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bedlamsbardMan, why do I keep feeling my Mac and Stella characterization's all shot to hell? It's really freaking me out, and I don't like it.
“You know,” Stella said, sipping at her Starbucks, “I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that Val Constantine and Ace Aciello really don’t know what’s going on. I mean, there’s stuff they’re not telling us, but that’s to be expected, I guess.”
Mac sipped at his own coffee, studied the paintings on the wall behind her shoulder. “I’d still like to run polygraphs on them,” he said.
“No argument here.” She nibbled on her crumb cake. Mac pulled apart his croissant, shredding the pieces and dividing them into small equal piles on his napkin. “I can’t believe Astra Pagliuca’s not letting us process the house,” she added after a moment. “I mean, she was attacked in there. A crime definitely went down. But she’s not allowing a sweeper team in there without a warrant? What is that girl’s problem, anyway?”
“Well, she is Mafia,” Mac said. “There are probably highly illegal things in that house she doesn’t want us to have access to – drugs, files, illegal weapons, stolen items. I’d say it’s highly possible she wants everything hot out of the house before she lets law enforcement officials in.”
Stella shook her head. “Okay,” she said. “I understand that. But still – Mac, if you’re not going to eat that, give it here.” She snatched the remaining half-croissant from Mac’s hands. “Jeez. This stuff is good. What’s your problem, anyway?”
“That was my breakfast, Stella,” Mac said in dismay.
She dangled it in front of him. “Well, you weren’t eating it. And it’s not like you don’t still have half of it.” She gestured at the piles of crumbs on his napkin.
“Stella –”
“Are you going to eat it?”
“Stella –”
“Because you spent money on it, so someone should eat it, and I’m not talking about the rats.”
“I’ll eat it, Stella,” Mac said, his expression hunted.
She handed him back the half-croissant, but not before tearing off a piece of the bread and eating it herself. “You don’t know what you’re missing, Mac,” she grinned. “So who do you think was behind the attack on Astra Pagliuca?”
He picked dubiously at the croissant, glanced at her murderous expression, and forced some down, looking a little surprised. “Both Ace Aciello and Val Constantine seem convinced that Frederico Patriso is behind the attack. According to the conversation we overheard while in the house –”
“It was a set-up by Patriso to frame Constantine,” Stella finished. “Constantine seemed pretty clear on that.”
“So did Mr. Aciello.” Mac chewed on his croissant some more, then drank a good half of his coffee in one gulp. “We have yet to see what Astra Pagliuca or the two perps in custody have to say, but –”
“We know Whackjob Cestra freelances,” Stella interrupted. “He works for whoever pays him; the feds have been loking for him for years and they’re not particularly happy about that little fact. So no way to tell there. And we can’t get into the house to see if there’s any forensic evidence that bears Constantine’s theory out –”
“Astra allowed us free access to the grounds,” Mac reminded her. “And to the outside of the house. Just not the inside.”
“Which really pisses me off, because seriously –”
“We need to find out what it is that has Constantine convinced that the Patriso Family is targeting him, as well as the Pagliucas.”
Stella was silent enough, and then reached across the table to snag the sugar and creamer. She emptied it into her coffee, eyes fixed on the milky swirls it was making in the already pale liquid. After a moment of stirring, she said, “Constantine said yesterday that Danny was a target too.”
“Yes.”
“Danny ever say why?”
Mac began ripping apart the remains of his croissant. “He said,” he murmured, speaking more to the table than to her, “that the Patriso Family was blaming him for the deaths of Vincent Patriso, Curly Sassone, and John Marcatti, as well as the incarceration of Phil DiCarlo and Reggie Dukes.”
“Uh-huh.” Stella glared at her coffee. “Well, I guess if you count ‘being a victim’ and ‘being an investigating officer’ as being the cause of a problem, sure, Danny’s guilty as hell. So are we all. I’m really starting to think the Patriso Family has serious mental problems, from what I’ve heard of them.”
“I’m starting to think the same,” Mac said, and smiled slightly at her.
“Hey, great minds think alike.” She stabbed viciously at her crumb cake. “Mac, when I said ‘take me out to breakfast,’ I meant ‘you and I will both ea
t food.’”
“Well, you didn’t actually say ‘take me out to breakfast’, so –”
“I know, you asked me, that still doesn’t absolve you of the fact that generally on dates, both people eat. And I’m not sure if you know, since you don’t really, you know, go on a lot of them –”
“I go on dates,” Mac said, looking indignant.
Stella pointed her fork at him. “When?”
“I – ah – well, there was that time in June –”
“That,” Stella said, “was not a date. That was a disaster. You came to the lab the next day and had a mental breakdown, and if you deny that I will stab you with this fork and make it look like an accident. I’m a crime scene investigator, I know how to do things like that, thanks to you and the state of New York.”
“I didn’t –” Mac said, and actually flinched a little as Stella made a threatening gesture with the fork. “I wouldn’t exactly call it a mental breakdown.”
“Well, what would you call it?”
Mac paused, thought that over. “A momentary lapse in judgment,” he said.
“You lapsed in more than your judgment, pal.” She took a sip of her coffee, almost spit it out. “What the hell did I put in here?” she demanded, staring at it in horror.
Mac blinked. “Sugar and creamer?” he said, somehow managing to make it a question.
Stella glared at him across the lid of her coffee cup. “This,” she said, “is all your fault. You should buy me more coffee, because I can’t fix this.”
“How is it my fault?” He looked genuinely bewildered. Then he paused. “Wait,” he said. “Is this a date?”
“Only if you want it to be one,” Stella said, and flounced away to order more coffee and drop the remaining amount of hers in the nearest garbage can.
“Stella?” Mac said helplessly as she came back bearing more food. She dumped most of it in front of him.
“You will eat that, or I’ll stuff it down your throat.” She took a bite of her raspberry scone for emphasis. “Remember what I said about eating? Should I say something about blood loss and blood sugar?”
Mac gave her an odd look, poking dubiously at the blueberry muffin in front of him. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” he said.
“Then eat, you idiot. It’s good.” She took another bite of her scone. “What do you think about Astra’s claim her father is out of town?”
“I’m dubious on that point,” Mac said, peeling the head of the muffin off and taking a careful, precise bite. He chewed for a moment, looked faintly surprised, then swallowed.
“Good, huh?”
“Yes,” he admitted. He took another bite. “Given what’s been going on in the Mob, at least what the papers have reported on, I don’t think it’s very likely a major player like Nicodemo Pagliuca would actually leave the city. I suppose it’s possible, if he saw himself as a target, but –”
“We’ve seen the number of guys Val Constantine goes around with, and he’s not capo di tutti capi. I’ve got the feeling he and his people are not to be fucked with, and I don’t really think Nicky Pagliuca’s going to go around with any less,” Stella said. She shook her head. “Man, this Mafia stuff is confusing.”
“Just a little.” Mac chewed thoughtfully for a moment. “I wish we knew exactly what was going on in the Mafia, but I somehow doubt –” He paused.
“What?”
“Danny. He knows more than he’s saying, I think.”
“He’s a New York police detective, you really think he’d turn on us? I thought you were pretty clear on the fact you trusted him.” Stella sipped at her hot coffee, wincing a little. “Man, there needs to be some kind of balance. No matter where you get coffee, it’s either too hot or too cold. Never just right. You think?”
“You have a point.” Mac sipped at his own coffee. “I trust Danny, Stella,” he said. “I wasn’t lying about that. He’s never shown himself to be anything less than trustworthy, even though he’s a little flighty – all right, a lot flighty – at times. I’m saying that I think he knows more about the Mafia than he’s saying.”
Stella raised her eyebrows, hands cupped around her coffee. “And what are you saying?”
“I’m saying –” He hesitated. “I think I’m saying that we have to see what Danny knows about the current Mafia situation, and what that has to do with our case.”
“What if he doesn’t want to talk, or doesn’t know as much as you think he does?”
“It’s worth a try,” Mac said. He looked down at the muffin in his hands like he wasn’t exactly sure what it was or what it was doing there. “Stella – about today –”
She reached across the table and put her hand on his, glad for the human contact, the reassurance that yes, this was warm skin, and flesh and bone and muscle beneath, not the cool rubbery feel of a corpse. He was alive, and relatively uninjured, and that was what mattered. “Mac, you hit yourself in the head with a fucking coffee table and passed out for fifteen minutes. How do you think I felt?”
“I didn’t –”
“And yes, I know how that sounds, and I don’t care. Come on and try not to do that again, because it’s just a little stupid. And I know you’re a Marine and that makes you a little crazy, but I don’t have a scar fetish and – okay, I actually know a lot of women who do, but you’ve never struck me as the type who’d go throwing himself at women who like to listen to war stories. So don’t do anything that stupid again, okay?” She frowned at him, pulled her hand back when he gave her a strange look.
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” he said, much to her surprise, his voice a little peevish.
“Well, no, I didn’t think you were that screwed up. Close, but no conviction. Never struck me as the masochistic type, either.”
“Stella,” Mac sighed. “I –”
“And next time we have breakfast, you’re eating, damnit.”
Mac looked back down at his muffin, face slightly surprised. “I –”
“And shredding it doesn’t count as eating.” Stella leaned back in her chair. Anyone else would have replied with you sound like my mother, but that thought wouldn’t even pass Mac’s mind. Of course, she’d met Mac’s mother, and Evelyn Taylor was a typical rich bitch social butterfly, too busy to pay any attention to her own son and to self-centered to think that anyone other than herself would actually need, say, any emotional content at all. It was something short of a miracle that Mac had turned out as well-adjusted as he had, although “well-adjusted” referring to Mac was something of a misnomer if there was one. Mostly sane, somewhat normal, and able to pass as whatever it was he was trying to portray himself as. As long as that whatever happened to be either a CSI, a NYPD detective, or a Marine. “Friend,” “lover,” and even “partner” were a little out of his range. Bitch, Stella thought fleetingly, hoping the thought floated east and south to Chicago.
Mac sighed. “Stella,” he said again. “You know that wasn’t what I was talking about.”
“Yeah, I do. What’s your point?”
“I – as we work together in a professional setting, I think it’s highly unadvisable to try and carry on an –”
He sounded like he was reading from a textbook. Stella laughed and said, “Mac. I’m not going to jump you in the middle of the lab. Relax. Just try not to get in any more ‘I am an unconscious and possibly about to die’ situations, okay?”
Mac smiled, a little nervously, and it reached his eyes, lighting them up from behind. “I’ll do my best, Stella.”
“You know,” Stella said, sipping at her Starbucks, “I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that Val Constantine and Ace Aciello really don’t know what’s going on. I mean, there’s stuff they’re not telling us, but that’s to be expected, I guess.”
Mac sipped at his own coffee, studied the paintings on the wall behind her shoulder. “I’d still like to run polygraphs on them,” he said.
“No argument here.” She nibbled on her crumb cake. Mac pulled apart his croissant, shredding the pieces and dividing them into small equal piles on his napkin. “I can’t believe Astra Pagliuca’s not letting us process the house,” she added after a moment. “I mean, she was attacked in there. A crime definitely went down. But she’s not allowing a sweeper team in there without a warrant? What is that girl’s problem, anyway?”
“Well, she is Mafia,” Mac said. “There are probably highly illegal things in that house she doesn’t want us to have access to – drugs, files, illegal weapons, stolen items. I’d say it’s highly possible she wants everything hot out of the house before she lets law enforcement officials in.”
Stella shook her head. “Okay,” she said. “I understand that. But still – Mac, if you’re not going to eat that, give it here.” She snatched the remaining half-croissant from Mac’s hands. “Jeez. This stuff is good. What’s your problem, anyway?”
“That was my breakfast, Stella,” Mac said in dismay.
She dangled it in front of him. “Well, you weren’t eating it. And it’s not like you don’t still have half of it.” She gestured at the piles of crumbs on his napkin.
“Stella –”
“Are you going to eat it?”
“Stella –”
“Because you spent money on it, so someone should eat it, and I’m not talking about the rats.”
“I’ll eat it, Stella,” Mac said, his expression hunted.
She handed him back the half-croissant, but not before tearing off a piece of the bread and eating it herself. “You don’t know what you’re missing, Mac,” she grinned. “So who do you think was behind the attack on Astra Pagliuca?”
He picked dubiously at the croissant, glanced at her murderous expression, and forced some down, looking a little surprised. “Both Ace Aciello and Val Constantine seem convinced that Frederico Patriso is behind the attack. According to the conversation we overheard while in the house –”
“It was a set-up by Patriso to frame Constantine,” Stella finished. “Constantine seemed pretty clear on that.”
“So did Mr. Aciello.” Mac chewed on his croissant some more, then drank a good half of his coffee in one gulp. “We have yet to see what Astra Pagliuca or the two perps in custody have to say, but –”
“We know Whackjob Cestra freelances,” Stella interrupted. “He works for whoever pays him; the feds have been loking for him for years and they’re not particularly happy about that little fact. So no way to tell there. And we can’t get into the house to see if there’s any forensic evidence that bears Constantine’s theory out –”
“Astra allowed us free access to the grounds,” Mac reminded her. “And to the outside of the house. Just not the inside.”
“Which really pisses me off, because seriously –”
“We need to find out what it is that has Constantine convinced that the Patriso Family is targeting him, as well as the Pagliucas.”
Stella was silent enough, and then reached across the table to snag the sugar and creamer. She emptied it into her coffee, eyes fixed on the milky swirls it was making in the already pale liquid. After a moment of stirring, she said, “Constantine said yesterday that Danny was a target too.”
“Yes.”
“Danny ever say why?”
Mac began ripping apart the remains of his croissant. “He said,” he murmured, speaking more to the table than to her, “that the Patriso Family was blaming him for the deaths of Vincent Patriso, Curly Sassone, and John Marcatti, as well as the incarceration of Phil DiCarlo and Reggie Dukes.”
“Uh-huh.” Stella glared at her coffee. “Well, I guess if you count ‘being a victim’ and ‘being an investigating officer’ as being the cause of a problem, sure, Danny’s guilty as hell. So are we all. I’m really starting to think the Patriso Family has serious mental problems, from what I’ve heard of them.”
“I’m starting to think the same,” Mac said, and smiled slightly at her.
“Hey, great minds think alike.” She stabbed viciously at her crumb cake. “Mac, when I said ‘take me out to breakfast,’ I meant ‘you and I will both ea
t food.’”
“Well, you didn’t actually say ‘take me out to breakfast’, so –”
“I know, you asked me, that still doesn’t absolve you of the fact that generally on dates, both people eat. And I’m not sure if you know, since you don’t really, you know, go on a lot of them –”
“I go on dates,” Mac said, looking indignant.
Stella pointed her fork at him. “When?”
“I – ah – well, there was that time in June –”
“That,” Stella said, “was not a date. That was a disaster. You came to the lab the next day and had a mental breakdown, and if you deny that I will stab you with this fork and make it look like an accident. I’m a crime scene investigator, I know how to do things like that, thanks to you and the state of New York.”
“I didn’t –” Mac said, and actually flinched a little as Stella made a threatening gesture with the fork. “I wouldn’t exactly call it a mental breakdown.”
“Well, what would you call it?”
Mac paused, thought that over. “A momentary lapse in judgment,” he said.
“You lapsed in more than your judgment, pal.” She took a sip of her coffee, almost spit it out. “What the hell did I put in here?” she demanded, staring at it in horror.
Mac blinked. “Sugar and creamer?” he said, somehow managing to make it a question.
Stella glared at him across the lid of her coffee cup. “This,” she said, “is all your fault. You should buy me more coffee, because I can’t fix this.”
“How is it my fault?” He looked genuinely bewildered. Then he paused. “Wait,” he said. “Is this a date?”
“Only if you want it to be one,” Stella said, and flounced away to order more coffee and drop the remaining amount of hers in the nearest garbage can.
“Stella?” Mac said helplessly as she came back bearing more food. She dumped most of it in front of him.
“You will eat that, or I’ll stuff it down your throat.” She took a bite of her raspberry scone for emphasis. “Remember what I said about eating? Should I say something about blood loss and blood sugar?”
Mac gave her an odd look, poking dubiously at the blueberry muffin in front of him. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” he said.
“Then eat, you idiot. It’s good.” She took another bite of her scone. “What do you think about Astra’s claim her father is out of town?”
“I’m dubious on that point,” Mac said, peeling the head of the muffin off and taking a careful, precise bite. He chewed for a moment, looked faintly surprised, then swallowed.
“Good, huh?”
“Yes,” he admitted. He took another bite. “Given what’s been going on in the Mob, at least what the papers have reported on, I don’t think it’s very likely a major player like Nicodemo Pagliuca would actually leave the city. I suppose it’s possible, if he saw himself as a target, but –”
“We’ve seen the number of guys Val Constantine goes around with, and he’s not capo di tutti capi. I’ve got the feeling he and his people are not to be fucked with, and I don’t really think Nicky Pagliuca’s going to go around with any less,” Stella said. She shook her head. “Man, this Mafia stuff is confusing.”
“Just a little.” Mac chewed thoughtfully for a moment. “I wish we knew exactly what was going on in the Mafia, but I somehow doubt –” He paused.
“What?”
“Danny. He knows more than he’s saying, I think.”
“He’s a New York police detective, you really think he’d turn on us? I thought you were pretty clear on the fact you trusted him.” Stella sipped at her hot coffee, wincing a little. “Man, there needs to be some kind of balance. No matter where you get coffee, it’s either too hot or too cold. Never just right. You think?”
“You have a point.” Mac sipped at his own coffee. “I trust Danny, Stella,” he said. “I wasn’t lying about that. He’s never shown himself to be anything less than trustworthy, even though he’s a little flighty – all right, a lot flighty – at times. I’m saying that I think he knows more about the Mafia than he’s saying.”
Stella raised her eyebrows, hands cupped around her coffee. “And what are you saying?”
“I’m saying –” He hesitated. “I think I’m saying that we have to see what Danny knows about the current Mafia situation, and what that has to do with our case.”
“What if he doesn’t want to talk, or doesn’t know as much as you think he does?”
“It’s worth a try,” Mac said. He looked down at the muffin in his hands like he wasn’t exactly sure what it was or what it was doing there. “Stella – about today –”
She reached across the table and put her hand on his, glad for the human contact, the reassurance that yes, this was warm skin, and flesh and bone and muscle beneath, not the cool rubbery feel of a corpse. He was alive, and relatively uninjured, and that was what mattered. “Mac, you hit yourself in the head with a fucking coffee table and passed out for fifteen minutes. How do you think I felt?”
“I didn’t –”
“And yes, I know how that sounds, and I don’t care. Come on and try not to do that again, because it’s just a little stupid. And I know you’re a Marine and that makes you a little crazy, but I don’t have a scar fetish and – okay, I actually know a lot of women who do, but you’ve never struck me as the type who’d go throwing himself at women who like to listen to war stories. So don’t do anything that stupid again, okay?” She frowned at him, pulled her hand back when he gave her a strange look.
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” he said, much to her surprise, his voice a little peevish.
“Well, no, I didn’t think you were that screwed up. Close, but no conviction. Never struck me as the masochistic type, either.”
“Stella,” Mac sighed. “I –”
“And next time we have breakfast, you’re eating, damnit.”
Mac looked back down at his muffin, face slightly surprised. “I –”
“And shredding it doesn’t count as eating.” Stella leaned back in her chair. Anyone else would have replied with you sound like my mother, but that thought wouldn’t even pass Mac’s mind. Of course, she’d met Mac’s mother, and Evelyn Taylor was a typical rich bitch social butterfly, too busy to pay any attention to her own son and to self-centered to think that anyone other than herself would actually need, say, any emotional content at all. It was something short of a miracle that Mac had turned out as well-adjusted as he had, although “well-adjusted” referring to Mac was something of a misnomer if there was one. Mostly sane, somewhat normal, and able to pass as whatever it was he was trying to portray himself as. As long as that whatever happened to be either a CSI, a NYPD detective, or a Marine. “Friend,” “lover,” and even “partner” were a little out of his range. Bitch, Stella thought fleetingly, hoping the thought floated east and south to Chicago.
Mac sighed. “Stella,” he said again. “You know that wasn’t what I was talking about.”
“Yeah, I do. What’s your point?”
“I – as we work together in a professional setting, I think it’s highly unadvisable to try and carry on an –”
He sounded like he was reading from a textbook. Stella laughed and said, “Mac. I’m not going to jump you in the middle of the lab. Relax. Just try not to get in any more ‘I am an unconscious and possibly about to die’ situations, okay?”
Mac smiled, a little nervously, and it reached his eyes, lighting them up from behind. “I’ll do my best, Stella.”
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-28 05:13 pm (UTC)One of the things I like about this is that the way Stella acts toward him here is very typical Stella, and on the surface it's fairly lighthearted, but knowing the subtext makes it resonate much more. Not only have they slept together, she just saw him get very badly injured, and it's clear that she's still upset and *very* worried about him. He scared her and she *really* doesn't like that.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-28 11:42 pm (UTC)I think she's worried about blood loss and blood sugar. Plus, he invited her to breakfast, so even if it's noon now, he might as well he eat, since he probably hasn't done so since dinner last night.
One of the things I like about this is that the way Stella acts toward him here is very typical Stella, and on the surface it's fairly lighthearted, but knowing the subtext makes it resonate much more. Not only have they slept together, she just saw him get very badly injured, and it's clear that she's still upset and *very* worried about him. He scared her and she *really* doesn't like that.
Gah, I'm glad that came across. She's not going to take Black Friday well at all.
Right, because Stella doesn't get scared easily, and Mac's kind of like...I don't know, Kevlar or something. He doesn't get hurt very easily or often, so when he does it's kind of a shock. Especially when he passes out, which he doesn't make a habit out of either.