Chapter Text
Jack didn't need this. Jack didn't need this at all. Jack didn't need this dickweed detective to come bother him with his dickweed detective bullshit. Jack didn't need him to wave his dickweed little business card in front of his face. Jack didn't need to read the irritatingly shiny embossed green print (P. Sloan and Associates: Private Investigators, it read, in case anyone was curious, which Jack wasn't). Jack didn't need to be interrupted in the most important week of the last three years by some amateur gumshoe with some score to settle or point to prove. What Jack needed was for this man to get the fuck out of his office and let him work.
“Listen, Mister. . .”
“Sloan,” Patrick provided, nodding toward the business card.
Jack leaned forward over his legal pad, gripping his pencil quite a bit more tightly than would ever be necessary. “Listen, Mr. Sloan, you must be aware that I am a very busy man. I have got complaints from the lower levels about recent acquisitions not being up to code, I have got an offer for further development in the Narrows that needs to be retooled, I have got accusations of someone cheating at one of my casinos that for some reason they felt needed to be directed at me, I have got a son who needs braces, I have got problems, I have got responsibilities. I have got things to do, and not one of those things revolves around you. I apologize for the inconveniences, but I do not know how my secretary was able to find a time in my schedule for you to make an appointment, because I – sure as God made little shit sandwiches – would not have been able to.”
“Ah, fault's all mine, Mr. Vantas. I should attempt to make this meeting as brief as possible.”
“All due respect, Mister. . . I'm sorry, I've already forgotten.”
“Sloan,” he supplied again, this time not breaking eye contact.
“All due respect, Mr. Sloan, if you had any intention of making this meeting as brief as possible, you wouldn't have made it at all. Now you can either get to your point and try very hard to waste as little of my unspeakably precious time as possible, or you can take your nice white hat and your nice white coat right back out my nice mahogany door and find a nice saguaro cactus and get carnally acquainted.”
Patrick Sloan just smiled and put his business card back in his shirt pocket. “Forgive me if I don't take you up on the offer, Mr. Vantas, but I didn't come here for foliage fornication. My business here involves some kind of rumors I heard regarding an associate of yours by the name of Jack Noir.”
Jack smirked right back into that fucker's pathetic excuse for a poker face, knowing it was just barely containing a shit-eating grin. He decided to play along with this asshole's little game of sudoku, or whatever it was that assholes played these days. “I'm sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Sloan, but I don't have an associate by that name.”
“Oh my, I ain't made a mistake, have I?” Sloan asked, raising his eyebrows in the most irritating mockery of sincerity.
Christ in a pair of handcuffs, Jack thought. He'd seen better acting in his kid's class presentations on the four food groups. “I think you may have,” he said. “What was his name again?”
“Jack Noir, Mr. Vantas.”
“Noir, huh. Sounds French. Can't stand the fucking French.”
“That's not a very nice thing to say,” Sloan said, his smirk visibly twitching under the strain of not showing how pathetically proud of himself he was. “I happen to have a very good friend of French descent.”
“Well that's the loveliest goddamn story I have heard all year. Please do type it up for me, I believe I can get you in touch with a publisher and a movie deal. Now I have answered your question, and you have used up fifteen minutes of my workday. Have a good evening, and don't get hit by the door. Hate for you to scuff it. Again, mahogany.”
“You ain't foolin' me, Jack. I know who you are.”
Here we fucking go. “Enlighten me,” Jack grunted.
Patrick opened up a folder on his lap and let loose with a tile-toothed grin which, as expected, made Jack sick. “Oh, but surely you already know. José Vantas, a landowner, a casino proprietor, a legitimate businessman.”
“This may come as a shock to you, but I assure you I have read my own business card.”
Sloan ignored the comment and continued to thumb through the contents of the folder. “You got your start as a pencil pusher at a pretty cushy, but not very challenging, government job. Governor's aide or some suchlike. Pretty complicated stuff, politics. I've never gotten the full handle on it, myself. It all seems pretty standard for a while, but then the governor resigns under somewhat mysterious circumstances and she ain't been in the spotlight since. Suspicious, right? Kinda stuff that would make a lesser guy lay low 'cause of the rumors, but not you, Mr. Vantas. You rose above the odds, came into some money – I know not from where – and moved here about eighteen years ago. Started a cute little family business, Vantas and Sons Real Estate, and began buying up and rebuilding large swaths of the residential and commercial districts. Your investments started making returns, so you thought then was good as any to branch out into the private entertainment business, ain't that right? Opened The Midnight Lounge and Casino and established yourself as one of the wealthiest and most influential fellas around. With your newfound reputation, you decided to actually make a family in your family business, and quietly adopted a kid from India. Named him Carter though, wouldn't want the public to think you folks were too ethnic, right? Just ethnic enough. Today you are the owner of four casinos, including the one under construction at Stilson Bog, in addition to most of the property in the lower west side and the entirety of the Narrows.” He shut the folder and smiled that disgustingly self-loving smile.
Jack pressed a button on his intercom. “Moll?” he said. “Check to see what it costs to commission a book. I think we found an expert candidate for my biographer.” He then turned and stared at Sloan with an expression he hoped the fedoraed freak could feel like a million little Kalashnikov bullets. “We'll be in touch.”
“Oh, but I'm not done, am I, Mr. Noir?” Sloan reached into his briefcase and pulled out another folder. “Little bit more, isn't there? You've got a little bit of a rap sheet, ain't that right, Jack Noir? José Vantas, you are also AKA'd as Jack Vantas, right? Which means you're also AKA'd as Jack Noir, and AKA'd as Blackjack Vance, and even AKA'd as Spades Slick, crime boss of the organization colloquially referred to as The Midnight Crew? Not exactly the most difficult problem I've had to figure out in my time, Jack. It ain't no secret that The Midnight Crew been getting into a little bit of a turf war with some of those boys in the nice green suits that work for Lawrence English and Felton Entertainment for some manner of a long time. And he owns the only serious share in your business competition, so I think you can see where I'm going with this.”
Jack glowered into the pasty white cretin's annoyingly green eyes. Only assholes have green eyes. Any decent human being would have the courtesy to have brown eyes like a normal person. Dear Lord, Jack hated this man. “Congratulations, Encyclopedia Brown. Fuckin' fabulous. I think I have twenty-five cents around here for your work.”
“I ain't here for your money, Mr. Noir.”
“Well I should fucking hope not. What did you come here for? You sure as hell didn't come here to try to bring me in.”
“Didn't I? Believe me, the thought had crossed my mind.”
Jack tried to laugh bitterly, but it came out as a small choking noise. “You wanna bring me in? Shit, I'd like to see you try. Come on, you come in here, waste my time, spout some bullshit anyone can learn from a pickpocket and a copy of Time Magazine, and you wanna bring me in? You got no jurisdiction, you're not a cop, you're a private detective. Hell, you're not even a proper detective, you're --” He searched for a word. “You're a fucking problem sleuth, with that sad excuse for a trench coat and that cheap piece of shit you call a fedora. My kid reads books about better private eyes than you, and they still sing in the soprano section.”
Patrick chuckled to himself, which naturally made Jack want to hurl. “Relax, Slick, I came here to offer you a deal.”
“I have no idea what the fuck you'd want from me, but I can sure as shit tell you that there's nothing I'd want from you.”
“Hear me out, Jack.”
“Only if you pick a goddamn name for me and stick with it, you insufferable prick.”
Sloan cocked his head. “That ain't no way to treat your company, is it, Jack? Listen, Jack, we do have some service we could provide each other. Me and my associates been having some troubles with a new face that seems to have popped up on the scene. Fancies himself something of a mobster kingpin, I've got to figure. Has his fingers in a lot of pies, has a lot of irons in the fire, that sort of thing. Seems he's got something against some lovely people we know, and we'd like to maybe see him come up short for once. Maybe get him a nice new stripey wardrobe. Or a hemp necklace." He mimed hanging a noose. "We don't know a hell of a lot about him, but the few sources we have only know him as The DMK. Problem is, we can't seem to find him, let alone get leverage to put him behind bars. All we know as he's running some show, drugs of course, maybe kidnappings, but probably more. More than a couple nice folks disappearing, and we think it's him.”
Silence. “So?” Jack asked.
“So my proposal is simple. We've gotta get an angle on DMK. You've got English and the rest of the Felton Family breathing down your neck. If you and your friends do me and mine a favor with Mr. DMK, we could graciously return it by bringing the heat down hard on The Feltons. Whattaya say?”
There was silence again. Sloan, apparently, was the one who felt he had to break it this time.
“Whattaya say, Jack?” he said again. “We got a deal?”
Jack continued to stare at Sloan for a while, then leaned back in his chair. Without breaking eye contact, he reached into his coat pocket, produced a butterfly knife, and twirled it absently. “The very next thing I am about to say will be enormously important. I do not wish to repeat myself, so I would like you to pay extra special careful attention to my words, all right?”
Sloan started to coolly nod his assent, but was abruptly cut off by Jack's hand gripping his tie and Jack's knife grazing his neck. “Listen here, problem sleuth, we don't got a deal. We don't got shit. I'm not helping you with your crummy-ass pansy-ass candy-ass wannabe bullshit. And whatever beef I got with Lawrie English and his gang of green-suited fuckfaces is my own damn business. Now you're not gonna bring me in tied up in your homemade paddywagon, you don't got shit when it comes to dealing with a proper boss, and you're not gonna get my assistance on your face-violating nancy rent-a-cop horseshit. Now you are going to go out my door, go down the hall, go down the elevator eight floors, go across the street, and get the fuck out of my nosehairs, do you understand me?”
Sloan looked dead into Jack's eyes without so much as a twitch in his eyebrows. Jack was honestly impressed at the kid's cool under pressure, as much as he hated to find something to admire.
“I ain't afraid of you, Slick,” Sloan said.
Jack could tell he meant it, which only served to piss him off even more.
“You got guts, douchebag. I'll give you that. But there is a very fine line between being the brave little toaster and being the guy who gets brutally murdered with a butterfly knife. Now either I show you the door, or I show you my stabs. It's your choice, but speaking from personal experience, blood is a bitch to get out of this carpet.”
Sloan grinned. “I'll leave. But I want you to think it over.”
Jack let go, flipping his knife closed. “Thought it over. Answer's no.”
Sloan stood up and shrugged. “Why don't you sleep on it?” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a card. “Gimme a call if you ever have a. . . a change of heart.”
Jack grudgingly took the card, but paused while holding it.
“This is a wallet-sized photo of you posing shirtless.”
Patrick froze for a long moment, his eyes shot wide open in terror. He then quickly snatched the photo back, flustered.
“That's. . . that's for something else that. . . this was not what I. . . this was not the card I meant to show you.”
He looked around anxiously as if about to say something, then threw down his real business card.
“I have to go,” Sloan said, and he rushed out of the office, slamming the door behind him.
Jack stared at the door, flipped his knife back open and stabbed it into his legal pad. You can build a city from the ground up, he thought, but there's always gonna be a few toolbags left over.
Actually, he liked the sound of that. He decided to write it down. Might look good on that asshole's tombstone.