London, pt 1

Mickey Mahoney
Previously:

Though the girls are aware of the cruciality of time whenever cults and assassins are involved they have plenty else on their plates. They went back to Denver to regroup before following up on the leads they had gathered from Jackson Elias's editor and close friend and then got a bit sidetracked by the happenings in the mountain city.

Nothing major. Nephandic hostages needing Good Deaths and boyfriends being in Quiet and cops mistaking them for Technocrats. The usual.

As all things do the crises ended and the girls were able to return to their investigation. Maybe Samir asked Ihsan what was going on with the Kenyan dudes who killed that author guy when she was asking him if he would help track down a cop who didn't want to be tracked down. Doesn't matter. They board a plane and fly it over the Atlantic and then there's London.

You know: fish, chips, cup o' tea, bad food, worse weather, Mary fucking Poppins. London.

Jet lag and caffeine withdrawal have them pursuing the lead that seems the least labor-intensive. The Sun is a weekly tabloid whose offices are right by the River Thames on London Bridge Street. The receptionist does not give them a terrible time before sending Mahoney's 'cousins' back to talk to him.

Oh yeah. Cousins. By marriage of course. They have to wade through the bullpen and its cigarette smoke and cacophony of accents in order to find the desk belonging to the Irishman. It is not a long journey. Just a bit unpleasant.

He's on the phone when they roll up to his desk. Leaned back with his tie thrown back over his shoulder and a bemused expression on his unshaven face. Though he's wearing a button-down and tie his jacket is a shabby tweed number. His computer is old enough that it would give their Virtual Adept friends a collective stroke.

"Yeah, and if a frog had wings it wouldn't bump its arse when it hopped, ya fuckstain."

Receiver slam. Oh. Visitors. Straighten up.

"Oh, well, hello there. Who might you two be?"

River Vasquez
River has a passport.

That passport doesn't actually have a stamp in it for the United Kingdom, so this was actually something of an experience for her. She slept on the plane, took a picture of herself with a flight attendant who seemed more than happy to pose for the picture, and generally amassed quiet instagram fodder for later because seriously, it wasn't like she was sneaking away to London under cover of darkness to do shady deals.

Besides, she'll figure out if she's actually going to post things later. You know, when she's done investigating things.

She still is a little weirded out by the way people drive and, frankly, is more than a little tired when they managed to get to The Sun. What she lacks in coherence she made up for with makeup. Anyone can look sunny and alert with the right bronzer/concealer combo. Off through the bull pen, and soon enough to Mahoney's desk.

"Mister Mahoney," what was the problem with adding her own accent to the mix of who-knows-what that is going on around them, "my name is River Vasquez, I was a friend of Jackson Elias? I was hoping to discuss some of your work?"

Ihsan Ghali
Mickey didn't need two women asking for the same thing at once, so she let River take the wheel from here.  As she said herself, Jackson had been her friend after all.

Instead Ihsan stood along with them and didn't introduce herself.  River would no doubt get to that if asked.  In the meantime Ihsan looked around curiously.  She'd slept heartily on the plane and was doing okay, but was cutting the entire crash off at the pass by cradling a cup of coffee in her hand as well.

She eventually landed on Mickey and the desk he inhabited.  Noticed his computer.

Grinned.  Snapped a picture, and would eat the international costs to text it to Samir that instant.

Mickey Mahoney
"My work."

Like even Mahoney realizes that tabloid journalism is hardly legitimate work. Maybe he had work at one point. Or a career or passions or whatever it is that journalists have before they end up at a bloody tabloid. He says it with a scoff and then cants back a bit in his chair to zero both of them in his sights even though one of them isn't talking. He locks his fingers over his midsection and flicks his eyebrows. Alright.

"Well, a friend of Elias is a friend of mine. Which groundbreaking bit of work were you hoping to discuss?"

In a few moments Ihsan will get a response to her picture message. This is the response:

https://forum.userstyles.org/uploads/FileUpload/11/2331.gif

River Vasquez
There's a second where she looks a little sad, a little steeled and she exhales. They have information that they have to get, yes, and judging by the man's demeanor she presumes that he won't be terribly shaken by the news she is about to give him- perhaps he's already aware of the situation. Perhaps he and Elias played Words with Friends together and Mahoney has been able to gather by the forfeited games that something horrific has happened to Jackson.

"I know that he was interested in what you had to say on the Carlyle expedition. He'd mentioned your name in a letter he'd sent."

She decides, instead, to stick with the facts and can explain the gruesome murder details later.

Mickey Mahoney
Well now that's interesting.

Mahoney doesn't seem to make much of her sadness or if he does he chooses not to comment on it right this second. This is not a bad place to discuss sensitive information. No one in here is going to steal anyone else's story. That's how people get food poisoning. They have to put their name on the shit they put on the Internet.

"Carlyle expedition?" he asks. Then the lightbulb: "Oh, right, that. No, he didn't want to talk about the Carlyle expedition, he came to me about some evil cult--" They can practically see the sarcastic campfire-story finger-waggling ooOOoo around the words. "--he'd heard about being here and wanted to know if he could have a look at my files. As far as I know he only pulled three of them." A flinch. "I may have rewritten them a bit from old stringer copy, just to give them a little extra whoosh."

River Vasquez
"He didn't make off with your files, did he? I'd love to look at them."

Like she didn't care he gave them a little extra whoosh. Or, rather, didn't know what old stringer copy was but she did know what rewriting something was. It meant she was going to have to pick bullshit from even more bullshit in a tabloid paper.

Mickey Mahoney
"Nah. At least, I don't think he did. If he did, I know where the bastard lives."

No. No Mahoney has not gotten the memo that Elias is a statistic now. For a journalist he doesn't spend much time conversing with his fellows. Twitter blew up when it happened but looking at the setup that The Scoop has half the staff here either doesn't know what Twitter is or has been shunned from blogosphere.

He has to push back from the desk and lead the girls to a filing cabinet is the point of that story.

River Vasquez
"When was the last time you saw Jackson?" she asks, heading over to the file cabinet with him and continuing on with the work that they have to do. You have to ease into these kinds of things. She doesn't know this guy, doesn't know if he's a gentle approach type or if he's a pull-off-the-bandaid kind.

The wrong approach gets you shut down, and it means that this lead dries up. If she lets the lead dry up, they could potentially walk into a bad situation blind. She didn't want that. River Vasquez doesn't fly several thousand miles across the globe on a whim, she did it because she had shit to do. If she lost this thread, the only thing that would make up for it would be a lucky break or taking selfies with Queen Elizabeth.

Mickey Mahoney
"Christ..."

A strong invective considering his accent pegs him as an Irelander and the majority of his countrymen are Roman Catholic. But he's in London. No one in London gives a flying fuck about religion.

They reach the file cabinets and Mahoney rubs the back of his neck as he thinks. Abandons the effort and starts digging through to find the ones Elias wanted. That she refers to the man by his first name and had previously said she 'was' a friend of his must have registered as her being an ex-girlfriend or something.

"Middle of October, maybe the end. Aha."

Found them. The girls can peruse the three stories later. They are titled "The Derbyshire Monster," "Slaughter in Soho," and "A Serpent in Soho," respectively. As he hands them over:

"He seemed like he was in a hurry, said he had to get back to New York." A beat. His old instinct starting to tingle. He frowns. "Why? What happened?"

River Vasquez
The girls can peruse the stories later, and the presence of said stories does put a weight off of her shoulders. No need to go hunting for royalty to indulge her instagram account. The last two titles do catch her as odd, possibly a bit of foreshadowing.

He seemed like he was in a hurry, and said he needed to get back to New York.

She exhales, catches the frown and concludes that the best approach here is to just go for it. They were friends enough that Mahoney seemed familiar with him. She lets the beat hang, puts a fermata there until she decides-

"He was murdered in Denver," River tells him, "we were going to meet up and-" she inhales sharp and decides, instead of talking about wailing on a crazy death cult member with her purse, to clarify "- there have been a series of ritualistic murders stateside, his was the first outside of New York. There's an investigation going on."

Mickey Mahoney
He was murdered in Denver.

His immediate response is, "What?" and it isn't that he didn't hear her. The information hits a brain that last saw Elias alive if not entirely well.

So she goes on. They were going to meet up. There were a series of ritualistic murders in New York. His was the first outside New York. There's an investigation going on.

And as she goes on Mahoney has time to process what he's hearing. He was murdered. Elias is dead. He lets out a breath he may well have been holding for the weight of it and he sags but does not have to lean on anything. Hands in the pockets of his shabby blazer and for a moment he looks sad.

"Fuck me," he says to the floor. Puts a hand to his forehead and looks back up. Smoothes hair back from his brow and pulls out a pack of cigarette. "I suppose you're going to be talking to the police then, aren't you?" Lights the cigarette and pockets the accoutrements again. "Jack mentioned he did an interview with a, ah, Barrington, Inspector Barrington, about this cult..." A dry laugh. "I didn't figure it meant anything, he was going on about the Penhew Foundation and Egypt and..." He drags off the cigarette. "Well." Still has a business to run. No time for sorrow. It stains his voice but that's easy enough to chase away. "If you find out anything, I'll pay you fifty pounds for the story."

River Vasquez
"We should probably talk to Inspector Barrington," she said, nods and gives the man a sympathetic look. She's had time to process what happened- one didn't traditionally surprise people with the mention of dead friends and/or colleagues.

She makes notes to herself, mentally because this wasn't an appropriate time to actually write things down. Penhew Foundation, yes. Egypt, certainly.

"I'll keep you in the loop if we find anything," she tells him.

There's a second when she looks at the file cabinet, considers going back to the articles he'd pulled for her. "You know, if... you're not busy after work, we could have a drink later? I know it was a lot for me to process when it happened."

Mickey Mahoney
The building they're in may be in a decent part of the city but even the decent parts of the city have their dark alleyways and their unpleasant if not entirely identifiable odors. Humanoid masses in dirty overcoats and newspaper shoes shuffling around panhandling in spite of the signs posted near the Tube exits urging folks against giving money to the poor sods.

No one cares if bodies finish out their shifts in places like this. Reporters don't engage in shift work anyway. It's about deadlines. And tabloids operate on a first come first served basis. If you aren't out there chasing down the stories that will nab people's attention then you may as well just go home and sort out your fucking life.

Mahoney considers his prospects and then blows out a breath.

"Hell," he says. "I'm not busy now. Let's go."

River Vasquez
"Can I make copies of these before we go?"

Mickey Mahoney
Of all the fucking questions she could have asked him right now that appears to be the one that is most baffling to him. Doesn't help that he's scowling through cigarette smoke that has nowhere to go indoors.

"Just bring them back when you're done."

Americans...

River Vasquez
She smiles something grateful, and the articles from his files disappear into the gigantic monstrosity of a purse that she carries. It's a wonder how she got the damned thing through customs, she could have probably fit a small child in there if she had wanted.

But whatever the case, she is content to go, content to take the lead and is more-than-happy to go to a right and proper bar to talk to the man about things that didn't necessarily involve his work at the tabloid. River gets paid by making people want to spend time with her, and in a work related context that usually meant getting people to find her engaging enough that they did, in fact, want to see her take her clothing off. One of the things that River actually does like about her job is the fact that she gets to talk to people, has spent an entire chunk of her evening not making money because she'd found someone's conversation to be engaging. It's how she'd become friends with Jackson Elias.

This is not a work-related endeavor; Mickey Mahoney is a journalist like River Vasquez is a dancer. They're both these things, but in their current lines of work the definition of those things is loose.

So, the merry crew goes out, and River engaged the gentleman in an age honored mourning tradition- getting shitfaced and talking about your friends. Hell, she'd even pay for the first few unless it seemed like Mahoney had a wooden leg. But the evening goes on, and for now she is content to try and be present for a stranger and enjoy the company- even if it did come in pretty terrible circumstances.