Weaving webs

Who: Jakob
Where: Police HQ, then One More Round
When: mid-morning

He couldn't shake the feeling, and that alone was bothering him to no end. Jakob knew himself so well, he was a creature of controlled chaos, a man who loved few things as much as chance itself. He lived to throw others into peril, to watch how they might thrive or wither, and he never cared when he did so. So what was different?

All night, he'd been tossing and turning in bed. All morning, he'd blankly stared at the cases in front of him, hands moving by reflex alone to fill in the forms of homicides that he couldn't solve if he wanted to. Really, only two things had held his attention through the morning. One was Brett Trent, and the task Jakob was performing for Eris.

This leg of it promised to be easy, a gentle manipulation of his file to reinsert just enough evidence that even he might believe Trent had been a good officer. It was easy because Jakob knew what had been removed once, he'd been the one to remove it. So he'd gone through the pages of commendation and service records, tucking in one slip that mentioned an undetailed assignment and dating it a few weeks before Brett had been 'caught', then following it with a bogus arrest removal that would seem, for all intents and purposes, like Brett had been let go when he'd been caught. It was enough for now, enough to validate Eris' suspicions about the truth, to give him enough time to truly stack the powder high on this particular pyre.

The other fixation, though, that was the one that nagged at him like a sore tooth or an itch that was just beyond reach. It was Sam. His partner. The woman who seemed to trust him so thoroughly that normally Jakob would be planning her downfall just for a laugh. And it wasn't her connections that gave him pause, though a thorough reading of her file was surprising unto itself. She was DiGiovanni? Did she know about him?

He didn't think so; Jakob kept his favors to the Families minimal when he could, tampering with evidence here and there, misfiling key bits of case logs, little things that generally gave them a freer rein. He was a dirty little secret, and the DiGiovanni seemed to understand that the less he was used, the more useful he could be when truly needed. Still, knowing Sam's relations was something to consider. It meant that if she spoke of her assault, half of the city would bay for the blood of Johnny Tang. Jakob didn't want that, not yet at least. He had other plans in mind for the Lotus grunt.

But the fact that he had those plans at all bothered him, it whispered all by itself that he was getting personal, losing sight of who the joke was being played on, or why it was amusing. He didn't care, in the end. A plan had formed, a plan with three simple pieces to it, and Jakob was bound to see it through.

The first piece? Well, the first piece came from the evidence lockers, and if he hadn't played a part in landing it there he would've been searching for hours. But it took him less than one to find the gun, an old .38 revolver belonging to an unknown shooter, recovered from the spot where Brett Trent's police contact had been executed. It had been easy enough to misdirect the clerk, to palm the snub-nosed pistol and disappear it into his coat.

The second part of the plan was the unknown, and that was sloppy of Jakob, given how crucial it was. Quite simply, he needed to find Johnny Tang. More specifically, he needed Johnny to find him, and that meant a phonecall. Jakob disliked making the call at all, knowing that even if he supplied cash, the Konovich Syndicate always requested favors of their own in kind. And not for the first time, he mused on the idea that playing games with both mobs, even at the fringes, would get him killed some day. He wasn't valuable enough, he was too dangerous, and whichever side got him first could stand to learn about the other. But it was something worry about on his last day alive, whenever that happened to be.

Right now, he was more worried about the sharply-accented voice berating him over the phone as he lounged in his desk chair. "Look, tell Wu Shou that I don't care what it costs," he snapped when he had an opening to speak, "I want him found, and I want him where I told you. It's better me than the other side, no? And for that price? Clean-up had best be included. Tell the old man I'll be by to check in." He hung up tersely, rubbing the bridge of his nose and sighing. Dealing with the Lotus directly was dangerous, but Jakob knew from unsolved cases alone that they put little value on their pawns. With a wad of money and a promise to leave Johnny alive? He'd get results eventually.

The last piece to the puzzle he'd devised, he could trust implicitly. It was him. He was going to see this game through personally, play it directly with Johnny if he could. It seemed, to his thinking, to be the only way to banish the mental itch that came with the image of Sam lurking behind his eyes, battered and weeping, talking about trust and honesty. Jakob knew it was foolish, it broke his habit of setting things in motion and watching from afar, but he wanted to be there this time.

There was one last thing before he could leave, a simple detail; a note for Eris tucked into Brett's file. 'Here is what you requested. Do not contact me for two days. Business calls.' Gathering up his coat and tucking the file for Eris into a large envelope, Jakob left the station house behind with a brisk, anxious energy to his walk. He was thankful for the nerves, for the elated feeling that always came at this stage of planning; it made him feel so alive. He cut through the city in his car, missing every detail around him as they ran together in a blur. He was focused now, narrow in his scope so that only Trent and Johnny existed in his head, each suspended by spiderwebs of details. He knew them, knew the stage they hung above, and he could do this.

There was never a warm reception for a cop in One More Round, so Jakob didn't mind leaving his car running outside as he went in, nose wrinkling in disgust at the place. It really was an offense to all five of his senses. Deciding not to linger, Jakob strode to the bar and leaned in to where the barkeep was polishing a glass that would likely never be clean. "I don't want no trouble," the tender told him, drawing a grin from Jakob. "Then you live in the wrong city," he replied, dropping the large envelope containing Brett's file on the bar. "Deliver this to the lady of the manor. You know which one I mean," Jakob instructed, laying a twenty dollar bill on top of the envelope and turning to leave without another glance around. Two pieces in place, he mused as he went back to his car, One floating. Don't die before I find you, Johnny boy.