Office of Nick Bartamian, Private Dick, The Arms Hotel Room 315, Saturday Afternoon

[gunslingerpose]

There was something to be said, Nick noted as he flipped through his notes on the case he'd been trying to get to the bottom of for the past several months, for criminals who left a neat and tidy paper trail for him to follow. They made his job so damn much easier, after all. Unfortunately for Nick, known as The Gorgon to anyone who had the misfortune of being on the wrong end of his investigations, the one that he was currently trying to track down was smarter than that.

Because of course she was. Leave it to Nick to try to bring in an opium queen with a brain in her head. He had a few leads, some more interesting than others, one of which had left his arm in a sling a couple weeks back in an attempt to dissuade him from the case, only making him more hell-bent on cracking it.

The Gorgon hated criminals. He hated cases that threatened to drag on until his bills were past due even more. But most of all, he hated that he couldn't get Dokkaebi and her damn opium empire off of Fandom's streets once and for all. What he needed right about now was a case. Something to put a few more dollars in his pocket, to tide him over until he had something concrete to work with, here.

Wouldn't THAT be the day.

[Open! With mild AFK warning for a little of the afternoon, because of course.]

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[gunslingerpose]

Nick glanced up from his notes at the fresh little dish standing in his doorway, taking in he sight of her with a long, thoughtful look up and down.

If she hadn't said his name, he'd swear the girl was lost.

"That is the name on the door," he noted at length, waving her into the room. "There something I can help you with, Miss...?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"Li," the girl said as she entered his office. She kept the door to the hallway open. "Miss Katherine Li. I--I'm here to hire you. For a case. That is, if you handle missing persons."

[gunslingerpose]

"I'll handle damn near any case, so long as you can pay," Nick replied, gesturing to one of the chairs across from his desk. "You lose somebody you want me to find?"

At this point, the girl could be missing a pet cat and he'd take the case. Not that he was desperate, really. He was just well aware that a PI didn't get a hell of a lot done without a roof over his head.

[spin_kick_snap]

Katherine licked her lips and took a seat in front of him, clutching her purse tightly. Her knuckles were white from the strain. "My sister," she blurted. "I'm looking for my little sister. Well, I guess not so little, but she's younger than I am. Doesn't look it, I'm afraid. Sarah's always seemed older than her years. Always been a little wild. She left home and I've been trying to find her, but..." She shook her head and looked away until she could get her emotions back under control. "I've managed to follow her this far. But the trail's gone cold. I need a professional to help me now, I'm afraid."

Her eyes darted back to his, large and dark with worry. "I can't pay you much. Father said that he'd rather Sarah--I can't pay you much. But I'll pay you everything I have if you'll just help me."

[gunslingerpose]

Nick took a moment to balance out 'not paying much' with 'no other jobs anyway.' If it was just a runaway case, it was possible he could set out to take care of it and have it handled by dinner. If it was an abduction case, it could get stickier.

Always did, really.

"Maybe," he said, walking around the desk to go and pull his office door closed, "you better start at the beginning. When'd she go missing, how you figure it happened. I'm gonna have to know what you know before I decide if I can take this case."

[spin_kick_snap]

"She went missing almost six weeks ago," Kathy explained, only turning to look at him when she began to speak. She had all the defenses of a three day old kitten. "I guess 'went missing' isn't exactly the right way to put it. She ran away. Our parents can be, well, rather strict and, as I said, Sarah always was a little wild. There was this boy that she knew, she said they were in love, but Father didn't think he was good enough for her. We're--" she faltered a little. "We're...rather well off and this boy had ties to some unsavory characters. Father was going to send Sarah to our family out west for the summer and hope that would put and end to her infatuation. Sarah would have none of it, though."

Kathy dropped her eyes again and a single hot tear splashed against her wrist. "I wasn't supposed to follow her. Father said that if she wanted to be a common--" Again, she stopped herself, shaking her head. "But she's my sister. I couldn't just let her run away. Not without making sure she was all right."

[gunslingerpose]

Christ. Nick got all the vulnerable dames with the sad sob stories, didn't he? He heaved a sigh, stuck his hand into his pocket, pulled out a cigarette. It was his last real vice, since he quit the dope. His only one, unless this obsession to get Dokkaebi off the streets counted.

"Mind if I smoke?" He was walking around his desk and pulling out a pack of matches anyway. "So what you're tellin' me is that you'll be happy just knowing that Sarah's safe? You don't figure she was grabbed, she just took off, but she's running with the wrong crowd, now."

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy nodded. "Of course, I'll--I'll need proof," she said, pulling herself up and giving him a look to suggest she was not one to have the wool pulled over her eyes. She looked like a kitten trying to convince a wolf she meant business. "A meeting to try to convince her to come home or at least something to guarantee that she's safe and you've found her."

[gunslingerpose]

Girl was about as frightening as a baby duck. Nick raised an eyebrow at her as he struck a match and lit his smoke.

"Seems to me like she doesn't want to be convinced," he noted easily enough. "But once I find the girl I'll talk to her. See what can be arranged."

Wasn't his job to do what the client's missing person wanted. It was his job to find out what he was paid to find out. In this case, Katherine wanted proof. Proof was easy, these days. Proof was a letter, a token, a phrase shared between two siblings.

The Gorgon could get proof.

"I'd be one hell of a dirty crook if I was planning on chiseling you out of the scratch you're planning on paying with. Can't imagine I'd be allowed to stay in business around here for long, if that was how I went about doing my job." He gave his book of notes one last thoughtful look, and then picked it up and turned the page. "I'll take the job. You're gonna have to cooperate with me every step of the way, though, baby."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Oh, I suppose that's true," Katherine said, deflating a little. "I'm awfully sorry, Mr. Bartamian. I didn't mean to impugn your good name. I'm just, well..."

New to seedier cities. New to a world where she wasn't protected by her family. Young and sheltered and innocent.

"Of course I'll cooperate. No one wants Sarah found more than I do." She deflated a little more when she realized how true that was. "What are your rates? I wish to secure your services immediately."

[gunslingerpose]

"For a simple runaway case? So long as I'm not being shot at, this might actually be within your price range, Princess."

He wrote down a quote in his notebook, slid it across the table to her.

"Of course, that's all dependent on just what kind of crowd you tell me she's running with. And I require half of that up-front."

Because otherwise, he wasn't eating this week.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Oh, I can pay all of that now, if you'd like," Katherine said, relieved. She opened up her purse, flashing a moneyclip that had more than a few Franklins in it. She seemed completely unaware that she was setting herself up to be the next missing person's report to cross someone's desk if that was the kind of thing she did regularly. "I feel a hundred percent better, Mr. Bartamian, I can't even say. Cash works best for you?"

[gunslingerpose]

Jesus Christ, this girl was hopeless.

"Cash'll do just fine," he replied, staring at the wad of dough. "You, uh, might want to be more careful about where you wave those C-notes around, though. This is a dirty neighborhood and people might get ideas, baby. Wouldn't want to have to go hunting for you as my next missing person, Miss Li."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Oh," Katherine said, closing her purse even as she withdrew the full amount he'd written down from it. "Oh, I see, yes."

She blushed. "I think my father was right when he said that it would be better to let someone else handle this." Dropping her voice to a confidential whisper she added, "I've never really been away from my family before this."

[gunslingerpose]

Fantastic. Nick should have asked for more. This was looking to be just as much a missing persons case as a demand for an escort service. How the hell had this lady managed to get this far without being grabbed in the streets?

"Well, let's not advertise that, either," he decided, shaking his head, bemused. "You said your old man didn't want you looking for her. Your father gonna show up at my door next looking for you, Katherine?"

Maybe he was covering his own ass. Maybe he wanted to get a better idea of that family dynamic that the Lis apparently had going on, there.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Oh no," Katherine said, shaking her head. "That is, I don't think so. I'd hired another private investigator back in Connecticut. He's the one who traced Sarah to Fandom. But when Father found out about it, he fired the poor man and forbade me from looking for her."

She lifted her chin, just the tiniest bit. "So then I apologized and told him that he was right and that I was going to visit our cousins out West until I'd come to terms with Sarah being gone. He put me on a train heading to California and I slipped off when it stopped in New York to come here instead. It will be days until he knows I'm even missing. By then, I hope to have word of Sarah and can make my own decisions about what to do next."

[gunslingerpose]

"Brave move, baby," Nick sighed, shaking his head. "Don't suppose you can get me the name of this other P.I.? Unless he handed you whatever trail he'd been following to get you this far, I wanna know if I'm starting from square one."

Yes, he was already reaching for his book of contacts. Did he even have any in Connecticut?

[spin_kick_snap]

"My father burned all the information he'd gathered for me," Kathy said, lowering her lashes. She was trying very, very hard not to sound bitter. "He said that would help me get over my little 'crusade.' And he told Mr. Jones--that was the gentleman's name, Tobias Jones--that if he ever caught him looking into the the Li family again, he'd set the cops on him like dogs."

[gunslingerpose]

Nick took a moment's pause at that. Frowned a little. Sounded to him like there was something that Mr. Li didn't want anybody finding out. Also sounded like a fishy thing to do to a man hired to find your missing baby girl.

"Your old man wants that sister of yours out of the picture entirely, it seems like. You get a look at those papers at all before they were burned? I'm gonna need to know anything on 'em you can remember. Any leads at all. Asking for a young lady running around with any unsavory characters is just gonna land me knee-deep in some can-house behind a place that tries to pass itself off as a theater in the daylight hours."

[spin_kick_snap]

No. Absolutely not. Katherine could accept her father being heartless enough to let hi younger daughter run away and cut her out of the family, but anything worse than that? She couldn't--wouldn't--conceive of it!

"A can-house?" Katherine asked, looking puzzled. "I don't know what that is. But I remember a few things from it. Most of it was from her time in New York, though. They weren't..." She struggled how to find a way to put it delicately. "...weren't flattering. Mr. Jones thought Sarah might have fallen prey to some of the seamier elements in the city. He wouldn't let me see the pictures, but I believe he mentioned an opium den." She flushed, just saying the words.

"I assure you, though, it must be some kind of mistake. Sarah would never!"

[gunslingerpose]

Nick had been just about to start to explain the finer points of brothels to the young lady when she continued on to that.

That. That one little word that meant that this could very well be tied in with whatever ghosts he was still trying to chase out there.

"So this boy of hers, he's a junkie?" It was the best damn starting point he could have ever asked for. "Got your sister too close to the dope for comfort, and your father doesn't want word to get out, doesn't want society to know that any daughter of his has fallen in with that sort, whether she's a user or not."

[spin_kick_snap]

"He...I guess he might be," Katherine admitted finally. "It makes sense. I don't want to say that it's the kind of thing my father might do..."

But it wasn't anything she could deny out loud, either. Better to just stay silent.

"Will that cost extra?" She opened her purse to put a few more bills on top of the full payment she had in front of her. "I understand that people in...that position...can be dangerous?"

[gunslingerpose]

Hey, if she was going to keep putting money down in front of him, Nick was hardly going to argue. A man with power like this lady's father? Who had already threatened one private dick before? Yeah, he needed the danger pay, here.

"It's a good thing to be aware of in advance," he decided. "It's the difference between being threatened and being shot at."

But of course he was reaching for the money. He wasn't running a charity service, here.

"I'll do the case either way. I'm not too worried about your old man. By the time he figures out that you're missing too, I'll have this case locked down and closed."

... He was an ambitious man, considering.

[spin_kick_snap]

Katherine offered him up a luminous smile. "Oh, if you could, there'd be no way for me to thank you enough," she said happily. "My sister and I used to be so close. I just want to know she's okay. As long as I know that, I'll be happy. And, if she's not okay, maybe I can help her."

[gunslingerpose]

"Well, that's real sweet of you, baby," Nick decided, shuffling the bills into a neat little pile and tucking them away in the inside breast pocket of his coat. "You and your sister must care about one another very much."

She wasn't being as exceptionally forthcoming with details as he might have liked. He was going to have to start fishing.

"Now, let's talk about your sister and that man she took off with..."