.

"Sorry but I'm working, I really have to go," I protested, gently prising her grip off of me.

"Oh, I'm sorry honey. Go get that bag!" She said, planting a kiss on my cheek and then spinning around, arms thrown wide with her eyes to the heavens.

Relieved to have dodged her inebriated advances, I kept moving through people under the roving spotlights and smoke. It wasn't long before inadvertently caught the eye of a man who reached out for me from the grey haze but I quickly side stepped him, not wanting to get caught up again. Finally, I made it to the back and followed the wall along to the left, past the bar towards some restrooms. I noticed the large metal door and initially walked by towards the restroom, trying to inconspicuously check if anyone was watching. I saw there was still a guard present despite what the batman had assured me. I anxiously watched from near the bar for two minutes and saw that he wasn't going to leave.

"Are you at the door yet?" Came the batman's familiar voice over my earpiece.

I pulled out my nokia burner and flipped it open figuring it would look less suspicious to pretend to be on a call.

"We have a problem," I hissed under my breath.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, the business deal might not go through. One of them isn't going to budge."

"There's a guard at the door?"

"Yeah that's what I've been saying, he could make the whole thing fall through."

"Alright, well we need to make him leave his post."

"I mean, I can try, I've been trying to run alternatives. We just need him to bite."

"We only have one shot. Try it and see."

"Alright. Well leave it with me and I'll get back to you. Bye." I said, pretending to hang up and put my phone away.

I scanned the crowd lining up at the bar and noticed two particularly tall men. One of them looked like a roided out gym nut. I felt safe in betting he'd have a hair trigger temper. I put myself next to him, being sure to have him on the non-scarred side of me. I stumbled and bumped him slightly immediately catching myself by gripping his arm and profusely apologising.

"Oh my god, I am so sorry!"

He turned and his face lit up when he saw me and he threw an arm over my shoulders.

"No worries! How's about I buy you a drink?"

"Sure. That's kind of you, handsome," I nodded meekly.

I asked for a jack and coke and quickly turned to the big guy on the other side. Seeing that his attention was on trying to get the attention of a bartender, and no one else seemed to be watching, I stumbled and grabbed him by the arm, repeating the same trick. He was just offering me a drink when the other guy turned around to hand me the one he'd bought.

"Hey man, she's with me, beat it," steroid guy warned.

The other one looked taken aback.

"Relax man, I was just buying her a drink."

I failed to suppress a slight smirk at the ridiculous argument that was evolving as i'd hoped it would.

"Hey, I don't want any trouble. I'll just leave," I said as innocently as possible and backing up.

"Now you've scared her away. Look!" One of them said gesturing to the other.

"Scared her away? She's coming with me, she can recognise a high value man," the steroid guy said squaring up to the other.

They hadn't even looked at me the entire time they'd started arguing and I began to slip further back into the crowd.

By now it had reached boiling point, as the second man grabbed the first by his shirt collar and then almost instantly there was a beer bottle smashed over someone's head and and all out brawl erupted, dragging several other nearby patrons into the fray. I moved back towards the nearby door and watched as the security guard ran in to try and help his colleagues break up the chaotic mess before it pulled in even more people. Everyone's attention was on the fight as I reached the door and placed the false card over the scanner.

"Now. Do it now," I urged over my earpiece.

"Hold it there. One, two, three. There should be a green light now."

The light flashed green, just as he'd said.

"Now type on the keypad. 10085."

I did as he instructed and there was a series of clunks as the door popped open about an inch. I heaved it open and slipped through, closing it behind me as fast as I could.

I was in a small room with an old vaulted ceiling and a stairwell leading down from it. It was warmly lit and the old carved stone looked far more like something you'd expect to see in Europe than the US. I quickly darted down the multiple flights, which then opened out into an atrium, with several doors leading off from it.

"Where now?" I urged.

"The second door on the left. Use the key again."

I did as he instructed, holding the keycard to the sensor and waiting until it clicked green.

Once I was inside the room, I noted it looked a little like an old library or a study.

"Am I definitely in the right place?" I muttered.

"Yes. The don is meticulous. He has a papertrail on everyone."

"Well where the hell am I supposed to start?"

"The cabinet on the far right. My source admitted that he keeps records of anyone who works with him in there. Even the basic heavies he keeps around."

"I'm not even gonna ask how you convinced him to give that information up..." I muttered as I flicked on the yellow-green light of the banker's lamp and began to rifle through the alphebetically stored files.

"You weren't kidding hjg names as the papers shuffled by my fingers.

I realised that the first cabinet only went from A-E and looked down the rest of the row in growing dismay.

"There's enough scandal in here to take down the entire fucking city... Is there anyone, any department that isn't on the take??? That isn't in the mob's pockets?" I was so overcome seeing the sheer volume of the corruption laid out before me - cold, hard proof, undenyable.

I felt a rising rage at the scale of the rot, at seeing just how deep it wormed into the very foundations of the city.

He said nothing to acknowledge my rhetoricals as I looked around the room in dismay.

My eyes caught on a leatherbound 'page-a-day' diary, and the fountain pen beside it. Unable to resist, I left the file drawers open and picked it up.

I flicked back through the more recent pages, past meeting dates and social calls until something caught my eye.

"What are you doing? Have you found anything yet?"

"Yes, but not in the files. I think this is the Don's diary. It's about the two dead men they found out by the docks. Remember? one burned and one chewed through by rats, like some kind of Saw trap."

July 17th

TMK and MW found.

There was a pause as I could hear him checking some kind of database.

"Look for anything under the name McKinney, or Watkins."

I did as he said and pulled out the files.

"There's more than one McKinney," I warned.

"Terence, or Terry, is who we're after."

I slotted the other files back, careful not to disrupt the order and flipped the remaining two open.

"Terry Mckinney. It's marked with a big red stamp. So's this one on Matthias Watkins. You think Galante had them killed?"

"Seems like it. Maybe they went to work for Scarecrow... if we can find who else is on his list -"

"Right," I affirmed, hurriedly putting the diary back and going back to flipping through the paperwork in search of more red stamps.

"What do you see? We don't have long now."

"Uh... there's a handful of others. I think some are already dead and gone but... theres an Adam Kaufman, and a Cameron Mitchell, and uh... Manh Nguyen, and Tate Jackson."

"Okay good, you need to get out of there fast."

I hurriedly slotted back the files i'd pulled out and shut all of the heavy drawers as quietly as possible. Rushing out into the central atrium, I softly closed the records room door behind me and darted up the enormous ornate staircase back towards ground level.

"You need to move faster, you're going to get caught."

"I'm going as fast... as I can," I muttered as I flew up the stairs, desperate not to trip.

I could hear the faint thumping of the nightclub bass as I reached the door, surprised by how much it dampened the sound.

"Ok let me out," I ordered, placing the key back on the pad.

I waited while he did whatever kind of hacking was required to trick the scanner again and I tugged the door. The sound hit me in one huge wall as I popped back out into the teeming club floor and it closed behind me.

I was about to breathe a sigh of relief when someone stepped in front of me. It was the door guard. Turning around hoping I could make a run for it, I instead saw a large man in a finely cut custom suit and two more men accompanying him.

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